emlocke

Category: La Familia

  • Giving Thanks

    At Thanksgiving, I remember one year in high school, eating cold creamed onions in my grandmother’s dark kitchen, sitting awake late into the night in front of AOL with my cousin Marie.

    This year, the day began with three inches of snow and ended with berry crumble from my grandmother*. In the middle, I ate Thanksgiving dinner in jeans that I haven’t been able to wear since the summer after I graduated high school.

    After I had folded white paper napkins neatly and lay them out on the table, my mom insisted on taking them back and sent me for the nice cloth napkins. The dark green did not go with the blue placemats I’d set out earlier, but I was not going to ask questions when the woman was brandishing the carving knife. When we sat down to dinner, my mom somehow managed to say grace even as she bit back fits of giggles at the motley table I’d set. My grandmother just kept saying, “This is the new style, nothing is supposed to match.” The dog stared at the leftover turkey without blinking for four whole minutes.

    * Not to be confused with this Applejack Cobbler recipe for a Thanksgiving themed cocktail, featured today in the NYT.

    November 23, 2005
    Adapted from the Pegu Club

    1 cup sugar
    12 ounces cranberries, washed and picked over
    1 orange slice 1¼-inch thick, cut in half
    2 ounces applejack
    1/2 ounce sweet vermouth
    1/2 ounce apple schnapps
    2 dashes of Angostura bitters
    1 teaspoon pomegranate molasses.

    1. For the cranberries: add sugar to 1 cup water in heavy-duty pot and simmer over low heat until sugar dissolves. Add cranberries, and stir frequently until berries are soft, about 10 minutes. Cool before making cocktails, which require about two tablespoons per drink. (The rest can be used as sauce or refrigerated for several weeks.)

    2. To make one cocktail, put two tablespoons of softened cranberries (about an ounce) and orange slices in a cocktail shaker and muddle together. Add ice, then remaining ingredients. Shake vigorously and pour into a cocktail glass.

    3. Garnish with something decorative, like an edible flower, an orange twist or a gooseberry with skin peeled back.

    Yield: One drink.

    Multiply recipe as needed for family events.

  • Secret Society of Rainy Saturday Afternoon Movies

    The original, archetypal, 1961, Hayley Mills version of The Parent Trap was on the Hallmark Channel this afternoon. My favorite part is at the end when Mitch decides to get seriously “washed up” and turns on the hi-fi and manages to charm knots into Maggie’s apron so she is forced to ask for help undoing it.

    My mom showed me this movie when I was a kid, about 13, the twins’ age in the movie. I felt like she was letting me in on a secret society of really, really good movies to watch on rainy Saturday afternoons.

  • Going to Class – or – Not Skipping

    In her senior yearbook, my mom is represented by a one-liner quote: “Wanna skip?” I wish I had known that when I got caught skipping class in high school. I hid out in the library when I just couldn’t stand the thought of sitting through another double lab. The library. I cut class in the library.

  • I Bring It Upon Myself

    I think I’m doing myself a favor by keeping some favorite websites on the down low. The last thing I need are parents who are not only super-fluent (superfluously so) in every one of the many grammatical, pronunciation and stylistic quirks in the English language, but can also communicate their ways through its substratosphere of pop culture references and lingo. It is for my own sanity that I keep Urban Dictionary my own little vocabulary secret.

    Then the New York Times blows my cover. Tom Cruise jives on Oprah’s couch, inspiring a new way to say “lost your mind,” “took some crazy pills,” or “gone off the deep end” and my dad reads about it. He also learns about “jump the shark” and he and my mom practice using their new hip phrases by referencing every favorite TV show I’ve ever had; Felicity, Gilmore Girls, even Dr. Quinn. They can name the precise moment when each one jumped the shark, usually when the inevitable couple-to-be gets together and the whole series has lost the plot.

    Go ahead, parents, use “lost the plot” in a sentence!

  • Revenge Could Never Be As Sweet As My Dog

    To Maggie,

    At the very end of our walks, I am usually far more forgiving about your incessant need to stop and individually sniff every blade of grass that may have been tread upon by another canine because I know you’re getting in ‘last sniffs’ before we get home. But yesterday, when you paused at the corner, I yanked your leash. Even as I did it I felt terrible because as we were strolling along, I had let myself ruminate on a person who has betrayed me and that yank was exerted with the force of my wishful retaliation. If I had punctuated that sudden jerk of your leash with a word, it would have been this person’s name and it would have sounded like I was growling it while punching this person in the stomach.

    But even though I interrupted your sniffing, you followed so obediently and looked at me with woeful eyes that said, “I’m sorry, you’re right, let’s hurry back home where I will share my liver treats with you and protect you from any friend who turns on you ever again.” And ten seconds later, when I stopped to shake a pebble out of my shoe, you sat patiently, gazing back over your shoulder as if to say, “take your time, I’m ready when you are,” even though I really would have deserved it if you had kept right on walking, pulling me over as I tried to balance on one foot with the other sneaker in my hand.

  • I Don’t Like Carrots

    If you can judge how someone loves you based on whether or not they know how you like your eggs, then I say the same goes for fruit and vegetable consumption habits. For a certain someone, I am willing to go to any lengths to prepare a fruit or veggie so that it satisfies even the most particular eaters.

