Bat out of you-know-where

On Friday evening at dusk -- that gorgeous time when the sun is down, but there's still light in the sky, and the heat of the day is finally burning off -- my husband and I were coming home from our date at the Chinese restaurant.

We were sitting at a stop light downtown, with no other cars around us, which was unusual. Except for some people with little kids still lingering by the fountain in the city square (the fountain has those squirty things in the ground that toddlers like to play in), it was deserted. All the workday traffic was gone and there was an unaccustomed hush that was very pleasant.

Which is probably why the bat felt so free to make its presence known.

As we sat, a bat swooped down from somewhere near the top of the YMCA building and did an extravagant figure-8 in front of the van, close enough to be easily visible, but not so close as to send me diving into the rear of the vehicle, screaming and and sticking my head under a seat to protect my hair. It dove and rose, fluttering around in a show-offy kind of way, until the light turned green, at which point it got in the same lane we were in and sailed off grandly toward the next traffic light.

Which put my husband and me in the strange position of chasing a bat down a city street as it vigorously headed north. I wanted so much to lean my head out the window and shout, "EEEE-WOOOOOOOO EEEEE-WOOO WOW-WOW-WOW-WOW!!!!" like a police cruiser's siren, but my husband wouldn't let me.

I like to think that some other concerned citizen made an arrest later and that the bat was released on his own recognizance.

Goodbye, swim club!

Meelyn, Aisling and I stayed at the pool for an unprecedented five hours today and I am now more suntanned than anybody you know. No, more suntanned than her. There is no use in arguing about this. I am a lovely, goldy-brown color achieved through determined application of SPF 30 lotion (PABA free) and Hawaiian Tropics SPF 4 oil for the late afternoons when the oldies station is on. The smell of coconuts and the sound of Paul, Linda and the rest of the Wings singing "Band on the Run" takes me back to the summer before my seventh grade year in such a profound way, I can almost open my eyes and see White Estates pool and my friend Lisa baking on the towel next to mine.

My towel, if you'll believe it, bore the legend, interspersed with many brightly-colored flowers, "Make Love, Not War." How a 12-year-old from a staunchly Republican family wound up with such a beach towel, I don't know. But it was 1974 and that's just how things were, I guess.

Anyway.

I had a lovely time, reading and reading and getting in and out of the pool as my body temperature dictated and eating my turkey sandwich from Subway. It was glorious. The oldies station played every song I'd ever hoped to hear that day, and I sang along under my breath, after furtively looking around to see if anyone was in hearing distance.

I missed Kieren and Dayden with a lump in my throat, once or twice.

As we packed up the floats and the towels and the coolers and our swim bags, one last song for the summer came on over the loudspeakers.

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Oh, won't you stay just a little bit longer

Please, please, please, please tell me that you want to

Now, your mommy don't mind

And your mommy don't mind

If we have another dance, just one more

Say you will

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You think there weren't some tears in my eyes at leaving this happy place?

"Are you crying?" Aisiling asked curiously.

"It's nothing," I replied. "Just my allergies."

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Won't you stay just a little bit longer

Come on and say you will....

Last day at the pool

The girls probably won't even be out of bed for another half hour, but I've been in my bathing suit ever since I opened up my peepers this morning. The first thought in my head was: This could be the LAST DAY we can go.

Saturday might work, but it would be a little difficult since we'll be going to 5:00 Mass and Aisling needs to get to the church to do some practicing beforehand. That doesn't leave us much time to loll around at the pool in our usual leisurely there-for-three-hours fashion, considering that the pool doesn't open until 11:00.

Sunday is out because we're going to brunch with my grandparents and the rest of the fam, and then my husband is going to mow my parents' lawn, since they're out of town. While he does that, the girls and I are going to go visit our other grandpa, who recently had to go to a nursing home because of his advanced Alzheimer's Disease.

Monday, we're having company.

So...today. I've already got the little Playmate cooler sitting out on the table. I've got some cash to buy us lunch, probably at Subway or somesuch, since the snack bar is rapidly running out of foodstuffs; we were desolate when they ran out of soft pretzels.

