If you've spent any time around me in real life, you'll know that I occasionally like to use the er, salty language. I am especially tied to the word "bitch" which I feel I have reappropriated in a feministy way and use to describe, well, just about everyone. In a child-free context, I use it a LOT in conversations with my husband. "Hey bitch, do you want to go to the grocery store?" "Bitch, please. I am not washing your long underwear AGAIN today." Something like that. I need to get a handle on it. I should go to a Bitches Anonymous meeting or something. However, I feel that my husband and I are both really good at not letting our...sentence enhancers leak in to our family life. Except for the rare time when I stub my toe or inflict some other kind of mind-numbing pain on myself, my kids have never heard me say anything more salty than "crap" or "shii--take mushrooms in a cream sauce" or "Jesus H. Christ on a rubber crutch."
So, imagine my surprise when my five year old comes running giggling into my bedroom yesterday while I was organizing my closet and goes, "Mommy, you're a JUICEBAG." Then he runs off giggling, not waiting around for me to respond. Juicebag? He can only mean "douchebag." Which is a word my husband and I reserve for only the most hardcore, nasty people we can think of, i.e., people who don't use signal lights, Republican strategists, certain academics, and the occasional meter maid. I am surprised that we have used this word in earshot of Sam, but know that we probably have. Our non-swearing policy is kind of like abstinence only education--it works in theory, but well, you know, sometimes you're just in the back of a Mitsubishi Montero, and you don't give a damn what they told you about purity last week....
So what do I do? Do I wash the kid's mouth out with soap? Hardly. I continued hanging up my scarves and then proceeded into the living room where Sam is blissfully playing with Legos. I mean to say something to him, tell him not to use the word "juicebag" at school, but I don't. I choose not to draw attention to it. Were I to draw attention to it, I have a pretty good idea that "juicebag" would suddenly become Sam's very favorite word because he has just enough of my DNA to make him the kind of rebellious little beast that would do such an abominable thing. Plus...and this is going to sound really horrible...it was really, really cute. A juicebag? Come on, that's cute. That's something that Will Ferrell would have his kid do on The Landlord video and millions of people would watch it and think it to be quite awesome.
So, I have a pseudo-swearing child who I can't bring myself to punish because I think the pseudo-swearing is fun. And I'm writing a blog about being a parent. Nice. Having reached my fill of irony today, I will be retiring.
Friday, November 7, 2008
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Four Years Ago....
*If anyone reads this, which is doubtful, they will probably think me to be a typical liberal, part of that "other America" that Sarah Palin warned you about. And you know what? I would apologize for that and tell you that I'm a typical American (because I think the results showed that last night, Ms. Palin....), but I'm not going to. For the first time in four years, I am proud of my own beliefs, so if you don't agree, you don't have to read, and if that makes you mad...well, too bad. I am a bleeding heart liberal, I am PRO-CHOICE (with a vengeance), I think anyone who wants to get married should be able to do it, I'm all about affordable health care for all, and I invite oil companies to just come suck it. There. I said it. That felt good. If that's not American to you, then, to be honest, I really don't give a damn.
Four years ago, I was a college senior with a 1 year old and a 5 year old at home. Four years ago, I was happiest when I was in my Tolstoy class. Four years ago, I worked the 4-midnight shift at Books-A-Million's cafe, coming home covered in coffee and just hyped up enough on caffeine to finish my homework. Four years ago, I loved my family, but quietly wondered what else was out there.
And four years ago, I lost all faith in America, in the democratic process, and in my own beliefs.
Four years ago, I wrote a blog entry full of tears, complete with Ginsberg. I had worked my butt off for John Kerry, passing out bumper stickers, taking my baby to the polls with me in a stroller, where I passed out literature and helped old people walk up the step and into the room where voting was to be held. Being the quintessential naive college student, I had no doubt that my candidate would win, because, ultimately, I believed that people saw the same way I did. I was surrounded by liberal professors, who swore moves to Canada if George Bush did the unthinkable and won.
And, of course, he did win. Wednesday, November 3 dawned cold and dreary, like a pall was stretched over our land. I couldn't see why. I couldn't understand how our country was so divided. My favorite professor halfheartedly jested that he was thinking of moving to New Zealand to become a sheep farmer, and I felt tears spring to my eyes, not because of the outlandishness of such an idea, but because all of a sudden, that seemed preferable to the current condition. I took a picture of my family holding up a giant sign that read "We're so sorry" and posted it on a website that contained pictures of Americans, apologizing for their country to the rest of the world. After posting that picture, I silently swore off politics right then and there, and in fact, four years ago was the last time that I voted. I didn't even register when we moved to CA, so upset and stung was I by my loss.
