Oven Lovin'

For the past few years I have been cooking with an oven that works intermittently at best. My range has only two working burners. It started three Christmases ago, while I was roasting some sort of huge hunk of meat, and my oven began beeping with an ominous repeating display of F-5.

What F-5 meant was my oven just stopped working and I had eight people at my house to feed and the roast beast was medium raw at best.

Over the years I have learned how to adapt to my stove's incompetence. I know that once I turn my oven on, I may have to keep it on for hours at a time, because once I turn it off, it is done for the rest of the day. I have kept my oven on for eight hours at a stretch. I have been cooking on a daily basis, for my growing and always hungry family of four with only two burners. It has been a frustrating experience, because I really do enjoy cooking and feeding my family and friends. Some people out there that hate cooking. I am not one of them. (My hatred for CLEANING however will be another post!)

When owning a home, there is a never ending list of working parts to purchase and maintain just to keep the house treading water - such as a furnace (a luxury in New England) and washing machine. Unfortunately, the stove worked it's way down the list. We knew we needed a new one, but I kept muddling through, crossing my fingers while cooking our traditional Thanksgiving lasagna that F-5 didn't appear and shut the entire operation down.

Until the last six months. That frickin oven has taken a nose dive. The remaining two burners began to do what I called, "The Big Finish". I would turn the burner off, there would be a pause, and then, there would be a final poof! of blue gas flames. Safe. Very safe. And then the oven. I could not use it if I had the burners on - it was one or the other. And then when it was on, it would be inconsistent at best. Sometimes it stayed on long enough to roast a full chicken dinner. And then sometimes it would stop after 15 minutes, leaving me to slow roast brownies for hours using only the residual heat to complete the task.

I could not take it any longer. I meet Cliff at the door one Friday night like a crazy lady, screeching to the tune of "we're not going to eat dinner until 11o'clock tonight and if we don't get a frickin oven pronto! We're going to be eating take-out until it happens!"

And now, after much research and haggling on my part with salespeople (I love the haggle!) we just had a gorgeous, shiny, black stove delivered first thing Thursday morning.

I have to admit, it is taking some getting used to. The power and precision of the four burners. The oven turns on and off. And on again! I find myself a little clumsy when cooking. My rythym is off. It is like having a new lover. We need to get used to each other. It keeps catching me in the corner of my eye. I giggle when I walk by - I have even caught myself saying, "Oh, hi. Well, lookit you here. All new and wanting to be touched. I'll be right over." Excuse me for a moment. I have some cooking to do.

Because I'm worth it

I began playing with my hair color at thirteen by dousing it with Sun-In, hoping to get those blond highlights so coveted by most American white girls. By high school I was making the cool girl pilgrimage to Astor Street haircuts in The Village in New York City, trying out oh so 80’s asymmetrical cuts and painting my hair with uneven blond peroxide chunks.

My best friend is a hair stylist and when I first meet her in 1991, she often needed a hair model. That means whatever technique she was learning at the time, she had to try it out on a real person, not just a mannequin head. In turn that model received a free cut or color. Since I had little money, and she was -and still is - fantastic company, I would ride my bike up to where she worked at Vidal Sassoon’s on 5th Ave and 59th street. I found it very NYC exciting, locking my bike across the street from the Plaza Hotel and walking into a busy, uptown salon dressed in my grunge uniform of baby doll dress and bike shorts and Doc Martins. An assistant would bring me a coke to drink and my girlfriend and I would laugh and cackle as she worked on my hair. My hair was very short for a few years, and a range of colors.

My hair has grown longer since then, but I have remained a (drum roll for pun) die hard hair colorist - red being my preferred shade. I have been happily coloring my hair for twenty years. It is a fun part of dressing up and being a girl, in the same way that I wear lipstick and jewelry every day. But one new color has crept in that I want no part of – grey. I am late in the game of getting those first grays. Only because of genetics have I been able to put off the inevitable this long. But, they have started to creep in, through the swirl of my cowlicks at my temples, sticking up at the top of my head, like a grey middle finger.

My body is playing a new trick on me, this aging thing. This in your face grey hair thing. I don’t like it. Not one stinking bit.

I have been through the major body re-shifting after having two kids. I’ve experienced massive weight gain and weight loss and the various flabby body parts that I have tried to tone and keigel over the past few years. I’ve come to a place of acceptance and pride at the magic that my body has performed. I try to be aware of being positive in how I talk about my body, especially having daughters. They will never hear me call myself that awful, ugly word – fat.

