bright spots

1.  sitting next to taylor j. in church today--suddenly realizing we were both shaking with semi-repressed & nearly uncontrollable laughter during the last verse of the last hymn--something about "reproving our every ill desire."

2. receiving my first valentine from moses--this bright yellow heart.

3.  sister tamara.  her stories.  her rocks.  her.

4.  mushroom crepes made by lula and anna.

5.  this bulgari snake watch.  thinking about liz taylor's jewelry. i know it's wrong, but i love rubies a lot.

a few sparkling points

this year's tree.

it's so dark!

so dark so early.

it's a little hard to keep the spirits up when it feels like bedtime at 5 p.m., no?  but we do what we can.

some things that shone in this dark day were these items:

1) my house is (temporarily, i'm sure) clean and decked out with decorations made and put up by my kids (plus d.j. and anna!)

the snowflakes.

2)  reading time with moses. phrases like "the greek war host", "the black ships", "single combat", and so on.  i'm becoming a nerdy little boy.

christmas list 2012.  a girl after my own heart.

3) cecily's christmas list with annotations and marginalia.  i love this gal's thinking.  she's such a good little writer and i really enjoy reading her creations every day.

this is the annotation to "totoro"

4) lula's salad:  kale, spinach, toasted pine nuts, oranges (supremed, like i taught her), fennel leaf, and meyer lemon garnish and vinaigrette. i added some cucumber and avocado because i needed to use them up before they started to turn.

in regards to line items "d.s." and "webkinz"

5) dessert made by the jasplund's.  holy, holy.  it was one of the best things i've ever eaten:  a spicy, dark gingerbread cake topped with a beautiful burgundy pear poached in unsweetened cranberry juice and spices, a dollop of whipped cream.

the annotations to "crutches"

legwear:  black leggings

looking forward to:  tomorrow's guest blog by one of my all-time sheroes

inspiration:  handmade holiday decorations, poached pears

thursday: a list

i wore these tights for good luck on election day.   it worked!

1. arose at 5.30 a.m., which feels incredibly easy what with daylight savings and all.  selected orange skinny jeans to wear.  regretted that decision all day long.

2. taught students about stasis, definitional & resemblance arguments, ethical/evaluation arguments, proposal arguments, & causal arguments.  obviously we had a rockin' good time.

3.  read byron's don juan, canto II.  discussed why byron disliked the lake poets (too obscure and blah, blah, blah-ish, too sure that the lack of book sales during their lifetimes was an indication of genius and future place in the great cannon.)

4. got a good response on my letitia landon paper.  super relieved about that.

5.  picked up car from the mechanics.  again.

6. ate fajitas at beto's with christian.  sat for a half-hour and did nothing.  finished reading manuscripts for writer's group.

7.  attended my writer's group.  they seemed to like my poem about 7-11, slurpees, hot dogs, and curbside philosophers.

8.  picked up groceries at day's market on the way home. lula requested that i buy pesto for her to eat with the homemade bread she was making while i was at writing group.  i bought it for her, because i love that girl so much i'll do pretty much anything for her.

9. came home to the smell of baking bread.  put away the groceries.  ate a slice of lula's homemade bread with butter and honey.  she had used half almond flour in the bread and it really worked.  she's culinarily gifted.

10.  tucked the kids into bed.  about to sink into my own bed and watch elementary, the new sherlock holmes, starring aidan quinn as holmes and lucy liu as watson.

legwear:  cropped orange skinny jeans

inspiration: writing something new for next month's writer's group

looking forward to: thursday night t.v.  on dvr.  isn't that pathetic?

grazi

thanks for:

dinner al fresco.  lula knows how to make things more fun and more beautiful.

1. lula, who volunteered to make dinner tonight and served it to us on the patio in a cooling breeze. she cooked, set the table, and started the dinner conversation.

lula's goat cheese, avocado, and black bean tacos.

2. my neighborhood, as safe as mayberry circa 1950. the city of provo, also as wholesome as mayberry.  when i told the kids' summer camp director thank you for making it so fun, he responded, "it's my goal to give the kids the best summer of their lives."  my kids have had great, affordable, enriching summer programs run by the city of provo.  i can't stop raving about the city of provo's parks and recreation department.

neighbor boy's a gourmet ice-cream maker.

3. this mountain.

when i'm sad, i look up.

4. myrtle's willow tree.  i love the beautiful white trunk.

my rad 92 year-old neighbor's willow tree.

