catching up

Really, I thought I was going to be able to blog all last week, after sitting in class from 8a-4p with a chaser of parenting duties. What can I say—I am delusional. I had my last class for the Mini Masters yesterday and rewarded myself with a fun evening with Caryl and lots of book talk. After volunteering in Winston’s classroom this morning, I decided to spend the rest of the day decompressing. I need some reflective time to process my new learning, as well as to recall the details of two whirlwind weeks leading up to this very moment in time.

But, most important, I wanted to reconnect with my handsome husband, who has done major dad duty. And, I missed my feller. So we made a lunch date for ourselves at the Khyber Pass*, an awesome Afghani restaurant in St. Paul. Before we went to lunch, however, we watched an episode of Classic Album on VH1 Classic. And, so it came to pass that we were sitting on the couch in the den, minding our own business, in utter awe over the genius of Daniel Langlois, oh and the members of U2 (Joshua Tree was the featured album). Occasionally, I’d get lost in my own reverie about 1987 and about seeing U2 in Dublin, when one after another, our cell phones started ringing. John answered his cell: the school nurse. Never a good thing.

The nurse reported that Winston had a small accident—got hit in the head with an icy snowball (apparently his “little friend” was in quite a bit of trouble—can't wait to hear who it was). Win was fine. No need for us to pick him up. John and the nurse chatted for a while. From my end, I could hear John laughing. A lot. After he hung up the phone, John related the following:

Winston to the nurse: Can I tell you something?
Nurse: Sure. What is it sweetie?
Winston: My dad is the hottest person my mom has ever met.

[Yes, my eyes are bugging out in horror as I’m trying to imagine in what context I’ve ever said this in front of him. Bracing myself now for the follow up.]

Winston: Yeah, he sweats a lot.

Apparently the nursing staff got quite a chuckle and just had to call us. I’m glad they did, cuz it’s the funniest thing I’ve heard in a long time and I'd forgotten how much I like to laugh hard.

*I’d like to wax rhapsodic about the lunch buffet at Khyber Pass, which, in my opinion, far exceeds any other local lunch buffet. For one, all of the food tastes fresher, by far, as well as being hearty and warming. Today’s buffet held a couple dals, a chicken curry, curried potatoes, eggplant, meatballs, to name a few highlights. But, I mostly go for the hummus. One day I will summon the courage to ask Amil for the recipe.

knitting

Despite resolving to blog more regularly in the new year, I’ve become more scarce. Mind you, I’m still attached to the internets by a tungsten umbilical cord, but I just haven’t had the energy to string together a thought. I lay all the blame at January’s feet.

Cruel mistress, January. She sets us up with the promise of new beginnings, then pulls the rug out from under us by presenting SAD-inducing gray skies and bitterly cold weather. This winter, I’m giving in to self-preservation by hibernating, and one of my all-time favorite winter activities is knitting.

You may remember, from way back in October, that I started a sweater for John. I had hoped to finish by the end of 2008 so that I could get back to a few unfinished projects. Alas, I hit a bit of a snag.

Mind you, the pattern I’m following is extremely straightforward, with one stitch and very little shaping. No cables. No patterns. No color changes. I knit the sweater front, shaping the armholes and the neck. Then, using virtually identical instructions, I knit the sweater back, shaping the armholes and the neck.

Most patterns that I have knit then instruct the knitter to make each sleeve. When the sleeves are finished, you typically knit the neck on circular needles. Then, with the same yarn, you sew all the pieces together. I’m lousy at finish work. Actually, I’m probably better than average at it, but I’m never satisfied. Rather than stressing over perfection, I schlep pieces to my local yarn shop. For a very reasonable fee ($20, last time I used it), the store sends the sweater to a pro-knitter, who blocks the pieces and puts them all together. I was going to do this with John’s sweater, until the pattern had different plans for me. After the front and back are knitted, you then sew the shoulders—hence, the snag.

I was deep in the procrastination—two entire months—when I met Penelope, my sister-in-law Caroline’s stepmother. In addition to being an accomplished knitter, Penelope has owned a yarn shop and designs patterns. She gave me tips and encouragement so I could tackle the shoulders. When I returned from Princeton, I sat down, with great determination, and stitched those shoulders together. With newfound confidence, I faced the next new-to-me technique—picking up stitches from a bound edge—which I did around the armholes so that I could knit the sleeves. Yes, the sleeves are being knit right into the sweater as opposed to sewing them in as separate pieces.

