Bobb Watkins said ‘hi’ to me in my dream.  He was my swim coach, and he passed just after Christmas last year.  I thought about him pretty constantly for a month and a half after I heard the news, then my life and 3 kids got in the way and I pushed his memory back.

You may want to stop reading this post now, since I’m about to launch into a description of my dream.   It will most definitely sound very boring because I, like so many others, can not do their dreams justice by retelling them.  They always seem better in one’s head, but here goes…

My dream: I went to the LACS pool to swim laps and pay respects to Bobb.  I remember taking a break at the deep end to look at Bobb’s office, squinting to try to see any pictures on his wall.  Unwilling to get out and snoop around, I continued with my laps.  I pushed through each lap, awkward and completely out of breath, and unable to do flip turns at all (I’d get stuck halfway around and get water up my nose, just like when I was first learning how to do one).  It wasn’t a graceful session, I’m sure Bobb would not be proud.

In the middle of a lap in lane 1, I saw a red ten speed bike parked on the deck, pointed toward my lane.  I stopped immediately, thinking someone else was in the pool area.  Treading water I turned myself in a circle and found no one.  As I came around to face the shallow end, I saw Bobb outside the wall of windows.

Since he was outside, I could only see his head from where I was treading water.  I watched him talking to me, his face was glowing from the light of the golden sunset.  I couldn’t hear a word he was saying, but it seemed very important, until the volume in my dream turned up for just a moment, and I heard Bobb say ‘…and you know, I said if you don’t like my house, then you don’t have to look at it’.  Then everything went on mute again,  Bobb kept looking at me, chatting away, he smiled and his head disappeared into bright light.

I realized Bobb had just said ‘hi’ to me, and I woke myself up from my dream.

That’s it.  I woke up, blew my nose, and fell back asleep.  But for a moment I remembered Bobb, and it made me happy that he remembered me.

Eternal is an exaggeration, it’s only been 3 months.  But still, it feels like forever when every scent either makes you dry heave, want to dry heave, or just wish someone would heave ho you out of the room and into a nice warm bed.

Some examples of smells that forced me to open the windows wide in the middle of winter: garlic, garlic breath, onions, poop from children and babies, sheets washed with unscented detergent, sheets washed with scented detergent, whole wheat pasta cooking, beloved coffee, and numerous others, the thought of which are actually making me feel nauseous.  It never ceases to amaze me how strong our sense of smell is, though any dog would laugh at that statement.  It never ceases to amaze me how absolutely repulsive I find things that usually bring me a lot of joy:  Cabbage, chocolate, coffee, avocados, room temperature water, apples.  All of these are stink bombs in my book, stinky crappy things that make me feel sad and defeated.

So why am I nauseous?  Stomach flu?  No – that was a month and a half ago, after my 2 childgerm brought it home- what a violent, awful, confusing, contagious virus that is.  So gross.  No, there’s something much more long term going on:  I am pregnant with baby number 4, scheduled to arrive sometime in September.  And if I’ve learned ANYTHING about babies in the past 5 years, it’s that they love schedules and they love sticking to them, especially due dates.

Ultimately we’re excited.  Honestly we’re overwhelmed.  Ultimately we don’t care what the sex is.  Honestly, we don’t care what the sex is!

My Libra scales are in total balance about this one.  It would be great to have another girl, we know girls, we make sweet girls, and we wouldn’t have to have the circumcision talk.  On the other hand, it would be great to have a boy because it would be a different animal, and Nick and I feel like we aren’t being challenged enough, as parents and as human beings.  Also, having a boy would get every Italian grandmother in my neighborhood off my back, and every construction worker who works in or around my building a sense of relief.  (When they see me with 3 girls they look at me with pity and confusion, and ask me ‘where’s the boy’?) – it’s weird, we didn’t even think to try for a boy, we just wanted babies.  Healthy, happy babies.  And though they are sick every other week during the winter, and they whine a good percentage of the day, I would still categorize them as pretty healthy and almost happy.

So, as we navigate this Labyrinth that is our adventure in life, I look forward to the day when the morning sickness subsides, the eternal stench lifts, and I’m able to enjoy food, this pregnancy, and the smell of my children’s poop again.

