Martha's Latest

The new issue of Martha Stewart Living is out, and while I don't often buy this magazine, I seem to always get it for Halloween and Valentine's Day. I like hearts year-round, so the cute stuff in here is worth the $6 for the magazine. I try not to buy too many magazines these days, but sometimes I splurge. Things I loved from this issue:


The melted chocolate filigree hearts that adorn this otherwise plain cupcake are really sweet and simple. It says to use a parchment bag or a plastic ziplock bag to pipe the filagree, but I tried the plastic bag and it was too hot to handle. It made my drizzles very...abstract in the recipe for peanut butter cookies below. You'll see...

I also loved the article on cake stands. Apparently Martha collects them, and since she's crazy rich she has a gigantic collection:


There were several pages of different kinds, ceramic, glass, milk glass, colored glass, it's amazing the array of choices. I don't have a cake stand, but I've been wanting one. Another "when we move" purchase. As of now, I don't even think I'd have room for a cake stand, so if we downsize in the kitchen by any amount, a cake stand will have nowhere to be! But I like the idea of presenting your food (cake isn't the only thing these babies are for) up on a pedestal.

By far though, the coolest article was about Darcy Miller, who has published books on weddings and is editorial director of Martha Stewart Weddings. As someone big into family history, preserving family history, and museums, this simple yet impactful display really caught my eye.

She has created a display wall in her home with shadowboxes and framed images. Among the regular old family photos are boxes with little keepsakes and photos.


Here's a close up:

One box has a picture from the delivery room, a pic of baby's first sonogram and the hospital ID bracelet. These are things usually kept in drawers and treasured but never really seen by anyone, so I thought this was great. Next to that is a box full of crayons that someone got too old to play with anymore, and another box with a little baby bathing suit! My Little Pony adorns the middle box as well.

Other things from the big wall include: a shadowbox with a bunch of baby sunglasses, with a picture of baby wearing them in the foreground; a picture of a kid in full swim-meet regalia with the winner's ribbon draping the front, a shadow box with tiny dolls in front of a picture of baby playing with them. I don't even have kids and I thought this was awesome! Of course, even the childless among us can do this for other things like concerts that were special, dates or trips where you saved a little souvenir. And the super modern vibe here can be played with as well. You could easily do this with a lot of vintage frames and boxes. Or use cheap wood boxes from Micheal's and glue vintage frames to the front of them to give it some cohesiveness.

This is a cool way to showcase the ephemera or items that are meaningful to you personally, but that nobody would find very meaningful without the juxtaposition of an image or other items for context.

I'm so doing this in the new place!


And now, for the cookie portion of today's post!




It's rainy and windy in Long Beach today, but not so cold that I couldn't walk my dog in flip flops. Either way, it called for matzo ball soup for lunch and home made peanut butter cookies. I used Martha Stewart's recipe, which is amazing. Perfectly soft and not dry like some peanut butter cookies can be. I just jazzed it up with some melted chocolate. Who doesn't love the peanut butter and chocolate combo? Whenever there are mini Reese's peanut butter cups in the house (once a year we get a bag for Halloween and proceed to pretty much eat them ourselves), they don't last long.


I realized that I had some super fine baker's sugar, which I have to use up before we move, so I used that in place of the regular granulated sugar. I don't know if it makes such a big difference in cookies, but the texture of the dough was very smooth. One thing I should probably buy is good vanilla extract. I use the generic brand from the grocery store and I just know the better stuff would add something. Do you use fancy ingredients like that? Is it worth it? Do you really taste the difference?

The Wikipedia entry on peanut butter cookies indicates that pressing the dough is important so that it bakes evenly, but claims that the cross-hatched fork tines way of doing so is not necessary. But then, how would you know it's a peanut butter cookie? It's like sacrilege not to do it, right?


If a cookie happens to break on the way from the cookie sheet to the cooling rack, that's not really my fault, but as the cook, I'm obligated to eat it. It's a safety thing, I think.


My addition is the swizzles of melted chocolate. I just melted semi-sweet chocolate chips and did some drizzling. The recipe says it makes two dozen, but I counted about 4 more cookies than that. I don't like giant cookies though, so maybe that's where me and Martha differ.

