Family

To The North Pole, Via NJ

December 3, 2010

My son is a serious train nut. All day long, he talks of pistons, buffers and coal tenders — words I never breathed before he was born but now have a prominent place in our house. He obsesses over which trains to couple together, which engine will make the delivery to the quarry and which one will bring the children in the passenger coaches, over the mountain, to the party (whose party, he hasn’t said). He wakes up thinking about this stuff. It’s pretty hard core.

And while Thomas & Friends are his usual trains of choice, he also loves The Polar Express. So, off we went to ride the New Jersey version this past weekend.

The whole set-up is really cute — it’s an old train (a diesel engine, as my son will specify) on a railway line that they run for special occasions, like the Thomas ride we took over the summer. For The Polar Express, they had the cars all decked out with Christmas lights and decorations. A lot of kids — and some parents — wear their pajamas. The audio version of the book plays over the speakers and they have folks come through the cars and serve the kids cookies and hot chocolate. Santa comes through each car too and the kids even get the little bell from the elves.

It’s all very sweet. And waaaay too long.

Two hours is an eternity to hold any kid’s attention under the age of five. And, since I was far from the only guilty party bringing small kids to this event, you end up with a train full of very antsy, very impatient kids once the novelty has worn off. Our son was pretty good — mostly out of train intoxication — but bringing the baby (she’s 16 months) was like being on a flight around the world without buying her a seat. Our bad.

While she was deciding what damage she could do (to the train and to us), our son, armed with his copy of The Polar Express book, followed along with the story — perfectly content.

Until his sister went after his cookie.

She’s tough, but he prevailed — and (some) order was restored. He got a shiny new train from the gift shop to occupy him for the remainder of the never-ending ride.

And the 16-month old ran the aisles with alternating parents, until she (and mostly we) finally tuckered out a bit.

What a trip. We may, in fact, have gone as far as The North Pole — or so it seemed. Great in concept, long in execution.

Oh, and for the suggestion box: Put some wine in those hot cocoa cups for the adults. Because surely we’ll make the same trek next year in the name of holiday tradition — and parental amnesia.

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The Day After

November 26, 2010

Sometimes tradition gets a little warped along the way.

I’m referring to one of my favorite days of the holiday season, which is today. Not because it’s Black Friday, but because it’s the day when my dad’s side of the family celebrates — in our own special way.

This started when my aunt and uncle were in the restuaurant business. They always had to work on Thanksgiving so they started hosting their dinner on Friday instead. Yes, we have the whole turkey dinner, lots of friends and family, great conversation, tons of cocktails.

But we also have a dirty little secret — an annual night of highly competitive and somewhat unorthodox gaming. Catch Phrase is our Thanksgiving game of choice (come Christmas, I’ll cover Extreme Charades).

The instrument of competitive holiday evil

Quick primer for those who don’t know the game. Basically, this disc of terror beeps with increasing frequency as it’s passed around a circle, while each person has a turn, and the opposing team gets a point if you’re left holding the game when it buzzes. Your turn requires you to look at the word you get on the screen and describe it to your team mates until they guess it. Sounds easy, right? Wait until you’ve had four glasses of wine and a near-tryptophan overdose while trying to convey “Leningrad” to your equally disadvantaged team mates.

This all seems harmless enough on the surface. But I need to reiterate that it’s *highly* competitive. As in, yelling, screaming and utter intimidation — all in the name of advancing to the championship round (yes, we have so many people that we use a bracket tourney set up) and ultimately claiming the title.

Yeah. We’re out for blood.

The hard part is the arrival of a few newcomers every year. These poor people — they arrive for a nice holiday meal and maybe they’ve been told we’ll play a game afterwards. How sweet.

Bwahahahaha.

Meanwhile, my cousin, my sister’s boyfriend and I are sizing up the newbies over dinner — their overall global knowledge, speed of response and academic background (would asking for transcripts be too much?). Because the teams are randomly drawn, you can really get hosed by having a new player on board. Or my Aunt J. She’s an awful player — truly — but she’s the hostess, so there’s a required level of acceptance/resignation that applies only to her. A highlight of her Catch Phrase career was calling out “Uncle Ben’s Tavern” instead of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” It’s true. Then there was my cousin’s neighbor who thought “Lasagna” was “Los Angeles.” That one really cost us dearly and I have lobbied to never allow him to come back. What a shit head. If my kids ever turn into such a Catch Phrase liability, I’ll be so upset. I have to start training them young.

Keep in mind that this all happens while wearing required, hand-crafted headgear to designate your team affiliation (Pilgrims vs Indians, Santa vs Reindeer, etc). So just picture some tipsy, screaming, competitive lunatics with homemade headgear and a beeping Catch Phrase disc. It hits a fever pitch at the championship round with all eliminated teams gathered around as spectators. I’m pretty convinced you can hear us down the street. Really.

