401

Last night was one of those few-and-far-between evenings when the MPM and I, after getting the girls down, heard the call of the Netflix. He was charged with getting it ready to roll and creating the proper ambiance in our not-terribly-comfortable TV-watching/workout/project room while I was finishing up the cleaning o the kitchen.

He popped into the kitchen, twirling the disk on his finger. Damn thing had a crack in it, sheer through. So much for our cinematic endeavor.

So we ended up facing off across the Scrabble board, which we haven’t done for some time. No one really seems to like to play Scrabble with me, although I have a standing offer to be trounced by Kate should I enable the Scrabble platform on Facebook. Some day, when I feel the need — because I have that addictive thing — to suck away the last vestige of time in my day… some day.

I felt just a tiny bit bad this morning when I discovered that “viognier” is actually a proper name and not a generic wine; I’d managed to lay it down across the bottom of the board from the corner triple to connect with the middle one, earlier commandeered by the MPM’s not-unrespectable “auger.”

It netted me a mere 86 points, so I still would have been over 300 and likely assured of winning without it, but it clearly dealt a demoralizing blow to my esteemed opponent and was thus perhaps the strategic lynchpin to my victory.

He was muttering something about ping-pong when we headed up the stairs. I think it was something about eliminating my handicap.

Protected: on the outside, watching

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$2.99 not spent

Yesterday and this morning I got a couple of those annoying calls that show up as “800 Service” on the Caller ID. You know the drill: you pick up, and there’s the pause, and then the click, and an automated voice. We got like sixteen a day during late October and I bet you did too. Per usual, after the click I hung up without even listening.

Picked up messages tonight and discovered that it’s been not someone selling tickets to the Policemen’s Ball but rather my credit card company calling.

No shock to anyone who knows either of us, the MPM and I don’t exactly edge out the limit on our cards or run in arrears, so we don’t hear from these folks very often.

The credit cards are the one piece of our financial spectrum that I oversee, because I get fiendish and gleeful satisfaction from gaming the system: I know which cards give which bonuses for what purchases and orchestrate payments accordingly; I’ve engineered a system to optimize our rewards and nothing makes me run around the house naked singing showtunes faster than getting a substantial chunk of cash back from the folks at Bank’o'PlasticDuJour. I am the queen of plastic. No purchase is too small; I go days without touching a dollar bill and weeks without writing a check.

This automated call, as it turned out, was alerting me that there was some concern of fraudulent activity on the account. Had we made an online or catalog transaction in the amount of two-ninety-nine on 1/26? Hell, I don’t know. Probably. Two dollars and ninety-nine cents, did I hear that right? Let me press “3″ to repeat the information. Good gosh. You’re really pestering me about three bucks?

I was about to press “2″ for “Yes, I made a purchase in that amount,” when two things occurred to me in quick succession: 1) It’s not the card I use for online transactions. 2) It’s not the card the MPM carries, so I’m the only one using it, ever.

So instead I pressed “0″ to be connected to a representative. Who informed me that there was another transaction as well, in the amount of $3.88, on the following day. Well, I sure as shootin’ didn’t make two online transactions with that card, so we went from there on along to filling out the fraud report and getting the new cards sent.

All she could tell me is that it triggered an alert because it didn’t fit my spending pattern. True enough — but it never would have occurred to me that they could tell that from two transactions under $5 apiece.

But it makes sense, when you think about it. They certainly employ folks working overtime looking for patterns — or writing code that looks for them — and deviations therefrom must stick out in a big way. Plus I imagine there are patterns of fraud, as well: a few under-the-radar transactions to determine if a card is “live” and then wham, a four-digit purchase goes through.

I guess I’ll be a tad bit more attentive to those “800 Service” calls in the future.

in the night air

Somehow it ended up that the girls and I didn’t get back to the house until the exact moment that the MPM arrived — right around 5:20. Which made for a frantic dash of dinner prep to meet our fresh and new getting-upstairs goal time for the girls, which we put in place this week in the pursuit of less-stressful mornings.

