What’s in a Name/The tree doesn’t fall far from the apple

My kids have named a lot of their crap over the years.  My oldest started naming his toys when he was around 2 and a half, and they all began with the letter B.  There was this safari man who came with a Jeep named B.D.  The dog on the string was Benny—pretty comical since my husband’s name is Ben.  He named a car transporter Brahday (not the person who drives the car transporter, but the actual vehicle itself), and a wooden frog Brahda…I guess he was hooked on the letter B, but the creative juices had petered out.  Nonetheless, those names have stuck for years.  His little brother has a cadre of imaginary friends whose names we hear on a regular basis:  Mr. Monster and Mr. Apple are the main players, but occasionally we’re treated to news from Mr. Pen, Mr. Sock, and Mr. Underpants.  Yeah, if you hear about a mister at our house, you’re pretty much guaranteed to never see him. 

I don’t name things.  I do have respect and affection for certain items in and around our home:  the coffeemaker, my trombone, clean sheets, firm pillows, blankets that haven’t been dragged all over the floor, the piano, our dishwasher.  I call them what they are.  Even our vehicles---no names. 

Until today. 

This morning I dropped the kids off at their respective schools in our 2010 Toyota Sienna, and headed to the beach to take a walk on the strand.  Afterwards I got back in the minivan, fired it up, and realized that I had left one of the dome lights on while looking for my sunglasses before the walk.  As I turned it off, I said---out loud---“Good thing we started, Bessie!”  I almost gave her a pat on the dashboard.  Almost.

Let the Games Begin

I love games.  I was so blissfully happy when our neighbors agreed to come over to our place on New Year’s Eve for food, wine and Monopoly (it also meant we saved a bunch of dough on a sitter and a night on the town, but that is really and truly beside the point).  The love affair started as a child:  my dad’s family lived a three-hour drive from us in rural central Wisconsin, and there were several things guaranteed on every trip up to Grandpa’s house:  a refrigerator in the basement fully stocked with cheap caffeine-free soda, an empty offer of chewing tobacco from my grandpa—“It’ll put hair on your chest.” (never mind that if hair ever showed up on my chest I would pay huge sums of money to have it removed)—and a game of Trivial Pursuit every night.  It was always boys versus girls…always.  And there were habitual disputes and quarrels:  at what point did the answer have to be EXACTLY what was on the card and when approximate was acceptable was a big one.  Taking too much time to answer the question was constant fodder for argument, and—after Who Wants to be a Millionaire came on the air—the “is that your final answer” question became customary.  At some point during every game there was an accusation that one team or another had gotten the “easy box.”  As I got older, I graduated to staying up for the post-Trivial Pursuit games of cribbage, oftentimes paired with a glass of brandy, Grandpa’s drink of choice.  My Grandpa to this day checks everyone’s hands after they count out. 

I learned to play a fair number of other games as a child:  the perfunctory beginner card games of go fish and war, and then gin when I was a little older.   Monopoly, Life, Mille Bornes, Scattergories, Battleship and Uno were all staples of our game cabinet.  My mom’s mother lived near us, and we played a lot of Rummy Royal at her house.  I felt pretty cool playing Rummy Royal, because it involved poker chips.   We also owned Risk and Scruples, although we never played those two games with adults, and I’m pretty certain we reinvented the rules every time we played them.  My dad also taught me to play checkers and, a few years later, chess, neither of which he ever let me win. 

There is a now a pretty wide swath of distance between me and my game-loving family, and sadly my husband does not share my penchant for the board game.  (I have suckered him into the occasional contest, mostly when we were in college, and actually had friends over.  As a right-brained person, I have a special affinity for Cranium, probably not the best game choice for an engineer).  However I do have a four-year-old, and this past summer, on a whim during a Lincoln nap, I taught Alex how to play Uno.  He was instantly addicted.  He suckered everyone who came to our house into playing with him: Ben, the babysitter, our neighbor behind us, our next-door neighbor, the babysitter’s sister.  When somebody won he would immediately deal them another seven cards and continue the game.  Once he got comfortable with Uno, I showed him how to play go fish, Chutes and Ladders, Memory, and more recently Hi Ho Cherry-O, a Christmas gift from my sister.  Yesterday I taught him how to play checkers.  And, while I did allow him to jump me a few times, I kicked his ass.  He has been pestering for another game ever since.

Lesson:  if you don’t marry a game-lover, make one.

Chicken Vindaloo---the Uneasy Way

1.) Grind coriander for spice mixture.  Try it with a mortar and pestle, but soon you’ll realize you’re getting nowhere.  Look for your spice grinder (repurposed second coffee bean grinder), but don’t find it, even though it’s staring you in the face.  Give up and do a half-assed job in your blender.

