The Urbane Homestead

Priorities

I haven't been doing much to whip my house into shape, or even, indeed, to keep it clean. Little tumbleweeds made of dog hair and dust adorn the corners of the stairs.  The color of the kitchen sink has permanently devolved to a light coffee beige. The shower curtain is...well, never mind that. The point is that although I let some things slide, I do have my priorities, and one of those is always having the right earrings to wear with every outfit.

Earrings have to match the outfit in style, of course; I couldn't possibly wear sparkly diamonelle danglies with jeans and a tee shirt. A casual outfit requires something in a plain metal, or perhaps small pearls. Color, however, is of even more importance than style, and so I have come to own earrings of every conceivable color. Morning, which is, naturally, when I get dressed, is not my best time, and the frustration I experience while searching through my jewelry box for the other earring to the right pair is an emotion best not described to those I want to think well of me.

Hence, my new system for earring storage. I have little divided trays (an inheritance from my mother-in-law, the most cleverly organized person ever to exist on this planet) that fit in my jewelry chest. And look how clearly I have indicated which color earring goes in which little box:

 

Clever, no? I could now match earrings to outfit even at the ungodly hour of 5:00 in the morning, although I can't imagine why I would get up that early. Shudder. But I could, if I wanted to, and I would look good, which is what really matters.

About travel, and life in the third grade

We went to the Yucatán peninsula for a week at the end of February. In preparation, I encouraged Joe to practice his Spanish whenever he got a chance—and as it happened, a new girl joined his class a few weeks before our trip, fresh from Mexico.

On her first day, he went up to her, smiled, and said, "¡Hola! ¿Como estas?"

"Shut up," she said.

Afterwords, Maribel turned out to be a very sweet little girl, so I'm perfectly willing to believe that either Joe misunderstood her response, or she misunderstood his Spanish. Still, it put something of a damper on his enthusiasm for Mexico, at least until we got there and he had a fabulous time. And he did, in fact, chat with pretty much everyone we met, in both English and Spanish.

Memories of travel

There's a discussion going on in the Interworld about the worst airline meal ever, based on a letter written by an irate passenger on Virgin Air. The meal in question, to my mind, looks perfectly reasonable for airline food. At least you can tell it's supposed to be edible. Years ago, I flew from Athens to London on JAT (the Yugoslavian airline). Dinner on the flight consisted of six thick slices of processed meat, each different and each unidentifiable, garnished with a single small pickle. I was young and very hungry, so I was willing to try it anyway, but it was so tough the tines of my plastic fork broke off. Then the flight attendant stumbled in the aisle and spilled an entire pot of coffee (fortunately lukewarm) in my companion's lap. That was a meal I'll never forget.

Stinky

As my sister mentioned on her Facebook page last week, many pairs of socks changed hands (as it were) among the Sikkengas over the holidays. Mom knitted her a pair for her, while I knitted a pair for our brother (well, half a pair—I'm almost finished with them now). Meanwhile, Karen had drawn my name for our gift exchange, and presented me with a box filled with about a dozen different pairs of nice new socks of all kinds. Later, Karen passed on to Henry three pairs of men's white Gold Toe socks, still in the package, that she had found at the thrift shop. They smelled a little mothbally, but they were brand new, and nice and cushy. Great! I took them home and threw them in the wash.

I always sort my laundry very carefully: dark colors, jeans, medium colors, household linens, warm colors, whites and very pale colors—all get washed separately in cold water, with scent-free detergent. Jeans are washed inside out, many things are washed in mesh bags for protection, and silk, fleece, and delicates are air-dried. There are a couple of reasons for all this foofarah. First, I think it makes our clothes last much longer than they otherwise would. Mostly, though, it's about the only part of my life where I really believe I have control. That's why I'm going to be in therapy for years now: washing them made those stupid socks smell even more strongly of mothballs. Not only that, they made the entire load of white and delicates smell strongly of mothballs, including the two new bras that were in the load—one of which I had paid full price for just the day before. Oh, the pain. I turned the water to hot, added some borax, and washed the load again. An even greater reek of mothballs plumed from the washer when I opened the door. I girded my loins, gritted my teeth, and, trying not to breathe, I sorted through the wet stinky clothes and pulled out all six white socks, which took straight out to the garbage. I tossed in a generous scoop of Oxy-Kleen and washed the load again. It still smelled poisonous, but, reluctant to subject the clothes to further torture, I went ahead and dried them. I wish there wasn't this faintly repellent chemical odor emanating from my chest. It can't be healthy. But on the other hand, I haven't seen any moths.

ta da!

