Seven in Seven 3: The mystery blogger

When I said I’d post every day this week, I didn’t realize it meant EVERY day. So this is going to be a bit of a free writing exercise because I’m drawing a blank here.

My sister made her new year resolution to save money on groceries by making stuff from scratch and by wasting as little food as possible. These are both subjects I find very interesting, so my sister calls me frequently to discuss Magic Bread and food-saving practices like keeping all of your vegetable peelings and tops in a Ziploc bag in the freezer instead of throwing them out and then using them to make broth later. And then, if you’re me, freezing the broth in a new Ziploc bag and then putting THAT bag in the freezer in your basement for the rest of time.

Our bread discussions usually segue into other things, and the other day we got to talking about my internet friends. I think I told her about my plans to attend the Edel Gathering this summer with Maggie, Arwen, and Lauren, and she started asking me about one of my blog friends who I told her about years ago. I told her she should be reading this blog, but it turns out she already was reading it, or at least she was at the time. She had since stopped following very many blogs, but this one stuck in her memory except that she couldn’t remember the name. “The blogger was so great,” she told me. “It’s like… she was who I want to be when I grow up!” but the blogger’s name remained elusive. “It starts with an ‘S’,” she said.

“Swistle?” I offered. But that wasn’t it, and I was at a loss, because I couldn’t think of any other blogger that I’ve been reading for years whose name starts with an S.

“What I liked about this blogger was how she just does her own thing and doesn’t make a big deal about it,” my sister said. “She just seems to be saying, ‘This is how I do it, and you can do it this way too, if you want, but you can also do your own thing and that’s fine too,’ instead of making it her crusade to convert everyone to homemade organic bread or something. You’ve been reading her forever and you’ve met and you’re friends now. But what was her name? S-… S- something… it started with an ‘S’.”

“Uh… Maggie?” I offered, drawing a complete blank on all “S” bloggers.

“There’s a least an ‘S’ in it, Maureen,” said my sister, with great indignation. But I had nothing to offer her. We talked about blogs and the internet for a few more minutes and then, figuring I’d give it a shot, I said, “Is it Arwen?”

It was Arwen. Or “S’Arwen,” as we sometimes call her. 

Seven in Seven 2: Cheesecake

A couple of years ago I bought a Better Homes & Gardens special interest magazine about holiday baking, primarily because the cover claimed to have a spread on cheesecakes. $5.99 well spent, my friends. After trying out several recipes, I adapted one of their recipes and created this one, which I shall now share with you, you lucky people.

Dr. Maureen’s Chocolate Raspberry Kahlua Cheesecake
Adapted from Better Homes and Gardens Holiday Baking, 2004, Chocolate Irish-Cream Cheesecake

Active time: 45 min Baking time: 1 hr Total time: 7-24 hr Oven: 325F

Notes
The original recipe called for 24 oz of cream cheese, 8 oz of sour cream, 1 cup of sugar, 8 oz of chocolate, and 3 eggs, but I thought the cheesecake was too tall, so I reduced everything by 1/3. The original recipe also used ½ cup Irish cream instead of Kahlua, but ½ cup was just a bit too much.
To soften the cream cheese, I microwave it for about 30 seconds. In my experience it makes a smoother cheesecake. I also microwave the jelly just to warm it up enough to get it to the right viscosity for swirling; that is your preference.

Ingredients

Crust
1.5 cups crushed chocolate wafer cookies, about 18 cookies
6 Tbsp melted butter
1 tsp cinnamon

Filling
2 8oz packages of cream cheese, softened (see note)
6 oz sour cream
2/3 cup sugar
6 oz semisweet chocolate melted and cooled
2 eggs
1/3 c Kahlua
½ Tbsp whipping cream or milk
½ tsp vanilla
½ cup seedless raspberry jelly, warmed (see note)

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 325F.
2. Crust: Combine crushed cookies, butter, and cinnamon in a bowl. Toss to mix then press gently into a 9- or 10- inch springform pan. You can use a cup with a crisp edge to get the crust to press into the edges of the pan.
3. Filling: Combine the cream cheese, sour cream, sugar, and melted chocolate. Beat with an electric mixer on medium to high speed until smooth. Gently stir in eggs until just combined – overbeating here will introduce air which will lead to cracks in the finished cake. If you ever get a cheesecake that doesn’t crack, let me know. I never have. Stir in Kahlua, cream or milk, and vanilla.
4. Pour filling into pan. Swirl the raspberry jelly into the filling. Put the pan on a cookie sheet in case it leaks and bake for 50-60 minutes or until the center appears nearly set when gently shaken.
5. Cool in the pan for 15 minutes and then loosen the crust from the side of the pan. Cool 30 minutes more and remove the sides of the pan. Cool for one hour, then cover and chill for 6-24 hours.