40 American Christmases

Have I ever told you my American Tale? Remember the movie An American Tail, about Fivel Mouskevitz, the animated Russian mouse who makes his way from Russia to America?

I totally remember that movie. I can still sing some of the songs and I don't think I've seen it in over 15 years. It came out in 1986, at which time I was about 9. I know that it seemed incredibly scary, the move to a totally different country. Of course, Fivel was separated from his family and had to navigate the new world by himself (see, scary!). But still, it's his immigration story. I don't have one, of course, I was born about 15 miles from where I'm typing this, but my family's story is an interesting one. And the fall/winter of 2009 marks the 40th anniversary of their journey from Cuba to America. Kind of a big deal, I'd say.

1969

Over 52,000 Cubans emigrated to the US in 1969. My mom's side of the family came over that year. My mother with her four siblings and two parents came in September. By October, the anti-war demonstrations in the US had reached epic proportions. In November, 500,000 people marched on Washington against the war. While hippies were dancing in Berkeley's People's Park, my mom and her family were adjusting to life outside of a dictatorship. Seeing American flags burn on the nightly news must have been quite the trip for a group of kids who were trained to sing the revolutionary anthem while assembling rifles. The Cuban educational system's motto, 'Estudio, Trabajo, Fusil' means "Study, Work, Rifle."


They settled in Lennox, a small town adjacent to Inglewood and LAX airport in southern California.

Cuba's immigration history is long and interesting. Since the United States has a history of instituting quotas for immigration from certain countries, people often hung out in Cuba, waiting to enter the U.S. This is partly how Cuba developed a variety of Asian, Jewish, and European enclaves. My family's history before Cuba is a mystery. The genealogical documents about when and how my family got to Cuba in the first place is all locked up over there, in databases and files that I can't access. Vague recollections and family gossip place them in Spain, Scotland, and Ireland. But I do have info on the immigration from Cuba to the U.S.

Both mom and dad came over (separately) on the Freedom Flights, the second wave of immigration after the Cuban communist revolution. The first wave was full of all of the rich folks, who could afford to jet out of Cuba as soon as Castro took power. Despite increases in available health care, education, and the enfranchisement of black Cubans, some of the revolutionary policies were seen as unbearable. The Freedom Flights assisted the middle and lower-middle classes, who had become increasingly dissatisfied with the policies curtailing political freedom and eliminating private property (some 55,000 small businesses were closed down by the government in an effort to eliminate private property in 1968). President Lyndon Johnson allowed for daily chartered flights to assist Cubans who wanted to permanently leave Cuba.

I now have my grandmother's and mother's Cuban passports, stamped with "Nulo" or void, which meant they couldn't return home because their passports were no longer valid.


Picture day for the passports was probably not a fun day, if their faces are any indication. Truly any bureaucratic appointment with 5 kids would probably be a nightmare. My mom says she is angry in this picture because she was bummed on her new haircut, which was too short for her taste.

These passports are powerful reminders of the consequences such a decision created for a young family. People who applied to leave were generally treated suspect, as they were defecting, and were given strict rules about leaving. Called "anti-revolutionaries," they were subject to a number of indignities.

In the case of my family, my grandfather was sent to work in the sugar cane fields far from home (quite the change of pace for a banker), while my grandmother cared for 5 small children by herself. Already accustomed to life under the regime, she had quite the side business making shoes out of old rubber tires and selling them on the black market so that she could get more ration cards or trade for goods that would feed her kids and make life bearable. My uncle (the oldest kid) has a story about how he was singled out in front of his whole school as a traitor on a day he thought he was getting an award. They haven't told me too much about what happened during the processing on their way out, but I gather it was a stressful and humiliating few days.

Leaving was the promise of something better, so they got out as soon as they could. They couldn't take much, and many of their family photos had to be mailed to them later, but they arrived in Florida and came to California, hoping to settle forever. You see, my family aren't the kind who are waiting to return, living in "exile." Many Cubans live "en exilio," waiting to return to Cuba to...well...I'm not sure what exactly they plan to do, but they believe that they were forced to leave a place they loved and that they want to go back there. Even so, my grandmother didn't become a citizen until the early years of this decade, just a few years before she passed away from pancretic cancer in 2004.

