peevish mama

Maybe you’ve already seen this, but I’ve been in spring break unplugged mode and I just stumbled upon it and it made me feel like weeeeeeee! Apparently, the National Geographic Channel actually pulled off recreating a house flight inspired by the movie UP. Check out more pics here. So neat.

So, on a seemingly (but never entirely) unrelated note, yesterday we had no real plans aside from a date with the couch and a US v Argentina friendly soccer game at 6:00 p.m. We had a lazy Saturday morning and I managed to scoot out of the house for a noon yoga class. When I came back, Saint James had a friend over and they promptly took off for the community center down the street to kick a soccer ball around. Good boys. The girls, though, were bored, whiny, bouncing around the house and getting on each other’s nerves and mine. I finally got so exasperated that I kicked them out – it was a beautiful sunny day and they needed to be outside, breathing in the last bits of cold winter air. Go build a school of snow children, I snapped as I shut the door. They stayed out for a while, came back in soaking wet, pink cheeked and smiley, just the way I like ‘em.

Later that night when we were cleaning up after dinner I found a paper magazine subscription insert on the counter. I was about to toss it in the recycling when I saw that Supergirl had meticulously filled the whole thing out. Name, Address, E-mail (made up), Number of Issues – all in neat, tiny, purple letters. I still tossed it, of course, but not without a twinge of guilt. She was so bored, sooooooo bored, that she filled out a magazine subscription card.

But let’s be real, here. I shouldn’t feel guilty. Not at all. We just spent three glorious days in Lutsen with Nanook, Gear Daddy and familia. They got to ski and snowboard their hearts out, bunk up and giggle into the night, feast on all sorts of yummy food, celebrate Nanook’s birthday, watch American Idol with peeps, color, bicker, chat, spy, and generally scamper around a big, cool house while the grown-ups talked, drank, cooked and cast a lenient eye over everything they were doing. It was a blast. What is wrong with coming home from that kind of trip and just chilling out?

If you were to look at my shoulders, you wouldn’t see the devil and angel taking turns whispering in my ear. Instead you’d see Julie McCoy, our fave cruise director, on one shoulder, hatching plans, leading adventures, planning field trips, always thinking of ways to make my kids’ lives more FUN. On the other shoulder you’d see Joan Collins in a silky dressing gown, maribou kitten heels and a very large martini glass muttering that these kids need to learn to occupy themselves. The truth is, I like doing excursions with them because I’m a bit of a “flee the house” kind of a gal. But it’s just that kind of on-the-go life that has made them so intolerable if we ever do want to hang out at home. If they don’t have friends over, they are pretty much guaranteed to be driving me insane. Which makes me yell at everyone and shoo them into the car for – you guessed it – an excursion.

As far as I can remember, my parents didn’t spend all their free time trying to keep us entertained. There were giant swathes of idle time in my childhood, which I filled by reading books and the backs of shampoo bottles, playing Dukes of Hazzards, spying on the neighbor boy and convincing my brother I was a wizard. I know this isn’t anything new, but I wonder what my kids are missing out on by being constantly occupied and entertained. There are so many things that can only be learned with ample time: how to get along, how to love books, how to French braid hair, how to climb trees, how to choreograph dance routines to the entire Grease album and then the entire Xanadu album. I bet the dude who thought of floating that house had lots of idle time in his youth (and she brings it back! bam!)

The way things are going, it seems like our children’s generation, more than any other, is going to find success through knowing how to hustle and being creative. Seems to me, those are just the kind of skills that may be borne of a little boredom. At the risk of sounding like I’m rationalizing my laziness (which, don’t get me wrong, I’m totally comfortable doing), I think I need to be less Julie McCoy and more Joan Collins. And maybe, just maybe, my kids will be better off AND I’ll get to do more of this:

I’ve posted a recipe for Irish Rebel Stew over at Simple Good and Tasty. It’s made with beef and Guinness and it’s delicious. Of course. How could it not be? Beef? Beer? Come on. Speaking of beer, my plans for St. Paul shenanigans with da girls had to be cancelled for today – this glorious, sunny, warm, perfect St. Patrick’s Day. Alas. Doctor Dash is coming off a week of nights, so a few beers might be in order this evening. Hope you all get a little green today, in whatever form that takes!

The Summer Day – Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan,  and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention,  how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me,  what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

I love this poem. It’s so simple. I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. But I do know how to pay attention. I see a pink cheek, small freshly painted blue nails and the twist of  a braid on a late winter’s day and I know to pause and take note.

Is this what I’m supposed to be doing with my one wild and precious life?

I think so.

What will she do with her one wild and precious life?

To ponder that exquisite question too closely or for too long is like staring into the sun. Better, for now, to stick with my moments.

Devious Knickers turned me onto this project by Argentine photographer, Irina Werning. She ferrets out old pics and gets the subjects to reenact them. Her ability to bring the same light and texture to these photos is uncanny. Not to mention the outfits! What a trip.

