Cheryl Katz

I’m working on writing an essay that is an important part of something I want to do. I sent my 972nd draft to my husband to proof, and he had some specific practical notes but his overarching criticism was along these lines:

You write about boring stuff on your blog all the time, and yet all of it is more readable than this. (He actually thinks my blog is pretty fantastic, even at times when I think it’s meh.)

And I’d be upset, but the truth is that he’s right. Turn the pressure on, and suddenly fascinating material becomes about as clear as a fourth-grader’s How I Spent My Summer essay.

I’m also a little stressed because I don’t yet have another important element of the Thing On Which I’m Working, which I don’t particularly want to specify here for mostly superstitious reasons.

Sigh. It’s like ten thousand spoons when all I need is a knife! (No, really it’s more like “Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink.”) Can I please draw on a little of my own skill and sparkle, right now when it would serve a specific purpose?

It wasn’t a hundred bazillion degrees in my house today, so I also cooked a pretty awesome dinner.  I made a pan-fried salmon with chard and onions and seared polenta cake, all topped with an orange-mustard sauce.  I’m pretty modest about my cooking, but I sort of blew myself away on this one.

Most amazingly, it didn’t take all that long to make.  My one cheat was that I started with pre-cooked store bought polenta in a roll.  I spied it while I was at the market picking up fish, and since I hadn’t actually thought out my meal plan, it struck me as a simple element to finish up the salmon and chard.  Oh, but this was one of my favorite cooking experiments of late, and I was probably only actively cooking for about half an hour, plus a separate 15 minutes to decide on what to put in, and then to make, the sauce.  It wasn’t a Julia Child recipe, in that I didn’t use a recipe at all, but I’m pretty sure I did her proud.

The best thing was being able to use butter, since I was cooking fish.  I can’t use butter with meat and still be kosher.

Like I said, it was a thoroughly reasonable temperature outside today.  In fact, it was so downright comfortable that if the weather holds, I may go for a lengthy run tomorrow morning.

I am technically training for the Las Vegas Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon on December 6th, but I have some challenges.  I’m a few weeks behind where I should be in training owing to 1) having taken the month of August almost completely off and 2) trying to avoid running when it is too hot and sunny out.  Now that the temperature is taking a nose dive, I may be able to get somewhat vaguely reasonably on track.  If I get up to a 19-mile training run at least 2 weeks before the marathon, I will consider myself prepared to run it.  I’ll be able to finish, even if I don’t finish fast.  If I don’t get to 19 miles, I will scale back to the half marathon, which I already know I’d be ready for.

Until recently, I had a never-say-die attitude about this marathon, but the cloud of potential injury is hanging over my head, so I am somewhat forced to accept reality.  I’m sticking to a reasonable training program and also getting all my practical responsibilities covered, and so what will be, will be in this case.

In other miraculous news, Sami napped yesterday.  Not for super long, maybe 45 minutes, but the new leaf in this story is that I told her:  you don’t have to sleep, but you do have to rest quietly.  Every time I come in here and you are not trying to rest, I am taking a toy away.

Toy #1 she thought was a joke.  Toy #2 she stood at her door crying, “My toys… my toys!” for about 15 minutes.  Toy #3, she threw a raging tantrum, and Toy #4 resulted in actual attempts at resting quietly.  I didn’t hold my breath, but when I checked on her about 20 minutes later, she was out cold.

Huzzah!  I found my method!  I know it worked because Mel, who watched her while Ben and I went to Yom Kippur concluding services last night, told me the following story.  She asked Sami to start picking up toys from her bed and the floor to put them away.  Sami flung toys one by one onto the floor, adding dramatically, “It doesn’t matter.  I’m bad, so mommy’s going to take them away anyway.”

I was guilt-ridden for about 30 seconds before I realized… that meant it worked.

Who says an old mom can’t learn a new trick or two?

I have a lot to post about from this weekend – but what’s on my mind right now is that one of my best friends lost her father yesterday due to complications following an invasive surgery.  I can’t begin to comprehend her loss, and I want to help her but I don’t know what is “the right thing” to do.

So right now, while I obviously have my own responsibilities to tend to, many of my thoughts and a lot of my energy are with her.

I am at a complete loss for how to help her.  She is with her family in LA right now, several hours away, so for now I’ve been available to talk whenever she’s needed, and I’ve helped with looking after her pets, apartment and car.  I’m going to do whatever she needs while she is away, and take care of her however she needs me to when she gets back.

I’m trying not to focus on my complete lack of experience in this area or the ways in which I am completely inadequate to the task of helping my friend, and instead focusing on the concrete ways in which I can literally help my friend.

In her autobiography, My Life in France, Julia Child wrote that she told herself early on to always serve every dish she prepared with pride, even when it turned out completely off plan.  To always do her best and never to apologize.

