Of Course, I May Live to Regret This

Yesterday, Finn decided he wanted to cook. So we pulled out some bowls, spoons, measuring cups, candied sprinkles, glitter, and food coloring and cleared a chunk of real estate on the kitchen floor. And then he stirred sprinkled, and poured for, really, hours. (Or maybe it was just a long series of minutes. But they were consecutively occupied by the brewing.)

He was so involved that I went into the other room and . . . did stuff.

Actual stuff.

Like, on my own.

And then I got worried. Where were the incessant pleas for mama or television? He must have sampled his own concoction and was now quietly flailing on the floor and foaming at the mouth, awash in red-and-blue-makes-purple.

I abandoned my free time--it was a little overwhelming anyway--and peeked into the kitchen to see if I had indirectly poisoned my child with lack of parental supervision.

But there he was, stirring, adding more glitter.

"Whatcha doin'?" That would be me asking.

"Making a transformer." That would be him.

He picked up another bottle, uncapped it, and add it to the brew. What was it? Garlic salt? And what was that beside the garlic salt? Onion powder? Dried basil leaves? Chili powder? Lemon pepper?

Finn had raided the spice rack and was seasoning his little Golem (and our floor) with every salt, pepper, and herby product we had.

It was a complete mess. And I was happy.

Wha?

That can't be.

I am notoriously uptight. And even if that weren't the case (stop laughing, I can hear you), I am genetically disposed to not being happy about situations precisely like this. The Mom would have thrown a righteous and glorious fit. If her spice rack had been within my reach.

So what's with the joy? I don't know. I love to see imagination run wild. I love the independence of my kid. I like glitter and I know how to work a vacuum. But I also love knowing that Finn had an idea and jumped into the spice rack to realize it. I like that my child is not a guest in his own home.

(Of course, that probably means I should lock up the liquor and the porn.)

Counting Down to Thanksgiving

Yes, Halloween is the No. 1 holiday in these parts. We've already started counting down to next year's candy-filled, horror-drenched extravaganza (343 days to be precise. We even have a countdown calendar in our kitchen that helps us focus).

But Thanksgiving. That holds a special place.

It's a holiday without gifts or treats. It's not about scoping out sweet treasures. It's more about looking inward than out. (And if that doesn't smack of Jung and Joseph Campbell, baby, then I'm just not doing my job here.)

Now if you know me, and you know the seriousness with which I take adventure seeking (in that literary-not-literal sort of way), then you can fairly and verily predict how we started this holiday.

By watching Star Wars.

(And if you have to ask why, then you need to go back and read your Heroes with a Thousand Faces, because I have somewhere to go here, people, and I just don't have the time to spell out that logic and the complete OBVIOUSNESS of our choice for you. Puh-lease! And, no. I will not apologize for my flagrant and aggressive use of caps-lock. It is the holiday season after all and must get my game on if I'm to survive Black Friday. Stay with me.)

So today, on the eve of Thanksgiving, we continued our tradition by grocery shopping for Thursday's feast. Yes, we started the shopping today. (We planned the menu yesterday, cribbed from several articles in this year's Thanksgiving issue of Food and Wine. ) And yes, we did get everything we needed for our Indian-spiced turkey breast, our curry-roasted butternut squash and chickpeas, our creamed spinach, our creamed onions with thyme and sage, our pear and gruyere pie.

(I should've bulleted that list. I'm working through those issues.)

Yes, our traditions could be read as bordering unconventional, or even misguided. We don't watch Miracle on 34th Street or eat my mom's stuffing or rocked-out spicy spinach casserole that I've eaten and loved and pined over nearly every year (save maybe three) of my past 37. We aren't spending this Thanksgiving with my sisters or my cousins.

No. Instead, we watch Star Wars and Shark Boy and Lava Girl as our holiday flicks. (And they make perfect holiday sense to us--finding a family when far away from home, expressing gratitude for the simple things that we spend each day diligently taking advantage of.) We cook and eat food that has never graced a family Thanksgiving menu; that, this year, doesn't even resonate with our cultures, however far removed we are from them.

Part of that is by design. Most of it isn't.

Several years ago, when Bear and I were living in Bloomington and couldn't afford to travel to spend Thanksgiving with family, we tried to recreate my mom's Thanksgiving dinner. We laughed as carved the finished turkey and found a bag of gizzards hidden in some secret turkey compartment. We struggled and sweated (salt is good seasoning) over my mom's spinach casserole. We grappled with the sense memory of her stuffing. (She makes it by taste, not by measurements.)

I remember calling my mom every 2o minutes or so--I was far from an accomplished boiler of hot dog (which I've since learned should never be boiled), much less executor of an entire T-day menu.

We thought that recreating my mom's menu, dish by dish, teaspoon by teaspoon, would be a good way to recreate home, to vicariously share a little piece of the holiday with my family when we were living so far away.

We've wised up.

Home should be where you are, not where you want to be. Traditions should be as much personal as they are historical.

And there's nothing, not even perfectly executed cornbread stuffing, that takes the place of spending the holidays with your family (even when mom mistakes salt for sugar in her pumpkin pie.)

I miss you.

75 Percent Off at Target, My Friend

I watched the history of the Halloween on the History Channel, and I am full aware that Halloween lasts only one day a year. Maybe, maybe, you can score an extra two bonus days if you're Catholic or Mexican. Those affiliations grant you a couple of saints' and souls' days and an extra squeeze out of the ghoulish festivities.

But November 5? Conventional methods just can't get you that far.

