A new car game for the kids

This is Joumana. :-)

The last time the kids and I were in the car on our way to karate class I overheard the following conversation:


Red: JOUMANA!!!!  I found her.  I get a point!


Tom Thumb: I have ninety nine Joumanas.  I need one more and then I'll have one hundred Joumanas!


Joumana Kayrouz is a personal injury attorney who has billboards EVERYWHERE around our town.  If we take a 10 minute drive anywhere around where we live, we'll see at least one Joumana billboard---sometimes up to five during a single drive.  Last week we took a road trip to a town an hour and a half away and she had a billboard there too. 


Do you have an attorney who advertises themselves to death in your hometown?  Perhaps your kids can play their own version of Find Joumana.  I guess if the kids ever need a personal injury lawyer, they'll know who to call. ;-)

Book Review: The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb and a Hunger Games update

I'm on a bit of a circus binge lately.  My friend Sock Monkey Mommy read The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb and recommended it so I decided to take the plunge.  And oh...I really liked it.  First of all, the cover art is just amazing, right?  It is just so evocative of the novel.  The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb is historical fiction that is a memoir from the perspective of Mercy Lavinia Warren Bump Stratton.  She and her husband General Tom Thumb, both little people, were a headlining act for P.T. Barnum for many years.  Although there has been some non-fiction in the past written about them and Mrs. Stratton herself wrote a short autobiography (which has been described more as a travelogue) late in her life, author Melanie Benjamin takes her story in a new direction by filling in all the blanks in their story in the voice of Lavinia.


For me, it was a fascinating read.  I really didn't know much about how circuses operated in the late 1800s, and Benjamin's well researched descriptions were quite eye opening.  I also enjoyed how Benjamin told Lavinia's story with empathy and compassion.  She made special mention of the struggles she endured from being different and how she coped with them.  
The author also portrayed Mr. Barnum as a very kind and sympathetic yet driven person.  I'm interested as to whether or not that was how he was perceived in real life, and has definitely inspired me to read more about P.T. Barnum down the road.  One thing that was repetitive in the book and became a bit grating was how Lavinia clearly viewed herself as better and more clever than most people, specifically her husband.  I liked her less and less as I read the book; however, that didn't make her story any less compelling.  

I also took in the second installment in the Hunger Games trilogy---Catching Fire.  I'm really digging these books!  I have a little place of love in my heart for dystopian fiction so they've been right up my alley.  I'm on my library's hold list to get the last one, Mockingjay, and I'm really looking forward to it.  I'm planning on dragging (well, maybe not dragging since he read both the books too) the Cobbler to the theater in a couple of weeks when the first movie opens.  I can't wait to see how the casting works out.  I was kind of shocked when I heard they had cast Woody Harrelson as Haymitch.  

He looks NOTHING like I envisioned the character (I was thinking more paunchy and bearded...kind of like a smaller Hagrid from Harry Potter) so I'm curious to see his portrayal.  I'm also looking forward to seeing Lenny Kravitz as Cinna and Elizabeth Banks as Effie.  Any other Hunger Games junkies out there?  Who would you have cast as Haymitch?


My blogging has slowed way down as I'm attempting to get things back to routine at our house.  After vacation and house guests and a period of winter blues, I'm ready to get things shaped up around here.  Hope your week is off to a great start!

It's Paczki Day!

In our family, Mardi Gras means paczki!  If you don't know what it is, paczki is a Polish donut that is traditionally eaten the day before Lent begins (A.K.A. Fat Tuesday).  No, we're not Polish, but when I was growing up our next door neighbors were.  Mrs. Guzik taught my mom how to make pierogi (stuffed Polish dumplings), but my mom got her paczki recipe from an article in the Detroit News printed in 1985.  
Here's what happened with our paczki today---


At 7:15 this morning, I rolled my bum out of bed, went down to the kitchen and scalded myself some milk.  Then, I had to wait and wait and wait for it to cool down to room temperature.  I even tossed the whole pan in the fridge at one point.  Finally, I got the dough going and got it to do its first rise in the oven.  Here's my dough rising secret --- turn on the oven at 350 for 2-3 minutes, shut the oven off and throw the covered dough in.  It's warm enough to get the yeast rising but cool enough to not cook it.   Then, I made my little balls and put them in the oven for rise #2.  Here they are just waiting to become yummy paczki!