Anyway, it has been a few years since I was on the winning team but I’m feeling pretty good about 2010 — as long as I don’t get any dumb-ass newcomers. Wish me luck.

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When Tradition Goes Up in Flames

November 25, 2010

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
To warm your hearts, please gather ’round the virtual fire to hear one of my favorite — if not one of the strangest — Turkey Day celebration stories, as told to me by its participants. All parties shall remain nameless to protect their future eligibility to run for public office or secure employment.

Picture a family with three adult sisters — we’ll call them 1, 2 and 3 to make it easy. This family is in a weird place — the parents are in the middle of an ongoing divorce, the mother is dealing with some health issues and Sister 1 is on yet another infamous hiatus from her boyfriend. There was a general lack of merriment all around this family, to say the least.

Sister 2 decided to host the Thanksgiving festivities at the place she shared with her boyfriend in Brooklyn. It would be just them, Sister 1, Sister 3 (home from college) and the mother. Nobody was really in the mood but they were pulling it together. They managed to have a nice meal.

Dessert rolled around. Sister 2, the hostess, has always been on the non-traditional side. With all good intentions, she decided to try to smooth out the day with her own special blend of brownies. So, her guests had a choice between the traditional, all-American pumpkin pie or the far less conventional Brooklyn brownies. Sister 1 quickly ingested not one, but two of these Brooklyn treats. This is where running for public office could get tricky one day.

Oh dear.

At this point, the family is watching TV in a state of we-ate-way-too-much-and-doesn’t-this-year-just-suck. Friends comes on (a family favorite) — specifically, the Holiday Armadillo episode. Sister 1, now in a special post-brownie place, simply cannot hold it together. In her mind, at that moment, this is clearly the funniest scene in the history of television and she fears she may, in fact, pee her pants. Just take a few minutes and picture her predicament.

She had to collect herself. She went into the bathroom and splashed some water on her face. There were festive candles flanked along each side of the sink. She had very long hair at the time. Oh, and she wasn’t exactly on her A-game. Here is her inner dialogue as later described to the group:

———–

What the hell is that fireball I see creeping up the side of my head out of my peripheral vision?

What is the awful smell? It’s like someone’s hair is on…

Fire. Mine. My hair is on fire.

I should do something.

I can’t believe this doesn’t hurt.

God my hair is long. I really could use a trim.

And that fucking Holiday Armadillo — now, that is funny.

I should put this little fire out…

———

And she did. No real damage done. But do you know the smell of burnt hair? It’s vile.

She returned to the living room. Sister 2 and her boyfriend are yelling, wincing — “Ew, that smell. You set your hair on fire? Oh God, just leave. It’s awful.”

So she leaves. The festivities had run their course, anyway. Sister 1 gets on the subway. It’s packed. Sister 2’s neighborhood in Brooklyn was “in transition” but hadn’t yet approached the good side of transition yet. People could be sort of tough. On this particular night, offended by the stench of charred hair, a few passengers hopped up on liquid merriment start making sniffing faces and yelling “Whose hair is burnt? That’s fucking nasty.”

Or something like that.

Sister 1 begins to cry. The hair, the bluesy season, the yelling on the subway, the Holiday Armadillo — it’s all too much. Apparently.

She makes it home. She calls her ex — they are on a break but speaking as needed. She tells him the whole story. He has no idea who the fuck the Holiday Armadillo is or what she’s saying. But he gets the gist. He asks her if her hair looks funny.

She goes to bed and wakes up to the smell of her hair and the muddled memories of the Holiday Armadillo. To this day, it reminds her of her family’s most unlikely and bizarre Thanksgiving on record.

From that year forward, she opted for the pie.

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Let the Madness Begin

November 22, 2010

It’s here — Thanksgiving Week. The official kick-off to the holidays, a short work week and time to feast, gather, give thanks. Maybe even rest (yeah, right).

I’m excited. I’m a holiday dork — I love this season, even though it causes me all kinds of stress. Every year, I vow to enjoy it more. Some years I do better than others. Since I’ve had kids, it has become both more important to me to enjoy it and simultaneously more complicated/stressful.

And so it begins this year. I have a few things up my sleeve this week. We are going to P’s family for Thanksgiving Day and then off to my family for Thanksgiving 2.0 on Friday (there’s more coming on that soon). We’re also planning to hit the holiday festivities in town this weekend. And, on the more practical/less fun, yet highly satisfying side, there will be some purging of the basement — again. Yesssss. This time, I’ve upped the ante. There’s a storage pod coming to our driveway and I’m going to be ruthless (purge, purge, purge). I’ll fill you in when said eyesore arrives on our property. I’m sure our neighbors will love our Sanford & Son look as they hang their lovely holiday decorations.

