Let's Play Pretend

Have you seen this?  This was and will be the actual weather in Austin for last weekend and this week.  High of 38?!?  That is crazy talk and I love it!  High of 56 on Thanksgiving?  That means the oven can be on all day and no one is sweating and wearing shorts.  That is happiness, pure and simple happiness.

Austin, I am not mocking you because I have lived here long enough to go "BRRRR" when faced with anything below 50.  My first winter here I ran around without a coat on because I thought it was so warm and took on an ice storm like it was nothing. The hotel I worked at had me drive two ladies down the tollroad in Dallas through said ice storm to their meeting.  Hotel insurance wouldn't cover their hotel vans going out, but it was perfectly fine for the Buffalo girl to take guests out in her crappy car.  They gave me a giant cookie when I got back and I thought it a perfectly reasonable exchange.   I will admit that I do giggle a little at how Texas plays winter.  The weather people with their somber voices and dramatic music and lead-ins of "Winter 2013".  Protect your plants!  Go wrap your pipes!  Bring the dogs in!  Please, dogs in my neighborhood are treated as good if not better than the kids, so no worries there.  There is the poor young newscaster right out of college doing the live reports bundled up in a puffy, down,  3/4 length coat, a Russian fur hat and scarf up under her nose.  The temperature?  50.  Then the weather man with his dire intonations of possible freezing precipitation, showing us video of snow in counties so far west and north, I think they must be in New Mexico.  My poor Texas children go to bed with visions of snowflakes dancing in their head.  The boy I can't pull out of bed in the morning is running down the stairs at 6:30am on a day off to see if it snowed.

I have seen some great things this week as we all hunker down and play winter.  Kids at school are either dressed to summit Everest or are wearing shorts and pretending they are not cold even as their legs turns pink.  The number of trees decorated along 360 has increased as cooler weather leads us into thinking Christmas. The environmentalist in me cringes with these adorned trees, but the bored commuter in me loves them.

not the best shot, but the only one where I was stuck in traffic.

Another fun thing I saw on my commute this week was a man not only selling firewood on the side of the road but chopping it as well.  Go Paul Bunyan! Is that great marketing or what?!?  We don't have an actual wood burning fireplace and I still wanted to stop and buy logs. (and no, it was not a shirtless young man chopping. He was old and layered up like he was wearing every shirt he owned)

The stores already crowded with the pre-Thanksgiving rush are now inundated with those afraid of being iced in without enough bread or milk or God help us, Deep Eddy Pink Grapefruit vodka.  We can do without a lot for a few days but not that vodka.

I know that there are many of you who are tired of the cold weather already (CG), but I say keep it coming!  We had the most relaxing weekend ever last weekend because we were hunkered down playing winter.  We didn't go anywhere, we didn't do much, we napped, we played some board games and even the kids were content.  The boy laughed so hard playing Apples to Apples that he turned red and couldn't breathe and I soaked up his exuberance and joy.   The oven and stove were on all day and it was still pleasant in the house.  A weekend of comfy pants and sweatshirts, of low expectations and contentment.  I had that rested Thanksgiving feeling a full five days before Thanksgiving!

When my kids tell me they are cold, I absolutely love to tell them "put a sweater on."  My mother must have intoned this ten times a day for 20 years between October and April each year and it gives me great happiness to hear her words come out of my mouth.  Layer up.  Dress for the weather.  Even Bill has been spotted dressing for the weather.  

the message makes me sigh, but the hoodie makes me smile.

I love this playing winter. I say playing because it is cold but we don't have to shovel our way out of the house or change the tires on our cars for snow.  We are not snowed in, iced in or otherwise truly inconvenienced.  We can still get to the store, the bank and our jobs.  I like to wear sweaters to work and not sweat.  I like the way a hot cup of coffee feels in hands that are actually a little cold.  I like that the kids and dogs all want to sit on the same couch and as close to each other as possible.  I do hope it snows at some point this year.  We have been years without snow and it is time for a light dusting to shut down the city.  My kids need to play outside and build a dirty snowman and lay down some snow angels and beam each other with snowballs.  Heck, forget the kids, I need to do that! We could play outside until our noses run and turn red and our wet hands in our cheap gloves go numb and tingle.  We'll stomp the snow off of our feet as we make it inside and gladly hold a cup of something steaming hot in our hands.  We'll sit on the couch together and watch the news to see if there will be more snow and watch the video footage where the camera sets up at the bottom of a hill and watches cars slide down it and take bets on whether they will slide, stop or stop and slide.  We will play games and read books and watch too much TV and be lazy.