Which may all be moot given that tomorrow is likely to dawn with inclement weather of the sort that makes southern school superintendents get all white-ringed around the eyeballs and cancel classes, leaving the kids home on a day that ends up being nothing more than annoyingly damp and mid-30ish.

But in any event, the MPM glanced out the back window at about 8p and wondered aloud if I was planning to freeze-dry the laundry perhaps? So I shot him a look that said, I’m the one that does the word-play in this family, smartass, and laughingly went out to collect it in the dark.

And with the city sparkling in the distance down the hill, it was still and overcast, with the light hitting the low clouds in the way that makes it feel like snow is coming, and the air had the scent of it too, under the sharp tang of someone’s fireplace. And the clothes smelled sun-drenched clean as I gathered them off the line, all the precious little-girl things, and I didn’t even notice the chill as I breathed it all in.

a crockpot affair

Way back when I was single, I was offered a crockpot by a friend and neighbor who’d received two as wedding gifts some years before. Not much of a cook, she’d never used either one, so I was delighted to help her recoup the wasted cupboard space.

I left with it under my arm, heading back across the street a little giddy with the thought of coming home to the comfort of a meal cooking, quiet evenings in, just me and my slow cooker, maybe a fire in the fireplace, some Grover Washington, candlelight…

Yes, that was the beginning of my crockpot flings: an early blush of infatuation with its potential and then, invariably, the crush of disillusionment. All that promise, all that hope, all that chopping and dicing and waiting for the timer to ding, and never anything more than a lackluster evening to show for it. Never did I feel the passion, the excitement of something special. Not once.

So we’d part ways for a time, me taking my leave more disappointed than bitter, which I’ve found isn’t a bad way to end a relationship, leaving open as it does the potential for friendship, maybe more.

And in fact, not long ago, this time as a bored housewife, mother of two, I found myself lured again by its earnest assurance of effortless bliss, and we embraced once more. Just for one evening, I told myself.

But oh, effortless bliss. Oh, promise. Oh, be still my heart: this time it’s for real.

Chipotle Black Bean Soup

1 lg onion, chopped
3 sweet peppers, chopped (I usually use a combo of green and red)
4 garlic cloves, minced or chopped fine by hand
2 T cumin*
3 C dried black beans
1 – 3 T canned chipotle peppers, with sauce (1T is mild; adjust at will)
4 C broth (your choice flavor)
5 C water

cook 6 hrs on high; remove 3 C beans and puree in blender (or use immersion stick blender). Add back to soup and add the following:

2 T+ lime juice (fresh is preferable)
2 t+ coarse Kosher salt
6 grinds black pepper

garnish as you desire: sour cream, chopped cilantro and tomatoes, etc.

Puts me in mind of Grover’s “When I Fall in Love,” or maybe this song by Katie Melua…

Please, share your long-term crockpot love — any other recipes out there?

*for enhanced flavor — you might could tell the difference if you tasted them side by side — you can take time (10 minutes or so) for the following: saute the onions and peppers over medium heat in a swirl of olive oil until onions are translucent. Add the garlic and cumin powder and continue sauteing another two minutes or so. Toss all that into the crockpot and continue with the recipe as written.

sweet words

Kira is officially two-and-a-half as of earlier this month. I’ve a post brewing about the deeper aspects of advancing age, that being mine, and motherhood, but I’m not quite ready to get sucked into the space it will require. Some day, sooner than later.

But with two-and-a-half has come the loss, I realized recently, of almost all her baby-speak: Megan is no longer May-May, and in fact I’m distressed to discover — likely yet another sign of my own aging — that I can’t even remember other adorable twistings, though I know she had quite a few not long ago. The only ones left are “warshmellow” (we toast them over fires) and “lem-o-lade,” a preferred beverage.

And I find myself shushing Megan when she launches her requisite big-sister corrections: “It’s MARSHmallow, Kee.” “Don’t say ‘LemoLADE’ — it’s lemoNADE.” I want to savor my warshmellows and lem-o-lade just a little longer, oh please.

