The Olive Garden at Times Square

Ok, so here's the story of how I found out about the baby.

After dealing with all the IVF stuff (early morning doctor visits, shots every night, etc), and then finally getting to the end of the two week wait after the embryo transfer, it was finally time for the pregnancy test. It just happened to coincide with the Christmas party for all of us teachers at my school, which was held at the Olive Garden in Times Square on December 17th.

I already kind of thought the test would be negative because I had some of my usual signs of my period (spotting, breaking out, etc), so I was pretty sure I didn't want to hear the news until after the dinner. So, when I got a call from my doctor's office right at 3:15 (about 30 minute before I left for our early dinner), I let it go straight to the message.

But I couldn't really forget about it, as I'm sure you'd understand. I kept looking at my phone throughout the dinner. When it was finally over, I still wasn't sure if I wanted to check the message but I had to go to the bathroom so I decided to check while I was in there. And lo and behold, I was blown away. The nurse said something about how she hated to leave such good news on my answering machine but I didn't care. I think I had to listen to it twice to let it all sink in.

After that, I went to the Toys R Us (it has a huge ferris wheel inside) and bought a baby stuffed animal. I think it's a bear or something but it has those sewn eyes instead of the marbley ones. I didn't even care that I had to wait in line with all the whiny kids anxious about their Christmas presents.

When I got home, I showed Rob the things I had gotten from the Christmas dinner and then gave him the bag with the toy in it last. He dropped it--he was so surprised. He had been preparing himself to be really supportive of my disappointment and so he was not expecting good news!

Big lame-oh

I know it's been over two months since I last blogged. But I have started school again (with some amazing wonderful kids), been working on the hardest/best sweater I've ever knitted, and finally started my etsy shop! SO, I can at least feel accomplished there.

Tonight's CSA adventure

Appey shock!

This is what my grandfather called it when he was a little boy. The CSA has been kicking my butt with fruit recently so I decided to fight back before my fridge started turning into a science experiment. Inspired by R., I'll include the recipe:

4 lbs apples (with a few pears mixed in to make 4 lbs)
1/2 a lemon
2 pieces of cinnamon
1/2 cup apple juice

Cut fruit into eighths and core but don't peel. Cut lemon into 2 pieces and bring everything to a boil. Then cook until properly mushy--that took me about 1 hour give or take. Then push through a sieve to remove skins, lemon, and cinnamon. The recipes I looked at suggested adding 1/4 cup brown sugar afterwards but it tasted so good I didn't add any. I do think having a food mill thingy like I vaguely remember using in my nursery school would have come in handy at the end but the wooden spoon/sieve combo does the trick and works out your forearm!

I don't know why I never take pictures of the final product (see borscht post below) but it is yummy! It was probably 10-12 apples and 2 pears and it ended up with the middle sized bowl from the borscht pictures mostly full of applesauce. I'm thinking about taking some in to school to have my city kids taste something beyond Motts but I don't know if R. Z. will let me! Maybe he wants it all to himself!

More CSA Treats

Borscht ingredients (clockwise from left): beets, red cabbage, carrots. Yes, those multicolored things are some very cool carrots! Not pictured: kielbasa, onion, garlic and other things I've forgotten. Hurray for the food processor!

A fruitful summer

Jam #1: Strawberry rhubarb with Mom's help (June)

Jam #2: Peach--on my own! (August)

Not on the list!

A week or two ago I wrote down on a page in my calendar a list of things I'd like to do before going back to school for preplanning. On it were things like wash the windows, work on my reading and writing curricula, finish my Great Conversation reading for this month, etc. I clearly did not write down totalling my car on that list!

