The good stuff

When I was about 9 or 10, our Primary (the children's organization at church) had a weekly spotlight on an individual child. I don't remember when I was spotlighted, but I remember a spotlight on a particular child, Charlotte, age 4. I babysat her and her siblings for a short time while her mother taught piano lessons in the front room, but that's not why I remember her.

Charlotte was what I have now learned to call a "spirited child." She spent a good portion of her time pretending to a canine identity, so that she became known as "Charlotte the sheepdog." Once, when her mother was busy trying to shepherd her three other children out of our elementary school after Campfire Girls (too bad the sheepdog was out of character at the moment) Charlotte was running so fast down the hallway that her pants fell down - a moment I was privileged to view from behind and still rank as the funniest of my fifth-grade year.

When Charlotte was the child of the week in Primary, one of the spotlight questions was, "What is your favorite food?" Charlotte's answer: "White bread."

Frankly, I wished I had thought of it. Hey, we were Mormon kids in the 1980s. Our moms were grinding wheat in loud electric grinders in the garage and making their own bread because they knew they were supposed to. And we were eating it. Wonder Bread was like birthday cake to us.

Fast forward to today. I got some white bread by accident (it's a long story) and used some to make K's lunchtime PB&J (with safe, non-salmonellaed peanut butter, I promise).

His response: "Why did you give me toilet paper on my sandwich?"

My, how times have changed. Do I feel a little proud that my kid doesn't recognize white bread? OK, yes. That is kind of cool. But I am shocked, I tell you, that it was not a big treat. I guess I am going to have to step it up.

Good news and bad news

In the grand tradition of people keeping their chins up, first the good news.

As of today our adoption home study is finally approved. Now we are just waiting for a court date. We are going to par-TAY when Z and K are officially ours! Watch for deets!

We got Healthy Families coverage for our older two kids. This is California's CHIP program. We will have basically the same coverage for them that we had when I was working, and it will only cost us $14/month plus copays, etc. This is vital. This is make-or-break news on the make side of things. Paying for S's medication was going to kick our behinds if we had to do it all ourselves for the next few months. I was shocked and overjoyed that this coverage was approved so quickly, and I am grateful that as far as we know we will only need it for a few months.

We have amazing family and church members helping us out while Dr. G-to-be puts the final touches on his dissertation and I focus on the kiddoes. I mean, super amazing. Thank you so much, all you awesome people.

Speaking of which, G's advisor wants him to schedule his defense for March. That's a date, folks! Also known as a light at the end of the five-year tunnel!

Now for the slightly less exciting (ok, bad) news:

There is a Church-wide hiring freeze right now and so our alma mater, home of the Cougs, cannot hire Dr. G-to-be this year. They said they're "interested" but we shouldn't wait around for them. Duh, like we could! So it really looks like we are not moving to Utah this year. The next three favorite contenders are Anchorage, Eau Claire and Portland. Start praying for your favorite (or if you would rather not be around us, the one furthest from you!)

We're with you

This morning when I woke at 6:40 a.m. Pacific time, something was already different. Instead of the business news I usually hear on NPR as I wake up, I heard crowds, excitement, anticipation.

After getting the big boys to school, I packed up my littles to head for the gym. No TV reception at home, so I watched the inauguration ceremonies from a treadmill. I think it's the first time I've ever cried during my workout (Oh, Aretha!) and the first time I've said "amen" from the gym floor (in that heartfelt and delightful benediction).

As I watched President Obama (how good it feels to write those two words together!) deliver his inaugural address, an idea occurred to me: I would like to speak those words. I would like to hear the voices of a lot of people speaking those words.

I'm going to read the speech aloud and record it. I'll edit it into an MP3 and post it here.

I want to make it a project - a bloggy community work of art. I want a lot of people to do the same thing. You can use any digital voice recorder, a fancy studio, or a $10 computer microphone. You could read the whole speech or just your favorite part. If there are parts you disagree with, just read a part that struck a chord with you. Do it your way - sing it, add applause, shout it from a rooftop. Get the quality as good and clear as you can. Send it to me in .WAV or .MP3 format and I will edit it all together. It's a way we can say to President Obama and to each other, "We are with you." It's a way we can seal into our own souls the urgency of the work that needs to be done and the changes we individually will make in response to the way America is changing.