Anyone else have in-house favorites?

brrrrrrrrrrr

It was 11 degrees this morning, according to our fancy new digital indoor-read thermometer from LL Bean. Whether that was accurate or not I can’t say for sure (the MPM seems to think this new gadget arrived with a calibration problem), but I do know that when I took Kira down to her dayschool at 9:00 it was officially and accurately Ass-Freezing Cold. With a snappy little breeze from the north just to liven things up a bit.

The thing of it is, we don’t really suffer through winters much here. Yes, we’ll get a cold snap for a week or two, but then it’s back to temperatures where appropriate clothing choices make outdoor activities once again pleasant and enjoyable. And yes, while I understand that a true member of the no-bad-weather-only-bad-clothing club would carry it farther, my own personal definition of pleasant weather does not include the necessity to garb every inch of skin against potential exposure to the elements.

I don’t mind the occasional cold snap, because it’s a SNAP: by definition, it is short-lived, and I can endure it with reasonably good humor and even a spirit of adventure: let’s bundle up and take the jogger to school — a little cold can’t make us drive!

What I find awfully hard to fathom is that there are people — sane, pleasant, intelligent people — who voluntarily live where these sorts of temperatures ARE THE NORM for many months out of the year. This, I find incomprehensible. Does it take a certain twisted sense of fun? Of martyrdom? What makes it bearable? And what is the payoff for such fortitude?

Enlighten me, oh northerly dwellers. Yes, you, Montana, Dakotas north and south, Minnesota, U.P., Upstate, New England entire: what’s the upside?

in her words

“… and that’s when the cheering began, and it wouldn’t stop for a long, long time.”

(Megan, age 6, relating the moment of Obama’s swearing-in, seen at school.)

Oh, the hope of it all.

oh, heck, let’s just start now

“Scholars estimate that it takes at least a generation before a president’s legacy can be analyzed objectively,” I read recently in our local paper.

Well. I was about to fall into a frenzy of self-flagellation over what was apparently a terribly premature assessment of #43 on my part when I read further and discovered that, astonishingly enough, others have gone before me.

The W presided over a “free-for-all in which powerful insiders … have played roles as policy entrepreneurs,” said Karen Hult, a presidential expert at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va.

Yes, you could say that.

“We can certainly talk about his remarkably sloppy decision-making process. That did have consequences,” added George Edwards, a presidential scholar at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas.

Yes, I think I’d have to agree with that one too.

I’m looking forward to today. And to seeing what intelligence, integrity, and vision in our highest office can accomplish over the next four, please eight, years.

(Quoted far and wide across the net, I believe the above snippets are properly attributed to David Lightman of McClatchy Newspapers.)

back to black

I grew up in an interesting place, a small town in Ohio known for its liberal attitudes about, well, everything.  A quick check at Wikipedia confirms at least the legend that Yellow Springs was one of the final stops on the Underground Railroad, thus dating its reknown for racial tolerance as far back as the 19th century, and in fact, an episode of the drama series Homefront (set in the mid 1940s) scripted a young biracial couple fleeing prevalent attitudes by moving there.

Homefront, you probably don’t recall, was the first we ever saw of Kyle Chandler, who was SO hot 20 years ago, not that he’s dogmeat now or anything.

My high school was, rough estimate, maybe a quarter black; the sons and daughters of professors, doctors, authors, and others, solidly middle- and upper-middle-class, they were my friends and I honestly had no sense of the racial boundaries, tensions and differences that would become apparent to me later when I moved to a good-sized city. I recognize that’s at least in part because I was white and not black, but it WAS the 70s. And I was, indeed, unaware.

And yes, I live in the South now. My encounters with subtle and not-so-subtle racism in my world no longer shock me, and sometimes I feel my roots grew in an idyllic, idealistic place I might even have imagined.  But the happy fact is they are deep in me, and I’m comfortable that I’m about as unracist as a white girl can be.

