tiny victories

It's not like I don't tell myself every week that this week is going to be a high-volume writing week.

And it's not like this week didn't have some justifiably huge, complicated necessities on the to-do list, of which I can divulge more later.

And it's not like only sitting down to finally fucking write on Thursday of said week is really championing my own brilliance.

But in the interest of self-esteem, and preservation of this fragile hold I have on my own goals, I did write this morning. For two hours. Without too much distraction and sticking marginally to the plot and characters that have been languishing desperate for attention in my documents folder for months now.

I don't know why it's so hard for me to do this, but it is, and conquering the hard and the fear and the angst is the only way to shut up the demons of self-loathing and doubt that plague my creative mind. At least, for today, I shut them up good and proper. And that deserves at least a bounce in my step.

distractions of awesome

There have been times in the past few months when I've been cripplingly unable to blog because it felt like there was nothing worth saying, and that's been annoying. This is more annoying - there's a lot worth saying, all of it good and exciting (and not involving babies), but I've got to keep it all tucked under a stylish winter hat for a while yet. So forgive me my silence.

Here are some other good things: two great friends getting engaged. Drinking delicious glasses of Rioja in Jen's apartment, surrounded by warm bodies of loving friends plus lots of cheese. Watching endlessly stressful but awesome episodes of 24. Oh my god! NINA! I just can't stop yelling that.

Also awesome is winter. I know it's cold outside, but it's not really too cold outside, people, and out come the lovely coats and scarves and leather gloves tucked in pockets and curls escaping from under hats.

Teaching hasn't been flaying me alive lately, either, which is a check in the positives column. And I've been busy, in a good way, waking up early and getting stuff done. So not much of has been writing, yet, but I'm confident it will be, soon. I like getting stuff done. I also like cooking. Which brings me to my next point.

Artichokes.

Are good, right? The few times I've had them, I liked what I saw. And believe you me, that's a rare mark of distinction for a vegetable in my world. So what I want to know from you, people with less cripplingly-picky eating habits, is how do you like your artichokes? How should I make my foray into the world of eating artichokes?

And squash, while you're at it. I've heard good things about the mighty squash.

So, see? I can't tell you big things, but you can share small things with me, and I'll tell you how that goes.

gadgetry in motion

For Christmas, Stuart and I received two pieces of kitchen gadgetry that a lot of people probably can't imagine living without - a Krups grinder and a rabbit-style corkscrew. Mind, I asked for these things, and my awesome sister-in-law happily obliged us with them. Even though I'd been living happily without them, bumbling along with my vaccuum-packed Bustelo and Stuart's lightweight and well-designed waiter's friend corkscrew, I thought I'd reach for the stars from my non-epicurean gutter.

A word in defense of Bustelo - it's strong fucking coffee. And that's the sort of people I come from. The sort of people who, damnit, if they're going to drink coffee, you'd better be able to beat back the Hun with it. So Bustelo, vaccuum-packed cheapness though it may be, embodies everything about espresso-roast, dark-as-hell-and-not-gonna-take-your-shit coffee that I love about coffee. Plus, hello? Five bucks a pound? I'm not arguing. I measure out at least a tablespoon per cup in our conical drip machine. I want ounce-for-ounce weaponry.

But I've been swayed by the dark side of finery. At some very posh friends' house (hi, Mark and Steph!), they brewed up a post-dinner pot with some fresh-ground beans and I was tempted, oh yes. It was so redolent! So earthy! So other words I don't usually bother to use when talking about my coffee! And since I no longer actually drink the stuff to wake up in the morning - having long ago switched to the gentler but more fortifying arms of tea - I figured it was time to dabble in the arts of fresh-grinding that once-weekly weekend cuppa brew. I mean, if it's going to be a weekend treat or a post-work delight, shouldn't it be words like that? If I don't need it to knock me down, brush me off again, and pat me on the butt in the mornings, what's wrong with doubling the amount of dollar-per-pound I'm willing to pay? Plus, have you smelled fresh-ground coffee beans?

And ooooh, boy, is it nice. The smell! The oily gorgeousness of the beans! We picked up some Starbucks Colombian (shut UP, I like Starbucks and my reasons why are a whole other post) and so far, I like it. There's a lot more subtlety to the taste, and I dosed it with only a teaspoon of sugar. I stubbornly refuse to stop stocking Bustelo in my cabinets, though. It's either out of a well-earned sense of loyalty, or it's because I can't really be bothered to diligently brush clean the Krups every time. Your pick.

High off the redolence of the grind, I pulled over the bottle of Shiraz earmarked for dinner. I felt a little dirty picking past the faithful waiter's friend to pull out the monstrosity of the rabbit. I mean, were the French actually going to come flying through the door, guns of condescension drawn that I was using a corkscrew worth twice the price of the bottle? I wouldn't put it past the Alliance Francais for being a cover op of that sort. If I don't know more about wine except "yummy" and "not yummy", what am I doing with a corkscrew with so much oozing sophistication that it actually seems like it can reasonably replicate a Van Gogh with some quiet time and yellow paint?

Gripping it to the neck of my humble Shiraz, even the first few seconds of the operation were fraught with the feeling like any minute now, this bottle and this contraption are going to slip out of my hand and shatter all over the floor and then the corkscrew will look at me condescendingly, YES IT WILL. But damn girl! Flip! goes the screw into the cork. Flip! out comes the cork. FLIP! off comes the cork from the screw. Could it really BE any easier? Et, as those connoisseurs across the pond say, voila. Wine open and breathing while I sip more of my earthy complex coffee.

Thus endeth my weekend adventures in epicurean pickiness. No telling what tomorrow might bring into my kitchen.

history lessons

So we're studying Ancient Greece, in our first grade classroom, and yesterday we started a segment on daily life in Athens, specifically, the birthplace of democracy and processes of citizenship. Smart kids that they are, they picked up on some interesting aspects of ancient life, no matter how blandly I tried to present it.

Keep in mind, the demographic of my class is at least 75% black, with a smattering of hispanic kids - as is the neighborhood in which I'm teaching. So, you can imagine, the parts of our lesson that mentioned slavery were hotly discussed by my seven-year-olds. I mean, kids will be kids, right? Most of my kids think New Jersey is another country; they have that elastic sense of place and time that every kid has. But these kids sure knew their history when it came to talking about slaves.

Krissa: So, it says here that only free men could vote. What does that mean, free men? What's the opposite of free people?
Sally*: Black people.

I was almost shocked into laughing, which rivals a certain mispelling of the word "house" as the hardest moment of forced maturity or composure I've faced. I went on to explain, as best I could, that although here in the U.S., black people were the predominant ethnicity forced into slavery, ancient Greece would have had slaves of different skin types, and that not all black people were slaves. And I was proud of her, of all my students - quoting Martin Luther King at me about freedom and knowing as much as they did about their own history. When I so often find huge gaps in their knowledge, here was an unexpected mine of information that our schools are doing well to drive home.

But MAN. This must be what they mean when they say out of the mouths of babes.

* name changed, OBVS.