let them eat cake

photo by Whitney Loibner

Taido is feeling mighty loved right about now.  Mighty loved and maybe a weensy bit sick.  As he eats his sixteenth piece of birthday cake.

The spread for Taido’s birthday, greatly enhanced by the arrival of the fish, was super fun to make.  I cooked a lot more than I wrote last week.  The proof is in the pictures, which Whitney was so kind to take for me.

I may find myself in the kitchen more this week too, because company’s comin’!

In the meantime, if you find yourself wishing for a little cake…

well, here are the recipes.

photo by Whitney Loibner

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake from my favorite food blogger, Deb at Smitten Kitchen.

photo by Whitney Loibner

Coconut Cake from The Barefoot Contessa Family Style

Ingredients

3/4 pound (3 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature, plus more for greasing the pans
2 cups sugar
5 extra-large eggs, at room temperature
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 1/2 teaspoons pure almond extract
3 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting the pans
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 cup milk
4 ounces sweetened shredded coconut

For the frosting:

1 pound cream cheese, at room temperature
1/2 pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
3/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon pure almond extract
1 pound confectioners’ sugar, sifted
6 ounces sweetened shredded coconut

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease 2 (9-inch) round cake pans, then line them parchment paper. Grease them again and dust lightly with flour.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar on medium-high speed for 3 to 5 minutes, until light yellow and fluffy. Crack the eggs into a small bowl. With the mixer on medium speed, add the eggs 1 at a time, scraping down the bowl once during mixing. Add the vanilla and almond extracts and mix well. The mixture might look curdled; don’t be concerned.

In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. With the mixer on low speed, alternately add the dry ingredients and the milk to the batter in 3 parts, beginning and ending with dry ingredients. Mix until just combined. Fold in the 4 ounces of coconut with a rubber spatula.

Pour the batter evenly into the 2 pans and smooth the top with a knife. Bake in the center of the oven for 45 to 55 minutes, until the tops are browned and a cake tester comes out clean. Cool on a baking rack for 30 minutes, then turn the cakes out onto a baking rack to finish cooling.

For the frosting, in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, combine the cream cheese, butter, vanilla and almond extract on low speed. Add the confectioners’ sugar and mix until just smooth (don’t whip!).

To assemble, place 1 layer on a flat serving plate, top side down, and spread with frosting. Place the second layer on top, top side up, and frost the top and sides. To decorate the cake, sprinkle the top with coconut and lightly press more coconut onto the sides. Serve at room temperature.

photo by Whitney Loibner

Carrot Cake from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking

Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
2 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. freshly grated cinnamon
3/4 tsp. salt
9 grated carrots
1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts
1 cup shredded coconut
1/2 cup raisins
2 cups sugar
1 cup canola oil
4 eggs

For the frosting:
8 ounces of cream cheese, at room temp.
1 stick unsalted butter at room temp.
1 pound of confectioners sugar, sifted
1 Tbs. fresh lemon juice
1.5 cups toasted coconut
1/2 cup toasted and chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 325.
Butter 3 9 x 2 inch round cake pans. Flour the insides and tap our the excess. If using 3 pans, make sure you have 3 racks in the oven that are evenly spaced apart.
Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt.
In another bowl stir together the carrots, chopped nuts, coconut, and raisins.
Using a stand mixer, mix together the oil and sugar together, until they are smooth.
Add the eggs one by one, and beat until the batter is smooth.
Reduce the speed and add the flour mixture, mixing only until the dry ingredients disappear.
Gently mix in the carrots by hand.
Divide the batter evenly among the pans.
Bake for 40-50 min, or until a small knife comes out clean, and the cake has just started to move away from the sides of the pans.
Allow to cool for 5 min on a cooling rack, and then unmold the cakes.

