Dear Counselor Chomp: Fashion Advice
The advice column run every two weeks, or otherwise at my whim.
Dear Counselor Chomp,
I am planning to attend my college reunion in June. I won’t tell you which one, but since these events are generally held every five or ten years, I probably won’t be going to a lot more! The main event is a luncheon. I really want to wear a new dress. I have spent hours scrolling through hundreds of dresses on the Internet.
When I attended college it was all women, so you know that everyone is going to be looking at everyone else and thinking about how they have changed. I am sure you can imagine the side conversations!
After weeks of searching, I finally found a simple dress with cap sleeves—all the rest seemed to be sleeveless. It fits nicely and is comfortable, but it is black! When I asked my husband if it would be ok to wear it, he, the fashion consultant, said “definitely not in June.”
I still have the tags on the dress!
Confused in Chicago
Dear Confused,
Finally, I get to be the arbiter of taste!
Let’s review the facts.
You have a party with people you haven’t seen in years. You don’t want to be laughed at. Rather, you’d like to crush their spirits with your evergreen beauty. What should you wear to accomplish this?
You should wear . . .
drumroll . . .
confidence.
You probably know what suits you and what doesn’t, and selected this dress because it inspires confidence in you.
Your sense of self will have solidified since graduation, even if your arms have moved toward a more liquid state of matter, as seems to be the wont of all arms over time. But my sense is that if you are largely looking at sleeveless dresses, that you’re probably doing better than just about anyone save Madonna and Obama.
So, consider it just one more time. If wearing a dark dress in June is a problem for you—and we are talking about you, rather than anyone else—then would you feel better adding a scarf or some brightly colored shoes or even some Lady Gaga makeup to color it up? (Look! I’ve linked to a helpful tutorial, and you too can have huge, bubbly, crazy-person eyes!)
Once you decide what you are going to do, never second-guess your decision.
As for your husband, husbands are notorious for being opinionated when consulted — they have to say something when asked a direct question, don’t they? But if he’s anything like mine, I’ll bet that if you put the dress on at the reunion, he’ll look at you once in the light of the moment, have no idea that he’s ever seen it before, and tell you that you look lovely.
And if you believe him, then you certainly will.
Have fun!
To get your question answered by Counselor Chomp, email it to churchchomp at gmail dot com.
Mucus: A Poem
I have been sick. Here is your poem generated by fever and sleeplessness.
Mucus
True compatriot to my blood, saliva, tears
You spring to action to protect me from germs, cold, particles in the air
Forming as if by whim, sticking by like a close companion
Moistening the air I breathe.
But, like the Lebanese
Falafel shop guy I dated briefly in Washington DC circa ’93
Whose stated intent was also to protect, but ended up calling 27 times one evening
Because I was not where he wanted me to be
You, too, can overdo: I may have overassessed your charms.
In fact, your loyalty is starting to smother me, friend:
Really, a liter a day should suffice.
Your avid multiplication is drying me out — no seriously, really drying me out.
It runs counter to your job description; it is time to cut down production.
I try to sleep sitting up, hurting my hip joints.
Breathing through my mouth, my throat dries out and I waken, choking.
This is not working out, and it’s you, it’s not me.
But you’re dug into my sinuses like a rock hard bone.
A dense cloud ready to storm, but waiting.
You seek the harbor of my lungs, turning green.
What seemed to be allegiance is now clearly envy.
What’s making you sick is making me sicker.
Great Recipes Stemming from Bad Misunderstandings, Part 2
Look! A series. I’m just like Charles Darwin. I mean Dickens.
I recently wrote about accidentally inventing some delicious tacos due to a misunderstanding. In case you haven’t yet, you should make these tacos.
Hurry!
With the tacos I served homemade salsa — also, apparently, the result of a misunderstanding.
The rice recipe is not here, but it is coming.
Salsa Saga
My friend Manuel is the source most Mexican recipes in my life.*
I used to make this salsa all of the time, but it had been a while—years.
I recalled that you take an oven safe bowl, and add a can of tomatoes, a chopped fresh jalapeno (with the ribs and seeds in reserve), a loosely chopped onion, aa few cloves of garlic, and cumin, and cook on low heat for, um, a long time. Is there lime in it? Called around a bit, and couldn’t find anyone to tell me. I couldn’t remember, and I didn’t add it.
The salsa ingredients can be cooked at about 300 hundred degrees for an hour. Because I now have a microwave, I tracked down my old blue Pyrex bowl, removed the Christmas lights sitting in it, and microwaved the ingredients . (Most of my bowls are not microwave safe; none of my Christmas lights are.) I tried to remember. When you use the microwave, is it 8 minutes? Or 12? Hmm. I did 12.
