food, and other musings

Turn off yer lights!

Saturday night at 8 p.m. people all over the world, beginning in New Zealand, spreading westward, and ending in San Francisco, will turn off their lights for an hour. I'm planning to join in -- what could be more elegant than having dinner by candlelight, after all? Whether or not it makes a dent in actual energy consumption, it demonstrates the importance even a small act can have, when executed day after day. I encourage everyone reading to join in, wherever you are. Who knows, maybe it'll be so soothing to eat by candlelight that we'll adopt it forevermore?

x marks the spot

Today we repeated last Saturday's taco lunch, stopping on the way so Jeff could photograph the spot where he proposed.

Imagine our surprise when we finally arrived at that exact bit of Polk Street, only to look down and see the following phrase etched into the concrete:

"Love is the way."

It's enough to make you gag.

But I'd be lying if I didn't admit it also gave me a few goosebumps. Total coincidence, I promise, and something neither one of us noticed until we went back today.

Does this mean our marriage is uncommonly blessed?

**

On a related note, I can boast with great pride that never once in the last 7 days has either of us uttered the phrase "popped the question." (shudder)

**

I am in wedding planning hell. As in, hell if I'm going to do any of it. I bought a few bridal magazines, but mostly they make me want to puke. All that white chiffon and ridiculous coifs. I'm wearing red, leaving my hair down like it always is, and if we do music it'll be a string quartet to start the show and and my iPod for everything else. If you know of any good Bay Area wedding planners, recommendations are welcome. So are caterers -- I care most about the food.

**

In astounding news, last week Jeff took his first plane trip since the accident that DID NOT GIVE HIM MIGRAINES! It's probably a tad too soon to say that for sure, seeing as he only got back yesterday and often the 2 weeks following a plane ride are doomed to pain and torture, but he escaped 4 days of the trip plus nearly a day home unscathed. Which begs the question -- could we elope after all?

**

I think we found The Ring. I'm keeping my hands maniacally manicured until we buy it just in case I see another one worth trying on. As a former nail biter (I would still happily nibble away but acrylic makes it hard), I am always sure everyone's staring at my hands. Now they really are.

On being quiet

Bird notecard by artist Julianna Swaney.


It's been nearly two months since I wrote here. (Not including that throwaway post about how disappointing Lost is this season). There's no Big Reason, no drama, no disaster, just life getting too busy and swallowing me whole. I get up, go to work, work, come home, eat something for dinner I've eaten a hundred times before, catch up with Jeff about his day, watch TV, read, sleep. Weekends are full of friends and dinner parties and outings and errands. Truth is, there would be time to post something here or there, but my mind has been quiet, even though my days have not.

Still, I have a Big Announcement. Big for me, anyway. I don't make new year's resolutions, but I have designated this year the Year of Beauty. A year in which I prioritize making my surroundings beautiful. A year in which I buy nothing which does not serve some artful purpose -- function is not enough. A year in which I devour design*sponge and subscribe to Domino. A year in which I have already spent way too much money on Etsy. A year in which even my sticky notes must be beautiful.

My current obsession is with birds, a fact my sister pointed out last weekend. I hadn't even really noticed, but nine of the recent objets d'art I've purchased feature birds. Is it a thirst for freedom? An unconscious desire to escape and fly away? I'm inclined to think birds are just cool, actually.

**

Jeff and I finally ate at the Dining Room at the Ritz-Carlton last night. We have been making and canceling reservations there for years, and I'm not sure exactly why. Sometimes we'd stop feeling flush the week we were due to go, other times illnesses and travel got in the way. But finally we went. It was meant to be a post-anniversary (eight years! And we forgot until a week later...oops!), pre-Valentine's Day celebration but then I went to LA for a week to shoot Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs for my client, and by the time I got back, two hours delayed and high as a kite on xanax, I was too tired to make it. We rescheduled for last night, one of the windiest and rainiest on record. Jeff put on his too-short black summer pants with his suit jacket, but we didn't notice until we were in the cab. He wanted to turn around, but I figured, fuck it. If I didn't notice, who will?