I don’t have any pictures of me being nauseous, so here’s a pic of Ida’s 3rd birthday cake, which happened just before I started feeling nauseous.  Her request:  I want a princess cake…NO!! A monster cake!! (I think she wanted to see the monster all cut up, and display her dominance by eating his face).

Tonight I tricked my girls into eating the pizza I made from scratch.

When I brought it to the table Mae said ‘Mmmmmm, it smells like REAL pizza!!’ then she took a bite and said, under her breath, ‘This doesn’t taste the way it smells.’  When I saw they were slowly picking at it and each other,  I had to take matters into my own hands- or in this case, fingers.  I fed it to them piece by piece (something I refuse to do these days, as they are all 3 old enough to feed themselves).  As I fed them, I acted scared they were going to bite off my fingers.  They’d chomp the piece of pizza from my fingers, I’d let go and draw my hand back in fear, and they’d laugh hysterically.  They kept asking me to show them my hands, and encouraged me to pretend I had lost all but 2 of my fingers. Dinner got pretty gruesome pretty quickly, and I was feeling weird about it.

They weren’t loving the pizza because it was delicious, they were loving it because I made it into an awful game.  Leading up to my decision to spazz out and play trickster, Ida was begging for lentil soup and Mae was begging for more eggs.  (They ate all the lentil soup last night and I had enough eggs for everyone to get only one – my co-op run is tomorrow, and I’ll purchase the usual $15.00 worth of eggs for the week, yikes).  So I had to get creative and sneaky, which I don’t like when it comes to food and kids, but this pizza was fucking awesome and I worked really hard to make it and they needed to eat it all.

Cut to 6pm: Ida is asleep for the night, Charlotte is also asleep, and Mae is pretending to be my doctor.  Naturally, the first thing she did was rub lotion on my feet.  Everyone’s doctor does this, right?  When she was done,  I asked if she fixes fingers because my children ate all of mine during dinner.  Not missing a beat, she said of course, and proceeded to pop my fingers up, one by one.

Me: “You’re magic!”

Mae: (straight faced, and in doctor speak) “No I’m not.  I’m just a doctor.  What day do you want to schedule your next appointment for?”  She is so serious when she’s playing a role.  She proceeded to write down my appointment for me so I wouldn’t forget, then brushed her teeth and went to bed.

Did I mention how good this pizza was? It may not look great in the low light photo I took of it, but imagine this: chewy crust, crisp dough from scratch, fresh mozzarella from Caputo’s, dark red kidney beans, a pile of mesculin and Pecorino Romano and caramelized onions with fennel and red pepper flakes (something I made last night, recipe to come, it’s my new favorite winter staple).

Come on.

Oh hello, roast beast.  As a practicing vegetarian, I eat a lot of meat.  (I’m just practicing at the moment, still not very good at it).  As a meat eater, I eat very little meat.  As a vegan turned vegetarian wife of a carnivore, I cook a lot of meat.  And as a mom, I had to make a roast for Christmas.  This here is a rib eye roast, from Paisanos Meat Market.  ( I love them – high quality meat, fair prices, extremely helpful and neighborhoody staff- and they deliver).  This is a really easy roast to make, the cut is beautifully marbled and the meat turns out tender.  The roast is crusted in a mixture of sour cream, horseradish, Worcestershire, plenty of thyme & rosemary, clementine zest, garlic, salt and pepper.  Oh come all ye faithful, it made a beautiful crust.   I made a mushroom gravy for it, because my mom always made mushroom gravy for her roasts.  I garnished it with undressed mesculin, because my girls like to eat the leaves, pretending they are bugs, trees, shoes, etc. (whatever works) and clementines, because I forgot to buy extra herbs for garnish and there was a lot of empty space on my giant serving platter.

