susan hayward photography

Blahg

Journal 

Monday, May 25, 2009

11:30 pm

Sudden burst of energy after brushing teeth and washing face. Decide to blog about being a night owl and how much I can get done when everyone else finally falls asleep.

11:35 

I lay down to mentally sketch out a post and fall asleep. Foiled again. 

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

6:00 am 

Read scriptures. Today's topic: warring tribes that never seem to get along for more than two pages. Reminds me of Israel and Palestine, among others. Two thousand soldiers--young and inexperienced--fight an army much larger and more experienced. But they're not afraid, because their mothers taught them to believe in God's protection. Makes me wonder what I'm teaching my children. Mind goes blank. I keep on thinking. Still nothing. I remember what my mother taught me: If you pick it, it won't heal. That's what she said when I was a teenager and performed self-surgery on my zits, emerging from the bathroom with bits of toilet paper stuck to the wounds. I have to say she was right. Again. Darnit. 

8:30 am

Huff and puff to an exercise video that's supposed to get me "ripped." I consider the meaning of this word and decide that this is what will happen to my muscles if I do this video one more time. My muscles will rip into shreds and reduce me to a gelatinous mass of bones, subcutaneous fat, and sweat. My cat will try to rub against me and I'll collapse and crawl through the house like the Blob. My children will shriek and run and my cat will try to lick me to see if I taste like jell-o, strangely addicted to sugar as she is. Somehow these thoughts get me through two more sets of push-ups, which I'm secretly hoping will improve the chest region. "Feel these," I'll tell my husband, flexing my chest muscles. "You can bounce a quarter off these puppies."  As I lift my arms to stretch I notice that my pits smell like a room full of sweaty little kids--kind of stale and meaty, like kitchen trash. I know this smell well, having whiffed it when I dropped off some papers to one of my kids at the elementary just the week before. I opened the classroom door and the stench nearly knocked me over. If I had had a handkerchief, I would have instinctively covered my nose with it. As I did not, I pretended to scratch my nose to protect myself. My eyes watered as I hastily made the hand-off and speed-walked out the door to fresh air. It is very dismaying to me that I smell like this. Also a little pathetic. I wonder if I have a sweating disease. 

This is when the tiny-but-buff instructor Jari Love tells me to "turn my scars into stars." I want to call my mother and tell her this, that my acne scars will turn into beautiful facial constellations one day. Perhaps when I die? Everybody in heaven will be jealous and want some too. "See Mom?" I'll say, flashing my sparkly chin, "all those hours in the bathroom squeezing pimples was really worth it, in the end." But maybe this thought disqualifies me for heaven and I'm going to H-E-Double-Toothpicks for being so vain. (Maybe by not saying it, I won't go to Hell. Oops. Just said it. Darnit.)

Decide to blog later in the day. Somehow, 3:00 comes and the opportunity is lost. Remember that my favorite song is "Where does the time Go?" by Judy something, that folk singer in the '60's. This is my anthem, my motto. This is my life.

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

11:30 am

Attend fourth grade recorder recital. When I can't figure out how to work the video camera, I make my way through rows of Chatty Kathies and Talkative Toms to my son. "How do I turn this thing on?" I ask him. He looks away and, without making eye contact says, "I dunno." Yeah, right. Like he didn't just spend the weekend messing around taping his brother's soccer game. This is the kids who knows more about my cell phone than I do. 

I stare at him and assume the I'm-not-leaving pose. He sighs and takes the camera, finds the switch and hands it back to me. I look through the lens and see…nothing. "Battery must be dead," P. says, a conniving grin on his face. I reply, "Humph," and go back to my corner of the room, where I proceed to excavate power cords from the camera bag. I plug everything into the wall outlet and voila! we are in business. Only, when it comes time to sing, P. just stands there frowning while the girls around him sing with vigor, leaning into the lyrics and smiling like they're high on this moment in the spotlight. I get this on film, too, panning the room so I can show P. how he looks when he's in the Stinky Pete mode. After a while, I realize he won't care and turn the camera off. When he gets home later on, P. unzips a slim blue vinyl case and pulls out his recorder. He plays "Yankee Doodle" and "Camptown Races" at an excrutiating forte until I suggest he go outside to play. I wonder why he wasn't taught some nice mellow New Age song that we could all meditate to and that wouldn't cause the cat make a run for the door. I consider the possibility of "losing" the recorder until the last kid needs it in three years, at which point I'll "find" it in an unmarked box in the garage. "Lookey here," I'll say, "I thought we lost this thing. What luck!" 

Saturday, May 30, 2009

11:50 am

Consider blogging about the rest of the stuff I did last week that prevented me from writing. Decide to lay down and sketch out the rest of the blog. Fall asleep immediately. Foiled again.

Digital Thanks!

Recently, a bunch of people have brought over some lovely stuff. It started with Alisa Sperry, my amazing gardener friend, who brought me a plant on Mother's Day. Alisa is the mother of seven, and she's giving me a Mother's Day gift? Who does that? "I know so many amazing mothers," Alisa told me. "I just felt like giving them a gift." Alisa is a pretty amazing mother herself. If I had that many kids, I'd be one of those crazy women you see downtown, walking around in rags and talking to myself. Wait a minute. I already do that. 

Thanks, Alisa!

 

My mother-in-law Dana Openshaw also gave me a gift for Mother's Day, some marigolds to plant in our yard. This was really generous considering Dana has already given me the gift of my husband. As she handed my husband the flowers to give to me, she assured him that I "couldn't possibly mess up marigolds." Dana has more faith in me than my past gardening endeavors deserve. Luckily, my husband is more handy with gardening than I, and he planted them the next day. Under his care they are thriving. Thanks, Dana!

