curry in a hurry

Okay, here's a quick and easy chicken curry dish. I love curry, so I was thrilled to find this in the latest issue of Real Simple magazine. Enjoy!

1 1/2 tbsp olive oil

1 sm yellow onion, thinly sliced (you could always get pre-chopped in the produce section)

2 tsp curry powder

1/2 c plain yogurt

3/4 cup heavy cream (You could always use half-and-half to make it lighter)

1/2 tsp Kosher salt (I used the good ol' plain stuff)

1/4 tsp black pepper

1 14.5-oz can diced tomatoes, drained (optional...and I opted to skip these)

1 rotisserie chicken (of course, I had to complicate things and get fresh chicken to cook)

2 c cooked white rice (I used Basmati; Jasmine would also be great or couscous)

1/4 c fresh cilantro leaves, roughly chopped (I skipped this!)

Heat oil in skillet. Add onion, cook, and stir for 7 minutes. Sprinkle curry powder, stir, and cook for another minute. Add yogurt and cream and simmer gently (isn't this redundant?) for 3 minutes. Stir in salt, pepper, and tomatoes (if using). Remove from heat. Slice or shred chicken. Top rice with chicken then sauce and sprinkle with cilantro. Voila! Oh, and I actually mixed the chicken in the sauce and then topped the rice. Dee-lish!

best shot monday

It may appear that this is turning into a photoblog, but I can assure you, I have not abandoned the writing. It's just easier (and sometimes more fun) to post photos. And now that I've upgraded my Flickr account, it's even easier. I'm going to borrow an idea from one of the other blogs I keep up with, and that is to post a "Best shot Monday" each week. After all, the weekend almost always offers some great photo ops. Here's one of Eli eating yogurt for dessert last night. He has a great fancy for utensils these days and wants to DO IT HIMSELF. So we just let him go all out, and he was plastered, literally from head to toe, by the time SD whisked him up to the bathroom to scrub his booty and other yogurt-laden parts.

happy weekend

she reads!

These days I find myself thinking back to pre-child years and all the time I wasted when I could have been reading, books upon books of useful and useless literary, historical, you-name-it knowledge. I wish I had some of that time back. However, if I had it, I'd probably still squander it terribly because that's just how it goes, right? According to Murphy's Law or something? In the past few weeks, though, I've managed to carve out a little time to pick up a few short reads, one of which is Louise Erdrich's book The Blue Jay's Dance: A Birth Year.

I wish I would have known about it when I was pregnant or while SD and I were in the throes of the first few months of parenthood. Nevertheless, it still fills me with supreme appreciation for being lucky enough to have the experience of being a parent and echoes many sentiments I have felt as I reflect on our first child's first year. It's beautifully written, and I would recommend it to any parent, especially new mothers. I'm not all the way through, but here's one of my favorite passages so far:

"We live and work with a divided consciousness. It is a beautiful enough shock to fall in love with another adult, to feel the possibility of unbearable sorrow at the loss of that other, essential, personality, expressed just so, that particular touch. But love of an infant is of a different order. It is twinned love, all absorbing, a blur of boundaries and messages. It is uncomfortably close to self-erasure, and in the face of it one's fat ambitions, desperations, private icons, and urges fall away into a dreamlike before that haunts and forces itself into the present with tough persistence. The self will not be forced under, nor will the baby's needs gracefully retreat. The world tips away when we look into our children's faces. The days flood by. Time with children runs through our fingers like water as we lift our hands, try to hold, to capture, to fix moments in a lens, a magic circle of images or words. We snap photos, videotape, memorialize while we experience a fast-forward in which there is no replay of even a single moment."

So true.

the house of the monster teeth

I promised myself I would post today, no matter how lame it might end up being, because I know there are some (all, say, seven of you) who like to see updates. It's 10:30ish and I'm just having my coffee now, so who knows WHAT will spew forth from this keyboard. I'm just saying, don't expect (my usual), um, greatness. Heh.

