Church Avenue Chomp

It’s time to move again. Lots of folks I know are moving, weeks or months after we plan to, and unlike us, they already make reference to stuff like packing.

Us, we thought about buying some boxes over the weekend, and then decided that there wasn’t enough room in the trunk.

We’ve done the math, and a lack of boxes will help us stave off what we’re doomed to us just a little bit longer. So nope, no boxes, not yet.

“But surely you are at least making lists,” said Manuel, my friend who will move a full month after we do. He is also my friend who historically helps me move, so I don’t know what he’s doing moving from another state to another state with nary a thought for my well-being, aside from the judgmental lists question he came up with. He should know by now that I need him to, to, to do whatever it is he does to complete the moving task when I fall into a sobbing pile in the middle of the living room floor after having blindfolded myself to escape the horror.

Maybe he can just lend me his lists, and then I will know what to do.

I shouldn’t be THAT bad off. Somehow, fate arranged that my sister and I would both marry very orderly men with German heritage. It might be a scientific law allowing that any force of disorganization shall meet a mate who will attempt to cancel out her efforts to bubble up into total chaos. Anyhow when Matthew and I joined households, it was rough going there for a little bit. I remember another friend helping to move my bed out from my studio, and looking at a collection of dust-caked items that had been living under there when we moved it, muttering in response “Matthew is a very good man.”

While I would prefer not to correlate what one finds under their bed with their level of goodness, I will allow that Matthew is a good man, and he is very good at managing his objects, and maybe I would be too if all I needed to own to be happy was 12 perfect j-crew shirts and 8 pairs of pants that always fit because I was lithe by design and did not faced challenges such as carrying around a 48 lb baby on the inside, every now and again.

But maybe that is not the problem, and my relationship to things is indeed a character flaw, I don’t know.

When we managed to get all of our stuff into one apartment, I saw it as phenomenal progress. Look! Our glass is half full! And our apartment is wholly full! In my estimation it was time for a cocktail, or a picnic, or a read a really good novel: anything but more moving-in associated tasks. But some people are infected affected more than others by the state of their environment, and M was getting an infection looking at all that was left to be done.

“We’re not even though the first layer of organization,” he moaned. My German brother-in-law really likes that quote.

I have a lot more to say on the topic, since we are buying a home for the first time and all of that, and we have this adrenaline rush because we might not be able to close in time for the new tenants to move in here — exciting! —  but instead I am going to take pictures of all of our things and try to give them away on the Internet, so they can be someone else’s damn problem.

If you want anything, let me know, but you are going to have to come and pick it up, because I am also bad at mailing things.

In the beginning of May, I wrote about my sister Beth who was very sick with pneumonia. I wanted to post a little more about that, and an update.

People with ALS develop a lot of goddamn problems, to put it mildly, but what they ultimately die of is respiratory problems. Choking, pneumonia or simply a failure to be able to complete the breathing act successfully are all problems that can lead to death. So when we heard a diagnosis of aspiration pneumonia, it came as serious news.

Beth entered the hospital during the second week in May. She was exhausted, in pain, unable to keep her eyes open, and she had a bad cough. Imagine yourself with a bad cough. Now, imagine how you would change your position (ie, sit up) in order to cough more productively. Well, that’s not an option for her.

I’d flown from Texas to see her, and thought I was prepared for this bad bad thing. As it turns out, I wasn’t. She had an oxygen mask on with something called a “nebulizer” which was spewing a fog of moist air as well as breathing medicine, and I felt like it was between us.

“When will she take that off?” I kept asking when I arrived, since this thing covering my sister’s face and making all of this noise made me feel like I could communicate with her even less than usual: it kept me from seeing her expression. It turns out that Beth’s most salient quality, in my estimation, at least, isn’t isn’t her gabbiness, or her love of swimming, or knack for buying someone the best present they’ve ever gotten. It is her desire to engage with other people. And so to me, when she can be amused by something, or annoyed by something, and you can register it in her eyes even if she is not emoting anywhere else, everything can seem semi-normal, for chunks at a time.

I was told that she’d keep the mask on indefinitely.

ALS has taken a lot of things from her: walking, talking, hugging, eating. But we can look at each other and share a moment. It has felt like the relationship had been boiled down to the essence, but that the essence was still there: when I can see her eyes, we can communicate. But then along came the pneumonia. And you know, the pneumonia was stripping away her ability to engage, and also, her desire to.

So I found myself thinking, all of the fun is over. When I was with her, we listened to some podcasts and mostly just hung out and held hands while she agitated trying to communicate how she could be made more comfortable, which was impossible to understand, or she dozed in and out. I didn’t manage to bring an amplification device, so I turned up the volume on my phone full tilt and we’d listen. We’d get interrupted all of the time, by a need of hers or by a nurse or a doctor, but it didn’t seem to matter since the experience of being together was so fractured anyhow. A podcast wasn’t really going to help pull it all together.