But last night, it all came back. I felt alive with the political process. I felt proud of my fellow Americans, MY FELLOW VIRGINIANS (HOLLA!). I fell in love with my country again, with the dividedness and the togetherness, with the tears and the cheers. Not just because of Barack Obama, although he is pretty rad--I'm not naive enough to think that he spits lollipops and rainbows like I think some people do, and I do know that the road in front of him is a lumpy one. But because we, as a youth, as a people, believed in something, and we worked, and it paid off. We weren't shut up by oil companies, by strategists who tweak the strings of faith and scare the frightened and the foolish into voting against their own interests. We used Facebook, we used our communities, we used each other to become something great, something that we weren't able to do four years ago. And last night, seeing all those beautiful young faces, crowded into a cold Chicago park, I cried. I cried for four years ago, I cried for Prof. Anemone and all the sheep farmers, I cried for the world, I cried for the "I'm Sorry's", I cried for us, as a country.
We are something that makes me proud. We are beautiful, and we are doing the one thing that I think everyone, parents especially, should strive to do. We are trying.
Four years ago, I was a college senior with a 1 year old and a 5 year old at home. Four years ago, I was happiest when I was in my Tolstoy class. Four years ago, I worked the 4-midnight shift at Books-A-Million's cafe, coming home covered in coffee and just hyped up enough on caffeine to finish my homework. Four years ago, I loved my family, but quietly wondered what else was out there.
And four years ago, I lost all faith in America, in the democratic process, and in my own beliefs.
Four years ago, I wrote a blog entry full of tears, complete with Ginsberg. I had worked my butt off for John Kerry, passing out bumper stickers, taking my baby to the polls with me in a stroller, where I passed out literature and helped old people walk up the step and into the room where voting was to be held. Being the quintessential naive college student, I had no doubt that my candidate would win, because, ultimately, I believed that people saw the same way I did. I was surrounded by liberal professors, who swore moves to Canada if George Bush did the unthinkable and won.
And, of course, he did win. Wednesday, November 3 dawned cold and dreary, like a pall was stretched over our land. I couldn't see why. I couldn't understand how our country was so divided. My favorite professor halfheartedly jested that he was thinking of moving to New Zealand to become a sheep farmer, and I felt tears spring to my eyes, not because of the outlandishness of such an idea, but because all of a sudden, that seemed preferable to the current condition. I took a picture of my family holding up a giant sign that read "We're so sorry" and posted it on a website that contained pictures of Americans, apologizing for their country to the rest of the world. After posting that picture, I silently swore off politics right then and there, and in fact, four years ago was the last time that I voted. I didn't even register when we moved to CA, so upset and stung was I by my loss.
But last night, it all came back. I felt alive with the political process. I felt proud of my fellow Americans, MY FELLOW VIRGINIANS (HOLLA!). I fell in love with my country again, with the dividedness and the togetherness, with the tears and the cheers. Not just because of Barack Obama, although he is pretty rad--I'm not naive enough to think that he spits lollipops and rainbows like I think some people do, and I do know that the road in front of him is a lumpy one. But because we, as a youth, as a people, believed in something, and we worked, and it paid off. We weren't shut up by oil companies, by strategists who tweak the strings of faith and scare the frightened and the foolish into voting against their own interests. We used Facebook, we used our communities, we used each other to become something great, something that we weren't able to do four years ago. And last night, seeing all those beautiful young faces, crowded into a cold Chicago park, I cried. I cried for four years ago, I cried for Prof. Anemone and all the sheep farmers, I cried for the world, I cried for the "I'm Sorry's", I cried for us, as a country.
We are something that makes me proud. We are beautiful, and we are doing the one thing that I think everyone, parents especially, should strive to do. We are trying.
Monday, November 3, 2008
Despite Your Political Affiliations, This Should Make You Cry
Today, Barack Obama's grandmother, the woman who raised him, passed away due to cancer. I have an incredible soft spot for awesome grandparents, as I lived with my grandparents for 3 years as a kid when my parents got a divorce and my mom went back to school, so I find this nearly heartbreaking. This lady seemed like a truly amazing woman, who, despite any political affiliations you may have, definitely raised a decent, amazing son who was obviously adored by her and who she was immensely proud of. We can only hope that we will all be so lucky as to be able to raise our children in such a manner.
And, on a shamelessly political note, I'm sure she will be smiling down from heaven when her grandson carries on her legacy and is elected to the highest office in the land tomorrow, ensuring a presidency that is friendly to strong, wonderful women like his grandmother.