I am at peace with these changes that having a baby has done to my body. I am not surprised at most aspects of getting older. Body signs like the classic small crinkles around the eyes. I learned from reading newsstand tabloids that as Demi Moore ages, her knees sagged (she had a lifting procedure to correct this abnormality) so I was prepared for this knee, skin drooping thing to happen. And of course, I know that humans get grey hair as they age, so it is no great surprise that I too will join the ranks and have graying hair.

However, I find grey hair to be the most unsettling part of this growing up process. I think that I can gracefully handle when the sweet crinkles become lines – I don’t see spending money on Botox or silicone fillers. But I will be very happy to color my hair for as long as I can. I have yet to be an all-over, shimmering, golden blond.

Balance Shmalance part deux

Or maybe the title could be, "This is why all of those celebrity, and fashion magazines can go suck it for perpetuating the myth that you can have it all."

I know that Gwyneth bashing can seem as if I have sour mommy grapes. We are not supposed to want to spew venom at blond, pretty, Hollywood royalty. She likes to tell us how busy she is ,just like us, feeding her children dinner and baking cupcakes for school, and fitting in a girls night out. However, her day is also spent dashing out the door to her clothes fitting with private stylists and having a car service. I just find GOOP and Gwyneth and everything about their lifestyle to be condescending.

These are some wealthy, privileged women who are giving tips and quirky slice-of-life moments that are meant to seem as if they live these lives just like the rest of us. They write about their hectic days filled with meetings with Adidas and Bono and they still manage to eat a full rounded breakfast. Trainers and acupuncture at your home saves time! Weekly hair blow outs are a lifesaver!

Maybe if these celebri-mommies would just admit - "Yes I have mountains of money and access to car services, nannies and house cleaners. I am nothing like the legions of you who read about my life. You, lowly people out there clean your own toilets. Boy, I am sure lucky I don't have too! Well, gotta go, busy, busy, time to eat out again!"

At least Stella McCartney admitted that she has a nanny.

Nice and Easy

I am a child of the 70’s. I am drawn to all things having to do with The Love Boat, Seals and Croft style soft rock am radio, and Free to Be You and Me. I love it for the nostalgia of my childhood, proud that I experienced a time when my friends and I rode in the way back with the window open of my dad’s faux wood paneled station wagon. We barreled down the highway, not strapped into anything, face whipped by the wind, mouths stained red from guzzling Hawaiian Punch, and my parents smoking cigarettes in the front seats. There was no doubt in our minds that what we were doing was so perfectly right.

Today, I strap my girls in tight with their seat belts, and they automatically snap on their bike helmets and I carefully monitor what they watch on the television, and I wouldn’t dream of doing it any other way. However, I experience a strange satisfaction knowing I survived without bike helmets, car seats and heavy doses of Fantasy Island.

I can get lost for hours looking at pictures from that time, caught in a swirl of shiny jumpsuits exiting studio 54, the rock and roll denim, and of course, the large amounts of hair. Whether it was Farrah Fawsett’s golden mane or Grizzly Adams, there were grand, copious amounts of hair. Jennifer Aniston may have had an iconic haircut with The Rachel in the ‘90’s but it does not nearly have the same impact as the gorgeous pride of Angela Davis’ afro. People just seemed hairier in the 1970’s. It was a time when long hair represented power, rebellion and the waxing industry was a far off, distant dream.

The one that almost got away

I had been lamenting my passing over two pieces at the Saver’s thrift store the other day, and I could not shake that horrible buyer’s remorse feeling - the one that got away. I did not purchase the orange plaid print short sleeved Marc by Marc Jacobs shirt. I rationalized putting it away. I told myself it was ugly, that if it was by Forever 21, I would put it away in a moment, but only because it was a Marc Jacobs was I seduced to buy. I thought that I was being a label whore about this one, jolted by the thrift store thrill of finding a high end label. I did the same with an Isaac Mizrahi beige suede skirt. It fit perfectly and could be a fantastic end of winter/early spring transition piece. And it held two simple and important second hand criteria - it was in great condition and the price was right ($5.98). I rationalized that I should spend the money on clothes for the girls or groceries or something more important – more practical. So I put them away and walked out the door.

