have a scarfy barfy christmas

maura @ 7:15 pm

Christmas morning we opened presents here and hung around the house for a while, having breakfast and calling grandparents. Then it was off to my family’s in the afternoon, which took longer than expected because Gus and Jonathan had head colds and snot makes everyone slower.

We arrived at our destination only to learn that the stomach flu had stricken 2 family members. But we thought hey, we’re strong, we can take it. Christmas night everyone went to bed early except for me, and while I would rather have been watching Christmas Vacation with everyone as planned, it was nice to have some quiet time to sit and read.

The day after Christmas dawned and most of the afflicted seemed to be on the mend. We did cancel our extended family gathering, but us nuclear family took the risk of hanging out together. By dinnertime everyone was back to eating the normal holiday foods: lots and lots of cookies.

The next day we left the house! But it was cold and windy at the playground so we didn’t stay out for long. After dinner we hugged everyone goodbye, piled a pajamaed Gus into the car, and started the trek back to Brooklyn, congratulating ourselves for not getting sick. I felt a little nauseous on the Verazzano, but I’m prone to carsickness so I wasn’t too concerned.

Until 4am, that is, when I was finally felled by the flu. Gus succumbed at 6am. We spent most of yesterday moving from sofa to bed, drinking ginger ale, and sleeping. Jonathan seemed to be catching it around dinnertime, but strangely just got a weird fever sickness instead.

By this morning we were all mostly fine, though the mountains of laundry to do did turn the stomach somewhat. We have all played more video games and watched more videos today than we probably should have, but that’s recovery for you.

Vomit is never fun, but it was worth it if only to see Jonathan’s glee at FINALLY convincing us to play Carcassonne with him. Next time I am taking you ALL down with my mad farming skillz, beware!

100% chance of rain

maura @ 11:22 am

Dear Denver,

Please stop hogging all the snow!

Your pal,
Brooklyn

thoughts from above hit the people down below

maura @ 5:29 pm

More collateral damage from getting the paper: Mark Bittman is making me fat.

It’s true! First there was the super easy bread that Jonathan is STILL baking (three loaves last week!). I have to admit that it is delicious bread, and it saves us a whole $2.75 per week, woo hoo!

THEN there was the peanut brittle. The terrifying thing about this peanut brittle is that it can be made in only a few minutes with ingredients we tend to always have in the house: sugar, salt, and peanuts (I make myself trail mix as a snack, so we get the bulk peanuts from the hippie food coop). And it is goooooooooooood, DAMN good. Just to show off his mad melting skillz Jonathan covered a batch of it in dark chocolate for our family xmas presents. Ullgghhh.

What’s the problem this week? Pancakes! Which Jonathan hasn’t made yet but is threatening to make very, very soon. Damn you, Mark Bittman! I can feel my butt slowly expanding, sigh.

we’re busy running out of time

maura @ 5:01 pm

Hi internets, how was your day? Mine was frustrating.

1. I spent way too much time in the car. I was probably 10 minutes too late getting to the garage to get an appointment for today to get the car inspected, and thus had to drive it all over the damn place to pretty much everything else I had to do today. Stupid car.

2. Then, while crossing the street, eating a sandwich, and trying to put my phone into my bag all at the same time, I dropped my phone. And it skittered and slid (quite cinematically, if I do say) right into the sewer. Yes, call me on my cell right now and a corner in Cobble Hill will start ringing, confounding passersby.

Duh. On the plus side, I’ve finished today’s paper. And we’re having a festive dinner with our neighbors tonight, so the day’s looking brighter already.

skating

maura @ 8:41 pm

My last paper’s been turned in, and with the end of this semester I am now officially 1/2 a librarian*, woo hoo! It’s kind of mindblowing that the program is so quick. Just as in previous semesters, while I am happy to have a break from schoolwork, I miss my classes already.

* Which half? The left, of course.

Yes, I know, I’m a hopeless nerd. I even have some scintillating intersession reading picked out: a newly-published online searching book (assuming I can get my paws on it from the library) and Strunk + White’s Elements of Style. Why the latter? Because one of my New Year’s resolutions is to stop writing like a fusty old academic. Simplicity and clarity, that’s my new writing motto. Rock on.

And while I’ve got you here, let me complain about my visor. Which has stopped synching to my computer, for no apparent reason. Of course it is 10 zillion years old (and my Mac’s no spring chicken, either), and probably I just have to reinstall the software. But during this, the most busy and stressful wonderful time of the year, I haven’t had time to deal with it yet.