"Mommy, you should totally write a cookbook about the good stuff you make. With no mushrooms. Only stuff with no mushrooms."
Yesterday my mother in law gave me a cookbook that a person I used to know has compiled of her family's recipes. It is a cookbook that is designed for families with children, detailing "kid-friendly" recipes. Had this been two years ago, I would have turned up my nose at this and proudly let people know that I had no use for such a cookbook, as my child ate whatever was served to her. That was B.S., and by B.S., I mean, not the obvious, but Before Sam.
My daughter, Gabby, is a culinary superstar. She has a palate that many adults could be jealous of. Her favorite food is sushi, she loves vegetables (except for mushrooms, as the above quote can attest), and she will try just about anything. She is just as at home ordering off a noodle shop menu off the main drag in Chinatown as she is ordering off the menu at Applebee's. It's quite amazing--after watching her down an entire plate full of pickled ginger BY ITSELF, I had brief thoughts of sending her out on the freaky kid circuit to do Ellen with those kids that have the bass voices or can paint Dali-esque prints with bathtub paints. She is a marvel--a Gourmet magazine thrown haphazardly in a stack of Highlights.
Enter my Sam. Sam is five, and religiously follows the five food groups: chicken, potatoes, ham, macaroni and cheese and breakfast food. He doesn't eat anything that doesn't fall into that list in some way. Moreover, even if one of these items contains a sauce of any kind, it's not going into his mouth. He hates sauces, condiments, and even sometimes, for inexplicable reasons, pepper. If something is purported to be healthy, he is not interested and is not afraid to share these feelings, loudly listing his disdain to anyone who will listen. He is not only a picky eater, he is a jerky eater, famously thumbing his nose at anything that doesn't fit his high standards. He is everything that Gabby is not, and this bothers me to NO END. I have no idea how this has happened to me, me, the mother who once pushed her kids three extra blocks THROUGH THE SNOW to get them to a Ukrainian restaurant I had read about in a New York City For Kids: Gourmet travel book. I can take many things as a mother--hell, if Sam came home in 20 years and told me that he was a gay garbage man, I would be just fine. But a picky eater? Nothankyou. I want to take him to a church and have him exorcised.
Thankfully, there is one thing in the world that keeps me from doing this, and that is roast chicken. Roast chicken is the one thing that my entire family can agree on--it is economical (which my husband likes), my kids love it, and, yes this is going to set back the women's movement 50 years or so, nothing makes me feel more like a woman than roasting a chicken. Plus, it looks like you tried so hard, when in reality, you just kinda put it in the oven and forget about it. Which is perfect for me, because I like praise but I also like to spend a Sunday afternoon doing nothing other than snuggling up in bed with a Lifetime movie and a stack of magazines.
So...in the interest of fulfilling my daughter's wishes, I will give you my perfect recipe for roasted chicken, and a Sunday afternoon of bliss.
Morgan's Roast Chicken
1 5-6 lb. chicken (you can use a smaller one, but I've found that this size gives us enough for at least one more meal during the week, which falls into that whole "economical" thing--hey, more money for beer and shoes is not a bad thing...)
a few handfuls of fresh herbs, chopped roughly--anything you have on hand (basil, parsley, and chives are generally the ones I go to, but you could really use anything)
one rock hard bulb of garlic, seperated into cloves
olive oil, salt and pepper
1 lemon
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Take the chicken and lay it breast up in some sort of roasting pan. If you have a rack, use it, but if you don't, just use a large baking dish of some sort. Remove any giblets. Ok, now look at the breasts (the fourteen year old in me just guffawed)--you should see some skin at the top that you can grab a hold of. Go ahead and take that skin and pull it up so that you can run your fingers between the skin and the meat of the breast. Start shoving in the herbs. It should kind of feel like a pocket that you are stuffing. When your herbs are stuffed, put a little salt and pepper in the pockets, and leave it alone. Then drizzle a bit of olive oil over the top of the bird and use your hands to rub it in. Salt and pepper the outside of the chicken--you can actually go a bit heavy on the salt because it will keep it moist, and despite the fact that I've used what I consider to be a lot of salt on a few occasions, I've never really had salty chicken. Kosher salt is good for this. Then salt and pepper the cavity. Use a few of the garlic cloves to put into the cavity, and cut the lemon in half and shove that in too. Place the rest of the garlic cloves around the chicken. Don't worry about peeling the garlic, because after it roasts a while, it will just pop out of the skin. Yum.