When she traveled to Spain in the 80s, she had to get some kind of passport. Due to her interesting situation (resident alien, Cuban refugee) her passport had this to say:


It must seem very strange and vulnerable to have no country. To feel like a stranger in your own home, so to speak. I wish now that I had asked her about that, and how she managed to make that kind of decision for such a large group of kids.

Just the other day I was talking to my mom about House Hunters International on HGTV, the show about buying a house in a different country. She and her husband (my step-dad, who was born in Mexico) were both fascinated with the show. They were talking about how "crazy" it must be to make the decision to move to a different country. To which I said "Hello!? You both did the exact same thing!" How quickly 40 years changes things.

This picture is of their first Christmas. They didn't have much, but they did have a tree and new, plastic covered couches. De rigueur for 1969.

Their story is one of many. In fact, a new PBS documentary about the Freedom Flights called My Suitcase Full of Hope just screened this past May and I just ordered the DVD today. I'm hoping to get a broader picture of their journey so I can ask my mom, aunts, and uncles some good questions.

On the eve of my mom's 40th American Christmas, I'm looking forward to celebrating the traditional Noche Buena (Good Night) a Christmas Eve party all about family and food. I'm planning to shadow her preparation of the dinner, so I can give you a good rundown of recipes and how they changed on the trip over.

Halloween Memories

I have always loved Halloween. I don't know why, but ever since I was very small, I enjoyed the theatricality and the scariness of this holiday. I love scary stories, and until I saw Paranormal Activity a few weeks ago, I never had bad dreams or stayed up late worrying about movie creatures. Seriously, that movie was frightening. I had a similar fright with Blair Witch Project, but as long as I stay away from nature (which is what I do anyway), the witch ghost can't get me. Demons who attach themselves to suburbanite students? Consider me scared.

Anyway, my mom always encouraged my love of this holiday. Cubans don't really celebrate Halloween (I would imagine it was especially frowned upon after the Revolution), so her parents never really got into it, but they allowed her and her siblings to dress up. There aren't a lot of pictures of their costumes, partly I think, due to the fact that my grandparents didn't think it was important to record. But you can kind of tell that my mom liked dressing up from other elements of the historical record. Here she is wearing my grandmother's wig for laughs:

P.S. I love wigs! I have four of them and I only bought one for Halloween purposes!

Of course, when I was born, everything changed. Now there was a little doll to dress up for Halloween! How fun! I was the first baby of the family and I suppose, the first American in the family. My mom tried to make sure Thanksgiving was American style (a no rice and beans mantra was apparently needed) and she made sure I had costumes if I wanted. For every picture that doesn't exist from my mom's Halloweens, there are about 5 from mine and my brothers'.

She says that I often created costumes and did fun makeup faces when it wasn't even Halloween.
I don't remember that really, but I do remember her telling me whenever I did something weird that I was very "creative." My dad fully encouraged the holiday, though I think for him it must have been tough. His father died in a tragic explosion on October 31st when he was a kid in Cuba. I can't imagine coming to a new country after that kind of loss only to find that the anniversary of his death is a death celebration. He never really talked about it and I don't know if he and his brothers ever trick-or-treated.

But my brothers and I did. We sometimes came back from a trip around the block and put on another costume and went out twice. Greedy little jerks, we were. And the amount of candy was totally ridiculous. I'm surprised we were allowed to keep it all, but I think my mom knew us well enough to know that come December, she'd see most of it in the trash. Except for my brother Lui, who I bet still keeps a candy drawer full to the brim.

Last year's Halloween celebration was not so hot. M. had just gotten laid off. I had a vampire costume planned, but I did a lackluster job of it because I felt, well, lacking in luster. M. went out with me anyway, because he knows I love the holiday. His costume, though planned in advance, worked perfectly for his mood:
Frank the bunny from Donny Darko allowed him to hide behind a mask. It also had a small hole in the mouth perfect for a cocktail straw. This year's celebration is going to be better, but it has been such a tough year. I didn't really do much decorating. I'm actually looking forward to next year's holiday, really. I plan on having a party, I think, in our new apartment. But tonight, we will go out and we have costumes and we will drink and be merry. The neighborhood kids love our dog Radley, so we'll dress him up too and take a walk around the block while they are out trick-or-treating. He loves wearing stuff, so I'm sure he'll be the happiest dog ever.

