Nursing Buddha

Well despite my protestation that cable is the devil and would do nothing but suck me into its empty, vapid wasteland, turns out it’s actually quite stimulating and educational. For instance, this week on Daisy of Love, Riki Rachtman taught me the word “resolvement”. Turns out resolution is dead. It’s all about resolvement. Thank god his career didn’t end with Headbanger’s Ball.

On the babyfront, I did baby laundry for the first time. Having a coming home outfit is a big production for some folks, but I just picked an assortment of tiny items from the deeply impressive stockpile my mom’s created and washed them to have them ready. So yeah, the stockpile…I’ve purchased one dress, and two White Sox onesies and a Jim Thome t-shirt for the baby. She has a wardrobe for most of the first three years of her life. Now everyone glance over knowingly at my mom and then quickly look away before she catches you.

Back to the homecoming get-up…everything is cute when it’s wee. How can there be a wrong choice when you’re talking about pj’s that have maryjane footies or a tshirt and skirt combo where the skirt fits my ankle. So I made a few selections and set to washing. Sadly, during my first attempt at laundering miniature clothes, I lost an incredibly miniature sock. The first of many I’m sure. I also struggled with folding the bitty clothes. What exactly do you fold over what when you’re dealing with such limited terrain?

The Man made this pasta dish, with tomatoes and basil from our garden. I could’ve eaten three or four pounds of it. Oh shrimp pasta concoction, I miss you in my belly.

More of our tomatoes and basil. The grape and cherry tomatoes have the perfect pitch of sweetness and acidity. Excellent snacking completely unadorned.

This is a little dish I like to call adult babyfood. We always have some combination of veggies, protein and brown rice leftovers in the freezer, I just always figure hey if I’m cooking, it should pull double or triple duty after the meal is consumed. I’ve also started cooking extra  sweet potatoes when I have one, which goes into the freezer stash. Rainy day lunch is combining and heating all of this together into a flavorful if unattractive mush. I lack the words to really convey its deliciousness. Trust me.

I upgraded Wordpress and broke the hell out of my theme. Rather than take the time to actually figure out what is not compatible, I just reverted to the world’s most generic theme possible. If the baby is born before I find the time to fix the old theme, be prepared to be looking at this mess for a long, long, long time.

Our tomatoes and basil have come in full force. The Man is more than a little obsessed with caprese salad. As I can only benefit from this obsession, I am doing nothing to discourage it.

My own obsession lately has been broccoli apple slaw. Lots of apple cider vinegar and raw sugar. I could eat this every day all summer.

The two plates above are from For the Benefit of Statts, an event we attended because it’s a good cause and because it was a rare Friday night when The Man’s impossible swing schedule actually worked out to allow a weekend date. The event was amazing, with a great turn-out, excellent food & music, and one of the very best collections of items for auction I’ve ever seen assembled. We didn’t win any of the pieces we bid on, the consolation being that folks able to commit bigger dollars did win. The Statts family are wildly deserving of this support and I am so impressed with their inner circle and the community at-large for providing it. Hopefully it is a trend that can continue, since their challenges will be ongoing. Anyone interested in the backstory or how to contribute can go here: www.stattswilliams.com.

The Man and I took an all too brief trip down to St. Augustine, a miniature babymoon. Which obviously required road snacks. How fantastic is that table above?

Gator bites, because who can resist.

BBQ’ed shrimp, crab-stuffed shrimp and fried shrimp.

The Man had deviled crab, scallops and shrimp. I might’ve sort of insisted he also get fries so they could be on the table but innocently not on my actual plate. The other delight of visiting this restaurant, my belly was too big for the booth they first sat us in. We had to move to a table with chairs. Thankfully my hormones were magically aligned to find this funny instead of deeply disturbing. So what I am preggo and ginormous, bring me my shrimp.

The Man ordered a gorgeous and perfect blackened fish wrap and I had a fantastic chicken salad BLT wrap at our Gypsy Cab Company lunch, where we accidentally ran into my sister-in-law and nephew. Surprise we are in your town secretly! It’s a small world, people, a small world intent on busting you every chance it gets.

I fell in love with Rita’s blend of Italian ice and frozen custard. I begged Rita to come home with us. Or at least build some kind of Italian ice and frozen custard pipeline between their joint and our house. No news yet on how this might be progressing.

Conch fritters.

Possibly my favorite meal, second to Rita’s which I’ve decided to count as a meal. Black beans, sweet potato fries, and a jerked chicken/cheese/avocado concoction. Mango Mango’s on A1A, sooooo deeelicious.

On our way back home, we stopped at Whole Foods in Jacksonville. I’ve got a box of cold salads, a box of tofu five ways, a box of spicy Indian, and a box of dessert there. It’s just as well Whole Foods is not in my town and probably never will be. I like having money in my bank account.