Then I removed part of the jalapeno so I could add more later if necessary, added some fresh cilantro, and used a hand blender to liquefy it.
Voooooom. We love the hand blender, Henry and me.
The resultant product was good. It needed more jalapeno. I added some. It needed a lot of salt. I added some. I was pretty happy with it, but when my husband came home and I asked him to taste it, he did, and then he said “so, what is it?” When I huffed around and told him salsa, he indicated that it needed a lot more salt. Duly noted. Salt salt salt.
When I talked to Manuel, I told him that I made his salsa, but that I didn’t use the canned tomatoes with basil in them, which was one of his tricks.
“I never did that. I often used stewed tomatoes, for the sweetness,” he said. Hmm.
Next, I told him that I couldn’t remember how much onion to use, so I used a bit more than half of a medium onion.
“Oh, I don’t even use the onion anymore. It makes it taste too much like onion.”
So I said “it’s just the garlic?”
“No, I started leaving the garlic our a long time ago.”
What is in his salsa is a mystery, but I’ll bet it’s better than my version. But this version is still really good.
Procedure
Preheat the oven to 300, or resign yourself to using a microwave.
Into an ovensafe bowl, put a can of whole peeled tomatoes, cumin, a sliced open jalapeno with seeds and ribs removed, a chopped onion, and 2 cloves of garlic.
Cook uncovered for 1 hour at 300, or cook in the microwave for 12 minutes.
Add cilantro. Blend ingredients together using a hand blender or a stand-up one. Season to taste with salt, more jalapeno, or cilantro.
Ingredients
- 1 large can whole peeled tomatoes (stewed if you wish)
- 1/2 t cumin
- a jalapeno
- a medium onion
- 2 cloves of garlic
- handful of cilantro
- salt
*aside from my guacamole trick, which is to grind garlic and salt around in the bowl before adding the avocado, and for some reason, this makes guacamole unreasonably delicious
TIE HIS SHOE
From time to time I like to share a neighborhood experience. For one thing, I love slice-of-life moments. And for another, you might pass someone a hundred times without even wondering about their story, though the truth is that everyone you pass on the street is a barrel of characteristics: in short, a character. A funny dance, an imitable accent, a deep anger, a notable passion, the unshakable certainty that I am from Russia, or just a kindness shining through on an otherwise unremarkable day are all things I can think of off the top of my head.
How will these characteristics manifest? Why are they like that? Who made them who they are? Are they so different from you that you can’t believe it? Are there similarities that surprise you? A conversation might yield both. And what is the impression of you that they are reflecting back to you? You may or may not have occasion to relate, but when I do, I almost always find that relating to another person is both illuminating and enriching. But often, if leaves you with more questions than answers.
Yesterday Henry and I had a blast at lunch and the playground with some friends. Except for the exact moment he was skinning his nose, it was a fine, fine day.
Afterwards, the friends dropped us off outside of our apartment. I had my bag, my kid, a stroller he wasn’t in, and was feeling around for my keys.
We were about to go up the steps to our building. There are 3 steps right off of the sidewalk, and then sort of a small plaza in front of the building, and then one more step to get up to the door.
Climbing the steps means Henry will be holding my hand, or holding the railing. Because I was carrying stuff, I was in the midst of urging him to grab the railing when the man approached. “Tie his shoe,” the man said. I looked at the man, who was tall, thin, African-American, and in his 30s. I cast my eyes down to the gray and red sneakers on Henry’s feet. Sure enough, one was untied. I’d tied it at the playground. The other mom had tied it at the playground, too. I think I might have even tied it across the street. They were double-knotted, but they are apparently slippery. I really just wanted to get inside, and to be honest, away from strange men commanding me to do stuff. But he stood there, expecting a response.
“I’ll get it as soon as we’re up the stairs,” I said.
He came a few steps closer. “No miss. Tie it now.”
I’m always wary of approaching men, especially those paying specific attention to us, but I assessed this one. He was carrying a bag of dry cleaning over his shoulder, and he had a squinty eye, and when he moved forward I could see that he was limping. I may pay for this some day, but I always look at the accessories a man has when I am wondering if he is planning to attack me. A large hunch-shouldered man in the shadows, hood around his head, standing aimlessly at the corner . . . is exonerated from being scary when I see the teacup dog he is walking on the world’s smallest leash in the pool of light cast by the streetlight. As for this dry-cleaning guy, I doubted he was going to really bother me, unless . . . unless I didn’t
“TIE HIS SHOE!”