Dinner was lovely -- it's been a long time since we sat down to a meal that long -- and every morsel was delicious, even the ones polluted by crab that I forgot and ate and then panicked over (I've become allergic to it, like my mother and sister before me. Luckily, I escaped unscathed.) The truth is, though, I don't like eating that way any more. It's too precious, all these gossamer flourishes on the plate, two kinds of bread served with snapping silver tongs, bottles of champagne that start -- start! -- at $180. Truth is, I'd rather eat a roasted chicken from the grocery store with a baked potato at home with my friends. It's not time to toss out my pretty heels just yet, but, with one exception, I think I'm done with multi-storied meals. Despite how full I am, I leave feeling empty.

**

p.s. Angelina is pregnant again. Because, you know, having four kids under the age of six isn't quite exciting enough.

My current opinion of the new season of Lost

After episode 1: Yawn.

After episode 2: Yawn.

After episode 3: SAYID!!! YES!!! And then, yawn.

The Human Stain

When I was a little girl, my father stood in front of my grandparents' staircase one day and told me that I was a perfectionist. I don't know what incident prompted the comment, nor what I thought of it at the time, but I have mulled it over a lot in the decades since. For most of them, I was convinced that he was wrong. A perfectionist is someone who won't rest until they've expended every ounce of energy, every morsel of intention, every iota of mental, physical, and emotional prowess to accomplish a task. It doesn't matter the size or importance of the job; doing it just so is king.

As you must know by now, I prefer to half-ass most things. It's just who I am. Done is better than perfect, I always say.

But sometime in recent years, I realized what I think my father was trying to tell me. He didn't mean to say that I was the kind of person who redid a book report 17 times until I was happy with it. I was not -- I was the kind who hung a bunch of hastily painted styrofoam spheres from a coat hanger and called it a day on my solar system project so I could play with a friend.(My mom called my back home within the hour and we spent the rest of the night redoing it to a much higher standard.)

I think what my dad was referring to is my tendency not to want to do anything unless I am good at it from the start, unless I know that I will excel. It isn't about giving my all, it's about having my some be better than anybody else's. Unless I am a natural, forget it.

And about that, he's right. I hate doing things I am not good at, and I rarely do. If I think I am going to suck at something, I give up before I begin. I'm not proud of my approach, but I have accepted it. The thought of being bad at something slips into every tiny crevice in my brain and my body and whispers "you suck" over and over and over again, the drumbeat of defeat growing louder and louder until I want to run and stick my head under a pillow and hold it down so tight that I can't hear it anymore.

There are a lot of problems with being this way. One of them is that I don't often try new things. And when I do, I hate them. (see also: Sports.) The only reason I went cross-country skiing for the first time when I was 28 is because Jeff's bad knee prevented us from going downhill skiing -- which actually was great, since a grown woman snowplowing her way down every mountain in Park City is something I didn't really want my colleagues to see anyway. Luckily I was with beginners, and we fell and laughed and helped each other up. I spent some of the most breathtakingly quiet moments on earth out there in the vast white world where nothing but bunnies and deer and birds lived, swish-swishing through the forest with only four other people. But if I had been the only one who was new to cross-country skiing, I would have pleaded a cold, stayed at the lodge, and missed out on one of the most peaceful moments I have ever had.

Another problem with this crap-tacular approach to life is that I have developed an unhealthy need for my life to look perfect. And by life, I mean apartment. (Because any idiot can see that my life is far from perfect.) I cannot actually recall ever having a friend come by, no matter how long I have known them, that I didn't clean the bathroom first. I have even gone into the bathroom with a vacuum cleaner while I made friends wait outside in the hallway because they showed up unexpectedly. Now, if I lived in a fraternity house, this would be an act of kindness, but my place is pretty clean on a regular basis. Our housekeeper comes once a week, and I do tidying up and sweeping and stuff in between. Plus, I make Jeff use the other bathroom sink so mine doesn't look like a toothpaste factory exploded in it. The truth is, I don't really need to clean the bathroom every 5 minutes. Except that I do.

