The Beautiful Game

Whoever dubbed soccer ‘the beautiful game’ was perhaps referring to the way skilled players seem to dance with the ball as they move it across the field; the fast yet delicate way their feet nudge and guide as they try to keep the ball away from their opponents’ reach.

Whoever it was, and for whatever reason they chose those words, they certainly did not coin the phrase while watching a soccer game played by the six and under set.

In that case they might have used the phrase ‘the hilarious game’ instead.

On Monday night, we parents of the U6 Blue Sharks gathered at the sidelines of Turtle Hill to watch our would-be David Beckhams, Mia Hamms and Thierry Henrys in action.

The result was a pack of pint-sized individuals seemingly glued together, unable to separate despite their coaches and parents’ ardent attempts to encourage them to spread out. ‘Spread out,’ we yelled, followed by pictionary-esque hand motions for those who don’t understand what ‘spread out’ actually means.

Still, they clung to each other.

The professor, acting as coach, could be seen lifting players in the air and redirecting them to the correct goal, carrying discarded sweatshirt jackets, tying laces, begging kids to throw in the ball from the sidelines in less than five minutes, and doing his best to convince distracted subs to return to the field.

The parents took it all in, howling with laughter, as some kids wandered off in the middle of the game, one player kicked the ball into the opposing team’s goal, and a few Sharks stole the ball….from their own teammates.

The Hen, meanwhile, played as if David Beckham himself had anointed him at the start of the game. He was running like a madman – tongue sticking out of his mouth in concentration, stealing the ball (occasionally from his actual opponents) and, aided somewhat by the downward slope of the field, sending the ball to the goal more times than I could count.

It even went in, once.

We drove home in the rusty Venture, feeling fine; the Hen suddenly enamored with his lucky number 11 shirt. ‘Can I wear this tomorrow?’

The Mother’s Day Snack

It turns out I’m a literal person. The kind who, when she sees something in print tends to regard it as truth. Like those ‘tow zone’ signs that pop up every spring when they do the street cleaning in Calgary. I take that to mean ‘don’t park your car here, or you’ll be towed’.

Or when a letter arrives from the preschool asking for photographs by May 11 ‘otherwise your portion won’t be included’; I take it to mean ‘race to London Drug before preschool to get it done or else you’re out of luck.’

But this is, of course, not how the world works. The street cleaners merely drive around the cars that didn’t adhere to the no parking ‘suggestion’. And the May 11 ‘drop date’ is merely shifted around until such time as everyone finally returns their contribution.

I’m writing this down, so I will learn. And remember.

The preschool moms were invited to a Mother’s Day celebration at the Hen’s preschool. ‘Come share a sweet treat and fruit,’ the adorable invitation announced. ‘No need to send snack kits to school that day,’ it offered relief to mothers tired of finding suitable snack options each morning.

The big morning arrived. I actually put on makeup and brushed my hair so as to avoid the de rigeur ‘you look really tired’ comments I seem to get whenever I show my face at preschool. After Operation Look Alive, it was time to dash to London Drug to pick up the aforementioned photographs of the Hen. The ones I was ordered to deliver by May 11, or else.

All this to say my morning was a flurry of activity. One that did not include breakfast. I considered grabbing a muffin at the Good Earth, before heading to the preschool. ‘No, they’ll have food there,’ I talked myself out of making an additional stop when I was already late.

Once all the moms had arrived, we were each sent downstairs individually where we were greeted by our adorable offspring bearing a cellophane wrapped gift: a painted clay pot containing a paper flower. It was so cute I nearly cried.

And then each mom and child duo sat down at a table for the eating portion of the festivities. My stomach was making all sorts of inappropriate noises, and I practically salivated at the thought that I was finally going to eat something.

The Hen went to the serving table and brought back two plates, one for me and one for him. The paper plates contained one quartered strawberry and 3 Praeventia heart-shaped cookies. Perhaps you’ve tried the Praeventia cookies? They measure roughly one inch in diameter and are often featured as a sample at Costco. They’re marketed as having health benefits – being made with cocoa and red wine extract and possibly containing fiber and iron.