 

Then, Alisha Jensen brought over a cheery note and this delicious bundt cake. I set the cake on the counter and went to get my camera. By the time I came back, my husband had a fork ready and was about to dig into the cake. "Wait!" I told him, grabbing his wrist, "I'm going to take pictures of that." He scowled at me. "Take a picture of the side I don't eat," he suggested. Yeah, right. 

The cat also wanted a bite. "Back off, Sister," I said, giving her a little love kick before she could lick the frosting. 

In the end, I chose this picture of a single slice (Sorry, Rick. You could have had a taste after all!). After taking the picture, I devoured this piece, and it was really delicious. Thank you, Alisha!

Shortly after the bundt cake, some cookies arrived, courtesy of our back-yard neighbor Teanna Hermanson. I did not get to try these, as my children devoured them all within minutes. Teanna has also given us brownies. Those were also devoured before I could get sample. In my house, you have to get what you want the minute you see it--and hide it if you arent' going to eat it right then. Also, it's wise to eat with two forks, one with which to put the food in your mouth, the other to stab any stray hands trying to sneak a bit of your stash.  

Battaglia Family Pictures

I had a wonderful time (and a good workout too!) photographing this family last night. We hiked up to this pretty spot, and after the family resuscitated me (not in as good shape as I thought), we took some fun pics.

Brace Yourself

My middle child. In braces. 

Paul went to our brilliant and talented orthodontist Dr. Jamey Watson for just a look-see this week and came back with a new set of railroad tracks on his smile. When he walked into the room, he looked at me just like this (see picture above), as if to say, "Would you look at these things? Aren't they great?" He wiggled his lips, trying to get used to the feeling of barbed wire fences stuck to his teeth. He had the look of a kid on Christmas morning who finally got his Red Rider BB gun and wanted to show the whole neighborhood. "Have fun at school," I called as he skipped to the car with his dad. But by the time he got home four hours later, his shoulders drooped and the smile had faded. "I hate braces," he said as he trudged into my office, his feet scraping against the wood floor. I assumed the kids had teased him. But it turned out he had not eaten much that day, owing to the throbbing pain in his mouth.

I stood up and put my arm around him. "I know what you mean," I said. And, because I am a great believer in the power of sugar to heal all wounds, I offered to make him a fruit smoothie. That, with a chaser of ibuprofen, cheered him up a bit. 

As we drank our smoothies, I thought back to when I was twelve and had to get braces. My braces were ugly, clunky things, not like the diminutive and colorful bits of metal kids get to wear nowadays. Now kids can make a fashion statement with their orthodontia, choosing to sport braces with colors named "kiwi-lime" and "purple fusion." These poor sheltered children don't know what it's like to be called "brace face" or "train tracks" or "metal mouth."  I, on the other hand, do.

Unfortunately, my two front teeth grew in crooked. They stood nearly back to back, looking in opposite directions. The best way to describe the angle at which they butted into each other is to make an open book with your hands. Now hold your "book" vertically and you've got a visual of how my teeth were misbehaving. Of course, the kids teased me about it. One girl in particular--we'll call her Wanda--found great enjoyment in calling me "toilet teeth." Every recess she called out "Hey, Toilet Teeth!" after which she'd laugh hysterically, going so far as to stomp her foot in the dirt and clap her hands, wiping imaginary tears from her cheeks. We all knew the routine. She was not all that imaginative in her insults, unintelligible really, but the other kids still laughed with her. Wanda was short and wiry, quick to throw a punch and slow to apologize. Though I outweighed her by a good thirty pounds and stood a foot taller, she scared me. And she scared everyone else, too. If ever someone should have had the nickname Firecracker, it was Wanda. If you unknowingly set her off, it was best to stand back at least eight feet and shield yourself from the imminent explosion. 

I spent a lot of time sitting on a fiberglass bench during recess, trying to figure out the toilet teeth thing and getting nowhere. Did Wanda's toilet look different than mine and my teeth reminded her of it? I thought toilets were all the same. Plus, toilets were generally white and shiny. Wouldn't that be a good thing for teeth to be? So when my dentist recommended I get braces, I immediately said, "Yes! YES!" I thought that if I got braces, Wanda would leave me alone and I could get through recess without emotional bruising. They would prove that I was not one to sit on the bench forever. Braces would be my way of saying, By golly, I'm going to do something about these toilet teeth of mine once and for all. 

A few weeks later, I came to school early to show off my new braces. When I smiled, the shiny rings topped with silver barbs of metal sparkled in the sun, attracting a group of girls to my usual spot on the bench. Seeing the crowd, Wanda approached. This is my moment, I thought. I looked at Wanda, my lips parted to reveal my new, bedazzled smile. Wanda stared at me in silence for some time. Then her eyes grew wide and watery, and from deep within her tiny chest, I heard a distant rumbling. That's when she started to laugh, bending over and slapping her thighs for greater effect. "Metal Mouth!" she said, pointing at me, as if no one knew who she was talking about. "Train tracks!" she squealed. Wanda danced around the bench, laughing and clutching at her stomach as if she might vomit from her own hilarity. As I sat watching the show, the backs of my thighs started to itch from the fiberglass. The night before I had planned on first showing the kids my braces and then telling them about the neck brace I would get to wear every night for the next six months. I had even considered bringing the neck brace to school as part of a one-woman show-and-tell, even though there was no such thing in sixth grade. I envisioned the children running home to tell their mothers, "I want braces too!" I would be a trend setter, an orthodontic super-star. Most of all, I would finally be what all girls secretly or openly long for: I would be popular.  