I keep thinking of my future, full of possibility. I know there is a lot left to do and a lot I want to accomplish here, but I am so excited about moving that I wish it was happening sooner. Remember my 2009 goals/resolutions? I had called them collectively "Go 2009." Well, it's still called that, but it's more like "Go already 2009." 2010 awaits!

Hope you all have fun Halloweens and that none of you are wearing "sexy" versions of regular costumes.

Prozac Nation

I don't know how many of you are on anti-depressants, but according to CDC statistics, they are the most prescribed drugs in the US. They are prescribed for all sorts of things, but mostly for people who display certain emotional criteria. If you have a depressive episode, which many people over 25 usually do, and you go in to your doctor, it's fairly easy to meet that emotional criteria.

My grandmother had severe depressive episodes in addition to an obsessive compulsive disorder. Her house was always closed up in the winter time, curtains drawn, in bed, the whole bit. To this day I find that opening the curtains in the morning is one of the more important things I do. Letting light in is a big deal. She used to clean silverware with bleach after certain people whom she considered to be not clean enough came for dinner. She bleached the hell out of everything. Many a morning my mother leaned over the kitchen counter in the kitchen to find a line of bleach on her shirt. She showered constantly. She was obsessed with killing any and all flies that entered her home. She needed there to be at least one gallon of milk in the refrigerator at all times. She was funny and she knew how to make you laugh, but she had obsessions that were debilitating and straining at times.

My mom lived with these moments her whole life. My grandmother was convinced she was going to die early and talked about it. In my grandmother's defense, her life before she had kids was no picnic. She could easily have been dealing with the demons of her experiences. But I wonder if it is genetic. Certainly depression may run in families as a result of environmental factors, and it must be hard to distinguish that from genetics in a study. The most they've come up with is that it's possible to inherit a vulnerability.

I've always been kind of an anxious person, a little prone to compulsion when it comes to things like keeping my environment neat and tidy. I feel very good when I see lines on the carpet after vacuuming. I feel like a clean apartment is brighter, with more space and air. I need the paper towels and toilet paper to go "over" and not "under," and I will change them when I see they are not. When my in-laws came to visit the first time (which also coincided with my mother visiting our apt. for the first time) I cleaned every single piece of silverware and put it in the drawer in an organized way. I scrubbed every surface of my apartment. There is a funny story in my family of my grandmother visiting my aunt in her first home and stepping inside only to go right to the oven and open the door. Of course, the oven was one place she didn't feel she needed to scrub. She was wrong. So I scrubbed like hell. And my mother-in-law was just happy to see us, she didn't seem to care about how clean my apartment was. My mom, of course, went to the bathroom and pulled the shower door to see if I had cleaned the tub. Every faucet gleams, every floorboard is dustless when I'm on a cleaning tear. It's ridiculous. I'm a perfectionist in a lot of ways, which makes me anxious and anxiety sucks. I get TMJ, so my jaw gets tight. My dentist was surprised that I needed more than ibuprofen to deal with it and prescribed a muscle relaxant because I was so "high strung." You know what high strung people hate? Being called out for being high strung, dentist guy. Geez.

When I was having a "depressive episode" a couple years ago I finally decided to talk to someone about it. A friend of mine told me that since she'd been on anti-depressants, things were much easier to deal with and she was much happier. I made an appointment with my HMO's psychiatric center. They were really fascinated with my compulsive stuff. They asked all kinds of questions like "What happens when you find that the paper towels are under? How do you react?" You know, to see if I go on a psycho frenzy. But my anxiety and bummed out situation led to the prescription of Prozac. Or, at least its generic, fluoxetine. Some piddly little amount.