My mom showed up just in time with her deep fryer and pastry bag with the attachment to fill the paczki.  She was in charge of the frying...

...and I was in charge of the filling.  There are no photos of that because it was such a MESS!  The metal attachment used to put the filling in the paczki wanted to keep going inside the pastry bag!  I had strawberry jam all over my hands and thus my sweatshirt (I accidentally wiped my hands on it) when all was said and done.  

We quickly whipped up some glaze and the kids did the glazing for us.  I have no idea whose hand that is in the first picture.  Grandma trying to steal a paczki before they're glazed?

The Cobbler showed up just in time to take a photo of all of the paczki makers and eat a warm one.  Yum!  We finally finished up around noon.

There's still time!  You can make some paczki today!  Here's my mom's recipe:



Homemade Paczki
3 c. milk
2 sticks (1/2 lb.) butter, softened
1 t. salt
3/4 c. sugar
12 egg yolks
1/2 jigger rum (or 2 t. vanilla or rum flavoring)
1 t. grated lemon rind
2 packages (or 5 t.) rapid rise yeast
1 t. sugar
1/4 c. warm water
12 c. all purpose flour (approximate)
shortening or canola oil for deep frying
fruit butter or preserves for filling


Glaze
1 lb. powdered sugar
1/2 c. orange juice
rum


Scald milk then cool to room temperature.  Add butter, salt, and sugar and mix well.  Add yolks, rum, and lemon rind.  Dissolve yeast and 1 t. sugar in 1/4 c. warm water.  Add to mixture.


Begin adding flour one cup at a time, stirring until mixture is too thick to effectively stir with a utensil.  At that point, work mixture with your hands.  When dough comes away from the bowl, stop adding flour and knead briefly.  


Place dough in a large greased bowl and cover.  Put in a warm place and allow dough to double in volume.  You can punch down and do a second rising at this point to make more airy paczki, but it's not necessary to make a good end product.  Spread work area with waxed paper and lightly oil surface or spray with cooking spray.  Also, grease your hands for the following procedure.


Form dough into balls about twice the size of a walnut and place a few inches apart on greased wax paper.  Cover and allow balls to rise until light and puffy.


Heat oil in deep fryer to 350-360 degrees.  This takes some practice.  If the oil is too hot, the paczki will brown too fast on the outside and the inside will remain raw.  Drop balls into oil and allow to fry until lightly browned on all sides.  Turn with tongs.  Gently remove paczki with a slotted spoon to drain on paper towels. When cooled, inject each paczki with about 3 T. of filling of your choice.  Makes between 2-3 dozen depending on size of dough balls.


Glaze: Combine a 1/2 c. orange juice, 1 T. rum, and 1 1b. confectioners sugar.  Mix together until smooth.
Drizzle glaze on top of paczki or dip each paczki in glaze.  


Alternate Glaze: Add 1 T. milk and 1 t. vanilla extract to 1 lb. confectioners sugar.  Continue adding milk until mixture is smooth.


Happy Paczki Day!

So I'll just say it...

My husband's father died this week after we got home from our vacation.  Most people immediately look horrified and then say "I'm sorry" when they hear the news.  Unfortunately, we have a strange case here --- we're not really all that sorry.  His father and mother divorced around the time my husband was 12.  His father didn't attend his or his sister's high school graduations and didn't contribute to their college educations.  When we got engaged, I asked the Cobbler if he wanted to tell his father.  He begrudgingly made a phone call that lasted about 2 minutes.  We had about a five year period from around when we got married 12 years ago until Red was born during which his father behaved in a semi-normal fashion.  He attended our wedding, there were holiday phone calls, he visited a few times and we visited him, and he attended Red's baptism.  Then, despite being around 70 at the time, he experienced some sort of late life crisis where he realized he was getting old and didn't really want to be a grandfather. He never even met Tom Thumb who is now 4 1/2.  We figured out the other night that the last time we saw him was the summer of 2006.  Our last contact with him was a phone call last Thanksgiving.