Wanda ran a final lap around the bench and stopped in front of me. "Brace Face!" she jeered. I closed my mouth and looked away. I hated how my lips protruded, unable to lay flat against my teeth because of the braces I had so foolishly agreed to. Thankfully, the bell rang and Wanda ran off, wildly pumping her thin arms and legs in a race to the classroom door. I stood up and scratched at my fiberglass wounds. I would not be a super-star after all. But at least, I told myself, I was no longer Toilet Teeth. 

Looking back on it now, I wonder if someone had called Wanda a potty mouth and she, not quite comprehending the implication, turned her confusion on me in the form of Toilet Teeth. She did cuss a bit, come to think of it. She was one of the kids from the rough part of town who was bussed in to attend a nicer school in a nicer neighborhood. What she didn't know is that I was doing the same thing, only my mother drove me to school and a bus did not. If we had analyzed our lives, we probably had more in common than not. Yet to Wanda, I was just a goody-goody teacher's pet. (I know this because she wrote me a note telling me so.) And to me, Wanda was just a bully. 

We both knew that in a year's time, the braces would come off and my teeth would be straight. But perhaps there were things in Wanda's life that would not right themselves, things she had no control over. So she lashed out at me, attacking one of my most visible weaknesses. That's what bullies do: they make their victims a symbol of what they would like to beat up but cannot. Perhaps in my own small way I helped Wanda to vent her frustration and anger, saving her from years of therapy and turning her into a nice person. 

But then again, maybe one day when her own child came home from the orthodontist, she took one look at her and said, "Hey Brace Face, why don't we trade in all that metal on your teeth for some spare change?" Then she'd start laughing, slapping her hand on the counter and wiping the tears from her eyes with her apron. Yes, that sounds more like it. 

      

Hello, I'm a Mac

Go to the Apple website to watch the "I'm a Mac/I'm a PC" ads. They will make you laugh. Well, maybe not so much if you just bought a PC or Vista.

So I spent a long time writing an essay about Bellatrix (AKA my period) only to find out that it didn't post right. Let me just say right now that all of my posts look just fine on my computer. But a number of people have told me that on their computers, most of my posts get cut off on the right margin and sometimes look chopped off at the end. This disturbs me. For one thing, I work hard to write my guts out (though my stomach is still not flat). These writings don't just flow from me (no Bellatrix pun intended here, although she did show up briefly today while I was stressing about this--which is not okay because I thought she had beat it a couple days ago). There have been times when I have thoughts to write about but no time to do a half-way decent job getting it out on a post. So I just skip it, even though I'd really like to talk about what's on my mind. I'm trying to do my best work possible in the time that I have while the kids are at school or asleep. So it pains me to think that all of this work has been unintelligable to a great many of you because of a computer error. 

Today I briefly considered throttling my computer. But then I thought, "I couldn't hurt my Mac. It can't be my Mac's fault." You see, I'm a loyal Mac girl. Ever since college, when I took design classes at BYU--all on Macs--I became convinced they are a superior computer in every way. They don't crash. They have fast processors and excellent operating systems. They're easy to use. (It's true that all you do is plug it in and you're on your way.) They also last a long time in computer years. My first Mac lasted ten years. My next Mac lasted five, and the only reason I replaced that was because I got back into photography, which had turned digital on me, requiring massive amounts of hard drive space and a faster processor.(Actually, that Mac lives on in my son's room. He will use it next year when he's in junior high and needs to type papers.) Plus, Macs are pretty. 

People tell me that Macs are expensive. But as you can see, they last a long time. It's like the difference between a Toyota and a Pinto (which to you young'uns is not only a bean but also the name of a crummy car from the Seventies). The Pinto was cheap, but cheaply built. This means it spent more time in the shop than on the street. Toyotas, though more expensive, nearly never end up at the mechanic's. They will run for as long as you want them to (practically). And they're pretty.

Tonight I went to the library to test my blog on a PC. To my complete astonishment, my most recent post appeared to have been sliced into pieces and tossed together higgly-piggly on the screen. "How can this be?" I asked aloud. The man next to me turned and looked, but I ignored him. In desperation, I went into the original post file and tried to fix it, but with most of the paragraphs gone altogether, there was little I could do. I stared at the computer, repeating my lament as I held the screen in my hands to shake some sense into it. "What's going on?" I said. More people stared, but I didn't care. I was determined to figure this out. After all, I had just spent the past two days listening to a mystery novel on CD and had learned some sleuthing skills. Like the main character in the story, I tried to retrace my steps. How did I create the post? I asked myself. And that's when I remembered something. I had tried to indent my paragraphs. Could that small act have thrown Microsoft Explorer into a tizzy? Could it be that simple? 

Maybe so, I thought to myself.  Microsoft Word never listens to my commands, even when I threaten it with deletion from my hard drive. It would follow suit that Microsoft Explorer would completely disregard my attempt to make my writings feel more like stories through indentation and less like  blocky business letters. How very typical of a PC-based application to come unhinged when I wanted to do things my way. 

The first thing I did when I got home was go into Typepad and un-indent my paragraphs. Then I called my sister. "Quick, look on your computer and tell me if the last post looks normal," I asked her. To my delight, it did. And I hope it does for you, too. However, if for some reason my posts still seem to be missing words or paragraphs, PLEASE email me and let me know so I can fix it. After that, go out and buy yourself a Mac. 

     

Monthly Misery: Bellatrix is in the House

This is a picture of Laura Ingalls Wilder. She looks a lot like Aunt Rose. Except Laura looks younger and more pleasant.