I inhaled the three miniature cookies, mentally assuring my panicky self that this was surely not the snack. This was simply (possibly) the appetizer portion of the event. Because who would call 3 Praeventia hearts ‘a sweet treat’?

Like I said, I’m a literal person. To my stomach’s [severe] detriment.

The Hen, who was also starving, asked his teacher if he could have more. ‘There is no more,’ she sweetly declined. And other moms pulled out their kids’ snack kits and fed them little tupperwares of goldfish crackers and cheese and fruit, while my boy looked on, mildly outraged that I had taken the invitation literally and not packed a snack kit for him.

Happy Mother’s Day.

The Cheese Pocket

I’m not sure how it first began, the Johnson’s collective love affair with the cheese pocket at Little Lebanon. I recall one day, several years ago, stopping at the hole-in-the-wall joint after some outdoor excursion; hoping to procure something akin to the Doner we used to eat in Berlin.

The professor returned to the car (I believe it was still a ‘car’ then, not a rusty van with ill-functioning power doors) with an assortment of savory pastries. As well as a Donair. Which is not at all the same as a Doner.

Maybe because the Doner are made by Turks and the Donair by Lebanese and never the twain shall meet.

After visiting Little Lebanon a few more times, I determined that I only needed to buy their cheese pocket: a thin disk of homemade dough, rolled out, sprinkled with grated white cheese, folded with crimped edges and placed in one of those ultra hot open ended ovens with conveyor belts for three to four minutes.

After the seemingly interminable wait – spent eating the free piece of baklava the friendly owner gives every customer –  the cheese pocket is placed in a white paper envelope and wrapped in a brown bag and, with grease stains already surfacing, handed to its recipient.

Moi.

Then there is an arduous five minute period while we wait in the car for the cheese pocket(s) to cool slightly, so as to only be ‘very hot’ instead of ‘searingly hot’. All whilst the backseat choir cries ‘I want a cheese pocket, we never get a cheese pocket, you’re going to eat all the cheese pocket,’ etcetera.

This past winter, we began frequenting Little Lebanon a little more….frequently. So much so that two weeks ago, Percy threw a complete fit when his father had the audacity to drive past the cheese pocket store, instead of stopping for one. That was the day I knew we had a problem on our hands. Also my pants stopped fitting and I knew the pockets of molten cheese were largely responsible.

Then, as fate would have it, I picked up the Hen from preschool on Monday. While waiting for him to finish using his ‘gross motor skills’ at the playground, I chatted with one of the moms who mentioned she was Lebanese. ‘Oh, do you ever go to Little Lebanon,’ I asked. Because I’m ultra eloquent and always say smart things when conversing with people. ‘We go sometimes,’ she answered gracefully, ‘but we cook a lot at home.’ And then I told her about the Johnson boys’ obsession with the cheese pockets. ‘You should just make them,’ she castigated, ‘instead of paying $4.75 for one.’

She’d unwittingly tapped into my culinary-thrifty side. ‘Which cheese should I buy,’ I asked, because I’d seen the wrapped hunks of cheese in the refrigerated display case and figured one of them had to be responsible for my ill-fitting pants, ‘Akawie,’ she told me, ‘and you can just buy some pizza dough.’ ‘No, I assured her, I’m a good cooker.’

Like I said, eloquent. This may be why I’m working on eliminating interpersonal conversation altogether.

Two days later, on the way to pick up the Hen from preschool, I stopped at Little Lebanon for ‘the cheese’. I found myself wondering if buying cheese would entitle me to the coveted piece of free baklava. Because I figured the professor would be all sorts of annoyed if I bought the cheese and a cheese pocket. Luckily the owner placed a piece of syrupy phyllo goodness in my hand while ringing up my purchase.

It was $10 for the hunk of white cheese. ‘That’s two cheese pockets,’ I did the math. ‘I’d need to make at least three pockets for this endeavor to be cost effective and/or worthwhile.’

I came home and made pizza dough because my Lebanese friend hadn’t entrusted me with the secret dough recipe.