Seven Posts in Seven Days 1: Ann Marie update

This is a post for me and for Ann Marie’s early intervention therapist, Miss Nancy. Ann Marie was enrolled in EI last January after I took her for her 12-month well visit in December and her doctor said, “What do you mean she can’t get herself into a seated position? And she has no words at all, you say? Hmmm.”

Honestly, I blame her motor skills delay on her parents’ forgetting how old she was. “She’s the BABY. Tiny babies cannot sit up! It’s perfectly normal! She’s only a few months old!” we thought, subconsciously. Also responsible: She is the THIRD baby. She does not get quite as much laser-focused attention as, I don’t know, her eldest brother did. Her brother and sister are sort of demanding, as it happens. This is real life. 

At any rate, she scored one point over the qualifying score for motor skills (she could not crawl or get into a seated position or roll over or pull to stand, but her fine motor skills brought her score up) and two points over qualifying for her communication skills. In other words, she did not qualify, but only by a hair. In such cases, children can be enrolled based on clinical recommendation, and that is what we did. Frankly, I was not concerned about her motor skills because she had improved substantially between her well visit and her EI qualifying interview, mostly because Andrew became aware that she was not, in fact, a four-month-old, and we made her try things. But I was a bit concerned about her learning to talk because she communicated non-verbally to great effect, so I was afraid that I would not know how to get her to use actual words.

  

Thus it was that Miss Nancy started coming to our house every Tuesday afternoon for an hour to play with Ann Marie. And Ann Marie was Miss Nancy’s favorite client, if you don’t mind my totally unbiased opinion. And, OK, I’m sure Miss Nancy worked with plenty of adorable kids, but seeing as how she worked primarily with children with severe developmental delays, I do think a pleasant hour playing with a cheerful baby who had a slight speech delay was a nice little break for her.

It probably helped that my other two children were always under some sort of magical spell when Miss Nancy came, and always acted like angel children from another dimension for that hour. Honest to goodness, Nora once spent the entire time playing with some dolls, singing a little song quietly to herself. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought it was staged. The storybook magic always ended when Miss Nancy left at 4:00 and the children immediately began begging for a show, but it was always nice – if surreal – while it lasted.

Once Ann Marie started walking, we noticed a problem with her feet. They curved in. The orthopedist diagnosed her with metatarsus adductus, which is Latin for “curved in feet,” and prescribed special shoes for the day and boots and a brace to sleep in. I was told to expect that she would need to wear the brace for three years, and we scheduled a follow-up visit for that November, six months away. Well, her feet were noticeably better within two weeks. I know it was two weeks, because we got the brace right away but had to go back for the special shoes, and they were better by then. And by the time Ann Marie had her six-month evaluation for EI, her feet looked totally normal. The physical therapist who had come for a sort of foot consult before I took her to the orthopedist came back for the six-month eval, and she was astonished at the improvement.

But what is the six-month evaluation? In Massachusetts, if you qualify for EI, you get it for a year, with an evaluation midway through to check on the progress. But if you qualify for EI based on clinical recommendation, the six-month eval is a qualifying evaluation, and Ann Marie did not qualify. Not even close. In January, her almost-qualifying scores were 76 and 78. (You need 75 to qualify.) In June, her scores were 105 and 97. So the EI worked, apparently.

You know what else worked? Her shoes. I took her back to the orthopedist in October instead of waiting until November because she had outgrown her special shoes, and the orthopedist declared her cured. Cured! She didn’t have to wear special shoes or a nighttime brace anymore! I’m still pretty amazed by that. Six months is a lot less than three years. So, Miss Nancy, she hasn’t had orthopedic shoes since October!

She also talks a blue streak now, Miss Nancy. I’d list her words, but her vocabulary is too vast. This morning Nora was making her way to the car taking her to school, and Ann Marie called out, “Carefully, Nora!” correct syntax and all. Then while we came upstairs she said, “Can I watcha show? How ‘bout... Mickey Mouse! How ‘bout... Dora! How ‘bout… Phinny Ferb?” (That last one is Phineas and Ferb, and the answer is always no.) Yesterday Andrew asked Nora to get him a napkin and Ann Marie came running. “I do it! I DO IT!” and did it. When she wanted to stir my coffee for me I sent her over to stir Andrew’s instead. Jack said that he didn’t think Andrew wanted her to, and she said “I GOING to!”  She can count to twenty sort of, and she can count to eleven pretty consistently. She can identify “G” and “O” and knows what sound “H” makes. For the counting and letters I concede all credit to her Leapfrog Leaptop.

