Is it only shopping if you buy stuff?
I spent all last fall and this winter wearing what used to be winter-white cords. These pants are very worn — so worn that the little stripes that some Old Navy worker lovingly etched into them have weathered away to absolute flatness.
Instead of donating them to the Museum of Natural History, where they could live out their days in a glass case right next to the other smooth artifacts, like arrowheads, I wear them at least three times a week. I like them. Why? They fit, dammit. They fit. Ish.
You see, they did not fit for a long time. Not in any way that would be held up in a court of law. Maybe 3 or 4 months after I had the baby, I came out of the bedroom wearing them and told my husband, whooee! Look, these pants fit.
He looked up and pointed out, as gingerly as possible, so as not to completely diffuse my glee, that the pants were not zipped. Whoops, I did not know that he could see that part. But they were UP, and at that point, up counted. Before, they weren’t even up. Now, they zip without problem. So most days, I pair these pants with some black boots. More specifically, black snowboots that someone gave me about 9 years ago.
I need new clothes.
I am not the first mother-shaped person to reflect on how hard buying clothing has become. There is the time issue: I have no extra time. There is the money issue: I have no extra money. And then, there is the real issue.
Of course, some folks zoom back into normal shape right away. One friend delivered her daughter 5 weeks before I had our son. I saw her 11 days after she gave birth. My friend could not take her eyes off of her tiny, darling daughter, but I could not take my eyes off my friend and the normal-people jeans she was wearing. Even then, in my crazily blown out giant freakstate, I knew that her story of pants would not be my story of pants.
For various reasons, I became mean and crazy last week, and could tell that I needed a break. I got a babysitter, and took the train into the city to see a movie. As the subway rattled over the bridge I had a sort of daydream (daymare) that the train would be stopped on the bridge, and a stompy Austro-Hungarian type of guard would stroll the cars until he found me, what with my flat white cords and the snowboots and the hair that, due to the circumstances of the last cut and style, left me wearing a hat at all times. But hey, that was about 8 months ago, and now I forget to wear hats. For the protection of the people of the city of New York, the guards would stop the train from entering into the Fashion Capital of America until they had ousted me and all of my aesthetic and confidence problems. They do not need these things in Manhattan.
The guard never arrived, and I get off the train in Soho. I used to work in Soho, and while waiting for the movie I am going to see, I decide to wander around and check out some stores. I decide to start with something easy: curtains for my son’s room. I go into an Urban Outfitters just above Houston. But as soon as I enter, I become paranoid. I can sense that some UO worker is going to try to stop me and try to have a conversation. And that through this conversation, it will be revealed that the worker has me pegged as some sort of tourist, but not from one of the great capitals of Europe, or say, Buenos Aires. They think I’ve come to stay with a cousin and buy ill-fitting commemorative tee-shirts featuring skyscrapers that no longer exist. They think that I’ve made a side trip to Urban Outfitters to shop for one of my teenage children. Damn you, flat white pants! Damn you, overweight mathematician who gave me a bad haircut two seasons ago!
I become so defensive that I am silently screaming to the poor terrible hipster employees, while being sure to avoid all eye contact: My child is a baby, you asshole. He doesn’t need any of your retro refitted strappy confusing bullshit skinny jeans hellholity, and neither do I. Just get me out of here, quick. Unless, of course, you also sell Xanax.
Banana Republic, I think. That’s where you go when you just sort of want a uniform. I could use a uniform. But once in BR, I can’t even recognize the store. Everything has changed in the entire world of shopping, is how long it has been since I have done it.
I decide to try on some jeans. I see that even BR jeans have changed from regular sizes to those waist number sizes.
You know, I used to, no matter what else was going on, have a pretty definitive waist. It was my favorite part of my body. It was one of the things that made me like Doris Day, though being like Doris Day wasn’t something I had specifically aspired to do. But it had happened, and I was used to it, and my waist is what I looked to for comfort when I wasn’t really all that excited about my limbs. Or my face. Or whatever.
These days, my midsection has more of a handful-ish quality than I should probably admit publicly. It’s definitely more attached to my body than it was, but even when pants fit, I have a little special bit of cleavage where my bellybutton sort of folds in. Sexy! Why must they fill dressing rooms with mirrors?
