Greetings from Snow-klahoma!

Hi everyone! We are going on day two of snow days! Can you tell we are a little manic?!

Which means I haven't combed their hair in two days! Just kidding, I combed it yesterday!

Actually, it hasn't been too bad. We stocked up on groceries, wine, and library books, so we've been just hanging out. The whole town was basically shut down, including OSU, so René has been home too, catching up on work and the endless job applications. We were fine until last night, when I blew a fuse upstairs by using a space heater and a blow dryer in the same outlet. Then I opened the front door to go check the breaker box, and realized that we don't have as simple a thing as a snow shovel. Actually, we don't have as simple a thing as a regular shovel! And, because I am me, I managed to go outside and throw every breaker without fixing the problem. Fortunately, the only room without power was our room upstairs (and the porch light) so we made do with the baby monitor plugged into an extension cord. And a flashlight. And I still managed to get my pajamas on backwards.

Today, when René went out to deal with the wilderness outside, he took with him a broom, a dustpan, and a hammer in lieu of a snow shovel. (and no, I don't know what he did with the hammer.) I was going to go ask our neighbors if we could borrow one, but I thought I'd let McGuyver have his fun. Then he threw the same switches that I threw last night, except he must have done it with flair because it fixed the problem! Yay, I don't have to brush my teeth by candle light tonight!

Yesterday we literally didn't step foot outside the house, since it was technically a blizzard and the snow was falling from the sky, then from the side, then from the ground. It was entertaining to watch, from the coziness of our pajama-ed house. But today the girls and I decided to brave the elements, since the sun was shining, and we opened the front door! It was cold. I took my gloves off to take these pictures, and my fingers promptly fell off.

We didn't have long to capture the moment.

Elsa wasn't pleased. Whenever I let go of her, she fell down.

Charlotte lasted the longest. Doesn't she look proud?

 And the resulting pile of wet clothes, gloves and boots was quite large for a five minute outing into the snow.







In other news, I am so glad that we got the Wii for Christmas, and especially that I got Wii Zumba (of course.) I might not have been so patient with the being-trapped-in-the-house deal if I had no opportunity for exercise. But I've been doing the Wii Zumba every day, and working on choreography for my first couple of songs, and so I have been well occupied.

One of the unexpected benefits of the Zumba training I did is that I am actually excited and engaged in something that is happening in the here-and-now. I've been struggling these past years with mindfulness; you would think that moving as often as we do, I would start to value the present since the future is such an unknown for us. But for me, I just tend to obsess over it, researching the real estate options and school systems of cities where there is an infinitesimal chance we might end up living. But being a Zumba instructor is something that I can start here and now, and take with me, and do wherever we go. And, in case you were wondering, we still have no idea where that will be, except for that it won't be here.

Mueve La Booty

If you've talked to me in person within the last year and a half, then you already know that I am a total Zumba convert. But I've taken it a step further, and I'm going to become licensed to teach Zumba!

The instructor training is this weekend, and I am excited and nervous. On the one hand, I can barely work up the nerve to talk to other people in the classes I take, and on the other hand, I fantasize about starting an Adult Dance Fitness Studio, where we would have Zumba classes and classes on belly dancing, folk dancing, whatever!

But here's the thing: I'm terrified. I am a shy person, when it comes down to it. And, for the last six and a half years, since I passed the exams for my Master's Degree, since I got pregnant with the twins, I haven't put myself out there. I haven't done a single thing where I was evaluated, where someone said, "you are successful," or "You've got the job" or "Great paper! A+." Being a parent is wonderfully rewarding, and I'm not saying that no one ever appreciates me or gives positive feedback. But the thing about parenting is that you can be doing a pretty bad job and you don't get fired or fail.

I can fail at being a Zumba instructor. And I don't like failing.

So I'm doing something for myself, something that doesn't involve the children at all. I will wear eighties-reminiscent teal dance-wear with splatter paint. I will dance to silly Latin-esque music. I'm thinking about getting some legwarmers. Let's dance. 

Peanut Butter Ball Time!

So it's Christmas time and I am far away from my family.  We had a good run there, three holiday seasons in a row in California, but this year we are here and you are there.  And that means that you don't have peanut butter balls.  So in lieu of the actual product, I present to you the recipe for said peanut butter balls, as written out by my Grandma Gloria, who passed away the year before my oldest girls were born.  I'm sad that she couldn't be around to watch yet another generation make a mess with this recipe. My grandma wrote out a whole box of recipes for me for Christmas one year, and I treasure it because I can hear her in my head each time I make the recipes. So the commentary is hers, unless it's written in red.  Then the commentary is mine!