Really, the only thing missing from this current cold spell is that silence that comes from a snowfall at night.  The world becomes muffled under a soft blanket of white and you can hear everything around you and nothing at all at the same time.  It is a quiet not heard in our days of rushing and beeping and buzzing and frenzied activities and one I think would do us all a world of good.    We will slow the world down for a day and savor it because it is fleeting.  It will be here and gone and we will be back to tank tops and flip flops in an eye blink.  So don't hate it Austin, embrace it!

It All Comes Down to Butter

Last summer, I did something that inadvertently changed my life.  I brought home an audio book of Michael Pollan’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”.  Bill drives two hours each way to get to his office and I thought this would be some interesting listening and act as a pleasant diversion for a few days.  Instead, it made him vegan.  Vegan, as in hold the eggs, no cheese for me, vegan. I have to say that when he first told me he was going to be vegan, I did not think it would last.    Two months in, I changed to hoping it wouldn’t last.  Now he is one year and five months in and I am afraid it is going to last.

I miss my husband cooking with eggs and cheese.  The man makes a blue cheese mac and cheese that will not only stop your heart, it will take your breath away; it is that good.  I swear it was just a few years ago I had to ask him to stop cooking everything with a roux; my wiggly thighs couldn’t take any more buttery beginnings.  We didn’t eat a lot of meat before this, but I find now that because there is never meat in the house, it is all I want to order when we are out.  I used to be very discerning about the meat I ate.  Now I just eat meat.

In an effort to make the most of my time, when I bake, I bake vegan so that both the kids and Bill have something sweet.  I use veggie butter in place of butter, flax seed and water in place of eggs.  When I eat what I have baked, my taste buds scream “WHERE IS THE BUTTER?!?”  “WHY HAVE YOU RUINED CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES?!?!”  Bill insists that they taste great but the man is living on soy and grains and is therefore taste bud compromised.  The kids eat it, but there is a haunted look around their eyes.  

We do eat well and very healthfully.  We tease each other about our meal choices.  For example, if Bill is in a bad mood or says he is tired, I will tell him to eat some meat.  Or because I am always tired, he will say it is because I am loaded down with animal proteins.  Ha ha, we laugh and tease.  Until today.  Today he posted ridiculous menu items he said sounded great for Thanksgiving.  It was from something called a Vegan Guide to a Turkey-less Thanksgiving.  Blasphemy!  You can take away my blue cheese mac and cheese, but you cannot substitute a Lentil Mushroom Loaf for my turkey Bill McMahon.  You cannot.

Thanksgiving is about butter and gravy and turkey and pie.  It is not Veggie Tofu Pot Pie or Tofurkey.  I will not “make the vegetable the star of the show” as your recent post declares.  I will stick that vegetable on the side and drown it in butter, gravy or cream of mushroom soup as the Pilgrims intended.  I want whipping cream in my mashed potatoes and I want to use the leftover whipped cream from the pies in my morning coffee.  I want the first scoop of mashed potatoes with the swimming pool of butter on top.  I definitely do not want to use coconut milk as a substitute for anything as far as the pies go.  No I do not.  I want the house to smell like cooking turkey all day long and into the night.  Thanksgiving is not grains and veggies and health because calories do not count on Thanksgiving.  We eat until we are so full we have to lie down and we blame it on tryptophan – not the 4000 calorie dinner we just ate.  We wake up from a little nap and because our stomachs have lost a bit of their distended bloat, we start on dessert.  And who can eat just one piece of pie?  Later at night, our stomachs empty from being stretched out all day; it is time for a turkey and stuffing sandwich.  (Bread on bread?  What, you say?  Try it, you can thank me later.)  This is Thanksgiving.  I feel like Charlie Brown being handed pretzels and popcorn when you talk about anemic vegetables and soy pressed products instead.

