because we need a little lego, right this very minute

So someone figured out a way to combine Cal's two great obsessions, Lego City and Christmas, comma, counting down the days until--and manufactured this:
It's a Lego Advent calendar. I never had an Advent calendar as a kid, but my best friend in elementary school did, and though I liked the idea of counting down the days and popping open the little cardboard windows for each day, I remember being distinctly let down by the so-called "chocolate" contained within, which was chalky and dry and tasted a lot like those shell-shaped hand soaps people keep for show in the guest bathroom.

But therein lies the beauty of the Lego Advent calendar. No shitty candy, just little Lego trinkets. I think each little window contains a small little Lego thing, anywhere between five and ten small pieces, that fit together to make a little minifigure or Christmas tree or toy airplane, what have you.


Let me be the first to say that yes, I am aware that this is a total rip-off, because look, it barely amounts to a handful of Legos in the end, and it's not exactly like there's a lot of building involved. Also, some of the pieces seem to be of unclear Lego/holiday significance, like Dog and Cat Eyeing a Hot Dog:

...or Angry Santa Takes a Shower While Wearing a Thong:

...but whatever, it's still better than waxy pellets of chocolate in the shape of the Baby Jesus.

Cal found the box for the Lego Advent calendar a week and a half ago (I thought I hid it well, up on a high bookcase, but he must have some sort of Lego divining rod, it's the only logical explanation) and I discussed with him how this was all going to work, how he was going to open one little window each day up until Christmas, but we weren't going to start until December 1st, because each little window has a number on it, etcetera etcetera.

He listened very carefully and nodded and then the second I stopped talking promptly poked his finger into the perforated hole for December 1st.

"I just wanted to make sure that it works," he explained sulkily, after I extricated the box from his hands and returned it to its shadowy bookshelf home on high.

So anyway, tomorrow is finally December 1st, and I told Cal that Wednesday evening, after dinner and bath and snacktime, if he was very very good and was nice to his little brother and did everything the way he was supposed to, we would open up the first little window, and then one every day up until Christmas Eve, as the Lord and the good people at Legoland intended.

Not until last night did I realize that I'm actually on call tomorrow evening, so I won't even be here tomorrow night. Oops. I hope Joe remembers.

nostalgia and farts

As I think I mentioned on Twitter (aside: if you don't follow me on Twitter, you might want to reconsider, because I'm actually updating there with some frequency now--unless you think me prattling on about the minutiae of my life is super aggravating, in which case, please continue not following me on Twitter), I have been trying to put labels on all my Blogger blog entries from the last seven years. The first three years of this blog are archived on my old Homestead site here and here (the less you read these entries, the better for you, I find them terribly embarrassing in both design and content but keep them up as sort of an archaeological relic, like the city of Pompeii), but I've been on Blogger since my intern year in Pediatrics, September of 2003, and thus have over 1,300 entries to sort through and catalogue.

That's a lot of entries.

I don't mind skimming through an old entry or two, that's kind of amusing in and of itself. But skimming through ALL of the old entries? Is excruciating. I've only made it back through July of 2008 (right after we moved to Atlanta, before Mack was born) and already I have flashback fatigue. Really the worst part of it (and I realize I may be alone in this, perhaps some people find the act of going through baby books a delight but I find it somehow lachrymose) is seeing how much my kids have grown in the past two and a half years--In Cal's case 100% and in Mack's case infinity percent. It's funny, it's cute, it's heartwarming to see the old pictures and read the old conversations and look at the old video, but it also makes me kind of sad. Because someday my kids aren't going to be little anymore, they're going to be big and grown up and not little and squashable, they're going to be adults and going out into the world and having their own lives and not need me and they're going to donate all their old toys to the local daycare center ruled by an evil despotic strawberry-scented bear. And then I will weep. Hell, I'll weep now.

Not to just indiscriminately recycle old stuff, but this one's worth it: a video from three years ago. Just three years ago. Mack's now almost the age that Cal was then. Sunrise, sunset.

cal on: marathons

CAL
Mom, why do people run marathons?

MICHELLE
I don't know, it's good exercise, and some people like to run.