Another fact about my midsection is that baby HAPS loves it. Specifically, he loves to press his spitty little mouth against it and blow hard til his lips flutter. At least someone is enchanted by this feature of my body. My best friends concur that their kids also love their special extra parts that they got from being pregnant. Not to turn everything around into something mushy: I’m still feeling overwhelmed that I am like a very special tigerized roadmap of jiggle who needs Pilates and is not likely to get it anytime soon, and does not even feel totally confident that it would address the issue at hand. But the laugh my waist gets when my one year old makes raspberries on it?
PHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaahh?
Helps.
Que est ce-que ce est NoseFrida?
A nose, if not a NoseFrida.
All of the males in the house have had terrible colds. This morning, when I lifted the baby out of his crib, the poor thing looked to be gaming for a part in an Irish novel. You know, the genre featuring snot-nosed one-year olds who never get their faces wiped? But those babies also never get enough to eat, and he is too roly-poly for the part, so the acting career is on hold.
If you are a baby, you can probably barely handle clapping. Consequently, your chances of being able to clear your own nasal passages are nil. As a first line of defense against congestion, parents buy bulbs aspirators. Oh, I could not wait til I had one of those on hand. So eager was I, I got one even before I got my actual baby. (For the uninitiated, bulb aspirators are pointy things—usually blue—that do not work. At all. Do not bother.)
If a baby is really stuffy, you can steam up the bathroom before every nursing session, meal, and nap, and sit with the child in the murk until their head clears long enough to be able to eat or sleep. This is important knowledge in case you get desperate, but it’s just about as practical as not using wipes in favor of washing the kids nethers in the tub every time they need, uh, a wipe.
Pediatricians advise parents that they can use their mouths to suck snot out of a baby’s nose. I would suck anything at all out of my child if his well-being hinged on it. But do I want to suck a mouthful of germ-laden mucous out of his nose? I believe that I would prefer to suck gasoline out of my Camry. And drink it on ice.
Enter the NoseFrida. Actually, the true title of this modern parenting tool is “NoseFrida the Snotsucker.” In a situation like this, subtlety isn’t what sells. It’s a combo of kookiness and effectiveness, and possibly — possibly — a delight in the squeam factor. Because you’re not actually sucking snot into your mouth, you are sort of miming it. You can *see* the snot. You can *hear* the snot. But due to a very tiny foam filter, you cannot taste the snot.
You take a squishy disposable foam round out and jam it into a slot, and then assemble the NF. The part you put into your mouth is red and sort of like a kazoo mouthpiece. The business end, that goes near BUT NOT IN the baby’s nostril, is blueish and pointy. (Never put something directly in someone’s nostril.) Anyhow, suck, and the pointy part might slurp goo out of the nose. Using a squirt of saline first might help, or you might just suck saline out of your little love’s nose. Plus, by the time you put saline into his or her nose, he or she clue in to the fact that have no qualms about doing terrible things. Some drama might have already ensued before you can even start with the NoseFrida.
While NoseFrida’ing a child, the child will act as if you are using a torture device. Is confusion a form of torture?
It’s safest to have at least two parents helping with this project: one to hold the child down, and the other to siphon out the fluid. Dads seem to come in especially handy when it comes to the siphoning part of the NoseFrida. It’s reported that they are way more willing to suck snot of out someone’s head than moms are, even if as a group, they seem more fastidious and dainty in re: bodily fluids.
That’s the Fur Talking
And mint made it taste like medicine.
My hair has turned into fur, I ate ice cream pie for lunch, and I can’t get the child unapplesauced enough to leave the house with him.
Growl.
Anchovies: Bacon of the Fish World
Know what I really love? Food that keeps forever in a jar.
I don’t think my friend T would mind if I described her as “a pasta lover of near-professional status.” Or pointed out that, while many women over 30 give up pasta in favor of things like continuing to fit into their clothes, T not only mysteriously fits into her (tiny little) clothes, but she can also continue to launder them and fit into them. Nice work, T. But, enough about fashion. Back to pasta!
Her favorite kind costs $8 / pound but she feels, and I agree, that it’s important to honor certain desires. We were catching up the other day in a coffee shop, while Henry honored his own desires to hoover lemon bread into his craw, when I realized that I was enjoying myself so much that I hadn’t given a thought to dinner. For me, planning dinner is usually a pleasure rather than a chore, but it is still a pleasure that needs to be addressed.
