peevish mama

This soup is perfection on a winter’s day and super healthy too. Check out the recipe along with one of my earliest and dearest food memories involving my sweet dad.

This past weekend, Saint James was invited to his first party, with both boys and girls. Supergirl is good friends with the host’s younger sister so to her great joy, she was invited too. By all accounts, it was a blast and from what I hear, the kids just danced and danced and danced. Nanook’s words after sneaking a peak: “they were in full Dougie.”

Am I crazy, or have things changed? Since when does a room full of boys feel comfortable showing off their moves under the shattered light of a disco ball? From what I remember of school dances, it was always just a mob of spazzy girls dancing, the boys shuffling around the perimeter until a slow dance came on and maybe one brave soul would emerge from the pack to approach a girl (sigh, never me).

It appears the kids today have obliterated all such awkwardness. For all the talk of the isolating effects of technology, I would have to say that based on this admittedly tiny sample size, all is well in the social department for our youth. They hung out, talked, laughed, goofed off, included the younger kids who happened to be there and danced. Maybe sixth grade just happens to be a golden window for this kind of freedom and frankly, coolness. But I can’t help but hope this portends of how it’s going to be. Now I just need someone to teach ME how to dougie.

Twitter isn’t good for much, but it is good for finding out things like the fact that Don Cornelius, the creator of Soul Train, died of suicide at age 75. Rest in peace, Don. This bit of sad news brought back vivid memories of watching Soul Train on the brown shag rug in the basement of the house my parents fled in favor of new construction, because the molds were giving me asthma. In fact, I believe that shag rug was largely to blame for many of my issues as a tween, asthma-related and otherwise.

I remember being entranced by the dancers on Soul Train – their outfits were so wild and their moves were so fine. Nothing like that ever happened in my house. In honor of Don Cornelius, I decided to see if I could find any Soul Train on youTube and, OHMYGODYOUGUYS, this NEVER happens, but it’s even better than I remember. Nothing is ever better than you remember. See for yourselves. I must warn you that this is possibly the most wildly entertaining thing you will have watched in a long time. And it begs the question: WHY NO SOUL TRAIN TODAY? Come ON!

I love this lady. I aspire to be this lady. Bring on the pink Mary Janes and culottes. Last weekend My Little Spring Roll talked me into going to what is basically a spinning class at our yoga studio. I had seen this class on the schedule, but truth be told, I probably wouldn’t have tried it but for the dangling carrot of some time with my friend. As I huffed and puffed and giggled at her attempts to tilt her bike with her tiny little body, I thought to myself: how lucky am I? At this point in my life and where I live, I am absolutely surrounded by women who love to move, who love to try new things, who love to laugh and break a sweat. I’m a yoga girl, and usually a solo one at that, but lately I feel as if not a week goes by without a text or email from someone enticing me to go for a walk, go to a hip hop class, go snowboarding, go to a dog park, go dancing. (Oh, the dancing. Fountain of youth, right there). Lady Tabouli has even taken me for a steam with the Jewish old ladies a couple times. Divine! I’m friends with more than a few crazy triathlon gals, but they know not to come a knockin’.

As I grapple with what it means to be over forty, I can’t help but think about the state of my body. Not necessarily because of how it looks, but because of how it feels. Or how I want it to feel. Those days of college dieting and forcing myself to the gym are a distant memory and shit, good riddance. Now, I’m grateful to have the time, the means and mostly, the health to be able to move my ass. We exercise for ourselves, and for the selves we will be in 10, 20, 30, 40 years. We exercise to figure ourselves out, whether it be a piss-ass mood or an eternally tight shoulder. We exercise to find our bliss.

My friends, I’ve been trumpeting this for a while, but I’m officially putting it out there: I am all about the limber. Limber body = limber mind = limber heart. See an adventure with your eye, say yes with your mind, chase it with your body.

What are the chances Pinky Tuscadero up there isn’t one happy old biddy?

Much thanks to all you movers and shakers. You inspire me.