At this point, with one sleeve attached, the sweater is an awful lot to juggle. I imagine the kids’ version will be much, much less cumbersome. I hope. That said, I have a quarter of sleeve two finished. The end of this sweater is in sight!!

So, sadly, everything else—blogging, job searching (wink), housekeeping, child rearing (wink wink)—has taken a back seat…but the meditative qualities of knitting make it all worthwhile. Oh, and it's fun, too.

i'm back. again.

Finally, we’re done celebrating Christmas. This past weekend, John and I took the boys to So Dak to visit my parents. When we left St. Paul on Friday, we had heard that the roads were questionable—icy in spots—but thought we’d give driving a shot. Even though the roads were fine, the conditions were stressful. Blowing snow alternating with flat light resulted in eyestrain that quickly turned to fatigue. Normally John does all the driving so that I may serve as a human audio book (for this trip, Nemesis, a post-Cold War thriller with a comet as weapon, by Bill Napier), but we took turns driving. On my turn, I marveled at how the colorless sky was connected to snow-covered fields by a graphite line on the horizon, making the world a study in grayscale.

The time with my family went better than I had hoped. It’s always anyone’s guess how it will go. My mother tends to go w-a-y overboard with her hospitality. I know she’s trying to make our stay extra special but she stresses herself out, gets crabby, and fails to spend any meaningful time with the boys.



Everyone tolerated each other as best they could given that we were housebound by weather. My parents’ house is on a lake, on the prairie. A complete lack of shelterbelts means that you feel all the wind, which is refreshing during the punishing heat of summer but lethal during the bitter cold of winter. Brutal. The boys wanted to sled so John and I took them to the highest point around my parents’ house and let them rip. As they were oblivious to frostbite-provoking cold, we had to drag them inside.

On Saturday afternoon, we took the boys to sled on St. Ann’s hill, the highest point in Watertown. It occurred to me that I had never sledded here as a kid. During my sledding days, my family lived across the street from a golf course so we had plenty of places to sled, but none were as impressive as St. Ann’s hill. It is a really big hill, ending—impressively, dangerously—at active railroad tracks. Even as an adult, I was tempted to take a run, but alas, gravity held me firmly on my feet. Needless to say, the boys had a blast.

Then we went downtown. Typically a depressing endeavor, the downtown business district is a fragment of its former “glory.” A shopping mall, Walmart, and a handful of big box stores on the edge of town, not to mention a citizenry seemingly unwilling to support its businesses, have turned it into a ghost town. Those establishments the remain are pathetic, maintained with little care for their appearance. Most seem to be on the verge of closing.

One bright ray: the Goss Opera House and Gallery. I remember hearing about this theater, on the upper floor of the building at the corner of Kemp and Maple, when I was a kid, in the late 1970s, around the time of the state’s centennial celebration. Then, the Town Players, a local theater group, was trying to raise money to renovate the historic theater to serve as their home. Undoubtedly, the project was ambitious and nothing came of the group's plans. Ironically, a recent transplant, with d-e-e-p pockets, purchased the building, turning the lower level (formerly a Rexall Drugs, plus a few more businesses in both directions, Maple-side and Kemp-side) into art galleries, shops (toys, a Life Is Good boutique), a private book collection cum bookstore, and an enormous coffeehouse. I have to say, the exposed brick, high tin ceilings, and arched passages between spaces reminded me of Stillwater. It’s incredibly cool, and I hope Watertown will support it. We didn't get a chance to see the King Tut (replicas) exhibit—maybe a compelling reason to visit again, soon.


John took these photos with his phone. Another saving grace is Lake Kampeska’s surrounding natural beauty, especially in the winter. My parents’ house is nestled into lovely corner of the lake, with water on one side, slough on another, and a county park on a third side.

I'm back

Winter break is over. Done. Put a fork in it—I am so ready to start my New Year. I know I'm a little slow to embrace the new year, but if I've learned anything in 40 plus years, it's that I only set myself up for failure if I wake up on January 1 expecting change to have happened overnight. Besides, we still haven't unpacked from our trip, which sort of makes me feel like I still have a foot firmly planted in last year.

Isn't that the perfect segue to notes about winter break? We spent most of it in Princeton, NJ, which is where my mother-in-law lives. When we arrived, there was snow on the ground. Sure, Princeton gets snow, but it's usually associated with a storm, and the snow often melts soon after it lands. I, for one, enjoy Princeton's maritime climate at Christmas—40 degrees and humid is a balm when you're arriving from 0 degrees, a desert-dry environment, and piles of snow (beneath which is a layer of unforgiving ice).