Peanut Butter Balls- a mess to make but so good!
1# powdered sugar (C&H confectioner's) (It actually took me a long time to figure out that # means pound.)
2 1/2 # jar of Skippy (no substitute!) Chunky p-nut butter (And when she says "no substitutes" she means it!  I used Jiff this year because there wasn't Skippy in the right size jar, and it wasn't wet enough.)
1 stick Imperial Margarine (no substitute)
4 c. Rice Krispies

I can hear this snowman thinking, "NO SUBSTITUTIONS!"

-Mix well -- best way is with your hands with disposible plastic gloves on, it is icky/sticky. (I have to add that the best way is with your sister, auntie, and/or step-mama, some gossip and some wine.  It's not a coincidence that this particular recipe card has wine stains on it.)
-Make small balls- put them on cookie sheets on waxed paper-chill in refrigerator at least 2 hours.

Second best way is with a couple of six-year olds

and with six-year olds, you get various sized balls!

although with the six year olds, you're likely to end up finishing it yourself.

Put 2 big Hershey bars (or 1 super-size) and 1 bag Nestle's chocolate chips (semi-sweet) (I have to admit I don't know what she's talking about with the sizes here.  I never have enough chocolate to cover the balls, so I make twice this amount.) and 1/2 stick paraffin, grated (this is in the grocery store with the canning supplies.) (Aaaand this is the part of the recipe where I lose some people.  Yes, paraffin is wax.  And though we've always made it with wax, and have suffered no ill effects, I must mention that no where on the box does it say that you can or should actually consume this stuff.  Last year my sister and I toyed with the idea of tempering the chocolate so the wax wasn't necessary, but in the end we couldn't be bothered.  Besides, NO SUBSTITUTIONS!)
-put into a small bowl - heat in microwave and GO SLOW stir and check it every minute or so-Don't let it get hot or chocolate will separate and you'll have a greasy mess.

This is what grated paraffin looks like, BTW.

-Keep warm (put bowl into large bowl filled part way with hot water-put back in microwave for 30 seconds if it starts to get thick and unmanageable. (Let me just say here that I HATE THIS METHOD. I always end up getting water in the chocolate bowl and that's bad.  Last year we had very good luck with a hot plate set on warm.  This year, I experimented with a fondue pot, which eventually worked pretty well.)

Dip chilled p-nut balls into chocolate-let excess drip off - put balls onto cookie sheets lined with wax paper - let sit in a cool place til chocolate is hard.-This makes a LOT of p-nut butter balls, about 150 or so- SO good!

This makes so many balls, you may want to consider cleaning out your fridge before you start!

 

        So it's Chistmas eve, and I'm missing family, and missing my Grandma.  Christmas makes me think of Gloria more than any other time of year.  Part of it is the recipes.  I usually make 4 or 5 different candy recipes of hers, and it's almost like hanging out with her.  And so many of my Christmas decorations used to be hers.  These wise men for example: 

I think it's funny that I have the Three Wise Men, but no Baby Jesus.  But come on, these dudes are so sixties-licious!  One of their heads fell off but I super-glued it back on!  And my grandma, she had the best Christmas parties!  She would have fellow lawyers, judges, neighbors, family and friends all together, and it always seemed lovely and effortless.  Of course, her family knew how she worked for weeks before the party to make cookies, candies, lasagnas, Swedish meatballs and always, always, towers of peanut butter balls.  I miss you, G!

What HAVE I been doing?

I haven't posted here in a while because there hasn't really been anything to report.  I have been busy, but not with anything exciting.  I've been working out a bit of a weekly schedule of things to do with Elsa, and I'm happy to report that I found a kid's gymnastics center that has "open gym" on Friday mornings.  So I can take Elsa there and let her run around and jump on trampolines, play on teeter-totters, climb and hang on bars, and play with other kids.  It does cost $7 for an hour and a half: cheap by California standards, expensive by Oklahoma standards.  It was pouring rain when I went last week, and so there were quite a lot of kids and parents in there.  Maybe I will be able to meet some parents there, but mostly they all seemed to have known each other for a long time. 