Sigh. It is apparent that we will need to sit down and work out what is non-negotiable so that we can both have a happy holiday.  My list is as follows: TURKEY, gravy, sausage stuffing, real whipped cream and genuine, from the cow, butter on everything.  I don’t know what Bill will put as his non-negotiable but I bet falafel is part of it.  I am not sure the chick pea really has a right to be at Thanksgiving.  However, because I am thankful for my husband and thankful for the right to eat my weight in mashed potatoes, if I get my list, he can have his too.  

Stop Rushing Me!

Enough America.  Enough of your propaganda.  Enough of your ads, your music in the background, your red cups of coffee extolling a season that is not yet here.  Enough.

It is early November.  The weather finally feels like fall.  Halloween is past, but so recently that kids still have their trick-or-treat candy left.  There are still three and a half weeks until Thanksgiving and, believe it or not, 7.5 weeks until Christmas.  You would never know this based on the ads on TV, the circulars in the paper and the bombardment of Christmas in every store.  I don't want to see stores bedecked in red and green. My eyes are still happy with autumnal reds, oranges and yellows.  I know Thanksgiving isn't a big money maker, but do we have to go right from Halloween to Christmas?  It is like reading the first three chapters of a book, skipping the middle and then diving into the final chapter.  Total rip-off.

I was surprised to receive the big toy book from Target before Halloween.  That got tossed without even paging through it because IT IS TOO SOON to start thinking about Christmas.  And yes, I tossed it complete with coupons and $5 gift card inside because you have to use them before Thanksgiving.  I was saddened to see that Starbucks broke out their holiday red cups on November 1st.  Too soon Starbucks, too soon.  Red cups December 1st?  Yes, perfect.  Let's all dream of peppermint mochas, playing Santa and good will towards men.  Red cups on November 1st?  Pressure.  It is not festive and merry when you force it too soon.  We will all be sick of the red before St. Nicholas Day.  (December 6th for those of you who did not grow up in the North).

Bah.  Humbug.

I am not going to buy into the hype.  I am going to eat my kids' candy and I am not going to skip over the next three weeks of thinking about Thanksgiving.  I am going to look forward to a long, long weekend filled with amazing food and time spent together as a family.  We will eat with abandon and wear our comfy pants all day long.  No nice clothes and good manners (except for Bill), just time together, movies, hanging out and relaxing.  Time to reflect, time to give thanks, time to just stop grinding it out each day and time to just breathe.  One year, thanks to my worldly cousin, we ended up having a guest here from another country who had never had Thanksgiving dinner before.  My kids got to explain the history of Thanksgiving (minus the genocide that followed) and he got to eat a Bill McMahon turkey dinner.  It was a beautiful, beautiful, rewarding, soul-enriching day.  Why are we as a nation trying to fast forward through all this?

Last year I got caught up in the hype.  I felt that I had to buy this at this store or this over here or this right now, but financially I couldn't jump fully into my seasonal crazy and that made me stressed.  I was sure Christmas would be ruined and I wouldn't get what we needed.  But let me tell you, Bill and I took a day the week before Christmas and got everything we needed, and cheap!  Forget Black Friday!  Try the mall the week before Christmas - they are giving things away!  The best part was that we took an entire day and we spent it together.  We had coffee and talked, we went to the mall and survived, we thought about our kids and how big they had gotten.  We wondered if William would still shake when he opened his presents.  (He did, but not as much as we hoped.)  It was a calm, wonderful day in the middle of a busy, harried week and I can't wait to do it again.

So please don't let them fool you.  Don't let them take away the actual beauty of Thanksgiving by treating it like it doesn't matter.  It does matter!  Don't ruin the magic of Christmas by buying into it too soon.  Christmas is magical because it only takes place for a short while, not because it is readily available November 1st.  There will be plenty of stuff available in December and leftover stuff haunting the shelves still in January.  Close your eyes to the commercials and skip over the ads in the paper.  Look at the weather and the calendar to decide which holiday is really next.  

I wish I could say I would boycott Starbucks and their red cups for the next month, but that would be silly.  I think I will bring a reusable cup when I go as to not be angered and which I should do anyway.  December 1st, however,  I will take their red cup and I will smile and I will feel the magic of a true Christmas season beginning to sparkle.