Photos by Amanda Naylor, PThreePhoto.com

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Love is a Meatless Ball...

Alyssa, my eight-year-old, is way into writing and publishing stories right now.  She brought home several funny, creative, and well-written stories yesterday, and she begged me to write some stories of my own.  Considering her budding interest in writing and two-year-old Brooke's great interest in listening to stories, I have created this based-on-real-life-events story for my daughters (and for you!)...

Mom’s Spaghetti and Meatless Balls
It was 3:58 PM on a sunny Wednesday in May.  A mother and one little girl sat in their car, parked along the side of the road, watching cars go by.  One minute later, the little girl called out, “SKOO BUS!”

A bigger little girl, the one little girl’s big sister, jumped off of bus 4, looked both ways, and raced across the street.  She opened the door to the car, and got in, asking, “What are we having for dinner?” before she even said, “Hi, Mom and Brooke.”

“Spaghetti and meatless balls,” was Mom’s response to her bigger little daughter, Alyssa. 

“Bee-balls!  Bee-balls!” little Brooke chanted happily. 

“Ugh,” was all Alyssa could muster.  Her mom was forever trying to make her eat weird things—from chocolate-zucchini muffins to ricemellow fluff.  Now meatless balls?!  Why couldn’t she just serve fluorescent orange mac’n cheese like the cool moms?

Mom even managed to make Alyssa’s school lunches embarrassing.  While the other kids were eating Lunchables, chips, and cookies, Alyssa was forced to eat things like yogurt, banana-flaxseed muffins, carrots, and strawberries.  It was torture.

Later that evening in the kitchen, Alyssa was working on her Rocket Math homework and Brooke was choloring in her Hello Kitty activity book.  Mom was boiling green lentils and simmering brown rice.  An oddly meaty smell filled the kitchen as some garlic, scallions, and mini Portobello mushrooms cooked in a skillet.

Then, Mom interrupted Alyssa’s silent reading of Yoko’s World of Kindness when she began to chop up the meatless…sigh…ingredients in the food processor.  She formed the strange-looking mixture of veggies, beans, grains, and spices into sixteen ping pong sized balls, which she placed in rows on a shiny foil-lined cookie sheet.  Into the oven they went.  Oh, joy.

As Mom boiled water for the spaghetti in a big steel pot, Alyssa surveyed the pile of cooking debris on the counter around the sink—mixing bowls, knives, food processor parts, measuring cups and spoons, the green tops of some stinky scallions, mushroom stems, and the box from the organic spaghetti.  The long, skinny noodles were brown and apparently “eight whole grain with milled flaxseed,” whatever that meant.  Was it too much to ask that our spaghetti noodles, at least, be normal and white like everyone else’s?

It was hopeless.  Even the tomato sauce was strange.  As if plain old tomatoes weren’t bad enough, this stuff was Organic Garden Vegetable!  The addition of more vegetables took this sauce from a moderate inconvenience to a serious problem.  “Can I just have my spaghetti plain?” Alyssa ventured. 

“No, you need to have tomato sauce…and at least try a meatless ball,” Mom replied with a sigh, as she stirred the spaghetti noodles into the boiling water.  Why did she look so sad?  Alyssa was the one who was going to have to eat this crazy vegetable-filled meal, after all.

Later, Dad and Alyssa were in their usual seats at the island counter, bowls of spaghetti and sauce topped with the odd-little meatless balls in front of them.  Brooke was seated at her own little toddler person-sized table with a fishy plate covered with cut up meatless balls and tomato sauce “dip.”  Brooke was a big fan of good food presentation, and so Mom sprinkled some grated Parmesan cheese “sparklers” over the meatless balls.  Brooke was thrilled by this, and after asking for a “fork, peez!”  began to gobble up her sparkly bee-balls and dip.  Show off.

The rest of the family began to carve up their meatless balls and twirl up saucy spaghetti.  Mom and Dad tried their meatless balls and made comments about the texture and spice profile.  Alyssa ate the spaghetti, carefully circumnavigating the meatless ball chunks.  Mom noticed.  She picked a lentil-(if you know what that is, it’s smaller than a green pea) sized piece of meatless ball out and put it right on Alyssa’s tongue.  It fell off.  Right onto the floor.  Mom picked it up within five seconds, so she put it back in Alyssa’s mouth, and this time she chewed and swallowed it with a grimace.

“I think they’re as good as a regular meat meatball,” Mom said triumphantly.

“I wouldn’t go quite that far,” Dad said, although he had cleaned out his whole bowl of spaghetti and meatless balls already.

“Das gooood, liddle Mama,” Brooke added.  Brown-noser.