Will you do it? Tell me if you plan to participate.

Image slightly modified from the New York Times' Facebook page.

Hot tamale

It would have been good to have a "hot" theme for the whole month of January. I could alternate between complaining about 45-degree highs and gloating over 68-degree highs. Too bad I didn't think of it earlier. Truly I am sorry for all of you who are suffering through snow days and cold temps right now. If it makes you feel any better, I sort of think next January I will probably be suffering with you. I am loath to leave California but kind of excited to move. True confession: I am stockpiling boxes in the garage. I should probably start looking at parkas on clearance.

So here is what I was really going to write about.

If you ever come visit me here, come on a Saturday of a holiday weekend. We will go to the Food4Less parking lot and find the tamale lady. She trolls the lot with a borrowed cart stocked with a big, blue cooler full of tamales. Four varieties now: chicken, pork (the traditional and best), chili verde (burns your guts out but soooooooo good) and sweet (I haven't tried this one). You get 12 for $10. Such a bargain! She takes checks.

We'll bring a couple dozen tamales back to my house, take them out of their fold-over sandwich bags, pop them in the oven on a cookie sheet covered with foil, make up a big green salad, pour a bowl of chips and make some guac, and gab all night. It's perfect party food.

Sounds fun, right? You are totally invited.

Hot and sour soup

Yesterday I got a crazy craving for Chinese food. I don't know if I caught a whiff driving by Panda Express, or what. I was feeling like I could easily sit down and enjoy a couple orders of something deep fried in a gooey sweet sauce. You know what I'm talking about. It's evil.

Instead, I did this. I modified it a bit from a cooks.com recipe. The changes I made occurred because Dr. G-to-be does not eat mushrooms, which is one of the real sorrows of my life, and I had a lot of chicken and bok choy to use up. We also don't like our soups thickened with cornstarch, so I didn't do that.

It ended up a very flavorful and nutritious recipe with almost no fat or carbs. I felt so virtuous and stuff. Hurray for small victories!

Protein-packed Hot and Sour Soup
8 c. chicken broth
1/4 c. low sodium soy sauce
1 c. white meat chicken, shredded or diced
1 tbsp. hot sauce (we keep Sriracha around so I used that) - adjust amount to achieve your preferred level of heat
1/4 tsp. ground white pepper
1/2 c. white vinegar
4-6 heads mei qing choy or other baby bok choy, washed and sliced. Separate stalks and leaves.
1 lb. firm tofu, cut in 1/4" dice
1 egg, beaten well

Simmer broth in a soup pot. Add soy sauce, chicken, and hot sauce. Simmer 5 minutes.

Add white pepper, vinegar, bok choy stalks and tofu. Simmer 5 minutes.

Increase heat to a medium boil. Pour beaten egg slowly into soup in a fine stream. Stir several times.

Add bok choy leaves (doing this last to keep the beautiful green color!). Cook just until tender. Serve hot.

Optional: garnish with sliced green onions and a drizzle of sesame oil.

Pledge

Sometimes Facebook shows me really cool stuff. This, for instance: Service Nation.

As Mormons, we have service drilled into us all the time. So, I think, do active members of other faiths. But I hope we - Christians, believers, whatever we call ourselves - don't expect to be the only people out to do good in the world.

I hope you sign up. Do a lot of little stuff, do a big thing, do whatever, but do something.

As for me, I know I will keep parenting the kids I have (foster parenting is a BIG thing, but these kids are just my kids now in my heart and soon will be by law, too, so it's kind of stopped being a public service) and keep teaching my darling 7 year olds in Primary. I'm hoping to head down to the stake vineyard to help finish the winter cleanup sometime in the next couple of weeks - we grow grapes for raisins. There are donations I will continue to make, although on a reduced scale since I am no longer the earning powerhouse in the family and for a few more months no one else is, either.

