Sleeping into the Sunset

It's been 16 days since my last blog post.

You know what I've been doing? Aside from working, raising three kids, managing Christmas and New Year's, and - oh yeah - dealing with a resurgence of head lice (which, fortunately, struck over the holidays when the risk of contagion was low and the time available to nitpick was high).

I just distracted myself. Wait, what was I doing? Oh, right!

I've been sleeping. S-L-E-E-P-I-N-G. Which deserves every capital letter I can find.

I meant to be on vacation, so the sleeping thing would have maybe made sense. Except for, you know, the raging insomnia. But that vacation didn't work out quite as I planned, and I wound up working. I did my work the easy way, though. Started late. Kept it to the daytime. Didn't bring out the computer at night. And you know what happened? I got tired. I got tired, so I got up off my sofa and I went to bed. I made myself horizontal by midnight every single night. Well, except Christmas Eve. But that's only because I was tracking Santa with NORAD and couldn't go to sleep until he was finished.

I'm well rested. Which means I'm not blogging. And I hope it doesn't offend you if I hope for more of the same in 2011. I'd call it a New Year's resolution, but I'm not so good with those.

Since I'm awake now, though, I proudly present my 2010 Done List.

In the past year, I have ...

• Said good-bye to a beloved friend - our dog, Moose, who passed away in January. We still miss her. 
• Survived the 80+ inches of snow dumped on our area last winter. With help.
• Got my kids eating real food, at a real table, with real manners. They put their napkins in their laps and only talk with their mouths full when they have something really important to say.
• Saw my diva into - and then back out of - vegetarianism. Along the way, she learned there's not a veggie grown that she does not love. Even better - she dragged her brothers kicking and screaming into the veggie madness with her. Now I can serve broccoli, cauliflower, green beans, brussels sprouts, peas, corn, cucumbers or carrots ... and everyone eats them. Last week, I introduced sauteed spinach and lima beans - on different nights, of course - and got nothing but yums from the peanut gallery. Hats off to Veggie Girl, because I'm pretty sure none of that would have happened without her.
• Fixed my plumbing. And my car. And my lights. And my computer. And my microwave. I got jiggy with the home repairs.
• Made new friends - a few who actually live near me (yay!), and one who lives with me. I've had lots of great au pairs, but only a few have become true friends - and the one who's living with me now is among the best of them. 
• Hired a boy. That's right - our next au pair is a fella! And he's got the URL to my blog, so if he's reading this - we're pleased as punch that you're coming, and the kids can't wait to make you play soccer with them. Every. Single. Day.
• Got my oldest into the Right School, with the Right People. Which means he's now attending a school where every single person on staff understands Asperger's Syndrome and not only accepts my son but loves him for exactly who he is. So far he's brought home straight A's and a girlfriend and a few best friends who call him just to chat and sometimes to invite him to the movies. His joy at getting on the school bus every day is palpable. (And, a nod here to the local middle school, because they did everything they could to support him and make sure he got where he needed to go.)
• Left my heart in San Francisco. And brought some yummy chocolate home.
• Saw my redhead off to Kindergarten. And only cried a little. And now he's reading. Kindergarten is magic.
• Knit stuff. This year I finished - yes, I said finished - my knitting Olympics project and a handbag, plus the three hats and a scarf I just gave as Christmas gifts. And I finished those last four on time. Barely. But it counts.
• Picked hundreds of nits from the heads of various of my children. And thanked my au pair for doing the same, for them and for me. (Ew.)
  
• Wrote another 57 blog posts. Which seems to be about all I'm good for in any given year, seeing as that's the exact number I wrote in 2009, too. 

Happy New Year, folks. I walked out of 2010 with a smile and my rose-colored glasses decidedly intact. I hope that you can say the same.

My Car's Going on Vacation

It could happen only on Facebook.

Three days ago, a long-time, well-loved friend from college posted something along the lines of, "Hey! Anyone got a minivan I can borrow?"

Today, she borrowed mine.

A little crazy, right? I mean, who lends out their car. Their only car. To someone they haven't seen in three, maybe four years. For a multi-state joy ride.

Yeah, that would be me.

Bear with me for a minute. There's a point, but it'll take us a few paragraphs to get there.

See, I learned a ton of things from my marriage. You spend a lot of time, in the after, thinking about how you got where you were, the choices you made, the things about you that contributed to the demise of all that hope and bliss. Because it takes two. Just as a marriage takes two, so does a divorce. So does any part of any relationship, really.

Then you look at your other relationships, too, so you can fit those choices into patterns. Because if there's a part of you running around killing your relationships, you want to know what it is, right? So you can make it stop, find fulfillment, a lifetime of joy, blah blah blah.

