pseudostoops

There is nothing more annoying, I know, than someone whining about jetlag. “I’m so tiiiiired,” they complain. “I’ve been on vacaaaation, and now I’m so tiiiiiired.”

It just feels like the worst combination of whining and gloating.

So I won’t do that.

I will, however, gripe a little about our wretched flight home, which featured:

• middle seat for John, behind woman who kept her seat reclined for the ENTIRE FLIGHT
• seats in nearly the back row, where we were apparently sitting on the engine, it was so loud
• strong evidence suggesting that the person who had occupied my seat before me had horked all over the floor, making it less than tempting to shove our carry on bags down there
• a drinks cart that ran out of diet coke before it got to us
• an hour delay, plus 25 minutes of slow circling in the air before we landed at O’Hare
• no movie. (Stupid MD80s. Worst planes EVER.)

All of this is a long way of saying: my hair is a mess, I’m not wearing makeup, and I’m going to work in jeans.  I hope they’ll forgive me.

While I keep reading of other offices that are easing gently towards Thanksgiving, and people who are already on planes to go visit far-flung family, my work has decided to schedule a huge! very important! requiring a tremendous amount of preparation! meeting for….tomorrow.  Wednesday.  The day before Thanksgiving.  Swell.

So people in my office are running around like crazy, everyone scrambling to finish projects, (or at least finish them enough that they can report at the meeting without looking like a total doofus).

I am no exception, since I have no fewer than FOUR things about which I am expected to present tomorrow.  (Upside of being a staff attorney: you get to work on lots of different projects with lots of different people.  Downside of being a staff attorney: you get to work on lots of different projects with lots of different people and are expected to be the one to write up all the summarizing documents and present out at big meetings.)

So it’s a leeeetle hectic around here right now,  and that’s unfortunately distracting me from my favorite thing to do in the week before Thanksgiving: plan menus.

See, my family are amazing, lovely, wonderful people, but we have some dietary restrictions.  Sister can’t eat gluten.  Father can’t really eat much salt or fat.  Mother (god love her) appears to not like flavor, and prefers all foods to tend towards the bland.

Since my parents live close by, tradition dictates that we eat at their place, which means my bland mom has control over the menu.  For her Thanksgiving, I try to plan at least two things that I can bring that I will love to eat but will be consumed by people other than me.  (Seems kinda rude to bring something that only you can/will eat.)  This year I’ll be doing roast asparagus and an apple-cranberry crumble with gluten-free topping.  Not bad.

But I dream about hosting my own Thanksgiving, where I am in charge of the menu, and can make whatever wackadoodle version of Thanksgiving classics I want.  This year, the menu would be:

Appetizers:

• Spinach artichoke dip with homemade pita chips
• Pomegranate salsa and tortilla chips (if you are looking for a delicious, different winter appetizer for Thanksgiving or holiday parties, email me.  Seriously.  This salsa is AMAZING.)
• Crostini with brie, honey, and pears
• Champagne Cocktails

Main:

• Adobo Turkey with Red Chili Gravy
• Stuffing made with actual onions and actual butter (this is the saddest one for me about our Thanksgiving- stuffing without onions and butter is a travesty.)

Sides:

• Mashed sweet potatoes
• Cranberry sauce with pear and fresh ginger
• Brussels Sprouts Gratin
• Popovers and homemade crusty wheat rolls (I like contrast.)

Desserts:

• Pumpkin Bourbon Cheesecake
• Crumb topped Apple Pie
• Cranberry Almond and Caramel Tart

What about you all?  What are your favorites?  Any dishes you’re dying to try when you finally get control of Thanksgiving?  (Or is that just me?)

Today is, among other things, our third wedding anniversary.

We rang in our anniversary last night in our car, driving home from Michigan where we’d been working as poll watchers/legal monitors. We were frantically twisting the radio dial to find NPR stations as we drove down I-196 and then I-94, back to Chicago.

As we drove through Grand Rapids NPR called Pennsylvania, and we started to get guardedly optimistic. We were around Holland when they called Ohio and we started to feel pretty good. They called New Mexico, and Florida, and Virginia started to look good, and Indiana turned in the right direction, and by the time we reached the Indiana border NPR had called the election for Obama. We listened to McCain’s concession speech as we drove through Gary, and sped into Chicago as Obama was taking the stage. We parked by a friend’s house in Hyde Park, ran upstairs, and toasted with glasses of champagne as we watched the end of his speech. It was the first part of any election day coverage that we’d seen on tv.