And she takes the stairs like a big kid. No more creeping. Sometimes she even alternates her feet while she climbs, although she has to be holding someone’s hand to do that. She can jump, too. Real jumps, both feet off the ground. She runs and climbs. She can get in and out of her crib and can even get out of her crib and make her way upstairs, all by herself. 

She is an utterly charming delight to be around. She has her moments of course, and we’re no strangers to tantrums about wanting or not wanting to wear her “cozy shirt” or some other nonsensical two-year-old problem, but she sure is fun.

And Miss Nancy, if you ever want to stop by for a visit, you are always welcome.

1,2,3... from Maureen on Vimeo.

There were so many other parking spots

Ann Marie and I went to Costco today. I got there when it opened, so I had a pretty decent parking spot nice and close to the cart return. After we were done and I had loaded all of the things into the car, I saw a minivan waiting for my parking spot, blinker fully engaged. She sat there while I shut the trunk and walked the cart back to the cart return. There were plenty of other spots free, so I don't see why she didn't just park in one of them. Why is it people are willing to spend extra time waiting in the car in order to save time walking? It's like the people who show up forty-five minutes early for school pickup. Yes, they get a spot close to the door which makes for a quicker getaway, but I get there ten minutes early and I drive away only about five minutes after the early people, so the total time I spend waiting around the school is only fifteen minutes and they wait forty-five. How does that make any sense?

But this minivan lady must have thought it would be worthwhile to wait; after all, all I had to do was return the cart, buckle the baby into her car seat, get in and drive away. How long can that possibly take? What she failed to consider, however, was that buckling the baby into her car seat takes at least five minutes, and that's when she is being cooperative. When she is not cooperating, it takes approximately 400 years. Getting into the car is one of the times where I hear a lot of "DO SELF!" but do not see a lot of self-doing. Other areas where "DO SELF" is unwelcome: Pouring milk from the full glass quart container, putting shoes on when we have places to be, and changing dirty diapers. She is most definitely not allowed to "DO SELF" her own poopy diapers.

But the car. The car is where I am most likely to lose my mind as I stand in the weather, waiting for her highness to stop pushing buttons and deign to turn around and sit down. Every time I must weigh whether it will be faster to let her DO SELF or to force her and endure her stiff-bodied wrath. If it were just regular old screamy wrath I'd endure it no problem, but she's a lot stronger than you might think and it can be pretty challenging to force her into a car-seat-amenable body shape if she doesn't want to comply. So I usually give her a few minutes.

But the lady in the minivan has apparently never tried to put an independent toddler into a car seat before. To her, it looked like I returned the cart and then went back to my car in order to stand there with the door open for no reason whatsoever. "What is she DOING?" she must have been thinking. "Doesn't she SEE ME HERE?"

Yes. Yes I did see her there. I thought she was probably going to be unhappy with how long it took me to get into the car. I would maybe even have felt some slight pressure to try to hurry Ann Marie along, except that there were about fifteen other parking spots within my sight line. None of them were closer to the entrance, but at least one was only fifteen feet further away. And that one was closer to the cart return.

And yet she waited. After what must have seemed an interminable length of time where I just stood at the car, waiting in the cold just for fun, she pulled forward and looked at me with an expression that said, "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?" I said, "It's going to be a long time," and shrugged. I don't know if she could read my lips or not, but she drove away and the vibe I received was very annoyed. Meanwhile, I was saying "Turn around and sit. Turn around and sit. I will give you the juice box when you are buckled. Turn and sit. Turn and sit. Sit. Sit down. Sit. Sit. Sit. Sitsitsitsitsitsitsit," because that is how I spend 15% of my overall time. And it's not even that I drive that often, it's that it takes Ann Marie so long to get in the car.

So, no, lady who didn't want to park fifteen feet further from the entrance. I have no sympathy for you whatsoever.

The cons of autumn

I love fall. Fall in New England makes February worth it. I especially love fall in the city where I now live. There seem to be just so many more types of trees around here compared to where I grew up, and so many of them are huge. The house next door to us has a simply enormous oak tree and two gigantic maples in their yard. Every year, they turn the most glorious colors, and when the afternoon sunlight angles in and hits them just right, they glow.

So. Huge, beautiful trees turning gorgeous colors: Pro.

But do you know what happens to the leaves after they're done glowing on the trees in the afternoons? They fall off the trees. Into your yard. And have to be picked up.