This time of year always brings up some great and even strange memories of past holiday seasons. We’ve all got the bizarre-yet-funny-in-retrospect family stories, right? I’m working on recapping one or two of those over the next couple of days, just to help get into the spirit.

In the meantime, let’s talk about the main event — the food. Everything is pretty traditional fare in our family but I will share with you my mother’s crown jewel Thanksgiving dessert. Hope that’s OK, Mom.

For those of you who, like me, find pumpkin pie a little too, well, pumpkinny, check out the Pumpkin Chiffon Pie (or, as we call it, P-Chiff). It’s much lighter — at least in taste, no promises on the calorie front — and I think much better than the traditional version. And super easy.

Ev’s P-Chiff

2 pie shells (graham cracker tastes best — psst, I buy mine pre-made but Ev makes her own)
1 cup sugar
2 envelopes unflavored gelatin
1 tsp. salt
1 30 oz. can Pumpkin Pie Mix (make sure it says Mix, not straight pumpkin)
2 cups milk
2 eggs, beaten
2 cups Cool Whip

Combine sugar, gelatin and salt in saucepan. Blend in milk. Cook and stir over medium heat until sugar and gelatin are completely dissolved. Gradually stir mixture into beaten eggs in bowl. Slowly blend pumpkin mix into bowl. Chill until very thick (about 2 or 3 hours). Gently fold about 1 cup of Cool Whip into mixture. Spoon into pie shell and refrigerate overnight. Top with Cool Whip.

Enjoy. And remember, the recipe yields two pies — so keep one at home for yourself (it’s really good for breakfast — trust me on this).

* * *

Gwyneth/Glee Stuck Song Update: No relief today. She’s still singing in my head. My friend Nessa said that this is called a head splinter, according to urbandictionary.com. I asked her if she had a large cranial tweezer.

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A Walk With an App

November 16, 2010

If you haven’t figured it out by now, I’ll remind you that I have little to no skill in photography. It’s not my gig. I’m better with a keyboard.

But I do have two kids, a pug, some fall foliage and a camera, and I’m sort of obsessive about trying to document a lot of everyday happenings — even if my skill doesn’t match my will. So that means, unfortunately, that you have to suffer through my bad photos now and then as part of the blog posts.

Now I’ve added my newly found iPhone photo apps into the mix. It’s like having no skill on steroids (or acid, if you look at some of these colors).

We went out for a walk this past weekend and everything was downright stunning — the weather, the colors and even the toddler dispositions. It was an alignment of the suburban planets.

Out came the photo apps. Before each photo, I gave the baby my iPhone and told her to shake it (which she loved, as I prayed it wouldn’t meet an early demise landing on the sidewalk). Many of you who have been iPhone-indoctrinated long ago — yes, I’m light years behind — know that shaking it will randomly change up the lenses and film on some of the apps to give you a different look each time.

So I guess what we have below is some photographic roulette, courtesy of a 16 month-old and me. We have the same level of competence with a camera, so it seemed fitting to include her as my apprentice.

Here’s our app-fueled, color-tastic trip around the neighborhood. I feel a little like Dorothy after the tornado.

My assistant, mentally framing the next shot.

And back at the ranch (well, the colonial): Fun with mud and trains — basically, the Holy Grail for a 3 year-old boy.

I like the whole retro-color look. It reminds me (as I assume the app marketers intended) of the types of photos my parents and grandparents took when I was a kid. I wasn’t overcome with nostalgia as much as with some residual jaundice from the overblown yellows. But it gave our walk a color boost and my non-skills a little help, both of which were welcome.

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Back in Business

November 15, 2010

My husband has so much patience. He can wait and wait for things to be precisely as they should be. He is highly methodical, very detail-oriented and he never backs down from a challenge.

So when the Trojan Horse virus punks came along and seized the full contents of our computer about six weeks ago (more on that here and here), they were messing with the wrong guy.

P was on a mission and, let me tell you, his resolve paid off. The stand-off has ended. Fordeville wins. The home computer is up and running.

In my infinite impatience, I was already thinking about which replacement computer we should buy. We were done for, I figured. Not P. He was researching the virus nonsense during the work day when he had time, and then kept bringing home new CDs, memory sticks, etc., to download various remedies onto our imprisoned computer. Foiled, foiled and foiled again — until one night, I heard this coming from our upstairs office at some ungodly hour:

“Yessssssssssssssssssss. Got it.”

This was followed by the joyous sound of Windows booting up — something we had not heard in weeks.

We had won! But not. By the next day, the Trojan Punks had resumed control. This was like a carefully played chess match. Not only were we dealing with strategy, but also some psychology and trickery.

My husband *loves* this shit. Not me — I was over it. I continued combing through the holiday circulars for our new computer.

This went back and forth for weeks. Trojan Punks up, then P resumed control. Then foiled again the next day — on and 0n.

Until this weekend, when there was a series of major breakthroughs. (Don’t ask me what they were — I was out looking for the new laptop.)