Several hours later, I rolled out a piece of dough. Not in the perfectly round shape they have at Little Lebanon. I sprinkled a handful of white cheese on the dough and folded it into something that looked nothing like the crescent shaped pockets I’ve become accustomed to.

I cooked it for an indeterminate amount of time and served it to the hovering wolves. ‘You need to cook this longer,’ my ever-honest eight year old instructed. My technique improved somewhat over the course of the experiment, and by number 3 or was it 4, I had a decent looking pocket. But the fact remains, it did not taste the same. Whether because of the pizza dough. Or because my Lebanese friend had steered me wrong on the cheese selection.

‘So how much was the cheese,’ the professor asked. ‘Ten bucks.’ ‘Yeah, not worth it,’ he made the call.

I spent the rest of the evening clutching my belly from the gut bomb I’d consumed. Some things are just worth the money.

The Pioneer Lunch

A couple of Fridays ago, the Gort was scheduled to go on a fieldtrip with his classmates. To a little place in Calgary called Heritage Park. An email went round asking for volunteers to accompany the gaggle of second graders to the historical village and I, for reasons I can’t recall, said yes.

The night before the fieldtrip, I reviewed the information letter the Gort had brought home. It gave details about the ‘pioneer lunch’ the students were supposed to pack for the day, with quaint suggestions like ‘pack it in a tin’, ‘bread smeared with lard (or jam)’, ‘cake if mother had sugar’, etc.

I pretended not to see the part about the hardboiled egg (seriously, am I the only person on this planet repulsed by hardboiled eggs?) and, fueled by 10pm adrenaline, began the somewhat complicated task of producing the best pioneer lunch anyone had ever seen.

Minus the egg.

But first, I had to find the requisite ‘tin’, since the de rigeur Marvel Superheroes lunch kit was not in keeping with pioneer tradition. My sister had gifted me with some cute orange tins from West Elm. But they are possibly made of lead and rather heavy. I envisioned the Gort buckling under the weight of the backpack he’d have to schlep around for an entire day.

And then I remembered about this old Godiva chocolates tin I’ve been schlepping around for years, the one I use to store ink pads. It was lightweight, if slightly large, and would do the job nicely.

Seeing as the pioneers did not have plastic wrap or aluminum foil, I dug out a few cloth napkins with which to wrap the austere lunch: two pieces of bread held together by a thin layer of strawberry jam, a boiled potato, a hunk of cheese, an apple, and some sunflower seeds stored in a glass babyfood container with a tin lid.

I was pretty pleased about the tiny glass jar, since I figured the pioneers also did not have Rubbermaid Tupperware at their disposal. (Okay, they probably did not have Gerber baby food either, but whatever.)

In the morning, I proudly showed the Gort my handiwork. The tin and all its pioneer glory. ‘There’s a naked lady on the tin,’ he observed. I looked. Yes, there was. Front and center. A naked Lady Godiva, I’m guessing. But it was past the point of no return. We were already late and I was not going to put my pioneer lunch in a cartoon lunch kit, so I made a mental note to be that mom, and rush to the lunch table to remove the questionable lid before anyone else  had a chance to see ‘the lady’.

We spent the first part of our morning at the Hudson’s Bay Company Fur Trading Fort. As a mother, this was the most valuable part of the fieldtrip experience. For I was able to show the Gort that the very same Hudson’s Bay Company logo resided on the sweatshirt jacket he so dislikes: a mustard yellow, 2010 Canada Olympic hooded, zippered, jacket.

Have you met my son? He has very particular tastes and will fabricate all manner of tales to get out of wearing something he.doesn’t.like. A chip off the old (paternal) block. ‘It’s too itchy,’ is the most common complaint, ‘the sleeves are bugging me,’ or the more neutral, ‘I can’t tell you why, because you don’t like it when I complain about clothes.’

With this particular ‘hoodie’, the complaint has been that the fleece interior is not soft enough. Even though the eight year old typically (read: 100% of the time) wears a shirt underneath any hoodie. Resulting in a permanent barrier between his skin and the jacket’s (soft, or not soft) fleece lining.