I was more open and less focused on minutiae, I felt easy going as a teacher (btw, great job choice for an ocd, anxiety ridden, shy perfectionist, right?), and I wasn't as concerned with perfection. I went to therapy for a minute, but that was a disaster. One doctor told me to deal with my anxiety over finances and not having enough time by hiring someone from a service called "My Man in India" to do all my bill paying for me."It's very cheap," she said. Modern day colonialism, a solution for all! Every solution to my problems seemed to come from Stephen Covey's 7 Habits for Highly Effective People. Like I needed more numeric lists in my life.

Recently I realized that I've been on this stuff for years. It was only supposed to be for a few months, until I was able to motivate to work on the dissertation (my main reason for being depressed). So I gradually weaned myself off and now I'm drug-free. Want to know what's changed? Nothing. I don't think it really did much anymore. Maybe it's what they prescribe to people like me that aren't clinically depressed, as sort of a placebo. It's not like I'm in some happy great place in my life, believe me there are things to be super bummed about. But I'm not, at least not as much as I could be, given my genetic pre-disposition. Maybe it's too soon to tell, but I have to say, I think it gave me the license to be more laid back, to fight anxiety, to be more confident in my abilities as a teacher. Maybe it just allowed me to give myself permission more than it messed with my chemistry. Or maybe my grandmother's life-long struggle with depression made me think that every bout of the blues was part of a cylce that would lead toward my self-emposed entombment in my bedroom for months at a time.

Hello, overshare! I just thought I'd let you in on some good news in my life. Don't think my story means you can just cut out your drugs or that I've joined Scientology. It doesn't work the same for everyone and some of you probably need some chemical maintenance. If anything, my story should encourage you not to be insured through an HMO. Maybe I would have gotten better psychiatric care had there been someone who didn't just have a checklist in front of them and a bookshelf full of self-help titles.

Back From Philadelphia

Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. I enjoyed my cold East Coast holiday American style.
M.'s mom made an impressive stuffing from toasted cubed challah, carrots, celery, onion, and spices. Her cranberry with apples baked on top was delicious too. All in all an impressive meal.

She has inherited these beautiful plates from her mother (M's gran, who passed away a couple years ago) and I just love them. So cute!


M's mom is an excellent cook, and her idea for Thanksgiving dessert pretty much ruled. She made chocolate chip cookies from scratch and made sure they were very thin. We used them to make ice cream sandwiches. No pumpkin pie, which was OK with me.

It was nice to get away, though I had planned to do some work on my trip and didn't get around to much of it. Actually, there was a lack of Internet availability at my in-laws and that really took its toll. I had to admit to myself that my functionality is dependent on the web, so if there's an apocalypse, look for me under a desk, curled up in the fetal position trying to access e-mail on my Blackberry.

I enjoyed downtown shopping (H&M, Ubiq shoe store, Philadelphia City Sports, and Urban Outfitters, if you were wondering). I have been looking for some comfy sneakers for a while, and I managed to find two pairs that were on super sale.


My silver Pumas are pretty sweet, no?

Urban Outfitters had some cute things that I wouldn't lug across the country, but felt the need to share:

These candy cane shot glasses are kinda neat.


Cool vintage-y frame
This key ring is so cute, and sorry whoever is making money from this, but I'm going to totally DIY it for myself. I saw it. It's a piece of plywood with a screen print and three cheap hooks.

A lot more cuteness was at the Philly Urban Outfitters, but not on the website. The H&M was good, but not as good as the South Coast Plaza one, or the San Francisco one. Still, I bought a skirt and a blouse for work. And there were a few boutiques I looked into too, but if you don't live there, I'm not going to make you sad by talking about them.

I got a couple more weeks of teaching and then the semester comes to a close. Can't believe it's almost the end of the year.

Late Late Late!

I bailed on Friday Finds this week. I know. I made up for it below...

I was super busy this weekend! I had a friend from out of town come to visit, I had mega piles of midterms to grade (not done yet...like not even remotely), and my brother was in town as well, so I went to my mom's for Sunday dinner. She loved the tattoo, in the way that a mom that dislikes tattoos in general would. I told her I got the anchor because you know, she's my anchor. And she responded with "and you're my ocean, because I never know what you'll bring in." At least she had a sense of humor about it, which is nice. Meanwhile, this tattoo is below the elbow, which is apparently a big deal. But is it really, anymore? I feel like everyone has tattoos or is at least not uncomfortable with them, but it could just be a So-Cal thing.