So. I tried for a number of years after it came into vogue to embrace the term “African American.”  It seemed reasonable, another evolving step, Colored Negro Black African American, and me just doing my part to be in step with the multi-syllabic times.

But then a few years ago I started wondering about this. And the sad truth is I no longer have any friends I can ask:  is that what YOU want to be called?  And what of the more confusing questions, the ones that call into question the applicability of either the first descriptor and/or the second?

And on along with some further thought over the years, frankly I’ve decided it’s not only presumptuous but ridiculously nation-centric to refer to anyone of a certain hue as “African American” when such-hued people the world over have no connection to our shores at all.   And that to engage in a determination of lineage, ancestry, or descent of someone’s forebears based solely on the color of their skin is not far shy of ludicrous.  And that I will probably only confuse my children by attempting to explain any of this.

So until I hear solid argument to the contrary, I’m reverting unreservedly to plain old “black.” When it’s necessary to throw in such an adjective at all, which is perhaps the question better addressed.

gettin’ there

I’ve been a fan of Allegiant Air, the small airline that started service to our regional airport four or so years ago, since our first flight.   They fly from here, officially Middle-o-Nowhere, to PIE — that’s St. Pete, FL — on a jet.  NON-STOP.

This, my friends, is huge, as we are in the land of the puddle-jump:  from here, you generally connect at least once and often twice to get anywhere of note, and seven flights out of ten you’re crammed onto a prop plane capable of causing chronic neck pain in anyone over six-foot-one.

(Although I’ve flown right many USAirways Airbuses in and out of here as well.  No water landings, though.)

And something else that makes more of a difference than I would have guessed is that they keep it light, managing to create an entertaining patter out of the required FAA information that’s usually the gateway to an on-board snooze.  And if there are delays, they do a remarkable job of keeping that light as well.  I’ve flown them now six times, never yet finding myself in the state I’ve come to associate with air travel, that being somewhere on the spectrum from resignedly annoyed to thoroughly pissed off.

Plus, with a casual $5 investment I somehow managed to win the highly entertaining on-board raffle’s cash prize of 81 dollars as we were headed south.

Kind of felt like an auspicious beginning for the trip.

64 and sunny

… to 26 and cloudy.  That was our welcome-home.  That and an apparent cat-care fail.  Not fatal, but disturbing.  But otherwise a lovely week away and uneventful travel, so I’m not complaining in the least.

More to come once I triage the mountain of mail, delete several screenfuls of spam, unpack, start the laundry, and suchnot.

my life of crime

Really, I’m an ethical person. You know, overall I follow the rules and try to behave so that I don’t have to fib about what I’ve been up to. In fact, those who know me will vouch that I can be painfully honest, sometimes confessing things hardly worthy of the airtime out of a compulsion to be upfront and open.

But today I undertook some petty larceny.

The MPM and I had borrowed a vehicle capable of transporting the 68″ dresser I bought off of Craigslist for the girls room, and it occurred to us to use it for a dropoff at Goodwill en route to the dresser pickup.

Don’t know about you, but as we go through our days, things get set aside for donation. We start with a small tidy bag of things, which morphs over time into a box, and then a larger box, and then another bag gets started, and then we just start heaving things in the general direction of that corner of the basement until there’s a huge unwieldy pile.

It was that pile that we slung into the back of the Expedition and headed off. When we arrived at the Goodwill there were helpful hands and the disgorge went quickly.

Alongside the many bins, I spied a small box holding four hats that simply cried out to be part of the girls’ dressup collection. I knew it was against the rules, but since we’re leaving town tomorrow there was no way I was going to make it back to buy them once they made their way inside, so I appealed to the grandfatherly type helping with the unloading as best I could: “They’d be so perfect for my girls to dress up in — can’t you see it now?”

Nope, I was told. Can’t do it. Even though he said he gladly would if there weren’t a camera trained on our every move. No kidding?? Cameras?? Well, I guess there could be a lively trade in something or other conducted out of the back of the Goodwill there, were there not 24-hour surveillance in place. I guess.

Shame of it is, he said, those’re just going to get thrown out.