I have felt bad for the Cobbler all week.  He is a very kind and compassionate person.  When I asked him how he was doing, he said, "I feel bad that I don't feel bad."  A pile of sympathy cards arrived today.  He opened them, read them, and threw them in the recycling bin.  One thing the Cobbler said to me was "When I get home at the end of the day and I'm tired from working and I want to just lay down on the couch and be by myself, I don't.  I choose to play with the kids because one of the only things I remember from my childhood of my father is him lying on the couch ignoring me."


Some good has come from this.  The Cobbler's sister and our nephew flew in after handling the cremation arrangements.  The kids hadn't been together since last summer and they have really enjoyed their time together.  There are Legos and crayons EVERYWHERE!  Not to mention, according to my nephew, I make the best grilled cheese ever and should open my own grilled cheese store! 

If I could talk to my father in law now I'd say you have two successful children and three amazingly funny and clever grandchildren.  Too bad you chose not to know them.  You missed out man.  You really missed out.

Back from Florida and lots of reading!

We're back from a week in Florida at Grandma's house!  We had all kinds of plans to see all sorts of things, but really we just went swimming...

...and read lots of books.

There was some beach in there too.

The Cobbler and I decided to just let the kids run the show and swimming and going to the beach was all they wanted to do.  But isn't that what vacation is all about anyway?

I did a lot of sitting in the sun with a book in hand and ended up with two hits and one rotten tomato.   First, I read Never Let Me Go which was my book club's pick for February's meeting.

The book, set in the 1990s,  is about three friends who grow up living at a boarding school in England.  You meet the narrator, Kathy, at the beginning of the book and she introduces herself as someone who has the occupation of a "carer."  She then reminisces about her school days with her two friends Tommy and Ruth---the twists and turns in their relationships and where that has led the three of them to today.  I don't want to say too much about the plot because it will give away the element of surprise if you choose to read it.  Don't you dare go near an Amazon review or a movie website (it was made into a movie starring Keira Knightley and Carey Mulligan in 2010) if you don't want it spoiled!  What I will say is that the book was paced great, the plot was teased out in a compelling way, and it has a medical ethics question that's left hanging at the end of the book.  I found the author's style to be refreshing because he doesn't spoon feed the reader.  For example, Kathy's narrative assumes that you already know what "a carer" is and other plot points are revealed in the same way---the characters assume that you, as the reader, already know what they're talking about.  You have to discover the truth for yourself.  In the end, this was not a vacation read.  I was left thinking about a lot of ethical questions which would have been great if I wasn't sunning myself and trying to have a good time.  Overall, it's a good read that I can recommend.

I wish I could burn the second book I read.  I gave my grandmother two books as her birthday gift --- The Three Weissmanns of Westport and I Still Dream About You.  What I knew about them was the first was supposed to be a modern take on Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility and the second came highly recommended by some of the folks in the 52 books in 52 weeks group.  My grandma's a fast reader and read The Three Weissmanns of Westport first.  She dubbed it "different," which in grandma language means it sucked.  My grandma tends to be a little...ahem...conservative about other races, religions, and sexual preferences.  She kept saying how the family was Jewish so I thought maybe that was her issue.  I decided to try reading it anyway.  It started out okay.  Instead of the Mr. Dashwood character dying, he left the mom for another woman from his office and then files for divorce.  The mother and the two daughters go down to a cousin's house on the coast in Connecticut to live while the divorce plays out.  The plot was initially quite a bit like Sense and Sensibility.  Instead of the death, you get a divorce.  Instead of an ankle sprain, you have a kayaking accident that the Marianne character needs saving from.  But then the author took it a little too far.  Let's put it this way --- Marianne doesn't get with Colonel Brandon.  Marianne, who was completely heterosexual up to this point, ends up with Willoughby's ex-wife.  It was completely out of left field, and I'm surprised my grandma wasn't ranting about the lesbians instead of the Jews.  Maybe she is getting more liberal in her old age?  This book could have been good, but in the end it doesn't even remotely come close to holding a candle to the original.