I remember one fellow, many years ago (well it would have to be, wouldn't it? I mean, I was married, like, forEVer). We broke up. I mean, he broke up with me. Not politic, but true.

I was pushing him for the why's, and he said, "Well, you're too happy. And you give too much."

Why, yes. Yes, those do sound like reasons to end a relationship.

That wasn't all he said, of course. And, in truth, they are perfectly good reasons. I mean, seriously, do you want to live with Rachael Ray? Love her to pieces - I know a kindred spirit when I see one - but perpetual pep can be a bit challenging in a life partner. You need someone who sees the ups and downs, who sails them right alongside you. And the giving thing ... well. If you're the right kind of person, it creates an obligation that's hard to live up to. If you're the wrong kind of person, it's an advantage, an invitation to just keep taking. And either way, you're both kind of screwed.

The thing is, these flaws are fundamental to who I am. It's really hard to take the happy out of yourself. To make yourself stop giving. I've never figured out quite how to do it. And I've learned that I don't want to.

So I lent my friend my car. For a week. She's driving it to the Outer Banks in North Carolina. She invited me to go, too, long before she invited my car. But my kids started school last week, and we can't take the time off. I'm sending my car in my place. It'll spend a week enjoying the sand, the sun and the sound of the surf, and the entertaining company of my friend. And I will get to drive her little hybrid, with its built-in navigation system - a nav system that I believe, in my heart of hearts, will magically make me on time to things.

Hah.

Have fun, little car. Bring my friend and her family back safely.

The Sea of Fabulosity

As many of you know, my fella recently moved to the other coast. I could call it the "wrong" coast, the presumption being that the coast I'm sitting on is the "right" one. But ... um ...

Yeah, that's really tempting. Wrong, but tempting.

He's been there for a couple of weeks now. I know this because his status on Facebook the other day said, "Week 2," and not because I'm keeping track or anything. Because I so totally would not do that.

And in fact, if you look carefully, you'll notice a quiet, bloggy gap right about the time he moved. That's because I went with him. Not to stay, of course. Just to help.

I'd say I ignored the mom guilt, packed my kids into a shipping crate, stamped my parents' address on the side and shipped 'em off for a week, just so I could go to San Francisco. But we all know that's not possible. Mom guilt doesn't allow for shipping crates. Plus, my kids would do each other serious injury if I left them alone together for that long without their electronics.

But I've got fabulous friends. Deeply, lovingly fabulous friends who get both mom guilt and the importance of giving a newly long-distance relationship the proper send-off.

So when my fella got word of his move, my friends listened and commiserated. They mixed gin and tonics and fed me Thai food and let me talk. Pretty much endlessly.

They quietly arranged a handful of playdates and sleepovers (even when their own kids weren't around), so my fella and I could enjoy a few last evenings together.

And they invited my kids to the beach. For four days. With my amazing au pair.

Even the ex helped. He took the kids on vacation, then brought them from his vacation directly to theirs.

And so my fella and I had a week together in San Francisco. We had friends there, too. Friends who put us up and treated us like royalty. Friends who gave us list after list of things to do so we wouldn't spend our days all mopey and maudlin. We ate pretty food, saw pretty art and pretty trees, and walked the pretty, hilly streets.

We also bought a big down comforter. It is yummy and warm and, well, comforting. Basically, it's a hug in the form of a household good. Because if I can't be there to hug the man in person, he should at least have a hugalicious comforter to take my place.

We said good-bye. I flew away. And then another friend picked me up at the airport. She put up with my overtired, drugged and mopey self, put me to bed and let me sleep. For a very long time. And then she drove me home. Which was really far away.

This is how fabulous my friends are.

Now, mind you, I have many fabulous friends. What happened here, it's just a snippet of fabulousness in a great big sea of fabulosity. But it was a very well-timed sort of fabulous. And the kind you can't repay. So you say the biggest possible "thank you" you can muster, and then you bake a cake or two. For the kids. Because, as it happens, sugar and chocolate compensate beautifully for mom guilt.

(Well, I'll be damned. I think that last sentence just summed up the whole premise of this blog.)

Strep and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

I know nothing about motorcycles.

Strep, though? Strep I know. It's not incredibly zen. More tired-and-cranky making. And we're deep in the heart of it.

My Aspie has it. Strep gives him a foul temper, a foul mouth, and outrageously foul breath. And no other symptoms. Kid can't feel a sore throat, so he just gets foul. Lovable - totally lovable. And totally foul.