But as soon as I pointed out he had a ‘pioneer’ logo on his jacket, he got excited; relaying the good news immediately and excitedly to our dare-I-say grumpy Pioneer guide.

But there was a slight misunderstanding. He’d chosen to relay the nugget of information when she was telling our group about buckskin. So she thought his cotton jacket – which appeared to be a camel color in the dark, lit-by-fire-only shack we were sitting in, was made (or lined) with…..buckskin. And he did nothing to disabuse her of the idea.

Uncomfortable fleece=buckskin, he decided.

And I had to sit there, quietly absorbing the spectacle of falsities.

The grumpy Pioneer also taught the kids how to make bannock over a fire, by melting lard (vegetable shortening, I think), mixing it with flour and water, sprinkling the dough with saskatoon berries, and possibly wrapping it around a stick and cooking it in the fire for a few minutes.

The end result was a warm bread-like substance with some berries in it, which some kids professed to love and at least one refused to try. (Much the same reaction the Johnson boys had when they reprised the bannock making experience a week later. Percy ate his weight in bannock and the other three barely touched it.)

We gathered upstairs in the village bakery for lunch and I rushed over to the Gort’s table; removing the lid before anyone had the chance to comment on Lady Godiva’s missing clothes. I looked around to see what kinds of fun pioneer lunch containers the other kids had brought.

They had all brought their regular ultra-colorful lunch kits. They were all eating their usual non-Pioneer lunches, while my son gnawed on a plain boiled potato.

Livin’ the dream

The professor told me I should write a book. And I looked at him with a frown on my face and said ‘about what’. And he said (plumbing the depths of his creative mind) ‘about your life with three boys.’ I thought about it for two seconds, ‘I will call it I want my own bathroom‘. ‘That’s a great title,’ he agreed.

Except, of course, I was being sarcastic. About the writing a book bit, not about the wanting my own bathroom bit.

We live in an age where magazines and drool-inducing websites (yes, you, Pinterest) all encourage us towards this notion of a ‘dream home’. Complete with a ‘dream kitchen’ that costs as much as a small house in most countries. And master suites large enough to hold all the Duggars.

Me, I have simple dreams. I want a kitchen that has more than two feet of countertop (preferably not of cheap, stain-absorbing beige Formica) and I want my own bathroom.

As in, the four men of the house can share a bathroom or some sort of outhouse in the yard, but I want a space (tiny is fine) with a door that closes; where people with xy chromosomal configurations may not trespass.

During the first week or so of our married life, the professor and I discussed household duties. He agreed to do dishes. I agreed to clean bathrooms. And, for the better part of fifteen years, I enjoyed the better part of that arrangement. He washed dishes at least once a day while I cleaned the bathroom(s) once a week. Ish.

But then we had three boys. And my once a week cleaning gave way to once a day cleaning. Or more.

And I’m not even talking about the toilet. That is a matter entirely too delicate for this forum.

I came home one day last week, after the professor had been in charge of his offspring for an hour or two. I entered the bathroom – the bathroom all five of us share. The soap dispenser I’d refilled the previous day….was lying on the floor. Practically empty.

That, my friends, is a very bad sign. It means ‘someone’ named Percy had had some alone time in the family bathroom. And possibly squirted soap all over the counter. And the strangely squishy-sticky floor. And the bathtub.

I didn’t even realize the bathtub had been soaped until the next day when it was time for my twice-weekly shower and I.nearly.died. We’ve all heard about people falling in the shower and seriously injuring themselves. Personally, I was always skeptical about those ridiculously uncoordinated people who hurt themselves in their very own bathtubs. But now I know: those people had children who squirted copious amounts of clear liquid soap onto the bottom of the tub.

And then….there’s the toothpaste. Are my children the only ones who, every time they brush their teeth, leave behind clumps of toothpaste in and around the sink along with those tell-tale white stains on the counters?

If I had financial backing and a scientific mind, I would make it my life’s work to invent one thing: invisible, non-staining toothpaste.

Seriously, the mom who figures that one out, will be able to build her own house, never mind her own bathroom.

