In Gratitude

In 2005, as I waited in an airport two days before Christmas with thousands of other people, I pondered what it would feel like to not have to spend every major holiday stuck in an airport, a rental car, or a traffic jam somewhere on the Eastern seaboard.

I should have been more specific.

Holidays now don't mean airports, rental cars or I-95 traffic jams, but it seems we've traded those for long road trips, icy mountain passes and no sleep. We might be closer to relatives, but there is a whole lot of nothing - vast open wilderness - between us and them.

Last year, I issued a moratorium on road trips during the month of November. It worked so well, I did it again this year. This year, we decided to play grown-ups and host our own holiday - something we haven't done on any major scale since moving to the Frontier. It was all carefully planned ... and then, Mother Nature decided to make things interesting and brought in a winter storm that turned every road into a sheet of ice and, as a result, no Thanksgiving guests.

When I wished for no traveling during the holidays, I didn't really mean spending them alone. Again, I should have been more specific.

Stuck with a 15-pound turkey (courtesy of work - at least I didn't have to pay for it) and a fridge full of ingredients for a family-sized traditional dinner, I set out to craft side dish upon side dish for Himself, myself, and two little girls who chose today as a day to eat like birds. I will be eating reincarnations of Thanksgiving dinner for weeks - if I was really creative, and had room in my freezer, I could probably make it last until Christmas.

At some point in the morning, I realized I wasn't having any fun. Cooking a holiday dinner for 2.5 appetites isn't terribly exciting. I put the turkey in the oven, left roasting instructions for Himself (who ignored them, being a man), bundled up the girls and took them to the zoo.

It was my favorite part of the day, and it was then I realized: I am deeply grateful to not only have a child, but to have two of them. I watched as Woodstock, looking for all the world like a pink marshmallow with stick legs (thanks to a puffy coat and skinny leggings) pushed Pebbles (who looked like the kid on Christmas story - complete with arms out to her sides - bundled too much to put them at her sides - it was only 27 degrees after all) around the zoo in her stroller. No people + a cumbersome umbrella stroller over which one can barely see = very little risk of out-running Mom, and Woodstock relished her freedom. She chattered away at Pebbles - detailing every exhibit and opining about this or that. They giggled at the turkeys wandering around and Woodstock (ever one to make me want to be vegetarian for animal reasons and not just health reasons) asked if they were like the turkey roasting in the oven at home.

They giggled at a sleepy crocodile. They laughed at the echos in the giraffe enclosure - who knew that a big empty building full of nothing but giraffes and two little girls could provide such amazing acoustics? Pebbles squealed at the leopard and Woodstock excitedly told me that we were going to visit a rain forest (I will admit - the rain forest/reptile house was my favorite - as it is the warmest building at the zoo). I marveled at how - now that Woodstock is potty trained, Pebbles sleeps through the night and both feed themselves - my joy was doubled with two children without necessarily doubling the work.

Our noses red, our fingers frozen, we returned home to put the final touches on the meal and to give thanks. Woodstock gave thanks for animals and family and the funny looking food on her plate (when else do you serve soggy bread?). I gave thanks for a few hours that lifted my spirits and made me realize Thanksgiving can be a holiday even without a house stuffed full of people. Fresh air, sunshine (cold sunshine, but still - sunshine), good food, family and two beautiful little girls.

I'm thankful, once again, for the simple things. The ones that warm my heart the most.

Next year, the Thanksgiving travel moratorium may just have to be re-instated.

Side Note

Sushi aside, I've realized that Shrimp Paneer is quite possibly one of my favorite foods.

Simple, easy to make, full of vibrant, heated flavor ... the perfect comfort food for all the right reasons (unless you're my thighs).

It's 11 p.m., and I'm just now able to eat the dinner I made 5 hours ago.