We'll have to clean out our locker for another year, bringing home the shampoo and conditioner and body wash and bottles of sunscreen. Plus the pool toys we played with all summer, with the boys....

I'm really trying hard not to be sad about this, but not being very successful.

Redolent of freshly baked bread

As I sit here typing, wafting all around me is the aroma of whole wheat bread baking. It smells SO GOOD, I want to take great big bites out of the air, although on second thought, that would probably just make me belch. And then Meelyn, who finds bodily noises unaccountably hilarious, would screech with laughter like a monkey and Aisling would loftily say to her "Were you born in a BARN?" and I just don't feel like getting into it.

Tonight for dinner, we are having the bread and beef-barley stew and I plan to close the curtains over the big dining room window and ask everyone to pretend it is a rainy, chilly night in mid-October.

Mmmm....fall!

Woe is not me

Today? When we were unloading and moving and reloading bookcases, with several hundred books plus little decorative items and family pictures haphazardly piled and stacked all over the dining room table and floor?

Guess what I found, on the bottom shelf of the bookcase we moved?

THE TWO LEAFLETS WITH RECIPES FOR MY BELOVED BREAD MACHINE!!

I thought they were lost and gone forever, but they've been found again.

I credit St. Anthony. Thanks, Uncle Tony!

No appreciation whatsoever

We finally had to break down and buy a new bookcase, one of those really classy ones made of particle board that your husband puts together in the living room, cussing sotto voce and stepping on little screws barefoot. Which leads to more cussing, with a voce that is not in the least bit sotto.

The task of the female membership of the family -- me, Meelyn and Aisling -- was to unload one entire big bookshelf, move it down the wall, put the new bookshelf in between the unloaded, moved shelf and the other shelf, which was able to just stay put.

The girls went to the Y this morning to exercise, and I spent the hour I had by myself unloading, dusting, and making sure piles of books on the floor and the dining room table didn't turn into some kind of freakish avalanche that would trap me in the dining room and prevent me from eating lunch. When they came home, we moved the new bookcase into its place and started reloading to the accompaniment of two girls carrying on like I'd told them I was sending them off for a few weeks of labor on an oil rig with unpaid overtime.

"Whhhyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?" Aisling whined in the nasal tone that never fails to make me want to start screaming. "Whyyyy do weeeeeeee have to do this? Why can't youuuuuuu dooo it?"

"Yah, weeeee went to the gyyyyyyyyym while youuuuu stayyyyyyed home, so weeee already did enough work for todaaaaaaaaaaay," Meelyn joined in.

Well, it wasn't pretty. And it all ended up with the two of them being grounded from the computer for today. So not only did they have to help with the books anyway, I also don't have to share the computer. Snnap!!!

While Meelyn was loading some photograph albums onto the bottom shelf, she noticed a loose photograph, one of my great-grandmother, Hazel Williams Houser, taken when she was perhaps a year old, wearing a fancy dress, all billowing skirts and carefully pin-tucked bodice. Her sweet blonde hair was combed into a little frill on the top of her head and her wee buttoned boots are sticking out of the bottom of her skirt in an adorable fashion. The photograph is very beautiful in its sepia tones and I've been keeping it in that album since my mother gave it to me because I haven't been able to find a frame that would do it justice.

"Who's this?" Mee asked, holding out the photograph for me to see.

"Ah," I said fondly, looking at Grandma's precious, pouting baby lips and the little dimples on the knuckles of her chubby hands. "That's your great-great-grandmother, the one I often stayed with when I was a little girl, on the farm in Luray. That's the grandma who would drop everything she was doing to play Old Maid with me, and she'd take me to pet the lambs, and she always had popsicles in her deep freeze on the back porch."

Meelyn studied my cherished photograph and said, "When was it taken?"

I thought it over and said, "Ummm, maybe 1897?"

Meelyn took one last look at the picture of her ancestor, a person I dearly loved, and put it back in the album, slamming the cover shut with a bang. "Well, that is one ugly picture. All those dark colors make her look like she's possessed or something."