The Assistant to the Assistant

It’s raining and cold in Calgary which can only mean one thing: soccer season.That time of year when parents – for reasons unknown – sign their largely disinterested children up for an outdoor sport occurring several nights per week. Smack in the middle of the dinner hour.

It seems like a noble idea, what with all the pictures of severely obese children in the headlines accompanying dire articles about the state of children’s fitness levels; spouting words like ‘epidemic’.

But then the rain starts to fall and temperatures plummet and you’re feeding your kids junk food in the car on the way to soccer and you want to kick yourself for thinking four nights of soccer a week would be ‘doable’.

Not to mention the fact that your kids don’t even like to play soccer and run off the field the second anyone dares to come within arm’s reach.

This year the professor agreed to be the assistant coach for the Hen’s team. A duty he’d managed to avoid since that very unfortunate time when the Gort was three and a half and I’d volunteered my better half to be the coach. Also the Hen was less than two weeks old, so I spent matches slinging around a newborn whilst trying to civilly threaten a preschooler to get.out.of.the.goal.now or get.back.on.the.field.now.

As luck would have it, the ‘real’ coach was going to be out of town for the first week of the 2012 soccer season, which means the professor had to run the show. ‘You want to be my assistant?’ he recruited the Gort, who readily seized the opportunity.

‘Do you think Dad will introduce me to Henners’ soccer mates since I’m the assistant coach?’ he wondered aloud before they left for the first game. Assistant to the assistant coach, I wanted to say; feeling like an extra in an Office episode.

‘Do you want him to introduce you,’ I asked the Gort. ‘Yes.’ It reminded me of the scene in Bridget Jones when Mr. Fitzherbert asks Bridget to introduce him at the launch of Kafka’s Motorbike, because it will ‘add a lovely sense of occasion.’

‘You need to introduce the assistant to the assistant,’ I gave the professor a discreet heads up before he drove off to the game. ‘I know,’ he assured me, ‘I’ve already been told.’

The first game went off without a hitch; the Royal Blue Sharks crushing their opponents with a 4-3 victory. ‘What did you have for snack,’ I asked the Hen later; curious about what constitutes a communal soccer snack. ‘We had granola bars, and they were better than yours,’ the Hen informed me matter-of-factly. ‘Yeah,’ the Gort agreed – apparently being the assistant to the assistant comes with snack privileges – ‘they were these Kellogg’s Apple Cinnamon granola bars.’

I’m not sure the two of them could have hurt me more if they’d tried; preferring sugary sawdust-esque snacks to my homemade treats.

For the second game of the week, Percy and I joined the fun. Though using the word ‘fun’ to describe standing on the side of a cold, damp field while chasing a toddler is perhaps hyperbolic.

The Gort proudly wore a nametag that said ‘Assistant Coach’ and I again suppressed the urge to yell ‘assistant to the assistant!’ He was heavily involved at the start of practice, happily allowing the Hen’s teammates to chase him around the field. But he lost interest after that, opting to disappear into the trees with other bored older siblings instead.

Minutes later, I saw a grey and white sweatshirt making its way up a very tall pine tree on the side of the field. I abandoned Percy watching duties and ran over to the tree to urge the Gort to return to solid ground, while Percy seized the opportunity to run back onto the field and into the assistant coach’s arms. ‘He’s fast,’ one of the dads marveled. The same dad whose son spent most of the game crying and clinging to his leg.

Seriously, why do we do this to ourselves?

It was all going as well as it could when they stopped for the all important snack break. Except the person responsible for snack had forgotten to bring said snack. The six-and-under set was outraged, as if expecting someone to be outside for one hour without fortification was a flagrant violation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. One of the Sharks actually said she wouldn’t play anymore ‘because she hadn’t had a snack.’

Finally, the world’s longest hour had passed and with empty bellies and numb extremities we climbed back into the van. One week down, seven to go.

A point for Gryffindor

Always one to eschew a bandwagon, I’d managed to evade Harry Potter mania for the better part of thirteen years. But last year, after repeated [failed] attempts at trying to entice the Gort into reading Little House on the Prairie with me, I gave up and pulled out a used copy of the Philosopher’s Stone instead.