OK, so Christmas is over, New Years is coming and for today’s Music Monday I’m feeling like a little gratuitous booty pop. As an aside, I happen to love Nicki Minaj. Big surprise. She’s a freak but she can back it up – she’s the real deal, and as hoochy as she can go, I feel like she’s doing it on her own terms. Theatrical, left of center, and so funny. will.i.am, being the master sampler that he is, has remixed the Buggles song which, arguably, defined our generation. It sounds as great today as it from the couch in my rainbow-colored toe socks, latched to MTV like a teat. CHECK IT OUT.

There are so many songs, so many many songs that would be loosely apropos for Halloween. I’m just going to pick one because I love it. And I’m thinking when you listen, you’ll remember that you do too. Enjoy The Ghost in You by The Psychedelic Furs.

Happy Halloween, my friends. Best day of the year, no?

Did you see the piece in the Sunday NY Times about iPod’s tenth (!) birthday on October 23? It’s an interview with David Levitin, a neuroscientist from McGill and it touches on some of the very things I was chewing on in a post I called Wrapped Up in a Song from 2009. I love that post, I really do. And I do wonder: what are we losing by having so much music at our fingertips, by listening to our vast libraries on shuffle, by picking and choosing the songs that we like off albums instead of ingesting the thing as a whole? Levitin has some answers for us.

On Sunday night we went to see the Minnesota Lynx play game one of the WNBA finals against the Atlanta Dream. They’re the best team going in Minnesota right now and it was such a blast. LOUD music, rowdy fans, plentya hootin and hollerin, and complete, unabashed GIRL POWER. Damn!

I can’t decide if it was better for my girls to see that or my boy to see that. GO LYNX!

p.s. secretly, I’d love to go back with a bunch of ladies, drink a ton of beers and then go dancing. Maybe the Lynx would like to come with us?

There’s a Richard Linklater film series at the Walker and I plan to catch as many as I can. Dazed and Confused is possibly one of my favorite movies ever. It’s a stoner coming-of-age story, but ever so much more. By turns dark and hilarious, it manages to tell the story of a group of Texas teens with a light hand but huge insight, even affection. Not much happens, it’s sort of a day-in-the-life, but man, are you ever taken there – sitting on the warm hood of a car, shooting the shit with your buds. And Matthew McConaughy is brilliant as the affable, slightly post-peak BMOC. I just love it. Dash and I saw it in a crowded little theater in Boston, a place where it wasn’t out of the question to see a mouse scurrying for cover as you found your seat. More than any other director, Linklater felt like one of us, making movies about us. Like our lives at that point, his movies are short on action and long on conversation and ideas. I swear that I spent most of my early twenties just walking and talking. Nothing about that period of time is as vivid as the rambling. We were young, we needed to be moving, but there was so much to talk about. So we did both. I’m curious to see whether I’ll still find these movies compelling, now that I’m old-ish. I’ll soon find out. I’m suddenly in the mood for a good ramble, though.

Incidentally, if you have elementary school age kids and haven’t watched School of Rock with them, do it pronto. A more recent Linklater movie, it could have been stick-your-finger-down-your-throat saccharine, but it’s quite the opposite. It’s hysterical and uplifting and sorry, but Jack Black can sort of do no wrong in my book. So good.

In this article over at the Huffington Post, author Lisa Bloom points out that complimenting a little girl on her looks or dress or shoes or hair is “our culture’s standard talking-to-little-girls icebreaker.” Bloom argues that this teaches a girl that the first thing you notice is her appearance and therefor that her looks are the most important thing. We are supposed to try a new approach with the girls we meet: ask, what book are you reading? What sports do you play? What do you think about global warming?

I’m not sure what to think. Putting aside the fact that the writer is slightly annoying in a self-congratulatory way (Look at how I crouched down and asked my friend’s daughter about books with a twinkle in my eye and taught her a valuable lesson about her self worth!), it is an interesting proposition. In theory, I agree that our culture puts way too much emphasis on beauty, youth, and general hotness. But for some reason I’m finding myself trying really hard to sidestep this. I want to argue with Lisa Bloom and I don’t know why.