Last night, P was finally ready to cautiously claim victory. Everything seems to be working — at least for now — but who knows what kind of damage/access occurred on the back end. We’ll see, I guess. Let’s just say that we’re not doing any banking on that computer in the near future.

And if any of my blog posts were particuarly weak in the last month, perhaps I’ll blame it on the Trojan Punks. You didn’t like that entry? Well, they posted in my name. Why yes, I’m sure their goal in methodically taking over our machine was to wield their power through my blog. They just needed a platform.

Anyway, hats off to P: Engineer by day. Anti-Trojan warrior and general online badass by night. ?And truly the patience of a saint.

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The Canine Evil Eye

November 11, 2010

The poor dog had to have three teeth pulled yesterday. He’s pretty pissed off right now.

I’m sure his pissiness exists on several levels. First, there was the 12 hours of fasting beforehand (for general anesthesia). This is a dog who doesn’t miss a stray scrap of food from the kids’ errant table manners. He’s the resident Swiffer. So 12+ hours without a morsel is pretty catastrophic for him (I would feel the same way).

Empty stomach, stitches in his mouth, shaved paws (for the IV). I feel really bad for him.

And for me, to a lesser extent. His surgical pain was physical, while ours is monetary. Perhaps there were hidden nuggets of gold in these teeth. If I typed what the vet charged me to extract them, I might cry. If I put it in writing, it would then be true. So let’s not. Let’s just focus on getting the patient to feel better. Let the kids throw some extra lunch scraps on the floor today — he deserves it.

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Missing Out

November 8, 2010

I won’t get into the whole working vs staying at home debate right now, but I’ll just say that there are obviously things I miss out on during my office tour of duty every week. Milestones, school happenings and just the silly, fun, mundane stuff.

Like this.

I don’t know who the strange bear/chef is and why he was roaming the grocery store — though, admittedly, he freaks me out a bit — but my nanny says that the baby was enthralled. So enthralled, in fact, that said unnamed freaky bear/chef sent them home with a miniature stuffed version of himself, which the baby proceeded to hug all weekend. The mini stuffed version is far less freaky.

Anyway, I missed it. It wasn’t a huge, life-changing moment — but it was awfully sweet.

(Does this bear roam your grocery store? Just curious.)

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Sunday in a Favorite Place

October 24, 2010

I have an uncle who is one of my favorite people on the planet. He gets me — he always has. I rarely have the chance to see him because he lives in Amsterdam, but this weekend was one of those rarities — and on his turf. Even better.

I have to go to a meeting in London this week and I was really glad that P did not blink at my idea to take advantage of the proximity and jump on up to Holland, even though it meant leaving him and the kids behind for a full week. (I’m fairly certain he’s planning a secret revenge golf trip or something, but that’s OK. Huge points for encouraging me to tack on the Dutch mini-vacation.)

My uncle moved to Amsterdam 26 years ago to live with his Dutch partner, so he’s practically a native at this point. I’ve been here to visit probably about five times and, every time, I love it more. It’s an amazing city — the food (more on that soon), the history, the people, the architecture, the weather (just kidding — it’s usually raining Biblically when I’m here — ditto yesterday). I could live here. I love it.

So you combine a favorite place with a favorite person and it makes for the most lovely of weekends. And, there’s more…

My dear friend Grace, who recently moved from New York to Switzerland, met me for the weekend. How lucky am I?

My uncle and his partner, Gene, live here — the uber-charming, uber-narrow grey house in the middle. It’s like a postcard, but better, because I get to go inside and stay there. The house was built in 1732 and is to die for. The details and decor deserve an entire blog. I cannot do it justice here, but suffice it to say that they have flawless taste, coupled with backgrounds in art and antique dealing.

Every time I come, I take this same photo. I love this view, right at the end of their street. Can you imagine walking out to get a newspaper and seeing this every day?

A few other shots of their immediate neighborhood.

It’s hard for me to describe the feeling I have when I am here. This city feels so familiar, inviting and comfortable to me, and yet is still a distinctly foreign place. This ain’t New Jersey (no offense to my fellow Garden State dwellers).

Another reason to love Holland: Some of the best cheese and chocolate on the planet. There are no other words to accompany this photo — let’s just give it the moment of respect it deserves.

Speaking of food…Last night, we had an epic dinner prepared by my uncle. Great conversation, great family, great friends — old and new. It was one of those evenings when everything just worked out beautifully.

Today, we walked the city, with no particular destination. We chatted, we ate, we drank. We window shopped and took cover under awnings when it rained horizontally, and then hailed. Twice. And it was just about a perfect day.

(Oh, and if my photos aren’t appearing or other formatting stuff is off, it’s because I’m trying to figure out Windows commands in Dutch. I can repair any damage when I get back on an English computer.)

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