CAL
But they have to run so fast and so far.

MICHELLE
Yeah, that's true. But, you know, some people enjoy that kind of thing.

CAL
Yeah. Crazy people.


(Edited to add: I was going through and labeling some old blog entries and found this conversation I had with Cal from around this time last year. Hee.)

scenes from a marriage

When you are on home call--that is to say, call wherein you are carrying a pager (or in my case, two cell phones--one is a backup in case AT&T's notoriously patchy service drops a call on my iPhone) but not necessarily physically in the hospital, all you can think about is that your phone could ring at any time. AT ANY TIME. At any moment, you could get a call from the nursing supervisor telling you to get into the hospital now, there's some old guy with an aortic dissection, or some lady with a small bowel obstruction, or some kid with appendicitis who needs to go to the OR, so get your ass back here in the next twenty minutes.

I'm sure after a couple more decades of taking home call, I'll be inured to the catecholamine surge that accompanies every phone call, every text message, every twinge that indicates that someone somewhere might be trying to reach me, but...I'm not at that point yet. I'm just being totally honest with you: carrying a pager at home stresses me out more than carrying a pager at work. It just feels like the stakes are higher, or more invasive, like the hospital is bleeding into your home somehow. And having been on the receiving end of some pretty bad call weekends, I am admittedly a little bit...sensitive about things.

Now, these are some things not to say to someone who is on call:

"So...are you going to get called in?"

"You're probably not going to get called in, right?"

"Can I run to the supermarket real fast and leave you with the kids? What? Why not?"

"You're probably safe now, right? I mean, what are the odds you're going to get called in now?"

"What do you mean you're backup call overnight? But just backup, right? They won't need you, right? I mean, what are the odds?"

"WHY ARE YOU SO ANNOYED AT ME?"

This is why Joe and I are having a little time-out right now.

good enough for me

I have to admit (rather sheepishly) that being on call on Thanksgiving wasn't really that bad. I went in early to do rounds for the pain service, did one case and one new consult, and then was able to enjoy the rest of the afternoon. I even got to join the everyone for Thanksgiving dinner (mostly because this year, Thanksgiving dinner was actually at dinnertime, instead of at lunch), with the family of Cal's best friend from school. It was very nice. We even got pity leftovers, which, as we all know, are the best part. I am, of course, still on call for the rest of the weekend, but that is neither here nor there. It's just a regular weekend at this point.

And anyway, now, there's this:




I admit I am feeling particularly smug about having finished the Christmas shopping for the kids about a week and a half ago. I was subject to some particularly vicious price-gouging last year (and not even on anything special, no Tickle-Me anythings or those weird robot hamsters, just regular little kid stuff) and thus decided to try and get the bulk of my toy-shopping done before Thanksgiving. I also took the liberty of helping select toys for various grandparents and great-grandparents in abstentia who usually just say, "I don't know what the hell to get them, just buy them something you know they'll like and tell me how much it cost," hence the respectable gift pile this early. Of course I do have to reconsider the wisdom of getting them, you know, more toys, because the basement already looks like this:




...but, you know. Kids and Christmas, it's just worth it. If you could have seen Cal fussing and rearranging the present pile and trying to diving their contents using both palpation and percussion, like some old school primary care doc, you would have died, believe me.


* * *


Also, completely unrelated to anything, this is quite possibly the best thing I have seen on YouTube in...well, ever.




Unfortunately, Sesame Street is, like, 75% Elmo now. I mean, Elmo is cute and all, but come on.

mackasaurus rex

First of all, hope you don't find the new design too disagreeable. I just liked having a page links bar across the top of the page as I do for the new book site, so I was tinkering with the blog design and one thing led to another and now suddenly I have two websites that are matchy-matchy, like fraternal twins whose mom insists on dressing them identical sailor suit rompers. Um...cute?

Anyway.