While I feel a pang of regret that I did not get to experience the much talked-about CNN holograms, it was worth it.

In the precinct where I was working yesterday, there were 122 votes cast in the 2004 presidential election. Last night’s final count was close to 1,000. The poll worker who was running the tabulator machine asked each voter “have you done this before, do you know how the machine works?” and probably 3 out of 5 said no, they didn’t know how it worked, because it was their first time voting. Ever. Looking only at the young people and the people of color, first time voters were more like 9 out of 10. I watched people with babies strapped to their chests wrangling toddlers tangled in their legs as they voted. I saw some who were in ill health, for whom it took real effort to stand long enough to fill out their ballots. I heard a few quietly tell poll workers that they couldn’t read and needed someone to read their ballot to them. When I voted, I took my lunch break one day, walked a block to the county building, and was in and out in half an hour. These people had to work so much harder than I did to cast their ballot. And again and again, I heard them say the same thing: “this election is too important not to vote.”

I’ve gotten less than 9 hours of sleep over the past two nights. We stood for most of the 13 hours the polls were open in Michigan yesterday, subsisting on coffee and a few slices of the free pizzas Papa John’s dropped off for the poll workers. We drove more than three hours each way for less than 24 hours in Michigan.

I am, in short, exhausted. Emotions are running a little close to the surface. So you’ll forgive me for being sappy, but I’m tired and it’s my anniversary and so I’m taking this moment to say this: I feel profoundly grateful today. I’m grateful to have had the chance to witness first hand a small piece of the amazing thing our country did last night.  I’m grateful to live in a country where such things are possible.  And I’m grateful to live in it with someone who I love more than ever after almost 8 years together, someone who shares my passion for the issues that were at stake in this election, and who, like me, thinks that poll watching is an exemplary use of a vacation day. John, I should warn you now- I didn’t get you an anniversary present. (Sorry about that.) But I think somehow, even without presents, we’ll always remember our third anniversary and the pretty amazing thing we got to celebrate on the same day.

Tonight we leave town for the weekend, off to the far eastern exurbs of Los Angeles to hang out with John’s family, and to celebrate his grandmother’s eightieth birthday.

I know there is a lot of stuff on the internet about how stressful and difficult people find their inlaws, and I want to say for the record: I am really fortunate. John’s parents and siblings are warm, welcoming, loving people, and they have made every effort to integrate me into their family. I love them.

But is it possible to love them and still have a jangled nervous feeling about the prospect of a visit? The purpose of the visit- grandma’s birthday – means there will be a large gathering of extended family. John’s family is large, (very large), and much of it is conservative, (very conservative), all of them are vocal, (very vocal), and several of them find my chosen career path and noticeable lack of offspring perplexing (very perplexing). I am feeling A LITTLE ANXIOUS about spending the weekend before election day amongst a very large very conservative very vocal crowd which is very perplexed by my life choices.

I plan to address this anxiety by self medicating the best way I know how: with my mother in law’s super creamy spinach artichoke dip. Also cookies. And leftover Halloween candy. I can only hope my mother in law stocked the bowl with Baby Ruths this year.

It seems I have a problem dressing properly. Specifically, I have no idea how to do it.

We are headed to Oklahoma for a family wedding this weekend, and aside from it being very windy, I don’t quite know what to expect, and more specifically, what to wear. (Yes, even though I went to a different family wedding in Tulsa two short years ago. I have a bad memory, okay? And at that wedding, I was so distracted by the groom’s alarming tan that I blocked out all other useful information.)

This wedding weekend will include four different events at country clubs in the course of 2 days. FOUR. And as I learned last time, Tulsa is decidedly the south, not the midwest, which means it is fancier and they have “etiquette” there and I will have to dress appropriately and oh my god I don’t even have four different southern country club-appropriate outfits in my closet.

My mother was no help. (”I’m just wearing my linen pantsuit! Why don’t you just wear yours?” Um, because I don’t own one. I would strongly prefer to keep it that way.)

So I did what any modern woman would do and turned to The Google. “Dear Google,” I asked. “What should I wear to a rehearsal dinner at a country club?”

“This!” says Google.

Um, really? Doesn’t that seem a little, uh, non-subtle for the rehearsal dinner? “Hey groom! If you’re tired of waiting for your wedding night with your wife, check ME out!” Maybe I could wear a slip underneath. Yeah, that’s it. I’m on board.

