Family Bed: Taking It Too Far

Here's a update to an earlier post about what sleep--or lack thereof--is like around our house.

When Mavis jumped up on our bed and settled herself as close as she could get into the crook of Ralph's knees at 4:48 this morning I got the brilliant idea that what we need is not a king-size set up like we have, but an accordion mattress--one that expands as the need arises--much like a dining table to which you add more leaves for company. 

That's because when I went to sleep around midnight, it was just Ralph and me, taking up a concentrated amount of space in the middle of the bed--about the size of a double. When Julia joined us around 3:00 a.m., splayed out in the middle, we expanded to a queen. By the time Mavis came along, I was hanging off the edge like Cary Grant clinging precariously to some president's nose on Mt. Rushmore in the great Alfred Hitchcock movie North by Northwest. Maybe we needed a California king at that point.

Like dreams, most ideas you have in the wee hours don't really hold up when daylight comes. But I'm sticking with my accordion bed invention. Anyone up for investing?

Media: Old and New Are in It Together

I'm getting more and more used to reading if not entire newspapers online then at least a handful of key stories every day and surfing around to see what's new with Sarah Palin, so, strictly as a reader, yesterday's announcement that the Christian Science Monitor is shutting down its print publication and going online didn't particularly bother me. As a journalist, of course, it seems like a big deal, especially coupled with the news that Gannett is laying off thousands of people. But David Carr, the New York Times media columnist, explains why it was a bad day for anyone who cares about the news in a way I hadn't previously understood: 

The answer is that paper is not just how news is delivered; it is how it is paid for. 

More than 90 percent of the newspaper industry's revenue still derives from the print product, a legacy technology that attracts fewer consumers and advertisers every single day. A single newspaper ad might cost many thousands of dollars while an online ad might only bring in $20 for each 1,000 customers who see it.

The difference between print dollars and digital dimes -- or sometimes pennies -- is being taken out of the newsrooms that supply both. And while it is indeed tough all over in this economy, consider the consequences.

New Jersey, a petri dish of corruption, will have to make do with 40 percent fewer reporters at The Star-Ledger, one of the few remaining cops on the beat. The Los Angeles Times, which toils under Hollywood's nose, has one movie reviewer left on staff. And dozens of communities served by Gannett will have fewer reporters and editors overseeing the deeds and misdeeds of local government and businesses.

I'm curious to know where you get your news. And if you'd like to throw in the name of your favorite blog, I'd like to know that, too, since that seems to be the way journalism is heading.  

 

Sarah Palin and the "Post-Palate Era"

With Ralph and the kids out canvassing for Obama, this past Saturday marked the first time since Sam was born in 2002 that I was in the house, alone, without a deadline looming. And since I married a man who not only loves to cook but is also a forceful presence in the kitchen (this is my diplomatic way of saying he's a kitchen fascist), it was one of the few times since Ralph and I met that I was in charge of cooking for a dinner party. 

Is food like music, I wonder. Do we go back to the recipes we relied on when we were starting out on our own in the same way that most of us never really progress past the music we liked in high school and college? My anthem: Earth Wind and Fire's "September." My dish: Chicken Marbella. 

For anyone who doesn't know, Chicken Marbella, distinguished by the colors and flavors of prunes, green olives, and capers, comes from The Silver Palate Cookbook. One of the people who didn't know about the book was our 20-something dinner guest, who was, after all, two or three when it came out in 1982. 

But when I was in my 20s, it was THE go-to cookbook--a bridge between the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook of my mother's heyday and epicurious.com and foodchannel.com now. And for me, it was also a highly personal book, because my first apartment in New York, a furnished one-bedroom on the top floor of a five-story-walkup on West 73rd Street, was kitty-corner across Columbus Ave. from the Silver Palate, a snail's shell-size storefront that sold the same gourmet food as the cookbook set forth. Although there was nothing especially revolutionary about either the store or the book, both were emblematic of America's burgeoning food culture

--and culture, in general--in the '80s. As the authors, Sheila Lukins and Julee Rosso write in the intro: 

The Silver Palate was born of two women's personal desperation. Our lives had become increasingly active and it was getting more and more difficult to juggle it all. There were school schedules, business appointments, political activities, art projects, sculpting classes, movie going, exercising, theater, chamber music concerts, tennis, squash, weekends in the country or at the beach, friends, family, fund raisers, books to read, shopping that couldn't be avoided, and, last, but not least, trying to prepare creative, well-balanced meals daily and an occasional dinner party at home. It was much too much. The wonder women we thought and were being told we were, had to acknowledge we might not be.