Frosting:
Combine the cream cheese and butter in the stand mixer bowl, and using a paddle attachment mix until smooth and creamy.
Gradually add the sugar and beat until smooth.
Add the lemon juice and mix until combined.
Spread 1/3 icing on bottom layer.  Repeat with second and third layers, leaving sides of cake layers.
Sprinkle the top of the cake with the roasted walnut bits.
Place in the fridge for 30 min so that the icing can set.

asian salad trio

photo by Whitney Loibner

photo by Whitney Loibner

I feel like I am finally back in my cooking groove and I have sooo been wanting to share with you the delicioso bites coming from the Chino House kitchen, but I have been sadly lacking photos to go with my recipes, which has long kept me from posting them at all. And so I called my sweet belle soeur yesterday and said, please please pleeeeease come and take pictures of all this food I just made. Because who doesn’t want to see a picture of the food you are thinking about making for those special people coming to your house tonight?  I have special people at my house every night, but on Wednesdays, we have extra special people who come over and eat before they spend the evening hanging out with adolescents.  Taido and I find that it is easier to get them to re-up their commitment to our teenagers every year if we bribe them with food.  Which, of course, it is my pleasure to do.

So this week the menu was…drumroll please, as it’s been a long time since I posted a menu…

Pan-fried onion dip with Kettle chips

Chinese Chicken Salad

Szechwan Noodle Salad

Curried Couscous Salad

and…

photo by Whitney Loibner

Homemade Ice Cream Sandwiches

photo by Whitney Loibner

You can just call me Ina because all of my recipes this week are coming from The Barefoot Contessa, because I LOVE her.  LOVE LOVE LOVE her.  I have four of her cookbooks (actually, some of them are my mama’s, but you could say we share…if by share you mean, I have all of them hidden under my bed and if she asks nicely, I might read a recipe to her over the phone. Whatever that she bought them all.  She just wasn’t using them to their full potential.  These cookbooks deserve to poured over, I tell you.  And in the last week, I have spent a good amount of quality time with them piled in my lap and all over my couch, deciding which recipes I intend to make next.  Next up, birthday desserts.  Taido is turning 37 this week and I figure if the desserts make his head spin, he won’t focus on how old he’s getting, right?  I mean 37 is NOT old, but men are funny about these things.

Recipes below.  Enjoy!

Pan-fried Onion Dip from The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook

Ingredients:

2 large yellow onions
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/4 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
4 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup good mayonnaise

Cut the onions in half, and then slice them into 1/8-inch thick half-rounds. (You will have about 3 cups of onions) Heat the butter and oil in a large sauté pan on medium heat. Add the onions, cayenne, salt and pepper and sauté for 10 minutes. Reduce heat to medium-low and cook, stirring occasionally, for 20 more minutes, until the onions are browned and caramelized. Allow the onions to cool.

Place the cream cheese, sour cream, and mayonnaise in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment and beat until smooth. Add the onions and mix well.

Taste for seasonings.
Serve at room temperature.

Chinese Chicken Salad from Barefoot Contessa Parties!

For the salad

8 split chicken breasts (bone in, skin on)
Good olive oil
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 pound asparagus, ends removed,
cut into thirds diagonally
2 red bell peppers, cored and seeded
4 scallions (white and green parts), sliced diagonally
2 tablespoons white sesame seeds, toasted
For the dressing

1 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup good apple cider vinegar
1/3 cup soy sauce
3 tablespoons dark sesame oil
1 tablespoon honey
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 teaspoon peeled, grated fresh ginger
1 tablespoon white sesame seeds, toasted
1/2 cup smooth peanut butter
4 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Place the chicken breasts on a sheet pan and rub the skin with olive oil. Sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper. Roast for 35 to 40 minutes, until the chicken is just cooked. Set aside until cool enough to handle.

Remove the meat from the bones, discard the skin, and shred the chicken in large, bite-sized pieces.

Blanch the asparagus in a pot of boiling salted water for 3 to 5 minutes, until crisp-tender. Plunge into ice water to stop the cooking. Drain. Cut the peppers into strips about the size of the asparagus pieces. Combine the shredded chicken, asparagus, and peppers in a large bowl.

Whisk together all of the ingredients for the dressing and pour over the chicken and vegetables. Add the scallions and sesame seeds and season to taste. Serve cold or at room temperature.

Szechuan Noodles by The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook

The sauce can actually be made a week ahead and then added to the hot cooked pasta just before serving.