Next up: “Dear Google,” I asked again. “What in god’s name should I wear to a ‘casual wedding day brunch’ that is being held at a country club where I know for a fact that men are required to wear jackets and ties to dine, even in the daytime?”

“Shiny brocade curtains as a dress, obviously,” says The Google

Right. Okay. Will work on that. I have a shift dress from a suit that I can probably spray paint or spackle or something to look shiny and patterned. Check.

The big one: “What is the right thing to wear for an ‘almost black tie’ (seriously, that is how was described) wedding taking place at a storied, fancy, old-school, debutante-loving, southern southern southern country club?”

“Duh,” says The Google.

Okay, I get it, a long dress is a smart move and the black accessories with a floral dress are a little hip and unexpected, but I have to be candid, Google, I’m a little worried about how that hat is going to fare in a suitcase. Also, my super short black gloves are at the cleaner. Do you think I could substitute weightlifting gloves instead?

And finally, our last event: the sendoff brunch. Google, help me: “What, pray tell, is appropriate for an event that asks guests to wear ‘traveling attire?’”

Okay, Google, I call bullshit. I may not know much about southern manners, but I’m reasonably certain that showing up topless in a swim cap is not going to work out.

Last week:

This week:

In other words: I had a vacation? Wha? I hardly remember.

Oh, wait, yes I do! There were volcanoes involved!

We hiked to the rim of the volcano crater and saw this cool lake…except it wasn’t a water lake, it was a LAVA lake. Awesome. And then we hiked down from the rim into the crater and across the lake. Double Awesome.

It was crazy to hike across a frozen lava lake, knowing it was bubbling boiling lava only 50 years ago. See? (same volcano, swear to god:)

Also, we hiked to a pretty waterfall:

I wanted to jump in, but John wouldn’t let me. Jerk.

We also spent time at the beach, dressed mostly in long sleeves and floppy hats under umbrellas wearing SPF eleventy thousand. Still, I managed to get this:

That would be my upper arm, with a quarter-sized patch of sunburn on it. It is totally unclear to me how this happened. I’m just grateful that was the worst of my sun problems.

So now I’m back, pale as ever but marginally more relaxed, reflecting fondly on mai tais and volcanoes and wondering how it is, exactly, that I ended up back in a place where the weather on March 21 looks like this:

How was your week?

(Sister gave me permission to share this story, though she kindly requests that no one ask any embarrassing follow-up questions since, as you’ll see, she’s suffered enough embarrassment.)

So we’re still here, at Mayo, though it looks like we’ll get sprung tomorrow.  Yippee!

Part of the reason we’re still here is that the first tests revealed some Causes For Concern, which led to the ordering of more tests, being performed today.  One of the tests that revealed a Cause For Concern was a test that they call something like “endoscopitosiscopsiousohmygodlongname” but which Sister  calls “a super horrible extra-long colonoscopy, except without sedation.”

For those of you who had not had one yourself (AND are lucky enough never to have had anyone describe their own personal experience with colonoscopy to you in lurid detail thanks so much for sharing that, father-in-law!), Dr. Wikipedia describes colonoscopy as “the endoscopic examination of the large colon and the distal part of the small bowel with a CCD camera or a fiber optic camera on a flexible tube passed through the [um, let’s just call it hole in the rear, so I don’t get a lot of hits from google searches of words that rhyme with ‘heinous,’ mmmkay?]

Typically, when one gets a colonoscopy, one gets knocked out so one does not have to feel the aforementioned fiber optic camera on a flexible tube as it passes through your personal regions.  For the particular test Sister needed, however, the typical generous dose of intravenous sedatives was not an option- it slows down your whole system, and this test was trying to measure how fast certain parts of her system react to certain things, so sedation was out.  Thus, she was fully awake for the FIVE HOURS this test took, fully awake as the nurse patted her head and said “honey, I’m staying with you the whole time because this is going to suck,” fully awake when the doctor started debating with the other doctor about whether or not this was, in fact, the “worst colon they’ve ever seen,” fully awake when they injected her with drugs that made her heart rate drop into nearly-dead range to “see how her system reacted”.