Do you see the size of that leaf pile? Nora is standing up in that middle picture. In the top picture, Ann Marie actually got stuck in the pile as if it were leaf quicksand. And that's not even all the leaves in the yard! I didn't bother with the part in front of the side door or the section around and behind the swing set. Why not rake all of it and be done, you ask? In response, I present the trees directly above our yard:



That's a lot of leaves up there. And over the past eight years we have learned that these trees shed their leaves last.

Actually, the past eight years have given me the chance to make some observations of the natural world. First, walnut trees turn yellow and lose their leaves in September when Norway maples are still lush and green; Norway maples turn last. Second, the first leaves to turn are the ones that get the most sun. This is a particularly nice effect because of the afternoon sunlight angling in and making them glow, as I mentioned. Third, trees in a clump turn colors starting from the outside in. My theory here is that the inner trees are kept warm by their neighbors and thus get the temperature signal to go dormant only after their neighbors have shed their leaves, but the takeaway message is that in a copse of Norway maples, the ones in the middle lose their leaves dead last.

These?



The middle trees in a copse of Norway maples.  So yeah, we've got several weeks to go. We will be raking up those leaves in late November, when it is really really cold and there will be a distinct lack of joyful jumping into the leaves. There will instead be a lot of grumbling about cold hands.

Late November freezing cold raking of leaves: Con.

Ah, well, I still think the pros outweigh the cons.

A time and place for paper towels

Temerity Jane just wrote a 150,000 word post on paper towels and how she won't buy them and has instead bought unpaper towels. In case you don't have the kind of time it takes to read 150,000 words on paper towels*, let me recap it for you here: Kelly doesn't like to spend money on things like paper towels which are used only once. She tried to use dishcloths, but they did not fulfill her paper towel needs. So she bought some handmade "unpaper towels" which are basically a specialized dishcloth that have the right thickness to stand in for a paper towel. There, Kelly. That only took 55 words.

Now I am ALL FOR the end of paper towel purchases. I am fully on board. I stopped buying them myself, under the premise that if I don’t have them, I can’t use them. I have found that dishcloths and dish towels do work pretty well for our paper towel needs, but I have to admit I am intrigued by this unpaper towel product and may buy some to try out.

But all that being said, there is a time and a place for paper towels, and that place is your kitchen and the time is immediately after an entire glass quart full of milk is dropped on the floor and shatters.

You see, we buy our milk in glass quarts from the local dairy. We do this because I like to support local businesses, and because I like reusing things whenever possible, and because the purchasing of reusable glass bottles of local milk gives me a pleasant smug feeling. There are two major downsides to this system. First, the glass bottles only come in quarts, so a week’s worth of milk takes up an inordinate amount of space in our refrigerator. Second, when a glass quart of milk is dropped on the floor, you get milky shard of glass everywhere. Just everywhere.

The first time this happened, I had recently climbed on the “no paper towels” train, so I grabbed a bunch of dish towels – including the pack of brand new dish towels that I had purchased that very day because when your kitchen is covered in spreading puddle of glassy milk you grab whatever is most handy- to sop up the milk. And it worked fabulously. The towels were absorbent enough to get all the milk and thick enough to protect my hands from the glass splinters.

But then I had a pile of milk-soaked towels, studded with shards of glass. “I’ll just put these in the washing machine immediately so they don’t fill the kitchen with the smell of sour milk,” I thought, and dropped them in. “I’m sure the washing machine will also get all the glass out.”

Did you spot the flaw in this plan? The good news is that I also spotted the flaw just as my hand was about to press the start button, and I did not run a bunch of broken glass through my washing machine. So that’s something. So then I decided to dump the glassy towels on the porch to dry in the sun with the plan of shaking the glass off the towels once everything was dry.

Did you find the second flaw? But fortunately, a few days later my brain clicked on mere moments before I shook a million glass splinters all over the porch my kids sometimes walk on barefoot. Unfortunately, that left me with a pile of glass-splintery, sour-milk dish towels - three of which were brand new – and no idea what to do with them.

I threw them out. Much like I would have thrown out paper towels, but far more expensively and probably with a bigger environmental impact.

So now I try to keep at least one roll of paper towels around. For milk emergencies.

*You should though, because Kelly’s version is much, much funnier.

1, 2, 3, foh

Ann Marie has learned to count, sort of. This is not something I've "worked on" with her. My theory, in fact, is that she picked it up from all the "you have until I count to..." we say to the other two. At any rate, here she is, counting to ten. Sort of. My favorite parts are her face when she says, "Fohhhhhhhhh" and how the "YAAAAYYYY!" gets earlier and earlier with each iteration.

1,2,3... from Maureen on Vimeo.