Like I once did when I drunk man tried to give me $5 for having such a beautiful baby, I did a quick mathematical calculation about how to get out of there fastest. I accepted that dirty balled up five last spring, and yesterday, I kneeled down to tie Henry’s shoe.
I was trying to hold Henry near me, and my bag near me, and I don’t really care if someone takes the stroller, but I wouldn’t want them to pick it up and wallop us with it, of course.
But the man just held his ground, watching me. I almost asked him to move on, but it wasn’t until he saw that the shoe was tied, and double-knotted, that he got a big smile on his face.
“Thank you, miss. Thank you for doing that. Thank you. Now you have a good day. Thanks for doing that.”
He seemed really happy. He walked past and turned his head.
Thank you.
I wonder if he didn’t have an experience where he fell as a child and was permanently injured because someone did not tie his shoe.
The shoe, of course, was untied again by the time we were at our own door.
I’m trying to write up a salsa recipe in a way that is not so boring as to make you keel headlong, snoring, apathetic about whether you eat salsa ever again, and liable to knock out your teeth.
I’m finding this task to be challenging and I need to take a lot of breaks.
During the breaks I’m trying to find some new dishtowels, and I am looking around the website called Etsy.com at all of the hyperspecial handmade dishtowels and feeling somewhat awful at the memory of a hyperspecial bunny dishtowel with a tail that my sister bought for me for Christmas several years ago. I have a lot of great friends and family, and I have a lot of great things. I am grateful. But I’m fighting the admittedly ridiculous feeling that no one will ever buy me the perfect bunny-shaped dish towel with a tail, or its sequel, ever again.
I know you shouldn’t miss people who have died because of the, uh, presents that you are missing out on getting, but I do. And Beth would be pleased that I was missing the perfect presents she cultivated, and see that it was a lovely part of a whole of the relationship.
There was a flip side to the gifts thing. She shopped constantly, spent too much money, had a hard time organizing the gifts, and they didn’t always even make it to their intended recipients. When she lost the power to shop and direct others, we toned down holidays quite a bit. I was just as happy for Henry to receive gifts his cousins had used or not used. And for myself, I don’t need a whole lot anymore.
For my birthday that occurred a year before she died, Beth was upset that she hadn’t gotten me a gift. I think I didn’t see her on my birthday proper, but visited in the weeks after. She indicated that she needed to get me a gift. I didn’t want her to feel bad, but I did actually have an idea.
I knew it would be one of the last gifts I’d get from her. I’d resorted to jewelry sometimes when buying gifts for her, because cocoa mugs, cooking utensils, even magazines, these had all gone by the wayside because there was so little she could do. And I’ve always had an idea about getting the perfect piece of everyday jewelry that someone would wear always to think of you: a plain silver ring, or something that wouldn’t go out of style. I aspired to elemental, always-with-you gifts for her.
One of the gifts I’d recently bought Beth was a birthstone ring that was clustered the way ’round with stones of the people who loved her. Her parents, husband, and children. Having our birthstones too would have been rather bling-y, but I could tell that she loved the ring but it bothered her not to have ours, too.
When it was time for my gift, I wanted, from Beth, a perfect and everyday piece of jewelry to acknowledge our sisterhood, and I wanted her to get a twin piece of jewelry. I searched and searched for good “sister” jewelry; I love you, Internet.
There is a lot of hokey sister jewelry. I found the perfect piece from, of all places, J.C. Penney. For $14.99, there was a silver chain and silver pendant that was in the shape of two concentric rings. On the inside it said “A sister is a forever friend.” It had a good shape, an everyday but pretty look, an acceptable pricepoint, excellent sentiment, and the sort of childlike / foreigner-style syntax that made us laugh. I showed her on my laptop. And then I proceeded to order two of them, sitting on the other bed in her room, using my own credit card. I was strong arming her, going so far as to pay for it myself, but it was something I’d wanted her to have, too. I wouldn’t have been able to just buy it for her, considering what we both knew was happening. But this was perfect.
When they arrived after a few weeks, we both started to wear them. I almost never take mine off. When she was hospitalized or in a nursing home, they’d remove her jewelry, and sometimes I’d visit and she’d request that I get hers from home.
I’d sometimes have her wear mine for a few days, and sometimes she’d wear it on her wrist because arranging her to get it on her neck was too complicated. At the end, who knew if she wanted me to bother, but it gave me something to do, and it was a little bond out of a material that would be around for longer than we would be.
She was buried in hers. I took mine off last week for a party and realized getting ready for bed last night that it was still off. I’m going to go put it back on.
Church Avenue Chomp 