And it is perfect. Nutty, aromatic basmati rice. Large gulf shrimp (from a crazy sale back when we were both employed), smooth, melty pieces of paneer bathed in a wonderfully creamy tomato base, a vibrant explosion of a number of spices. Mild enough to not interrupt the flavor, spicy enough to make your lips tingle for a moment after the last bite.

Never mind I'll have heartburn from the spices, the cheese and the tomatoes.

For five blissful minutes, all was right with the world.

Favorite Things

Strawberry Limeades from Sonic
Christmas morning
Christmas hymns (NOT the nerve-jangling "fa la la la la" stuff)
Snow days (days with snow that involve hot cocoa, reading, watching it snow from the inside, not having to drive and not having to work)
Trying new food
Road trips
Baby Girl's smiles
Bilbo Baggins' White Chocolate Raspberry Bread Pudding
New shoes
Buying new socks for Baby Girl (weird, I realize)
Back rubs
Board games
Early Saturday mornings when the weather is warm and no one else is awake
Good books
Sushi
Plays
Christmas lights
Homemade whole wheat bread
Looking at old photos
Posey Lake trips
Really good french fries with fry sauce
Hiking
New restaurants
Making new recipes
Getting e-mail (not the spam kind)
Visiting new places
Tomatoes straight of the vine, still warm from the sun
Flannel sheets
Visiting the parents
Snow cones
Getting magazines in the mail
Downtown DC
People watching
French Dip sandwiches from Kneaders

Favorite Restaurants

Himself and I were talking this weekend a lot about DC - as mentioned before, I was homesick, and he was suffering a myriad of emotions over who was and wasn't coming to the weekend's celebration.

Since my mind was on food all weekend - what to buy, what to fix and serve for Baby Girl's blessing luncheon, and since Heidi and Dave spent their anniversary in DC revisiting favorite restaurants (and texting me about it), I thought a lot about MY favorite restaurants in DC.

In no particular order:

Bilbo Baggins, Alexandria: I discovered this when training interns while I was working in Maryland. We were going to take them to Gatsby's Tavern (a fabulous place for a colonial lunch), as was tradition, but it was closed for a wake. The maitre d' suggested we walk down Queen Street to the bright yellow townhouse that was home to Bilbo Baggins. I immediately fell in love. Himself discovered it a year or so later. We both declared to each other, "There is this great restaurant ...!" and then burst out laughing when we realized we had suggested the same one.

Tachibana, McLean: I love sushi. Love it so much I could eat it every single day of the week and not tire of it. While flying one Christmas from the right coast to the left coast to visit Himself's family, we read a review about the restaurant in an in-flight magazine. I tore the article out (yes, I know, bad plane etiquette) and saved it. When we moved back to the DC area, we tried it out. If you discount the mismatched 1970s decor, the food is amazing. The sushi is spectacular - large, succulent pieces of fish over tangy rice. And nowhere else makes spicy scallop rolls quite like Tachibana. In fact, the last truly sushi meal I had there (a sushi meal without raw fish isn't sushi), was the day before I found out about Baby Girl's pending arrival.

Pho 2000, Herndon: Comfort food extraordinare. There are dozens of Vietnamese soup houses in the metro area, but having tried at least half dozen of them, Pho 2000 takes the cake (or soup). They have the richest broth, the best chicken and the best additional menu items (like spicy chicken with bamboo and coconut in a clay pot). Plus, Himself and I could eat there for $17 - including appetizer, tax and tip - a bargain in DC. And it was right down the street from our house.

Taste of Saigon, Tysons Corner/Rockville: Introduced to this restaurant during my first sojourn in DC, it remained one of my favorites. Black pepper chicken, in all it's caramely, peppery goodness, remains one of my all-time favorite foods. Owned and operated by a Vietnamese family who emigrated to the US during the fall of Saigon, every meal tastes homemade. It's a good thing that by the time my office moved to the building next door, I was only there for another week - otherwise my paychecks would have begun subsidizing all the black pepper and gyoza goodness that was Taste of Saigon.