When I was a girl my sister and I referred to our menstrual cycles as Aunt Rose. If I said, "Oh, I can't go swimming today because Aunt Rose is visiting," my sister knew exactly what I was talking about and left me alone. If one of us was behaving badly, the other might say, "Is Aunt Rose coming soon?" and if the answer was yes, we steered clear until it looked like Aunt Rose had skipped town again.

I always envisioned Rose as a thin older woman in a high-collared dress with dozens of tiny buttons down the back, her hair swept up in a tight bun, a few ringlets jiggling by her ears. She came regularly, usually in the middle of the night, carrying only a small carpet bag filled with cotton and chocolate. I would wake to the sound of her high-heeled boots clicking on the wooden floor as she crept to my room. And though I enjoyed surprise visitors, she was not exactly a welcome guest. She never waited for an invitation; she just showed up whenever she wanted to. Also, she had this way of hitting me in the lower abdomen in such a way as to necessitate hours spent in the supine position, a heating pad roasting my fallopian tubes until they were numb. And she was messy.

But I was taught to respect my elders, and Aunt Rose was no exception. She was proof, after all, that I had become a woman, that everything was in order to make a baby or two someday. She was like my practice run for labor and delivery, jabbing at my uterus and bruising my lower back until they throbbed with pain so deep and constant that I would involuntarily moan--or curse--in public. To cope with the discomfort, I developed the habit of standing with my back arched and my hands at my hips, massaging my lower back as if I'd been bent over in the fields for the last ten hours when in reality I'd been sitting in front of the television for the last two. 

There was a year when Aunt Rose became cruel and vindictive, barging into my life twice a month, which meant I had one week between visits to recoup. I told my gynecologist this as I lay on her examination table, and she took the opportunity to give Rose a stern talking to. Rose slunk off, probably offended by my doctor's tone of voice, and only came back at her appointed times. Then she disappeared altogether, leaving me wondering where she had gone off to. I suspected it had something to do with how much I was exercising and how much weight I had recently lost, but nothing was ever tested to tell me or Auntie so. Yet I was so afraid that she would suddenly appear, leaving her crimson mark in her wake, that I refused to wear white pants or skirts for years. But then I realized that Rose was giving me the silent treatment. For anyone else I would have written a note of apology: I am so sorry to have hurt your feelings. I know you were just doing your job. Please come back!" But I was having too much fun without her. Any woman can tell you that it's far easier to live without Rose than to live with her. You can travel without worry, for one. And you can save a small fortune not having to buy tampons every month. And then there's the pain, or lack thereof. So that's why, when my mother asked, "Aren't you worried you're not having a period?", I could honestly answer no. That's also why I started telling everyone I never wanted to have children. If delivering babies was anything like cramps, I wanted nothing to do with it. My factory was closed and Big Boss Rose had retired.  

Alas, eventually Aunt Rose returned. Again, I suspect it had something to do with all of the exercising I was not doing and all of the body changes that come along with pregnancies, but I have no proof, just my woman's intuition. One night Rose just walked up to my front porch and threw the door open in her fury. Didn't even knock or say, "Hello Deary, I'm back." Didn't write me a letter asking if she could come for a visit. No, Aunt Rose just whacked me in the back with a two-by-four and punched me in the gut. Then she unpacked her bag--which was much larger than I remembered--and camped out for a week and a half on our front room couch. She threw her clothes all over the floor, ate all our food, and always screamed "Leave me alone!" to anyone who tried to talk to her. She cried all the time, accused my husband of calling her fat, and made me run to the store every day to buy her salty and/or sweet snacks. When she finally left, it took a week to clean up the mess. And though we put new locks on the door, she still came back.  

Recently, I've come to realize that Aunt Rose is not an appropriate name for this woman who invades my home and my body on a monthly basis. Aunt Rose is not to be trusted. She might even be considered a psychopath. That's why, when we saw the last Harry Potter movie with a character named Bellatrix that I decided to rename Rose. Bellatrix is a nasty witch with a cackle that makes you want to hide in the closet. She likes to cast spells on unsuspecting victims, probably because she dislikes her chosen career and feels jealous of other people's happiness. Also, she doesn't care much about keeping her house tidy and her hair combed. And definitely, she is not the motherly type. She's like the Grinch Who Stole Christmas, except without the change of heart at the end. Bellatrix doesn't have a heart.

So I told Aunt Rose to scram. Or rather, Bellatrix did. I think my husband appreciates this new name that fully expresses the extent of my monthly transformation. It helps to have the movie to refer to, especially the scene where Bellatrix breaks out of prison during an especially violent storm that signals the revival of an evil wizard by the name of Voldemort. As the walls crumble and the waves smash against the structure, Bellatrix licks a tattoo on her arm and laughs like a maniac, revealing small, blackened teeth that look like they haven't had a professional cleaning in centuries. With eyes black and wild,hair shooting from her head like she's been electrocuted, wearing a tattered black and white striped gown--the "fat clothes" she keeps for just such occasions--she looks skyward. Her cackle goes on and on, becoming more shrill by the second until her image shrinks to a small photograph in a newspaper. "That's what it's like to have PMS," I tell my husband. "It's like something's trying to break out of me. And then my period comes and it's like I'm possessed." My husband readily agrees. And for some reason this makes me want to punch him. But perhaps that's Bellatrix talking and not me.  

As for my kids, they are slowly catching on that I no longer have a relative by the name of Rose. Rather, I have a chronic ailment that turns me into a witch. One night during Bellatrix's last visit, I was tucking my middle child in bed. It had been a long day of hard cramps and annoyances, two things I do not hide well when Bellatrix is in the house. As I pulled my son's blanket to his chin, I sighed. "What's wrong?" my son asked. 