I gave the Cobbler The Hunger Games for his birthday again on the recommendation of the some of the folks in the 52 in 52 group.  He read it while we in Florida, and I started reading it on the way back on the plane.  I could not put it down!  This book is set in Panem, a country in the former United States, at some point in the near future.  In the beginning, Katniss Everdeen and her sister Prim are preparing for the annual reaping.  The reaping is a lottery in which one boy and one girl from each of the 12 districts of Panem are selected to take part in the Hunger Games--- an event when they are placed in an arena for a fight to the death with only one winner.  When Prim is selected as the female participant from District 12, Katniss offers herself up as her replacement.  This book moves at a break neck speed from start to finish.  There is violence, there are some yucky wound descriptions, there is the requisite love triangle, and there are some wild action sequences that I didn't anticipate.  Both the Cobbler and I enjoyed it.  There was one scene that we both found a bit far fetched, but it is set in the future so I suppose who knows what could happen!  I can't wait to see the movie (it comes out next month!) and read the other two books in the trilogy.

Much more has happened since we returned home, but that will have to wait for another day.

Happy reading!

Book Review: The Underside of Joy

This one was a tearjerker!  I picked up The Underside of Joy from the new books section of my library.  It just came out last month so it really is new!  I looked at the flap quickly and deduced it involved some sort of custody battle, threw it in my tote bag, and checked it out.  Little did I know what I was in for...


The Underside of Joy opens on Joe and Ella.  Joe is a photographer and runs his family's mom and pop grocery store.  Ella has is pursuing a career as a wildlife guide.  They have two children from Joe's previous marriage.  Three years earlier, Joe's ex-wife Paige abandoned him and the children shortly after their son's birth.  Four months later, Joe met Ella.  Within the first 20 pages, Joe is killed in a tragic accident.  Paige shows up unexpectedly at Joe's funeral.  What does she want?  Why is she back?  Will she try to take the children?

This book was absolutely heart wrenching and felt very real.  I spent a lot of pages tearing up, and the foreshadowing was brutal.  You just knew things were sure to get worse before they got better.  The author of this debut novel, Sere Prince Halverson, does a great job with character development.  You can tell that she spent a lot of time figuring out who these people were before she laid down their lives on paper.  There is a sub plot involving Joe's family regarding Italian-Americans being sent to work camps like the Japanese during World War II.  It was something I had never heard of before, and it definitely added to the story.  One thing that I thought the book could have done without was the epilogue.  The author seemed to feel obligated to tie the whole story up with a bow on top and I felt it wasn't at all necessary.  You can drop the epilogue when it comes out in paperback...really you can.


Can I recommend this book?  Absolutely, but be sure to sit with a tissue box.  You'll need it.

Packing for zombies...

All I can say is thank goodness and oh crap that our vacation is starting tomorrow!  The sky is grey, the grass is a weird green brown color, and I've packed absolutely nothing.  I just want to crawl back into bed and wake up to the sound of the sprinklers in my grandma's back yard.  Don't you just wish that you could skip all the bag packing, line standing, plane flying, and kid whining and just get to the good stuff?  Speaking of the good stuff, the Cobbler has been on the rampage planning what he wants to do while we're visiting Grandma in Florida.  First is a trip up to Fort Myers to the Edison & Ford Winter Estates.   