I downloaded some episodes of "Walking with Dinosaurs" off iTunes a few weeks ago, thinking nothing much in particular except that if my kids were going to be watching TV, at least the TV would be somewhat educational. I did not know what I was getting into, because Cal and Mack are completely and wholly obsessed with dinosaurs now. Cal is mostly interested in the wonkish way, reading and studying, memorizing names and characteristics and diets and eras. He's not as into the pretending aspect--I got the kids a tube full of these little plastic dinosaurs to play with, and after naming them all, Cal just looked at me and said, "Now what am I supposed to do with them?" He wants to learn about the dinosaurs. He doesn't want to be a dinosaur.

Mack, on the other hand...





I'm not quite sure what it is about the dinosaurs, but definitely there's something about their sheer enormity that appeals to kids. Even Cal, who takes something more of a scholar's delight in his paleontologic fervor, continually asks if X is bigger than Y or if Y could beat Z in a fight. That's much of the fun of it, I think. Being so small and the thrill of imagining something so big. I, on the other hand, look at my kids, imagine them being big, and relish that--for now at least--they're still so small.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

it's the most wonderful time

Thanks for all the opinions, everyone. So we're all in agreement, picture D, right? Just kidding. The ayes have it, picture C all the way. I already told Stan (the photographer) about the choice, and he's going to polish up the image before we send it off to my publisher for whatever whatever.

Cal's Thanksgiving vacation began this afternoon (I distinctly remember from my childhood that Thanksgiving vacation did not start until Wednesday afternoon, but maybe that's what we get for sending our kid to a private school--paying more money for less schooling) (just kidding, we love our school) (not really kidding though). Since I was on call Monday night I was able to pick Cal up this afternoon, and as a special treat, I took him to one of those places where you get to paint and fire your own pottery. It was pretty fun.




The lady at the place remarked a couple of times at how focused Cal was and how amazed she was that he was able to sit there for almost two hours painting. I don't think it's quite so amazing--he is five years old, after all, I think that's old enough to attend to a task without being distracted by other kids or music or that shiny thing over there--but that's definitely Cal's personality all the way. Inability to focus is certainly not one of his weaknesses.




(Above: the plate that Cal designed to hold our cookies for Santa. Not sure why he thought Santa would particularly enjoy the math problems, but...OK.)




Anyway, we made some Christmas presents.

As I discussed before I am skipping straight ahead to Christmas because I am working Thanksgiving weekend and therefore the prospect of Thanksgiving this year depresses me. Though I guarantee there is likely no better way to put into stark bas relief exactly what to be thankful for than spending Thanksgiving in a hospital (health, family, being not dead, etc.) I've been hearing some version of this conversation for the past week and a half, and it's starting to drive me slowly insane.


NURSE
You have to brine it.

SURGICAL TECH
We went to my brother's house last year and he deep fried his.

NURSE
Oh that's good, though. So juicy.

SURGICAL PA
But the stuffing has to be on the side, not in the bird, or else it doesn't cook through.

NURSE
I like to make mine with chestnuts. First you roast them, then chop them up fine...

SURGICAL TECH
Sometimes we do raisins.

SURGICAL PA
Well, when I make my mashed potatoes, first I...

MICHELLE
Everybody shut it! There will be no more talk of Thanksgiving feasting! I'm working on Thanksgiving and will therefore be eating a frozen dinner in the doctor's lounge while having football inflicted upon me because I can't find the remote control for the TV! So just! Shut it!

(Silence)

PATIENT
I like when my wife does the thing where she puts the layer of marshmallows on top of the sweet potatoes.


(To be clear, I don't really yell at people for getting excited about Thanksgiving, I'm not a total dick. For most people it's four days off work to be with your families, and hats off to you all, you've certainly earned it. But...I am really looking forward to Christmas this year is all.)

Anyway, thanks everyone for your help with choosing the photos. I'll put up the final image as soon as Stan is done with it.

and you thought midterm elections were over

OK, so I got some proofs from Stan! Time to put on your thinking caps, people. And your thinking glasses. He e-mailed me a whole shitload more photos, but I chose my top four, evenly split up between glasses and non-glasses.