You’re kidding. Thrown out?? I mean, okay, maybe there’s not exactly a booming market for used little-old-lady-going-to-church hats. But thrown out? Couldn’t I talk to a manager or something?

Nope. They won’t do it. I’ve tried before, he said.

Well. I looked at the MPM, whose precision-tuned integrity meter is one of the reasons I married him, and I looked at the hats and twitched my head slightly in the direction of the vehicle, and he didn’t flinch.

So while he was obtaining our receipt, I pulled the Expedition up so the next folks in line could unload. And while the grandfatherly type was assisting them I snagged those hats and nonchalantly scurried back to the driver’s seat. If one can scurry nonchalantly without tripping hard over an oxymoron in the process, that is.

And just to be on the safe side I warned the owner of the Expedition that if they track his plates off the surveillance tapes, he may be getting a call from the authorities.

I told him I’ll post bail.

hold the cheese

I met two friends out last night for a long, long overdue MNO. We were the only people in the entire place and when we walked in at 8:00 Tony the chef/owner was sitting at the bar counter, which distressed me some since I have a vested interest in seeing this neighborhood spot make it, because I gotta say Tony can flat-out cook. But it didn’t really cut into our enjoyment of the evening, nor is it what this post is about.

Toward the end we started chatting with our server, who’s waited on me a number of times and is invariably cheerful and fun. I asked her if she’d tried the soup that I was doing my best to unobtrusively lick the bowl of, and she responded she hadn’t, saying that she was a “raw vegan.”

Which I’m pretty sure means that you eat nothing cooked and nothing with any animal derivation, including honey (those hardworkin’ bees) or sugar (there’s something in the filtering that uses a bone product or something?? I’m not quite clear on that), along with the standard dairy and suchnot.

And she said she’s been eating this way for more than three years; she has A-positive blood type and read a book that convinced her to try it for a month. And she did, and once she saw how much better she felt, she couldn’t go back. She feels fantastic all the time, she said.

Huh. I’m A-positive, and there are days aplenty when my meter approaches nothing near fantastic. I’m not sure I could give up my infatuation with aged cheese, and overall I so don’t believe in anything other than moderation and balance when it comes to what I put in my mouth.

But “feeling fantastic” has some allure, I’ll grudgingly allow. The book title was one I’ve heard wafted about over the years, but haven’t checked into: Eat Right 4 Your Type.

I’ll toss out that I’m inherently leery of most any book that contains a number in the title, but when I work my way through the stack of books in my queue, I may give it a spin just for fun.

Anyone else want to weigh in?

hello, I’m here in front of you

Let’s say that you’re an employee of, say, the U.S. Postal Service. Working at, say, a small neighborhood station which is woefully understaffed, through no fault of your own.

And let’s say that your fellow counter-service person is on her lunch break, and you’re in back doing whatever you’re doing back there when the door opens.

You say, reasonably, “I’ll be out in a minute.”

A minute passes, and you make your way to the front. As you enter the front area, where you see a customer with a young child in tow, the phone rings.

Now, here’s the tricky part, because there might be a quiz on this later or something. Do you:

A. Ignore the phone and head immediately to the counter to assist the customer in front of you;

B. Pick up the phone and ask the person to hold while you assist the customer in front of you;

C. Pick up the phone and assist the caller while simultaneously weighing the package pushed across the counter by the customer in front of you with the words “Cheapest rate, please”;

D. Pick up the phone, stand at the counter talking and ignore both the package sitting and the customer standing in front of you who is now repeating “Cheapest rate, please” in a louder tone and glaring at you because you’ve been on the phone for well over a minute while her young child tugs at her and says “Hafta PEE Mommy!”

If you chose D, congratulations. You are a Postal Employee!! You can foster your attitude of annoyance and disinterested service, knowing your job is safe short of stealing mail over several decades and squirrelling it away in your attic. And even then you can probably petition for re-hire.

Sadly, of course, you could also be an employee of just about any service industry. What is WITH the phone-trumps-face thing?