When you are away

Back a million years ago, or maybe only 15 or so, Auntie Chris was deployed on ships.  Sometimes large; more often small.   She was one of three females on a fast frigate deployed in, what, 1998 or 1999 I guess.  On an aircraft carrier, the one that was deployed forever and helped with the Indonesian tsunami relief effort.  Some other ship after that.  She'd give me a folder with all the information about her auto-pay bills, instructions for the DVD recorder she'd installed at my house to record the West Wing or whatever (Can you imagine! It used to be the only way!), where the keys to everything were, what to do if her helicopter crashed into the ocean, and then away she'd go for six months, nine months, until she came back.

While she was gone I'd send her things.  Once a week.  Not every-single-no-matter-what-once-a-week but, pretty much 80-90%, once a week.  Sometimes it would be cookies.  Sometimes candy.  Often I'd try to send something silly.  Once I sent one of those robotic plush pet dogs that you could "train" to bark and jump.  She told me this lived in the helicopter group office, or whatever that space is called where they kept their stuff and talked about what needed fixing and all the rest.  Once I sent a whole bunch of soap and asked her to please have the ship spell out my name in bubbles in the ocean and take a picture from the air.  Twice, at least, I sent kites.  I can remember in a visceral way shopping for this goofy stuff, packing these little boxes, filling out the carbon-forms you get at the post office to send something to an APO box.

Chris said sometimes the mail would be squirrely and a bunch of boxes would arrive all at once. Three, five, six weeks of stuff.  She said it was like some strange holiday.

More often than anything, I sent these brownies.  They mix up by hand in one bowl, no fuss no bother.  They cook up right and pack like a dream. 

Auntie Chris texted me today. (So sorry DVD player, your days are gone.)  She said she was thinking of someone deployed and could I please send the brownie recipe.   Sure thing.

Chocolate Chip Brownies for Mailing to People Who Are Far Away
3/4 c butter
4 oz unsweetened chocolate
4 large eggs
1 3/4 c sugar
1 1/2 tsp vanilla (sometimes I just add 2 tsp)
3/4 c flour
1/2 tsp salt, or a little more
1 c chocolate chips (or finely chopped chocolate is good too, also M&Ms)

Melt together the butter and chocolate and set aside to cool.
Bet the eggs and sugar together with a whisk until they are pale yellow, thick, and light.  This takes 3-5 minutes depending on your energy level.  This is the leavening, don't phone it in.
Add the chocolate and butter mixture and fold in.  Be careful it's cool enough so you don't cook the eggs.  Add the vanilla.
Fold in the flour and the salt.  Add the chocolate chips or whatever (or you can just sprinkle them on top when it's in the pan).
Bake in a 350 degree F oven in a 9 x 13 x 2 inch (or slightly smaller) buttered pan for about 25 minutes.  Don't over bake.

PS -- I looked all over for a photo of Auntie Chris and one of her helicopters.  I think I must have some somewhere, but they seem to have vanished into my fancy picture organizing and storing technology, in which I can locate no photo taken before 2006.  Sigh.

PS again -- updated to add pictures, from a ship's tour in Australia.  Thanks Chris.


 

Fall birthday #1

We are hurtling towards the fall birthdays around here.  All four grandparents have birthdays within the next six weeks, about.  Starting with GG, celebrated today. 

We had a rainbow birthday (Liam's suggestion) and I wish I had thought to take some pictures because I think it looked nice.  We had pretty much the entire rainbow represented on the table with green bean and fig salad, nectarine salad (scroll down for the salad), tomatoes salad, purple potatoes, corn and zucchini succotash, and steaks.   My mother made fully half the food, which is a big help, of course.

The birthday cake was homemade rainbow chip, and I think I liked it best of anyone.  I loved making this cake; I love making almost any birthday cake, but this one really said birthday to me.  The frosting is over the top sweet, but the cake has a great texture and flavor.  From here, again. Plus, when the play date activity is making rainbow chips from melted white chocolate and food coloring you get a lot of fun mom points, which is good.   As soon as everyone left we took half the leftover cake to the neighbors.

Liam is all about choosing what he wants to give for birthdays and he had a very specific idea for GG.  Last year he gave her a small wood cat which sits on top of a picture frame in her kitchen.  This year he wanted to give a little bird for the cat to look at. 

In which Liam and my mother make the same face

We took a lot of pictures at Liam's birthday at the end of June.  Lots.  And GG was kind enough to volunteer to come to Liam's kid party and take pictures there, so we have lots of those too.  I've finally started to go through them all, and my favorites so far by far are these funny shots of Liam and my mother making the same face, not once, not twice, but basically in every single picture. 

So funny. We also took photos with his other grandparents, GG, GoGo, Grandpa.  He is so blessed and lucky to have these people love him so very much.