So this is kind of embarrassing, what with it being so many photos of me, so pay attention without, you know, paying too much attention. Which one do you like best? These are un-retouched, but Stan will take whichever one we like the best and do some sort of post-processing to it wherein colors look richer and teeth look whiter and my boobs look two cup sizes bigger. (OK, not that last part.) Please help me pick one. Don't think too hard about it, just pick the one where I look least like an asshole. I happen to like D (like the colors, love the wall and the junkyard chair that we found in that alley, and love those shoes that apparently some of you HATE) but I am completely aware that part of the reason I might like it best is because it's the one where my face is the smallest. What can I say, guys, I'M SHY.

Anyway, Stan did such a nice job with taking the photos while making me feel relaxed (not easy) an completely nailing the "feel" of the photos I was looking for. I would recommend him to anyone. If you're interested in seeing more of his work (or possibly commissioning him to take some photos of your own), he a great portraiture-centered site, where he showcases some shots from his more recent photo shoots. I think you'll agree he does great work, and if you mention my name to him and the fact that you got here from my blog, he said he may be able to work out something special for you.

Thanks, guys. Also thanks for pointing out typos on the new book site, I'm still working on ironing out the kinks. (Including--sharp eyes on some of you people!--the fact that the cover image I posted is an old version, which did not yet include the subtitle.) The internet! It helps you get stuff done!

i made this while mack was napping

OK, so look guys, I made a blog just for the book, so that when stuff starts ramping up in the Spring I don't have to inflict it all upon you here if you don't want to read it. Go look at it and tell me what you think. It's still a work in progress (lots of the pages still have COMING SOON written on them--unfortunately I could not find that little .gif of the worker digging as in the days of Web 1.0, but rest assured that the .gif is in my heart, if not on the page.)

You may also be interested in these two things: a little spiel on what the book is about, and a (very short) excerpt from the first chapter. It has butt holes in it as well as the word "clitoris"! So I guess changing my URL has only made me more porn-y. Oh well, so it goes.

Edited to add: You didn't change your links, did you? Well, good. Because michelleau.com links to the book site now, this blog is still at it's same old address. I know, I'm confused too. I'm just going to leave it alone--either way, you can easily get back to this page, the blog is linked from the sidebar of the book page, and at any rate, it probably makes more sense for the book page to have the custom URL. I AM NOT TOUCHING ANYTHING ELSE. Go to hell, crazy computer demons. Medical school was easier than this.

dot com

First, some weirdly morose looking photos from today.





I know there are a ton of iPhone photo apps out there, and I am not affiliated with any of them, but the one I keep coming back to is Hipstamatic. It just does a good job is all. I know I'm just the one millionth person on the bandwagon (even David Pogue from the New York Times has endorsed them as one of his top 10 iPhone apps) and maybe you disagree, but...I enjoy using it is all.

Well, if we are all in agreement on any one thing (segue!), it's that my hospital staff photograph is the worst photo ever in the history of ever. GUYS, I KNOW! If it makes things any better (or any clearer, at least), I remembered that I had to take this staff photo at the last second and dashed over from the OR to the suite of offices where the official photographer was set up. I had no make-up on because I never wear makeup at work (other people do, and that's fine, but I think it's gross when I see layers of makeup rub off on the inside of people's masks which is why I avoid it myself) and I'd just had my hair crammed up inside a scrub cap all day so it was all squashed so I therefore had no choice but to keep it up for the picture. Also, the photographer forced me to take off my glasses, which were the last accessory that kept me looking somewhat normal. And I know this is all very the-lady-doth-protest-too-much, but seriously guys, I KNOW!! It was so, so bad.

But these new photos, I think they're going to be better. I know that's not setting the bar terribly high, but seriously--we'll look at the new photos and we'll vote and we'll pick a better one for the book jacket. All is well. And if it's worth anything, at least I'm not the kind of person who says, oh, I look so terrible in pictures! and then has a billion pictures of themselves looking gorgeous and dewy and sparkly. I really, actually look terrible in pictures. Not terrible in life, I hope, but photos immortalize some weird stiff self-conscious portion of my soul, such that the only way to get a decent picture of me is to take a truly candid shot (which is barely possible under ordinary circumstances) or just to take a shitload of photos and weed out most of the worst ones. Statistics, people. Statistics.