We're upholding the almighty status quo here and trying relentlessly to get organized, stay organized, work on pet projects, be healthy, stay healthy, visit the gym more than never per week, refrain from tripping over hammers, cars, and other brightly-hued plastics, be good parents, enjoy parenting, be good spouses, raise a good son, enjoy life, be kind, and find amusement in all things chaotic.

Sound familiar?

Eli has TWO HUGE MONSTER TEETH charging out of the top backsides of his mouth. Ouch, I know. Considering this, he is still dang happy, but he has been waking up in the middle of the night for the past couple of days. He spent half of one night with us in our bed and got us to wondering why on Jupiter we didn't get the king-sized mattress.

You may be able to see specks of the tiny dentures in this photo, one of my recent favorites:

Despite this seeming setback, he has managed to carry out most of his typical toddleresque mischief, which lately has included:

• ordering an on-demand movie with the remote control,
• dialing 911 while playing with the phone (I usually take the battery out, but of course, the one time I don't...),
• putting my underwear (clean, of course) on his head and blithely trotting around the room, which I will, OF COURSE, bring up when he is 16 and angsty.

Yes, things are getting interesting.

fast love

Ziplocked roses,
sugared hearts,
cardboard poetica,
and milk (because we're out),
in the Express Lane.

hurryhometowoo,

because we all need an excuse
to
eat
more
chocolate.

But, really, the 15th would have worked better for me.

Happy LoVe Day, a day late :-)

bathbug

mediocrity this way flies

Okay, this is gonna be quick. Well, everytime I say that, I end up writing something godawful long and overwrought. This won't be it, I can assure you, because I am tired. So, mediocrity this way flies. What have we been up to?

• Eating falafel (which, I think, correct me if I am wrong, is pronounced, fa-la-full). Fa, la, la, la, la...la, la...la, la. Yummy. The Greeks got it right. I guess it's Greek. Got it in the Kosher section of the grocery. Kid likes it. Husband likes it. Wife likes it. Slap it in a pita with some hummus and veggies, and damn, you've got supper.
• Taxes: I think we're gonna get money back.
• Movies: Little Miss Sunshine. Ahhhhh, what a super flick, su-per flick, it's su-per flick-ay, yaohhh. Seriously, SD and I agreed, this is the best movie we've seen in a while, which I guess, isn't saying that much since, well, we *never* watch movies anymore, but it really, really impressed us. Funny and sad and uplifiting and not overly sentimental and just real, right down to the heroin-snorting grandpa, the mom's 10 or 12 pants size, and the angsty-mute teenage son. L.O.V.E.D, loved it. If you saw it and hated it, don't rain on my parade, okay? Devil Wears Prada. Less impressed. Meryl can almost do no wrong in my book of books (Sophie's Choice, anyone?), but, um, the movie was predictable and slightly boring. The clothes, however, were enviable.
• 30: Less than three months for both SD and me. Holy crap. I'm planning to bungee jump or get a tattoo. You think I'm kidding?
• Our child: Beautiful, joyous, perfect, and rashy. He had a reaction to the MMR he got at his 12-mos check-up. The doctor told me it could take up to a week for it to appear, but I don't think I believed her. After a few days, I thought we were in the clear, but then...this:

A aside to the grandmothers: He's fine -- happy as all get-out. It's already started to diminish, but, whoah, was he rashy.

All right, so that's our update. How was your weekend? Do tell...

all right, already...

I know, I know, it's coming. Soon. I promise. More pictures and intimate (or maybe not so) details from our toddlered life. I mean, I've got BIG things to share -- as in, SD and I watched TWO movies last night. Did hell turn an icy 1000-below and I not get the memo?

Duties call: coffee to make and toddler to feed. I shall returneth...

And why, pray tell, is my profile picture not showing up?!!? I must get my own, non-Bloggerfied web site. That's number one hundred forty-five million on the do-to list, so it might happen, uh, when the frosty Netherworld drops another 50 bajillion or so degrees. Ya think?

birthday boy!

on the day you were born...