Roast for 2-2 1/2 hours. If you have a chicken that has one of those little thermometers that pops up when it is done, then you are in business. You can baste it a little if you want--you don't really have to, but I think it makes the skin nice and brown if you do. Just use a brush to paint some of the juices back on the skin as it cooks.
Ok, now what to do on the side? Glad you asked. As you roast the chicken, think about roasting some veggies. I usually put them in when the chicken has a 45 minutes or an hour to go. I generally start with a combination of onions, peppers, and mushrooms, and then add 1-2 seasonal veggies to go along with it. When I made this last Sunday, I used acorn squash, which was pretty good. Just take the veggies, cut them up, and then drizzle with a bit of olive oil (don't go overboard here--you want these to be mildly healthy) and sprinkle on salt and pepper and a bit of Italian seasoning. Roast for 45-60 minutes, but check every 20 minutes or so and flip them around their pan.
You can serve your chicken and veggies with mashed potatoes and baguette smeared with the roasted garlic like I do (I'm not giving you my recipe for mashed potatoes, so don't ask. :-) ). Or, be like my friend Mara who serves hers with potato leek soup and baguette spread with herbed goat cheese. I wouldn't turn down a good white wine with either of these meals. Anyway you do it, it's a great meal that will give you leftovers and should please even the most picky of eaters.
My daughter, Gabby, is a culinary superstar. She has a palate that many adults could be jealous of. Her favorite food is sushi, she loves vegetables (except for mushrooms, as the above quote can attest), and she will try just about anything. She is just as at home ordering off a noodle shop menu off the main drag in Chinatown as she is ordering off the menu at Applebee's. It's quite amazing--after watching her down an entire plate full of pickled ginger BY ITSELF, I had brief thoughts of sending her out on the freaky kid circuit to do Ellen with those kids that have the bass voices or can paint Dali-esque prints with bathtub paints. She is a marvel--a Gourmet magazine thrown haphazardly in a stack of Highlights.
Enter my Sam. Sam is five, and religiously follows the five food groups: chicken, potatoes, ham, macaroni and cheese and breakfast food. He doesn't eat anything that doesn't fall into that list in some way. Moreover, even if one of these items contains a sauce of any kind, it's not going into his mouth. He hates sauces, condiments, and even sometimes, for inexplicable reasons, pepper. If something is purported to be healthy, he is not interested and is not afraid to share these feelings, loudly listing his disdain to anyone who will listen. He is not only a picky eater, he is a jerky eater, famously thumbing his nose at anything that doesn't fit his high standards. He is everything that Gabby is not, and this bothers me to NO END. I have no idea how this has happened to me, me, the mother who once pushed her kids three extra blocks THROUGH THE SNOW to get them to a Ukrainian restaurant I had read about in a New York City For Kids: Gourmet travel book. I can take many things as a mother--hell, if Sam came home in 20 years and told me that he was a gay garbage man, I would be just fine. But a picky eater? Nothankyou. I want to take him to a church and have him exorcised.
Thankfully, there is one thing in the world that keeps me from doing this, and that is roast chicken. Roast chicken is the one thing that my entire family can agree on--it is economical (which my husband likes), my kids love it, and, yes this is going to set back the women's movement 50 years or so, nothing makes me feel more like a woman than roasting a chicken. Plus, it looks like you tried so hard, when in reality, you just kinda put it in the oven and forget about it. Which is perfect for me, because I like praise but I also like to spend a Sunday afternoon doing nothing other than snuggling up in bed with a Lifetime movie and a stack of magazines.
So...in the interest of fulfilling my daughter's wishes, I will give you my perfect recipe for roasted chicken, and a Sunday afternoon of bliss.
Morgan's Roast Chicken
1 5-6 lb. chicken (you can use a smaller one, but I've found that this size gives us enough for at least one more meal during the week, which falls into that whole "economical" thing--hey, more money for beer and shoes is not a bad thing...)
a few handfuls of fresh herbs, chopped roughly--anything you have on hand (basil, parsley, and chives are generally the ones I go to, but you could really use anything)
one rock hard bulb of garlic, seperated into cloves
olive oil, salt and pepper
1 lemon
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Take the chicken and lay it breast up in some sort of roasting pan. If you have a rack, use it, but if you don't, just use a large baking dish of some sort. Remove any giblets. Ok, now look at the breasts (the fourteen year old in me just guffawed)--you should see some skin at the top that you can grab a hold of. Go ahead and take that skin and pull it up so that you can run your fingers between the skin and the meat of the breast. Start shoving in the herbs. It should kind of feel like a pocket that you are stuffing. When your herbs are stuffed, put a little salt and pepper in the pockets, and leave it alone. Then drizzle a bit of olive oil over the top of the bird and use your hands to rub it in. Salt and pepper the outside of the chicken--you can actually go a bit heavy on the salt because it will keep it moist, and despite the fact that I've used what I consider to be a lot of salt on a few occasions, I've never really had salty chicken. Kosher salt is good for this. Then salt and pepper the cavity. Use a few of the garlic cloves to put into the cavity, and cut the lemon in half and shove that in too. Place the rest of the garlic cloves around the chicken. Don't worry about peeling the garlic, because after it roasts a while, it will just pop out of the skin. Yum.