Serves 6 to 8

6 garlic cloves, chopped
1/4 cup fresh ginger, peeled and chopped
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup tahini (sesame paste)
1/2 cup smooth peanut butter
1/2 cup good soy sauce
1/4 cup dry sherry
1/4 cup sherry vinegar
1/.4 cup honey
1/2 teaspoon hot chili oil
2 tablespoons dark sesame oil
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/8 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper
1 pound spaghetti
1 red bell pepper, julienned
1 yellow bell pepper, julienned
4 scallions, sliced diagonally (white and green parts)

Place the garlic and ginger in a food processor fitted with a steel blade. Add the vegetable oil, tahini, peanut butter, soy sauce, sherry, sherry vinegar, honey, chili oil, sesame oil, and ground peppers. Puree the sauce.

Add splash of oil to a large pot of boiling salted water and cook the spaghetti al dente. Drain the pasta in a colander, place it in a large bowl, and while still warm, toss with three-quarters of the sauce. Add the red and yellow bell peppers and scallions; toss well. Serve warm or at room temperature. The remaining sauce may be added, as needed, to moisten the pasta.

Don’t combine the sauce with the pasta until the last minute; the soy sauce tends to break down the noodles and make them mushy.

Curried Couscous from The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups couscous
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups boiling water
1/4 cup plain yogurt
1/4 cup good olive oil
1 teaspoon white wine vinegar
1 teaspoon curry powder
1/4 teaspoon ground turmeric
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup small-diced carrots (I grated mine)
1/2 cup minced fresh flat-leaf parsley
1/2 cup dried currants or raisins (I used cranberries)
1/4 cup blanched, sliced almonds
2 scallions, thinly sliced (white and green parts)
1/4 cup small-diced red onion

Directions

Place the couscous in a medium bowl. Melt the butter in the boiling water and pour over the couscous. Cover tightly and allow the couscous to soak for 5 minutes. Fluff with a fork.

Whisk together the yogurt, olive oil, vinegar, curry, turmeric, salt, and pepper. Pour over the fluffed couscous, and mix well with a fork. Add the carrots, parsley, currants, almonds, scallions, and red onions, mix well, and season to taste. Serve at room temperature.

*I also added a couple of tablespoons of lemon juice.  I thought it needed a little more tang.

and not a moment too soon

I am now the proud owner of a deep freeze.

This may not be that exciting to you, but believe me.  It is to me.  I have wanted one for a long time, but I am way too cheap to spend money I don’t have on an extra appliance.  Case in point…the high temperature has creeped up over 80 degrees F for the last two days, but I still didn’t shut our windows and turn the air back on.  Instead, Cole was up out of bed tonight at 10pm digging around in the garage for a second fan, because it’s Mary Polly’s night to have their box fan pointed at her.  I am holding out for fall.  Come on, cool nights.

But this precious lady whose children are grown GAVE me her deep freeze because she just doesn’t use it any more.  A gift from above I tell you!  Now Instead of dragging anything I happen to find on sale over to my parents’ house only to find that there is only about two cubic inches of room left in THEIR deep freeze (yes, there are only two of them, I have said before that I think my mother is secretly planning for a natural disaster of gargantuan proportions), NOW I can just bring those loaves of bread on home to my own little treasure chest.  I can make soups and cakes and who knows what else ahead of time and freeze away to my heart’s content. This is going to totally revolutionize our winter.  I am just sure.

And although it seems unlikely that this is just a happy coincidence, my mother-in-law phoned tonight to say that she is sending something by AIR CARGO for Taido’s birthday this week.  In case you have never been sent something by AIR from Hawaii, let me explain.  AIR CARGO is when your very crazy kind relative takes a large box of something fresh and yummy to the airport and sends it on a plane.  Then you have to go to the airport that same afternoon and pick it up.  I did not know this method of shipment even existed, I tell you.  Until a couple of years ago when I received from the Hawaiian islands no less than sixty pounds of fresh tuna.  Yes, I wrote that correctly…SIXTY. Six. Zero.  Friends, that is a heck of a lot of sashimi.

my month to host

At church this fall, Whitney and I are hosting what we are calling a Boxed Lunch Book Club.  I am super excited about it, but I am a little nervous.  Because lots of other people are super excited about it too, so I have sold like 20 books.  I am used to a book club discussion being 5 or 6 people, so I have some research to do.  Taido says I had better get my lecture notes ready, which is not even funny.  Actually the idea of my standing up in front of more than three people to talk is a little bit funny, in a gut-wrenching kind of way.  But maybe after everyone reads the book I chose, they won’t want to come.  Because maybe not everyone loves Susan Vreeland as I do.  Let me tell you how much.  For the church book club, we are reading Girl in Hyacinth Blue, which is Susan Vreeland’s first and MOST wonderful book.  And for my regular book club, which it also happens to be my month to host, we are reading her new book, Luncheon of the Boating Party.  If you are in the area consider yourself most cordially invited to come to Fellowship North on October 9th at 12pm for lunch and book discussion of Girl in Hyacinth Blue.  You can bring your own lunch or order out with us for $10.