My little guy has it too. It kept him up all night for two nights in a row. Gave him a scary high fever and a "hurty neck." That all makes him tired, and the tireds make him cranky.

And I have it. I have it, and I'm cranky because I can't sleep when the kids are always awake, and because I have work to do and little people to take care of and groceries to shop for and my throat hurts and I have an (admittedly small) fever. I also have an awesome au pair (seriously, she's awesome - she says things like, "you shouldn't do those dishes, you're sick," and "of course you're not talking too much") ... but she's sick too. It's not strep, thankfully. But she's sick nevertheless.

The diva is not streppy. Nor is she sick. She's just surrounded by cranky. Lots and lots of cranky, from everyone but the awesome au pair. So the diva's cranky, too.

All that cranky makes for a fun, fun time.

Oh, and we seem to have infected a few friends, including one of my wine and pie buddies who was gracious enough to watch my kids for me for a few hours on Sunday. The strep was our way of saying thank you.

You know how she said you're welcome? She made a complete right turn in the middle of a phone call this evening to tell me what a great mom I am. And how great my kids are. And how much fun she had with them (while they were giving her strep). And how wonderful they are together.

I gave her strep. She gave me happy mushy mommy tears.

It may not be zen, but it's close.

Three Hairy Fairies

I remember a time when snow was fun. Sledding. Catching flakes on your tongue. Making snow angels and snow balls and snowmen.

But when you're looking out your window at the second blizzard in a week, the third blizzard of the season ...

... when the snow is taller than your four year old and you haven't left your house in days ...

... when you've dug through nearly 80 inches of the white stuff in the space of about six weeks ...

Soooooo not fun.

It's shoveling and backaches and wet and salty on your hardwood floors. It's ice dams on the roof and water damage in the drywall. It's slogging through hip-deep cold to dig out the heat pump. It's cabin fever and kids gone wild.

But there's a kind of awesomeness to all this snowfall, too. Because it brings out the village. As in the "it takes a village" village. Which is, as I've just learned, about snow as much as it is about kids.

See, I dug out my heat pump because a friend on Facebook thought to post a note about it to save everyone from burning out their motors and dying of carbon monoxide poisoning.

Another friend posted a diagram on ice dams, and a third spent an hour on the phone talking me through my dams and my drywall and my homeowner's insurance. I'd never heard of the dam things (ha ha), and they are killing my little house.

And, in a tremendous act of kindness, three of my neighbors - my three hairy snow fairies - took pity on our vain attempts to shovel through the mad snowfall and dug out my driveway. Not once, not twice, but over and over until the snow finally stopped.

Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Still can't find the mailbox. But I can get my sick kid to the doctor. That matters.

One friend in the village had the kids in mind. She passed along a recipe for snow cream. Awesome stuff. Just like ice cream only easier. If you've got this much snow, might as well eat some of it. 'Cause eating snow? That's fun.

Snow Cream

1 big bowl of snow
1/2 to 1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup of milk (enough to make it mushy, not runny)

Stir & enjoy! My diva ate two bowls of the stuff, and even my sugar averse Aspie deemed it a hit.

Kanata Canada

Canada is lovely this time of year. No, seriously, it is. See, I just got back from a recent trip to Ottawa. Well, technically I was in the Ottawa suburb of Kanata. Yes, that's Kanata, Canada.

This is Ottawa:



View Larger Map

Generally speaking, that whole area is due north of the bitterly cold place that is upstate New York. So I expected it to be bitterly cold and then some.

Only it wasn't cold. It was balmy. And rainy. And practically warm. Until yesterday.

Yesterday was the day I flew home. Yesterday, the temperature in Ottawa dropped from the high 30s into the low teens and kept falling. Yesterday, a freakish wind sprang up to blow a light snowfall into a frenzy. It stopped traffic and sent blinding flurries sideways through gray skies. The snow stopped eventually. But not the wind. It made for an interesting view through the two-story windows at the airport terminal. Gorgeous sunset up top, all pink and glowy and peaceful. Furious storm down below, with swirling eddies of snow so dense you couldn't make out the planes at the end of the gangways.

Weird. And for a woman with a massive flight phobia, totally unnerving.

So I took my Xanax, the gift of pharmacology that makes air travel possible for panic-prone fliers such as myself.

Then the flight was delayed. Which I didn't realize, because my Xanax - lovely, panic-quelling miracle that it is - also puts me out like a light. But I heard the boarding announcement. I got up. I got on the plane. And then the Xanax wore off. It wore off just as we were coming into DC's National Airport, one of the nastiest approaches in US airspace. All bouncy and twisty and crazy-making. And, unknowingly Xanax-free, I had my first panic attack in a decade.

