Liverpool can be a lonely place on a Saturday night, and this is only Thursday ...evening

From Here to Maternity: The Education of a Rookie Mom, by Beth Teitell – boooorrrrrring. Don’t bother. Tedious, self-absorbed, and repetitive. The chapter on how she feels she has to massage her nanny’s ego was beyond painful. I was torturing myself reading it when I finally realized I was bored and irritated so I stopped. I’m getting smarter in my old age. So I picked up the new Ruth Reichl, Garlic and Sapphires. It’s terrific. (Although who told her to not trim her bangs before having her author picture taken was sadly misguided!) If I didn’t know that I’d have boys awake at 630, I’d have sat up late and read the whole thing in one sitting. It’s absolutely delightful, and funny, and has great recipes. It inspired me to go request a mess of food books from the library:

Poet of the Appetites: The Lives and Loves of MFK Fisher – Joan Reardon. I really enjoy Fisher’s writing so would like to find out more about her creative inspirations, and in addition, I really want to find out more about her personal life. She’s so circumspect in her writing that you never really figure out why she leaves her husband, or how the lover she leaves him for dies, or any of those intriguing facts. Boy, am I nosy.

Last Chance to Eat - Gina Mallet. Jessa Crispin of Bookslut raved about this book. Good enough for me. It sounds interesting enough that I would consider buying it when it comes out in paperback, but they changed the cover from the hardback edition, and the new paperback cover is plain ugly. So I’ll read it and if I love it, I’ll buy the hardback with the pretty cover.

Eating My Words: An Appetite for Life – Mimi Sheraton. Sheraton was the New York Times restaurant critic in the 70s and 80s; so after reading Garlic and Sapphires, Ruth Reichl’s take on her years as the Times’ restaurant critic, I wanted to read more. This seemed a logical choice.

Stalking the Green Fairy: And other adventures in food and drink – James Villas. I’m sorry, but isn’t the name alone enough to intrigue you? And the cover art is very Art Nouveau – just like the prints hanging in my powder room. So I like the style. And one of the reviewers on Amazon likens Villas to “MFK Fisher, Edna Lewis, and Ruth Reichl rolled into one.”

Fried Butter: A Food Memoir – Abe Opincar. I don’t even remember why, probably one of those Amazon, “Customers who bought this book also bought:” lists. But since it’s free, heck, I’ll check it out.
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Sometimes - just occasionally, mind you, and in moments of complete lunacy - I want to have ten children. Here’s one of those moments:
This morning we were waiting for one of Si’s little friends to come over. He and Jude sat down on the big armchair in our entryway and Simon read A Fish Out of Water to Jude while they waited. Jude loved it. I was completely captivated. Of course within the hour Jude had a black eye, Simon and Sarah were running around screaming like banshees, and the playroom was a complete wreck. But it was nice while it lasted ; )

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For some reason my stomach cooperated this morning and I baked six mini loaves of banana-walnut bread for my sons’ daycare’s bake sale tomorrow. I love the idea of a bake sale to raise funds, rather than having two- and three-year olds selling tubs of inedible cookie dough and crappy candy bars to their relatives. I got the recipe from Epicurious.com and it is the BEST banana bread I have ever tasted (might have something to do with the three pounds of bananas it requires! Also, substitution note in the interest of full disclosure: I used sour cream instead of crème fraiche). It makes a ton of batter, so I threw some in a mini-muffin tin I have, and they turned out beautifully and looked so cute. The kids LOVED them. They were two bites’ worth of bread, perfect size for little guys. Just call me Martha.
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Last week, on my way to pick the boys up at school, I spied a cool chair in someone’s garbage, out on the curb. When I drove back that way getting home, it was still there, clearly garbage, so I stopped, threw it in the back of my car and took it home. I ripped off all the ratty upholstery. It’s a nice solid wooden chair with arms, and it more or less matches the style of another chair we already own that lives in our entryway. I have been meaning to learn to re-upholster before I tackle the couch, so I thought a chair might be a good place to start. My mistake was in letting Dan find out where the chair had come from – but what was I going to do, muzzle the boys? Poor Dan does not understand my fascination with other people’s cast-offs. I love to go to the flea market and generally find good stuff; most of the furniture in our house is flea market or estate sale finds, some expensive, most not. I tend toward handiness, and am unafraid of experimenting, so don’t think twice about buying pieces (or hauling them out of the trash) to work on. I brought home a cherry rocker that needs only to be reupholstered from an estate sale recently. I thought it was a bargain at 55 bucks. Dan thought I’d been ripped off. Until I pointed out that it was a good chair, brand-name (I priced similar chairs of the same brand on Ebay and emailed him the results), and reminded him that you can’t buy a new chair for twice what I paid for this chair. I’ll bet he’ll buy that argument – which is true – once I finish recovering it. I bought some really cute yellow and red Chinese-themed Waverley fabric at Joann’s from their flat-fold section for three bucks a yard (speaking of bargains!!) and it’s my next project. Then the rocker that needs a new spindle on the back; then the porch rocker that needs to be re-veneered…the list goes on and on.
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OK, the other evening I looked out my kitchen window, across the backyard that abuts ours, and in the next yard were three youngish (maybe 10-12 years old) boys, playing with a ball and climbing trees. I happen to know the woman who owns that house lives by herself, and her children are grown, in college, or whatever. So I poked my nose out the back door and yelled, “Hey! Do you guys know the person who lives in that house?” They all stared at me. So I continued, “If you don’t, and I suspect you don’t have permission to be in there, you need to leave.” Grumbling, grumping, mutters of “There’s no fence” from the three boys. They stared at me and made no move. So I threaten to call the cops, at which point, rather than exiting the way they’d entered, through the unfenced back, they saunter up the fairly long yard, past the front of the house, and out to the street. Man, what ever happened to respecting other people’s property? When I was a kid, I would no sooner have played in my neighbor’s yards, let alone a stranger’s yard, without permission than I would have played on the freeway behind our house. And these kids do not live on our block – I’d have recognized them. The park is only three blocks away, the schoolyard is one block over; it’s not as if these kids lack for spaces to play. And God forbid one of them fall out of the tree they’re climbing or cut themselves on the side fence or whatever – guess whose parents would be filing a lawsuit as quick as they could? I just can’t fathom that lack of respect for others’ property. It makes me NUTS (as if I need any help in that department…) Is it a generational thing?

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And don’t even get me started on people who carry on loud personal conversations in the library (not cell phone conversations, either, for a change). I know the days of hushing and shushing patrons are long-gone, but honestly…does anyone here really need or want to hear about the hokey poem your boyfriend wrote to you, or the inspiration behind your latest art efforts, or what you plan to do with the rest of your evening? Can’t you go across the street to Starbucks and regale the clientele there (who are NOT trying to study) with your pathetic and boring stories? I so wanted to shush them, but my hair isn’t long enough for a bun. Although I could glare at them over my wire-rimmed glasses.