I am reminded that a month and a half ago when these pictures were taken Liam was going through a very grating "I must wear PJs all the time" phase AND insisting that they be fleece, footed PJs even though it was trying to be summer.   He seems to have pretty much graduated from that now, or as he likes to say "Mommy, I've retired from that."  Although, really, he does still love to wear PJs, I just put all the footed, fleece ones away in the top of the closet until fall.  Chose your battles.

In other news, we took the last of the pea plants out just in time to plant more in hopes of a batch for the fall.  I have officially declared myself serious about getting rid of the slugs and garden snails after they ate two of the five broccoli transplants down to the stems and one of the brussels sprouts.  Except for my remaining hopes of tomatoes, and a few cucumbers coming on, we seem to be moving directly from the spring garden to the fall.  The slugs and sails also ate all three plantings of green beans and most of the zucchini flowers so...you know.

Thank you for all your kind thoughts and intentions for Lisa.  She died that Monday, going on two weeks ago now.  Her memory will be a blessing always.  Later that week I found out the spouse of a dear friend of mine at work was dx with surprise stage 4 lung cancer and is not responding to chemotherapy.  (She got bronchitis last year but got better; she is in amazingly good shape but how strange she started to get out of breath hiking; she got -- finally -- a chest xray; there you have it.)  He is a scientist and a biologist, like me.  (Sort of, at least, I was when I went to school and I'm still wired pretty much that way.)  He said: she's probably going to die soon.  You can see straight through his eyes into his heart when he says it; watch as everything starts to go upside down.

So, so fragile.

Sending much love to dear Kate today (and always, but today especially).   Thinking about Will's birthday coming up on Monday.  Always to correspond with the Perseid meteor showers.

Happy Easter!

 

 

Liam woke this morning and immediately started looking all over the house for Easter eggs.  I had to send him out into the yard -- where at 7:45 am it took him approximately five minutes to find the five eggs I hid last night.

He is a much better finder than I am, or he is a better hider; tonight after dinner at GG and GoGo's house (Thank you!) he hid six eggs in their back yard and it took the three of us at least 15 minutes to find them, even with hints.  At closing in on five years old, Liam's hints are priceless.  "Look over there (Frantic pointing.); no, no look in that bush, I hid one  in that bush (Jumping up and down)." 

We also found our first tree frog of the season -- so tiny and green, with long, golden, sticky feet.

Our egg tree has eggs from Sunny and Starry that we dyed this year, and a few from the egg tree we had out every year when I was small.  Hand drawn by my mother all those years ago.  The white bunnies also are from my childhood egg tree. It's so sweet to have them, and to hear myself say things like: "They are very fragile! They are not the hopping sort of bunny! Please put them down!"  That's me on the swing, I think.

 

In my memory we always received (besides a chocolate rabbit) new swimming suites and saltwater sandals for Easter. You? Liam was given sunglasses and a lego firetruck set, which he wanted to put together right away, in lieu of his morning TV.  The power of legos.  (Don't worry, he got a small chocolate rabbit too, and he got to eat it before breakfast.)

 

Sun all day today, and although the sewing didn't get done the peas did get planted. Now onward into a very busy week at work and at home.  I hope the weather holds.

Auntie Chris' Graduation

Chris with my parents

Just before Christmas we took a quick trip to California to see Auntie Chris graduate (with distinction, of course).  Auntie Chris' new degree is in space systems engineering; which means she knows all about how to make satellites work.  (This complements her degree in aero/astero engineering; you know now where the brains in the family went!)  After graduation Liam and I drove with her from California back up to Seattle.  This went better than one might expect considering that Liam is 4.  After staying with us here outside Seattle for a few more weeks, Auntie Chris will move to the DC area and we are so excited to visit her (and Liam's cousin, and the big,big zoo, and my friends from when I worked in DC) later in the year!  Congratulations Auntie Chris -- we're so proud of you.  Thanks for fixing the computer --again -- and the TV (also again), and for teaching me how to touch up paint the trim without making a mess, and mostly for just being you!

 

 

Pizza Friday -- 1/6/2012 Edition

This week for pizza Friday Liam wanted to have a party.  The key elements of this were decorations and cake.  So, Thursday night we made a chocolate cake and wrapped it up tight.  While I was at work on Friday morning he and the babysitter blew up about 25 balloons and hung them all over the house with streamers.  Friday afternoon when I got home, after we made the pizza dough, we made some chocolate frosting.  The vegan (bless him) brought ice cream, which, of course, he doesn't even eat, and we ginned up an ice cream cake.  We also ate, again, this kale salad because I simply cannot get enough of it this time a year.  (We make it without the cheese.)

Mostly though we enjoyed the balloons.  And the four-year old.  And the pizza.

Birthday Girls

We are so blessed and lucky to have these two women in our lives.  Happy Birthday Grandma.  Happy Birthday GG.  Thanks for everything you do for us; I hope you both have great years ahead.