Roast for 2-2 1/2 hours. If you have a chicken that has one of those little thermometers that pops up when it is done, then you are in business. You can baste it a little if you want--you don't really have to, but I think it makes the skin nice and brown if you do. Just use a brush to paint some of the juices back on the skin as it cooks.
Ok, now what to do on the side? Glad you asked. As you roast the chicken, think about roasting some veggies. I usually put them in when the chicken has a 45 minutes or an hour to go. I generally start with a combination of onions, peppers, and mushrooms, and then add 1-2 seasonal veggies to go along with it. When I made this last Sunday, I used acorn squash, which was pretty good. Just take the veggies, cut them up, and then drizzle with a bit of olive oil (don't go overboard here--you want these to be mildly healthy) and sprinkle on salt and pepper and a bit of Italian seasoning. Roast for 45-60 minutes, but check every 20 minutes or so and flip them around their pan.
You can serve your chicken and veggies with mashed potatoes and baguette smeared with the roasted garlic like I do (I'm not giving you my recipe for mashed potatoes, so don't ask. :-) ). Or, be like my friend Mara who serves hers with potato leek soup and baguette spread with herbed goat cheese. I wouldn't turn down a good white wine with either of these meals. Anyway you do it, it's a great meal that will give you leftovers and should please even the most picky of eaters.
I'm a Bad, Bad Blogger.
Ok, ok. So, yeah. It's been a while. Like 4 months! Eek! And last time I wrote, I was living in CA and employed. So yeah...here's a handy run down of all the crap that has happened to me in the past four months:
- I moved back to my hometown, kind of unwittingly.
- I became a stay at home mom (or, more appropriately, stay at home badass).
- My daughter became a cheerleader at my old alma mater.
- I became the best Rock Band II player EVAH.
- Life became much simpler, much more fun, and just altogether easier.
I have actually been thinking of writing this post for a long time because now I have time to BREATHE, and I feel like I have so much to say about being a fun, ROCKIN' young parent because, for the first time ever, I am one. For those of you who knew me in CA, you did not know the real Morgan--you knew some stressed out shell of a Morgan who was too fat, too mean, and just altogether too pulled in too many directions. But despite wanting to set the record straight and write about all this, I've felt a bit shy about it. For one thing, it is terribly embarassing to move back to one's hometown, when it is a place that you never thought that you'd actually want to come back too. It is even more embarassing to like it. And for someone who spent the last three years or so being totally defined by what she did, it is EVEN MORE embarassing to find yourself doing nothing substantial, nothing wage-earning.
But you know what? Screw embarassment. I am doing what my family needs--I am giving them myself for the first time ever if I'm truly honest about it, and, further, I'm giving them the best life that I can physically give them right now. I am happy, my kids are happy, and I want to write about it. Why? Mostly, because I am a very self-indulgent person, and I like to write. A lot. I just started writing a novel, if you must know (try not to roll your eyes too big on that one--you don't want your face to get stuck like that). But also because I see a lot of my very good friends having babies, and I totally feel like so much of the advice that people give them is so much crap. Will mine be any better? I can't guarantee it. I don't get it all right, probably not even 50 percent. But I do try, and sometimes I think I can come up with a good tip or trick, a product that has saved me time, a TV show that you can regretlessly plop your five year old down in front of when you absolutely have to have that 15 minute magazine and hot cocoa break (I'm looking at you, Upside Down Show!). And also, my kids do cute things, and sometimes I just want to brag about them. Seriously. Have you seen my kids? They are pretty awesome. Just putting that out there. Lastly, I'll just say that it is incredibly hard to be a young parent. There just aren't that many of us, and we're all so stressed that we don't necessarily take the time to really communicate about the awesome things that we do with our progeny and how we keep our own lives befitting of the youth we are still hanging on to.
So, I hope that you'll continue to read this, and know that I will update it more and more, as I finally have the time (in theory at least). I will try to do it daily, but that is, of course, dependant on important issues, like the health of my children, and Law and Order marathons on TNT.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)