It certainly sounds tough! I can't imagine trying to fit squash and a sculpting class into the same day, either. Or the same month, for that matter. What does resonate is the part about being "wonder women," because I remember so well thinking then, as most of my friends did, "I'm going to have it all." I even remember writing an essay about it to get into graduate school, and whether or not it was based on the weakness of my argument, I was turned down. As time passed, but still before I had children, the phrase shifted to being, "You can't have it all at once, but you can still have it," and I thought that made a lot more sense.

But life has proved both ideals wrong for me and everyone I know--I suspect even for Sarah Palin, who has revived, and become the poster mom for, the debate. In the first case, if you have a fulfilling career, a wonderful husband, well-adjusted, well-groomed children, and Chicken Marbella on the table when you come home at night, chances are great that you are weighed down by the guilt of feeling that you're not spending enough time with your kids, who, it turns out, grow up fast and do not become well-adjusted and well-groomed on their own. In the second case, if you step out of your career or slow it down to raise your children in a more hands-on fashion, you have the nagging dread that (a) you're missing out on important work and (b) you'll never get back on track. I'm not saying anything new here, I'm just saying the dilemma has never been satisfactorily resolved.

When I told my friend Sarah (the other Sarah, that is) on Sunday that our dinner guest had never heard of The Silver Palate, she joked, "I guess it's not the post-racial era we're living in, it's the post-Palate era." 

So here's my question for the women in what I'm calling the epicurious generation--women who haven't had to make decisions yet about balancing work and family. It doesn't matter if you've never heard of The Silver Palate, but does "having it all" mean anything to you? Is there another paradigm?

Unscrambling the Eggs

I've previously confessed my downhill slide from perfectionism but this is how far toward degradation I've gone. 

Yesterday, Sam had a friend over, and once they had finished the light saber fight that's in the play date rule book for 6-to-8-year-old-boys, their rising boredom threatened to thwart the afternoon. "What if we make brownies?" I asked brightly. 

"I'd rather just skip right to eating them," Sam's friend replied. 

With that, I jumped on my laptop, googled "easy brownies," and was soon melting butter and cocoa powder in a pot on the stove. The kids took turns measuring out the sugar and vanilla and beating the eggs. We were all into it, PLUS, we were going to be rewarded for our labors--handsomely, I thought. I poured the eggs into the pot . . . and realized that I had made a mistake. A big one, unless you happen to be a fan of chocolate scrambled eggs, which I am not. 

The old me would have thrown out the curdled-looking molten chocolate and started over. But the old me did not have three young children watching expectantly. And the me standing over the stove had just used up the last grain of sugar and the only two eggs in the house.  

The new me shoved the pan away from the heat, stirred vigorously, and poured the lumpen mixture into the 9 x 9 pan. After all, Julia Child once exhorted her TV audience: "Remember, you are alone in the kitchen and nobody can see you." Well, at least the kids were too short to see what had happened. 

Thirty-five minutes later, I pulled the not-quite-cooked brownies out of the oven, cut them while they were still hot, put them on plates, and served with a glass of milk and a smile. And you know, even I didn't really notice the eggy bits. 

But it made me wonder, not for the first time: is the key to motherhood--and life, generally--faking it? Is this what Hemingway meant by "grace under pressure?"

HuffPost Said "Yes" to My Post on Saying No

My new post "Notes From a Yes Girl" just went up on HuffPost. Please take a look and please leave a comment--I'd love to know what you think. Thanks to you--and thanks to HuffPost!

Why You Shouldn't Make a Llama Nervous

So Ralph just read my previous post on spitting. He says that ballplayers spit because they get nervous. "If you watch them," he said, "they start to pace. It's very animalistic."

"Dogs don't spit," I said, looking at Mavis.

"Yeah," he said, "but llamas do."

You May Find Portions of This Offensive

You know how when you're thinking about buying a new car and suddenly start to notice the make of every car that's parked on the street? Or how when you're hoping to get pregnant and all you see are babies everywhere? 

This is not that. 

The other night, when I stayed up late with Sam to watch one of the playoff games between the Red Sox and the Tampa Bay Rays, every time the camera panned to another player or coach, he was spitting. It was like a contagion. Except it was behavior as usual. Just in case you don't get the full picture of what I'm talking about, Terry Francona, the manager of the Sox, took a sip of something from a cup--Gatorade, Sam said--and then he spit it out. 

"Why'd he do that?" I asked Sam.

Sam: "He's rinsing his mouth out."

Me (to myself): Isn't that what the bathroom sink of for?

I chew gum, drink drinks, play catch, but do I ever spit? NO! And it's not just ballplayers who do it--it's men! I can honestly say that unless a woman is trying to expel an errant insect that flew into her mouth, I have never seen the fairer sex spit. 

Maybe dads take their sons aside and tell them that spitting is a good idea, but then why does the mom message, Don't do it!, hold no sway? 

So here's my question: WHY DO MEN THINK SPITTING IS A MUST?