"Just mommy owies," I told him. 

"Oh," he said, which is what all of my boys say in response to mommy owies, right before they visibly draw themselves in and make a quick exit--as if it were a contagious disease. 

I kissed my son's cheek and gave him a hug. "Don't worry," I said. "It'll pass in five to seven days." 

"That long?" my son asked incredulously, a hint of fear in his voice. I nodded. Then I clutched the seams of my tattered pajamas and cackled like a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

Bellatrix Lestrange, my friend the witch, otherwise known as me during five to seven days each month.

 

Recipe: Easy Cinnamon Rolls

photograph by Susan Hayward

Do you ever get a hankering for cinnamon rolls but don't feel like scalding milk, kneading dough, waiting for the dough to rise, and doing all the other stuff involved in making the darn things? Why not hop on over to Cinnabon and just buy one, right? Well, not to worry. You can satisfy your craving without slaving over the stove or forking out your hard earned money. Remember Janni Totsch's Easy Roll Recipe ? You can make cinnamon rolls with it, too! 

Here's how to modify it for cinnamon rolls:

6½ to 7 cups flour (I use 6 cups of regular flour)

2½ cups hot tap water (run the tap until you see steam. That's when you know it's hot enough)

2 tablespoons quick rise yeast (or 2 packages)

⅓ cup sugar

2 teaspoons salt

1 cube (½ cup) butter or margarine

1 egg  

Filling for cinnamon rolls

melted butter, to taste

cinnamon sugar, to taste (or you can use brown sugar and then sprinkle cinnamon on top)

nuts (optional), to taste

butter cream or cream cheese frosting

Measure flour into a large bowl. Put remaining ingredients into a blender and mix well. Pour over flour and stir with a wooden spoon until all of the flour is mixed in. Cover with a wet towel (or a clean plastic bag that you can tie shut) and let rise for one hour. (Note: dough will be sticky. DO NOT ADD EXTRA FLOUR.)

Using cooking spray on your hands will keep the dough from sticking to you while you work with it in this next step. Split the dough into 3 parts. Roll each out on a sprayed/greased counter to about ¼ inch thick. You'll have a big rectangle. Next, slather melted/softened butter on the dough. Sprinkle sugar and cinnamon on top of that. If you like nuts, toss the nuts on top of everything. Roll the dough up into a fat log. With the seam side down, take a piece of fishing line (a new piece of course, and not one fished out of a tackle box!) and cut slices of the log to make rolls. A slick way to do this is to hold both sides of the fishing line, slip it underneath the log, then draw up the two sides and cross them over as if you were getting ready to tie a knot. Voila! You will have a slice of cinnamon roll. Alternately, you can use a knife, but the fishing line doesn't squash the dough like a knife will.

Place your rolls on a greased pan and let rise until double (about 15 minutes). I like to place mine close together so they rise high instead of wide. 

 

Bake at 375º on the middle rack for 15-20 minutes. When they're just slightly golden on top, pull those puppies out and turn them out on a cooling rack. When they're cool, frost them with copious amounts of butter cream icing. 

Here's a recipe for frosting. 

½ cup softened butter (more or less to taste)

3 cups or so of powdered sugar 

5-6 tablespoons milk or condensed milk

1 tsp of good quality vanilla

Whip with an electric mixer. Taste and add as you go along. If you want your frosting thicker, add more milk. If you can't taste enough vanilla, add a little more. If your frosting is too runny, add more sugar. If all you can taste is sugar, add more butter. Frosting is very forgiving. Unlike my cat.  

Bon Appétit!

Body Matters: Swimsuits of Satan

Why did these suits ever go out of style?

I admit it. I'm getting a middle aged body--which makes sense, considering I am pushing forty. The thing is, forty's pushing back.  Things are migrating south--and not just for the winter. This extra ring around my waist seems to be permanent and my rear continues to droop. I could come to terms with this if I never had to actually expose my body to the world. But now that we're approaching swimsuit season, me and Pushing Forty are no longer on speaking terms.

I have (somewhat) successfully ignored Pushing Forty until I realized that this year my bathing suit needed replacing. It's not only out of style, it is literally falling apart. Near the end of last summer I was playing ball in the swimming pool with my oldest when it became painfully clear that my suit was on its last leg. Let me just pause here for a moment to tell you how much I love this suit. It's a sensible thing bought from a sensible department store. It's light blue on top and dark blue on the bottom. Because of the tonality difference it makes the eye say, "Hey, where should I look, the top of the bottom?" and then the eye does this little dance up and down, never sticking with one spot, which is the effect I was going for. As I have nothing on top worth gawking at, I don't want anyone to notice the upper region of my body. And as for the dark blue bottom, blue is almost as good at slimming as black--and (here's the kicker)--it has attached shorts. Though it is admittedly tricky to get into the pool without the shorts ballooning, thus revealing the swimsuit bottoms underneath, it can be done by discreetly clutching the hem of the shorts to keep them down and jumping in cannonball style. Awkward pool entries aside, with attached shorts I don't ever have to shave in my Nether Regions. Nor do I have to worry about post-lunch tummy bulge. Everything is hidden. How many swimsuits can make that claim? 