For starters, it’s a physical fact that we do notice someone’s looks first. The first thing you see, is what you see. Right? Perhaps, with girls, we just feel more free to say what we think. Little girls are adorable or funky or gorgeously tomboyish and I think most of us just let it fly. Not so with the boys. I can’t tell you how many times I see one of Saint James’ friends looking especially cute, but I squash the urge to say anything because I don’t want the kid to melt in embarrassment. Hell, there’s one in my backyard right now. He looks like a dark version of Saint James  - handsome as all get out – they would make an unbeatable duo out in the bars in a few years. But will I tell him this? No. All bets are off with the girls, though. Red cowboy boots, feathers in the hair, tutus and Chucks, jean skirts, knobby knees, curly blond chlorine hair – I mean there has to be a limit to the cuteness I’m expected to see and ignore!

Second of all, just because a physical or sartorial complement is the first thing you might say, it’s not the only thing you’ll say – it’s not the most important thing you’ll say. A greeting is a greeting – it’s an icebreaker, a bridge to more talking. Maybe I’m the superficial one, but I think we do this with grown women too. Giving or getting a complement is disarming and a way to get closer to someone. It’s not as craven as it sounds – it’s social short-hand, taking you quickly through safe terrain, until you can settle in for a deeper conversation. And it’s not always complements – if someone looks stressed or sad, well, you aren’t going to notice her cute boots, you’re going to ask how she’s doing. Aren’t we just passing on a bit of social currency to our girls, albeit inadvertently?

Lately I’ve talked to girls about fencing, Harry Potter, babysitting, and middle school. I’m sure we talked about clothes and hair too, but I can’t remember. Maybe I can be blasé about this because my oldest girl seems impervious to the trappings of conventionally girlie things. Oddly though, Supergirl has taken a recent liking to watching Toddlers and Tiaras. I’ve put the kibosh on it, not because I fear she’ll get sucked into the pageant culture, but because I think she’s too young to be feeling superior to and disgusted by fellow Americans on TV. And maybe I’m naive, but even if Devil Baby continues on her present trajectory of a dramatic girlie girl, I cannot imagine a situation where she’s going to end up wanting a boob job at age 20. Child may like sparkly things but child is fierce.

I’m not arguing that there isn’t an issue with girls’ self-esteem and a disproportionate value placed on the exterior package by our culture. I just think pinning even a little bit of the blame on the four or five words that come after hello is convenient, simplistic and misplaced. Bloom does admit that her idea won’t “change our multibillion dollar beauty industry, reality shows that demean women, our celebrity-manic culture.” Of course it won’t. At this point, I get the sinking feeling nothing will. So we need to focus on the girls and make sure their lives are filled with books, art, sports, current events, deep friendships, healthy food and cooking and yes, consistent conversations that are challenging, complex and colorful. Also, if they take you there, a reasonable dose of fashion and pop culture mixed with a little irony, caution, humor or whatever else we’re feeling about it, isn’t going to hurt. Call me vapid, but if I see my neighbor girl with her Tiger Beat magazine, I will sit shoulder to shoulder with her and flip through with gusto.

OMG! Did you hear Justin Bieber got pulled over in Miami because the cop thought he looked too young to be driving? LOL!

I just finished Tina Fey’s autobiography, Bossypants, and it did nothing to dissuade me from my prior opinion that she’s hilarious. And smart. And cool. And hilarious. It was a perfect quick summer read and follow-up to the phenomenal yet heartwrenching Beloved by Toni Morrison, which we’re reading in book club. (Damn, ladies. What in the HELL? Counting the days till Wednesday night!)

Back to Tina (yes, I feel we’re on a first name basis now). Tina made me laugh over and over, and while I can’t relate to her sexy comedy and television life, I can sure as hell relate to coming up as a “brunette” in the seventies and eighties. She writes: “Let me start off by saying that at the University of Virginia in 1990, I was Mexican. I looked Mexican, that is, next to my fifteen thousand blond and blue-eyed classmates, most of whom owned horses, or at least resembled them. I had grown up the “whitest” girl in a very Greek neighborhood, but in the eyes of my new classmates, I was Frida Kahlo in leggings.”

She proceeds to talk about how she was inevitably drawn to super “Caucasian” guys, as was I. Such is the curse of a dark girl. My first TV crushes were blond (Bo Duke, Ricky Shroder, and Alice’s son, Tommy) and my first two boyfriend were blond Johns. And oh, how I coveted Cindy’s golden ringlets and Farah’s fabulous feathered do. I tried to get my formidable head of hair cut into feathers and it was so thick and heavy (and untouched by a curling iron – who knew you had to style it?) that I looked like Dorothy Hamil’s younger, retarded cousin who had accidentally injested copious amounts of Miracle Grow in an unsupervised gardening episode. Seriously, it was a bowl cut on steroids, voluminous and shiny, like a majestic, fecund mushroom – only it shrouded most of my face, which, in retrospect, is probably for the best.