I was first introduced to Susan Vreeland years ago by a darling gal with whom I sold books in my Chicago days, which were also Taido’s seminary days, and our newlywed days.  I gobbled up Girl in Hyacinth Blue.  Vreeland writes historical fiction about real artists and art.  This first book is about a fictional Vermeer painting that travels from family to family, leaving its mark on a large cast of characters.

Luncheon of the Boating Party is about the evolution of the painting of the same name.  I am still reading it and enjoying the painting coming to life as Auguste Renoir manages to handle having more than a dozen models assemble every Sunday afternoon while he paints.  I will never see the painting again without imagining all the different relationships of the models, to each other and to Renoir.  He only painted from real life instead of from memory, so his canvases full of people laughing and eating and living are all the more amazing to me.

Book club or no, both books are delightful.  I also loved The Passion of Artemisia, whose story haunted me while I searched for her paintings in Florence, but was less wowed by The Forest Lover.  I blame my state of mind at the time though, because I am sure it was genius.  It must have been me that wasn’t.

killing fields

photo by Whitney Loibner

Taido and I have never been much into football.  In fact, we don’t watch any sports at all.  And though we both love the outdoors, we don’t really play sports.  At all.  But somehow we have managed to raise a son who loves sports, and particularly football.  I don’t even pretend to understand what is happening on a football field.  To me it just looks like a series of organized dogpiles, that go on forever.  Cole, however, is obsessed with football.  He has amassed an understanding of the game that I find baffling considering how little Taido and I know about it.  When I say he is obsessed, I do not mean that we have a son who really likes football and is kind of hoping to watch that game tonight.  By obsessed, I mean that he spends every spare moment of his time reading football encyclopedias, writing lists of players and teams, drawing plays and worrying about his fantasy football team (a new addition this year to the already all consuming football habit…thank you very much Uncle Robert).  Football is like another entity in our house.  It lives with us all year, but in the fall, it seems to take up every room.  It fills the crevices of the day, as Cole gets up earlier to check his fantasy football team, and stays up later to see who won so he can write it on one of his lists.

Last fall, cooling weather brought Cole’s first opportunity to actually play football.  It was a long awaited season.  And he relished every little bit of it…long practice days, memorizing plays, getting to know his team and coaches and waking up psyched on game day.  He didn’t even mind too much that his team lost every game but one, and though the season ended with a losing game, he went out with a bang by scoring his first touchdown near the end.  He was sad when it was over and has anticipated getting to play again all year long.  When the time came to sign up, we found out that our little league had been moved from our local park to fields that are far far away from us.  Way over in west Little Rock, which is the equivalent of going to the moon for me, an old time North Little Rocker.  Playing football was going to mean driving not just long distances, but driving through all kinds of insane urban sprawl.  I avoid west Little Rock like the plague, mainly because I like to pretend it isn’t there.  There is all of this other REGULAR Little Rock, much of which has just been abandoned to build NEW Little Rock out there on the moon.  I don’t pretend to be any kind of an expert on urban planning or on the city of Little Rock, but I am pretty sure we’re not busting at the seams like other big cities, requiring us to spread out further and further.  It’s just like plastic water bottles to me, only on a bigger scale.  People would rather drink out of a new water bottle from the gas station or the grocery store instead of filling up one that isn’t disposable.  It is cheaper to throw away a whole toilet and buy a new one than it is to have the old one refinished.  Everything is disposable, even buildings, streets and houses.  Because we like new ones.  New streets, new houses, new strip malls.  This isn’t really a post about The Geography of Nowhere, but I have to say all of this for you to understand how much Cole really wanted to play football.  Somehow he was able to overcome my strong desire to NEVER EVER drive out to this ridiculous newly cleared land that used to be trees in order to get to play football.  Even after I was like, No one is going to be able to come to your games because it is too far to drive. He had looked forward to this since the end of his last game last year, and he wanted to play.  Yes, he would get all his homework done with a happy heart.  No, he would not complain about getting up the day after a game even though he would be tired.  Yes, he understood how much gas we would be using to drive him to Little Rock twice a week.  Yes, he would be thankful.  No, he would not accept a bribe.  No, he was not backing down.  Yes, he still wanted to play.  Yes. Yes. Yes!