Now, onto my belated Friday Finds:

It's getting closer, and I figure people might finally be in the mood for this stuff:

This website turns Victorian family photographs into creepy monster photos when you look at them from different angles, a-la the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. They can do it to your own family photos if you want!

http://www.hauntedmemories.com/

Pushin' Daisies is a shop for all things death and funeral. Want some toe tags?, how about a body outline beach towel?

http://www.pushindaisies.com/

Front Gate has some amazing Halloween stuff for indoor decorating, outdoor, and entertaining. Some of it is going for very cheap now that Halloween is a few days away. Maybe a full sized coffin for next year??

Front Gate Halloween


Really who could do it better than Martha Stewart. Her classed-up Halloween party stuff blows me away every year. I like the idea of supporting ex-cons trying to re-integrate into society, so check out her official site. The store has some very nice party invitations, including these "Mad Scientist" ones.

St. Mom

I spoke to my mom today about my whole eye thing, and the first thing she said was, "I can give you my cornea," to which I said, "you can't just give your cornea away. You kind of need it." Her response was, "What do I need one cornea for? You can have it. I don't have to see out of both eyes, but you do." How crazy is that? My vision is a little blurry. It's not like I wear an eye patch! This struck me as a very "mom" thing to say. I thought it was incredibly amusing, but she was serious. She kept reminding me that she was serious on the phone before we hung up.

What does this have to do with McCain's VP choice or the Virgin Mary? Well, it made me think of moms and the expectation of sacrifice and devotion that is rarely applied to fathers. Palin is a mom, and one that is getting put through the ringer in a way I kind of expected. Now, I dislike this woman's policies, and I would never in a million years vote for her and as an American am pretty embarrassed that she could be the first woman VP (what with the ties to big oil, her anti-abortion stance, and her apparent hatred of Alaskan bears- both the animals and the gay men). That being said, there's all this discussion going around the webs and tvs concerning her ability to be a good VP and be a good mother at the same time. She's got a special needs infant, a teen-aged daughter that is pregnant, and I think three other kids that are so freaking glad right now that they aren't "mommy's little PR problem." I keep hearing about "how could she do a good job with the country if she can't run her family right?" Or, "how could she focus on VP duties with an infant and pregnant daughter?"

Curiously, these are not questions that anyone ever asked of the men who have run for VP. "Who is going to take care of your kids, Dan Quayle? Al Gore?" "Don't you think they need a father more than the country needs a VP?" I can't think of even men in managerial positions in offices that I have worked in being asked these questions. "Bill, are you sure you can handle being accounts manager of the entire company what with three young kids at home? Isn't it a little bit selfish?" How weird is it to think about those questions applied to men. It is 2008! I can forgive the lack of flying cars and food that zaps into existence out of nowhere, but the whole "women are nurturers and men are providers" stuff is way too behind, culturally, for me. And this is a big question for political pundits (who, by the way, are all such bottom feeders).

Some days I just wish we could appoint Amy Goodman as Journalism Czar. She could go from network to network and hit bad reporters and pundits on the back of the hand with a ruler and make them write ethical standards over and over again until they get them right. She could ban all hairspray from TV news broadcasts. She would erase Lauren Sanchez and the entire My 13 news team from our memories. They'd just be a bad bad dream... Oh Amy, I wish it were so.

Convention-itis

Oh man, I could just be a bit hormonal right now, but the Michelle Obama DNC speech (and intro) made me tear up. It's nice to see words like "compassion"used in a real way, and lived in a real way. It was cool to see her and Barack talk about how they started dating in regular conversational speech, not overly rehearsed. And she seems kind of cool. I like the words they use: hope, compassion, future, change, gratitude.

I would love someone from a working class background, not to mention a person of color, in the White House. Someone who knows what it's like to grow up frustrated over money. I hated seeing that frustration in my parents, especially in my mom, who worked 4 jobs at once to be able to provide for us after my dad stopped paying child support. She still works in a factory, in a job that makes her back ache and her feet hurt. She works at a factory that makes frozen health food dishes, so she spends a lot of the day in a freezer. And she comes home to take care of my step-dad, who has a rare form of cancer that requires him to have chemo treatments every month, probably for the rest of his life.