I was lucky. I was sitting in the back row of the airplane, all by myself. So the plane bounced. I panicked. No one noticed. The plane landed. I made myself stand up and put on my coat. I calmly walked to the baggage claim and I picked up my bag. I walked out the door. I met an old friend who'd come to give me a ride home. Like the gentleman he is, he stepped out of his car to put my bag in the trunk. And my competent, 43-year-old self immediately collapsed into a shaky, snivelly, post-panicky mess.

Poor fella gave me a hug, even though it was about 12 degrees outside and all he really wanted was a hamburger because my late flight had delayed his already well delayed dinner. Good man. Good friend. And it worked. Shaky snivelling stopped. Panic abated. Though I'll admit it was something like 2:00 a.m. before I finally settled down enough to sleep.

Nice to know a good hug makes an effective Xanax substitute when you need one, though.

PS: Here's wishing a very happy 8th birthday to my diva!

I Left My Chocolate In San Francisco

Anyone who knows me knows I'm a horribly social creature. I like to talk. I like to listen. And I really really like to talk. I crave people the way a chocoholic craves, well, chocolate.

But I spend nearly every waking moment in my little house. I work here. I sleep here. I watch TV here and I eat here and I blog here. I get to talk to my three children, and to my wonderful au pair who makes my life so much easier. And they are patient souls who listen and talk and sometimes even listen a bit more.

I am, however, slowly going crazy.

So last week I got out. I got way, far out. I went to San Francisco. And then I went to Ottawa.

In both places, I met people whose names I recognize from emails, whose voices I know intimately from countless phone conversations, whose humor has been the highlight of frequent late-night chats. I was surrounded by people. I talked to them. I listened to them. I went for walks with them. I ate with them, too. And oh, was that fun! I had fresh-caught scallops (though my daughter, the wannabe marine biologist, would be disappointed because I did not first ask if they were ocean-friendly - they were too yummy to worry about). And, of course, Ghirardelli chocolate. I had brilliant, bright green olives - not the browny green you normally see, but a vibrant pine green with a surprisingly brineless, purely olive flavor. I had whole, crisp baby artichokes while my companions had pig cheek and octopus. I know, my choice sounds a little lame by comparison. I am not normally a food wimp, but I was really drawn to those artichokes.

And I had people. No, no, not for dinner. I'm not that fond of fava beans. But I got to know long-time acquaintances in a whole new way, over coffee, over cocktails, over wine. My friend Ange - that is her real fake bar name, which I promised I'd put in my blog - has even said she'd send me a list of half-decent wines so I won't continue looking like a complete ignoramus when I go out (this is what 13 years of marriage to a teetotaller will do to a girl).

I'm home now. Back at my desk. Back to my quiet little life. But that very loud chocoholic-style people craving that's been plaguing me, it's not quite so loud now. Crazy will just have wait a few more months.

Cheesecake and Cosmos

My nearly ex and I, we are officially counting down to the end of life in limbo.

Yesterday, we got all dolled up and went to the office of an Examiner - basically, a lawyer who gets to be queen for the day. A dear friend came, too, to serve as a witness. The Examiner and my own lawyer asked us a series of yes or no questions, some of which were disturbingly intimate because apparently the state we live in feels a need to be absolutely certain that you are not even remotely inclined to reconcile, even by accident.

They don't make divorce easy in this state. Not by a long shot.

But that was it. A quick and generally painless 15 minutes, and then we were done. And a pretty cheery 15 minutes it was, too. The nearly ex and I were in good spirits, I think just out of relief that the long road back to singledom is nearly done. In the next two weeks, the Examiner's report will go in front of an actual judge, who will sign off on things and issue the final decree. And then limbo is over.

Oh, and I get my old name back. This is a good thing. I liked my old name.

All that was cause for celebration. To be clear - you're not celebrating the end of the marriage, when you toast to this stuff. Because that's a sad thing, even if it's a right thing. What you're celebrating is the end of the process. The end of limbo. And the start of something new.

So you need something that does both. You need to comfort the little sad bit and celebrate the happy bit.

While the nearly ex headed off to watch the kids (it being his night and all), my friend and I drove out in the pouring rain and found The Cheesecake Factory, home to the perfect balance of comfort and joy. There was cheesecake - pumpkin cheesecake, and oh that's yummy stuff. And cosmos, you know, for the joy. Well, she had a mojito. But the cosmopolitan, that was mine, and yes, it made me happy.

Interesting day. A little happy. A little sad. More happy than sad.

And now, we wait.

'Cause, you know, we haven't done enough of that.

Lawnmower Men

Yesterday, my friends mowed my lawn.