Yes, it's true. I really have, finally, graduated. For years I have been styling myself as the "most educated, least degreed" person I know, thanks to my years and years of graduate work without a conclusive event (i.e., the receiving of an actual graduate degree). But no longer, because now I actually have a graduate degree. It's not quite the one I expected, earlier in my life. On the other hand, an MBA means you have learned some things that people will actually pay you to know, which makes for a nice contrast with linguistics.

I have many plans to fill up the empty hours ahead, now that I won't be sitting through three hours of Finance class on a Monday night, or eight hours of Strategies of Growth on a Saturday. The months ahead will include:

• Training the dogs for Good Canine Citizen certification.
• Setting up a Torah study website for the temple. I already have a design in my head.
• Planning the vegetable garden ahead of time this year.
• Organizing the basement, so I have room for
• Making Art.
• Translating Crónica de una Muerte Anunciada (because I happen to have a copy and it seems as a good a way as any to practice Éspañol).
• Writing more.
• And of course, vacuuming. And working to pay off that student loan.

What a great day!

Not only do we see the beginning of a new era of civil (in all senses of the word) government, but our new espresso machine arrived this morning. Even as we speak I'm waiting for the water tank to heat up. I look forward to a future in which I am well-governed and fully caffeinated!

Taking stock

 

Now that fall is here it's time to make stock again. (Maybe I should have started out with, while the market is down, it's time to make stock?) (But since I started out by talking seasonally, I should add that yes, I know it's been fall for some time now--but there's some lag time between my personal universe and the big public one.)

Here's my stock-keeping system: I put my giant stock pot, empty, in the chest freezer in the basement. As meals get cooked and eaten upstairs, bits of onion peel, asparagus ends, chicken bones, parsley stems, carrot peels, wrinkly cherry tomatoes, and other miscellany are set aside, and dumped in the stock pot to freeze. When the pot is full to the brim with jetsam, I bring it upstairs, fill it with water in the sink, and heave it onto the stove (remembering, of course, to lift with my legs). I add nothing else. For a few hours, it simmers merrily. The next day, after a suitable cooling-off period, I put the pot back in the sink (for easier reach and less clean-up), and the detritus is removed. The stock is ladled into plastic quart take-out containers to be frozen and used later in soups and such.

I don't add anything extra to the stock, and I don't keep track of what's in there. Most bits of vegetable and meat are fine, and some fruits, such as apples, which are not too sweet. I usually don't add fish bits. Each batch of stock is slightly different, but somehow it always tastes good. I did have to dump a batch once because I had put several lemon rinds in, and somehow boiling them gave it a weird and unpleasant taste, but that's the only flavor failure I've had. usually it even makes good soup on its own, with a little salt and a squeeze of lemon, and two or three nice big matzo balls.

Making stock is a fall/winter/spring thing because it fills the house with the warm, steamy, savory smell of soup - unbearable in the summer, but so delicious in the cooler weather.

Dinner tonight

Dinner was a seasonal stew that turned out very nicely, despite Joe's wails of complaint when he walked in the door after school and realized from the aromas wafting from the kitchen that he was to be deprived of pizza again. So very cruel.

Anyway: Autumn Stew

Brown in stew pot, with oil as appropriate: 2 lb. stewing beef
Add and cook until golden and soft: 1 med/lg onion
Stir in: 1-2 T sweet paprika, 1-2 t cocoa, 1 t sugar, salt, thyme, rosemary
Add: 1 lg can whole peeled tomatoes, 1 c. coffee
Stir in gently: 1 med butternut squash, peeled and cubed in largish chunks
Add stock to cover. Simmer gently until done.

