To my knees

Aboard the coaster

With much on my mind last night, I had a hell of a time getting to sleep. Once I did, my slumber was fitful and brief, and I have felt enervated since my eyes first opened. Today was a roller coaster. Not the fun kind that makes your stomach almost pop out of your throat and leaves you feeling thrillingly alive, but rather the sort that terrifies you and renders you certain that death or injury is around the next bend. It was the kind of day during which I vacillated among wanting to run away, drink a fishbowl of wine and hold on even more tightly to the sweet moments that provided respite from the rest. Don't go worrying, people. Some days are just like this, plain and simple.

I'm teaching a canning class tomorrow, so this morning, before the shit really started going down, I enthusiastically took the boys to the farmers market. We tasted everything in the world (huckleberries are revolting; who knew?), bought a buttery palmier and a flaky croissant, sat down with a half-gallon of apple cider, splurged on carrots and nectarines and peaches and apples and lima beans and a baguette and so on. Together we picked out a bouquet of flowers. Ol was in his caped Batman pajamas; Jack was in some Undercover Savior of the World get-up. They looked so darling.

Atop the first big mountain

And you have never heard so much talking in your life. I'm serious. I don't think you have.

I, on the other hand, most definitely have. All morning and for great portions of the past five years. I think it's just how I'm wired, but being assaulted with an endless stream of noise -much of which is nonsensical chatter and interrogative discourse- truly overwhelms my senses after a while. My gut and brain start to feel as if they're firing at random, synapses ablaze. You know in Ghostbusters how they're always warning each other not to cross the streams or else "total protonic reversal" will ensue? Yeah, I feel like my streams are crossing. Like they're double-dutching in the contest of the century.

We got home, and I declared myself unapproachable for ten minutes. This proclamation did nothing except make me sad that I then spent 9 of those minutes fending off verbal advances. Which, in tandem with their physical counterparts, have continued all day. But I digress.

Down the face and into the loop-the-loop

Duhn-duhn... homework time. The boys' school has a remarkable -for this day and age- and wonderfully reasonable approach to homework: there isn't much when the kids are small, nor does anyone there feel there should be. Me too. Reading daily is the primary commandment, an easy one since we do that anyway. Additional homework generally takes less than 20 minutes. But my dearest older child does have trouble organizing his many thoughts and then putting them onto paper, and so writing-based work is tough.

I suspect it's how math was/is for me. I don't like it, I don't much get it, it's hard but not in a fun way and so, sure, it feels like a crappy chore. But even minimal homework has to get done, and I'll tell y'all the damn truth: education is not something T and I take lightly. Not.in.the.least. Like, I don't find the slightest bit of humor in even the suggestion that education is not paramount. And I can find humor in pretty much everything. Truth.

Long, fraught-yet-dull story short, four questions took an obscene amount of time and energy. For all of us. Homework strife falls into the "Shit No-One Tells You Will SUCK About Parenthood" category. It's enough to manage the doing of it, but if you've got a kiddo who isn't hell-bent on getting that biz done? May the force be with you. Especially if you weren't like that. At all.

On the verge of fire-breathing rage, I took Oliver out for a walk to Crate & Barrel. I knew he'd love ogling all the Halloween stuff, and since T actually rocks math and was in a boat called Patience which could safely roll with the bucking tides of Lake Third Grade Nuts, he won the staying-home award.

It's unsettling to feel truly irate at a young child. It's humbling and scary and sad, and it's one of the many experiences in parenthood that will bring you to your knees. I know, rationally, that J is still but a babe. And I definitely know what it's like to feel overwhelmed by school work, without the slightest idea of where to begin. Yet after an hour of infinite lovesupportpatience, I just don't always have much left. Especially when the one on which I'm bestowing all that lovesupportpatience is acting like an ungrateful, deaf pissant who "hates me!" Rationality tends to fly out the window at that point.

I know I'm the adult. And I know my kids love me wildly. I know things could be harder or worse or yada yada. I know so many things that don't make a hill of beans difference when I'm tired and frazzled and really running on empty and the small ones are pushing, pushing, pushing.