But back to the ball game with my son. The ball whizzed through the air and I leaped to catch it. That's when I realized that the top of my suit had become so stretched out, it nearly fell off my shoulders. I grabbed my straps and hunkered down in the water to think things over. As I contemplated my options the suit filled with water and undulated about my torso like a pulsating jelly fish. Clearly, the suit was trying to tell me that it was too old and tired to continue. But I just couldn't let it go. That night I tried to resuscitate it by hauling out my sewing machine to sew shorter seams at the shoulders. It didn't look so great, but I figured it would do. It's not like I'm trying to get a date or anything, I told myself as the machine thrummed its way through the worn and faded fabric. I'm a mom for heaven's sake. I didn't think my husband would care much, either, given that swim suits can be quite expensive. But soon after, the whole family went swimming. Again I leaped for a ball. Again the suit slipped from my shoulders, nearly exposing my nakedness to the lifeguard watching from his tower in front of us. "You need a new suit," my husband called out. "That thing is falling apart." I knew he was right. But I couldn't help feeling slighted. All around us lounged mothers in stylish bikinis with flat stomachs and big bosoms, their sunglasses sleek and glamorous like limousines. And then there was me.  Until that moment I had not cared about the bathing beauties on the sidelines, comforting myself with the thought that I actually got IN the pool and played with my kids while most of the limousine ladies did not. Yet at that moment, instead of the Cool Mom in the Pool I felt like the old bag in the saggy suit. 

Now that the weather's getting warmer and my kids are talking about going swimming again, I figured it was time to start searching for a replacement for Old Blue. In an act of desperation, I bought a tankini with a little skirt on the bottom, assuming that it would cover my troubled parts. But it's just not the same. Sadly, I can't pull off the ballerina skirt look any better now than I could when I was an overweight thirteen year-old. In fact, I looked so similar to a woman in the first trimester of pregnancy I almost asked myself, "So, when are you due?"  Add to that that the tanky top is too short to cover the entirety of my girth and would probably slide up when I do cannonballs. And the skirt can hardly merit its name, given that it's the same size and width as my headband. You might be thinking, "Duh, get a bigger size." But that's not it. When I try it on for my husband, he tells me the new suit "looks fine." But what does he know? He gets to swim in a long pair of shorts with a comfy elastic waist. I, on the other hand, am supposed to prance around in (what really amounts to) my skivvies, baring my most embarrassing figure foibles to the world. What does my husband have to expose? Freckles on his back? That's why I'm freaking out here and he's not. What I'm looking for is body camouflage, which the new suit doesn't care about. With a heavy heart and belly, I take the suit off and put it back on its hanger shaped like a transparent woman's torso.   

The next morning I dig through the closet and find my saggy suit. "Maybe it's not as bad as I remember," I think as I pull it on. And it's not. The new seams at the shoulders look sturdy enough, although the black thread against the light blue wasn't such a great fashion choice. Plus, it looks like I started out with a zig zag stitch and switched to a straight stitch. That's definitely a faux pas. I lift and lower my arms, then air-swim for a few strokes. Just as I suspected. Chafing in the arm pits. I look at the tankini sitting in the corner, still attached to its plastic form with the Barbie boobs and flat abs. Turning sideways, I study myself. The padding in the built-in bra is concave in some spots, making me look like the victim of plastic surgery gone awry. (Is it possible that my stomach has been stealing mass from my chest?) But I have to admit that my old suit still does a great job of camouflaging the necessary things. I decide I can live with the chafing. And as for the concave chest, well, I can get used to that too. As long as Old Blue still has a pulse--and as far as I'm concerned it does--I can keep this thing alive for another summer. Besides, they say that if you wait long enough, everything comes back in style eventually. Hopefully, this applies to my bathing suit, too. So take that, Pushing Forty.   

Random Acts of Mother Mind

Happy Mother's Day to my beautiful mother. 

When I was a teenager, my mother took me and my sister out for burgers after she got home from work one day. Mom pulled up to the drive-thru to place her order on the intercom. Leaning out the window she said politely,"I'd like three Big Macs, please." The little speaker crackled, sounding distant and ancient, like we were calling Siberia instead of talking to a tiny box located five feet from the source of our conversation. "Excuse me?" the pubescent voice on the other end said through the static. 

    

"I'D LIKE THREE BIG MACS PLEASE," my mother shouted, leaning closer to the intercom. The car idled noisily, but we could still hear snickering from the speaker. 

   

"Um, this is Burger King," the kid said through his laughter. "We don't sell Big Macs. Did you mean Whoppers?" 

    

"Just give me three burgers," Mom told him, her voice heavy with fatigue. As she fumbled through her purse for her wallet, I slithered down in my seat trying to hide. It was another moment to add to my mental list of Things I Will Not Do When I Am a Mother. 

    

But the older I get, the more I find myself committing similar acts of what I like to call Mother Mind, those moments of forgetfulness usually caused by thinking of about three million things at once.

Take, for example, the time when I was convinced our relatively new microwave had somehow blown a fuse. Whenever I pushed the start button nothing happened. "Stupid machine," I muttered to myself. I pressed harder and harder until I heard my husband snickering like that teenager at Burger King. "It might work better if you close the door," he said. Sure enough, I had neglected that final step in the microwaving process. I slammed the door shut and smashed my finger against the start button as if squashing a bug. And lo, the microwave worked beautifully.

    

This brings to mind a story my friend told me about a similar experience involving a microwave. "I figured that I had been shopping too much when it happened," she told me on the phone. "It was Christmas time and I came home to microwave something to eat. Instead of entering the time to cook on the keypad I entered my PIN number." If I were a teenager this story would have made me groan in embarrassment for her. But as a harried mother, it sounded like a perfectly reasonable thing to do after a day of holiday shopping. It was one of many times when I said in all honesty, "That sounds like something I would do, too." You would have never heard me admit this when I was, say, fifteen, and cowering in the passenger seat of my mother's car as she committed various random acts of Mother Mind.