So last night was my first time out to nowhereland.  Because there are four little Chinos, we have conflicting activities, so Taido went to the first game last week while I went to soccer, which by comparison is a nice tame sport, played for the most part right here in our little town.  This week it was my turn.  Cole’s enthusiasm over the event helped with the drive, but I was still sporting an attitude as I parked among the Land Rovers with their private school bumper stickers and walked the length of the fields rolling my eyes at the shouting dads.  Oh, how the men turn out for football.  Women might be soccer moms, but I am telling you, if you want your husband to leave work early for your son’s sporting event, sign him up for football.  Though I am not in touch with the magical appeal of this sport, I can attest to the power of its pull on the testosterone filled.  Taido is of course an exception, and that would be why I married him.  He and I exchange knowing glances whenever a preacher uses football as an analogy or opens with comments about the weekend’s games.  If we were thirteen, you could hear us saying WHATever! But we’re still thinking it.

So I claimed my spot towards the end of the field.  I tried to not notice that Cole is clearly on the smaller side.  I took deep breaths while the coach yelled at all of them.  I had to get over this last year.  Coaches yell.  It’s good for him right?  It will toughen him up?  Help him through middle school?  It doesn’t seem to bother him like it does me, so I pull out my book for the remainder of the warm ups.  Thankfully, Peter and Whitney and my nephews came to watch the game, so Peter, who knows only a little bit more about football than me, helped me have a clue about what Cole was doing.  He’s on the defensive line, playing cornerback.  Don’t tell him, but here’s what I was thinking…He just looks so small out there.  I bought him the wrong kind of shoes.  I can see this now.  Everyone else has the REAL kind, but I bought soccer cleats.  They were less than half the price.  I wonder if he will be at a disadvantage because of it. Why is everyone yelling?  The game hasn’t even started yet.  Oh, I just hate football!

Whitney was taking pictures.  Whitney comes from a football family and blessedly, her attitude was catching.  Instead of melting into a pile of cynicism and nerves, I tried to see through her lens.  Look how cute he is!  His whole team.  They are precious. This is one of the reasons I really love that girl.  She doesn’t sit down and mumble with Peter and me, instead she rescues us with her optimism.  And Cole did look darling.  His shoulder pads drown his whole body.

When they started playing, it was SO confusing.  They all just rush and pile and I never know where he is until it is all over.  And then phew, oh he’s not completely crushed. Thank the Lord. That’s pretty much the whole game.

But then he had a glory moment where he recovered a fumble and I got all teary-eyed.  I found myself sitting out there in the midst of a total suburban cliche, with my eyes watering and feeling all sentimental.  Which is a little embarrasing, but also downright amazing.  Because did I mention that I don’t even like football?

are you talking to me?

This is the look Simon gives pretty much anyone who dares to speak to him.

title please?

This summer I read a book I really enjoyed but would never have picked up on my own for two reasons.  It has a bad title and an even worse cover design.  A friend lent me this story of a gal who comes to church and eventually to Jesus through participating in communion.  Her name is Sara Miles and she writes this sweet memoir of her faith story through stories about food and hunger.  Spiritual and physical hunger.  She is moved to faith through the sacrament of communion, and then she begins to express her faith by serving communion, which grows into serving food to the truly hungry.

One late night in the pop up after I finished reading, I turned off my headlamp and lied in my sleeping bag thinking about how much I love reading people’s stories.  I love hearing someone’s spiritual journey.  Seeing how God fills someone’s heart to the point that it overflows into these amazing expressions of love.  Sara’s story reminded me of Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies and Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love. Then I started thinking about why Eat, Pray, Love has been such a phenomenon and I realized that the primary brilliance of that book is its great title and cover.  Come on, what woman does not want to eat, pray and love?  And I know I was not the only one who first picked up the book because of it’s darling cover.  What victims we are of good design.  Suddenly I felt so sad for Sara Miles, whose book is almost certainly as good as Elizabeth Gilbert’s, if not better, but she just didn’t get a very good designer assigned to her at the publisher.  Or something…I don’t really know how those things work.