Wow, if I knew I was going to get so much mileage out of that terrible staff photo, I would have posted it months ago. What makes it ever worse is that there was a choice of two photos for our corporate website, one of me with the white coat (which is the one I ended up choosing) and one without. The other one was even worse.

(I'll let you think about that for a while.)


* * *


SPEAKING of vanity, it seems unbelievable that I've had this blog for ten years and I never considered getting a more streamlined (or at least less porn-y) URL, but I have finally pulled the trigger and for the staggering sum of $10 a year I beat out all the other Michelle Aus of the world and now own the web address michelleau.com. Actually, I don't know...is that less porn-y? Hard to say. Either way, the URL just refers back to this same page, so no need to change your bookmarks or anything. New label, same great taste. Or at the very least, same weird taste that you get strangely fond of, like Red Bull or something.

smiling for the camera is not one of my strong points

So now that Cal has had his name in lights--or at the very least in microscopic all caps print--I wanted to get some slightly higher quality photos for the book jacket and any promotional materials that might be required. Nothing at all against the photos that Cal took, because they were pretty good especially given the lack of photogenicity of his subject, but I didn't give him anything good to work with; all the pictures were taken with a cell phone camera and the resulting product is a little grainy.

Anyway, after looking around online, I found a portrait photographer whose look I thought fit the bill. His name is Stan Kaady, and he is a portrait photographer with editorial experience who seemed to have a very natural and relaxed portraiture style, with fine and judicious use of light and color. I had a portrait taken about a year ago for our corporate website (the less you know about this photo the better--not the worst picture of me ever, but very close) and it was all about studio lighting and unnatural poses and sitting in front of a mottled brown backdrop. Most of my co-workers looked pretty good (and frankly doctor-y) in this setting, but I don't photograph well even under the most spontaneous of circumstances, so this kind of posed-indoors-under-floodlights-in-front-of-a-roll-of-contact-paper did not do anything for me, and I think that the resulting photo clearly belies this tight-lipped dead-eyed horror that I was clearly emanating.

Oh, OK, I'll show it:




I know, who farted, right?

(Again, no aspersions cast on this particular photographer, she was just doing the best she could with a terrible photo subject under the most canned possible conditions. I just knew that this was not going to work for me again, so when looking for someone to take a new picture of me, I wanted to find someone who would not replicate the same scenario. I also wanted to find someone who would let me go outside. I JUST WANT TO LIVE.)

Stan was super-flexible from the get-go, from the day to the time of the shoot (he likes to shoot in the afternoon, which worked for me--the light was really nice that time of day as well). He asked me what kind of feel I wanted for the shoot, and I told him that I wanted kind of an gritty look, with sort of an urban decay motif though perhaps falling just short of outright decrepitude. So we picked a neighborhood, and earlier in the day Stan and his assistant scouted out some nice locations in the nooks and crannies. And if I do say so myself, I think the photos are going to turn out really, really nicely. Even though I'm in them.






These are not his photos, by the way, they're my photos from my iPhone. I just wanted to give a sense of the backdrops. Anyway, Stan and his assistant Chris were really wonderful and professional and available for commissioned portrait work in the Atlanta area. If you're looking for some nice photos of yourself or your loved ones--maybe even in time for the holidays?--it's worth checking out his website or giving him a call.




I'll have some proofs by Monday, I think, at which point I'll post a few up and we can all vote on which one we should pick to send in to my editor. (Hi, Emily!) Sound good? If not, too freaking bad, I am compelling you to vote. It can be like "America's Next Top Model," and you can rule out any pictures in which I look amputated or insufficiently like a broken-down doll.

sore loser



I was able to pick Cal up from school today to take him to a playdate at a nearby bowling alley with one of his new school buddies. This was Cal's first time bowling, and though the Wii has given him some good working knowledge of score keeping and the rules of play, it also gave him an inaccurate sense of how good he actually is at the game.

Faced with this crushing realization, he may have not been the best sport about it.




I gave Cal the old "It's not if you win or lose, it's how you play the game" talk, but he wasn't really having it. I was so bad at sports at a kid that for me, losing was a foregone conclusion. But Cal is different, Cal wants to WIN, in that "second place is just first loser" kind of way. Any advice on how to teach your kid better sportsmanship? Or should he just start rehearsing his "I'm not here to make friends" reality show villain speech?