When people come over -- and, um, maybe more importantly, even when they don't -- the bed must be made and straightened. If Jeff takes a nap, I have to smooth the wrinkles from the pillow within two minutes of him getting up. Or the world will explode. (It's true. It is!) Truth be told, I would prefer it if you could not tell that people occupied the place. Call the style post-apocalyptic -- as if suddenly, all humans vanished from the Earth and this model apartment was all that was left.

After Jeff's accident, a lot of people inadvertently reinforced this crazy notion of mine. If I've heard it once, I've heard it a million times: "You are handling this with such grace." Ha! That couldn't be farther from the truth. I scream and cry and fall apart and get mad -- at Jeff, of all people -- all the time. But I don't do it so other people can see. In the first hard weeks after Jeff fell, not including the first few days, I only cried in the shower because I didn't want him to hear me. For the first 6 weeks when neither of us left the apartment for any reason other than to go to his doctors' appointments, I only asked two or three times for people to run errands for us, even though I desperately needed the help. His parents came up every week, usually more than once, to take him to some of the appointments and give me a break. Often I invited them to stay for lunch, which I always made -- soup, sandwiches, salads, nothing fancy, but nothing store-bought either. Meanwhile, Jeff couldn't walk or take a bath by himself, couldn't even get up in the night to pee without my help, but I was putting on mini-dinner parties. It seems mad in retrospect, but I'm learning that it's how I cope with disaster and vulnerability and fear. I figure, if everything looks fine and perfect and under control, then maybe it will be.

So when a friend dropped his bottle of beer on the living room carpet at our holiday party a few weeks ago, I rushed in with the OxyClean and the reassurance that all was fine in the world. Inside I was freaking out, but I smiled and murmured not to worry. That's what perfect hostesses do. I flooded the stain, applied the magical elixir of stain removal, and went to bed feeling good.

When I woke up the next morning, what remained was a big, misshapen blotch of faded rug. For days I applied more and more OxyClean, convinced all it needed was a little more elbow grease and some patience. When we left for the East coast for Christmas and the stain remained, I told myself we'd hire a carpet cleaner in the new year.

It dawned on me last night that the "stain" is actually lighter in color than our white carpet. Essentially, I have bleached it. What remains is noticeably whiter, with a ring of brown around the edge from the beer. There is no more stain to remove -- I have gone one better and removed the carpet's color. There is no way to fix this, save recarpeting the entire apartment. (Because all the rooms have to match. Duh.)

As soon as I realized what I had done, I got angry. I stomped and stormed about the apartment, barking at Jeff for not reading the Christmas cards yet, furiously folding clothes and tossing them into the armoire. How could I ever straighten my life out if this big huge horrid stain was forever smack dab in the middle of our living room, reminding me just how imperfect everything is?

Ah.

Aha.

And with that realization, something shifted. Maybe I need this stain, this thing I can see and touch every day, to help me remember that life, my life, is not perfect, no matter how hard I try to make it look that way. I marched myself back into the living room and tried to look at the stain with fondness. Then I did it again, and again, until I actually started feeling sort of affectionate about the stain. And then, out of nowhere, I decided to keep it. I might even name it. (I'm also madly hatching plans to get rid of it: We'll get an area rug! Let's see if there's hardwood underneath there and redo the floors!). But mostly, I'm trying to appreciate this sign from the universe. However ugly it may be, it is a reminder that there is no sense trying to look perfect when you are anything but.

The Leader of the Band is Gone

Every night in junior high, I'd get in bed, surround myself with the orgy of pillows that made up my nightly nest, and turn on the clock radio to Love Songs. Then, as I drifted off to sleep, a woman named Delilah would play slow, soft serenades dedicated to lovers long gone. I would listen closely to the dedications, and my heart would ache strangely, in a way it never had before, for people who had lost someone they'd loved, to distance, death, or the cheap hussy at the liquor store. No matter the story, I felt their pain. I could hear the yearning, that deep ache in the bones, all the way through the radio waves. I hoped one day to love that much myself. I was 14; of course I did. The music that accompanied these stories was always older than me, from an era when sentimentality was king.