For a week or two we’d gather in my room before bedtime while I read one chapter aloud. Usually with the two younger boys bouncing on the bed or talking loudly while the professor dozed, soothed by my excellent reading voice.

Less than 90 pages into the story, I abandoned Operation Hogwarts; finding it impossible to read with the littlest two hanging around or carve out time to read with just the Gort.

Nine months later, I dug the book out of the recesses of my closet and we picked up where we left off. [Harry hadn't even made it to the School of Wizardry yet.]

I read a chapter or two with just the Gort….and then we moved to house number three and poor Harry still hadn’t made it to Hogwarts. A week passed and I vowed to finish the book once and for all. So we read another chapter together, and the next morning I walked into the kitchen and found the Gort sitting at the table with the book in front of him. I guess he’d done the math and realized – at the pace we were going – that the book wouldn’t be finished….until Percy turned 8.

Three days later he’d achieved mission impossible and finished the book-that-could-not-be-read. I assured him I would find a copy of the eleven year old movie, because I’d said all along that he could watch the first Harry Potter movie when he turned eight (after he’d read the book). I don’t really know why I’d said eight, but I did and he’d been asking me and reminding me for nearly a year. Even the Hen was in on it: ‘when Gaga turns eight, he can watch Harry Potter.’

And then, on the appointed Saturday night, I suddenly remembered that I had two other not-eight-years-old children and what was I going to do with them while my firstborn and I watched a movie?

So I did what I’d vowed never to do – I let the younger siblings have the same privileges as the oldest sibling, with no regard for age or hierarchy. [Am I the only one who harbored bitterness because my younger sister and I had the same curfew when we were still living at home? Really, what is the benefit of being the oldest sibling if the younger ones get to do everything you get to do with far less life experience under their belt?]

The four of us sat down and watched the (rather long) movie despite the fact that two of us did not meet the minimum age requirement and had not made any attempt to read the book. (In fact, it could be said, they’d actually sabotaged the reading of the book.)

We got to the scene with the Quidditch match between Slytherin and Gryffindor; when the Gort’s enthusiasm for all things Hogwarts reached new heights. ‘Ten points for Gryffindor!’ he crowed enthusiastically, as though he had a personal investment in their success. This did not escape the professor’s attention as he toiled in front of his laptop. ‘How come you won’t watch sports with me, but you get all excited about a game that isn’t even real,’ he complained from his kitchen office.

Finally, after enduring trolls and unicorns and Voldemort hiding underneath Professor Quirrell’s turban, the movie ended. The Gort was not happy. ‘But I wanted to see the part where Harry goes to the Weasley’s house,’ he protested, feeling cheated by the movie’s omission of such a ‘critical’ scene.

‘The movie is never as good as the book,’ I delivered the bad news.

Several days later, the eight year old stomped in through the back door after a disagreement with the Coach-Professor, during a round of soccer drills at ‘Coach Jason’s Soccer Academy’.

‘He’s meaner than Marcus Flint,’ the boy wailed unhappily about his coach-father. ‘Who’s Marcus Flint,’ I asked, suppressing a smile at the suspected literary reference. ‘He’s the chaser for Slytherin,’ the boy reminded-explained.

It was the ultimate insult.

The Art of Kijiji

House number 3, our latest in a string of Calgary abodes, is lovely in many respects. A nice backyard for the boys to run around in while screaming at the top of their lungs – much to our new neighbours’ chagrin, I’m sure. There is sufficient light in the house so as to allow me to take pictures of the boys when they’re doing ‘adorable’ things like filling the bathroom sink with water and using straws to blow bubbles.

But, and there’s always a but, there’s a teensy drawback: the large basement is entirely without storage space. No closets, no shelves, just one long skinny room with greige carpet. Ta-da.

‘Do you need me to help you unpack,’ one friend asked; mildly horrified by the state of the below – brown boxes everywhere, some open, some empty, some with contents spilling onto the floor. ‘There’s nowhere to put the stuff,’ I explained, hoping to convince her we weren’t candidates for an episode of ‘Hoarders’.