Sometimes, you just want to run away and join the circus.

Falling tears

On Friday morning, I went to early Mass and then stopped off at the grocery store down the street from the church afterwards to pick up a few things. The store is an innocuous looking Kroger, but it's the one I've written about before that the meth dealers in my city seem to frequent; it's not unusual to note among the clientele amped out people wearing cunning little crack pipes on chains around their necks. I'm not sure if this is supposed to be a fashion statement or a subtle advertisement that they're in the market for some rock.

But then, I'm the one in there wearing a two inch crucifix necklace. People probably wonder if I'm a really big nun who has forsaken scapular, guimpe and wimple or a vampire slayer.

Anyway. I was pushing my cart down an aisle and there was another woman pushing her cart towards me at the other end. She was very noticeable because of her hair: It was parted in the middle and the left side was black and the right side was blonde, kind of like Cruella de Vil.

As she got closer, I couldn't help but notice that she had two terribly blackened eyes, like her face had met the dashboard in a car crash. I sucked in my breath in pity as she drew closer, noting her slouching walk and defeated air: her body language spoke volumes. Here was a person who seemed sunk in melancholy, weary and apathetic.

But then she drew closer still and I realized that what I had taken for two black eyes was actually a tattoo: She had a Lone Ranger-type mask tattooed on her face.

I like to think that it takes a lot to shock me. Or maybe that I'm unshockable. But it turns out that I am so capable of being shocked, it can make my hands shake.

She looked at me briefly, her eyes sliding to my face, probably to gauge my reaction to her appearance -- or her plight, it's hard to say which. I only had the smallest instant to make sure my mouth wasn't hanging open and my eyebrows weren't all raised up to my hairline. I have a problem with that, as I noted a few posts down from here. But I swiftly made a mask of my own face and her lackluster eyes, with a tiny ember of defiance burning inside them, slid away from mine like a water snake slipping into a stream.

I was dumbfounded, and I am not usually a person who is much fazed by tattoos. But this seemed to be so much more than just permanent, personal body art. This looked like a cry for help.

I wonder who she was, why she did that to her face.

I did the rest of my shopping mechanically, going throught the self-check lane and swiping my few items without paying much attention, feeding my ten dollars into the bill acceptor. I took my bag and went out to the van, where I surprised myself by sitting there for a few moments, quietly weeping for the woman in the self-imposed mask.

Woe is me

I am starting to get in a bread-baking kind of mood, which means hauling the bread machine out from the appliance garage, conveniently located under a counter and so deep that I practically have to stand on my head to get it. That, or yell and make one of the girls come get it. I do have my sneaky ways.

So anyway, I bought a new jar of yeast and a new bag of whole wheat flour, because I absolutely love the way the bread machine does whole wheat bread -- it is as different from the grocery store's whole wheat sandwich slices as a beautifully scented candle's aroma is different from cigar smoke. I was prepped.

Then I went to look for the two little leaflet cookbooks that go with my bread machine. One came with it and the other was one I ordered from the company, which I believe is Rival. My bread machine is either ten or eleven years old and still going strong and those recipes -- about forty in all, with everything from oatmeal bread to potato bread to dinner rolls to pizza crust -- have been my mainstays. I have always kept those two leaflets in the red three-ring binder I keep all my family recipes in.

Only when I looked in there on Friday, they were gone.

The last time I used the machine, which was early in the spring, I must not have put them back.

But where did I put them? I haven't a clue.

Without them, my bread machine is pretty much useless, and I am the saddest, bread-hungry person you have ever seen.

Where? Where?

Olympic-sized irony

Does anyone else find it paradoxical that so many of us are staying up late to watch Olympic athletes -- with their muscular, healthy, well-trained bodies, swimming in pools, diving off platforms, running on tracks, playing on courts or fields and flinging themselves pretzel-wise around gymnastics equipment -- while we in TV Land steadily grow more tired and draggy, with eyes that look like two holes burned in a blanket and attitudes that tend toward the sharp and snappish both before and after coffee and needful of a nap right during the time of the afternoon when we all know it is impossible to take one?