Or maybe, she is like me and is just beginning to understand (on a much smaller scale in my case) the power of a good title.  And of good design.  I am not great at either of these details, but I have friends who are, which is almost as good.  Except that I can’t call them every time I write something and say, um, can you help me out with a title for this? I used to just throw a title on a blog post as an afterthought, or I would choose something boring like the day of the week it happened to be.  But now I realize that a good title (or a bad title) can determine how many people will actually read what I write.

All that being said, try not to let the bad title and really bad cover with a pbj made on wonderbread on the front put you off from reading this beautiful story about how bread and sharing food and feeding and being fed grows into a trust in Jesus, the Bread of Life.  Here’s a random quote I loved.

The bread on that table had to be shared with everyone in order for me to really taste it.

tread lightly when it comes to middle school

In general I have not been that mom who couldn’t stand it when her kid moved on from a stage in life.  Not that there is anything wrong with that mom.  In fact at times I have thought that there must be something wrong with me because I am walking away from the first day of kindergarten or some other major milestone without crying.  But I have tried to just celebrate whatever stage we are in.  I loved my babies as babies, but I don’t still wish they were babies.  I embraced having three toddlers at home when Cole, Mary Polly and Ben were all under five.  I also embraced napping on the couch and never showering along with it.  But I appreciated that we didn’t have places we had to be at certain times.  And that I pretty much had complete control over their choice of friends.  And for that matter, their choice of everything.  Then Cole started kindergarten, and I was excited that we were done being all at home and had entered a new era.  Elementary school.  It seemed like every year after that I had another child starting kindergarten.  And even last week when I walked Ben to second grade, I thought Oh my goodness, it will be just a minute before I am walking Simon to a classroom.

But this year there has been a little kink in my plan to always embrace the next stage of my children’s lives.  One of them finally reached a stage that I just wasn’t excited about.  As I’ve already mentioned, Cole started middle school last week.  He is actually going to the same building every day that I went to for my first year of junior high.  He’s playing the trumpet.  I played the trumpet.  It’s his first year to have a locker.  I still cry when I think about trying to remember my locker combination.

We took Cole and picked him up the first few days of middle school, but now he’s riding the bus.  Which is better, because I don’t have to break out in hives when I drive down there and remember my middle school days. Last spring we went down there for orientation and I was walking the halls with Cole and I said, Yep, Cole, right there.  There’s the spot where Mama had her very first nervous breakdown.  That’s right.  That desk there in what was then Mrs. Moore’s class. And Cole looked at me with an expression that clearly did not mean, I feel you mom.  I’m just so sorry. Mrs. Moore did not understand the plight of an eleven year old girl who is being made fun of daily by that boy right there across from her.  Otherwise she would have used her almighty powers to move him to the other side of the room.

When I say I was being made fun of, I do not mean the kind where people say to you, Oh he is just flirting with you. I know about the kind of teasing that is really just flirting.  That’s what he did to OTHER girls.  But me.  I was made fun of like mocked, made the butt of all jokes and made to look like the complete idiot that of course I already believed I was because I could not EVER EVER get my locker open on the first try.  Or manage to get to class with everything I needed.  Or come up with a science project that would please the likes of Mrs. Moore.  Usually I could get all the way home before I would go inside and cry.  I would take deep breaths as I walked the slow road from the bus stop to my house, and up the stairs to my blessed bed with the Holly Hobbie bedspread.  You can make it. I would tell myself.  But one day, I couldn’t make it.  I didn’t even make it out of third period.  I actually hyperventilated I cried so hard.  Which finally made people take notice of the fact that I was being HOUNDED by a MEAN boy for all of science class.  And here’s the thing about middle school.  You don’t ever want anyone to take notice.  Your parents, yes.  And your close friends, maybe, if you have any.  But not the rest of the world.  To the rest of the world, I was just trying to be invisible.  So, yes, the mean boy got in trouble.  It was a long time ago so he even got spanked.  Which I NEVER LIVED DOWN.  Mrs. Moore finally moved him, disdainfully.  And I spent the rest of the year trying harder and harder to disappear into the nonexistent spaces between the lockers.  Seriously.