Here they are both looking at Liam doing (yet another) inappropriate thing at the table.

 

A note on the cakes: cake #1 is from here.  These recipies are always so perfect; every instruction is easy to understand, all questions answered, and they always work out just right.  Cake #2 is from here.  Also very easy to follow and who can resist something called Southern Strawberry Cake.  The frosting roses were made by a local bakery and frozen on waxed paper for me to take home.  At less than $5 for all these roses I think it may be the last good deal left on the planet.

Buckwheat noodles and broccoli

It's shaping up to be a real and truly animal-free food weekend.  Friday night I made red lentil dal and brown rice (from here, a lovely place) which I served with broccoli and some more orange squash.  Saturday dinner was buckwheat noodles with broccoli from Bittman, Food Matters.  These noodles were so, so easy and so good, and were just inhaled by the small one.  (They are teriyaki noodles and asparagus in the cook book.)  I adapted the recipe a little, which is to say, I left out the ingredients I didn't have around.

8-10 ounces buckwheat soba noodles
4 cups cut up broccoli
1 bunch green onions, chopped
1 tablespoon each garlic and ginger, minced
2 tablespoons or less oil (I used canola, I think)
1/4 cup soy sauce
2 tablespoons honey mixed with 2 tablespoons water (this is a mirin substitute)

1. Mix the soy sauce and honey/water 
2. Bring some water to boil for the noodles.
3.  In a large pan suitable for stir-frying cook the broccoli with the oil, ginger, garlic and green onions.  I added the oil and when it was hot added the broccoli and green onions, cooked until it was starting to turn bright, then added the ginger and garlic, cooked a minute or so more, then added some water and covered to steam until the broccoli was all bright green but still crunchy.  Take off the cover, turn off the heat.
4.  Cook the noodles; mine took 3 minutes after the water returned to a boil.  Don't overcook them.
5.  Turn the heat to medium-ish under the broccoli.  Add the cooked noodles, about 1/2 cup of cooking water, and the soy sauce mixture.  Stir around and cook until everything is mixed well and heated through and the sauce has reduced slightly; this worked out to be about another 5-6 minutes.  That's it, you're done.

Next time I would add lots more vegetables, at least red pepper and onion, and maybe carrots too.  Bittman calls for adding some shelled edamame at the end with the noodles and I'm sure that would be good.  I didn't have any edamame in the freezer this week for some reason. 

Liam ate salmon and veg. last night (he's not a big lentil fan) and a little more salmon with his broccoli and noodles tonight.  Loved it all, especially the noodles.

It's raining, raining, raining this weekend and predicted to continue. The front fence collapsed because the new retaining wall in the front has been so delayed by weather.  So, now I guess we'll be getting a new fence too.  Great.

Happy Birthday to Auntie Chris today.  What is to say about Auntie Chris? She is simply the best sister, auntie, naval officer, a person could ever encounter.  We are so blessed and lucky to have her in our lives. 

Solstice

 

Our small solstice fire.  On the solstice we eat dinner by candle light and (starting this year) have a small fire in which we burn our hopes and wishes for the upcoming year.  Liam wished for "fish." (I have no idea where this came from.)  And then he didn't want to burn his wish. 

"Mommy, if it goes into the fire and up in the air, will it come back?"
"Well, not exactly.  We believe that if you burn your wish on the winter solstice it puts it out into the world in a very special way, so everything, everywhere will know your wish and be able to help you with it."
"I don't want to."

Okay.  So, maybe not quite the thing for a three and a half year old, especially one with his second cold in three weeks.  We taped his wish to the refrigerator.  Fish.

My sister is here.  We are trying to enjoy Christmas.  Trying to be very gentle with ourselves.  I am not sending Christmas cards.  Not yet ready to sort through the last photos and movies on the camera, or any of the other things that eventually must be done.  Not writing the thank you notes I should write, yet. Still ambushed by sadness daily -- an ad for a movie I know Will would like to see, he loved movies, a scrap of paper with a doctor's phone number, the sky in early morning, a long drive, something I know he would think was funny, something I want to ask him..

Someone wrote me and said: "we'll be thinking of you and your son as you make your lives together in this new way."  That's really what it is, it's a process of finding ourselves, our new selves, together and separately.

Will made the bowl we're using as a fire pit.  Years ago, before I knew him, he did a lot of metal work and sculpture and we're very glad to have a lot of the results -- the fire bowl included.   And we really miss Will.

(Auntie Chris lit the fire by flashlight.  A thoroughly modern solstice.)

 

Overdue update

 We are fine.  Busy end-of summer time.  And my work got busy for the first time all year at the same time so, you know.  Since I was last in this space we have:

Enjoyed a visit from Will's sister and her family and survived Liam and cousin K making footprints and hand prints on the back patio.  And later that week, enjoyed a visit from my sister.  Who is coming back for Thanksgiving this year, and already I can hardly wait.