In addition to the kind NJ weather, I like visiting my mother-in-law. She and her husband love to cook so we always eat well (rack of lamb, prime rib, and more), and she maintains an amazing wine cellar so we're always in good spirits (wink).

This year, John and I took the boys to New York City for a day. Although we had wanted to take the train, which the boys would have enjoyed, we drove. Six hours of member-validated parking at the Met and a round-trip cab ride across Central Park to the Natural History Museum cost significantly less than four round-trip train tickets. I'll be honest, driving in NYC sucked. Fortunately John was off his meds and drove with New Yorker-style aggression. (I'm joking about the "off his meds" but I am really proud of how he navigated thick traffic.)

Of course, the museums were awesome! We parked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, wound our way through Greek/Roman statues, temple ruins, amphora, and other artifacts, to the cafeteria where we had a quick and unnoteworthy lunch. Then we cruised the Met's famed Christmas tree on our way to the main entrance, where we hopped a cab to the American Museum of Natural History. The boys had been agog in the Met—Simon was excited to identify Hercules, who appeared in a statue, and Winston was into the displays of coins. They couldn't believe we were leaving the museum, which was very gratifying, but Mama had a date with natural history.


Of course, the dinosaur models in the lobby of the Natural History Museum took the boys' breath away! And, from there, the wonders never ceased. The museum is vast, and we were only able to hit the high points—the elephant, the giant clam, and the whale—but we took occasional detours and we lingered everywhere we landed. I could go on and on about all the amazing things I saw. When we did our post mortem, each of us offering up our favorite thing in the museum, I narrowed my selection to the biodiversity wall, the vast array of animals and bugs and their nearest relations. Also, I loved the panoramas in the African mammals and the North American mammals halls. They have such a lovely old-timey feel, despite all that is NPC about this sort of big game collecting.


In addition to NYC, the boys spent loads of time rolling around with their cousin Dodi, who is almost six years old. Cousin Scarlett (below), on the other hand, is two and a half. Does anyone remember two-and-a-half? Scarlett is very precocious and very very verbal and very energetic. To be in a room with Scarlett required a flak jacket, ear plugs, and a quick wit. Also, 409. Because, in her wake, Scarlett left a smear of yogurtbananamucusgrahamcrackertears on every surface she touched. Maybe even every surface in a 100-foot radius. She endeared herself to me, though, as one morning I came to breakfast grumpy (for having slept little and poorly). Scarlett, who was already squirreling around with her daddy, poked her head out and said, "Good morning, Jenny." Now, no one is allowed to call me Jenny, and still I couldn't help but feel my cold Grinch heart melting.


Also while in Princeton, we were treated to a wonderful performance of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol that had amazing stage sets. I did a bit of cooking, making the largest batch of homemade macaroni and cheese, with two pounds of pasta and two pounds of cheese and half a gallon of milk, for a potluck dinner party. Generally speaking, I'm not comfortable cooking for more than six people. Eight people, tops. And, I made the potato rolls, the sponge takes a few hours to make. Each year I vow to start earlier, yet it never happens until the boys are in bed and the kitchen clears, so some time around 11 p.m.

Now we're home. The boys inaugerated their new downhill skis at Afton Alps, giving me a much deserved quiet day. We've celebrated the New Year's with an impromptu gathering. It's the same every year—no one steps up to host until New Year's Eve. Still we manage to have fun and stay up ridiculously late (3 a.m., listening to music with handsome husband) and need two days to recover. We've played endless rounds of "Dragonology," a silly board game that the boys LOVE. We've been sledding, mostly on a sheet of ice, but exhilirating and fun, nonetheless. I left the sledding hill in shame (ha!), having plowed into an unattended sled and causing another group of sledders to scramble out of my way. That'll learn those kids who lay at the bottom of the hill when their run has ended.

After I dropped the boys at their bus stop this morning, I took a walk. A short walk, and a cold walk (didn't look at the temp, didn't want to know), but a good walk during which I tried not to think about my frozen quads, instead listening to the lyrics of Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros (Global Go Go). I had the foresight to make a pot of coffee before I left the house so when I returned from my walk I poured myself a cup and curled up on the couch for an hour with Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games. Such a civilized start to the day. With a belly full of oatmeal, I'm diving into reconnecting with my internets world and renewing my job search.

Now I'm ready to take on the year!