Obviously, life is not controlled by lists. However, I'm trying to work on that mental bitterness that creeps in every so often so I'll try and make a new list of things I'm grateful that the one who controls life took care of:

• no one was hurt
• no screaming or yelling or crying happened after the fact from the other driver or me
  
• both parties had insurance
• my friend J. and her newborn that I was supposed to have lunch with were not in the car
• my husband was able to get there really quickly to deal with the tow truck guy
• while the first cop who handled it wasn't nice, he wasn't mean either

The details: I was taking a left turn and I think (when you hear people say "it all happened so fast", they're right) I misjudged how far away the oncoming car in the opposite lane was. All I know for sure is that I saw it right there at the last minute and slammed on the brake but it was too late. The second scariest moment after that one was when I tried to get out of the car and the door wouldn't open all the way--I had visions of those tv shows in which the crashed car bursts into flame or explodes on impact. But I managed to get myself out and I remembered to take my purse and insurance info.

Poor car. Below you can see a picture I took with my cell phone. As R. said, it was our first car together and it was good to us. It even appeared in one of his paintings.

My former smiley car on the right

New Things

What is it about the newness of new things that makes them so attractive to me? I don't think I'm alone in this but I always seem to get excited about trying new things that I've purchased. The new thing could be as simple as a new hair product or as complicated as a new pattern for knitting. But there's something about the newness that gets me. I always have to wear new clothes right after I get them and my husband will tell you I have difficulty finishing off the old cereal before opening a new box.

In some ways this isn't a bad thing. My CSA gives me new and different fruits and veggies every week which forces me to come up with new recipes. And I'm all for breaking from routine in cooking. Today I was especially excited to get blackberries which were a surprise (not on the email list) and a new thing.

But also this love for the new can make me a bad finisher or bad at continuing things. For example, I get excited about joining new groups on the internet, like facebook or blogging, but then I lose interest when something else new comes up or when I get too busy. My blog and lack of emails to friends and family are evidence enough. So maybe I need to find ways to make the old seem new again and/or apportion new things so they don't take over. My new knitting project can't be started until September since I signed up for the knitalong--maybe then I can focus on other things first. But the yarn is really nice. . .

Pigeon Boy

On Monday, I worked for a few hours at my school's day camp. Normally this is something I would avoid--day camps on the subway make me change cars! But, it was just for the afternoon and it's a pretty small group. While I was there, we went to the library and the playground. The youngest kid, J., was this little blond curly-headed boy who was about 3. He was looking at a book titled something like, Where's the Mouse? in which a mouse is hiding on every page but the people can't find it. I was impressed by his knowledge of how books work--at one point "NO MOUSE!" was written in large letters and he said his version "WHERE'S THE MOUSE?" very loudly. How did he know big letters meant yelling? Also, the camp is focusing on France this week and the librarian had showed them several books written by French authors or that took place in France. When J. got to the end of his mouse book, he looked at the author's photo and said, as if he was reading that part, "This book is from France." It wasn't but he was applying what he had just heard.

Then he asked me to read him The Lorax by Dr. Seuss. Another teacher had commented before about his lack of attention span where books were concerned but I didn't find that to be true. He had trouble paying attention to a 6 year old reading to him but I don't think that's unusual--you need to be a teacher or parent for that type of attention. Anyway, I read to him and every page or so, he'd say, "Excuse me. Where did the trees go?" or "Excuse me, why can't you see his face?" When another child came over, he said, "Excuse me. Look, all the trees are gone." At one point I thought it might make him sad because all the animals were leaving and getting sick but he seemed to get the idea of planting the seeds for the Truffula Trees. Although at first he was telling me about how tree tape would fix them all.

The best part was the park, though. J. asked to be my partner to cross the street and he held my hand very well until we got to the sidewalk where he saw a pigeon. He immediately ran after it and then happily came back and took my hand again when it flew away. Evidently he does this often so I knew to keep an eye on him when the next one came. I asked him, "What would you do if you actually caught one?" Without a pause, he replied, "Eat it." My sister R. used to chase pigeons (would they be considered invasive species?) so that she could kick them. I don't think she ever thought about other options for pigeons.

Knitting and beets

I spent a lot of energy and thought yesterday on both subjects. I've joined this Knitalong thing which I think is basically an online group that works through a knitting pattern together, posting questions, comments, photos etc. I'm pretty excited about it because it's a complicated pattern (cables and lace) and the yarn looks beautiful. First I have to finish this scarf I'm doing for Hope for NY's homeless knitting project but I think it's almost done. The hard part will be not starting on the new project until September!