It’s been illuminating to see how much I’ve come to rely on that little guy over the past few months. My lists! My precious, precious lists!

And speaking of lists, over the past few weeks I’ve been putting every non-emergency thing that comes up onto a list titled “intersession”, figuring that’s when I’ll have time to do it. If you saw this list you would laugh and laugh — it’s grown to utterly inhuman proportions. All I want for xmas is the ability to not need sleep.

out there somewhere

maura @ 4:38 pm

Here are some helpful hints for the older student re: the combination end-of-semester + approaching-holidays crunch time:

1. Make sure to have your second cup of coffee of the day no later than 4pm, otherwise you will be fuzzy until 9pm and then WIDE AWAKE at bedtime.

2. You will be tempted to stop doing whatever it is you typically do to relieve stress (e.g. exercise + meditation), thinking that you don’t have time to write your papers AND get the holiday stuff done AND get enough sleep AND relieve stress. But that is wrong! Because stress feeds the hamster brain, and the hamster causes insomnia, and you will be tired.

3. Trying to finish xmas shopping while researching a paper is a bad idea. Dividing your efforts makes each task take longer than it should!

4. Quit yer email app while writing a paper. Quit the internets altogether, actually, if you can (which I often can’t because I’m writing about something online).

5. Focus! Drink mint tea! Listen to Orbital! And remember that it’ll be over soon, and you’ll still have a whole week before xmas.

world of leather

maura @ 9:03 pm

Last weekend Gus and I went to the Brooklyn Museum with some friends of ours. We’ve only been there once before and it’s inexpensive and just around the corner, so it seemed like a pleasant way to spend a few hours. I gave the website a cursory glance before heading out the door, and it looked like the kids might like the Walton Ford exhibit, and maybe the grafitti exhibit too.

First stop: Walton Ford. His stuff is done in an olde fashioned naturalistic watercolorsy style, very pretty. The first two paintings were a tiger and a lion, so far, so good. But then we went into the next room and there is a water buffalo goring/being gored by a pack of wolves.

Hmm…somewhere in the dark recesses of my brain I’m remembering that I’ve read about Walton Ford in the past…oh yeah, at my old job. And the Brooklyn Museum website does say that Ford’s paintings “offer a wry critique of colonialism.” While I’m still trying to access those mental files we rounded the corner into the next room and are suddenly staring at Nila.

To be fair, the enormous elephant penis is pretty much exactly at 5 yr old eye level, so it’s not really surprising that Gus should have run right up to it, pointing, and asked “Mommy, what’s THAT???” As the other patrons giggled behind me, I mumbled something about the birds sitting on a branch and steered us onward. Not that I really care if he’s looking at penises in art, but I just did not feel like answering 1001 questions about it for the rest of the day.

Next we had to pass through the Annie Leibovitz exhibit. It was crazy crowded in there and Gus didn’t seem to care much about photos of (clothed) Johhny Depp groping (naked) Kate Moss, so we cruised on by.

My friends and I thought that the Ron Mueck exhibit would also be interesting for the kids. And, in a way, we were right. His sculptures are so very realistic — the skin of the figures is so textured: SO many pores. Plus the hair, everyone loves fake hair. I did get the “why is that big man naked?” question, but then his attention zipped to “what is behind that face on the wall?”

Gus was especially intrigued by the crouching little freaked out boy looking at himself in the mirror. He really really REALLY wanted to touch it, so I busted out with the “art is for looking” speech and the hugging as an excuse to hold his arms down. Somehow he got an arm free and swatted at the piece with the museum map he was clutching. He barely grazed it (with paper, mind you), yet the art fancier (male, around 30) to the left of us gasped, clucked, and scolded me!

Now COME ON. I know it’s wrong to touch the art, but cut me some slack! It’s not like I was standing on the other side of the gallery smoking a cigarette and drinking a bloody mary. I was RIGHT THERE, clearly attempting to grapple with a child who’d just morphed into an octopus. Sheesh!

We scooted over to catch up with our friends, only to discover that their kid was getting a little freaked out by the freaked out looks on the sculptures’ faces, so we hustled the kids right out of there.

Thank goodness for the Visible Storage Study Center! Lots of things they don’t have room for in the galleries are stored in 20′ tall enclosed lucite shelves. We looked at the funky furniture and housewares, and used the flashlights hanging from the cases to examine all the details. Hands on fun!