I've also been busy trying to go to the gym, then hurting myself and being sad that I can't go to the gym.  In the past two months, I've been stung by a wasp, fallen down a step and twisted by ankle, burned my hand quite badly, hurt my back mysteriously during a kick-boxing class, and of course I've had the lingering not-quite-a-cold cold that we all seem to have.  Each thing took about a week to fix itself, and of course they happened consecutively, not all at once.  And of course I wanted to start going to the gym in the early morning again, but it's soooo cold at 5:30!  When I can't get to the gym, I try to walk and/or run on the path around Boomer Lake:

It's three miles all the way around, but I only run about 1/2 mile of it!

It's pretty when the weather's nice

 

 

I do this...

 

 

 

  

...while Elsa does this...

...and we try to avoid the notice of aggressive geese.

Turban-shaped Challah with dried cherries

Less boringly, I've been baking loaves and loaves of bread!  Claire and my Dad got me this book for my birthday, and it is fantastic.  I have made two loaves of plain bakery bread, one of herb bread, one of olive bread, one plain challah, and one challah with dried cherries, and one loaf of peasant bread, with the dough for three more loaves of peasant bread resting in the refrigerator and getting beautifully sour.  Watch out, if you have even the slightest kitchen inclinations, you are probably going to get this book from me for Christmas.  I am crazy for it. 




The twins are good, they have also had the not-quite-a-cold cold, too, though.  They actually missed some school last week, but after the second day, I had send them back.  They were driving me crazy.  They are the sickest at night, then morning comes and they are tired from not sleeping well.  After an hour or two, though, they are feeling fine and asking me "what can we do that's fun, mama?"  Arg.  We have a humidifier in their room now, but they complain about the noise.

Wow.  This is boring.  Let me talk about swearing a little bit:

This past Sunday, I was listening to Jane's Addiction's opus Ritual De Lo Habitual (how sacrilegious of me!!)  and thinking about swearing, rebellion, and motherhood.  When I was 22 or so, listening to this album constantly, punk-rock pink-haired grunge girl, older people would often tell me how I was going to grow out of my rebelliousness just like everyone else, that you have to grow up at some point and be an adult.  But actually I held onto it for a very long time.  And really, I could totally have been an adult and still have been that punk-rock pink-haired (okay, I still do have pink hair occasionally) grunge girl.  There are jobs out there, real grown-up jobs, where they pay you to be weird.  The thing that forces us into conformity is not adulthood, but motherhood.  Do I care that the girls were around when I was listening to Jane's Addiction?  Nope.  They've heard music with swearing in it since they were babies.  My policy is, as long as the word isn't being sung over and over, they aren't even going to notice.  Did I change the CD when the neighbor kid came over?  Of course.  What is my point here? I don't know.  I guess that it's hard to reconcile the person you used to be, the person you like to think you are, and the person that you actually live as in everyday life. 

On Not Being Christian

I realize that I haven't been posting as regularly as I should be.  The truth is, I've been a little down, and by a little down, I mean I've been very maudlin and pessimistic and alienated and all that fun stuff.  I feel like I don't fit in here at all, and a lot of the reason that I don't fit in is because I'm not Christian.  And I feel a little stifled about it, as if it's a "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" sort of situation.  Everyone assumes that, if you aren't wearing a burqua, a headscarf, or a yarmulke, that you are of course Christian.   And that if I'm not, I really should keep my mouth shut and nod and smile. 

There was the situation at the "good" zumba class, the one that I pay extra for outside of the gym I'm actually a member of.  I overlooked the fact that we do a zumba routine to a pop-country song about "Save a horse, Ride a Cowboy."  It's ridiculous, but I figure we are in cowboy country, it's sort of inevitable.  But then last week the instructor said we were going to be learning a routine very near and dear to her heart, a routine to a Christian hip hop artist who lives in our community.  She said that we are going to practice these songs (there are actually two of them) and then she would video tape us doing them and put them up on her facebook page so that other zumba instructors would see it and want to use it in their class and we could help spread the love of Christ.  I was looking around the class to see if anyone else seemed to feel uncomfortable with this, but everyone was clapping and cheering.  I just went along with it.

There is a sign you pass as you enter Stillwater that says "Attend the Church of Your Choice on Sunday!"  There are a lot of bumper stickers that say "Invite Someone to Church Once a Month!" The Mother's of Preschoolers group is religiously affiliated.  Even the preschool I am sending Elsa to is at a church.  I struck up a conversation with someone who seemed cool at the library, and we decided to start meeting at the park once a week; I discovered at the park that she considers herself "deeply religious" and that everything she does in her life she does because she loves God.  And that she's considering homeschooling.  I mean, she's a lovely person and all, but I don't know that we will ever be able to connect that well if our views are so different.  I don't think she's seen my bumper stickers yet. 