I turned to Kijiji, in the hopes that somebody, somewhere in southwest Calgary, was hoping to part with an assortment of storage solutions for the winter gear, books, office knickknacks and bins of Christmas decorations we seem to bring with us wherever we go.

There wasn’t, as it turns out.

Within five minutes of searching, I learned two things about this website where other people always seem to get great things at great prices. First, I’m convinced there are people who do nothing but stalk the website all day long, hitting refresh every 2.5 seconds and pouncing on any advertised bookshelves or other semi-attractive storage solutions. That cute red bookshelf that was listed ‘less than 12 minutes ago’? Gone. Snapped up by a Kijiji hawk. No shelf for you, unmotivated person who refuses to sit in front of a computer for days on end until the right item appears.

Second, Kijiji is the internet’s version of Lake Wobegon: ‘where all the furniture is like new, where nothing has been used more than a handful of times, and everything is valued at 90% of the original price paid.’

Even if the item in question was bought…six years ago. One woman advertised her two year old IKEA sofa with the line: ‘has only been sat on twice.’ Literally. Two times. In two years.

Even if the statement was remotely accurate, I do not wish to pay 90% of the original sales price for any used items from that blue and yellow warehouse. If I’m buying IKEA, I’d rather buy it brand new with the hopes of somewhat extending its no more than four years shelf life.

So I gave up, after scouring ten pages’ worth of advertisements for leather couches and dining sets. But not before my eye landed on a picture of a small velvet sofa for the low, low price of $20.

I’ve been on a velvet sofa kick for a while now, faithfully pinning pictures of other people’s adorable vintage couches to my Pinterest board; swooning over airy Brooklyn apartments with exposed brick walls and green velvet encased sofas as featured on Design Sponge.

So I emailed the seller of the $20 sofa, and he said I could have it, and I dispatched the professor to load the two-seater into our rusty Venture. The professor, who rolled his eyes at my impulse buy, muttering about how he thought ‘we were looking for shelves, not sofas.’

He brought the brownish beige gem home with a frown upon his face. ‘One of the legs is broken,’ he announced-accused when he walked through the door. ‘It cost twenty dollars,’ I reminded him, my mind clouded with visions of the couch transformation I would oversee: re-upholster in a dusky blue velvet, remove the old-fashioned skirt around the bottom edge and add a pair of chic new legs.

Never mind the fact that this would set me back considerably more than the initial $20 outlay. And by ‘considerably more’, I mean: the price of a brand new couch.

Pastry Night

I’d stopped at a local Mexican grocery store last week to buy some tortillas. As luck would have it, I timed my visit to coincide with empanada night. I’d had the bison spelt empanadas on a previous occasion and couldn’t leave the store without a little to-go container of bison spelt goodness. When I got home, I sat at the table to tuck into my snack and the ghosts of dinners past gathered round. ‘I want some, I want some, I want some’ they chorused in triplicate.

My two not-exactly-huge empanadas dwindled into a few measly bites for me. The thing I found interesting is that these empanadas were spicy – made with chipotle peppers, burn your mouth spicy. ‘I need water,’ the Gort gasped and alternated taking bites of the bison filled pastry with long drinks of water. ‘My mouth.is.on.fire.’

Still, they ate my empanadas and that’s how tonight’s dinner was borne.

I had ground bison in the freezer. I looked up a recipe for empanadas. I bought butter and canned chipotle peppers.

Ta-da.

It required a little bit of work, of course. I’m not sure what it is about the prospect of making pastry dough, but I dread it much like I might dread an annual medical check-up. Once I throw some flour and salt and butter in the food processor, it’s fine, but to get to that point I have to spend hours fixating upon the ‘horror’ that awaits me.

I was still in the midst of dreading making the empanadas, when it occurred to me: I was going to be dabbling in pastry anyway, why not make some homemade pop tarts while I’m at it?