This is the first time that I've ever suspected that the Olympics could kill me if they went on longer than two weeks.

Whisk Wednesday Assignment #13, Part 7 -- Potage Ambassadeur (Split Pea Soup with Bacon, Sorrel, and Lettuce)

I stood alone in the rain on a corner, holding out my hands beseechingly and saying, "Sorrel. Sorrel. Won't someone give me some sorrel? Or show me where to buy it? Or, I don't know...maybe tell me what it is?"

_________________________________________
sor·rel
(sôr-uhl)
n.
1. Any of several plants of the genus Rumex, having acid-flavored leaves sometimes used as salad greens, especially R. acetosella, a widely naturalized Eurasian species. Also called dock4.
2. Any of various plants of the genus Oxalis, having usually compound leaves with three leaflets.
_________________________________________


Oh. Well, that certainly clears things up.

I searched through the produce departments of several different markets and sooper-sized groceries and could not find sorrel. I hope it doesn't have some kind of magical taste that turns a simple pot of split pea soup into a classy dish worthy of Marie Antoinette, because if it did, we missed it.

However, this was also a very easy soup to make and let me tell you -- it is delicious. Delicious! Nothing went wrong this week, well, unless you include not being able to identify sorrel in a lineup of suspicious-looking fruits and vegetables.

Potage Ambassadeur was made up of homely, comforting split peas, carrots, onions, leeks, garlic, rice, bacon and heavy cream, all cooked together in a nice, hearty porridge -- a potage, which means "thick, creamy soup" -- that whispers "Cold, rainy evening in late October" into your ear. I can hardly wait to make this again in the autumn, when the aroma of it cooking on the stove will make everyone in our big, chilly barn of a house feel all warm and cozy.

Meelyn, Aisling and I did take a few liberties with the recipe, though.

1) I made the executive decision to not use bacon, since we were already dealing with butter and heavy cream. I used Canadian bacon, which was very delicious. In the past, I've always eaten split pea soup with ham in it.

2) The three of us loved the rustic peasant look of this soup and we couldn't bring ourselves to purée it in the food processor. It's so adorable with its little peas and bits of carrot and leek and onion and Canadian bacon. It is a happy-looking soup. Don't ask me to explain that. Just make it yourself and then stand at your stove and giggle at its preciousness. If soup were a baby, this one would be both Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen in the early years of Full House, back when they were just learning how to talk.

3) I have GIVEN UP on trying to make a bouquet garni hold together, so I am now putting all my aromatics (parsley, thyme, leek, bay leaf and celery) in a little cheesecloth bag and tying it up in a cute little bundle.

That's all I have for you this week, because it has been a hella day (sorry, Mom) and I have a headache that is about to split my head, just like a pea.

We're done with soupes and moving on to entrées!

Next week! Steak Mirabeau (Beef Tenderloin Steaks with Anchovy Butter) page 426-427

The glory of homeschooling

The public and private school students (who all operate off the same calendar) in our community started school yesterday morning. The school bus stopped outside our neighbors' house across the street and their three teenagers climbed aboard; As I peered through the blinds of my bedroom window, yawning, I'd have expected to see happier faces on members of the French aristocracy as they were pushed onto the tumbrils on their way to a date with the guillotine. None of the three clung to the doorframe with their fingers and had to be pried off, yelling that they don't need no education or anything, but still. Misery appeared to be the order of the day.

On the other hand, we at Our Lady of Good Counsel Middle and High School don't start until September 2. We get away with this by not having teacher in-service days, parent-teacher conference days (I usually just lock myself in the upstairs bathroom and mutter to myself about how I could be doing a pleasant, easy job in a foundry somewhere) and snow days. It's amazing how those things all add up on the public school calendar.

We began our remaining two weeks of summer break by going to the pool at noon. As we suspected, the only other people there were retirees, mothers with toddlers, and other home schoolers. Benches were lavishly available, the snack bar was doing a brisk business in ice creams and tenderloins; I lolled on my bench and read my book, feeling delightfully lazy. I felt so delightfully lazy that I later on felt dreadfully guilty and sat up and finished writing the syllabus for the British Literature class I'm teaching.