There were a few classic songs that I got to know over the years, sad songs sure to elicit tears that were requested over and over and over. Some were treacly, but some were decent songs that had gotten attached to the dedication circuit through no fault of their own.

Same Old Lang Syne told an every day story, the kind you might say was pregnant with regret. A few lines were genuinely touching; more than a few made me cringe. But somehow, even with the gratuitous sax solo at the end, I came to love it. Running into an ex in the grocery store, the most mundane of places; two people looking back, not only wondering "what if?" about one another, but also remembering a time when their lives had spread out before them, unformed, electric with possibilities. At the moment they meet, it's clear that at least one of them has settled, and for both of them, the surprises their lives once held have long since faded to disappointment, loneliness.

When I woke up this morning and read that Dan Fogelberg had died, I immediately thought of this song. I'd heard it in the nail salon a few weeks back, and strained to hear the words. After all those cheesy dedications, and all those years, it still captured me, treacly lines and all. That's something.

Chopping Block

I guess I have been getting a lot of attention around our house lately, what with the colonoscopy and all. But did Jeff really have to go and cut off his finger to swing the pendulum back his way? It's pathetic what some people will do for attention.

We'd just come home from having a glass of wine and a small bite down the street and I was setting up the iPod in the kitchen while Jeff was cutting up some fresh basil. All of a sudden, I heard something behind me to indicate pain -- I don't remember the noise but it made me turn around and by the way Jeff was holding his finger, I realized he'd cut himself.

So I followed him into the bathroom to help him run the finger under the faucet. (Watching is too help.) There was serious blood, everywhere, and when we saw his finger -- middle one, left hand -- we realized something important. PART OF IT WAS MISSING.

All of a sudden there were major hysterics. Tears, hyperventilating, lots of "Oh my Gods". I mean me, not him. I dashed back to the kitchen and looked down at the cutting board.

And there it was. PART OF HIS FINGER. The fleshy tip. It was bloodless and it looked sort of forlorn. I flipped it over and could see where the layer of skin stopped and the flesh began in varying shades of pale. The last layer of skin looked sort of lacy at the edges, with the swirls and sworls of the fingerprint shining through from the other side.

Lest you think I was admiring it so philosophically then, let me draw you a more accurate picture.

ME: [crying and screaming] "Ohmgodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod. Oh honey, it's bleeding. Ohmygod you cut your finger OFF! YOU CUT YOUR FINGER OFF! Look! Here it is! Do something with it! Ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod."

HIM: [calmly] "I'm fine, will you just get me a bandaid?"

ME: "YOU'RE NOT FINE! YOU CUT YOUR FINGER OFF!"

HIM: "So?"

ME: "So? YOU'RE GOING TO BE DEFORMED!"

HIM: "Will you please get me a bandaid?"

ME: "No, you need stitches. Ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod. I'm going to call 911."

I dashed back to our old style rotary phone and dialed 911. Aside: I think if you get all the answers right to the questions the 911 operator asks you, you should win money, like on Jeopardy. Because when you're hysterical, figuring out your address and phone number and all the other bazillion questions they ask you is really, really hard. 

Anyway, I told the lady that my boyfriend had cut part of his finger off -- OFF! -- and she was all, "Woah." And I was all, "I found the part he cut off, can you tell me what to do with it so they can reattach it?" So she starts giving me instructions -- totally counter-intuitive, I might add. "Do not put it on ice. Do not run it under water. That could damage it and ruin chances of reattachment. Find a clean plastic bag like a Ziploc and place it in there."

I dashed back down the hallway, turning on the lights for the ambulance as I did so they could find our apartment. I grabbed a Ziploc and ran back into the bathroom. While I was on the phone, Jeff had tried to get a bandaid himself, and there were wet bandaids and half-torn bandaid wrappers covering every square inch of the bathroom from sink counter to floor. "Where is it?" "It's not there?" "No, I don't see it. Did you put it on your finger?" "I don't know, I might have washed it down the drain "WASHED IT DOWN THE DRAIN? WHY DID YOU DO THAT? OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD."