Back into the flat zone, aka catching breath and steeling nerves for the next go

Then a tiny hand slips into mine. The "hate" turns into "best mom ever." I catch sight of a framed picture memorializing a grand moment from days past. Concurrently, I'm aware that my cortisol is spiking and my stomach is churning and that I really feel mental. That dissonance, between mutual adoration and complete unhealth, is all the more insanity-inducing, and then I step, barefoot, in a small lake of Percy's creation (inside, natch), and feel I might spontaneously combust because what the eff with all the stimulative input?!

Oliver went to see a play with a friend, I went to the market, J had a baseball game, and finally we all ended up at the field. Things seemed to have eased into a holding pattern of manageable when Ol unearthed a slab of concrete the size of his torso and started carrying it to the car.

"Ol, honey, why are you taking part of this school with you? It is their property."

Back up and down and all around

Commence giant Alice-in-Wonderland tears and manic assertion that "this wock means SO MUCH to me. I need to put it in my woom."

Erm, no. "Ol, we are leaving this concrete here and going home."

Cue wailing, boneless* reaction from tot and forced belting into car of tot by mom.

"Ol, you look a bit peaked. Are you hungry?"

"NO."

Mom, thinking fast: " The nursery has a big sale right now and they have really cool things made from rocks. Would you like to go on a date and look at cute owls crafted from rocks?"

Skeptical pause followed by somewhat groggy (wailing will do that) "Ok."

Naturally this was not as easy as Sucker Me thought it would be, for at the nursery we saw... more Halloween finery on which to fixate. Ol's lustful eyes spotted and could not let go of a very real-looking skull. Of course, he wanted two.

"You see, Mom, these would look SO scawy [scary] on the fwont porch."

"Ol, do you see the felt on the bottom of these skulls? These are made to be inside decorations. They would get ruined outside." Also, they were $30 a piece for crying out loud. "Let's look online for some really cool and scary Halloween decorations."

Cue wailing, boneless* reaction from tot, complete with giant Alice-in-Wonderland tears and manic assertion: "But this one is SO cool. There will nevuh be such a cool and scawy skull online."

"Ol, you are having such a hard afternoon. Let's go home and do research, OK? Let me just buy this salt" (because obviously the one thing most people leave the plant store with is fancy finishing salt).

His tears, reminsicent of those shed over Garth with the blue necklace (kitten) last week at PetSmart, this time prompted more from the cashier than a hand over the heart. Today, Ol was gifted with a cactus.

Sweet jesus, you'd have thought he'd just been given a lifetime supply of concrete slabs and fake skulls. He was beaming so hard I thought his cheeks would fall off. No child has ever been so thrilled with the gift of a succulent. I, meanwhile, will be forever devoted to this nursery -shout out to American Plant- and that lovely woman's angelic intervention.

Whew

As was deserved, dinner/bed/bath-time went relatively well, and the boys crashed immediately afterwards.  Wine and the best-ever spaghetti and meatballs, which thankfully I had the foresight to resurrect from the freezer yesterday, made for a superb dinner, and now I bid you adieu.

*See Knuffle Bunny. Going/went boneless =  best description of young child meltdown ever.

Kindred jamming spirits

In late 2012, I taught a Canning 101 class on Pickling (we made pickled ginger carrots). In attendance was a woman, S, with whom I've become friends, not least because she totally grooved on the Type-A way that I rearranged the julienned ginger so they were more evenly distributed throughout the carrot sticks. S is the one who introduced me to Blue Duck Tavern and also to the highbrow Canadian mustard outfit, Kozlik's. We email regularly and often run into each other at Whole Foods and this past week, S emailed me ask if I could come over and taste some of her jams and chutneys and catch up. Yesterday worked swimmingly for us both, and I enjoyed a couple hours in her beautiful home. She sent me home with an incredible goody bag of stuff she recently schlepped back from Ontario- a Canadian cheddar and a bottle of local Riesling, a jar of Kozlik's horseradish mustard, tomato jam, pickled strawberry jam, peach chutney and zucchini salsa. I know! Right?!