Cheese and crackers, chocolate and crackers.  This was the day after Christmas dinner.  The savory crackers consist of different combinations of salamis, cheeses, pickles, leftover cranberry sauce, sliced apple, hunza raisins, mustard, and honey.  The chocolate covered graham crackers were dipped in dark chocolate, and garnished with hunza raisins, toasted coconut, and pulverized pepitas  (btw I LOVE that band…they later became the Smashing Pumpkins I think…)

It has become a tradition for us to make a trip to ABC to see Santa.  Every year it seems to get more and more adventurous, and by that I mean it gets more chaotic and stressful.  Probably has something to do with the fact that we’ve been averaging an extra kid every year.  Also has something to do with the fact that ABC’s Santa has become all the rage in the past 5 years.  The first time we went, with just Mae at 9 months old, was joyful and triumphant.  No line.  No hassle.

This year, there was a line OUTSIDE, around the block.  They herded us in, we formed 2 lines inside, kids swarmed and got in our personal space as the girls timidly approached Santa for the photo op.  Picture was taken, we were scooted off to the side where there were lovely tables with highly breakable ornaments and decorations on display.  This store is beautiful, but only if you are with people who know how NOT to break things.

Regardless of the mayhem, we go every year.  And we hit up L.A. Burdick afterward for mediocre coffee and tiny chocolates.

2 pics below: waiting in line to see Santa, tired, hungry, cold and excited.  The girls were fine.

Pics below: At L.A. Burdick.  Stirring steamed milk and honey with their candy canes from ABC Santa.  Ida looks like she’s yelling at Mae, but she’s really just telling an animated story, as Mae sits and judges her, numb to anything interesting Ida might have to say.

In the weeks before Christmas I mentioned to my mom that Mae had been wanting to make a wreath, and if she had time could she clip some branches off of her evergreens for us and send them in the mail.  Surprisingly, a box came 2 days later, filled with an abundance and variety of clippings- so fresh- and the white pine came complete with pine cones!

So, we made a wreath, and decorated it with some dried clementine slices and clove encrusted clementine pomanders.  (We made those during another crafting session that week.)

I spent most of the winter break making paper chains with the girls.  And if I’m being honest, they weren’t much help…they got bored after 7 links, and I’d just be getting into it.  So if I’m REALLY being honest, I spent a lot of time recording Christmas specials for the girls to watch while I made paper chains.

We made the chains into paper chain-deliers.  They give everything a romantic light, which is perfect in the kitchen.  I’ve always wanted to use sharp knives in dim light, I think that’s what they recommend.

Pic: I don’t have any proof that I was on the swim team, no pictures that I can find.  So here’s one of me in our front yard.  You get an idea of how cool I was.  And my little sister, Grace, was sporting a Pac-Man tee, thank you Bobb, for all those Pac-Mans.  I remember the term, I don’t remember what they were specifically, but my guess is they were painful, and never ending.

Bobb, you are the reason I push myself to the limits.  You pushed me to push myself, it came very naturally to me, you saw that and encouraged it by yelling at me.  I remember your face after I swam my first I.M.  You put me in as an experiment, and it worked.  You had a smile on your face when you told me I did a good job.  I remember feeling like I finally found my place on the team.  Prior to that being my race, I swam the 100 backstroke and 100 breaststroke.  I was mediocre at both.  In fact I was mediocre at all of the strokes, which is why the I.M. worked for me, and it worked like this:  I’d get way behind in the butterfly, get ahead in backstroke, keep my lead in breaststroke, and barely keep my lead in freestyle.  (That’s when I’d hop out of the pool, fold out my cardboard box and bust a move, for those of you who don’t know what freestyle is.  It’s also the leg of the race where I’d flow off the top of my head.)

I remember, like everyone else, the music you’d play while you casually kicked our ass.  Beatles, and everything else.  I have a horrible memory for artists’ names, but I remember the songs, and today when I hear them I think of you.  I can smell old chlorine.  I can feel those little square tiles under my feet.  I can hear the echo of voices as we’d walk in the tunnel from the girls locker room to the pool.  I was proud to be on the swim team.   I was happy to do the work you demanded of us, because I knew it would make me better and make our team strong.

I remember when I had to swim the 500, because everyone had to at some point.  It was at a Beaver River meet, I took it VEEEEERY slow because I had no idea how to pace myself.  I finished, totally not out of breath and totally in last place.  I approached it like a warm down, which is not correct, but you didn’t really care.  I don’t think you were counting on me to win that one.