2.)  Cut the chicken thighs.  Partway through cutting chicken, you should hear a loud thump as your one-year-old gets his first bleeding head injury.  Put the knife down, but don’t wash that chicken hand!  That way you can feel extra guilty when the back of your baby’s shirt is full of raw chicken goo.

3.) Finish cutting your chicken, mix it with the spices and toss it in the fridge.  Make chicken mini-tacos from the freezer for dinner.

Day 2

4.) Well, the meat prep is done, the rest should be easy.  Place your youngest son in the pack and play, so he can’t commit suicide out of your eye sight.  If you alternate between talking to him like you are teaching a cooking class and singing silly songs, he probably won’t cry too much.  Slice onion thin.  Cry so hard from cutting onion that you can’t fathom handling it to measure out only the two cups you need; throw all onion slices in a bowl, cover with Saran Wrap, and set aside for your vindaloo.

5.)  Mince the garlic and ginger.   Make three trips to your older son’s room so he can give you unimportant messages about how he doesn't want that toy castle from Target anymore.

6.)  Cut one medium baking potato into ¼ inch cubes, not because it actually says ¼ inch, but because you need glasses.  ¼ inch cubes would be diced, dumbass!

7.) Partway through cutting the potato, you will realize you are not going to get this meal done on time.  That’s ok; make it for tomorrow.   Put the store-bought pizza dough on the cutting board and allow it to rest at room temperature for 20 minutes.  Don’t forget to put lots of flour down, so that your older son can come over and make a huge mess while eating flour.  Place in timeout and forget.

8.) Finish that potato!

9.) Answer your older son’s yells regarding leaving timeout to go to the bathroom.  Tell him he wasn't in timeout, but then immediately remember that he was, for a prolonged amount of time.  Apologize profusely, and encourage bathroom use.

10.) Flatten dough.  Allow older son to “help” flatten dough.  Add sauce and cheese.  Throw in oven.

11.) Put potato, onion, garlic and ginger in fridge.  Tomorrow is a new day. 

Day 3

12.) Enjoy the pervasive smell of onions every time you open the fridge today, because you only covered the onions in Saran Wrap.

13.)  Cut tomatoes while your older son sings “Call Me Maybe,” and hits pots and pans with a chopstick and a reusable straw.

14.)  Sauté onions, then add ginger and garlic.  Before that happens, be sure to kill and dispose of all the ants on your stove.

15.) Add potato, mustard seeds, tomatoes, coconut milk, green chilies and salt.  Stir for 2 minutes.  Add chicken and water; bring to a boil.  Simmer for 30 minutes.

16.) Drink wine; vow not to make homemade Indian cuisine until children are in college.

The View from [what should be] the Back Row

Most of the playing I do I get paid for; however, I do play with a community band whose rehearsals are a seven-minute drive from where I live.  It keeps my chops in shape when I don’t have a lot of gigs, and every now and then they throw me the “featured solo” bone (no pun intended!).   We play an annual Mother’s Day concert at a local botanical garden.   This year, I came down with a head cold (you know how the month of May just screams cold season, right?  Oh wait, I have a preschooler, so EVERY season is cold season), and was combating it with an arsenal of zinc drops.  At intermission I popped one in my mouth, figuring I had plenty of time to whittle it down to nothing.  I almost made it.  There was the tiniest sliver floating in my mouth when the conductor was on the podium, ready to start the second half.  I could have crunched it down in haste, but for some reason, I held onto it behind my teeth.  Was it the irresistible flavor?  Did I think it wouldn’t work as well if I chewed it?  I have no idea what I was thinking; in fact, I probably wasn’t.  Before we were a quarter of the way through the first piece, the damn sliver escaped.  During a multi-measure rest I glanced into my mouthpiece, where I could see the drop resting at the throat.  The next time I played, it was sure to go down the shank and into the horn, where it would wreak havoc.  I couldn’t let that happen, so I quickly dipped my finger in and pulled it out.  Not knowing what else to do with the drop, I put it back in my mouth and quickly chewed until it disappeared.

Normally I can do this---and any number of other things---without anyone noticing, because I sit in the back row.  While this group does seat the trombones in the back row, it is an arching back row, so that the trombones are actually quite close to the audience, leaving my deft actions on display for whoever happens to be gazing at the section at the moment.  And, sure enough, the second the drop was back in my mouth, I looked up, only to see a lady in the front row, first whispering to her husband as she pointed at me, then glaring in disgust.  She caught me (catching her staring at me), purposefully turned her head away, and avoided looking at the trombones for the remainder of the concert.   

I should probably feel badly about this.  What if she is so turned off by the piggish behavior of “that disgusting musician” that she stops attending concerts? 

But wait.  If it were me sitting in that audience and I saw someone eat something from inside their mouthpiece, I would probably piss my pants laughing, all the while wondering what the hell story was behind that swift move.  If she was that bent out of shape about my lozenge sucking shenanigans, it would have only been a matter of time before something else rubbed her the wrong way.  Sorry for eating a cough drop out of my mouthpiece Miss Manners, but a sick trombone player’s gotta do what a sick trombone player’s gotta do.