The boys ate about half the jar of salsa with their picnic dinner, I immediately tasted the mustard as I am an enormous fan of horseradish (this has some serious punch!) and I opened the peach chutney to serve with the meal I made for T and me. Zucchini-feta fritters, seared chicken slathered with Penzey's barbecue rub and cooked in bacon drippings in my trusty Lodge, and Israeli couscous with lemon, parsley and skillet drippings. One bite of chicken with chutney and couscous made me awfully glad I had more of everything. Sublime!

+

+

= awesome dinner.

Thank you, S, for your friendship and generosity!

Crab fest

Yesterday was pretty darn good. First, after being forced to exercise, I realized that a crappy dinner the night before (cold pizza after Back to School night #2) and a minimal, on-the-run breakfast that morning just prior to said exercise, did not lay a good foundation for feeling strong and energetic during my work out. My trainer, in such a gentle and simple way, said, "You know, Em, I need you to take care of yourself while you're busy taking care of others." A dimmed light brightened in my harried mind, and I left the gym, picked up a protein-heavy shake and committed to eating a marvelous, good, substantial lunch.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, but I love when trusted others remind me of elemental truths. For pete's sakes, I hadn't even brushed my teeth before leaving the house yesterday.

Frantically slurping my shake, and feeling better with every gulp, I headed back to school as my friend, who also happens to be the school librarian, had very kindly invited me to attend an author presentation with the kids*. Kathi Appelt, a lilting, lovely Texan who's written a huge array of highly-regarded children's books, was taking the kids through her writing process. I sat by Jack, who crossed his legs as women often do -knee atop knee- which I always love to see because he is so cute and dear and his slender little legs nestle right into each other such that they look like one. He kept my arm draped over his shoulder for the whole hour which was also very dear, and I dare say I couldn't have enjoyed myself more.

Not least because I was listening to and learning from such an accomplished author. She took the children through a fairly brief but terrific discussion about what revision really means. To view anew, to see with fresh eyes. And how doing so can and often should take time. I suspect Jack about fell out when Kathi showed us her 24th revision for Watermelon Day and then said, "Well, another book took 30 revisions!" (That's kind of Jack's biggest nightmare right now.)

Writing is a discipline that takes time, effort over time and the willingness to cut one's own work.  Revising is a life lesson really, whether its form takes shape on the page or in one's relationship with self and others.

(Kathi also loves swamps. A devoted Louisianan, I, too, adore swamps and all of their mystical, dark, muddy, life-sustaining beauty.)

Afterwards, I came home, cleaned myself up and made that substantial lunch to which I'd committed. It was great- an enormous roast turkey, chevre, kalamata olive hummus, tomato, lettuce, whole grain bread tower + the last piece of plum tart.

Last night, T had a work party that we wanted to attend. Not your generic staid work party, no. This was an outdoor crab feast with live music, barbecue and endless platters of freshly boiled crabs. I must have eaten a dozen, and my hands still smell today if anyone needs any proof. It's been a long time, too long, since I went at a mess of crabs like that. I'd forgotten how they nearly burn your fingers and lips with both steam and Old Bay (it'd be Tony Chacheres at home) and how delightful that is. It's great fun to pound a wooden mallet down on an upside-down crab body whose "key" you've pried open.

If you look closely in that picture above, you can see the rather phallic-looking "keys" on the crustaceans' underbellies.

As if that weren't enough, this cookie & ice cream food truck then drove up. People, let me just say this: If you encounter the Captain Cookie food truck whilst in or around DC, run, don't walk, to it and get yourself a big old ice cream sandwich. I chose a chocolate chip cookie for the top, vanilla ice cream for the middle and a nutella cookie for the bottom. Are you kidding? It was insanely good. Huge! Spectacular cookies! Sublime ice cream! They even have milk, should you simply want cookies, and they have vegan options for those of you out there.

I would love another right now!

*One of Kathi's books, in the Bubba and Beau sequence, talks about making gumbo and apparently, my boys were the only ones familiar with roux. This was the sole reason for my invitation which I thought was totally fabulous.