I remember you NOT going easy on me after I burned my wrist severely on our wood stove.  I had half a pack of band aids on it, that came off pretty quickly while I did one arm fly during practice.  You bandaged it up and told me to go do a 1,000 I.M., or something like that.

I remember the meets.  Feeling nauseous on bus fumes on the way there.  I remember butterflies in my stomach every time the race before mine ended.  I remember you giving me last minute advice before sending me up to the blocks, the anticipation of the gunshot before the start, hearing the muffled voices of you and my teammates cheering, walking up and down the length of the pool while I pushed as hard as I could in the water.  I remember your whistle, I remember when you’d get mad at us.  I remember Saturday morning practices, too early to be working out, but we did it anyway.  I remember donuts from P&C after those practices, or if we were lucky, something that Kelly Witmer’s mom baked for us.

You were a stellar coach.  You were the perfect mix of drive, demand, serious and sweet.  You, as a human being, were completely authentic.  We didn’t get much of that in high school, so it was refreshing to have you show us what THAT was like.  To have someone in our lives who was hard on us because you believed, and who loved us completely no matter what.

Thank you for helping me find my strengths.  I hope, wherever you are, that you will be able to click on my website and read this.  I’m pretty sure they have WIFI in heaven.  I love you, Bobb.

Are you like me? Do you have loads of kale just sitting in the fridge, waiting to turn yellow and become a waste of money?   Are you tired of roasted and pureed kabocha squash staring you in the face every time you reach in to grab a beer?   Well have I got the recipe for YOU!

So no one else has these problems, but nonetheless this was one of the most delicious lunches I’ve had in a while, and the abundance of carbs were a nice change of pace from all the salads I have been eating.

Here is the recipe:

One giant bunch of kale, chopped and stir fried/steamed in a skillet with some sliced garlic, red pepper flakes and olive oil.  To it add some pureed squash, and some more olive oil.  To THAT add cooked spaghetti.  Toss and sprinkle with grated Romano and you’ve got a nice fall lunch (or dinner).

It’s almost Thanksgiving, and I’m finally getting around to sharing my really crappy, low light low-res pictures of the kids’ Halloween costumes.

When I (we) decided to have 3 kids, I (we) didn’t take into consideration Halloween.  I (we) just wanted to make sweet babies, but never thought that I (I) would then need to make Halloween costumes for all of them all the time, every year, forever and ever.  For those of you who know me, you know I NEED to, HAVE to, am OBLIGATED to Jomake everything…there’s no other way when it comes to my stubbornosity, headstrong-ition, and obsessionista-ness.  (Also, I can make negative descriptive words sound fun, exciting and complimentary, simply by changing their suffixes.  What a wonderful way to play with the English language, and with one’s sense of self.   Did I say wonderful? I meant slightly annoying and delusional.)

I am a procrastinator, or if I’m going to go the delusional route, a procrast-inventor!  What I’m saying is,  I do not make their costumes in advance – ever.   In October, we have short conversations about what everyone wants to be for Halloween, followed by a discussion about what we’re going to commit to actually being, and finally them changing their minds at least 6 times right up until the day of Halloween.  We were going to be mice.  It’s a simple costume, and relevant because we were being terrorized by mice in our apartment just a few months ago.

In true Halloween fashion, everyone changed their minds.  Ida has decided to throw ‘princess’ into the mix, so she was a mouse princess.  Mae decided to be a ghost, the easiest costume ever thank you Mae.  And Charlotte is very opinionated about hats, meaning she thinks they’re FAH-BUL-OUS as long as they are not on her head.  So I was prepared for her to be a Charlotte with a tail, which is spooky and adorable.

After a frantic crochet fest while the girls feasted on Halloween dinner, I churned out one mouse hat for Ida, a mouse ear headband for Charlotte, 2 tails, and I dug up some old lace for Mae’s creepy ghost costume.  Terribly spooky blurry pictures are below.   Have a Happy Thanksgiving everyone!