Serve with hearty bread.

Yum.

Koff, koff

I've had the most tediously awful cold for almost the past week. It's one of those colds where you enjoy a different symptom each day: a fiery sore throat on Monday, ballooning sinuses on Tuesday (but no sore throat), complete loss of voice on Wednesday (but no sore throat or sinus problems), consumptive cough on Thursday (etc., etc.). Not to put too fine a point on it.

Joe has been most helpful. On the day I lost my voice, I told him, in a froggy whisper, that he'd have to be well-behaved, since I wouldn't be able to yell at him if he weren't. "That's okay," he said cheerfully. "There's still Daddy."

On the day I was wallowing deep in the swamps of unspecified crumminess, Joe and I were home alone for a while. "Hmmmm..." he said, "I don't know how to make tea...." He thought a minute. "But I do know how to make a hot water bottle!" Which he did, (after asking to be reminded whether the hot tap is on the left or the right). Then he tucked me in, and gave me a solicitous pat on the head. And I did feel much better.

Have you noticed that in literature and myth teeth are a metaphor for power?

As we know, I'm perfectly willing to complain at great length about other people complaining about aging. But that doesn't mean that I myself don't mind aging. Au contraire, I mind it very much. Not because I fear the inevitability of my own death—the idea of ceasing to exist doesn't bother me, because once I'm dead, I won't care, so why be upset about it now?—although the thought of any of my loved ones shuffling off the mortal coil truly gives me the heebie-jeebies. A deeply selfish attitude, I know. And my distaste for the aging process is based on an equally selfish and shallow reason: I want to look good, and generally speaking, young people look better than old people.

Last week, I was reading an article in Slate Magazine about different kinds of wrinkles and how they form. It was decorated with before and after photos of Paul McCartney: the young. fresh, yummy-looking Beatle, and the wrinkly old Sir Paul.  Two things caught my attention about Sir Paul: first, he looks a little like my mom, with those high cheekbones; and second, boy, are his teeth yellow. Quickly reverting to the Me view of the universe, I wondered if my teeth looked that yellow, and if I looked that wrinkly and old (but without the palliative effect of an MBE).

So later that very same day, I found myself in the dental care aisle of Target, dazzled, as it were, by the variety of choices for the whitening of one's teeth. There are pastes, there are gums, there are little bottles of paint, there are strips, there are devices. It's not a good place for the green conscience, because mostly there's lots and lots of packaging. I stifled my eco-guilt and selected a largish plastic box of strips guaranteeing me whiter teeth in just seven days.

Eager to recapture youth and beauty, I rushed home and tore open the wrapper of the box, which contained four packages of seven individually wrapped blue strips for the upper and lower teeth, to be applied twice daily for 30 minutes. Two minutes later my trash can was full to the top with packaging, and my teeth were encased in blue waxy gel. Youth and beauty,here I come!

Seven days later, my teeth are a more attractive creamy color, an obvious improvement over their tannic pine look of last week. It was definitely worth it. But I did learn two lessons.

First, you can't answer the phone when you have the strips in. There's no way to talk without sounding like Sylvester the Cat. The library called the first morning I was wearing them to let me know I had (once again) returned a DVD case with no disc inside. Of course I immediately apologized, but you try saying you're so sorry with a mouthful of wax. I'm sure the librarian thought I was trying to weasel out of something, even though I did return the disc later that day.

Second, if you feel annoyed or irritated, do not clench your teeth. If you do, the upper wax strip will meld with the lower, and your teeth will remain clenched until your 30 minutes are up. Until then, you really can't talk at all, or even move your jaw. It's very tedious, but it does remind you to make sure your yard is free of rusty nails and other tetanus dangers.

I'm sure I'll have to do a tune up in a few months, but in the meantime, I'm trying to toss back my daily caffeinated beverages past my teeth without touching them. And there are lessons to be learned there, too....