Last week of the semester!

I know blog posts like this are lame but I have the kind of self-awareness that recognizes the lame and does it anyway.

Today was a super productive day. And I'm not quite exhausted yet. I got up with Max at 6:45, fed Max, made Zoe breakfast, made Zoe's lunch, wrote a letter of rec, braied Zoe's hair, took Z to school, fed Max, responded to emails, checked on grant, responded to four student essays, prepped for tomorrow's class, fed Max, emailed folks about poetry book, prepared envelopes to send poetry book out to Constant Critic, emptied dishwasher, made lunch (smoked turkey, kidney beans, beets, carrots, lettuce), took shower, fed Max, picked up Z, helped Z water plants, helped Z change shoes 4 (that's right, changed shoes four times. My helping mostly meant rolling my eyes and convincing her to put on last year's orange Keens), emailed Baltimore sister (who got a new job, yay!) read and responded to long email from colleague, read essays for Diagram, fed Max, worked on food proposal, checked on grant, rewrote part of grant, emailed thesis student, emailed all students reminding them to fill out their course evaluations, emailed friend at Bookworm in LA, started to make dinner, realized we were out of ginger, took Zoe to the Farmer's Market store and bought ginger, garlic, shitakes, almonds and salt water taffy, came home, fed Max, finished dinner, fed Max, filled out Zoe's summer camp application, folded laundry, sang Zoe sleeping songs, folded more laundry while Max slept in laundry basket, read second to last thesis, put away laundry, harassed people on Facebook, wrote an annoying blog post, fed Max, went to bed.

The Feeding of the 5000

I used to have an album called the Feeding of the 5000. Crass was the name of the band. They were big fans of swearing. The line I remember off the top of my head was a song, "Do they owe us a living, of course they do, of course they do, Do they owe us a living, of course they fucking do." No wonder I'm a poet.

Facebook gave me no love on the news that Zoe will eat Tom Ka Gai so I'm repeating it here. A whole bowl of it. We ordered it only "2" hot, but still, she slurped it up and wanted more chicken. Once, when Erik and I were at the Emmy award show (I like to name drop that although it was indeed the regional Emmy's and we did not, in fact, win), Zoe's grandma and aunt took her to Thai food and she ordered a Thai Iced Tea, telling them that of course I let her order that. The caffeine plus sugar equaled seventeen running trips around the downtown. Still, it's very good news that we can take Z to Cuban food, sushi, Thai, dim sum, and pizza (my niece does not like pizza. This would kill me I fear.)

I wanted my sister to start a food blog that listed all the amazing food she made for the book release party. Everything had, or was supposed to have, eggs in it since the title of the book is This Noisy Egg. I remember homemade crackers, cobb salad in cups of bibb lettuce, and caviar but she made so much else and if she doesn't write it down, we'll all forget it.

I didn't like to eat much when I was pregnant so I didn't cook often or very well. But when my mom came to visit right after Max was born, I cooked in that week more enthusiastically than I cooked all year. It might have helped that my mom bought all this meat and I was prompted to do something with it all. The best were the too-many lamb chops with a ground rosemary rub and fennel butter. I made a apricot and almond rice as a side. I made brisket with onions, juniper berries and apple cider vinegar. I made pork tenderloin with chipotle mayonaisse. It truly was a meat fest.

When, after the egg party, and you would have thought we were entirely saturated with food, we met for a goodbye dinner, my mom brought even more caviar. Rick made bratwursts from Colosimo's, grilled and then stewed in beer. We took the caviar and put it on top of the mashed potatoes. Now, I'm afraid I'll never enjoy fish egg free mashed potatoes again.

The meat market isn't open on Sundays or Mondays and we didn't plan ahead. Therefore, tonight will either be meat-free or oven-fried chicken (because I can almost abide grocery-store chicken) with jalepeno roasted potatoes. And, because I'm lucky that I have an eating daughter who tries (although mostly fails) to eat 9 different colors of fruits and vegetables a day, we'll have green beans and shallots and count those each toward our goal (green and white). And maybe the jalepenos and potatoes (green and white. See why we fail?). We had carrots for lunch. But for the most part, we're behind today. Perhaps we can import some of the ingredients from the Tom Ka Gai--galanga root and lemongrass--to fill out our food color wheel.

Easter

Here's a sign I may have hit the wall. Things are starting to fall apart. For instance:
Zoe woke up before we hid the eggs (seriously, she often sleeps in later than us. We thought we had time). She went to get some milk out of the fridge and saw the carton of eggs. She came back into our room looking a little confused. I thought the Easter Bunny was coming. So sad.
I convinced her to hang out with me while Erik went to make coffee. While he 'made the coffee' (hid the eggs. OK. He made coffee too), I told the lamest story of the history of the Easter Bunny.

Once, there was a little tiny bunny born named Peter. He was a regular, tiny bunny when he was born but he liked candy so much that he ate it and ate it and ate it until he grew bigger than his parents. By the time he was two, he was as big as a human. He went to the doctor to find out why he was so gigantic and the doctor told him it was all the candy he ate. The doctor told him to quit eating so much candy or he'd grow big as a house. But he still had so much candy! What would he do with it? Peter the bunny decided that he would share his candy with all the little kids in the world and that's why on Easter, the Easter Bunny brings you candy.

By the end of the lame story, Erik had hidden all the eggs.
When she asked Erik one more time why the Easter Bunny didn't hide her eggs, he asked, are you sure? Show me.
She went to the fridge to get out the carton and what was there? A carton but no eggs. She must have seen the carton and not noticed the eggs were all gone.

She found them all. And a basket of candy-filled eggs. The moral of the lame story is lost on her as she is eating jellybean after jellybean.

Oh. Wait. She just said so. She just said, after I said, that's probably enough jelly beans, "I don't want to turn out like Mister Bunny." I suppose my lame, I'm barely holding it together, cover the gaps kind of parenting might be enough for today. Thank god Erik thought about returning the empty egg carton to the fridge to cover our tracks.