Now, granted, these are my friends in Limbo, the folks with whom I and my kids now frequently share wine and pie and cupcakes. On Labor Day Sunday, those of us who could came together for a meal and a little beach time on the river. The gathering was at my house, and I'd had grand plans about getting up early (yeah, right) and depooping and mowing the lawn.

Lots of kids in attendance means a need for a clean and navigable yard. Right?

But I woke up late. And I woke up to a disaster. Two of 'em, actually.

My redhead, who has an unquenchable thirst for what he calls "cow milk" (note the cow on the label), had helped himself to a carton from out of the pantry. He left the pantry door open. This is never smart with a Black Lab in the house. This dog, who is now so old she cannot manage stairs unassisted, somehow made her way to the pantry, pulled out six cans of cat food, chewed her way into each and every one of them, and left bits of crushed can and puddles of chicken and liver dinner all over the house.

It took me an hour to clean it all up. Longer for the stench of cat food to dissipate.

Then, my dryer broke. So I spent lots of time carting wet clothes upstairs and laying them all out in the sun in the vain hope that they'd dry before company came.

Upshot? Lots of poop, very long grass, and an explosion of laundry on my deck.

My friends, who get that Limbo is a challenge of time as much as anything else, took one look at my shambles of a backyard and just stepped in. They grabbed plastic bags. They pulled the mower out of the shed. And in no time - well, it would have been no time except that crabgrass is a bitch to cut - they had my yard in playable shape.

And in doing so, they taught me another one of those Lessons Learned in Limbo.

Lesson 2: Ask for help.

Most of us, we just keep on swimming, despite the tsunami doing its best to drown us. But if you ask for help, shockingly, you might just get a life preserver, a helicopter, and someone trained to use both.

Pretty incredible, that.

Of course, asking for help is easiest when you don't actually have to ask. My friends made it very easy.

Once the lawn was mowed, we had a fun dinner - potluck as usual - of faked barbecue chicken, nearly browned potatoes, curried wheatberries and a signature salad of savoy cabbage and home-roasted crunchies. Oh, and brownies so fabulous that the children managed to devour every one of them before the grown-ups even noticed they were gone.

The food vanished. The lesson, though - that will stick.

Wine & Pie

The Land of Limbo belongs exclusively to the separated-but-not-quite-divorced. And it is a strange, strange place. One of the strangest things about it is that you firmly believe you're stuck there all by your lonesome. This is ironic, because you know for a fact there's at least one other resident - that being the person to whom you are now not-yet-unmarried. Not that you want to talk with him about it, even under the most amicable of circumstances.

Which is how we come to wine and pie. And yes, there's a recipe in here ... two actually. Keep reading. We'll get to them. ("What?" you gasp. "She's talking about food? I totally forgot she did that.")

I am fortunate enough to have a large number of friends who love me to pieces and have been looking for an excuse to show it. One of these friends, when he saw me heading off into Limbo Land, realized he had two other friends who were living there too. He introduced us to each other. And now the three of us are also friends, tied together by the strangeness of our circumstances and by the fact that we happen to like each other. Our kids like each other, too. Coolness all around.

Last weekend, we got together with two other Limbo Land residents for an evening of wine, pie, and catharsis.

It was not all about the dessert. We kicked off the evening with a MiddleSouthEasternAsian smorgasbord that included homemade tahini hummus, spicy chick pea masala, green salad with feta, and a fragrant cinnamon beef and chicken and rice dish. There was also a big mess of tabouleh made with such dedication and commitment that every single leaf of parsley and mint was chopped by hand. I know this because I did all that chopping myself and my forearms still ache ... yes I own a food processor ... clearly I was not in my right mind. The tabouleh could have used a good bit more lemon. But it wasn't bad, considering I was winging the recipe from memory because the dog ate my recipe cards. That, however, is a story for another day. Tabouleh recipe is below (and if you can figure out what it was missing - I suspect it was more than just the lemon - please share).

All that food? It was just the appetizer. The whole point of the evening was wine and pie. You put those two things together and you have something magical. Hence the catharsis. Give anyone enough sugar and alcohol and they'll have epiphanies they didn't even know they needed.

For me, pie comes once a year at Thanksgiving. I make an apple crunch pie that I found in an issue of Family Circle waaaaay back in the mid-1990s and have made every year since. It's the only pie I make.

In honor of wine and pie night, though, I ventured outside of my apple-y comfort zone and made a strawberry-rhubarb pie. With fresh rhubarb. I've eyed it at the grocery store countless times and never done a damn thing with it. But it's good stuff, that rhubarb. Pretty and pink and tart. Recipe is below.