Everything I can do, I will do with love and without apology for the places I think I fail.  I’m beginning to realize that death is enormous – there’s no one way to handle it, except one baby step at a time, over and over, by many people together.

This is where the rubber meets the road and actions speak louder than words.

For my friend’s father, alav ha-shalom.  May peace be with him; he fought his body and time for many years.  May peace also be with his family and children, including my friend.

My house is a brick oven. (I know, why don’t I make more pizza?!) It’s 90 in here right now, and today isn’t as hot as it’s been lately.

Yesterday I finally caved and bought window conditioners for our bedroom and Sami’s room. I’m trying not to abuse it, but then also I don’t want to spend my days holed up in my bedroom, so I’m sweating it out in the daytime.

The nights are much, much better sleeping in a room set to 80F, however. Once I get used to the noise of the window unit, I’ll be sleeping much better.

This week has been largely inconvenient, though I hate to complain about it because at least I’ve been able to manage all the minor inconveniences without a child in tow. (And she’s tucked away safe as houses in her air conditioned school.)

I defeated three ant insurrections, a moth… experience wherein Ben’s bar mitzvah napkins finally met their match, my date with Bob, and of course trips to Costco, Lowe’s, various errands run, personally installing the A/Cs, and the list goes on.

I went to Disneyland on Wednesday, what I thought was a much needed vacation day. I had a good time, but came back possibly more exhausted than I was before we left, and we didn’t stay as long as we’d intended. It was super quiet, though, and Laura and I got on all the rides we wanted to see with virtually no wait time. We got stuck in Haunted Mansion which was totally fine, because it was air conditioned.

My prognosis for the weekend is that we will hole up in one of the air conditioned rooms and entertain ourselves somehow. A long nap sounds just about right to me. And avoiding sunshine and heat are just the thing.

No love for summer from the Katz household.

It bothers me that Lactaid is only available in bulk wrapped in foil-lined paper. Costco sells them in tear-off packets that come in boxes of a few hundred.

It irritates me because before they came in paper tabs, they came in big bottles, four or five hundred to a bottle, and they’d always come with a little reusable plastic Tic-Tac like box to carry them around conveniently with. I continue to buy them, because at least I still do get several hundred per cardboard box, so that goes a long way toward assuaging my ill ease.

That way the bottle was recyclable, the tablets were consumed, and the carrying case could be reused for any number of things.

I’ve made the same complaint about markets where produce and other items come wrapped in plastic where other shops might sell them loose. I avoid situations where I have to buy something on a styrofoam tray, wrapped in plastic, because of the extraneous use of plastic and non-recyclable materials.

I frequently hear from people that “the trays at [store x] are recyclable” and that simply isn’t an adequate response. Recycling is no replacement for simply not using up the resources that go into the creation of, and in fact make up, plastics and styrofoam.

It’s worthwhile to me to take on a little extra effort by bringing my own bags, shopping at eco-mindful markets (especially if they’re on my daily path!) and being aware of what packages are made of, to reduce the quantity of raw materials consumed to get a product from the earth to my plate.

Ways to do this:
-Buy products in the largest sizes available (the 6-lb mozzarella loaf uses less plastic per ounce than the same quantity in 1-lb blocks or, obviously, string cheese.)
-Buy produce and meat at markets that don’t pre-wrap and don’t use styrofoam. A good meat shop, and many supermarket meat counters, will often wrap its wares in paper, and I prefer this.
-Bring your own bags – even those ubiquitous plastic supermarket bags add up and take their toll.

I will now step off my soapbox and return to my previously scheduled relaxing after a calm day of marketing, running errands, and doing generally otherwise boring adult things BY MYSELF!

It was a nice day and all, with the preschool orientation, totally being in love with Sami’s 3-year-old class teacher, and an afternoon revolving around the kiddy pool and the quest for air conditioning.

So now that I’ve appreciated the positive aspects, let me tell you about the two minutes that have besmirched the reputation of today entirely.

Sami whimpered a little, so I peeked in on her, turned on her bedroom fan, and ducked into my bathroom, which is next door to her room.

Something fluttered from the counter, out the door and onto the wall in the hallway.  I viewed it in profile (sorry, no pictures.  Oh wait, no, not sorry) and it looked like a big beetle.  I presumed this because of the presumed fluttering/flying.

I didn’t want to cross its path, so I stood in my bathroom doorway staring at it while it waved its smarmy tentacles at me.  As soon as I caught my breath, I got Ben to come and take a look at this “disturbing creature,” I think that’s what I called it…. he got a dustbin and some flat thing to trap it with, and took it outside.

I kind of don’t ever want to go in my bathroom again.

By the way, he was a roach as big as half my hand and his name is Bob.  He was big enough to earn a name from Ben.  And he’s probably writing a bad review of us on Yelp right now, hopefully telling his buddies that the sweet summer bathroom he found has shit for hospitality, and they could do much better.  Well, that is the best I feel I can hope for at the moment.  And he’s the first and only bug of his kind I’ve ever seen in my house, so I am assuming this is happening because of the heat.  And don’t, please, don’t crack my delusion because I want to sleep tonight.