But that stuff is just kind of the way I live. Nothing new, nothing to enable me to say I am doing more now than I was last year to make the world a better place. I am looking for something else to commit to in conjunction with Obama's inauguration and the Service Nation pledge. I gotta figure out the right thing. Anybody got a project they need help with, or a great idea to share?

View

Is there a book you've been meaning to read for, oh, forever? Read it. Seriously. Last year I did this with "To Kill a Mockingbird" (how I managed to make it through a very lit-heavy high school program and a college English major without this book is anybody's guess) and it was one of my favorite books ever.

This past week I finally got to "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down" by Anne Fadiman, about Hmong refugees in my adopted hometown of the last five and half years. My mom in Salt Lake actually read it first, for a class at the University of Utah, then sent me her copy.

I thought I knew the story of these people - I had interviewed a couple of Hmong students for my job - but I truly had no idea. I say hi to the Hmong families at K's Head Start program now with a whole different feeling in my heart.

The history of the Hmong is stunning in every respect - thousands of years of persecution and attempted assimilation by other cultures brought them, uncowed in the end, to Laos, where they fought the Communist Pathet Lao on behalf of the United States. (I previously thought they were involved in the Vietnam War, but Laos was actually a whole different theater where our country essentially used Hmong soldiers - ages 13 and up - as cheap, expendable fighters in a losing conflict.) When we pulled out, we left all but the officers behind. The rest of the families went on foot to Thailand, through landmines and under fire, to refugee camps where they endured disease, overcrowding and food insecurity, not to mention cultural prejudice from administrators who persisted in seeing them as dirty and ignorant. When they arrived here they had already been through the pits of hell.

I also thought previously that there must have been some government program settling Hmong immigrants in pockets. I've become somewhat familiar with a few of them - the Twin Cities in Minnesota, the Milwaukee area, and now the Central Valley of California. I thought somebody must have decided those would be good areas for the Hmong and put them there/here on purpose. Not so. Originally they were settled one family to a city - isolated from their clan-based culture - in hopes that they would blend in quickly. After reading their history I have to say that seems pretty ironic. Of their own volition they came together, and when this book was written my town had the highest percentage of Hmong residents in the nation. A major leader had visited here in April, found it a paradise, and spread the word. (Must've been a dry year - in my experience April can also be very cold and soggy!)

I am taking a long time to come to the main point of the book. The story on which all this history is hung is the story of a little girl with epilepsy and how her immigrant parents struggled to work with the American medical system, and how the system struggled to work with them, ultimately failing despite best attempts to interface properly to preserve her quality of life. It's a tragedy, though with some bright spots as people do their very best. It crossed my interests as the foster care system became very problematically involved; as a hyperactive child tore a medical setting apart; as the author's translator - or "cultural broker" as she described her - asserted her Mormonism in seemingly problem-free conjunction with her family's plans to sacrifice a cow in a Hmong ritual.

Can you start to see what was so fascinating about it? I read only a few non-fiction books a year, but this one was one I would not skip if I were you. Even if you don't live near refugees, even if you don't have a child with medical issues, even if you're not a doctor or nurse or social worker, it's a gripping story with a lot to learn. But if any of those things apply to you, this book will change your view immensely and for the better.

Connections

We are not vegetarians. In the interest of helping my 4 year old understand where his food comes from, I embarked this evening on the following conversation:

K: I like this meat.
A: That's pork. It comes from a pig.
K [suspicious]: Is it the pig's poop?
A: No, it's the pig's muscles.
K: I don't like a pig's muscles! I'm just going to drive away to a hotel! Or Grandma's house!

He ate the rest of the pork and then conked out before he could find his license and keys.

How is it done?

Yesterday we had this great day. We made everybody work all morning and got the house all clean. In the afternoon we napped and played but still generally kept it together. In the evening I made people get off the screens and we played Hullabaloo (which is so worth it if you have littles; it's like Twister for preschoolers) and I sat and played baby dolls with Z and Matchbox cars with Z, and we got everybody to bed by 8:30 and it was bliss, and I was thinking maybe 2009 was going to be the year I got it together and was Organized Mom with Clean House and Well-behaved Children.