After all the excitement it was time for a snack. On the way to the elevators we nearly ran smack into a completely awesome installation by Swoon. I love love love her work. The piece consists of her printed sheets of paper suspended from the ceiling at different depths. Very nice. I later realized that it’s only there for another month or so — I think I will have to go back and see it again (go, student discount, go!).

Gus + his friend wanted ice cream, and ice cream they got. Then it was time for the grafitti exhibit. To get there we had to walk through the Hall of the Americas which features art of the Pacific which freaks Gus out (especially the totem poles). He insisted that we walk through the gallery with our eyes closed because it was scary. I really like Pacific art so this is kind of a drag for me, but I suppose he’ll grow out of it.

Next stop: Grafitti Basics. This turned out to be a very small space, though Gus was intrigued by an actual subway door covered in grafitti. But he was too jacked up on high fructose corn syrup to watch the video of Fab 5 Freddy and Keith Haring.

So we took off for the playground, so those kids could run the cultcha right out of them.

we’ve even had our days

maura @ 8:59 pm

It’s the holiday season which means people are s-h-o-p-p-i-n-g. Not me though. I hate shopping.

But we’re not talking about my shopping hatred today. No! We’re talking about gifts. And why not get your loved one a t-shirt this year? I hear the kids love t-shirts these days. Here’re my picks for t-shirts I like on the internets this season:

– I just got this Brooklyn Industries shirt for myself with a credit I had from last year, and it’s pretty cool. I like their kids shirts, too. I usually try to resist dressing Gus in things promoting my own personal agenda of coolness, but they do have a Made in Brooklyn shirt* that I might have to get for him, since he was, in fact, made in Brooklyn (yo).

* This is the onesie, but they have the shirts in the stores.

– I’ve raved about these handstitched t-shirts before. I KNOW they’re only in kids sizes, but I still want an N is for Nerd one for my own self (or, L is for Librarian).

– Nothing says good times like video games. I wish the Penny Arcade boys made this one in a girly shirt, because it cracks me right the hell up.

– And while we’re geeking out, let’s head over to xkcd. Two shirts that have been making me giggle all week:

Science
It works, bitches.

And (scroll down):

Just Shy
Not Antisocial
(You can talk to me!)

– Argh, there was a fetching t-shirt in a bright spring green with a nice little red apple design on it, but I negelected to bookmark it and now it’s gone right out of my head, bah.

do you see spots?

maura @ 2:17 pm

Last night for dinner Jonathan made dumplings. Dumplings! On a weeknight! They were very tasty. He combined two recipes to make frankendumplings: our Taiwanese friend’s mom’s recipe (which includes lots of spinach) and Anita Lo’s pork and kimchi potstickers (except he didn’t fry them, he boiled them). He called them Detante Dumplings, har.

We had them for dinner last night and then again for lunch today. It was kind of weird to be eating a giant plate of dumplings for a meal and nothing else, but they have protein and veggies and starch so I guess they’re a complete meal. Gus won’t eat dumplings, of course, though he does like us to rip off pieces of the wrapper noodle for him.

Jonathan said “the kimchi makes it funky”, which made “how funky is your chicken, how loose is your goose” pop into my head. And it’s still there today.

you’ve been here a week

maura @ 2:15 pm

On the way home from doing lunch with the kindergarteners I rode the bus with a bona fide crazy person. That hasn’t happened to me in a long time. It was an older woman who looked just like your average person. But then she got on the bus and sat behind me (in a one seat*). And then she started in with the crazy.

* The one seat! I love the one seat. Right next to a window and you don’t have to touch anyone. On the small buses (which run the route to Gus’ school) there are 3 one seats. They are the prize, man.

Apparently her beef was noise. There was a couple talking near the back door, and all of a sudden the crazy lady sarcastically said, “oh, now we have to listen to your private conversation, so banal and boring.” I don’t know if anyone other than me could hear her. She was talking in a normal tone of voice, but she only talked when other people were also talking.

Then a few Caribbean nannies got on the bus with their young charges. Apparently they had been waiting for another bus that never came, and they all started chatting to the bus driver about it. The crazy lady said, “oh, you’re from a happy island, you can laugh loudly about the bus.”

I was starting to get a little freaked out, but luckily my stop was next. As I got up to leave I heard her say something else about not liking anyone who’s not in their tribe. WTF?!?! I guess that’s why it’s called crazy.

I’m glad Gus wasn’t with me, as I’m sure he’d have asked his usual 101 questions about everything: “What’s boring? Where’s the happy island? Is she talking to me? Who is she talking to?”