That's why we bestow unearthly gratitude to Target. We love Halloween. We love dress up. (We love candy, but that's beside this particular point.) And 75 percent off all Halloween accoutrements, including costumes, means Halloween doesn't have to stop with October. Gosh golly, it doesn't even have to keep to fall. We can keep the haunts up all year long--as if Four hasn't already providing plenty of those on its own.

Let's Bowling (or How to Abuse Italics)

Several years ago, in that other lifetime when I could luxuriously dawdle in a San Francisco stationery store, staring at one piece of letterhead for seeming hours without wondering where my kid had got off to because I didn't yet have a kid that could get off to, I found this cute, mistranslated stationery. It depicted, with delicate drawing, a family of baby blue bowling pins--mama, papa, and a couple of baby pins--with the invitation, "Let's bowling!" And I wondered, in that luxury of time and thought, what would one do with such a activity-specific invitation, on such cutesy paper. Without finding an answer, I promptly bought it, without weighing that purchase against the 5T pants I needed to buy or the college fund I should be contributing to or the bottle of fruit-flavored water I just dropped two bucks for (because it tastes like juice, yet isn't juice, and that small distinguishing factor will save me and my already thin hairline from the repercussions of a not-so-small-and-ineffectual sugar crash.)

To this very day, I have not written a single note, letter, tiny morsel of thought on that paper. But I think about it a lot. Especially when we go bowling, which we--Bear, Finn, me, and some very special friends--did last night.

I don't pretend to be a good bowler. Nope. Stop. Reverse. Scratch that. I do pretend to be a good bowler. In fact, I'm a great theoretical bowler and pool player. It's a ball, a trajectory, some english, and set of balls that either drop off a ledge or into a pocket. It's all physics and if put in a vacuum or among my Mii, I would rock the ball vs. ball-collective show. Rock. It. Out. Of Town. I'm saying. I am saying!

But, alas, we don't live in a vacuum, and those big balls (they are so very heavy and ponderous!) slip and slide and too often find comfort in the gutters.

But Bear rocks it out.

He has his own ball.

(And I will surround that admission with some white space so you may linger on the full implications of what it means to own your very own bowling ball.)

Bear consistently kicks my ass, which is why, when we played last night, I didn't play against him. Because theoretical Sarah tends to share strategy when she bowls, even, yes, even when she's sporting a 54 at frame 8. I still dare to coach. And some people don't show the appropriate amount of gratitude for my unsolicited wisdom.

So I played with the Supreme Overlord of Bowling (name withheld), who not only owns his own ball, but also his own shoes and vintage bowling shirt. Which he wore. To bowling.

His level of character development and just sheer competence so clearly surpasses mine that he shuts me up and down. You can't feel bad losing to someone so obviously superior. (Well, actually I can.) My other opponent: half of a Finn and half of his three-year-0ld friend. The split the other spot. Finn would bowl first. His friend cleaned it up.

Let's pause at this point to again reiterate how much I understand about bowling, a fact which may not translate into my execution, a fact which a third of my opponents clearly could not claim, as evidenced by the variety of their technique. Push the ball. Kick the ball. Nudge the ball. Butt the ball. And sometimes not even in the direction of the pins.

Let's also take this time to underscore that I did not use bumper guards, unlike some people.

Let's just understand those things as we look at last night's final board:

Supreme Overload of Bowling: 147
Sarah: 54
Finn/Friend: 62

One Week One Day

I haven't counted anything down since, well, I was going to say since I was a teacher and I "helped" my students countdown to winter holiday, or labor day, or Friday, or seventh period, or 2:05, but really it was just a few weeks ago when we thought we were taking that trip to Mexico that we had planned for four months. Then, just as when I was a teacher or a student (of varying degrees and maturity), I pulled out my calendar and slashed, hash marked, and tallied my way to that dreamy destination, that ultimate, if brief freedom, that coveted prize.

And, except for my moment of beachy weakness, I really didn't expect I'd be jumping into the countdown so soon. Or late. You know, in life. Because whittling away the minutes, hours, or days just seems like it's heading in the wrong direction. I'm getting of the ripeness where I should be holding on to those fleeting moments, not casting them away so carelessly.

Add to that confusion and backasswardness that I'm actually admitting to this on my blog. Well, this entry is just so wrong.

But counting I am. And inverting my predicates as I go. One week and one day. And by now, you're chomping at the bit, you're tapping your fingers, you're grabbing your monitor in your hands and shaking it like you would an iBook that's gone on the fritz, screaming, begging me to tell you what it is that I'm so damn adolescent about.

That is, unless you're doing it, too.

One week and one day, folks. Until . . . Harry Potter. Which really is just a cruel crumb of a two-week-and-four-day cupcake away from the big tasty, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Now, try to tell me--and try to be convincing--that you don't have a secret stash of tally marks that's counting the days until Harry and his crew resurface. (Spoiler alert! Will they really abandon Hogwarts?) Just try. And I still won't believe you.

I haven't had this much pent up anticipation since Duran Duran came to town when I was an eighth grade. Or since, ahem, the days of premarital sex. This is an event. A butterflies-aflurry, will-the-day-ever-arrive, and can-I-possibly-survive-the-wait ardor.

We just don't get many events like this in life. And at the ripe age of 29-very-plus, those moments of delayed requiting seem fewer and fewer. We just don't have to wait for things as long anymore and those things that are dangled in front of us for months or years on end (re: Phantom Menace, Matrix Revolutions, adulthood) often aren't worth their measure of marketing.

But Harry, I have high hopes for you, lad. I have questions that need to be answered. I have people I want to see resurrected. I have acting I'd like to see redeemed. And so, on you, Harry, I pin my hopes of the world. Be my light, Harry. Be my salvation.

And of course, if you don't put out for me, Harry, it's only six months until season 4 of Battlestar Galactica.