We were reborn into Joy, Hope, Innocence, and Possibility.

Since then, we have stumbled through a blurry past, trying to remember where and what we were before you:

More sleep, fancy restaurants, impulsiveness, time to waste, time to wait, time to lose.

Less laughter and fewer Cheerios, poops, and wooden blocks to build houses, ships, and dreams to tower over Reality and Practicality.

You have brought Clarity to our obscurity, Gladness in our despair, Relief to our burden, and Direction through the foggy intricacies of
breathing,
thinking,
resisting,
deciding,
hurting,
forgiving,
loving,
living.

And we are indebted but most of all thankful.

Happy first birthday to our precious boy.

on ants and laboring

I've got a joke for you: What do ants and laboring have in common? Well, yes, ants labor...to build ant piles. And to invade perfectly undisturbed domiciles in Texas via tiny crevices in the floor, wall, etc. Yes, we have ants. Not at the moment because my endeavoring husband poisoned them all last night. But before he did so, 'twas the meeting of the Great Ant Assembly upon our bathroom countertops and the kitchen floor. It's lovely, really. And I'm sure it will end up costing us some non-insignificant sum of money paid by check to Terminex. But, I digress. Laboring, did somebody say laboring? Yes, on this day a year ago I was LABORING, I would guess, much more deliberatly than an ant constructing a pile of soft dirt. Not that I have anything against the willpower of an ant, except when they're on my countertops.

It's elevenish (pm) as I'm writing this, so as I remember, at this time a year ago, SD and I were just transferring from the birthing center (where I had already labored for about 24 hours) to the hospital, where I would receive a humongous needle in my spine from the god Anesthesis.

"You must remain still for this," I remember him saying. Maybe those weren't his exact words, but I remember thinking, "Oh, okay, that's an easy one. I mean, I will just instruct the labor contraction to hold off until the cold, silver rod delivers the numbing agent to my already jacked-up nervous system. Yes, that will be a piece of freakin' birthday cake."

As luck would have it, the needle slipped in before the next contraction did, and before I could say, "Could I have some ice chips with that?" I felt my legs and pelvis float away, like cotton puffs on the nurse's cart as it rolled out of the room. Oh, and I should also mention that by this point, SD was almost horizontal himself. I think we focus on how hard it is for a woman to endure childbirth but forget how difficult it is for a partner to witness. I mean, we're talking, BIG STEEL NEEDLES here, people.

After that, we just waited for more dilation, which was hard-won. I forget precisely when it was that we made the decision to do the C-section, but it was, of course, not the outcome we wanted. In that moment, we were disappointed, relieved, anxious, and strangely calm. And then, at 2:34 in the afternoon, our first child was born, perfectly pink and puffy and ready to upset the relative tranquility of our sleep-indulged existence. TLT (Total Labor Time): 42 1/2 hours.

Pretty amazing stuff. We thought so, at least. And now, also amazing and much more hilarious than his actual birth itself is this, a little something we like to call A Tribute to David Bowie and the 80s on the Eve of Eli's First Birthday:

eli, the great

peek-a-boo on the run

for my husband...

Go Colts!

4 May 1978

SD and I have just spent the last few hours traipsing through at least a ton of old pictures from our infancies to the near-present. I found this one of me in the mix and thought it was appropriate to post a week before our son's first birthday. Wow. Time soars, and we hang on, willingly or not, for the ride.

photoshopping

So, I've just spent the last two hours or so exploring the capabilities of Photoshop, which was a Christmas gift from SD. Ahhh, how I love him. This was really the first chunk of time I've devoted to it, and, oh, how seductive it is, like grocery-store chocolate cake at two in the morning. You can do just about anything. Yes, anything. Like float a banana out of your ear if you want to. These are the days when technology makes me smile. More cropped and recolored art to come in future blogs because chocolate cake (and Eli) are irresistible.

throwing a bone...