(One more thing: note the bumpers along the gutters that the bowling alley puts up whenever they have younger kids playing. Heed my word and NEVER LET THEM PLAY WITHOUT THOSE BUMPERS. The score would have otherwise been zero to zero the whole hour we were there, yet another crushing blow to an already bruised ego.)

under the sea




I took Mack to the aquarium today, which means I got lots of pictures of the back of his head. If you're visiting Atlanta, the Georgia Aquarium is worth a visit, even though it costs thirty-three squijillion dollars to get in and if your kids are prone to fits of sulky boredom and want to leave after forty-five minutes (as Cal did one time) it will be very hard not to calculate the dollars-per-minute ratio of your visit and start getting chest pain. I just ended up getting a membership--the membership fee costs less than the price of two adult tickets, so if you're planning on going more than once in the next 12 months it's probably worth it. Also, I think kids 3 and under are free, so bring as many babies as you want, or else cram your five year old into a onesie and try to sneak him in. (Not that I am condoning ticket fraud, but let's just say I was very small for my age and I think my parents were able to get me in at the movies at the kid's price well past my fourteenth birthday.)




Mack, looking delicious. Apparently, this shark concurs.





* * *


Sorry to be doing so much self-promotion, I am vaguely sheepish about it, and though I realize that it needs to be done (I always think of that scene in "The West Wing" where Josh Lyman insists that the president's staff does not take curtain calls--I think this goes double in medicine, since most of the good outcomes that we get credit for are entirely due to the patient's own physiology or strength of will), as I have discussed before, self-promotion makes me feel weird.

But! Yesterday I got an e-mail from a reader with info that I thought I should pass along to the international readers at large. Apparently "This Won't Hurt a Bit (and Other White Lies)" is available for pre-order at a site called The Book Depository, which offers free worldwide shipping. Yes, even Vatican City, I checked! (Hi, Your Holiness.) So if you don't live in the U.S., it could be worth checking out. Big thanks to Lurkette in Israel for the nice e-mail and the heads up!

spring/summer 2011

I came home this afternoon to find this in the on my desk, the Grand Central Publishing book catalogue for Spring/Summer 2011. It is pretty.





(My editor's name is Emily.)

And there it is, page 29, right opposite the copy for a book called "Slow Sex: The Art and Craft of the Female Orgasm." Maybe it's a ying and yang kind of thing.

My first thought in leafing through the other hardcover books that are coming out next year? Is that I should have chosen a better "author picture" for my book, rather than one that I took at the last second with my cellphone camera while sitting on the front stoop. However, admittedly, the competition is stiff. Stiff and very attractive.

Hey, Nicholas Sparks, actually quite the looker! Who knew? I admit, I always imagined him as looking like the old man in the movie version of "The Notebook," not quite so much like Nigel Barker from "America's Next Top Model." (Right?)

However, I have one thing in my corner that none of these big names have, and that is this: the first ever published photo credit for one Msr. Cal Walrath. The kid's got the eye! Like a latter-day Richard Avedon, he is! (Or maybe make that Diane Arbus.)

Pre-order on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Borders, or for your Kindle. Prices appear lowest on Amazon and B&N at the moment, unless you don't care about having a physical copy or are or delicate and prone to paper cuts, in which case obviously you can pre-order the e-book version.

it's beginning to look a lot like

When I'm not at work or busy searching eBay for used bulk lego blocks by the pound (I know, used toys, they could be tubercular, but I got a whole shitload of used Duplo bricks off eBay a few years and it was the best thirty-something bucks plus shipping I ever spent), sometimes I like to interact with my kids. Here are a few pictures from this weekend, in which everyone has recovered from their various maladies and Mack proves that his eyebrows do occasionally point in a direction other than down:






Anyway, not to belabor the point (Kids. Cute. Done.) but I do love that last one wherein Mack is busting a tiny little move. (He's Stirring the Pot of Love, of course.) Also, yes, it has warmed up here since last weekend.