I’m an Infant/Toddler Music Teacher Whore

Well, not really.  But I have been around the block a few times.   Alex, Lincoln and I---and previously Alex and I---have done, um, a number of different music classes in our area.  I guess I’m pickier than your average parent about young childhood music classes.   It’s not that I want my kids to be musical prodigies---because I don’t, and the reasons why could be another whole blog---but I do want them to be exposed to good music fundamentals, interesting music, and a solid curriculum, delivered by a stable, reliable, competent teacher.  Is that too much to ask?    

Apparently, it is.

We did experience a blissful nine to twelve month period where we had a great music teacher.  But then there was the hired-her-as-a-sitter-and-my-visiting-brother’s-dog-bit-her-and-she-overreacted-and-sent-him-a-ridiculous-doctor-bill-that-I’m-not-sure-ever-got-paid incident.  That aside, we really enjoyed her class.  She was an actual trained musician, with good pitch, good rhythm and good time.  She worked with a curriculum that was interesting and diverse.  And she was great with kids.  Then, the “incident” happened.  And then she moved to Texas.

We moved on to another music teacher in the area that we really liked---good pitch, good time, fun songs, but she only had one curriculum.  If you took multiple sessions, you were singing the same songs as the previous session.  This is probably fine if you are a kid, but as an adult, I couldn’t deal.

We went back to the old program with a different teacher.  She was good---when she showed up.  When she didn't, she sent a substitute, or someone masquerading as one.    Her “substitute” was a bad singer, who was so tone deaf she was somehow able to modulate on songs as simple as “The Wheels on the Bus.”  What the hell?

We switched to a new program.  It was tolerable.  Then one day Alex wore a Jimi Hendrix tee-shirt to class.  The “music” teacher asked, “I should probably know who is on that shirt.”  After we told him, he wondered aloud if he was too young to know who that was.  Dude, Jimi Hendrix died 8 years before I was born.  My husband the ENGINEER knows about JImi Hendrix.  You’re fired.

We stayed with that program, but switched teachers.  He was good.  He was hot.  Unfortunately, Alex didn't like the class.  It was our first class with Lincoln in tow, which probably played a big factor.  And the songs were too standard.  Not enough global perspective here.   So much for the eye candy.

Okay.  First program, new teacher.  Good singer.  Stays on pitch.  Bad at rhythm.  Doesn’t know she’s bad at rhythm.  I don’t think I can do this.  We take some time off. 

At Lincoln’s Mommy & Me class, a DIFFERENT music teacher does a demo.  He LOVES it.  She appears to be a decent musician.  But her classes are separated by age---we have to do a different class for each of the boys, AND neither one can be at the other one’s class.  The logistics do not work for us. 

First program, different teacher.  Stays on pitch.  Rhythm is okay.  She’s not the most charismatic or creative teacher, but the curriculum is good enough to cover this.  Lincoln likes her (although to be fair, Lincoln likes everybody.  He would probably smile at Joseph Kony).  Alex likes her (and he won’t smile at Santa Claus).  On the third class he presents her with his new shoes.  We may have a winner.  

Where are Max and Ruby's Parents?

If you are the parent of a preschooler, you know what I’m talking about.  Max and Ruby are a pair of portly rabbit children who appear on NickJr, and my oldest son is obsessed with them, requesting a viewing of at least one show a morning.  Ruby, the seemingly superior older sister, is always on some sort of mission:  go sledding, bring cookies to Grandma, make flyers for the Bunny Scout bake sale, learn how to hoola hoop, etc.  Max, the younger brother who is only capable of uttering one word at a time, has his own agenda, which appears to be thwarting Ruby’s intentions, but usually ends up augmenting them or at the very least helping her solve her dilemma.   The strangest thing about this show is the permanent absence of Max and Ruby’s parents.  They are never around, no matter what the activity: cookie baking, snow shoveling, even Christmas Eve.  So where the hell are they?  I have a few theories:

In one of the upstairs bedrooms, incapacitated by drug addiction.

Chopped  into little pieces by Max’s Green Godzilla Alien Action Toy.

Staying at Grandma’s house for a year so Ruby can earn her self-sufficiency badge for Bunny Scouts.

Hanging out in the bomb shelter---check out the wallpaper---does this show have a fifties vibe, or is it          just me?

Hiding from all of Max’s freaky toys…how many remote control vehicles and wind-up animals can a toddler really operate?

Working nonstop to pay the mortgage on their park-adjacent house.

Wherever they are, they should probably poke their heads in once in a while…I know I’m influenced by living in the era of Tiger Moms and helicopter parents, but really?  You can’t even tuck your kids in on Christmas Eve?  Come on, rabbits.  Good thing Grandma lives down the street.