yeast rising...

So I'm not a bad cook, and I can follow a recipe but there are things I've never done.

One of them is make bread. I don't know why. I was afraid of yeast. It sounds so mysterious and it needs so much skill.

My 10yo, who never reads anything voluntarily, except for cook books, wants to be able to cook, unsupervised. My compromise is that he can make dinner once a week, but I have to be in the kitchen, even if all I am doing is reading a (non-cook) book.

What does he do for his first effort? Make pizza. Which sounds like a good idea, after all he eats pizza, but all of sudden, there it is... yeast.

I've never made a yeast recipe in my life. How do I know if he is doing it wrong? How can I assist him when I haven't been on the journey myself?

What I do know about cooking, is that having the right tools help immeasurably. Our very detailed (and quite wonderful) cookbook - The New Best Recipe - recommends a baking stone. I'd never even heard of one before, and am suddenly sure that the recipe won't work without it. Thank goodness for Bed, Bath and Beyond in the next block from home, because for $14.99 I get all the pizza making equipment you could want - the stone, the rack, the pizza peel (another thing I'd never heard of - basically a large wooden spatula that eases the pizza onto the very hot stone) My son is thrilled when he comes home and sees it.

Then we squabble over the cookbook.
"Can I read it?"
"No, mummy, I'm looking at it!"
Finally, I get to read it and find out all sorts of things - it needs two hours to rise and then 30 minutes for a second rise (who knew about a second rise? Not me, that's for sure)

The first pizza is made while I'm on the phone, and of course, he forgets something - to put corn meal on the pizza peel. The pizza sticks to the peel and won't slide off into the very hot oven. I kind of scrape it off, and it rolls over, spilling half the topping. DS is distraught.

Now for the life lessons of cooking - the first one, or even the several early versions - they don't always work. You don't make an immaculate cake the very first time. These are skills that develop. He listens to me, distrustingly. It's okay to make mistakes, and learn. No one gets it right all the time. Don't give up. (You don't have to play sports to get these life lessons, the kitchen will do it just fine)

The second one, is better and the third one looks professional as it glides off the peel and into the swelteringly hot oven, and then glides back onto the spatula and onto a plate.

And you know something... following the instructions, you mix flour, water, salt and yeast and you get... pretty delicious bread! The pizzas, even the misshapen first one, taste delicious. We all eat happily.

DS is already planning his next dinner.

Wanting...

We wanted to go and see the film Wanted this weekend - but not enough to actually leave the house at 9.30pm and get to the cinema.

My 10 yo son really wanted to go and see Wall-E this w/e and booked tix on Fandango even before I woke up (7am, mummy, I found a session at 1.40, let's go...)

I actually loved Wall-E. I thought it was beautiful, and sad. The depiction of Earth and the future of the humans, who become these gormless baby like things, was horrible to me. I so don't want that future! But the romance, especially the two so human machines (more human than the humans by that stage) floating/dancing in space was just beautiful. They did something exceptional there.

In the end, instead of going to Wanted, I played around on the internet and found a few more friends for my facebook page - though I have real issues with the word 'friend'. Some of these friends are acquaintances, and I don't get it when people I don't know at all keep inviting me to be their 'friend'. I don't want friends I don't know. Friends to me implies a level of intimacy, that I do want and respect, and won't throw away this precious word on people I've meet once at a conference, or people I don't know at all. And yet, when I see that people have 121 'friends' and I have barely 40, I feel less popular, in that teenage angst way. I tease my sister that she has 'false friends' because she's up to 167 or thereabouts. And yet, most days when I walk down the street I know faces to say hello to, and that anchors me in this place/street like nothing else. DH laughs that walking with me is like walking down Sesame St, where I keep seeing people I know. That's what volunteering at a local school does for you, it satisfies the want/need to be recognized, to be known.

An Enchanted Evening

We go to the theater quite a bit, but sometimes, sometimes it's just magic.

We went and saw the current production of South Pacific at the Lincoln Center this week.

Oh my...

It's so lushly tropical and beautifully romantic and just a perfect night at the theater. All three of us cried at the end, including DH.

I mean, who doesn't want a man to sing to you - Some Enchanted Evening. It's such a romantic concept. There isn't a dud song in the entire score. Every time a new song starts you think to yourself, I know that song! and they are funny, witty, clever, beautiful songs, with the most amazing score. The music is so lush, and carries the story so beautifully.

We just had one of those magic nights, where everything is perfect (even the lighting was amazing, the sky - it looked like a real tropical sky. They managed to convey the sense of size and grandeur in a tropical night, with paint and light...)

Kelli O'Hara was just luminous as the sweet girl from Little Rock who has to grow up in more ways than she expected. Paulo Szot was the 44 year old plantation owner who falls in love with her. His voice was like chocolate. Really, so seductive and beautiful. The Lincoln Center has a really good site, with sound recordings, so you can have a listen to some of the magic. It won 7 Tonys and I would have given it more.

Fight to get a ticket, it's definitely worth it!

The Journey is the Destination

Oh what a week!

So I had to ask myself all sorts of questions this week, ones I didn't know the answers to -

I lost the election by one vote. But actually, it was a tie (168 votes and a perfect tie, how is that even possible?!) and then, one vote was discounted, correctly, and so technically I then lost. But the vote counters then worried that other votes may have also been filled out incorrectly, and discovered that due process had not been carried out.