In stark contrast to the face Alyssa had made while ingesting the probably dog-hair covered microscopic piece of meatless ball that Mom had force-fed her, she generously stated, “It was okay.  I wouldn’t eat it again, but…” Alyssa just knew that Mom was going to make it again.  And chick-pea falafels.  And red lentil dal.  And carrot spice muffins and so on and so forth. 

Alyssa also knew, somewhere deep down, that Mom wasn’t making these foods to make her bigger little daughter the laughingstock of the Cheeto-eating, Hi-C-sipping kids in the lunchroom.  She was going to the trouble of making these vegetable-based, whole food meals because she cared so much about making sure her family was healthy!

Yeah, the little girls’ mom was weird, but she was the little girls’ mom, meatless balls and all.  Forever.

The End.

Thursday, April 19, 2012

This Lemming, Right Here.

I live a charmed life.  

Unfortunately, my forte in writing seems to be sarcastic diatribes about the mundane, a la Jerry Seinfeld.  Truth be told, I am a little bit afraid to write in my favored genre; it seems irreverent to complain—however comically—about my life when I am so blessed.

Being so unbelievably fortunate makes it much more difficult to come up with good material for my notoriously bitter, bad-natured, self-obsessed rants.  Nevertheless, I will preserve.  I will push on and find something to complain about:

And 2.5 seconds later…  

 My neighborhood.  God help us (and our grey-haired, respectable neighbors), we are a young family living in what was originally intended to be a retirement community for senior citizens.  Quiet.  Civilized.  By its definition, free of free-ranging, shrieking children and lawless, leashless, yapping dogs and noisy friends and rusted cars and parties with DJs and loud trucks and dirt bikes and chainsaws and sidewalk chalk and battery-operated pink toddler-sized Hummers.  And free of Greg—yelling and singing and loud-talking Greg, especially.

Yep, there goes the neighborhood.

I read the HOA documents before we signed the contract to move into this community.  Honestly, I thought they were a joke.  Owners can’t park on the street or plant a plant?  Clearly those forty-something pages of rules akin to these are meant to be pulled out in extreme cases…like, say, for that hard-partying, boom box with bass turned all the way up-blaring neighbor who builds a fence out of tie-dyed car tires and uses an old toilet as a flower planter for marijuana and parks fifteen junked cars inhabited by drunken hobos in his yard which is also home to a flock of lice-infested, 4AM-crowing chickens, fifty-two feral cats, a blind, three-legged mutt chained to a half-eaten, hot pink dog igloo, and a rabid, stolen Bengal tiger who frequently gnaws its way lose and mauls visiting grandchildren.  

But they were deadly serious about all of them.  A week ago, I got an e-mail from the HOA detailing exactly what grade of black-dyed, hardwood mulch must be used to spruce up any planting areas, and just today I got a “spring reminder” e-mail today from the HOA stating that both a written proposal and a pictorial plan needed to be submitted to the property management group if a resident planned to plant anything in “their” gardens.
   
A month ago—after I accidentally slammed Brooke’s fingers in the door trying to let my dogs out and became distracted by assuring that none of those fingers had been crushed or severed—the dogs started running from the yard.  Just as soon as it was clear to me that Brooke was going to survive, I shut her into the house (yes, I shut her alone in the house—please don’t call child services—because I was frantic about keeping track of the dogs, and I couldn’t pick her up and run with her because I had a hernia—see? charmed life!) and tried to run after them while clutching aforementioned hernia.  As you can imagine, I wasn’t very fast, and so they reached the down-the-street neighbor’s yard before me.  I was hot on their heels, though, and as I reached the yard, calling their names in my most stern dog-mother voice, my gleeful dogs were barking, and the furious neighbor was rounding the corner, clutching to her chest her small, brown dog (who, in Ringo’s defense, did resemble a groundhog, and you know how Jack Russells feel about groundhogs) and screaming the word, “LEASH!” into my face. I was not given a chance to explain my situation or to apologize. “LEASH!”  (Translation: “There is a strict leash law in the neighborhood.  It is enforced, and a fine is forthcoming.”)

Accidents be damned.  

And fences, apparently~well, "dividing instrumentalities" they are considered by the HOA.  Never wanting to replay the horrors  depicted in that story just now, we promptly requested permission to construct a fence to corral our ferocious, lawless, monstrous, 20-pound attack dogs (and equally terrifying children).  Permission denied.  

And play areas:  “No temporary or permanent play areas are permitted.”   So, we can just forget about leaving that two-foot Little Tykes plastic sliding board outside overnight.

And, same goes for the one-foot diameter circular satellite dishes that the non-cable half of America uses.  We requested permission to put a one in “our” garden because DirecTV is way cheaper than cable.  Denied.  Satellite dishes are a blight on the “excellent outward appearance” of the neighborhood, as are burned out lightbulbs in exterior lights, grills, big trucks, boats, campers, ATVs, livestock, poultry, basketball hoops, skateboards, kiddie pools, actual pools, motorized vehicles parked outside of the garage, signs, flags, lawn ornaments, garbage containers, dividing instrumentalities, paint, laundry, tents, shacks, sheds, construction materials, screen doors that aren’t full-view style, and so on and so forth ad nauseum.