I too was the frequent victim of mistaken ethnic identity. My middle school bus driver assumed that since I had dark hair and was at the same bus stop as the three Cho brothers, I must be their sister. It’s no wonder, considering my bus driver was an overweight, middle aged, BLOND Michigander by the name of Tanya. Why would Tanya need to distinguish between an Argentine girl and three Chinese boys? Aren’t they all the same? Those . . . brunettes? Only I had no idea I had been lumped into their family until one day I was getting off the bus and she yelled after me in her Midwest corn chip accent: Be sure to tell yer mother about yer brother’s nose bleed now. I stopped and turned around. Her arm jiggled as she pulled the lever. The bus door closed with a hiss.

Not that it’s a big deal. It’s not. So people think I’m Chinese (those three Chinese brother can be very misleading). Or Greek (I was in Greece). Or Arab (I did live in suburban Detroit). Or Indian (I used to get very very tan in Florida). So what? But when you’re young and you just want to fit in, it is kind of a big deal. At least Tina’s name was Tina. Try Gabriela. In Michigan. In the seventies. Oh, how I longed to be named Kim. Or Nancy. Sigh. I LOVED the name Nancy. It sure was prettier than Garbage-ella. Kids can be cruel. Clever, admittedly, but cruel.

Being a brunette or ethnic or whatever you want to call it certainly doesn’t kill you. Or even maim you. I like to think that the sense of being different, of being apart gives you the requisite space you need to observe. You aren’t splashing around having chicken fights in the pond; you’re standing on the shore, watching. And you can actually see better standing on the shore. At least until you’re old enough to beat it on out of there and get your ass to an ocean.

So I was checking out Jay Z’s blog (I know, ridic that Jay Z even has a blog) and I stumbled upon this cool video of these three girls who longboard in NYC. They have formed a little pack and they are pretty bad ass, yet still total girls. I’m not saying I’d particularly want to see my daughters weaving around NYC traffic on skateboards with no helmets, but I do appreciate their moxie. They aren’t being groupies, they aren’t being posers, they are just being themselves – and in this day and age, that’s a lot.

If you happened to have watched American Idol last night, you would have seen the premier of Beyonce’s newest video. Possibly, probably, you were completely entranced. Like me. I love Beyonce – she can kind of do no wrong in my book. This song sounds very M.I.A.esque and definitely gets you wanting to put on your fringe sandals and stomp your feet in the sand. And I covet the gold chainmail dress. Oh, and the cropped black fur vest. And the jewelry. I may need a tip-o-the-finger ring soon.

The video follows in the fine tradition of “rumble” songs – like Beat It, West Side Story and Love is a Battle Field. Seriously, wait for the part when Pat Benatar takes on the pimp and shakes her skinny bosom at him like an aggressive hen. It’s awesome. I love nothing more than a choreographed dance/fight scene. I think they are hilarious and a fine alternative to taking up arms, wouldn’t you say?

This has the makings of a girl anthem. Yes, das wat I said.

I’ve decided I’m going to pull up to Supergirl’s next soccer game against one of the giant blond suburban teams and blare this song out the back of the minivan (I may also plug a fan into my cigarette lighter to get the wildly blowing hair effect and lead the girls in a pre-game war dance). I was telling my family all of this this morning while I tried out some of the moves in the kitchen and Saint James just put his head in his hands and croaked MOM, how many times have you watched this?

Only once or twice. I swear.

Red Vogue is an amazing photographer and lately she’s been trying her hand at video (although the word video seems too banal for what she does). They really are moving photographs and to me they possess the same quiet, authentic, purity of her still photos. This video of Supergirl is such a snapshot in time – it captures her right now, age eight, suspended between being a little girl and a big girl. Actually, who am I kidding? She’s a big girl. You can see it in her eyes, her self-conscious laugh – she is no longer a naive baby, no longer an open book. She’s a girl – with all the complex feelings and  self-awareness that entails. Supergirl is as open a person as you’ll ever meet, yet in this, I see her safeguarding a little piece of herself. I guess this is what we do as we mature. We gain dimension. We develop an inner life, which, I suppose, by definition, makes us less visible, or rather, less readable to others. Sniff. It squeezes my heart. Oh, how it does.