Today we went up to the snow. We borrowed a couple of sleds from my friend Jenne and proceeded up past her house to a place that is apparently called either Little Sweden or Swedish Hill, up Highway 108 above Sonora just before the pass is closed off. It's a pretty good sledding spot and very crowded.



In my five and a half years in California I had not yet encountered Sierra Nevada snow until today. It is not snow as I knew it in Utah or Alaska. It is really dense and really wet. If a bit gets into your shoe there is no grace period for you to get it out. You are wet immediately and wet through.



Also, because we have spent five and a half years in California, completed numerous closet purges and added two members to our family, we no longer have adequate snow gear. We were really Mickey-Mouse sledders. Note the ill-fitting, mismatched gloves. I have dug out some leftover fleece and I have a project to undertake!





It was still fun. K said to me, "I never sawed snow!" And I realized that he probably never has. So that was worthwhile, to take a four-year-old for his first experience with the white stuff.

(Can you believe this picture, with the eyelash yarn hat and the eyelashes on Z!!?)

But it wore us out. After dinner tonight we bathed the kids and then G zonked out on the bed and I got carried away in a new novel. (Who, me?) Suddenly it was 9:15. S was on the computer playing Roblox. A had gotten Z and K into their pajamas (my second son is a saint) and they were watching Night at the Museum. The movie ended and there was mass chaos getting everybody into bed.

I will say, I am grateful they weren't out stealing blow-up Santa Clauses on motorcycles, which I know they covet, from our neighbors' lawns. This wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been. But I could definitely see a contrast from the night before.

So how do people be the Organized Mom and the Fun Mom and the Clean House Mom and the Well-behaved Children Mom for more than one day in a row? I really would like to know, and I think I'm asking in the right place, because there are a certain few of you out there whom I suspect of having it all together like this. Sometimes I think I need to do a mommy internship with some of you people. But I might flunk. I am not sure I have it in me.

Actually probably if I had not stayed up until 2 a.m. watching Wayne's World and folding laundry and eating peanut M&Ms with G I would feel a little better and more focused and capable today. Ya think?

HNY

HNY. That's for Happy New Year, 2009, in which we hope to goof off just as much as we did in the old one, or possibly more. It's not a good time for anyone to stray from their core business.











Thanks to my dad for the mustaches. He knows us well. Santa brought the Dora the Explorer bandanna for Z. So far only Daddy has worn it. Z, like her mother (me), has little patience for stuff on her head or face.

In spite of all the goofing off (which we have done with aplomb for the last two whole weeks) this year for real we are going to finalize two adoptions and get a Ph.D., a grownup job and a house. I'll keep saying all that at the beginning of every year until it all really happens.

Seriously, as of yesterday, Dr. G-to-be has a complete draft of his dissertation. I don't know how he does it and still helps me so much. Simply the best. And I hope you are thinking about Tina Turner now.

In touch

I have a compulsion about Christmas cards. I have been doing them since I was about 16 or 17. My family moved around a lot as I was growing up. At Christmas I felt like I could do this one thing to hold onto not just the people who actually cared enough to write back and forth with me all year - and there were several; I was a dedicated letter writer - but others I remembered and thought about.

I took this photo of our door a couple of days ago. This is how my mom displays Christmas greetings at her house. I have never tried to think of another way, although one year we had a door with a nine-pane glass window and I had to tape the cards up around the doorjamb instead.

A few more cards have arrived since then. And there are the newsletters, which I don't display, but I do love them. News of the kids we taught in nursery or the children of my high school friends, no matter how braggy or sensational (and usually it's not) thrills me. Family pictures in red sweaters are universally smiled at here in this house, especially when they come from message board or blog friends I've not had the chance to be with a lot in real life. And the cards - pretty or clever or intricate or even just ordinary, I love them all.