Hee Been, Annandale: (See a theme? Asian food as a general cuisine is my favorite - it surpassed even Italian years ago). Recommended by Tom Sietsma, the restaurant critic for The Washington Post and a VP with whom I worked, Himself and I tried Hee Been for the first time about seven months before we moved. It quickly became a favorite - especially when we could take advantage of their much less expensive lunch offerings. Savory bulgogi and kalbi, spicy kimchi and the best Korean mashed potatoes in town. Mmmmm. It was worth the horrendous drive to get there.

There are more. DC was the birthplace of my love affair with all things food. There is Cafe Deluxe and its wonderful fire roasted tomato soup; Sweetwater Tavern and its great rootbeer, mashed potatoes, fried dough and house salad with goat cheese; Vidalia and its salmon croquettes; Jaleo and its cod fritters and paella; Taste of Saigon and its chile lime rockfish (served with the head - not for the squeamish) and dozens more.

All that thinking about food makes me hungry. I guess chocolate milk isn't enough to count as breakfast.

My Favorite Lady

You would think, knowing what I know about life and death and all that, that having someone die would be a momentary sadness, tempered by time and the comfort of knowing I belive in eternal families.

But I still miss my Grandmother. Every single day. And it's been just over three years.

Last night, in an attempt to have clothing on and still maintain some semblance of cool in the Hobbit Hole, where it was a raging 90+ degrees, I had on her old "summer robe" which I snagged when going through her effects after her funeral. I don't wear it very often, but I was desparate last night. I sat, sweating buckets, and all I could think of was how much I missed her.

My Grandmother was the best friend I've ever had - the woman who influenced me more than any other person outside my parents; the woman who was more like me than anyone else in my family; the woman who is responsible for many of the things I love in life. She wrote to me faithfully in her spidery handwriting, nearly weekly, when I moved away. Since she died, I've not received a single letter (cards excluded) from anyone. Every time I came home, I begged her to visit my parents, so I could see her. The last time I was home before she died (8 months), she had a commitment and couldn't come. It had been 10 months since I had seen her when she died suddenly of a massive internal infection. She had plans to go camping with us 6 weeks later, which made it even worse.

My Grandmother was raised dirt-poor on a ranch near the Arizona Strip. During the school year they lived "in town" - a small cowboy community (to which she and my grandfather relocated after retirement) in southern Utah. She was the oldest of 5 children and the strong-willed one who dreamt of something bigger than her childhood existence (just like me). She was tough, wore pants and chafed under the different rules set for boys and girls.

She couldn't afford college, though she longed to go, so she took a job with the railroad concessions and eventually met my grandfather, the son of a wealthy textile merchant from NYC. Their two worlds couldn't have been further apart, but they had the strongest marriage I've ever seen. In lieu of formal education beyond high school, my Grandmother was determined to learn all she could. She had a passion for fine art, good food, good books, poetry, writing, sewing, painting, drawing, throwing dinner parties, the Old West, crossword puzzles, travel, "going out into the hills," hiking and her grandchildren.

She taught me to paint and draw, instilled in me a love of poetry (especially Walt Whitman and Longfellow), taught me how to appreciate art of all types (and accompanied me to any art show within an hour's drive as a child), ignited my passion for food and cooking and dinner parties, taught me to quilt and passed on her obsession with crossword puzzles - specifically the New York Times puzzles.

She chided my East Coast all-black wardrobe, and encouraged me to be daring enough to try color in my clothing. She didn't believe in "frumpy" clothes, and dressed primarily in suits when going to church or a formal function. Since we were about the same size, I inherited some of her clothing when she died - and gained two beautiful suits (not in black) as a result. She was reserved in crowds, as I am, but had a great sense of humor and an even deeper sense of compassion. Until the very end - at 88 years old - she was still "visiting the old ladies," many of whom were decades her junior - she took them meals, read to them, did their hair and sat and talked.