As for beets, since I got my CSA veggies yesterday, I decided to make a beet and beet greens salad with feta which I've made before. Well, for some reason, the beets took extra long to roast and the water in the bottom of the pan evaporated. I kept checking them and they just seemed so hard still after 1 hour and 15 minutes. So finally I yanked them out of the pan, wrapped them in foil and put them in for 10 minutes at a higher temp. I think that's the only way I'll make them from now on. And then peeling them took forever too so once the salad was finally ready, I didn't really feel like eating it. Maybe they'll taste better today since they won't be tainted by all that labor. According to Martha, I should rub them with a paper towel to peel them. Live and learn.

CSA Delights

Ok, since I haven't blogged in almost a year, I decided to at least blog about my CSA (community shared agriculture) which gives me tons of lovely produce every week.

Last week I got lettuce, arugula, carrots, scallions, red cabbage, yellow wax beans, 3 pounds of apples, 2 pounds of peaches and 1 pound of teeny plums. For two people, that's a lot of food.

Well, I ended up making Thai chicken curry with the beans and some cole slaw with the cabbage and carrots and scallions. A whole cabbage is much bigger than it appears. I think we still have a cup of the cole slaw. Amazingly, we seem to have finished the fruit--I gave a few apples to friends, R. made some peach smoothies, and I made an apple pie to take to a barbeque. It was a frozen crust and I didn't realize it wasn't supposed to be thawed so it ended up a little weak but next time I'll make a real crust.

We still have a lot of salad left and today's CSA day but we don't get any more salad this time around so that's good. And I'm feeling a little less inspired this week about cooking. I think the cole slaw wore me out last week.

Creature Weekend

R. and I visited my mom's house in the Berkshires this past weekend and saw lots of creatures--some were where they belonged in nature and some gave me quite the surprise. Somehow, I was the one who kept finding them!

Snakey coming out from behind the fridge!

I first saw him on the rug when I went to get something from the fridge. Then, he got scared away when people tried to grab him. Finally, he reappeared.

Snakey right before R. swept him out of the house.

The frogs that make the really big plop! into the creek.

Frog on the porch in the rain

Dead Meecie

The real reason we were there.

Procrastination

My last post sounds so productive, like I'm hard at work preparing for school to begin. Hah! My books were out on the table all day and I think I thought about opening them all of once. Instead, I read, ate popcorn, etc. I didn't even do any Latin or any Great Books reading. I justify it to myself by saying that I really worked hard at cleaning today, which I did, but it took longer than it needed to since I kept interrupting myself to read for a few minutes. I know it's a bad sign when it's 8 pm and I still need to sweep up the floors. I guess I'm just giving myself more work to do later. Oh well.

Stuart Little

Ok, this is just a random note since I'm working on Stuart Little for my reading groups for the fall. I always liked the story as a kid, partly because it's fun to read things about small creatures trying to live like we do, using our things in strange ways. But I'd forgotten the part about how Stuart tries to have a date with this small girl. It kind of creeps me out. Maybe it's Garth Williams' illustration of the mouse swimming to show off for her. Or the picture where he's waiting for her to arrive, seated jauntily with his hands behind his head. A mouse acting like a guy--it doesn't quite work and it feels weird in a children's book. It also has a very ambivalent ending. What about returning to his family? Will he ever find the bird? I wonder how my students will react. Also, I wonder how many have seen the movie which definitely changes a lot of things.

Hot

These past few days I've felt like a chicken roasting in the oven. The school where I'm working has lousy airconditioning so that doesn't make things any better. The students are whiny because of the heat and I've gotten to the point where I just turn out the light in the room to try and make it cooler. Although I'm not sure how much that helps.

I'm usually not big on airconditioning but it's my new best friend. Even though it makes me sleep like a rock and makes getting up rather difficult.