And the question arose - was it a valid election. And I suppose the clear answer was - no, it was not. But my question was, did it matter? I lost by a vote, should I/could I be gracious and just bow out? I said to myself, yes, of course I should, I lost.

But lots of parents, especially those who are lawyers, were really upset. The process matters. There was talk about Florida and Bush and Gore (and I kept saying, guys, it's just the PTA!) but then I began to think, the journey is the destination, and what is the journey here. If I removed myself from the picture, if this was another school I was reading about, what would I think? I so didn't want to be the crazy PTA lady who doesn't win and then demands a new vote. I mean, who would want to be her?!

But on the other hand, if we get to a good end by bad means, does that matter? and I thought to myself, yes, actually, it does matter. The destination is not all, how we get to it makes a difference. And people were genuinely upset that the process had not been done correctly.

Democracy is precious, people are dying in Iraq over that. And votes are precious things, if they are not counted or filled correctly, then doubt sets in. Look at what Mugabe is doing, such a corruption, it hurts to hear about it. And I guess all the well educated and well informed parents were reacting against all this news, and were saying 'not on my watch' - where they can control events, then elections will be carried out clearly and cleanly, with due process, and as transparently as possible.

In the end, it all comes down to the benefit and education of the children, which is what our PTA mission is - and what does it teach the children if we allow fudged elections to go through? So I sighed and bit a very large bullet, and had more meetings than I can count, and finally, we declared the election void. A new one will take place in September.

The only way I could square it was if I removed myself from the process. I thought, if I don't run in the next election, what would I want to happen, and then I thought what are we teaching the kids. This is the most basic of civics lessons, but it's also the most basic lesson all all - humans make errors, now what do you do? Real, adult grown ups acknowledge the error, apologize, and then make it right. And that's a very good lesson for the kids to learn...

Choice is Good

I was the president of our public school PTA this year, and did a pretty good job, if I say so myself. Now we have the elections, and I can run again and am then termed out. So I put my name down and all is well, and then 2 days before the election another parent, who had been president previously, comes and tells me he is going to run against me.

And I have to confess my first reaction was 'against me? poor me!' and I blanched. But as I got used to the idea, I thought, you know something, choice is good. It is, frankly, a hell of a lot of work, if I don't get chosen, I don't have to do the work. But if I do get chosen, well then I do the work, which I enjoy, and both parties (me and the parent body) feel that a choice was made. So either way I win.

There was a part of me that instinctively felt I should back down - oh, if you really want it, please go ahead... - and that's why I liked Hillary Clinton. She didn't back down. She fought relentlessly. And even if I didn't like the way she fought, I really admired the fact that she didn't shy away and go all coy and female, but fought on till there was nothing left to fight for.

I would have voted for her, and I would vote for her again, should she chose to run in the future. I just really liked the role model of just getting up there and doing it, no matter what. I could not have done that myself, and liked to see a woman show us how to do it, even if it makes us cringe a bit, but that wanting and fighting for something so openly and in the face of quite a bit of humiliation - that just made her very human to me.

Perking up with Percocet

So, the pain is still here. Isn't that unbelievable? It's been months, literally.

But finally I can think again. They gave me oxycotin and all it did was make me floaty, but the pain still dominated and I still couldn't move. So I didn't take it. Finally I went to the doctor and said, is there another class of painkillers to give me and they gave me percocet. DH's new joke - I'm perking up on Percocet. Actually, it's all about pain management, what can they give you to make you get through the day like a semi-normal human being.

So now, I can sit (for short periods) walk (for short periods) and think (okay, you know the drill...) but it feels like a liberation after the months of literally stumbling through the days in a pain filled haze.

On to other matters... one thing about pain is that it makes you boring (or at least it made me boring) I couldn't focus on anything else. I couldn't even read. I could barely lie and listen to music. I couldn't surf the net, I could barely hold a conversation. So I'm glad to start interacting with the world again, because rattling around in my own foggy head was not fun.

My current obsession? Battlestar Galactica, of course. How I've loved that show. I was so out of it, I couldn't watch it and just let the episodes pile up in TIVO. And then, last weekend, I watched all 9 of them at once, leaving me open for the cliffhanger this w/e. Perfect timing.

This series was uneven, there were episodes that frankly felt like filler, where not enough was happening. But the ending, for this ending I'll forgive them anything...

They just push the envelope again and again, showing us our humanity, and the glories and dangers of it. I'm just so grateful to have such excellent and provocative (in the best sense of the word) television. It makes me want all TV to be that good!

Pain dulls the quirky edge

I realize I haven't written for over month. Have I been gallivanting in Europe, having an affair or won the lottery? Or have I had any quirky edge dulled by pain and done very little. Sadly, it's the latter.

I saw that I wrote on April 6th that I had back trouble so that makes it more than 6 weeks now, that I've had pain daily. You know what I don't like about pain - not that it's painful, which is a given, but that it impact on me is to turn me into someone I don't like. I'm snappy, with low patience, low interest, not moving much physically or spiritually.

So for the first few weeks I thought it would pass, and for the next few weeks I thought this will never pass this is my life from now on, and in the past week or so I've become much more proactive - I changed meds, went to a physical therapist, and then went to a chiropractor that my friend recommended.

The meds are definitely essential, and the physical therapist was okay but no real difference. After one session with the chiropractor I feel hopeful that this is not going to be the rest of my life... I'm having another session tomrrow and hopefully more interesting blogs (and a quirkier life!) will follow....

(I did find meditation helpful, and in my proactive phase have started listening to Joan Borysenko regularly again. She's really very good.)