It’s no secret I’m addicted to live music. The more I go, the more I want to go. It’s kind of preposterous, except that it’s not. There are very few things in this world that make me feel so alive (sorry, I know that sounds cheesy, but it’s true) and so, like a rat who has figured out which pellet spits out the tasty treat, I keep going back for more. I can feel the top of my head pop open and my heart fly around the room. And I can’t wipe the grin off my face for days. That joy, that juice, it lingers and lingers. The problem (if you can call it a problem) is that we are lucky lucky lucky here in the Twin Cities. It’s so easy to go, really not much more work than going downtown for a meal -you  just wear flats. At certain times of the year it’s actually hard to choose who to see. Obviously, I can’t go every night, or even every week (nor would I want to), but I’m not going to lie, when I pass something up, my mind wanders over to that loud, sweaty space as I’m wrangling the kids to bed and I can’t help but wonder what sort of magic I’m missing out on.

This past couple months I’ve seen some gems – a trifecta of beautiful ladies and then the amazing Fitz and the Tantrums, which you knew about. I’m not going to torture you with my amateurish and annoying reviews, but to the extent that I’m going to be reading this blog when I’m an old biddy, sunning myself on a chaise lounge in Florida like a tawny lizard, I want to get it down. Just so I can say, boy oh boy, have I seen some things, Marco! Did I have some times, Marco! (Marco would be the pool boy). I want to remember, because even right now when I’m living it, sometimes it’s hard to believe.

First up. The queen. The QUEEN! Ms. Lauryn Hill. At First Ave. After all these years. We knew she was going to come on late so we had our sitter come at ten o’clock. Yawning and moaning after the kids were in bed, I was so close to letting myself fade away, but Dash and a little green tea pushed me through. Once inside, she sent out her DJ and wild horses couldn’t have dragged me out of there. Five children later, she’s as incredible as ever. Truly one of my top five shows ever. (Five is an extremely elastic number in my world, but I really mean it this time.)

Then came Dessa. Young, smart, drop dead gorgeous, girl-about-town and CEO of the Doomtree Collective. Big Red, Nanook and I became fans after she curated a hip hop series at the Guthrie and wanted to see her perform. We knew she could rap, we didn’t know she could sing. Boy, can she sing. And she’s really into collaborating, as you’ll see from this clip. We saw her at The Cedar which had partnered with the Jerome Foundation to commission local artists to create and perform new work together. Really cool. She’s brainy, wordy, sexy and funny. What’s not to love?

And last but certainly not least was Robyn, the pint size powerhouse from Sweden. Thank you to Rosalita for spearheading this adventure. And when I say adventure, I mean adventure. She, Nanook and I were instantly engulfed in the happiest, gayest First Ave crowd I’ve ever experienced. She’s a little Madonna (but with a good voice), a little Gaga (without the theatrics), a little Gwen Stefani, a little Pink. And not for nothing, Europeans have such a different sensibility with regards to what it means to be sexy. She’s as sexy as the day is long, but sexy like Bjork: smart, empowered, unique sexy. Quirky sexy. Some of our artists could take a page out of her book, fo sho. She’s a fiesty, kick-ass pixie and I could have watched her and danced with the gays all night. She is phenomenal – total electronica, 80’s pop, and it’s infectious. We got the fever and spent another happy, silly, dancy few hours at the Saloon afterwards with Rosalita’s hilarious hair posse. Top five, people!

And finally, Fitz and the Tantrums. Talk about lingering joy. They were SO GOOD. Thank you to Creeper Bud for turning me on to them and insisting that it was not an option to miss this one. I would drop everything to see them again. Only next time I suspect it won’t be at Bunkers. Lucky us. Lucky, lucky us.

Now where’s that Marco with my drink?

I love it when Doctor Dash doodles. He never uses good paper – only wrinkled scraps and the backs of kids’ old worksheets. They’re intriguing to me – a peek into a part of his mind he doesn’t get to use very much. Sometimes in the daily grind, I forget that this person I live with is actually quite creative, fanciful and a bit of a dreamer. He seems drawn to magical floating cities with gravity defying citizenry and eccentric, vaguely Latin dudes with a story to tell. At least in his latest trail of paper crumbs. He’s probably going to be slightly embarrassed by this, but whatevs – it’s my blog. And I think they’re cool.

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.

This is the text I received from Supergirl (using Doctor Dash’s phone, of course) yesterday on her way back from soccer:

“Hey mom! What we having for dinner?????????????? ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? I’m starving how about meat oh I love meat juicy meat on the grill YUM!!!! I love meat GIVE ME MEAT MEAT sweet meat. Love ya smooch bye P.S. I LOVE MEAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Give me meat :-p”

I’d say that girl had the hungah! She’s a protein girl through and through. Just like her mama. And guess what we had for dinner?

Last night Doctor Dash got home from work and the following conversation ensued:

DD: Saw your present!

Me: Oh ya! Do you like it?

DD: Well, is it printed on a thong or something?