5. the apricots our neighbors always share with us, and the whole neighborhood.

i can't wait until these are ripe.

6. dinner conversation with moses, "if i were making dinner for cecily, i would make her a big piece of meat since she loves all meat except for rotting flesh."

blackberries ripening.

i look forward each day to ingrid's sartorial concoctions & thrift store finds.

7. ingrid's outfits and hairstyles. cecily's smile.

i adore this girl.  the end.

8. christian's willingness to help me feel better when i freak out (like taking the kids to d.i. to buy "back up bathing suits" so i can stop dramatically losing my shiz when i can't find their suits). & my kids, who know to just laugh at me when i freak like that. & how to make me laugh at myself through my tears.

this kid is quite the entrepeneur. & his dad's a famous chocolatier.

9. my neighbor boy's homemade ice cream stand.  tonight's flavor: malted milk.  past favorite flavors:  fresh mint, sour cream strawberry, cinnamon.

lula's very resourceful & started an herb garden in a cardboard box.

10. lula's suggestions for making life more beautiful: this kitchen door herb  garden in a cardboard box, tonight's after dinner luxury stroll, her adorable home made peanut butter cups, ripening blackberries.

laid flat by sunday dinner

lula's 14th b-day cake: chocolate with ganache, strawberries, whipped cream, & strawberry coulis

 i have a love/hate relationship with sunday dinner.  i love having a whole day to cook grand dishes, i love being with the whole family, plus extensions and friends, i love the opportunity to try new recipes, techniques, and ingredients & to make the table extra pretty.  i hate the stress, the two days of shopping and prep, & how exhausted i am by the end.  i also hate how, every freakin' time, i plan to make it more simple and less stressful and yet i always end up doing the opposite.

oh yeah, and how crabby i get.

so i vow i'm gonna stop,  but then i do it again, or my kids ask me if we can have people over and get all sad when it's just us and we're just having grilled cheese or something.

& i give in & give up.

once again.

hoping that, in the end, it's a worthy endeavor to go all crazy for our sabbath dinner. (cause that's probably what i'm gonna do anyway.)

the menu, on the fridge.  note the backwards "z" on zucchini

rose petals for lula

grilled artichokes with aioli

date night, shokunin, practicing

highline breakfast date in nyc

never complain about your work, jiro, the greatest shokunin in the world, says at the beginning of jiro dreams of sushi, the film i've been dying to see, that we finally caught tonight at the broadway for date night.

it was a great film, and like all good documentaries, had a sub-text that transcended the subject of the film.  it was not really about sushi, but rather about devotion and fatherhood.



i wish i'd understood so long ago what joy devotion to work, whatever it is, can bring.  of course, i've never had to do the horrid work, or forced work, that many oppressed in the world have done/are doing, so i can't speak to that, but even in the days of low-level restaurant work, working as a housekeeper, nanny, temp worker, receptionist, etc., there were moments of joy in doing something well.

i could have had more of them if i'd been present with the work.  it took me a long time to learn how to be present with all of my work, and i'm still practicing it. 

how liberating it is! 

to take the focus off of outcomes and external rewards and learn to be so happy with simply doing the task at hand.

in the season of advice to new graduates, tonight i realized that would be mine, echoing jiro:  never complain about your work.

i include a picture of lula below with the breakfast she made and set for us on the patio:  blue corn pancakes with homemade buttermilk syrup, yogurt/berry parfaits, hazelnut milk, and a little dish of jacques torres chocolates we brought back from nyc.

i've bragged about her cooking before, but it really is true. she has a palate and the obsessive attention to detail of a great chef.

saturday brunch on beautiful late spring morning, prepared by my own little budding shokunin

also, these issa haiku, translated by robert haas, little perfect gems, reminded me of jiro's beautiful sushi gems:  discrete, perfect, simple, and pure.

Selected Haiku by Issa

translated by Robert Haas

    Don’t worry, spiders,

I keep house

    casually.

    New Year’s Day—

everything is in blossom!

    I feel about average.

    The snow is melting

and the village is flooded

    with children.

    Goes out,   

comes back—

    the love life of a cat.

    Mosquito at my ear—

does he think   

    I’m deaf?   

    Under the evening moon

the snail

    is stripped to the waist.

    Even with insects—

some can sing,

   some can’t.   

    All the time I pray to Buddha

I keep on

   killing mosquitoes.

    Napped half the day;

no one   

    punished me!