I started really noticing this feeling a couple of weeks ago when there was this festival called Celebration Stillwater that was put on by the churches of Stillwater; I actually wrote this next bit as soon as we returned from this fuction, but then I wasn't sure if I should post it, because I really don't want to offend people that I know and love that are Christians.  So if I know you and love you and you are Christian and you've never tried to convert me, then this isn't about your kind of Christian. Here it is:

We had gotten a flier about "Celebration Stillwater" from school earlier, but we had decided not to go, figuring it would be aggressively religious.  But they must have talked it up at school a lot, because the girls came home on Friday practically peeing themselves with excitement about Celerbration Stillwater! so we figured we'd better go.


And I'm glad we did, all in all.  There was horse-back riding-- not ponies, mind you, but full-on horses!  Charlotte and Ramona each rode a horse, and I went on with Elsa.  She was skeptical, but decided it was good.  There were bounce houses, free oil changes (weird, right?), free health and dental check-ups, and, get this, free "hot dogs, cookies, and cokes!"  I can't even think those words in my head without supplying the Oklahoma accent. And for the most part, the religiocity was confined to people's tee shirts(a lot of which were aggressively, almost offensively Christian,) and the christian rock that was playing.  Well, yes, there was a prayer tent, but you know what you're getting into if you go into the prayer tent, right?


There was one booth that really pissed me off, though.  Next to the face-painting and balloon animals, there was a bead-your-own bracelet booth; fun right?  So the girls sit down, and the volunteers start in on their spiel: "The knot at this end is the day you were born!  Do you know when your birthday is? This BLACK bead is comes first, it stands for your sin!  Your sin is what separates you from God!"  Do you know how much it pisses me off for someone to tell my six year olds that they are sinner? I bet you can guess!  Then each subsequent bead represented some other thing on the path to heaven; I had to walk away and just let them do it, or I was gonna lay into them.  Then they asked the girls if they had a bible at home.  They said "What's a bible?"  Such fresh young heathen sinners!  So they got bibles to take home (only the New Testament, though.  Why is it always the New Testament?  Don't want to pull out the old vengeful God unless you need Him for condemning homosexuals?) Luckily my girls are so unused to that kind of talk that they didn't absorb any of it.  I asked them what the book was, and they said it was a book about growing.  Okay.  I asked about the bracelets, and they only remembered what the green bead was for (also growing.)  Whew.


I know, we went to a festival put on by the churches, what did we expect?  But it was also pushed heavily at the elementary school, they did posters for it in class, so I expected it to be inclusive. And mostly it was pretty laid back.  It was just that one booth.  

Anyway, that's how I'm feeling right now.  I miss the casual secular feel of my social life in California.  I'm pretty sure that the majority of my friends and acquaintances in California would consider themselves Christians, but it didn't seem to be the central aspect of their lives, and they didn't just assume that everyone else felt the same as them.  Here, I feel like I'm doing it wrong.

Preschool and what happened before school.

What a morning.

Today was Elsa's first day of Preschool!  I know, right? How did this happen?

Well, there's nothing else for her to do.  There's no Gymboree, there's no mommy-and-me dance or gymnastics or art or anything.  At least not in the morning.  Every single class I have seen is either in the Picking-up-first-graders time period, or the It's-dinnertime time period.  So I thought I would check out the preschool options, to get her on the waiting list for, oh, I don't know, maybe next spring?  So I went to the Presbyterian Preschool (which comes highly recommended by non-religious folk, and is totally secular.)  (Secular is a word that some people around here don't know.  I mean, literally.)  I was really impressed.  They have the classes broken down into small groups, and there are only nine kids in the 2-year old class, with two teachers.  The teachers are lovely, and they do a lot more school-type stuff that I would expect with children that young.

And there was no waiting list.  So she started today. She's going from 9 to 11:30, twice a week.  And I was hoping that this morning we could get the twins sent off on the bus, and have a nice quite morning getting ready, somehow, I don't know, emotionally preparing her for what was about to happen.  But then Ramona fell down and wacked her head on the porch step while waiting for the bus.  Someone had so inconsiderately weighed her backpack down with three pounds of clementines for school snack this morning (I am a terrible person), so she must have been a little off-balance. And the bus pulled up just at that moment, so I kept the twins off the bus so I could put some ice on her head and watch her for a few minutes, but that meant I had to get myself and Elsa ready, leave 25 minutes before I was planning to, and drop the girls off at school before heading over to the preschool to drop my baby off.