I’d seen an adorable version on Pinterest, complete with heart cut-out and ever since I’d had my mind set on making pop tarts. Even though I’d choose chocolate over fruity pie-like creations most days.

When you spend the bulk of the day preparing dinner, it tends to be ready….early. So at just after 5pm, I gathered the Johnson boys and we sat down at the table for my slightly less spicy version of bison empanadas with cilantro cream and guacamole.

They were pretty tasty if I do say so myself. Percy, the two year old, finished one plate, then another. The Gort and the Hen each ate theirs without complaint. The professor choked down a couple. ‘I would have eaten more,’ he confessed, ‘but I didn’t want to be a pig.’

With dinner out of the way, it was time to make pop-tarts. I was in the middle of rolling out the dough when the phone rang. ‘Have you eaten dinner?’ a friend asked, ‘because I made extra and thought we’d invite you guys over.’

It figures: the one night of the year that I’m on the ball with dinner, I get an impromptu invitation to dine elsewhere.

It was just past 6 when I pulled the pop-tarts out of the oven. I tasted a warm one and nearly kicked myself for spending so much time making something that tasted so…..meh.

Since the tarts were piping hot, the professor suggested a walk around the block – Goldilocks-style – so that we could ‘earn’ our dessert: aka not having to listen to the boys ask every.two.seconds ‘are they ready yet?’

After the longest walk-around-the-block in history, we arrived home and I passed out a plate of pop-tarts.

Apparently hot pop tarts are meh. But luke-warm pop tarts with homemade strawberry icing drizzled on top?

Delicious.

Raising the Tabernacle

When I picked up our once-in-a-while babysitter on Friday night, she got in the car and said: ‘I’ve babysat for you three times and every time it’s in a different house.’ I made some crack about how we were in the witness protection program and drove her to – what I shall call – house number 3. [For the four month period of December 30 to April 30.] To be fair, the Gort reminded her she’d actually babysat for us four times, so the situation is not nearly as outrageous as she suggested.

As we were hauling things out of the garage at house number 2 in preparation for the move to house number 3, a friend looked upon the tree house the professor had built. The same tree house that had taken up the entire garage…..while our car languished in the driveway for three months, gathering snow and sleet and a million of those tiny red berries.

‘This is, like, a mini Tabernacle,’ the friend declared as he gazed upon the canvas covered structure. Before hoisting it onto the back of a truck for its five block odyssey…..to house number 3.

The Tabernacle was placed upon the semi-dead grass in the backyard and, though I wondered to myself ‘isn’t that going to decimate the grass,’ I said nothing, because I had bigger fish to fry. Like figuring out what happened to my juicer. Seriously. How is it possible to move an entire household of objets and lose one juicer?

Meanwhile, feeling guilty after my mother had asked ‘what are you reading’ and I’d replied ‘nothing’, I’d gone to the library and picked up a book. [Though personally I believe the 'we just moved' excuse should preclude one from any and all sorts of things for at least two weeks. Three weeks. A month.]

I’d just finished reading the first few chapters, in which a young engineer from the turn of the 19th century describes the atrocious bridge-building practices of the time; including the deaths and ‘decompression illnesses’ among the people building the Brooklyn Bridge.

My horror was momentarily interrupted by the Gort. ‘Uh, mom, I think maybe Dad needs a hand.’ I glanced at the backyard and saw the Tabernacle, two sawhorses, and several wooden planks. Judging from its Pisa-like appearance, it seemed the professor was trying to raise the Tabernacle on to a three-foot-high wooden base….using an undeniably dangerous method of diagonally placed planks and a couple of sawhorses.

I ventured outside – keeping my distance for fear I’d be felled by a toppling wooden structure; watching as the professor pushed one side of the Tabernacle and adjusted the sawhorse before pushing on the other side and adjusting sawhorse number two.

I feared two things: (1) someone might die or at least be severely injured, and (2) it would take two days to inch that structure towards the base.

So I lent a hand, fully prepared to jump at the first sign of disaster. (Joan of Arc, I am not.) Before the sun set (entirely) the base was reunited with its canvas-sporting sister. And the boys were happily reunited with their play house.