My pie was served side-by-side with our hostess's Hershey Bar pie, a decadent mash-up of almond Hershey bars, marshmallows (I think?), Cool Whip and two other ingredients that I really wish I could remember right now. Even my kids liked that one. And they think pie is for sissies.

Gotta tell you - it's worth living in Limbo Land just for the food.

Recipes:

The Dog Ate My Tabouleh

• 1 cup bulgur
  
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/4 c olive oil
• 1 bunch of scallions, green parts and all, thinly sliced
• 2 bunches of parsley, chopped fine (take my advice and use the food processor)
• 2 packs of mint (about 1/2 c when chopped - hey, if you drop it in the food processor with the parsley, you'll really be cooking!)
• 1 seedless English cucumber, peeled (mostly) and diced
• 4-6 tomatoes with actual flavor, seeded and diced
• The juice of 4 lemons. I only had 2. Use 4. Or more. Lemon is good.
  
• Salt & pepper to taste

Cook the bulgur according to package directions, drain (I squeezed mine out in a kitchen towel) and cool. Mince the garlic, then plop it in a cup and pour the olive oil over it. Set it aside to give the oil a chance to get all infused and garlicky (I squeezed in a lemon, too, though I'm not sure that added anything). Do allllllll that chopping. Or processing. Your call. Mix the parsley, mint, cucumber and tomatoes in a big bowl. Fluff the bulgur with a fork and drop it in. Squeeze in the lemons, add in the olive oil and garlic, and salt and pepper to taste. Mix it all up, then let sit for an hour or so to let the flavors blend.

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie (The Cheater's Version)

• 4 c trimmed rhubarb, sliced about 1/2 inch thick (about 1 1/2 lbs if you're buying it fresh - though frozen will do)
• 1 lb (16 oz) strawberries, hulled and cut in half (my diva cut the strawberries - girl's got mad skills with a paring knife)
  
• 1/2 c packed brown sugar
• 1/2 c granulated sugar
• 1/4 c cornstarch (though I'm thinking tapioca might work better)
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp vanilla
• 1/4 tsp salt
• One refrigerated Pillsbury pie crust (that's the cheating part - if you want to go whole hog, find a good two-crust recipe and make it instead)
• 1 large egg yolk beaten with 1 tsp water

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Combine the first eight ingredients (everything through the salt) in a big bowl and mix gently. Place one pie crust in the bottom of your pie pan and spoon the filling into it, spreading it out evenly. Lay out the other pie crust on a floured board and slice it into 1/2 inch strips. Lay the strips across the filling in a lattice pattern. Trim dough ends even with the overhang on the bottom crust, then fold strip ends and overhang under, seal, and crimp. Brush the yolk and water mixture over the crust. Sprinkle with sugar. Transfer pie to baking sheet and bake at 400 F for 20 minutes. Reduce oven temp to 350 F, cover pie with foil to keep crust from overbrowning, and bake for 1 hour 25 minutes. Transfer pie to rack and cool. Enjoy with Cool Whip, wine and friends.

Spaghetti Hands

An old and dear friend of mine has recently published a book. A real book. Actual literature. His name is John Pipkin, and his book, Woodsburner, is really quite good. Well thought-out with intriguing characters, a compelling story and some beautiful turns of phrase. Not quite finished with it - life in limbo leaves not enough time for reading, so I'm only about a third of the way through. But it's been fun so far.

Earlier this week, John was in town. I took two nights out - mid-week, mind you - to go see him and his family, hear him read his book, and catch up on the last 14 years or so.

My kids were flabbergasted. Mom going out on a weekday? Mom actually leaving the house??? That's like SpongeBob doing a cameo on Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. Inconceivable.

So intrigued were they that they took time out of a tasty dinner of spaghetti and peas to grill me mercilessly on where I'd been and what I was doing on my two nights out. I felt like a teenager who'd just missed curfew facing her disbelieving parents. When I told the kids about John and his book, they demanded to see it. It's like I'd just said I was late because the car got a flat. They had to check that blown tire for themselves to be sure it was real.

I brought the book downstairs, but of course I wouldn't let them touch it. Pretty, pristine dust jacket meets spaghetti hands. Not good. The kids were duly impressed by the book all the same. Lots of oohs, lots of ahs. They liked seeing my friend's picture and his signature on the inside. My Aspie seemed particularly struck by John's name. He said it over and over: "John Pipkin John Pipkin John Pipkin." Cool name. I get it. I used to call him Pipkin most of the time myself, just 'cause I liked saying it.