Not only is that totally funny to me, I think it’s a fabulous idea. Oh Darling, Let’s Be Adventurers! Hilarious.

Dash and I had a special Valentine’s din with our sweetie-pie brood. I made sure to stick to the big faves: rib eye steak with red chimichurri sauce, Caesar salad, potatoes roasted in olive oil and sea salt, a crispy baguette and brownies. That dinner, simply, is my way of saying to my family: I love you. I love to feed you. I want you to chow until your little bellies are distended. IloveyouIloveyouIloveyou.

Tonight is part two of our Valentine celebration (because why not milk it?) and the dashing Dash and I have gotten a sitter so we can go see the Illusionist and then (fingers crossed) grab a couple of seats at the bar at La Grassa for a late night bite. I’m really excited for this movie – it’s by Sylvain Chomet, the same guy who did The Triplets of Belleville which completely enchanted both us back in the day. Here’s to long, drawn-out and delicious Valentines plans.

Happy Valentine’s Day to all you lovers out there. And, of course, to mine. This will be my Valentine’s present to Doctor Dash. Unorthodox, admittedly, to post before purchasing, but what can I say? It gets the job done, no? What a cute print! And where to hang it? Mudroom? Bedroom? I suppose we’ll decide together.

xo

Photo by Samantha Casolari NYTimes

Not that it’s in any way relevant to my life, but I always get a little excited when I know New York Fashion Week is happening. To know that all that fabulousness is percolating in one place, that people are stressing over fashion, that wearable art is being paraded down runways, well, it’s exciting to me. These NY Times Photos of the Moment are a cool way to dip your toe into the fray. The photography is as compelling as the clothes, if not more so. Check them out if you’re in the mood for a little cool, a little beauty, a little fantasy. We can always dream, right?

People, I realize posting youtube videos does not a blog make. That when you come here, you may be expecting to read some words from time to time. All I can say is that we’ve made it through some dry spells before and I can only hope we’ll do it again. We are going to see these guys tonight at a teensy place that has been the scene of many shenanigans in the past, and I am all a’dither! So very, very a’dither! They are out of L.A. and are considered Indie Soul. Again, the cross-pollination I love so much! When I watch this, I sort of pick up an 80’s new wave vibe from the lead, Michael Fitzpatrick – something about his natty dress feels old school and nostalgic to me. And see if you don’t fall in love with Noelle Skaggs. I sure hope she’s wearing something sparkly tonight!

Ya, I know. Crazy! It was actually kind of tricky to make and as usual, there’s actually kind of a reason why I even went down this path. Jump on over to Simple Good and Tasty if you’re curious.

And hey! How ARE you? I hope you aren’t feeling neglected. I’m not sure what I’m doing with my time, but there seems to be very little of it these days. I’m still here – doing what I do – cooking, mothering, erranding, thinking, thinking, thinking. I haven’t figured anything out yet, so you know I’ll be back soon. Stay warm, friends!

Her name is Roxanne Tataei, she goes by Rox, she’s half Jamaican, half Iranian and a mere fresh baby twenty-two years old. She’s from South London and sister can sing. I love this girl. I love her with the piece of my heart that loves Janelle Monae, Lauryn Hill, Estelle, and Santigold. This vid is worth checking out, especially for the acid-wash-bedazzle-pocketed-high-waisted shorts.

Who knew those could be so sexy? Apparently, Rox.

Love. Her.

Doctor Dash says I’m a smiler. I don’t do it intentionally and it’s not necessarily because I have anything approaching a sunny disposition. I think it’s kind of a default setting for my face. And I can’t help but look askance at this particular default setting because, at 40, I’ve started to think about smile lines and such. I’ve got ‘em. Oh baby, I’ve got ‘em. Sometimes I actually force my face out of a smile when I’m driving because why on earth do I need to be smiling when I’m by myself in the car? Just because I like the music? Ridiculous. And think of the wear and tear on my face! Actually, I don’t mind crows feet on people – I think they are kind of sexy, a sign of good livin’, big laughs and high times. Those marionette lines around the mouth, though – oof, not such a fan and unfortunately smiles bring those babies on too. But this wasn’t meant to be a post about wrinkles and Botox.

No, the other thing I’ve noticed about smiling is that I respond really strongly to smiles. On two occasions over the past few years, women whom I had presumed to be unfriendly turned out to be fabulous, wonderful, sweet-as-pie mamas once I got to know them. They just aren’t smilers. Hell, my very own husband isn’t a huge smiler. In fact, that’s why the Babe-o’s and I referred to him as The Asshole until we got to know and love him. Never in a million years would I have thought myself primitive enough to require the baring of chimp teeth in order to recognize someone as friend, not foe. But there you go. I guess I need those chimp teeth. I am nothing but a primitive smiling chimp. Not that chimps are primitive. They are AWESOME.

This article in the NY Times about the states of mind that produce smiles and what allows people to parse the meaning behind smiles is fascinating. To me, anyway. And if you see me grinning to myself in the car, do me a favor and just give me a honk to remind me to cut that shit out.