But after a few days, she stabilized somewhat. I had to come back to Brooklyn for various reasons, so I left late on a Wednesday, and that day before I left, the nurses removed the oxygen mask. When I returned on Saturday, she was a different person. No more mask. I was there on Saturday evening when our aunt and uncle arrived.

Judy and Harvey visit a lot. I’d seen them earlier in the week when Beth was feeling so ill, and during that visit, they’d told me about taking a cab to the airport to save on long-term parking. The cab came late and when it finally arrived, there was a huge blood spot covering one of the only two sittable seats in the car. They didn’t want to disturb forensic evidence, or get their traveling clothes dirty, or miss their flight, so they simply covered the spot with a newspaper and then sat down. Further hijinks ensued. When they were telling the story, I kept looking over at Beth, who the story would have had in fits, but she was asleep or too out of it from pain medication to enjoy it.

our loving uncle

But when I returned the next Saturday, we were all listening to our Uncle Harvey explain, rather fondly, how his adult children had once tricked him into a eating a handful of dry cat food. They’d come upon a sample packet of catfood that looked eerily similar to a packet of peanuts. They’d banked on him arriving home and stopping at a certain spot in the kitchen, in order to chat with them. They’d foreseen his level of distraction and constant low-level desire for peanuts, and assumed he’d take the bait and grab the bag if they put it in a certain spot. He described how he opened up the little bag shook some into his hand, and then popped it into his mouth, handful-of-peanut style.

He mimed the physical sensation of all of the moisture in his mouth being leached into the dry catfood, leaving him with a puckered effect and a mouthful of unswallowed, uh, cat food. And suddenly Beth was laughing hysterically. The laughing was making a foreign noise, one that had the nurses running in to make sure she was all right, but the terrible fog had lifted. She was as all right as she will ever be. And just like that, it was clear that the fun was not over. Bring on the stories: Beth was enjoying snippets of life again.

In the time since, she’s been discharged from the hospital. Being decreed too well for the intense and expensive care of the hospital, and yet still too in need of nursing care to be safely at home, she’s currently at a relatively, all things considered, lovely nursing home with good professional care. Don’t get me wrong: the fact that my 43-year-old sister is currently in a nursing home makes me want to vomit. She’s not so crazy about it, either.

Our mother worked like heck to get her into this good place with great staff and lovely grounds and I was even able to *take her outside* last Sunday. That is absolutely amazing. Despite the intense dedication of many staff people and family, it simply hasn’t been possible to do that at home. (Her home had been modified with a stair chair, but she can no longer safely use that to get downstairs. And while she has a lift to get her out of bed, she doesn’t have a wheelchair she could get into that would fit back through the door frame.)

That’s one reason ALS sucks so much: all of the best planning is worthless when a person’s physical condition shifts yet again. It’s like quicksand.

As for that week specifically, and for the last 3 years generally, thank you to everyone for their thoughts and calls and e-mails and good wishes.

I read recently some advice: if you are ever considering calling someone who is having a hard time but are afraid of being intrusive or bugging them, err on the side of intrusion. No one has to answer the phone, but knowing that you’re thought of can make all the difference. We are all alone, aren’t we? But the phone ringing can sometimes give us the welcome illusion that we are not.

Thanks to foxypar4 for use of the photo, released under a Creative Commons attribution license.

This week we are living like regular New Yorkers: young ones who are not on a budget! There’s been a lot of takeout and evenings out with friends and when I have been around, I’ve been toooo tired to cook.

Sunday night as we drove back into Brooklyn from Connecticut we stopped at Medina, a fancyish Pakistani / Bangladeshi / Indian takeout place in our whereabouts — on Beverly and Coney Island Avenue — to pick up some naan. We wanted it to accompany some Indian food leftovers we’d gotten on Friday, from another restaurant.

We had some leftover Rogan Josh (lamb curry) and Saag Ponir (spinach with fresh cheese), but we’d eaten up all of the Peshwari naan on Friday night.

Peshwari naan is my favorite sort of bread these days. It’s a buttery flatbread stuffed with dried coconut and ground almonds and chopped raisins. This is a brilliant pairing for the things listed above when they are soaking into some clovey rice. Seek some out!

Though they don’t have Peshawar-style naan at Medina, we pulled over at a bus stop nearby and I rushed out in for some regular naan. I figured I’d get some freshly cooked rice as well. Once I got in there, though, and saw salad with hot peppers; some lentils with squash; a stewed okra dish as well as a beguiling eggplant one, as well as some incredibly juicy ground chicken on skewers, I started to think: well, there isn’t really THAT much Rogan Josh left over, is there. Plus we’ll need something Henry will like: I’d better supplement. So I ordered a mango lassi, and some squash and lentils, and got the rice and bread ordered.