Worked on our bedside manner.  He has a ways to go.  (The stethoscope is real, we have a number of them around from when Will had chemo and they would put a dedicated-to-his-germs-only stethoscope in his hospital room.  We brought them home for reasons I still don't really know.)

Played with boats.  All of them. A lot.

Hosted at least one birthday party.

Wished a lot of days would never end.  And lots of stuff I was too busy doing/enjoying to take pictures of.

We also had our pictures taken by a real photographer.  The remarkable Clane Gessel who, in addition to his regular gigs, takes photos of CF-families.  So, if, at long last you want to see what we really look like, all cleaned and photoshop-ed up, you can see Clane's pictures here.  If you are getting married or whatever, and want photos, call Clane; he's the best.

More soon.

Happy Birthday Will

Forty-two years is a lot of years.  I'm glad to have spend this last one with you.

We had our small at home family celebration last night; the bigger party will be tonight, at Will's parents.

Ours featured a dozen balloons (I thought Liam's face was going to crack open he smiled so wide when he saw them in the car), all of the little animal candles we could find, steaks, and summer vegetables.  A few small gifts.  Liam choose to give Will Tinker Toys ("maybe Daddy will share them with me") which was okay, since they both really do enjoy playing with them. 

Will's been not feeling great lately, but remains pretty stable all told.  I'll post a real update about all that sometime soon.

Liam gave the Tinker Toys right away, as soon as we walked in the door, but the other presents were given after dinner.  Liam helped Will open all the presents -- and then he decided he might try to read to Will from one of his new books.

Learning the Aunts

I have this photo from my mother's wedding up in our guest-sewing-art-room/office.  It generally has lived on my desk and this is as close to a desk as I have at this house, so.  It has me and Auntie Chris, and my mother (of course), and her two sisters in it; and boy do we all look alike.  (Well, it was a bunch of years ago now, so none of us really look like that anymore, but, whatever.)  Liam is fascinated with it.  A few months ago he undertook to learn all the names.  He'll get there eventually.  My favorite is "Auntie Grandma."

Rainy day today -- makes me think that winter with a 3-year-old is going to be L. O. N. G.

The Table

When Auntie Chris was here at the end of July, one of the many things she did was build us this remarkable patio table and benches. I've had the plan for this table "sturdy picnic table in a weekend from dimensional lumber" torn from a Sunset Magazine for at least 10 years. I can save stuff -- no fooling.

Auntie Chris made it very beautiful. She chose all the wood -- ceder -- carefully for straightness and interest. She sanded everything a lot. She tried out different combinations for the table top to get one that made the best use of the grain and knots. She finished the top so it will stay clear and the legs to let them weather to ceder gray. She patiently, patiently encouraged Liam to help her set the pegs in the top.

It's built like a bomb shelter and now officially the place we're all going to run to when the next big earthquake comes. (It's only a matter of time.) Takes two grown-ups to lift, our table.

We love our table and love the love and skill with which it was made. We inaugurated it this weekend and the only sad part was that Auntie Chris was back at rocket-scientist school and couldn't be there. We can't wait to eat lots and lots of meals outside for the next 50 years. Hopefully most of them with Auntie Chris in attendance.

Sparkler

Auntie Chris leaves us tomorrow and we're already sad. Actually, I haven't told Liam yet because I'm afraid he will cry and I want to give him as much time as possible not worrying about what he can't change before we tell him. Three is tough that way; so far I think of it as the age of obsession with every little thing, especially worrisome or unwelcome things.

Besides making every single thing nicer and more pleasant just by being around Auntie Chris (with help from Grandpa SuperDave): put in a new sink and new toilet in the bathroom upstairs, replacing the 1902 models (no fooling) that came with the house; powerwashed and primed the fence (Grandma and I helped with that too); assisted with the big yard makeover including all the skilled labor (wisteria trellis; pea trellis) and much of the unskilled; and, all by herself, built the most beautiful patio table and benches ever (photos of this later). She also thought to buy the perfect fireworks, just the right speed for a three-year old, that even got his father out of the house to enjoy himself for a little while.

She never stops helping out in her good-sported-way. As I type she's over at Grandma and Grandpa's helping them let off fireworks with Grandchild K, an only slightly pre-teen boy visiting from California for the week.

PS - yes, Liam's shirt says "next stop, mars." In her spare time, Auntie Chris is a helicopter pilot and a rocket scientist. No fooling.

Swing

We've been doing a lot of this lately. Auntie Chris made Liam a swing as part of the great yard makeover. She was in charge of all the skilled work. I moved dirt, and wood chips, and gravel.

Happy three-day weekend everyone!