   

I could handle my own case of Mother Mind a little better if it didn't pop up in public so frequently. Take last week's mishap at the grocery store. I swiped my card through the mini computer at the counter, punched in a few numbers and did some other stuff, all the while trying to figure out where all of my kids had scampered off to and reviewing a long to-do list. When the cashier handed me my receipt, I asked, "Don't I don't have to sign for it?" 

She gave me what can only be described as a sympathetic look. "You already signed," she said, her head cocked to one side, her voice gentle like she was talking to a kindergartner on the first day of school. She tapped the mini-computer. "Remember? You signed right here?" 

"Oh my gosh, I'm turning into my mother," I said.  

  

As I walked to my car, I recalled trips to the grocery store with Mom years before. I remembered how she often paused after the checker told her the total. "How much did you say it was again?" Mom would ask, pen poised above the check, her eyes glazed over as if in a trance. I always wondered how she could have possibly forgotten a few numbers in the three seconds between hearing them and uncapping her pen. ( This was item number three on Things I Will Not Do When I Am a Mother.)  But now that I think of it, she did have a lot to keep track of. Like me, for instance. And quite often my sister, too. And for years before that, she had three other kids to count before she wrote the check and heaved the grocery cart to the car. Add to that a never-ending internal dialog that involved what needed to be done that day, who needed to be where, what to make for dinner, and how to make ends meet that seemed miles apart, and you can understand a little confusion at the check-out stand. 

But you know what? For all the silly things she's misplaced in her memory bank, my mother has managed to remember the most important things, like how to make her children feel loved. I think that's because Mom has always remembered who she is in the grand scheme of things. She is what *Emma Lou Thayne calls a "milk and honey mother," a mother "with a sense of self."  Just what is a "milk and honey mother"? Thayne writes, "Milk is food at the table, clothes for the back, shelter for sleep and growth, but honey is the marveling at spring, a bird, a snowflake, being ready to laugh as well as cry, being a respondent to the miracles of being alive." Looking back through my growing-up years, I see that my mother fits this description perfectly. She not only worked hard to provide us with the physical necessities, she labored to infuse our lives with a little sugar as well. When we lived in Colorado, she drove us to the mountains to watch the deer and see how the seasons changed the landscape. She spent countless hours at music and dance lessons, church programs and choir concerts. She was a room mother and a den mother. On our birthdays, she took us out to lunch and shopping--on a school day. Mom was always there to give us a hug and a treat when we came home from school. And she has always listened when we needed to talk. Or to cry. 

Even though we're all grown and most of us live far away, Mom still takes care of us. She continues to end every conversation with an authentic "I love you." She never forgets a birthday, spouses included. Plus, she sends hand-made cards to thirty-plus grandchildren on every major holiday, writes sweet notes of gratitude for almost everything, and calls frequently "just to see how things are going." And when she comes to visit, she always wants to go for walks in the mountains just to breathe the clean air and, if we're lucky, site a few deer, just like old times. For all the silly insignificant items she's misplaced in her memory bank, my mother has managed to remember the most important things: the people.

And so, as I embark on a house-wide search for my keys that have been missing since yesterday, I salute the Mother Mind, acknowledging from whom it came. I really do hope that I am becoming my mother, following the trail she established long ago. Even if I don't have any sense of direction and regularly commit Random Acts of Mother Mind, I hope that I will always travel as Mom did, with a bottle of milk to feed the body and and a jar of honey to sweeten the journey. 

*Quoted from All God's Critters Got a Place in the Choir by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich and Emma Lou Thayne. 

Engagement Session

High School Graduate

Ah, youth. Isn't this girl gorgeous? Don't you just love that beautiful hair and those amazing eyes? The future looks bright for this high school graduate. Good luck Megan!

A Beautiful Meal in a Box

My friend Corrine Miller is not only a generous and gorgeous woman, she's a talented chef. When asked to create a meal for 300 that could be packaged in a box, this is what she came up with. 

First, a yummy chicken salad wrap with lots of goodies inside, wrapped in unbleached parchment paper and tied with green raffia. 

The vegetables on the side were nestled inside a hand-made french fry box. 

For dessert, key lime pie bars with an edible flower on top, courtesy of Gail Madsen Clayton, master gardener extraordinaire. 

I told Corrine that had I been in charge, the meal would have been a disaster. I would have suggested Peanut Butter and Jelly, a sack of chips, an apple and a popsicle for dessert. I also would have just thrown everything in paper sacks. I guess there's a reason no one asks me to plan these things. But thank heaven for people like Corrine who know how to make things special.

If you want to make your own french fry boxes, here's a template:

Stop and Smell the Roses

One of the things I learned in photography was to see things in a new way--to notice the unnoticed. But seeing requires looking, which is something I don’t often take the time to do. I’m not alone in this, I don’t think. Yet there are people who make it a practice to look, to smell, and to enjoy.

Take a college friend of mine who worked with me in a nearly window-less office. One day she swept through the door ten minutes later than usual. “I stopped to smell the roses,” she gasped as she threw down her bags. The fluorescent light overhead cast a ghoulish tint on her pink cheeks. She had literally stopped to sniff the sweet fragrance of summer on her way to the dungeon, before she would spend four hours under the watchful, harsh light created by humans. I retreated to my small office, turned off the lights, then yanked the window blinds open. They screeched up the glass and hung at the top, squenched together like a smashed accordian. It was afternoon, and the sun was hidden behind our building. All that came through my window were the leftovers. Consequently, the room was dim, illuminated only by the sunlight reflected from the tall white library across from my office. But it was enough. I stared at my hands, my arms, my legs. The clear light wrapped around them, molding them. It produced deep shadows and highlights on my skin. I was three dimensional. I felt illuminated, luminous—alive. I bathed in the quiet natural light until my employer came in and carelessly flicked on the fluorescents again. “Why’s it so dark in here?” she asked. I could hardly tell her that I had been figuratively skinny dipping in the afternoon rays. I looked at my hand, two dimensional once again, like a cardboard cutout of a human. In the flat and lifeless light powered by wires and cords and switches I answered, “Just stopping to see.”