The kids wanted to play after dinner, so I put the book on the stairs and forgot about it until bedtime. Promptly at 8:30, I marshalled the troops and sent them up ahead of me. They charged upstairs, my Aspie leading the way.

He took one look at the book and started hollering. "Don't touch The Pipkin! Don't touch The Pipkin!"

This struck me as inordinately funny. Really wish I could tell you why. (Though I suspect it has something to do with Remington Steele.)

Anyway, all three of them gave that book an extremely wide berth, which is hard to do on our stairs. I may have made that point about keeping their hands off just a little too clearly.

John's a parent, too. He started the book the week before his son was born. He wrote between 4 a.m. feedings and a boring job that paid the bills. Now he's a published author and a good dad to boot. Even his wife agrees. So buy the book, read it, love it - and feel good about supporting one of the hardest working fellas I know.

The Blogroll

I'm a surprise blogger. Always wanted to try it, and now that I have a vehicle, I find that I actually have something to say. Had no idea it was in there. Surprise!

What this means, though, is that I never stopped to set the context. I'm betting that, as a result, you have no idea why I chose to put those random bits and pieces on the right side of the page. So I'll do a few posts over the coming weeks to give you the 4-1-1 (and yes, I feel silly even typing that).

We'll start with What I Read ... more commonly known as the blogroll.

First up is DivaSpeak, which I've been following since its inception. It is creatively crafted by a good friend who knows her pop culture cold (she blogs on Lost and Heroes, among many other things). She also has a knack for finding brilliant, off-beat content. My most recent guilty pleasure from the Diva: "I've dreamed about it ... have you?" It's one of those things you can't stop watching. Not that you'd want to. Dive into her archives. She keeps me entertained. She also has phenomenal taste in shoes.

The Bloguscript is my how-to-live-vicariously blog, because it's written by a friend who actually leaves his house. I read this and want to go do things and see things and hear things. His tunage is interesting, his grammar is spot on, and he's got a sense of humor just this side of snarky, as evidenced by his "You Might Not be a Redneck" post. He's been teaching me to blog, for which many thanks and a batch of banana chocolate chip bars - or at least a lasagna - are likely in his future.

If my friend iClipse is providing the mechanical bloggy know-how, the Yarn Harlot is providing the inspiration. I knit. I write. The Yarn Harlot knits. The Yarn Harlot writes. She makes me want to knit and write and then knit some more, because you realize, reading her, that knitting and writing are what life should be about. I want to knit a sock. I don't even like socks. And then I want to write about it. And take its picture. I think that means I am an honest-to-goodness fan.

Cake Wrecks is a new find. I've been decorating cakes for 12 years. Started with this stunning creation that I copied out of Colette Peters' first book, Colette's Cakes, for a dear friend's baby shower. It was a giant bib done in multi-colored buttercream loops, lacy swags of royal icing, and pastel animals piped with run-in sugar. It tasted like sawdust, but oh, was it pretty! My cakes taste better now and mostly come out to play for birthdays and special family events. This blog makes me laugh out loud. Often.

Eat Like Me is on the roll because I think I should want to read it. A nutritionist chronicles her day in food. Not 100% sure I'm there yet, though I do check in sometimes. And knowing this blog's here does seem to make me eat better ... I'm officially down 15 pounds since I started blogging in January.

Snark appeals to me, which is why I keep a link to Diary of The Food Whore and get her RSS feed delivered to my iGoogle page. A snarky caterer. Loves food; not so fond of people. Brilliant.

52 Cupcakes is - duh - another cake blog. Some of her ideas are a little off the beaten path: to wit, the Bisquick Bacon Cupcakes with Maple Syrup and Bacon Frosting. But she's unfailingly creative, and that works for me. I actually want to try those the next time I make breakfast for dinner with the kids.

It's Easy Being Green

I work for a living. I know, hard to imagine that I can find time for a job. But I do. Work for a nice, big company, with lots of people in it. Used to be a lot fewer people, but then we executed a merger. We got hugely enormous and became genuinely multinational in the process. This is cool, because it means that sometimes I get to go to Paris. And I like to go to Paris. Not just for the food, either, though that's certainly a draw.

On my first trip to Paris, the folks on my team wanted to get to know each other. So we did a personality analysis.

As our consultants explained, each of us is a blend of three colors, one of which is usually dominant. If you're mostly blue, you are heavily analytical, always thinking about the future, and generally staring at your bellybutton because you are so inwardly focused. If you are red, you are driving and driving and driving - though you may not always know toward what, and that "what" may sometimes be a big giant cliff. And if you are green, you are the Chatty Cathy of the group, the social butterfly, the networker. And you are always late, because the person you are talking to right now is incredibly important. This pisses off the blue people, who are always on time because they are insanely precise, as well as the red people, who never wait for anyone.