The Ted Kennedy speech was also a bit inspiring. I wanted him to come out blazing, no bullshit now that he really doesn't owe anybody anything, but he was professional and thoughtful even. It must be hard to make that speech to a crowd that knows you don't have much time. I don't know if I could have done it, as he did, without cracking or tearing up. I heard a story that Ted Kennedy wore a t-shirt to a bbq this past summer (before he was diagnosed with cancer) that said "Bill Clinton for First Lady." Don't know if it is true, but if it is, that totally rules. The sexism of the message is totally trumped by the balls it took for him to wear it.


Ted seemed to have faith and hope in the future and even promised to serve the Senate during the next presidential term. I want to be hopeful. When I think of all the people in my life affected by cancer, it makes me sick. And some of them didn't have the health care that would have prevented tumor growth or made it easier to live with the treatments. That makes me feel even sicker.

The last two elections made me lose faith in humanity. One of my colleagues said after the last presidential election that he finally understood what it must have felt like to want to secede from the Union during the Civil War. Just that kind of feeling that there are really totally different ideological systems guiding people in this country. Just not being able to abide by that kind of thinking.

This Convention seemed important to pay attention to, which is kind of nuts, since I never really care for those speeches. A lot of hustling, preaching to the choir I always thought. But the choir needs preaching, I guess. That's what 8 years of Dubya will do to you. Have you seen the cover of Rolling Stone?

Quittin' time's a-comin'!

Genetics

Coney Tarot
Originally uploaded by wzrdreams

My mom was very interested in my tarot reading from a few weeks ago. She wanted a psychic reading for herself by the same people, so I agreed to go with her. We met up this morning and had breakfast down the street from the place. As I'm sipping my OJ, we are talking about psychic readings in general. My mom has always been fascinated by it and so not surprisingly, I have been as well. She told me some interesting stories about psychics she's visited in the past. Not too many, but a couple seemed on the level in terms of relating specific information about her during the reading (and being right about the future in some cases). She also, as an aside, mentioned that my great-grandmother (the mother of my grandma with the cookbooks) did tarot card readings to make extra money in Cuba. Hello? How did this little tidbit of history get put aside for the 31 years I've been alive? So cool! I should be used to it by now, I find out new things like this all the time. My grandmother never believed her mother had psychic ability. She figured it was a good way for a single mom in the thirties to make some money. But I wonder...

My mom has had some semi-psychic moments. Most moms have an "eyes in the back of my head" kind of foreknowledge, based primarily on studying their kids so intently that they know what they are going to do before they do it. But for my mom, there's a little more going on. She just knows things. For instance, in my younger days, I was driving home from Fullerton (when I lived at home) very late and after a few cocktails. So stupid and unsafe. I was extra cautious, going 60 mph (this was back in the day when the limit was 55 mph) so it didn't look too perfect, but also not crazy fast. As soon as I got past the 71 freeway on the way to Corona, I was getting very tired. That's when I noticed there was a cop on my tail. I don't know how long he had been there, but I do know that he followed my ass all the way until my exit and then sped off. It was nerve wracking, but it also kept me from dozing or swerving or doing anything but pay attention to my driving.

The next morning, my mom commented on how late I'd gotten home the night before. She always waited up. Always. And she worried. Always. But she said that she must have fallen asleep at some point because she'd had a dream that she was worried about me coming home so late and a cop came to her and told her "Don't worry, I'm watching out for her." Yeah. I dropped my spoon right into my cereal and looked at her with giant eyes. I still get weird fluttery belly feelings thinking about it. Stuff like that happens to her periodically. I had been contemplating putting a star on the back of my neck as my very first tattoo when I was 20, and not two minutes later did I get a call from my mom telling me she was watching the news and she saw a chola with a tattoo on her neck. "Please tell me you wouldn't do that, would you? Se ve tan feo (It looks so ugly)." So I put it on my ankle instead.

This power has yet to yield lottery winnings, but it's fascinating. Wouldn't it be cool if great-grandma was the real deal? And it is a hereditary thing? Regardless, I bought a tarot deck on the way home. When the revolution comes and all the lefty professors are sent out to pasture, I can rely on my trusty tarot deck to get me through the tough times.