Then I noticed some some chunks of reddish chicken. They weren’t in a sauce, and they many little unfamiliar green leaves threaded throughout. Not like cilantro, which collapses when challenged with heat, but more like thin, sharp little bay leaves. I asked what the dish was.

Ahh, that is the Chicken 65, miss. It’s an appetizer, very good. Would you like to try?

Heck yeah. As the man behind the counter was removing the tray in order to fork a piece for me, I grabbed a menu and checked to see what #65 was. It was a “sweet.” Hmm . . . Then I looked at the appetizer menu and indeed, among the grapeleaves and whatnot was a listing for a dish whose title Chicken 65.

So, taste this miss, but let me tell you it’s better when it’s hot — it becomes very juicy.

He handed me a chunk. Before I even had it in my mouth, I could tell I was poised to fall in love.

And then, I tasted it. It had the sort of hot that I associate with the Sichuan chicken Matthew brings home from work when I am lucky. Those peppers are just larger than peppercorns and almost sour: they go to work on your tongue in a very particular place, which is midway back, along the sides. The effect confuses you and so you eat more.

I could feel the Chicken 65 in the same part of my tongue, though it didn’t have a numbing effect. I wondered if it was a combo hot hot and citrusy, together, the achieves this. But heat and acid and salt and grease (the chicken isn’t breaded but apparently it’s fried) work together like magic.

What I’ve learned through reading (and watching video clips on the web) is that Chicken 65 originated in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. (That’s where Chennai is.) This dish, which is chopped chicken thighs cooked with lemon, ginger, chili, garlic, maybe egg, maybe yogurt, and what I learned were curry leaves, is a deep deep pink due to the addition of red coloring — and it has a particular feel on the tongue due to the lemon / ginger / chili combo but probably enhanced by what Indians call Ajimoto — which is basically a Japanese brand of MSG. (Which my jury is out on.)

My jury is not out on Chicken 65: I love it. I’d link to a recipe but I don’t have a tried and true one. However, you can have a lot of fun watching video-clip recipes of chefs (accomplished, and not-s0) explain how to make this dish.

There is a lot of supposition going on about the title. Some people think it’s called Chicken 65 because it takes 65 ingredients, or because you won’t get it right until you make it 65 times. Others assert that it was most popular in 1965. Instead, it was #65 on the menu at a military encampment in India.

Our pilgrimage to Medina was more of a small errand than anything else, but it ended up being exciting and informative in an unexpected way.

They did forget to pack us the naan, however, which as you’ll remember was my original reason for stopping.

Thanks to protohero for use of the photo.

1. Did you hear? It’s a holiday today — it’s “tell someone else about my blog if you like it,” day! So, go forth and multiply, readers! Speaking of which:

2. This morning, while pushing Henry’s stroller down the street, someone with very fluffy and unruly long white hair, who was being helped along by a female with more controlled, slightly darker hair, commanded to his companion, SAY HI TO THE BABY.

And then they both said hi to the baby, and then the man stopped and looked me in the eye and raised an eyebrow and asked “NO ‘TOONS?” Or, I was thinking, perhaps he meant the homonym: “NO TUNES?”

I considered about both possibilities and couldn’t come up with any answers.

To get some clarification, I said, “Excuse me?”

Not the “you are rude and I will ironically call it to your attention by excusing myself” version.

Not the Steve Martin version from the ’70s that my dad really likes.

Nor was it the very genuine “I sneezed and though I made a valiant effort to turn my head and get my inner elbow to absorb it, I am uncertain of the consequences and truly hope I didn’t douse you with spit or mucous.” (That is the one I probably I use the most.)

Or the, “I am touching your butt but the subway car is so crowded that I couldn’t help it.” That’s popular, too.

Instead, it was the most rarely employed version: the genuine-respect-for-elders one. Because suddenly this person, with the crazy white hair and the oldness and the commands and his desire to connect with a stranger, looked like someone’s rendition of God. Maybe like Jeffrey Tambor’s rendition from the “Arrested Development” episode when he plays God in the painting. Still: Godlike.

When the man on the street restated his question with correct pronunciation, I heard it more clearly. What he said was “NO TWINS?”

That made me sort of nervous. Did he know something about my future, and know that it is thick with twins? We’d just seen some twins at the playground, and that seemed . . . hard.

Hopefully he was just a cheerful neighborhood guy with a bad hair day who likes to tease women 60 years his junior.

Okay guys, that’s all for number 2. Don’t forget about 1.! And have a great holiday weekend!

Someone else getting "threaded"

He has the most perfect eyebrows!