This will come as a complete shock, of course, but I am mostly green. I am also always late.

On Wednesday after work, I walked into my hotel and found an American friend in the lobby, waiting for her French boss, who was joining her for dinner. I kept her company while she waited. Of course, he was late. He is green. She is green, too, so we understood. And when he arrived, apologizing, we explained that there was no need because all of us are green.

At which point, green social beast that he is, he invited me to dinner with them. For which, huge thanks.

We spent 45 green minutes on the sofa getting to know each other before we realized that if we didn't leave we'd never find an open restaurant. Then we chatted at the table without even looking at the menus for at least 20 green minutes more before we realized that if we didn't order we wouldn't eat before midnight.

Everything was late. None of us cared. We were too busy enjoying being green together.

The food wasn't bad, either. At the aptly named Spicy restaurant, we enjoyed intriguingly spiced dishes along with a chilled bottle of red wine (and J-P, if you read this please share what type of wine it was because I loved it and I cannot remember). Oh, but the best part - aside from the green conversation - was the dessert. It was called Spicy Coffee. And with that, I learned a new food word - degustation. For Spicy Coffee was a bit more than that. Along with our teeny tiny cups of French coffee, we each enjoyed a degustation of two insanely fabulous desserts. One was a small, cannoli-like pirouette cookie filled with an appropriately green pistachio cream. The other - it was ooh-la-la good! On the top, chopped spiced fruit - maybe apple? Then a thick layer of a smooth custard akin to vanilla pudding, only richer. And then, at the bottom, a layer of perfectly spiced and saturated gingerbread. Together in one bite, they blended perfectly. Rather like our conversation that evening. Fabulous!

We closed the restaurant. Then our newest French friend suggested we see the Eiffel Tower at night, so we did ... and, not realizing that our green natures had brought us to the Tower after midnight, we missed the last subway train back to the hotel. So we chatted and walked and chatted some more. Crossed the Champs Elysees, all bright lights and cars and dramatic presence. Chatted a bit more. And finally made it back to the hotel at 2:00 a.m.

Being green is a bit like being blonde: you just have more fun. Though one might occasionally appreciate just a little more sleep.

Call Me Couscous

On the plus side of separation and divorce is the opportunity to fix a few things and get them right the second time around. Takes a while - a good, long while - to figure out what those things should be, exactly. It's an iterative process, and one I'm going through with some measure of success and a nearly equal measure of failure.

Here's one I'm determined to get right.

Lesson 1: Make time for you.

It’s okay not to be at the top of your list, but you should at least make the top five. A stressed out mom is a grumpy mom, and even the best of us a need a break.

Given the massive changes in my life in the last few months, I needed a big huge gargantuan break. So, last weekend, I took one. Invited a friend to hop a train with me and headed to NYC for food and art and a little Broadway.

Which brings me to couscous.

My part of the world is a quick train ride from NYC. But if you've ever spent much time on Amtrak, you know the food is, well, bleh. And that's being charitable.

So I packed a lunch. A grown-up, not-your-average-lunchbox lunch. No plain Jane turkey sandwiches for me on my grown-up vacation. Went recipe trolling on foodnetwork.com and came up with something that I thought might work: Moroccan Chicken with Apricot Couscous and Green Olive Sauce. Changed it up a bit, because no one in her right mind should ever spend an hour and ten minutes making lunch. Used boneless, skinless chicken breasts and covered them in a very intense, home-ground spice rub ... then rinsed off the rub once everything was cooked and cooled. Used regular old tortillas instead of wasting time hunting down lavosh.

Grown-up food does not have to be exotic. Just has to fake it well.

Couscous in a wrap is not something I'd ever have thought of on my own. I frankly figured the texture would be a little odd in what was basically a sandwich (and if you've read me on couscous before, you'll get that). But it went so well with the other bits, it made that wrap worth eating. Celeb chef Tyler Florence doesn't usually impress me much, but that worked.

So, the wraps were good. Set a nice, adult tone for a nice, adult weekend. Managed to stay away from the giant Toys R Us in Times Square, avoided the M&M store, and even kept my distance from the world-renowned Natural History museum. Instead, I toured a grown-up museum full of grown-up art, ate lots of grown-up food, and even had a grown-up drink or two.

Even better, though ... I had two meals worth of phenomenal leftovers waiting for me on my return. The couscous and all its flavors had a chance to meld and soften, the olive sauce settled into salty, tangy comfort, and the chicken found its juicy goodness.

I'll make that again ... then wait two or three days to eat it. Without the tortillas this time.