Lil Cuties

Can you believe my left eye is still blurry? I don't feel any pain or even much sensitivity to light anymore, but the blurryness remains. Hopefully it will go away. I stop the meds soon, so I will have a better picture of things then. Sheesh. I stayed in all day on Saturday, which sucked because it was so beautiful here. Everyone went to the beach while I read the last Harry Potter. M.'s friends were in from out of town with their little one year-old daughter Ella. She's a real sweetie, yet at the same time, it was clear that we were all her servants. "Get my food servant," "Hold my popsicle so that when I occasionally come over to you it is ready for me," "My binky is not in my mouth! Fix it servant!"

I was better on Sunday so I visited my mom with my mother-in-law. She gave me some interesting news. I knew that my grandparents were divorced on my mom's side, but apparently my grandmother's parents were also divorced. In 1935. Kind of a big deal then, no? M.'s great grandparents were also divorced. I guess we come from some pretty strong women who weren't afraid to be independent even when it wasn't socially acceptable. At least for my side, I know my grandmother was pretty stubborn and hard-headed. This is a woman who slapped a teacher because she attempted to force her children to sing the communist national anthem (she also insulted my grandmother because they didn't want to sing it). After that, her kids got a pass when it came to group displays of patriotism. She supposedly got that spirit from her mom.

In our reminiscing about all things family, my mom remembered that my brothers and I had these little silhouettes done at Disneyland when we were about two years old. I love them!






















I am happy to have visitors, but I really need to get myself ready for the fall. I have 187 students to look forward to. All of my classes are full and closed. Yikes! Wish I could do multiple choice exams. Damn ethical standards...

Grandma's Recipes

My grandmother was a very interesting and resourceful person.
She always managed to make things happen and get things done. Her mother died when she was young and at 15 she left home. She talked about living in boarding houses and going down to the ice box late at night to steal some milk, then replacing what she'd taken with a little water so no one would notice. It must have been a traumatic thing for her, because her refrigerator always had at least one gallon of Vitamin D real deal milk. And she'd freak out if we ran out- you had to go get some ASAP. She was diabetic, but she loved sweets (if you tried to buy her sugar-free sweets, she'd pretty much laugh in your face). She was always joking and making fun of people. She's where my whole family gets its sense of humor.

After the revolution in Cuba (in the 60s), she had five children to feed and managed to do it using the government-approved ration cards and the black market. She sewed up shoes out of rubber and canvas and traded them for meat to cook for dinner. My mother and uncle used to deliver these shoes by hiding them at the bottom of a bag of oranges. She had a high standard for nurturance. So much so that when a pair of swallows made their nest in the overhang of her roof (now my mom's roof- this picture is from today!), she got mad that sometimes the mama bird would let her baby die if it fell out of the nest. One year she refused to even let her make her nest because she was a "bad mother." I guess seeing the hungry chicks reminded her of something. You can see three hungry babies in that nest today, mouths open. They just hung open like that forever. I took something like 4 pictures! Once I realized mama bird wasn't returning because she was waiting for the giant camera wielding monster to go away, I stopped snapping photos.

I'm going through her old recipe books as part of a project I'm working on with a friend to publish our grandmothers' recipes. Her grandmother is Polish and also has some interesting food-related stories to tell. I picked up the books at my mom's house. My mom said that my grandmother would often sit at the kitchen table writing out recipes carefully in a book so that we would have them when she passed away. It was totally morbid at the time, which she acknowledge, but such a treasure to have now, even if nobody sees them but me. This picture to the left is just so...her. She didn't have a stapler with her or a paper clip, but she had a sewing pin. Viola!

This is a project I'd really like to make happen. I am going to be going through these recipes, doing translations, making the dishes, and photographing them in my spare time. Maybe by the end of January I'll have enough to start doing some research (January will be mydown time at work) on the historical side of things. If you have great original recipes from your grandmother and an interesting story to go with them, preferably with a connection to a historical event or period, we'd love to see it! Leave a comment with your e-mail (Don't worry, I won't publish it for the world to see).