There are exactly two floorplans of houses in this community (all of the two-stories have the same hunter-colored shutters and door, and all of the ranchers have the same burgundy-colored shutters and door).  ALL of the houses are clad in the exact same stone facing and the exact same BEIGE siding.  All of the trim is painted the in the same shade of beige.  The same landscaper installed all of the gardens in the same general layout with plant media from a list of approved vegetation.  Homogenous.  I would invoke plain vanilla, but boring beige is much more appropriate in this situation.  Changing the outward appearance of the home in any way is disallowed without board approval.

And since no one has any power over their property, I guess they divert their attentions to imposing rules, watching for infractions, making formal complaints, and determining enforcement actions to ensure compliance.

What kind of lemming signs up to be part of something like this?  This lemming, right here.  And her husband lemming.

Greg is a man (to clarify: not actually a lemming...but is there a difference?).  He didn’t read the HOA documents before he signed the papers.  If he had, which he wouldn’t have and didn’t (restatement for added emphasis), he wouldn’t have intended to follow the rules anyway.  He is a renegade.  I didn’t think that I was rebellious or confrontational before I moved here, but now I’m downright oppositional-defiant.  I realize, rationally, that since I signed up to live in this neighborhood despite having read ALLLLL of its rules, I really have no right to complain about or rebel against them.  I'm choosing to ignore that rational line of thought for this one.  There’s just something really unsettling about being the least anal, OCD person in the group for the first time in nearly thirty years.  And it makes me want to SCREAM!  (But I can’t because “[n]o noxious, unsightly or offensive activity shall be conducted on any Lots or on the streets…[and] No annoying or nuisance activity which is offensive to other Owners will be tolerated.")

So, now I am quietly whispering to no one in particular: Darn it all to heck.

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Never On My Own

I was just reading my friend's blog, Never On My Own.  I like the duplicity of that name.

In one respect, it expresses the exasperation and over-exposure of the mother of young children; as in: Will I ever be able to use the bathroom alone AGAIN?

In another respect all together, it relates to the overwhelming loneliness that can be felt simultaneously in the same role: Will I ever speak to another adult (about anything other than children) AGAIN?

After being on Facebook for a few months, I am RELIEVED to be on Momglomerate again.  Facebook is an assault of private information and oversharing.  Blogging, by comparison, seems so much more intimate.  I am still able to share my thoughts with the wider world so that I feel less alone, but I can enjoy some of the relative "silence" of blogspot.  On Facebook, I was never on my own in a bad way--like an unhealthy, seizure-inducing way.  On Momglomerate, I am never on my own in a good way--like that I have valid thoughts worthy to be shared with others who might appreciate them.

Good work, Laura.  Thanks for writing and giving me so much to consider!

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

So Far, So Good: I'm Scheming "Something" Mightily

It has been three days since the start of 2012, and so far, so good! 

Reflecting on some scripture and commentary (from my Advent "Blue Book"), I was struck by these words: "So what am I to do?  I am free to do what I can do...something, just not everything...I can do something."   I often feel stymied by my limited ability to DO anything, as a stay-at-home mom.  I want to do something AWESOME, but how with so little free time or extra resources?  This commentary seemed to speak to that exact feeling.  No, I'm not free to do much at this time.  But that doesn't mean that I can't do anything.  Even if it's something small, it is still something, and every little bit helps.

On that note, I've been pretty productive here.  Mostly I'm trying to determine how to use space at the farm to do the most good.  No one wants to hear any of my ideas until they are fully formed, so my mind is basically a whirling chaotic mess!  I have written down my ideas in various notebooks and scraps of paper which litter my desk (basically a tangible version of what's going on inside my brain).

My current "master plan" is basically to consolidate the horses in a smaller area that is more centrally located to the houses.  The horses all require very little pasture at this point, so moving them to a more confined area would make it easier to manage their weight and easier to care for them in general, as water and electricity are already present*.

(*A big deal, as tonight I spent more than an hour fighting with the hose, which is basically the singular plot or at least the most commonly recurring theme of all of my winters.  Eventually, I was forced to give up on the hose, which froze shut immediately after being attached to the carefully winterized faucet.  Therefore, I was resigned to clumsily filling and transporting and lugging and pouring a 5-gallon water tank repeatedly from the basement of the barn to the top of the property where the horses currently reside...until it broke, sloshing me with water in the 23 degree night air!)