* * *


I am basically trying to forget that Thanksgiving is coming up, because I am on call for Thanksgiving weekend (all four days--but just the day parts of the days, someone else is covering the nights) and if I can forget that it's a holiday instead of a regular call weekend it'll be far less depressing. Now that we don't live near family Thanksgiving has been generally depressing for the last two years anyway--our first year in Atlanta we tried to fend for ourselves (the less said about the cooking of our Thanksgiving dinner, the better) and last year we very kindly got invited to one of my co-worker's homes for Thanksgiving lunch, which was very nice not to mention very tasty--but just served to remind us that we were these sort of pathetically unmoored figures that require taking in, like The Old Lady At Church Whose Husband Is Dead, or That Guy Who Hangs Out In The Periodicals Section Of The Library But Is Basically Harmless. This year, I figure I'll just skip over the Thanksgiving part of things altogether (except for the giving thanks part--very thankful for many things, of course) and go straight to the Christmas preparation, which, to be perfectly honest, is something that I've been desperately waiting for since before last year's Christmas tree came down.

I like Christmas is all.

I'm trying to emphasize to Cal, as I do every year, that the importance of the holiday (at least in the secular way that we celebrate the Christmas) is family and togetherness and blah blah blah Gift of the Magi, but he's reached the age now where the mere smell of pine is enough to trigger a Pavlovian response of OMG SANTA CANDY CANES PRESENTS!!! Still, I don't want to be a total killjoy about the thing and it's not like he's overly materialistic or anything so what the hell, just let him enjoy the freaking presents.

Mack didn't have a very good Christmas last year--he had a cold going into it and got his flu shot two days before Christmas Eve, and while I don't blame the flu shot for his illness, the combination of these two events (something something cytokines?) made him a febrile, snotty, miserable mess who alternately sobbed and slept through the entire holiday. I am determined to make it up to him this year (not like it was my fault or anything, but he was still very little and I felt bad) but the problem with Mack is that all he generally requires to be happy is a fistful of pretzels and a stool to climb up on in order to reach the knife block, and these are difficult to incorporate into our holiday celebration.

Actually, the real problem is that he's the second child, the second boy child, and anything we could possibly think of to get him (trains, little cars, grating Wiggles DVDs) we already accrued for Cal the first time around. So we're kind of at a loss when it comes to what to get him. Again, not that the holidays are about PRESENTS and GETTING STUFF and the most pleasant part of my Christmas is sitting around in my pajamas watching my kids not kill each other--but I do want to be able to get him something special aside from, of course, my undying love, especially since meanwhile Cal is going to be building some kind of Lego Universe with the spoils of his holiday gift bounty.

Anyone else have second child syndrome when it comes to gift giving? I know that gifts aren't important and that kids don't really know the difference and this is all very First World Problems, but...I just like to watch their faces when they open the presents, you know? That's my Christmas present. And I'm not particular, I'll wrap anything to put under the tree. One year I wrapped a pack of Raisinettes.

food glorious food

Joe texted me this morning that Cal woke up tired and out of sorts, complaining about some vague thing or another, but since he didn't have a fever and manifested no objective signs of illness, it was off to school for him anyway.

Fifteen minutes later, I got another text that Cal barfed in the car, and so it was back home for him for a day of this:




Couch napping, fluids, episodes of "Planet Earth" narrated by the esteemed Sir David Attenborough. (I know this is yet another example of forcing upon my kid things that I loved as a kid, but Cal enjoys the natural sciences and hearing David Attenborough speak still puts me in a happy place of meditative Zen. He knows so many things about biomes!)

Luckily I was on call last night and able to get home early to the kids (there was no mystery where Cal got his bug, as Mack was basically pooping water for the past two days) and so this seems like as good a time as any to share my recipe for congee.




Let's make it clear that I cannot cook, though I do have a limited catalogue of mostly one-pot comfort food wonders that I tote out once in a while when the occasion calls for it. Congee is basically a Chinese rice porridge, and it is very simple to make, because in it's most stripped down form, it really only requires rice and water. You probably want it to have some, you know, flavor though, so usually I will do some variation on the below.

(Also let's be clear that calling this a "recipe" is perhaps generous, as I do not measure anything--consider it more of a rough blueprint, as most of the ingredients listed below are added to taste.)