When she was inside, she was every bit the lady - always wearing shoes, always proper, never used paper plates for a sit-down dinner. When she was "in the hills" she was every bit the child who had grown up on the dessert prairies - wearing men's jeans (they fit her long legs better) with a floppy hat and a walking stick, talking of adventures past and yet to come and longing to be "out" for as long as possible.

She believed in a woman's divine nature and their critical role in bearing and nurturing children, but she also believed in independence, in having an opinion and sharing it, in being equal in her role as wife. She could be stubborn, strong-willed and adamant, which made her all the more charming to me. She believed in wearing a hat when outside, investing in good toilet paper and shoes (though she always bought generic tissues for some reason), eating good food, letting the linens air out before making the bed and the importance of memorizing things to keep her mind healthy. She loved to play Yahtzee! and cards, write stories, poems and essays, go to the symphony and read to us when we were small. Best of all, she adored having her grandchildren come to visit, and always made it special.

It is no wonder that I too developed a love for fine art and music, a love for good food, dinner parties, crossword puzzles, reading, poetry, card games, learning, writing and being outdoors.

My greatest joy will be getting to see her again. My greatest sorrow is that Baby Girl will never grow up having the chance to know the woman who so strongly influenced her mother. I have a feeling I will miss her even more upon Baby Girl's arrival.

The Woodstock Factor

You would be surprised if I told you that I have a secret not-quite-obsession with Snoopy and Woodstock and virtually all things Peanuts. I don't go out and collect all things Peanuts-related, but I don't argue when presented with a gift of said items, especially if they are actually useful.

My car doesn't have a Peanuts sticker (stickers on cars are something I never understood - what happens when you go to sell it and the buyer doesn't have the same feelings toward your crusade that you do?). There is not a single visible Peanuts item in my bedroom, living room or kitchen. There are no Snoopies or Woodstocks at work.

I do, however, have the entire collection of Peanuts cartoons, the history of Charles Schulz and Peanuts, two Peanuts Puzzles, Peanuts checks, mints in the shape of Snoopy and Charlie Brown - some of them headless, a result of an angry spurt one day when I shut myself in my room and bit the heads off of every character-shaped food I could find. (Satsifying, yet far less permanent than biting any human heads), Snoopy shorts (no worries - they aren't worn in public, ever), all the Snoopy DVDs, even a Woodstock avatar on a site I frequently post on - and on and on.

Himself feeds this not-quite-obsession and gets all sorts of excited when he finds something that he knows I would like (the book with the cartoons was a particular piece of pride and joy for both of us). He has begun developing the assumption that Baby Girl will have the same not-quite-obsession that I have - Baby Girl is already the proud owner of two Snoopy outfits and a Peanuts pop-up book, both purchased by her father.

I was thinking about this as I was unpacking - wondering what other things about me people might be surprised about - weird quirks I have that I actually manage to keep under wraps for the most part. I don't seem the type that would have a not-quite-obsession with a cartoon dog (or maybe I do?) or his little Woodstock buddies, even if I do find great bits of wisdom in the silent communications between the canine and his birds (is that rationalization)?

I realized the following interesting tidbits:
-My favorite sitcom in the whole world, even more than Friends is The Cosby Show. I have watched every episode more than once, thanks to a bad bout of insomnia several years ago and their air time on Nick at Night as a 'classic.' I think it's because Dr. Huxtable, even though he's black and a doctor, reminds me in some way of my dad, who is definitely neither black nor a doctor.

-I own stuffed animals (dogs) that reside on my bed when it's made (right now they reside in a box marked "Stuffed critters and misc.", as I haven't actually unpacked the not-entirely-useful things yet). They are another thing fed by Himself over various Valentine's Days and birthdays. Somehow, early on, he found out I had a fondness for stuffed dogs and teddy bears. He's gleefully increased my stuffed critters ownership over the ensuing years and is again spreading it to Baby Girl, whose nursery theme is teddy bears.