So, in order to determine whether my "master plan" is at all feasible, I have been collecting estimates from a variety of contractors--excavating, wood construction, metal construction, concrete construction, fencing, etc.  If it is allowable by the township, I'd like to fortify and expand a barn that currently exists and replace some decrepit fencing that has been removed.

And...if I already have an excavator leveling a spot for an enlarged barn structure, maybe--just maybe--it would be the right time to level a spot to ride (dare I say it, an "arena")?  After all, there is already a flood light lighting the old "riding" area...  Oh, to have an arena after all of these years!!  A level spot with footing and lights would take my enjoyment of the horses to a new stratosphere.

If the horses were removed from the upper fields to the central spot, by way of my "master plan," less mowing and maintenance would be required in that area.  Efficiency: check!  We would be able to ride whenever--darkness, rain, freezing weather.  Efficiency: check!  And, we would have a large acreage of pasture that was not in use.  Efficiency: Zero~ especially as we have been mowing it several times during the summer, which is not a blast, and then allowing the cut grass to rot.  So...wait for it!...we have a service come to custom bale those pastures, thusly, gaining a supply of hay for our horses at a much-reduced price and also creating a surplus of hay that could be sold or donated (to the SPCA Equine Fund!!)  Efficiency: check, check! Not to mention a GREAT BIG SOMETHING for starving horses!

Add that planning and scheming to my ideas for additional fundraising for the SPCA horses--tack sale, sponsorships, market stands, horsey pillows--oh, and my thoughts on a free-range, organic-egg-laying chicken flock--oh, and a non-profit horse sanctuary or foster home--and I'm on a major role!  I'M FINALLY DOING SOMETHING...or at least scheming mightily to do something!

But can she keep up this level of spastic mental activity?  That remains to be seen...

Sunday, January 1, 2012

One More New-Year Thing

I was reading my horoscope in the local newspaper.  It said something to the effect of: Your work is taking up a lot of your time and emotional energy.  If you follow through with your dreams, this could be the year that they come true.  I was super-happy to read this.  In fact, I cut it out to tape somewhere for inspiration.  I can't find it now, as evidenced by my ugly paraphrase above, because Brooke can reach my desk now and robs me of my things and then squirrels them away in or under furniture for me to randomly find later...

As I was searching for the scrap and considering my euphoria at it's initial reading, it occurred to me that it is a really generic horoscope.  I mean, isn't it always the case that if you follow through with your dreams, they will come true...for anyone...anywhere...anytime?

Our failings don't occur because the stars didn't align.  They occur because we give up on the dream.  Or we didn't fully form the dream.

I give up on my "dreams" when my reality doesn't immediately (or eventually) match the dreaminess.  I give up if things are hard or if the next step isn't obvious or if I get overwhelmed or if I feel tired or if I'm afraid people will see that I'm not as smart, cool, talented, or capable as I'd had them convinced previously.

My ultimate dream is to do something AWESOME.  For the wider world.  For my family.  For my own sense of self-worth.  I want to find fulfilling work.  It would be a bonus if that work was gainful (in the financial sense).

2012: Eat, Pray, Love. (Better.)

Eat: I am so thankful for my health.  I am aware that I do not deserve to be as thin or as healthy as I am based on my current diet.  I need to eat better--you know, as if I love and respect my body.  It would also be the best example for healthy, conscientious eating that my daughters will have.

Pray: I believe in God.  I am thankful for the Bible; I feel re-energized and re-affirmed by reading it, listening to it, or discussing it.  I kind of wish we had a church community that fit us as a family.  We haven't been attending a church regularly, and I don't miss our church...I feel guilty, but I don't feel like going back there either.  Nevertheless, I would like to spend more time in prayer and meditation and reading the Bible because it makes me happy and content.  I become fully aware of my many blessings and overwhelmed with thankfulness.  By feeling happy, content, thankful, and blessed, I will be able to better serve others...and maybe meet people to serve as my formal or informal "church."  I'd also like to provide more of a faith-full example to my kids.

Love: Our new family motto is, "You are kind.  You are smart.  You are important."  I will tell my family members this.  I will make them repeat it to me.  I will use my actions to assure that they believe it!  I will continue to volunteer at Alyssa's school because it makes her feel special and loved.  I will work to be the best wife and mother that I can be, and when I mess up, I will apologize.  I will continue to multiply the collective peace and happiness that comes from being a member of our horse-human-canine herd!  I will try every day to do something to serve others--no matter how small--donating, volunteering, working for the SPCA Equine Program, researching ways to start my own non-profit venture.

And...I can only hope that if I pour myself into all of this eating, praying, and loving that this will lead to the only thing that I (feel that I) lack--fulfilling work for me that allows me to contribute to our family financially. 

Although, they didn't call the book, Eat, Pray, Love, Work, did they?  Maybe that's the secret?  We shall see.  On with the NEW YEAR!