I obsessed about them all night long. However, once I was able to quiet my mind and the delirious circling that it was doing, I listened to what was really going on. I was feeling more than misgivings about leaving behind thrift store treasures. I regretted that I just didn’t take that chance – that I did not take a risk. I can’t help but view my thrift store excursion as a metaphor for how I fear I have been living in my creative life. I have been scared – of taking creative chances and putting myself out there. Stuck. Comfortable with the status quo, but feeling an undercurrent of creative dissatisfaction. I have talked myself out of starting this blog too many times, telling myself that there are enough out there, the world doesn’t need another blog. I talked myself out of starting a blog, just as easily as I talked myself out of those amazing clothes.

I fear some days I am becoming a living cliché of modern, middle age. I have two children, a mortgage, and a marriage. I need comfortable shoes and I prefer white wine to red. I am involved in the PTA and I care about local politics. Those are all true parts of me. But, I struggle with the person who I still remember before children and other people’s needs and adult obligations came before my own youthful impulses. Some days I feel as though my mission is to bring these dualities to harmony in my life.

The great thing is I am back at that place where I have nothing to lose. More specifically, I have more to lose if I don’t just do it. I can be responsible and make sure there is food in the house and write and create and have some frickin’ fun with it.

And you know what was just the fantastic, metaphorical icing on the cake. I went back to Savers the next day, expecting nothing but hoping that maybe the shirt and skirt were still there – and they were! It was like they were waiting for me to just seize them and claim them – just like all the words and stories that swirl around inside of me every day.

Frickin' February

I am feeling a little weighed down the constant flow of have-to –dos that make a house and life and family run semi- smoothly. I had a break from the grind this past weekend, where my bestest, longest, closest friend came to visit. But as the short, tease of a weekend comes to an end, I just get greedy and grabby and I want more time with her. Because right when the groove gets going, and my girlfriend and I figure out what our theme song is for the weekend, and we have a few dance moves to go with it, we have to get back to work or whatever reality we have that needs attending. Although if I didn’t have just that little taste, right now I’d be drowning in the grind of life. Sophie has been sick this week. Feverish, barfy, moaning, glassy-eyed, oh, we are not leaving the house, sick.

Frickin’ February.

I am perhaps going on about the dreary month of February., but it cannot help it. This month is a long, dark, frozen marathon. It drags on with no mercy and I have nearly developed a phobia about the bad that this month traditionally slams onto me and my family. It usually involves any combination of sickness, objects breaking down, trees falling, and power going out.

For example, one February my husband started to read The Stand, by Stephen King. If you are not familiar with the plot of it, it involves a super flu that kills off most of the world, and then those who survive are drawn out to west, plagued by visions and dreams, culminating in the timeless fight of good versus evil. It runs a dainty 1,000 pages. Three days into reading the book, he came down with a raging fever and flu, the likes of which I had never seen him racked with. Then the girls got sick – and that was it. I was convinced that it was life imitating art and we were all going down. I would yell at Cliff to “ finish that goddamn book because it was jinxed and causing us all this misery!” He would read it with fever hallucinations and I would ride him everyday, making sure he was getting closer to the end.

You see, in addition to my hatred of February I am quite prone and susceptible into believing in the apocalypse and the possibility of any sort of giant meteor crashing into the earth or microbe killing most of humankind, and then those of us who survive having to duke it out with the zombies and cannibals . I will watch or read anything post-apocalyptic. I was paralyzed while I read Cormac McCarthy’s, The Road. I believed in every grim possibility. I would have to stop reading and look up at the outside, just to make sure that reality and life was continuing on. As I remember it, he finished The Stand on February 28th and they all got better the next day. March first.

So right now, for the next eleven days I have to strap in tight, fix my eyes on the prize of the promise of spring and hold on until the month is over. Wish us luck.

New England in February

The dank, winter month of February kicks my ass every time. This is the tipping point in the winter where I feel as if my family and I are living at the bitter cold, remote and demented Overlook Hotel in The Shining. It doesn’t matter how many hopeful sun salutations I perform and miles I pound away on the treadmill. It doesn’t matter how much citrus I eat, trying somehow divine its golden promise. It doesn’t matter if I exfoliate and moustruize twice daily. By this time of year I feel flabby and grey and scaly and my mood is morose at best.
We all have snot and are housebound, roaming the hallways, looking for trouble and needing some relief.
You will never, ever hear me complain about the sweet, sticky, summer heat.