Unsure, at first...

...but ultimately, it was a good day.

Elsa, of course, cried.  She was wailing as I left, but the assistant teacher called me about a half hour later and told me that she was fine.

And Ramona has a huge goose egg on her forehead.  And, yes, tomorrow is Picture Day.

What a morning.

*****
Edited to add:

I swear, only a child of mine.  About an hour before I usually leave to go pick up the twins, their school calls me.  Apparently, Ramona fell in the library and hit her head on a bookshelf.  In the Exact Same Spot as this morning.  The office lady told me she's never seen that big of a goose egg on a kid's head in the entire time she's worked there.  It was already much better by the time I got there, but honestly.  The first time could have happened to anyone.  To hit your head twice in the same day in the same place?  I think you have to have some sort of genetic predisposition...

It looks much more impressive that this in real life, I swear.

No, she didn't knock her teeth out as well. That's just how few teeth she has right now.

Food for Thought: Thoughtful Food

Today was “lunch buddy” day at Ramona and Charlotte's school. Actually it’s grandparent’s Day, and the kids were encouraged to invite their grandparents to come and have lunch with them at school, but in the interest of inclusiveness, any family member could come. So off I took myself to school, to eat a school lunch.

Now, I had seen the menu, I knew what to expect: “Beef fingers, mashed potatoes and gravy, peas, fruit/vegetable bar, milk.” But I have to say, having eaten that food, I feel assaulted by my lunch. I had hoped that “fruit/vegetable bar” meant that they have a salad bar? But I was wrong. There was some watermelon in a cup. I asked a teacher about the salad bar, and she looked confused; then she said they must have meant a bar, like a granola bar type thing. I didn’t see that either, though. I was also told that they choose this lunch to serve on “lunch buddy” day because it’s one of the best things on the menu. I don’t want to be too negative, but let me just say: it wasn’t good. And it wasn’t healthy. Usually food manages to be at least one of the two, but I guess if it needs to be inexpensive and easy to prepare, too, then something’s gotta give.

The “beef fingers” – and I don’t know why that term seems so icky when I’m okay with “chicken fingers” – were definitely flaked and formed beef of some variety, covered in batter and fried (at some earlier point in time) and reheated. The mashed potatoes, which were the most appetizing thing on the plate, were potato flakes, peas were canned, “texas toast” was a thick piece of white bread with something yellow smeared on it (butter? maybe?) There were three different kinds of milk: chocolate, 1% plain, and “vanilla shake” milk. The girls both chose the latter. I looked at the label and there were 22 grams of sugar in there. That’s 8 more grams than is in a serving of the vanilla ice cream in my freezer. And the packaging of “vanilla shake” milk was almost indistinguishable from the plain milk, which is significant when you realize that a fair number of those kids can’t read. In the whole lunch, there were no whole grains and not much fiber, especially if you consider that most of the kids threw their peas away. Charlotte and Ramona started on the watermelon, then ate the peas, and each ate a little bit of the meat sticks. They weren’t interested at all in the potatoes or the toast.

Now, I don’t fault Oklahoma, our school lunches back in California weren’t much better, although at our elementary school there was a salad bar. What saddens me in this case is that almost every kid at this school eats the school lunch. And in a situation where 56% of the kids get free or reduced lunches, and this lunch that they get is going to be their best opportunity for balanced, nutritious food for the day, I feel like we are letting these kids down. My girls bring their lunches to school every day, because I have the luxury (and believe me I know how luxurious it is) to have the time and money to do that.

I know I’m not saying anything new; Jamie Oliver has had an entire TV show on this subject, and there is also an excellent blog written by an anonymous teacher who has resolved to eat school lunches every day of the year and write about it. It’s hard to feel so powerless about it. I only have the power to protect my own children from this, but change has to happen. I just don’t know how to do it.

One thing that I did do was to email the girls’ teacher and tell her that I’d be interested in doing something food-related with the class. She had asked me earlier if there was anything I was really passionate about that I’d like to come and talk to the class about, because the kids love it when parents do that. At the time, I couldn’t think of anything (I mean, I’m not going to go in to a first grade class and do a Zumba presentation, am I?) but now I remember exactly what I’m passionate about. Fresh, healthy, tasty food.

I felt compelled to compensate for the lunch; snack was peaches, home-made hummus, and multi-grain crackers

Much enthusiasm ensued.

Score! For hummus!

Except on Elsa's part.