I felt that expected pang of sadness that hits me right in the solar plexus at this time of year. The swim club is a cherished place for the four of us because we can go there and leave everything behind. It's like stepping through a looking glass or pushing our way past the fur coats in a wardrobe...magical. I hate the thought of it's being closed up from September until the end of May; driving past the club in the winter and looking at the leafless trees and the forlorn and empty parking lot is always very gloomy. Sometimes, when it feels like winter will never end, I go over there and trundle up the long, curving driveway in the van, the tires squeaking and creaking over the snow. I don't know why. Maybe just to remind myself exactly how much winter stinks? To torture myself with memories of summers past? Now that I've typed that out, it sounds really stupid. I'd better quit doing that.

Anyway, the girls and I stayed for almost four hours and we were all a bit pink when we left. But we were also deeply relaxed and happy. I think I'll try to remember that this coming winter.

Busted!

We have new next-door neighbors, a divorced father with two sons. One is in his early twenties and the other is a boy who looks to be around sixteen or seventeen. The father seems a bit overwhelmed and the sons, as so many young men seem to be today, are largely inarticulate and completely incapable of looking you in the face and saying hello like gentlemen. The most they can summon up is a grunted "hi" when you see them in the driveway.

(Although with some of the things young men seem to say nowadays, I should probably be grateful. The other day, the girls and I were following a twenty-something man who was driving a truck slowly down one of our city streets; he spied a friend ambling along the sidewalk and shouted out in a friendly voice, "Hey, how are ya, ya big b*st*rd!"

The guy on the sidewalk called back, in an equal amount of bonhomie, "How's it goin', you son of a b*tch!!!!!"

My ears were about to bleed at that point and the girls and I looked at each other, wide-eyed. I took a deep breath and said, "I wonder what Mrs. Gertz or Mrs. Williams would do if I greeted them like that in the parking lot of O'Charley's at the next Moms' Night Out?")

Anyway, back to the neighbors, we were getting out of our car and the father and his younger son were getting out of their car at the same time the other night, so my husband and I exchanged pleasantries with the dad. The son was looking at Meelyn, and as he passed us, he was very obviously preening like a young peacock.

He said hello in a civil manner, accompanied by a nod of the head that was obviously intended to give off great waves of Brad Pitt-like coolness. But as he walked past, I couldn't help but notice that the belt of his jeans was firmly cinched around his upper thighs, leaving his entire backside, neatly covered in a dapper pair of Black Watch tartan boxer shorts, exposed for all the world to see as he swaggered on down the driveway to his front door.

It looked so silly, an incredulous grin broke across my face. WHY do some teenage boys wear their pants like that? Is it supposed to be gangsta? Is it to allow a freer flow of air around the buttocks to eliminate the possibility of chafing? It must be something, but one thing it definitely can't be is comfortable. I mean, really.

You know how you can feel someone looking at you? Well, he felt me looking at him, although I'm sure he was hoping it was Meelyn. He turned his head and gave a glance back over his shoulder that I don't think even Enrique Iglesias could have bettered. Unfortunately, all he saw was middle-aged me, and me with a smirk on my face.

I have never had one of those faces that can stop looking naughty at the proper time. Always, always, I was the kid who stuck my tongue out at my mother just as she turned around and caught me. Or rolled my eyes. Or -- once -- gestured obscenely, and she nearly took my arm off at the shoulder for that one, so I never did it again. So this kid caught me looking like a gargoyle and he immediately whipped his head back around and studiously examined the sidewalk until he got to the front steps of his home, which he went up with alacrity. But not before giving his sagging pants a firm hitch, which didn't work.

I wanted to call helpfully, "Yoo hoo! Young man! I can still see your butt!" But I thought maybe I'd already damaged him enough and it's not nice to toy with people.

Meelyn was oblivious throughout this entire episode, and as we climbed our own steps, she opened the door for me and asked innocently, "So what are you giggling about?"