I grabbed the sink drain and yanked it out but I couldn't see a finger nub. The only logical thing to do next was cry harder.

"Why are you crying?" Jeff asked me. "Because you're going to be DEFORMED!" I wailed. I'm the kind of woman who makes him change his shirt and use hair gel when we go out, so it stands to reason a physical deformity might get my panties in a bunch.

About that time the paramedics came. I considered asking them to take off their shoes -- we don't wear them in our apartment because of our pristine white carpet -- but the possible deformity won out and I shooed them in.

As soon as they made sure he wasn't bleeding to death, they sat him down and unwrapped the dish towel turban from his finger. They found the fingertip -- Jeff had put it under the bandaid, thankfully. You could tell they were totally disappointed. Obviously they were hoping he'd cut it off at the second knuckle or something. But then we got the bad news.

"They won't be able to reattach this, sir."

You would be proud of me. I handled the news really well. NOT. I started crying hysterically again. Then about 17 more paramedics arrived and started asking me for his ID, to get my shoes and my coat, that we'd be going to the hospital. I was definitely having flashbacks and I think that's part of why I was so upset. One of them, Mr. Tough Guy, says, "Hey, who's the guitar player in the family," and points to one of Jeff's guitars and his 800-pound very manly looking amp. I eyeballed him for a second before answering with THE OBVIOUS. "Hey, I did the same thing to myself at the fire station," he tells us. "See?" He showed Jeff his presumably deformed finger. "It looks a little funny but it's okay."

After much consultation, Jeff decided not to go to the hospital. All they were going to do was clean it, Mr. Tough Guy's partner told us, and since it was bleeding so profusely it was probably pretty clean already. They walked Jeff back into the bathroom and bandaged it for him, giving him instructions for changing it. I sat on the edge of a hard chair in the living room, my coat on, staring out the window. I think I was in shock. Would I really have to make dinner tonight? It was HIS turn.

On their way out the door, Mr. Tough Guy and his partner said, "Hey, man, take it easy. Let your wife take care of you." I narrowed my eyes at them. "I'm onto your man schemes," I said. They chuckled. I tried not to attack them from behind for the ways their huge man-shoes were leaving filthy paw prints on my white carpet. They had been helpful, after all.

I guess the finger throbbed something awful the rest of the night, but I wouldn't let Jeff have any Advil because it makes you bleed. With luck, he'll be in a bandaid later this week sometime, but the bleeding isn't going to stop completely for quite a while. "You won't bleed to death or anything," Mr. Tough Guy told us. Thanks for the reassurance, dude.

An hour behind schedule, we sat down to bowls of spaghetti aglio e olio and watched another episode of Heroes.  Mid-way through, I looked at Jeff "Does this mean you're going to have a different fingerprint?" He looked back. "I bet it does." He chewed thoughtfully for a moment. "Man, I wish I had robbed a bank yesterday."

The Colonoscopy, and The End

Sorry I haven't been back to let you know about the actual procedure. But you know, now that it's over, it's like oh, what, the colonoscopy? That was sooo Tuesday afternoon . Now all I care about is the office holiday party, and how many drinks = not making an ass of myself on the dance floor.

Jeff and I left for the hospital at precisely 12N. I'd gotten my bathroom visits down to every 30 minutes, which I figured left me a spare 15 minutes to get from the parking garage to the lobby before things got out of hand.

Right before we left, I walked in the living room to find Jeff flipping through a magazine. "I need you to get totally ready so that when I say go, we can literally be downstairs in the car in 30 seconds." He got going, and I hit the loo one last time. Then it was GO! GO! GO!

We were like a football team doing drills, running down the stairs in tight formation. Door open. Door shut. I hit the garage door opener while he started the engine. The trip was full of backseat driving: "Turn left!" "Speed up through the light!" "Pass this car!" "Get in the right lane!" It was like Dale Earnhardt, Jr. Sort of.