The Cobbler has been dying for the kids to be old enough to be tolerant of looking at Ford memorabilia for a few hours.  They might just survive.  We visited there on our honeymoon in 2000 and I remember it being pretty interesting.  The other site he wants to check out is the Koreshan State Historic Site.  When he told me about it he said, "We should go to that place.  You know---the one that was once owned by the cult."  I had no idea what he was talking about, but then he finally admitted that he really wanted to go there because they have a machine shop somewhere on the property.  I knew there had to be an ulterior motive!  We also will have to hit the Naples Train Depot again.  The kids adore the model train exhibit and the small scale train that you can ride around the property.  Here we are at the train depot last year:

But really what I'm looking forward to most is making up some tasty bad for you food for the Super Bowl and smelling some of that salt at the beach.  I'm ready to get sandy!  Here's some photos from years past:

2006

 2006

 2007

 2007

 2008

2009

Tom Thumb with his Patriots balloon in 2008.

So are the Patriots going to win this time around or what?

Ammonium hydroxide---perhaps the most disgusting thing I've seen in a long time!

Can you believe McDonald's was actually treating their meat with this as to make inedible meat edible again?!?!  OY!  Here's a link to the blog post on the topic.

It's okay to be afraid. It's okay to fail.

Something I've struggled with for most of my life is fear of failure.  By the time I got into high school, I never wanted to try anything I thought I wouldn't be a star at.  I liked playing basketball in middle school.  But when high school rolled around, I joined the cross country team.  I knew I could earn a varsity letter as a freshman running, but I would only be on junior varsity in basketball.  So I ran mile after mile for two years until a knee injury benched me.  I auditioned for the school plays and got the role of the lead's confidante, but never went after the big role because I didn't want to face someone else beating me.  When I got to college, I never even auditioned for a role (even though I secretly wanted to) because I knew I could rule the roost in the costume department.  And in true form, I got the paid position of the costume shop supervisor as a junior.  As the years passed, I would try new things but only things that couldn't reject me---quilting, stained glass, skydiving.  I could die skydiving, but the ground sure as hell couldn't tell me I wasn't good enough if I hit it. 


In my childhood drawings, I was always a doctor or an artist.  300 level biology lab showed me the exit door from the pre-med program and just plain old fear of rejection prevented me from ever considering my creative pursuits could be on the same caliber with anyone else.  After abandoning biology/pre-med and theater as majors, I settled on marketing.  Marketing suited me.  It was creative and I could excel among my classmates.  I knew I could find a well paying job.  After college, I went to work for the sales division of an automotive company.  
Even though the social aspect of a sales job had suited my extrovert personality well, the high anxiety associated with meeting monthly sales objectives and the fierce competition that took place in the office took a toll on me.  After describing the work environment to a friend once, she exclaimed, "Holy cow!  You work in the Boiler Room.  Just like the movie!"  I left that job when I had Red.  I have zero regrets about leaving that job...except maybe those times when I have lunch with an old co-worker, they tell me about their latest promotion, and I think "That could have been me!"


The Cobbler and I had a discussion last night about our aspirations and where we want to see ourselves in 10 years.  It was the first serious conversation about life goals (aside from money and retirement) we've had in a long time.  All of this was triggered around the promotion of one of his co-workers.  It isn't that he thought his co-worker was undeserving of the new job, but he was upset he wasn't considered for it.  His first thought was what's the matter with me?  


But did he want that job? For a lot of years, the answer has been no.  He told me he didn't want the extra pressure and responsibility of a management position.  The extra hours that her perceived he'd have to work were unappealing at best.  I think he's starting to realize that he's grown, he's capable, he can do it, he's ready for it, but like me he's been afraid.


I want to have a pursuit other than being a stay at home parent, but I want to be available to my husband and my children.  I want to be there to pick my kids up from school, make dinner for them, and drive them to dance and karate.  Tom Thumb will enter kindergarten in the fall.  What do I want to do with my life next?  Well, I won't be strong arming any old men in suits into buying more pick up trucks.  That's for sure.


So after the Cobbler and I decided that we'd save for a trip to Hawaii that we'll take somewhere between 2015 and 2017, we held each other hands, we looked into each others' eyes, and said, "I'm not going to be afraid anymore."  I feel ready.  It's about time.