PS I’m assured by my friend Mel that this giant bug isn’t the same kind of dirty roach that indicates squalor.  This kind really just are looking for a place to get out of the beastly heat for a while, and that’s why they usually hang out in bathrooms.  I’m comforting myself with this even while I may not go back in there tonight, and may think about not going in there tomorrow.

Containing a capital letter or two | dooce®.

I am not a regular Dooce reader, but I think that this story about customer service, the power of the consumer and the internet, the serious situation that is sleep deprivation in new mothers, and channeling these forces for the good of humanity; needs to be read, and widely.

Hold the sunshine, please!  It’s 900 thousand degrees outside, so the outdoor activity segment of our day has been suspended.

But nonetheless, a good day.  I realize that from reading my blog one might think that I hate being a mom and that every day is thoroughly excruciating.  That isn’t really true, though I’m more likely to blog about the frustrations than I am to write about the normal moments.

Today we made whole-wheat orange muffins (recipe courtesy of the Tassajara Bread Book, thanks for the rec, Jess!)  I fill the measuring cups, Sami adds the ingredients to the bowl.  There’s always a little tension when it comes to the eggs, because of the way Sami likes to stick her fingers unpredictably in her mouth, having them covered in raw egg makes me nervous.  Ditto for licking the spoon after the wet ingredients are mixed.

But we get by, and total cliché though this may be, it seems like the more fun we have in the baking, the better the muffins taste.  These ones turned out really well, especially considering that they’re made with 100% whole wheat flour.  Usually it doesn’t rise very well, but these are moist and fluffy the way you’d want from a muffin.  Orange juice seems like a decent replacement for milk, and meant that I could dramatically reduce the amount of added sugar.

Sami was practically chewing the paper liner, she liked them so much.

This is the moment I’ve been waiting for, all my localicious life.

Despite the anomaly that occurred this past weekend, I don’t get to Hillcrest on Sunday mornings very often, even though Hillcrest is widely thought to be the best farmers’ market in San Diego, and at such a convenient time.  It’s always crowded, and parking is an issue unless we get our butts in gear (haha) and haul out the bikes, which is completely temperature- and weather-dependent.

So you can imagine how stoked I am to learn that Adams Avenue Market will be opening on Wednesday, September 9 to bring locally grown produce and foodstuffs to the park right on the corner of Adams and the 15!  (This link is the best review I could find on the new market so far.)

It’ll be every Wednesday from 3-7 PM.  How will I love it?  Let me count the ways!

It’s easy walking distance – so easy, I’ll probably walk it together with Sami, sans-stroller, and happily carry back the spoils of a good marketing trip.

It’s got a playground – an asset of inestimable value, considering the blatant lack of children’s entertainment at Hillcrest.  Yes, yes; the children can watch the band – but my three year old tires of that pretty quickly, heartily disapproves of set breaks, and also doesn’t come home from a half hour of erratic dancing as tired as she comes home from the same time spent on a play structure.  Adams Avenue for the win!

It’s on Wednesday night!  (This one is totally personal.)  That’s my down night.  What better way to tire my kid out than to pick her up from an exhausting day of play at school, to march her right up the street for a grubby farmers’ market street food dinner, let her lug around a few onions, and march her right back home?  Bedtime made WAY easier.

My only quandary now is rethinking our CSA membership.  I’m pretty sure I’ll leave things as they are, though, since I get all the veggies I need every week in a small box, including most of the staples. I still need to get things like onions and extra fruit to supplement what we receive.  Basically, our CSA leaves us just enough wiggle room to have fun at a farmers’ market without needing to spend a whole lot more than we already do.  Now I can do it at our own market instead of having to go to the supermarket every now and then.  (Another win for the Wednesday 3-7 time slot – it’s at a time when I’m already out of bed and can, in fact, be bothered to drag myself over there.)

I am eagerly awaiting the grand opening – and Sami is, too, but she just doesn’t know it yet.

The real, honest, relevant truth about me and motherhood is that I need to be alone.

I’m exhausted. Numbers are transposing on my computer screen before my eyes. I’m saving documents and then losing the latest copies and sending people incomplete files. Less empirically, I feel like tangible knowledge is leaking out the back of my head as it melts in the heat from my overworking brain.

Someone once told me that introversion and extroversion have nothing to do with the social situations you enjoy and everything to do with the type of environment that allows you to recharge your batteries.

My batteries are nearly empty from three weeks spent more or less with at least one other person at all times.  And the one person I have been spending most of my time with is a little tempest of unpredictable irrationality who has taken up kicking me for sport.

Thank heavens school starts back up next week.  I think I’m going to spend the weekdays sleeping.