We pulled into the parking garage with oodles of time to spare. I checked in, they got Jeff's number to call him when I was ready, and he took off for greener pastures. I toodled off to the waiting room. And promptly started to cry.

Go ahead -- you can say it. I'm a baby. (Or, as I told my very sweet nurse, Frances, "I'm not the most stoic patient you've ever had, am I?") I don't like hospitals. I don't like people messing with my body. I certainly don't like anal probes.

My nurse came for me and took me away to the hospital room, where she made me change into one of those horrid buttless gowns. I almost got to keep my sweater on, since the IV fluid makes you so cold, but it was long sleeved and I guess that gets in the way. But she tucked me up nice and cozy under a blanket and set to putting in the IV. I looked out the window to my left and gazed out at the back of a row of houses, one brick red, another white, and the trees behind them that had just started to turn shades of red and gold. I pretended I lived in the red house with my fairy godmother and lots of brownies and hot cocoa while Frances stabbed the fuck out of my veins. Seriously, I look like a heroin addict.

The lady in the bed next to mine had just had an endoscopy and her doctor, also mine, came in and out to check on her. The sound of Dr. Melnick's voice was soothing, but it wasn't enough to make me want to let her stuff a metal rod up my bum. I cried some more, softly. Occasionally the lady next to me would try to make me feel better. "You don't feel a thing!" she said. "I've had three of them." Goody goody for you.

Mel, a very nice nurse's assistant swung by and pushed me down the hall. It was such a strange feeling, gliding through the hallway under someone else's steam; the vantage point almost made me dizzy, walls and lights coming at me from unfamiliar angles. He parked me outside the procedure room and Dr. Melnick came by to say hi. When she saw I was upset, she reassured me. "The worst is over, this is a piece of cake." Well, I don't like butt cake.

Pretty soon she asked me to roll onto my side, and then she showed me the most beautiful sight I have ever seen: two syringes full of the elixir of forgetfulness. As she sank the first one into my IV, she said it would be a mere 7 seconds before bliss overtook me. I felt a burning sensation in my throat, and then it was like Alice down the rabbit hole, down down down down....

I woke up, about an hour and a half later, woozy and confused. Eventually it subsided long enough for me to notice Jeff was in the room, and then Dr. Melnick stopped by. "We tried to get you comfortable but no matter how many drugs we gave you, you kept thrashing and wailing, and we just couldn't give you anymore -- we gave you enough to kill an elephant." In my addled state, I wondered -- is she trying to tell me I'm fat? Then the penny dropped: "So we had to stop 1/3 of the way through."

Yep. I am so hardcore that I fought it even in my unconscious state. I guess often young people have a harder time than older ones tolerating the procedure. Luckily, the few things they could check for at that, er, depth were ruled out, but now it looks like there's a CT scan and a delicious barium beverage in my future. Whatever -- I think I can handle that.

When we got home, I slept for a hundred hours. I woke up to a bowl of spaghetti aglio e olio that Jeff lovingly prepared. It was the best plate of food I have ever tasted in my life.

red daisies

Experiencing single-dom for a night

Jeff is off playing guitar with friends tonight. I didn't do much. I certainly didn't "chic out." Heh. Me? Never. What did I do?

I got a manicure and a pedicure.

I baked brownies that contain four sticks of butter, more than a pound of chocolate, and an entire package of Oreos.

I popped the cork on a bottle of prosecco, which I am sipping from my favorite Kate Spade "happy 34th birthday" champagne glass.

I played all my favorite songs on my iPod, like My Heart Will Go On (shut up) and Hey There Delilah (you know you like it, too.)

About a minute ago I considered putting on my pajama bottoms, the ones emblazoned with pink hearts, and then dancing around to ABBA or Air Supply, singing into a hairbrush, but a girl has to know when to cool it. (Otherwise known as her boyfriend and his friend might walk in the door any minute.)

Dinner? Haven't figured that out. I guess when the brownies are cool I'll decide between them and...uh...some cereal. Yeah.

xoxo