So if you get a card and letter from me and you think it's annoying or prideful or weird, I apologize. I sincerely just want everybody to have as much fun with Christmas cards as I do.

Here are some of my favorites this year:

The yin-yang penguin



The pop-up

Sweet

Just a little photo story today ... Z eats a Christmas cinnamon roll.

Another tortellini salad

So we had carnitas for Christmas Eve, which were awesome. My flan failed (I unmolded it too soon, I think), and then we had a huge breakfast on Christmas day with cinnamon rolls and eggs and bacon and fruit, and then I didn't cook. We just ate candy and fruit and nuts and leftover cinnamon rolls. Everybody was fine. I might never make a Christmas dinner again. Nobody seems to care.

However, by the end of the day yesterday we were all actually hungry again. I was craving broccoli salad. Didn't want to make two dishes. Here's the result.



Broccoli and Tortellini Salad
1 package cheese tortellini, cooked and drained
2 heads broccoli florets, chopped
1 small to medium bell pepper, diced (we used green)
1/2 c. raisins (we used golden)
1/2 c. nuts (we used almonds)
4 slices bacon, cooked and chopped or crumbled
About half a bottle of your favorite prepared vinaigrette (we used Brianna's Real French)

Mix it together. Eat it. Feel relieved that it is not a candy cane flavored Hershey's kiss, yet is still festive and yummy.

Makes about 6 servings.

Joy

From us to you on Christmas.

Groove

Four posts in the month of December! That is just pathetic! I am brainstorming ideas for how to get my blogging groove back. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, I wanted to share the fact that you can groove yourself to free holiday tunes from Amazon.com. There is a wide variety and you are bound to find at least a few tunes you will enjoy! If you're like me you've overdosed on all the Christmas music you own and are definitely ready for something new at this point!

I've got the brains, you've got the looks

I just updated the master spreadsheet I'm keeping for the professor/postdoc job search for Dr. G-to-be. All told we have found 31 assistant professorships and postdoctoral positions that he absolutely should apply for. Doesn't that seem kind of miraculous for a guy with a doctorate in a highly specialized scientific field? Like somehow he chose just the right discipline at just the right time?

Out of those 31, so far he has had one lecture/interview/not interview and one rejection letter. The two were not from the same place. Sorry, Florida, you will not be seeing us next year, after all.

Our son is fasting and praying that we will move to a place with snow, anyway. Maybe this would be a good time for me to start looking at parkas on sale.

Tonight, again and as always, I believe in miracles. I am so optimistic and excited about our future. Even if it's not going to be by Disney World.

Treasures

One of the things that bugged me when I was working full time was that I never had time for leisure shopping. Bear in mind, to me leisure shopping does not mean strolling department stores smelling perfume and picking up luxury handbags. It means combing through piles of junk at secondhand stores in search of treasures.

Now that I am unemployed, I have time. Sure, I could be scrubbing a bathroom. Who needs it? They are just going to pee on the floor again when they get home from school.

So when I finished my errand at Staples today I just stopped into the Goodwill in the same shopping center. (Would that there were a Deseret Industries close by! Mormons give away the best junk!) Here's what I found today:


A king-size sheet with a cute aqua/yellow/peach daisy print. I'm guessing it's vintage '70s. I'm planning a dress for Z and an a-line skirt for me. Hey, I only have one daughter, and she's growing up fast. I need to do the cheesy stuff while I can. Plus it is so cute and retro it won't be that bad.


A cute little brown stoneware vase. Not sure whether it is really old or not, but I do love it. I think it will work with the Zona aesthetic I am dreaming up for when I own a home again. Plus, perfect for the dandelion gifts I will doubtless be receiving periodically from my boys beginning in a few months.


A very cute and clean baby doll for Z. Give her one of these and she'll sit in the cart through the whole store. For $1.50, it's a bargain. I've posed baby Z-style (thumbsucker!) so you can see her cute wrinkly hands. Maybe we can make a retro daisy dress for the dolly, too. Won't we be cute?