All of which paled in comparison to the part where she was fully awake when the x-ray machine they were using BROKE DOWN in the middle of the test so they had to bring in a repair team!  Of 6 people! To fiddle with the machine and try to get it to work while they chatted about what they were doing this weekend!  And then they started chatting about her!  One said “geez, THAT does not look pleasant” when they saw her in her compromised position, butt facing them, all exposed and tube-filled. And they all laughed!  And then (of COURSE– why do people DO this, it’s like a colonoscopy compulsion or something) they started swapping stories of their own colonoscopies, and how unpleasant they were, and how it sucked so bad to have to drink the gallon of gross medicine the night before to clean out your system, and that must have really sucked for a girl as young as Sister to have to do that. There she was, trying not to die of embarrassment, when the doctor clapped his hands briskly, said “okay, guys, our patient is not actually anesthetized here, so she’s, um, awake, so maybe we could wrap this up and clear you all out of here?”

If only she had had her head, not her butt, facing them, so she could have seen the looks on their faces when it dawned on them that she had heard every single word.

We had a lovely trip to California that involved several family gatherings, an obscene amount of sweets, and only one minor breakdown in tears. This is good.  I ended up caving and making another batch of the caramels, which came out perfectly, and were much appreciated. I may or may not have eaten about half of the batch when I was making them. (What? December is for gorging, January is for the soup diet. Duh.)

Now we are back. In addition to several lovely gifts, I brought home an unpleasantly persistent headcold, a nasty ingrown toenail infection (too much information?) and a new appreciation for our own apartment, where it is just the two of us. Our apartment is still trying to warm up again after being kept at a frugal 48 degrees for the duration of our absence. I plan to roast potatoes tonight.  (Go, stream of consciousness writing, go!)

As if this post was not random enough already, I am offering a contest for your amusement. If you are a gmail user, you will know about the “sponsored links” that appear in a column to the right of your emails when you open a message. As best I can tell, a google algorithm scans the email and generates a list of links that it thinks might be interesting to you based on the keywords in the message. Pasted below is a 100% accurate copy of the sponsored links that showed up next to an email I just read. (I especially like the Greek Clothing Sale- I don’t know what makes clothing Greek, particularly, but I can only hope it involves feta.)

The contest: Guess in the comments what the actual email was about that generated such a random list of links. Closest guess wins a batch of the now-infamous salted caramels (cooked to the correct temperature, so as not to destroy your dental work) mailed direct to their door. If the winner does not like candy, I will seriously question their judgment but will send an alternative (non-sugared) gift. Whee!

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Greek Clothing Sale

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John and I are spending Christmas day with my family and are then flying out to California for nearly a week with his family. This trip will involve lots of driving between the homes of various divorced and remarried parties, several celebrations at several different homes, and a dinner at a suburban fondue restaurant. Whee!

(foreshadowing)

Last year when we did this trip, I brought a box of Frango mints from (the store formerly known as) Marshall Fields to give to John’s mom. She set them out during one of the huge family gatherings, everyone liked them, they were hit. I work rather close to the flagship store of (what I insist on still calling) Marshall Fields, so I figured this year I’d buy another box, bring them to John’s mom, and start a hostess gift tradition.

Except work blew up this week and I didn’t have any time to go to (always and forever known as) Marshall Fields to pick up the damn Frango mints. And since I have about a million houses to go to during this visit to California, and because I really feel a strong personal obligation to show up with SOMETHING to every house I visit for a holiday party, I decided to dust off last year’s go-to holiday hostess gift recipe: salted caramels.

(they take several pans, but are WORTH IT)

I made about a dozen batches of salted caramels last year and gave them to everyone we know. They were delicious. Easy. Foolproof. Most importantly, I really liked eating the scraps that were left over after I cut them into neat squares and wrapped them in charming twists of waxed paper. So I figured it would be no big deal for me to whip up a batch and stick them in our suitcase to dole out to the many hostesses we’re going to encounter in the next week.

(mmm….soft and caramelly. Except not.)

You know what is a terrible way to discover your candy thermometer has gone wonky? When you taste your caramels after all your careful stirring and melting of butter and measuring of sea salt and discover that when it said 248 degrees, the perfect firm ball stage for caramels, what it actually meant was about 255 degrees, the perfect soft crack stage for candies that will stick in and then yank out your teeth if you try to eat them. Awesome.

(Where the whole mess ended up.)

Do you think if I printed out this entry and give it to the hostesses next week, I would at least get points for trying? Because I don’t think I have another batch of candy in me today.