Splitting all my waking hours between floating in the water (weightlessness is a pregnancy miracle) and eating delicious food caused me to cry like a baby when the trip came to a close and we were back on the highway heading toward home.

Back to regular life, with sensible apples and even more sensible to-do lists. And of course having the delightful but still goose-bump raising realization that this little trip was our last before becoming someone’s mom and dad. Even when we go somewhere just the two of us in the future, there will be a third waiting for us at home.

…

Wow.

This week it became June. We will have a baby next month. I’ll give you a moment to really soak that in.

This delicious plate was consumed in honor of a friend’s recent graduation from our local fancy-pants arts school. She earned her masters degree and was rewarded with a house full of loved ones and huge platters of pulled pork and cupcakes. Briefly I pondered returning to school so I could also get vats of icing and pork into my home.

Over-abundance of cukes + apple cider vinegar + sugar = love.

Peanut butter + granola + honey + plain homemade yogurt = also love.

These poor cornish game hens. The Man did all the cooking for this meal, and did it superbly, but it was my idea to prop these guys up on empty miniature V-8 cans, like beer can chicken on a tiny scale. Even with the smaller can, it was something of a violation. They both stayed in this exact position so we ate them upright, positioned a little like bald, headless teddy bears. But really delicious bald, headless teddy bears.

I don’t care what anyone says, the best ribs in town can be found at Randy’s on Wheaton. Go there now. There’s no mac ‘n cheese or red rice sides. There’s yellow bread and meat. There’s no place to sit, they only serve at lunch and the line is always long. Wait in line, take your giant box of ribs, head in any direction and you’re almost guaranteed to hit a City park with a couple benches. Seriously, quit wasting your time with wait staff and air conditioning and a selection of beverages and dessert. Concentrate on what matters. Go to Randy’s.

This disturbing headline in the local paper led to some very anxious conversation in our household. The Man and I came to the realization that when the Baby Revolution comes, and each baby chooses their adult personal servant…you know because they’re still babies even when they take over the world, so they need someone to drive them around and make them food and stuff…anyway when each baby gets their choice of adult, and the rest of us are shuttled off to work in the mines, odds are our daughter will be choosing my mother over us. Just based on the fact that my mom has already compiled a three year wardrobe for her and stands ready to provide for any possible need and calls it all “having fun”. All we have to offer is some cute prints from Etsy which took me three months to frame (still not hung on walls) and an unassembled co-sleeper attachment for the bed and our versions of fun remain entirely self-serving, not child-oriented, and heavily slanted toward naps and inside jokes. In short, we are screwed when the hammer of Baby Revolution falls.

I already started mowing this lunch down before remembering to photograph it, so here you have the last bite I’m positioning for my craw. But check the pregnancy nails. I feel like Barbra Streisand. Except I can’t sing and gay men would never dress up like me.

I could only eat half of this cake, I mean waffle. I find myself wistfully thinking of that other half. Like, why did I let it get away? When will I ever see it again? *sniff*

I think we can officially christen this the Sandwich Pregnancy. I’ve had more subs, wraps, bagels and homemade sammies in the last few months than I did in approximatey the five years prior.

Today’s cliffhanger: I bought something shiny and blue this week and I need to get a picture of it and do a grand reveal. It’s deeply exciting, I promise. To me at least.

Oh, the pure magic of sweet cornbread and butter blended with a spiced pear puree. This was one of those meals where you kind of have to let go of what you know to be the right kinds of food and just embrace the delicious and fried. I had crab cakes, fried zucchini and the world’s most perfect cole slaw with bits of broccoli and sweet apple. The Man went for seafood fried three ways, slaw and mac ‘n cheese. We both rolled out happy and a little shiny. This was Geneva Geneva’s on Bee Road if you’re local.

I call this one “Gas Station Breakfast–The Man With Birds”. This is what happens when you leave home without breakfast and you are preggo. You look for the highest protein/lowest sugar combo at the gas station and then later you wish you had two. That’s The Man there in the distance feeding the birds stale bread.  When we got there it was super low tide. You can see the shallows that form half-way up the beach just on the other side of The Man. When the tide comes in, the sand between the shallows and the ocean is covered in fast-moving, cold water. Everything that spent its morning cut-off happily returns to the big blue. Lather, rinse, repeat later when the tide runs out again.

Our first warm weather trip to the beach this year couldn’t have been more perfect. The water is still too cold for me, but the breeze and the sun and the sand are therapeutic all on their own. And how the loveliness is amplified the first few hours we’re there, when the people are spread far apart and all you hear are waves and wind. By the time the sun is high and hot in the sky, the families carting their hand-pulled U-Haul of beach gear have taken over. There is shrieking and scolding and crying. We fold our towels and retreat. I see a few families that seem like the sort we would like to be. The ones not feeding the toddlers pepsi and potato chips. The ones who don’t communicate by screaming. I hold out this hope for us and Baby Girl, that as a unit we can remain reasonable people.