That is the most oft-uttered comment about my child. I think that the elements that spark admiration are

1. Contrast: his eyebrows are darker than his face

2. Form: the eyebrows are distinct, but they don’t take over the face

When people gaze upon me, let’s just say that they do not automatically launch into speeches about how excellent my eyebrows are.

I have many early memories of my mother combing them into place, or licking her finger and then smoothing them into place before we went into church, or school, or shopping. They would not be conquered.

And then, when I was in college, a friend from high school came to visit me on campus and broke my heart by saying. “I want to grab your eyebrows. They are just like Mark Twain’s!” Perhaps an astute comment, but not what a 19 year old co-ed is looking to hear.

I like to think that she was trying to be friendly, with sort of a literary twist. But obviously, I wouldn’t be dredging it up 19 years later if it hadn’t sort of upset me.

I identified two characteristics of good eyebrows above, and will revisit them here and apply them to my own eyebrows.

1. Contrast: There is a contrast between my eyebrows and my face, but it’s the sort achieved with night vision goggles. My face is somewhat exuberant in the color department, my eyebrows are glinty blonde, and can sometimes appear to be glowing a spectral green. When I’m dressing up, I color them in with a brown pencil.

2. Form: Yellow hair traditionally implies delicateness, right? RIGHT? Surely you have read Fairy Tales. Well, ok. Don’t be fooled. Like the hair on my head, the hairs of my eyebrows are sproingy and individualistic and they grow very very fast. Earthlings do not favor curly eyebrows. Maybe a desire to curl is the problem.

So, let’s try having less. For a while, I got my eyebrows waxed. Then once, someone tore the skin near my eye by tearing hot wax off of it. No thanks!

I’ve resorted to threading. I wish I could explain it to you, but it is far too mysterious. I have looked on the Internet, and I can report with confidence that it’s a mode of hair removal popular in India and in the Middle East. Not to imply anything about those places, but it’s a wholly barbaric, if effective, practice.

I cannot even communicate with the woman who I pay to do it well enough that I can know where she is from, but I feel afraid of her, perhaps because of her highly judgmental, beauty professional status.

I arrive, she points to a chair, gestures that I should slump down, tears a piece of thread and keeps one end of it between her teeth, and goes to work in a fast and systematic motion of twirling thread around my eyebrow hairs to tear them out.

First it doesn’t hurt too badly: the hairs are teensy and she’s just warming up. Then my ears start to fill with an unusual roaring noise. Sort of like the kind of noise that happens when you are yawning, except I’m not yawning, I’m getting the individual hairs of my eyebrows torn out in public, pop pop pop pop pop, by some highly authoritative woman who won’t talk with me, who is keeping her torture device between her teeth.

By this point in the procedure I can’t hear, and now tears are spilling down over my cheeks. I have to beg her for a moment of respite. I wipe my eyes away. I imagine that she thinks I am an English-speaking wimp who doesn’t tolerate pain very well. But I do! I want to say. I went to a hospital once and they said that I do tolerate pain well!  . . . You respect me, right?

Instead I slump down again and wait for her to resume. During the next break 30 seconds later I try to ask her, cheerfully, if her if her eyes water when she gets her eyebrows threaded. She stares at me. She is totally silent.

When I am done, she tells me, “Six dollars.” My goodness. In an effort to get her to like me, or perhaps in an effort to get me to like me, and I leave twice what she asks: a 100% tip. She continues to never smile at me, ever at all.

Reasons she might hate me

1. Poorly tended eyebrows

2. Fluent in English

2. Can’t take pain

3. Stupid big tipper

This weird boot camp on both a physical and emotional level leads me to avoid threading. But about a month ago my sister’s manicurist, who comes to her house to make sure that, despite ALS, Beth will still have perfect nails with seasonally themed colors and miniature paintings on them, recently greeted my son for the first time ever. She did the by saying,

“You have the most perfect eyebrows! Yes baby. Much nicer than your mama’s.”

First, I made sure she couldn’t see my non-seasonally themed nails. Then, I tried to think up some sort of response, or at least acknowledgment, of this ballsy estimation. Since my sister can’t talk anymore, and my son can’t talk yet, it was up to me to say something. At a loss, I decided to try to laugh it off.

“Nicer than your mama’s, she says!” (I was addressing my son, since I wasn’t quite sure who else to address.)

She continued on by continuing to address Henry. “Well, what can I say, it’s true. Your eyebrows much, much nicer than your mama’s.” Poor Henry of the perfect eyebrows, who barely speaks English unless you are talking about bananas or going on a walk, already implicated in this crap.

Something had to be done, so earlier today forced myself to revisit the Silent Threader. Things over there are pretty much status quo, but at least I look a little bit tamer for the next week or so.

Thanks to Mercedes . . . Life As I Pictured on Flickr for use of the photo.