So I realize that as of late you’ve been getting mere crumbs here at Peevish. I’ve been holding out on you, keeping a bit of a secret this winter. You might know about it if you read the beef jerky recipe, but I realize that dehydrated meat is kind of a niche interest and I won’t take it personally if you didn’t. You see, along with my other New Year’s resolutions , I also promised myself I would learn how to snowboard this winter. Except, unlike those other resolutions, this was a promise I made to myself with quaking knees and more than a little trepidation. Frankly, I hadn’t learned a new trick in a really long time and I was scared. I was scared I would get hurt, scared I would fail, scared I’d be driving myself home from my first lesson with snow down my pants and my tail between my legs. That’s why I didn’t want to write about it. I didn’t want to jinx it. I didn’t want to widen the audience that would be privvy to my totally sucking.

But I did it. I learned. Every time I go out, I get better. I can honestly say it was one of the most challenging things I have ever done. I am really proud of myself – like puff out my chest and strut my tail feathers proud – make the sign of the horns and yell AWWWWWHAAA proud. Law school, babies, knee surgery, you name it – I am most proud of myself for learning how to snowboard. It was as much a mental game as a physical one for me, especially at first. Every time I drove to the hill, my heart pounded in my chest and a repeating loop of Wile E. Coyote-esque crashes and wipe-outs played out in my head. Every time I slid off the chairlift for my first run of the day, I was convinced the snow was slipperier than the last time, that the trees were jumping around, trying, just trying to take me out. And don’t even get me started on the freaking children – whole hoards of school kids littering the hill, getting in my way and generally causing me to eeek and panic at every turn.

But here’s what I learned: I learned that if you tell your crazy brain to fuck off and just keep going, your body miraculously starts to do the right thing. By some magic stored deep in our muscles and nerves, it starts to stick, it starts to work. Now I go around the kids if I have to. I dig the slippery snow. I have a renewed faith in my physical self. In the past, I’ve written about going from feeling invincible as a girl to utterly betrayed when I blew out my knee at 17. I don’t think I ever really recovered from that. I have been walking through this world carefully, defensively – but no more. Snowboarding is empowering and exciting and it’s all mine. I did it. I did it! Me!

Here’s what else I learned: It’s frigging fun to go fast on your own juice. To skiers and snowboarders, wake boarders, kite boarders, surfers and all those other ers out there, this is a ridiculously obvious statement. But when is the last time I went fast? On my bike? It’s fun, but not like this. People, there is NOTHING like carving down a hill. NOTHING like it. Goddamn! It makes me want to yell profanities and pump my fist in the air. It turns out that buried in the body of this 40 year old woman lives a randy 15 year old boy. Hossing down chicken fingers covered in ketchup and Cholula hot sauce in the car after snowboarding = TOTAL BLISS. For real.

And here’s yet another thing I learned: You never know when you’re going to make a friend. When I took my lessons at the beginning of January, I never considered that I might meet someone. But I did. Her name is Shreddy Betty. She’s a mom of two boys, one tough cookie, a bit of a danger grrrl and as crazy about our new little hobby as I am. We make plans by text and meet up after the kids have gone to school to play on the slopes. We call each other dude and pump fists after a good run and laugh and laugh. We laugh a lot. Because what’s not funny about snowboarding mommies? We both bought boards a few weeks ago and are figuring out how to tame these spirited fillies, so much faster and more sensitive than the rental beasts we were riding before. It’s always a blast and we’ve been out in some crazy-ass weather: 10 degrees below with the windchill, but as sunny as a lemon ice pop one day; 35 sweltering degrees that turned the snow into quick sand and a pile of laughs the next.

So there you have it, the reason for the crumbs. Even on the days when I woke up frothy to write, I’d come back from snowboarding feeling completely sated and quiet. And I just couldn’t find the words to write about my biggest news. I was too freaked, too blown away, too smitten.

Still am.

It’s fun, man. So much fun.