This blue crab met The Man in the shallows of low tide. The strawberry jam on his head is blood from the bite he inflicted on The Man’s index finger. Well-deserved as the blue crab had no intention of leaving the shallows for a game of show and tell. After his brief photoshoot, The Man returned him with his strawberry jam head to the shallows. He retreated into the water and pouted for hours. The crab, not The Man.

The last time we went to the flea market, the young lady at the fried Twinkie stand absolutely devastated my husband by informing him that at 9 a.m. the fry oil hadn’t yet come to temperature and she couldn’t serve him. I took it as divine intervention, but the lure of the fried Twinkie remained embedded til this weekend, when we returned to the flea market and The Man’s dream of experiencing diabetes on a stick came true. I took a very small bite and when I’m able to say something is too sweet, that means it’s not fit for consumption. Sugar from the sack is not too sweet for me. But this, this unholy abomination…too sweet.

After the flea market came strawberry u-pick. The Man mostly picked while I waddled the aisles and experimented with squatting and compensating for an usual center of gravity, only to end up light-headed as I cut off the blood flow back to my heart and brain by daring to bend my knees. And here’s the funny thing– pregnancy, even a normal and healthy one like mine, is crazy with physical side-effects that can be uncomfortable or awkward or weird…but it’s still fantastic. Even though my wedding ring won’t fit and I can’t find a single comfortable position to sleep in, it feels good to be pregnant. And the good feeling comes not just from knowing this is the process of how we come to meet our daughter, but also just the process itself, of how a body can adapt and morph to build our daughter, feels good. It doesn’t follow an easy line of logic but I’m seriously not kidding when I say I love being pregnant. Mother Nature, that tricky bee, has totally worked her mojo on me.

Maybe the best part of the flea market was actually down the street and completely unrelated. This mammoth falafel and feta stuffed pita disappeared quickly into my belly where it went to work as the main sponsor of Sunday’s luxurious afternoon nap.

My boss went on holiday overseas last week and today he brought the office back bizarro chocolates and Mentos with foreign language labels. I accused him of shopping for us at the airport and he refused to confirm or deny. I’m not complaining. This guy above provided breakfast candy and a new plastic thingie for my desk.

We rented Benjamin Button. It has zero in common with the short story it’s based on. I am not even sure what the film-makers meant by “based on”. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote the hyper short story. Fitzgerald didn’t go in for schmaltzy stuff. The movie version is schmaltzy to the extreme. This all makes sense when someone tells you Button’s screenwriter also brought you Forrest Gump.

Still I cried all over myself and my unconscious husband at the end. Watching a movie in bed when The Man is on day-shift and has to be up at 5 a.m. doesn’t always mix. He awoke suddenly, asking “what happened in the last 80 seconds, that’s all I’ve missed”. This is good to know, if I ever need to precisely time something, I can just set-up a sleeping The Man as a timer. Shake him awake and he’ll say, “that was four minutes and 22 seconds”. As for the crying over a long and pretty terrible movie, I’ll say it again in case you’ve missed it in the past: hormones are powerful, powerful chemicals.

I was watching the Barefoot Contessa, and she was making lemon butter fish. I have a rule about cooking shows. They have to be hosted by someone who looks like they eat. Otherwise, how can I trust them? Gianna De Laurentiis, I’m looking at you. Anyhoo, I was sort of napping during this episode, but I decided when I woke up I should follow her recipe with the grouper I had in the fridge. And by “follow”, I mean replicate what I remembered from being half-asleep. You know, not actually looking up the recipe or anything. The Man is a sport. He ate all of his Lemon Bomb. I ate a couple pieces then started to die from acidosis and gave up. He kept saying, “you know this is really how I like fish cooked…just with, uh, a little less lemon..but I like this!”. Awww, nice man.

Our garden is looking fierce. The number of tomato blossoms scares me a little. Maybe this is the year I learn to make salsa.

We give this cat drugs to encourage her to  destroy her own furniture, instead of our furniture. It only works if we keep a constant coating of catnip on her couch. But when it works, it really, really works.

I’ve given her a new nickname. Land Manatee. We adopted it really quickly and have taken to asking each other where the Land Manatee is and if the Land Manatee was already fed.

Despite what television tells you, a magical green bag cannot reverse geotropism. It was worth a try, and I have to say because I have questionable taste to begin with, I think the crazy bags and confused plants make for an awesome porch display. We won’t be up for any Better Homes and Gardens awards anytime soon, but there is value in coming home and laughing before you even get inside.