At minimum, you will need:

- Rice
- Some form of clear liquid (I use a combination of water and chicken stock)

In what proportions? That is debatable. I think it somewhat depends on what kind of rice you use (I prefer an Asian new crop rice) but the closest I can come is one part rice to nine parts clear liquid. It's going to seem like too much clear liquid when you start boiling, but believe me, it is not--in fact, you may find yourself adding another can of chicken stock at the end if your congee ends up too thick.

Also at minimum, you need:

- Some ginger (at least a good, thumb-sized chunk, sliced)
- Scallions (Trader Joe's sells them as "green onions," which so far as I can tell are the same thing)
- Salt and pepper to taste

That's really all you need, but if you want to get fancy (or perhaps overly baroque in your opinion--I don't know if you're a congee purist) you can also add:

- Mushrooms of some sort (I got those baby Bellos--probably shitakes or those dried mushrooms they have at the Chinese People Grocery Store are better and more flavorful but it'll work with what you have)
- Peanuts
- Some kind of animal protein (I put in two frozen tilapia filets--they cook and get soft and then flake apart into smithereens, so it's really more of a fish chum infusion by the end than actual fish chunks. Alternatively you could use chicken or whatever.)

Put all the ingredients in a big pot. Use a big pot, because like polenta, this stuff grows. Put it on high until it starts to boil, and then put the heat all the way down. Simmer the shit out of it for two or three hours, until the rice breaks down, stirring occasionally. Like I said, you may need to add more water at the end, depending on how thick you like your porridge. Save the scallion tops (they are edible) and slice them for a garnish on top if you're so inclined.




Serve rice gruel to your kids like some cruel Dickensian orphan master. Tell them to eat it, it's good, and stop complaining that it's weird, they're half Chinese for chrissake. (You can probably skip that last part.)

weekend detritus

This is pure conjecture, not backed up by science of any kind, but I think that if you don't cry at least twice while watching "Toy Story 3," you should check for evidence that your soul hasn't died. Let me be clear that I do not customarily cry at movies (though I also have to divulge that the last time I cried at a movie was during the climactic sled scene in "Elf"...what?) but I cried three times last night while watching "Toy Story 3." Once during the goodbye scene with Andy and his mom (dur), again during the scene where Andy plays with his toys for the last time and Woody says, "So long, pardner," and once during the dumpster scene where Lotso Bear (SPOILER ALERT: he's bad!) yells at Big Baby that Daisy never loved them and the baby says "Mama?" while sticking out his lower lip. Granted, I think that moms with young kids are particularly susceptible to that last one (that's why I said that you had to cry only twice in my soul location criteria), but still, everyone has to at least tear up a little bit at the end, right?

On a possibly related note, Joe and I decided last night that Cal and Mack are not allowed to go to college.

So it got all cold here all of a sudden (actual empiric cold, not just I-live-in-the-South-now cold), which is kind of amazing in that it went in two weeks from this:




to this:




so this week cued the yearly scramble to locate cold-weather clothing for the kids, mostly by trying to decipher the scribbles on our rapidly disintegrating and yet inexplicably everpresent moving boxes. When we lived in New York we'd still go to the playground even on the coldest of winter days, but I have to admit I may be getting soft, I wanted to get back indoors after about an hour today.




(Above: Kenny from "South Park.")

Last week was a busy one at work, and we had a houseguest as well, my friend Veronica from high school. It seems weird to have friends that you've known for the past twenty years of your life (we met when we were twelve--Hunter goes from 7th to 12th grades and it's not very big, so by the time you graduate you and your classmates are basically irrevocably welded to each other for life) but it was nice to see her and talk about old times and new times. It's always good to have friends who knew you when you were an obnoxious greasy teenager but somehow still kind of like you anyway.




Anyway, have a good rest of your weekend, and don't forget to change your clocks. (Lousy farmers.)

fancy feast




I was just getting dinner ready for the kids, but something about how this looks on the plate makes me think of those pictures depicting all the wholesome ingredients inside a bag of dog chow.




(No, there is no actual point to this entry.)