Even if the result is pile shaped, I generally serve a bunch of vegetables, a starch, and some protein, even if it’s a textured vegetable version of a protein. Still, protein is the only real aspect of dinner that can be a hitch, since our speedily gentrifying neighborhood — like most New York neighborhoods — is served by mostly terrible grocery stores. If I can easily picture mice barreling headlong over the onions, then I certainly have a concrete mental block against the undated, leaking meat. Recently these grocers have been thrown into sharp relief by a spate of organic food coops cropping up everywhere. I don’t mean to sound like a grump, but at the organic markets, the protein selection is extremely expensive, seriously over-packaged, and branded to a degree that makes me jittery.
Perhaps because of my company, my mind landed on pasta in a very simple, chili-flecked anchovy sauce, with broccoli.
I decided to consult T about the recipe.
- Me: Hey, do you ever do that easy broccoli and anchovies sauce?
- T: Only 3x a week for dinner for years: it’s my go-to.
- Me: I used to make it all the time, but Matthew might frown upon anchovies. What shape does that one go with?
- T: Orrechiette. Ears.
- Me: Crap. I don’t have any ears.
- T: Eh, it’ll still be delicious if it’s not with ears.
- Me: Do you think I can I slip anchovies into dinner without mentioning it?
- T: Is sneaking anchovies into dinner the worst thing you are planning to do to him this week? Look at your week, then decide.
If bacon is the candy of the meat world, anchovies are the bacon of the fish world. However, they are physically saddled. Covered with cilia, salty beyond belief, and rife with zillions of whiskerlike bones, it’s no surprise that even fish lovers don’t always want them on their pizza. They’re best in small quantities. Small, melted quantities — just enough to kick up the umami. (This is how I believe bacon is also best — as an accent in an omelette or a pasta sauce — but I’m not going to turn my nose up at a BLT, should you have one on offer. I prefer wheat toast, please!)
So I abandon the idea of serving it with the correct shape, and go home to put some water on to boil, and hand the baby to my husband, and when everyone is out of the room, I sneak the jar out of the fridge.
One of my favorite cookbooks refers to certain recipes as using “meat as condiment.” Anchovies are sort of “fish as condiment.” I fish (ha) a few anchovy filets out of a jar that, like many self-respecting condiments, has been holding its own in the fridge for a nice long time, and put them in some warm olive oil in a large diameter frying pan. The frying pan then sits over the boiling pasta water, like a double boiler. Looking at the tiny delicate bones, I remember calling a food-writer friend the first time I cooked with anchovies, many years ago. “How do I get the bones out???” A ridiculous question for a seasoned cook, and he could barely bellow out that they just melt. (Melting bones sounds like something out of that Cormac McCarthy novel, but it sure makes life easier.)
Smush ’em on down with a wooden spoon, then add pepper flakes, and broccoli that’s been lightly steamed (you can add it to the pasta water for a new minutes.)
When steaming the broccoli, don’t forget to include the stems! It is the correct thing to do in this economy, and fewer broccolis will have died for our pleasure. Plus, it’s vitamin-rich food. Just peel off the squeaky-feeling outer portion of the stalk.
Replace the pan on the burner, and cook it all together for about 5 minutes. Toss with pasta (I think I used mezze rigatoni), and add some of the reserved cooking water if you want it a bit juicier. Sprinkle with more pepper and cheese.
Tell them if you want to start to build a case for the fish everyone loves to hate, or just enjoy dinner, and rest assured: they’ll never know the difference.
Regarding the Zoaster (patent pending)
Months ago, I had a brilliant and vivid dream.
I dreamt of a device called the “Zoaster.” The gist is: take a raw chicken, and rub olive oil into the skin, then place it into a cardboard shoebox. Dust it with seasoned breadcrumbs. Dust might actually be the wrong verb: put a whole bunch of breadcrumbs into that shoebox. Put the shoebox into the back of your El Camino-style vehicle, and then drive along the roads of the Italian highway system. Periodically, you’ll come to a row of toll booths. When in zoasting mode, choose the lane to the far right. Pull the car in, and slow way down, enough so that the booth’s zoasting elements have a chance to take effect. Resume driving normally towards your destination.
And after you have passed through 3 or 4 of these toll slash chicken-cooking booths, the chicken will have been zoasted to perfection, and you have a delicious picnic when you arrive at the sunny and sparkling blue Italian seaside.
It’s the simple things, isn’t it.
Church Avenue Chomp 