So when Cole and I got home from his orientation, he told his dad that I was completely crazy and could his dad please take him to all of the rest of his middle school events instead of mom.  And when we filled Taido in, he said with TOTAL nonchalance, That’s funny.  When I was in 7th grade, I got spanked for making fun of a girl until she cried. And I have to tell you that I lost just a little bit of respect for him right then and there.  Respect he will not regain until he finds that poor girl and apologizes.  Which he cannot do, because he doesn’t remember her name.  They never do.

The good news is that I don’t think that Cole is going to repeat my middle school experience.  And I know this not just because he is a boy.  I know it because on the first day of school I picked him up and when he got in the car he was chewing on something.  So I said, hey, what’s in your mouth? to which he replied, my locker combination.

And because he is the kind of boy who would actually EAT the only piece of paper he has with that sacred information on it, I had to give him a lecture right then and there about NEVER making fun of girls.

enough already

i know, i know.  you’re tired of it.  i’m home.  just get over it.  summer is over.  there are christmas decorations out in the stores for crying out loud.  (i swear it’s true.  i almost had a total panic attack at sam’s because i am just barely back from summer and there they were…huge christmas displays!)

so this is it.  really. no more about this summer after this, i promise (maybe).

but because i am officially INSANE and not a little bit OCD, i spent a ridiculous portion of my weekend in my pajamas and favorite t-shirt pulling all of my writing and pictures together off of various storage spaces, broken laptops, USB drives, etc and put it together in one grand page, chronologically.  and now i just feel so much better.  some people have suggested that i might should write a book about this summer.  well, i’m pretty sure i did.  it tops out at like 46000 words or something insane like that.

so sometime this fall when you are feeling bored and/or blue, and you want to relive my summer with me or if you have just arrived and you don’t even KNOW that i spent the entire summer in a pop up camper with my family, then you can just click one link.  one page.  and read the whole dang thing all over again.  and for those of you who are sad that the chino house road trip is over and you just wish there was more, well, there is.  deleted scenes if you will.  things i wrote when computers were stolen or broken.  or when there was no internet to be found.  and then it just seemed so already over when i finally could have put it up.  but now, since it really is all over, it seemed appropriate to fill in with the bits and pieces i wrote in the in-betweens.

and next week, maybe i will write about my real life.  the one that started last week without me.  because i was still here.  living the dream, baby.

pop up explosion

I can’t believe I’m saying this but I think the problem we are currently suffering from (besides a two year old with a stomach virus…won’t even go into that) is too much space.  Can that be possible?  Our house is about 1700 square ft.  When I first walked in (all by myself last Saturday), I couldn’t believe how gi-normous it seemed.  I just sat right down on my couch and cried.  I didn’t know if I was crying because I was so glad to be back or sad it was over or overwhelmed to face the days ahead or because the Republican National Convention was going on or WHAT!  Maybe I just didn’t know where to start.  So I cried.  Sitting in my clean, large house on my clean empty couch.

Now, just days later, the words clean and empty cannot possibly describe one square inch of this little hole in the wall.  No one remembers where anything goes, including me.  And I can’t imagine where everything came from.  How on earth did all these tubs and bags and boxes fit into that pop up camper and van?  We had that thing packed to the gills.  And now I am resisting the urge to put all things away in labeled plastic tubs forever and ever, because after three months of crawling into the van to get things out or to put them away, I am kinda used to those stacked up tubs.

There are other strange urges.  Like last night when I poured the water off the corn I had cooked for dinner, I felt as though I should be saving all that hot water for dishes.  What a waste of hot water!  Just pouring it down the sink like that.  But if I was going to save it, then I would need to bring in the washing tubs I used all summer for dishes and laundry.  Speaking of which, I can’t figure out how people who wore the same thing all summer long all of a sudden are creating piles of laundry that I cannot possibly keep up with.  I keep taking things out of the dirty clothes and telling people to hang them back up in their closets.  And my family members are like, Closets?  Hangers?  What are those?