Because it's been a week since my last post, I know. And I also know that my Catholic-school grammar teachers would say, "You're not supposed to begin a sentence with because." And so I do it because I'm almost 30, and it's artistic rebellion, and, er, nothing else is coming to me here. Seriously, I should think of doing other rebellious things because if all I've got is grammatical rebellion, well, that's just pathetic. And how do I ALWAYS manage to launch into these idiotic musings anyway?

We have been doing a few things of note, if you're interested. Yeah, yeah, I know, you only come for the pictures, but the writing is for me and for whoever else feels so inclined to partake. So, here goes our update:

• We've been a few Village People latley hanging at the Y.M.C.A. We joined a couple of months ago, and are just now kind of hitting our stride with going regularly. There's a great Child Watch program where we bring the tyke, and although it was an adjustment (for all of us!) at first, he's loving it, and it's great to see him interacting with other kiddos. One of the first times we brought him, SD said, as we sauntered to the cardio room, "Man, I feel like we're dating again."
• I also recently joined an area mom's group and will join up with a smaller playgroup within the larger organization. Eli and I were supposed to go to a gathering yesterday, but the weather was, um, cold and gross, so we stayed in.
• Let's see, what else? Well, first birthdays are in the air and all around us. Well, that was redundant. Ahem. This weekend we will attend the first birthday party of SD's boss's daughter, and I will be taking notes because we have our own coming up soon. Also, Eli would like to send his personal birthday wishes to Eva Rose, his first love and future prom date, who turns one today. Love ya, babe. Call me.
• And the love for the revamped pantry continues. Now if I could just transfer that model to all the closets in our house, it would be true bliss. We're working on Eli's room now and going through all of the clothes he's grown out of. It's just a little sad to me that he will never be that small again, but I'm getting over it because he's just so much fun now, and I know the next year holds even more surprises, some of which I'm just a little afraid to behold, actually.

Happy Thursday, and I will try to throw a more substantial bone (with more than one picture) soon. But in the meantime, check out our Flickr slideshow if you haven't yet. From here, look left, and you can't miss it. Because it's blinking and flashing and, well, now I've just started another sentence with that word. Because I can. Because I like it. Because I'm just a little crazy. Because, as I told one of my childless-but-soon-to-be-a-mom friends this week, you do lose brain cells when you become a mother, in case you didn't know.

contemplations

"Ah, zee wvorld, zee wvorld, vhat is it comeeng to? Brittanee Speers, Paris Heeltone. I can't take it any longeur. . ."

"It's terreebule. I zie avake in my crib, zinking, I must share zee cheer-i-oze."

"Hah, ha, ha...I crack myself up."

Behold, a pantry!

Okay, first things first, cause I'm feelin' guilty:

• I am fully aware that not ALL football players are overweight and male,
• that college players don't get the big bucks that pro-players do;
• and that on occassion, I have been known to enjoy chips and salsa.

Now then, I promised evidence of the SMACK's descent.

Remember this (gasp):

Who's your mama now?

Who am I kidding? Like you were even going to believe this might be my pantry. This is my idol pantry that one day, just maybe, if the kitchen gods smile down upon me, I will achieve. For now, I had to settle for a more inexpensive solution and something I was capable of accomplishing in a fairly short amount of time. It's not perfection, but I love it, and it has made the last 48 hours of meal preparation more joyful than you could ever know.

Baskets were on sale at Home Depot. Stackable containers were not on sale at Target, but we got them anyway, and my favorite aspect of the makeover: spice world (see below).

God, I LOVE Ikea. Cheap spice jars AND cheap hot dogs. Here's a close up of the spicaaayyy spiiiiice...ahhhh.

I'd like to thank my husband for the moral support and for providing pep talks when, thinking I could not go on, I struggled to find a place for the crushed box of Ziplocs. And to our son Eli, thank you for taking great naps. I'm hoping the canned goods remain upright for at least a week. Silly idealism.