Slow Down, You Move Too Fast

“Be Good, take care of yourselves, and don’t leave the path.”

--Gandolf (from The Hobbit)

 

What is it with women? Why do we feel the need to do everything perfectly and all at once—to bite off more than we can chew, as the saying goes? I say “we” but might as well admit that it should be “I.” Unfortunately, I’m one of those people who figures that if ten crunches a day are supposed to flatten my stomach, then two hundred must be even better. (Not that I’ve every really tried this, or that ten crunches would actually flatten anything except for maybe my chest, or that I could find the motivation to do 200 pseudo sit-ups for more than a day.) When my kids were younger and I read about a plan to get them to help around the house, I went for it full throttle, designing complex chore charts that even I couldn’t understand but which I enforced like an old codger of a PE coach counting down the days to retirement. In a matter of weeks I reduced our house to a juvenile detention center rather than an oasis of love and learning. (Remember that movie Mommy Dearest? One of my biggest fears is that my kids will one day see that show and turn to me and say, “Gee, Mom, that lady reminds me of you.”) For a while I was into a program conceived by a woman who calls herself Flylady  to reduce my clutter and clean my home. She advised newbies to her program to take “baby steps,” meaning that we were to learn one new skill a week (or maybe it was a month).  But I was not into baby steps, having too many babies at the time causing their own kind of clutter. I wanted a leap frog program, kind of a big bang theory of house cleaning that would magically transform my house and me into model citizens. I scoffed at Flylady’s suggestion that merely making my bed and getting dressed—neither of which I was doing on a regular basis—would be enough to start. But I have to admit she was right. The moral of the story is (and always will be) if you bite off more than you can chew, you might just choke. And if there’s no one around who knows the Heimlich, it’s very hard to rescue yourself.

This is why, when I went to a church program last night about slowing down and taking care of ourselves, I not only listened, I took copious notes. Because summer’s coming, my brain has been hard at work making a list of goals to accomplish with all the free time we’ll have (which is just a lie my mind tells me every spring. You will have hours more in each day without school in the way, it says. But it never seems to work that way.) Yet, intuitively I know that if I don’t watch it, I’m going to end up flat on my bum, literally sick and tired. As of Monday, my summer goal list looked something like this: start teaching again, amp up my photography, post something brilliant on my blog every single day, run a half-marathon in the fall, refinish an old dresser that’s been sitting in the garage for years now, sell granola at the farmer’s market, learn how to cook, plant a flower garden, visit my family in California, read a book every week, play with my kids, teach my kids to cook, take the kids swimming every day, read scriptures every day as a family, read a book with my kids every week, run a summer reading program, write articles and take pictures, learn how to make French pastries, learn how to eat French pastries every day without looking like the Michelin Man or the Pillsbury Dough Boy, improve my ability lead music, paint the bathrooms and the laundry room, and learn how to not only play basketball but to like it too.  Mind you, this is just the short list. If you give me a minute, I’m sure there are about twenty more things I could add.  

So this wise woman by the name of Zella told us about how as a young mother she had tried to take care of everyone and everything except herself. Sleeping and eating well were last on her persnoal to-do list. Being productive and perfect were her focus. After years of this, she ended up sick, unable to do much of anything. “I was compelled to slow down,” as Zella put it. But in her stillness, she felt closer to God. She enjoyed her children more when she wasn’t constantly spinning in circles. “I had been so busy doing things for them, that I forgot to do things with them,” she said. This sounded familiar to me. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if instead of signing our kids up for little league sports with all their practices, games, and sports camps, we went to the park and played with them. They might not end up in the NBA, but chances are they might not end up in therapy telling their doctor all about my Mommy Dearest episodes either.

The point is, Zella discovered that “the quieter [she] became, the more [she] heard.” And what she heard was that she didn’t need to spin through her life like a tornado. There’s something to be said for taking it slow. For one thing, you develop sensitive ears that can detect a note of sadness in a child’s voice when you ask how school went and he answers only “Fine.” And you will find truth to a line in Jamie Lee Curtis’ book Is There Really a Human Race? : “There are beautiful things to see when you come in last.” Tornado living is like riding the TGV, the fastest train in Europe that zips you through the countryside so fast you hardly know you’ve been there. The TGV is all about the destination. But when you take the slow train, it’s about the journey as well. You can see and enjoy what you move through to get where you want to end up. Writing this makes me feel better about how slowly I have to run through the neighborhood nowadays. Though I’ll never be speedy, by keeping a snail’s pace I’ve seen things and heard things I might not otherwise. Just today I ran (or slogged, to be more accurate) past a house with dozens of blazing red tulips in the front yard. This is the same route I’ve run for the last five years. But this is the first time I’ve seen the tulips. Suddenly, my summer list looks a bit…unreasonable. Crazy, even. 

And so it goes with the process of living. Zella quoted The Hobbit when she said, “Be good, take care of yourselves, and don’t leave the path.” The path may be different for each of us. But the need to take Flylady baby steps applies to all. And of course, we should all listen to our mothers and remember our manners, or rather, what matters: Take small bites, chew, and swallow. Or at least learn the Heimlich.