-I don't like ice cream that has chocolate in it (usually) with three exceptions: Oreo cookies, chocolate chips or cookie dough. Even then, I'm relatively picky about the brands, etc. But the ice cream itself cannot be chocolate. I realized this is still true when trying out Ben & Jerry's "Half Baked" the other day. Entirely too much chocolate. Truth be told, I'm not a chocolate fan period, unless it involves chocolate covered raisins.

-I have a unicorn collection. Granted, I haven't added to it since I was about 12 or 13, but I never got rid of it. It's boxed up at The Parents' house. There are some beautiful figurines in the collection, including a hand-blown glass unicorn. I'm not sure how it started or why it stopped, only that at one point it was a fairly impressive collection.

-Himself and I own more board and card games than any other person I know, other than The Parents. Clearly, I know where my board game addiction came from, but Himself's is a puzzle, since no one in his family even owns games. At one point, we had so many free points at the local game store, we got $50 worth of games free. Twice.

As I continue to dig through boxes and sort things out, I'm sure there will be more surprising tidbits that reveal themselves. It's like an adventure in self-discovery, unpacking things that have been packed for three months. I'm learning more about myself every day. Scary.

In celebration of a crummy day

It didn't start out so bad, but for whatever reason, this particular Wednesday is definitely a day better left only as a postscript in the Book of Life. Countless small details rendered me frustrated, flustered and feeling drained. On top of that, today marks the occassion in which Sara's feet and lower legs are larger than they have ever been, due to mysteriously increased swelling.

In celebration of today's general crumminess, I wanted to make a list of the things I missed, but I'm trying to have a better attitude, so instead, I will muse on favorite things.

Sushi. You think I'm joking. Going to a favorite sushi restaurant with Himself can cure almost any bad day, and is guaranteed to make a good day spectacular - especially if we get to sit at the bar (and especially when I'm not pregnant, so I can eat spicy tuna rolls to my heart's content). I actually get to try the Japanese place near The Factory tomorrow with a vendor - I hope it's decent.

Bookstores. I could spend a good portion of my life in, and my life's savings on, a bookstore. There is something compelling (and slightly overwhelming) standing in a bookstore and realizing how smart you could be about everything if you read everying in sight. For some reason, being smart is appealing to me. Think of the brilliant conversations, the flood of knowledge, the sheer entertainment! Good fiction, non-fiction, coffee table books - I'm a fan of almost anything printed, bound and understood by someone with less than a Genius-level IQ.

Cooking. Well, cooking in a clean, well-stocked kitchen. Cooking for entertaining. Trying a new recipe, and having all day to do it. I love cooking on the weekends. I love the routine, the creation and when it turns out to be even better than you thought. I have not cooked a meal in 7 weeks. I used to love baking, when I was in college. Then I realized I didn't really like eating baked goods - I switched to appetizers and main dishes. I really could have just put "food" here, because I love food in general, but I love it more if it came from a just-discovered fantastic restaurant or a new recipe that I finally got the hang of.

Road Trips Road trips to places I've never been, especially. Seeing new sights, new people, trying new food. If I hadn't been 6 1/2 months pregnant, I wouldn't have even minded the cross-country moving road trip. My all-time favorite road trip was the 10-day road trip Himself and I took to New England for our honeymoon. New England still remains my favorite vacation spot.

Fall. Crisp air, scented lightly with woodsmoke, damp leaves and apples. Chilly evenings and days bathed in golden light. The brilliant landscape of scarlets, golds and vibrant oranges. The anticipation of the holiday season and all of its magic.

Sundays. The greatest invention ever is the Sabbath is a day of rest. I rarely actually nap (I don't like wasting my time napping, even when I need it), but I love to know that on this day, the world can rest outside my mind. I don't think of work. I don't think of how messy my house is. I don't think of what I need to do on Monday. I enjoy the day. I savor it, because it is the only day on which I can pretend that everything settles into a peacable hum, and all is right with the world.

I might just have to do the only thing on the list today that is possible - find a bookstore on my way home.

That might improve things. A little.