There was another babydoll, too - a Cabbage Patch Kid for $2. Imagine that our parents spent $50 and up for these in their heyday! Add a few stocking stuffers which shall not be mentioned here - it's a morning of shopping fun for $10 even. Viva thrift.

Funkbuster

I've been in kind of a blogging funk the last couple of weeks.

I got this Facebook tag today and thought I'd put it up here ... maybe it will break me out.

Rules: Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 18 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 18 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you.

1. Still in my PJs at 1 PM. Not every day, though.
2. Am the one in charge of the power drill, but not taking out the trash.
3. Fan of kids' books. Try "The Twenty-One Balloons" by William Pene DuBois.
4. Like to tell people what they should do. Hate to ask people to do things. It's a subtle but important difference.
5. Spent junior and senior years of high school working at a radio station, reading the weather forecast and eventually announcing songs on a pre-recorded show.
6. Child bride - age 19 in 1993. Not necessarily recommended for anyone else (young women, this means you!) but it worked out great for me!
7. Got to take American Lit and Mormon Lit classes from Eugene England at BYU. If you haven't read his essays, you should! (See, I like to tell people what they should do!)
8. Only time off the continent: BYU Geology field trip to Hawaii in 1996. Hiked on active flows and flew over the Kilauea crater. AMAZING! Until this trip I thought Hawaii was all about the beach and the tacky shirts. I was SO wrong!
9. Dream trip: Food tour of southern France and Italy. Maybe next year (and next year, I will probably be saying, "maybe next year")
10. Getting used to being unemployed/full-time motherhood after 4.5 years working for UC Merced. I was supposed to become a contract worker but because of budget cuts I am cut loose. It is both sad and fun (see #1).
11. Still deciding what to put on the treat plates for Christmas this year. Oreo truffles? Jam stripe butter cookies? Gingerbread men? Probably all of them.
12. In a lot of suspense about my husband finishing his Ph.D., getting a job and maybe moving next year. Trying not to let it make me too crazy.
13. Louisa tagged me. I think this is my first Facebook tag of this kind.
14. Have been a movie usher, hotel maid, fish factory worker, sandwich artist, Morris Center cafeteria server, phone surveyor, College of Religion receptionist, magazine editor, trade show display planner and university spokesperson.
15. Have touched the Arctic Circle ... not the one where you get cheap hamburgers and courtesy cones. The one where you run into a guy with a canoe full of fish.
16. Loud music: the Breeders (try it! You'll like it! some of you)
17. Quiet music: Ari Hest
18. Christmas music: any. It's the best part! Merry Christmas, friends! I hope this is fun for you!

(Tagging ... whoever wants to do this, as is my habit on the blog.)

Two

Today feels like a milestone. My baby is two. I know once a baby hits this age she is not really a baby anymore. She talks. She feeds herself. She runs and jokes and sleeps in a big girl bed.

I keep holding her and smelling her hair and squishing her soft little belly and wondering if I will remember how it feels. She stood in front of me as I sat on the couch folding socks this afternoon and leaned her head back onto my knees and told me a long story in nonsense language, gazing at me steadily with her dark, dark, long-lashed eyes.

In just a couple of months we will finalize her adoption and K's in court and then take them both to our dear little temple in Fresno to be sealed to us forever. My eyes are firmly fixed on that. It makes so many other things seem less important.

Happy birthday to my darling girl, my Z.

Psych!

I think some kids used to spell that "sike." The middle school set is not particularly well known for its knowledge of Greek roots.

We got totally psyched today. A place where G has progressed through the initial stages of a faculty search sent us a big, fat envelope. I called him, all worked up. No rejection letter is that big, right? He had me open it while he was on the phone.

It was the notes of all the students who had been at his guest lecture.

I'll pause while you take in the weirdness of that.

This place bewilders me. But I really want him to get the job there.

Happy belated Thanksgiving, by the way. I have been cooking for what feels like a week and am looking forward to my turkey sandwich in a few minutes, white bean chili tomorrow and not doing any real cooking for several days thereafter.