    To me, the bundles of cream colored seeds that sprinkle themselves everywhere when you cut open a bell pepper are pretty harmless. I run the pepper under the tap, filling it like a cup and then pouring it out (I have yet to attempt drinking the pepper water), washing most of the seeds down the drain. The ones that cling to the striated walls inside don’t bother me. But my mom will rinse each individual slice of pepper clean of seeds before she’ll eat it.

    And it was as if the boys I took care of last Spring had never seen a whole apple in a dining context. They recognized the traditional contents of a Thanksgiving cornucopia. The teacher’s desk on the first day of school motif was also familiar. But they liked their apples sliced as thin as crackers and left untouched any pieces without a smooth crescent whittled away from the core.

    Strawberries, too, were inedible in their natural state. Though Brian was always impressed by abnormally large or mutant specimens, it was off with their heads before he would indulge. It seemed a little sad to cut away every tuft of leaves, nature’s version of a popsicle stick.

    I don’t think I’m picky, but a banana is that much more appetizing when the bitter strings are pulled away, and I’ve never met a carrot I was crazy about. As for my eggs, I prefer french toast.

  • Drive To Ikea

    Ikea with Mom
    Chat and laugh down 95
    Almost miss exit

  • Verde o Blanca, Feliz Navidad

    Mom and Dad are at church, my brother is having dinner at his girlfriend’s house, and Maggie and I are at home watching John Goodman discuss Monsters Inc. on Inside the Actor’s Studio and eating frozen pizza in bed. Well, I’m eating the frozen pizza and she is snoring in my face. And the pizza isn’t frozen right now, I put it in the oven for fifteen minutes at 400 degrees, but I’m sure you discerned that. I’m sure you’ve also discerned that, due to 40 degree weather, all the snow melted, and because I am not at my boyfriend’s house, I am on the grumpy end of the Christmas-spirit spectrum.

    On the good tidings end, a) I got a Christmas card from the Cass’ today! They sent one of those family photo slides of Brian, Danielle and Larry, all looking festively adorable. b) I also got the self-addressed stamped envelope containing my final Children’s Lit paper, Reading for Healing: September 11th Literature for Children. I got an A! c) Comcast Cable in Ridgefield gets ABC Family now, so I can watch Gilmore Girls reruns every day over break. d) I saw Jess at J.Crew and she complimented my eye make-up. e) Maggie may be snoring, but she is keeping me warm.

    It was due to these small gifts that I mustered a merry away message: feliz navidad! To which one of my very favorite non-Christmas celebrators responded:

    rachcl85: con suelo ano y felicidad!!!! i wanna wish you a merry christmas, i wanna wish you a a merry christmas, i wanna wish you a merry christmas from the bottom of my heart!

    Even without the snow, that inspired me to spin Maybe This Christmas, with special emphasis on ‘Rudolph’ by Jack Johnson.

    Quote of the day: “Now’s the time that we need to share, so find yourself, we’re on our way back home, going home” – Supertramp

  • Just Because I Can

    Remember three days ago when I couldn’t satisfy my urge to blow kisses at everyone via the Internet (or is it just internet now? Depends on who you talk to.). Mwah! There’s nothing like a new toy to inspire blogging even after a seemingly endless dry spell. Here I am after cleaning my whole room, top to bottom, for Family & Friends weekend.


    friday kisses
    Posted by Hello

    I called home to ask for lots of batteries, because they are expensive and my Discman is dead, and my brother answered the phone with “Hey, I have a quick question.” Wait just one second now, I called you! He’s like, “Yeah, I know,” but didn’t seem to think it odd that I called and he got to ask his favor first. Typical!

    Quote of the day: “You arrive and the night is alive, yeah, you are a shining light. Yeah, you light up my life.” – Ash

  • Writing About Nothing Distracts Me From Everything

    i’ve been bemoaning the fact that i had nothing to write about all summer and now i have lots of events and thoughts and humor to record, and no time to blog all about it. tonight, i rediscovered my very favorite time of day. the best part is, there’s plenty of it. it’s procrastination time! do i feel like reading the canterbury tales in middle english? am i in the mood to prepare for next week’s children’s lit course? do i even have to energy to locate my children’s lit books? no, no, and no. but suddenly i have all the patience and ambition required to sit here and write about it all!

    i dropped ethics and traded latin american studies for a geology course called planet earth. i needed to get out of ethics b/c the lectures were dragging me into a mind-vacuum, but i’m hoping i can go back and take latam next year. planet earth is fulfilling my last math/science requirement. i missed the first meeting, but i sat in the second class and the prof walks in, puts a giant lord & taylor shopping bag on the lab table, and says, “i need to run and get something, make sure you all get a pair of 3-D glasses,” and walks out again. sign my add/drop form, the course shopping spree is over!

    i’m also signing up for the first responder certification course, which meets every wednesday night for four hours, but satisfies my last three gym credits and means i could run on the emt team next year. so between that, the saw center, and res life, i have three potential jobs for senior year. now, if i could only find a steady source of income for the next three and one half months. i’ve got my eye on the coffee bar and the blanchard info desk.

    turns out, my dad works closer to mount holyoke than home, so i drove down to glastonbury to have lunch with him and exchange some stuff that i didn’t need at school or forgot at home. my dad has my 8th grade school photo in his office, and i think it’s still my favorite one out of all my years of public school picture days.

    quote of the day: “i don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.” – bill cosby