Precious Saturday quotations

Did you know that "quote" is actually a verb?  So that's why it's Saturday quotations - that's the noun form.  Okay, I'll put the English professor away now.  Quote as a noun is becoming accepted now anyway (much to my chagrin).  Moving along...

Yesterday the fam and I went to my godson's (little cousin's) 5th birthday party.  My cousin (his mom) always has themes for her kids' birthday parties; this one was a music theme so they had inflatable and real instruments for the kids to play with and a little stage area for them to perform, plus some musical chair-type games and a cake with a musical carousel on it.  Kids love making noise, so needless to say, everyone had a great time.

Quote #1 - "Tattoo!"

The kids all got press-on tattoos, like little rock stars. TJ's dad has tattoos so he already knew what they were and was very excited to have a tattoo, just like Daddy. He kept pointing at it, grinning, and saying, "Tattoo!" with the emphasis on the second syllable. So cute.

Quote #2 - "Boo!"

No matter how many times we play peek-a-boo, it never gets old. My sister said she's going to be playing peek-a-boo with him as he leaves for college.

Quote #3 - *Excited sucking sound*

Whenever TJ is excited about something, he sucks in his breath and makes this, "Eeee!" noise. He does this when he's on a swing or hears his dad on the phone.

Quote #4 - "Oh boy!  Wind up liederhosen!"

No, seriously. My godson, Erik (whom you may recognize as the ringbearer at my wedding) said this when he saw these toys with his birthday cake. The boys are half German and enjoy going to Oktoberfest and other similar festivals. Note: Erik is actually wearing liederhosen in this photo.

I vote the wind-up liederhosen as the quote of the day.

The happy genius

My father is an amazing man and one day I will write something for him or about him that will do him justice.  For today, though, I will rely on one of my poet loves, William Carlos Williams, and a poem he wrote about himself.

Danse Russe
by William Carlos Williams

If when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-white disc
in silken mists
above shining trees,-
if I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
"I am lonely, lonely,
I was born to be lonely,
I am best so!"
If I admire my arms, my face,
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
against the yellow drawn shades,-

Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?

New things, including magic pancakes

The most recent issue of Cooking Light has a really great strawberry layer cake recipe in it that I wanted to make for Mother's Day.  The problem was that I wanted to try some of it to make sure it turned out okay AND I wanted to give some to my parents while bringing most of it to the hubby's parents' house.  Sure, it can be really cute to wrap up an individual cake slice for someone, but that wasn't my goal this time around.  "Oh, hi, yes, I brought you 3/4 of a cake because I also wanted to give some to someone else." 

So, instead, I decided to make the cake as cupcakes.  They turned out quite delicious, but I think I made two key errors: 1) I did not let the butter reach room temperature and 2) I over beat the batter (I always over beat the batter, darn it - trying to work on that).  Because of this, they collapsed a little and weren't as fluffy as I'd like.  They were still delicious, though.  (Note: I substituted 1 tsp. vanilla for the Grand Marnier that the recipe calls for.  I really wanted the strawberry taste to stand out and not be in conflict with any orange tones.)

So, the cake recipe calls for 1 cup of reduced-fat buttermilk and since I can only ever find buttermilk in quarts, I had 3 cups left over.  I woke up Sunday morning wondering what I should do with it since 1 - neither the hubby nor I drink buttermilk and 2 - we're going to Florida on Friday for four days and I really didn't want it sitting around.  And then it hit me: Buttermilk pancakes!  Yum! Ordinarily, I don't/can't really eat pancakes.  I certainly never order them when we eat out because it just won't end well.  Pancakes are high in carbs and low on protein, which is not a good combination for me.  Plus, it's extremely rare to find a restaurant with sugar-free syrup.  Regular syrup - even good, organic syrup - does a number on me because the sugar content is so high, and what good are pancakes without syrup? However, if I was making pancakes at home, I could use my own sugar-free syrup and also eat something else to go with them (cheese, fruit) to balance out the supreme carb-ness. 

And ironically, since it was Mother's Day, I was able to use two great appliances that are recent gifts from our mothers.  The hubby's mother gave us an electric griddle a little while back and my parents just gave us a microwave this weekend (as a gift for our six month anniversary, which is this upcoming Friday, aww).  I used the microwave to melt the butter and the griddle to make the pancakes. I'd never made pancakes from scratch before, so I was a bit nervous, but they turned out to be really delicious! 

For once, I tried a Smitten Kitchen recipe and didn't royally screw it up!  Her skills are so more advanced than mine; I can't even properly whip egg whites yet - but I'll get there.  For Sunday, I made her Buttermilk Pancakes, but sans blueberries since 1) I didn't have any, 2) the hubby doesn't like them, and 3) they would have upped the sugar level (yes, even natural sugar can become too much of a good thing).  They were perfect, though - golden on the outside, crispy around the edges, and fluffy in the middle.  Mmm, it is seriously going to be way too tempting to make those more often.  And, somehow, they didn't upset my sugar level.  How is that possible?  They're magic, that's how.

Happy New Year!

Today is the day many Chinese people celebrate the New Year and one of my coworkers pointed out that it's the year of the Ox and sent along this piece about the Ox:

My purpose is to alleviate chaos
And perpetuate stability
To hold my ground against
Hardship, danger and adversity
Steadfast and above reproach

I am here to enforce honor and fair play
To set a moral code
By becoming one with nature,
Constantly working toward my goal
To bring about harmony and good fortune,

I AM THE OX

The year of the Ox is just what’s needed to clean up any mess and clutter left
by the Rat. The Ox is not as he appears and should not be underestimated or
considered slow or unaware.

The Ox is the quintessential hardworking, conventional cleaner-upper who will
put everything back in order and turn chaos back into reason.
There is no room for anyone looking for a free ride during an Ox year.
Hard work  pays and laziness does not.
It’s a plain-and-simple, cut-and-dried, yes-and-no type year.
It’s a year to get papers in order and your life back on track, and
to do whatever it takes to budget and plan for your financial future, lessening
the stress and securing your position. Tradition will be important and keeping
order and making sure that everyone plays by the rules a must.

You must gain respect through your actions
if you want to fare well during the year of the Ox.

~~~

I think it's wonderfully fitting (even if it is a bit like astrology and everything always seems to fit to some degree).  For me, it chimes with what I think was one of the more powerful moments in President Obama's speech yesterday:

"To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict or blame their society's ills on the West, know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy."

I think the idea of being judged for what you build, not what you destroy, is incredibly useful.  I spend a lot of time around students and see them spending so much time tearing down other people - making fun of their pictures on Facebook, talking about what someone did, said, or wore, and so on.  It's such wasted energy and to do that kind of stuff around other people makes it even worse.  I feel like it poisons the air.  Sure, I have done (and do) my fair share of gossiping (although I try to keep it to a minimum now) but it never would dawn on me to do it around anyone other than the one person I was talking with.  Just think how the energy would be if we spent more time honoring and helping one another instead of degrading and criticizing.

A poem for the new year

If I had to make a list of my favorite poems, this poem would certainly be on it.  (Which gets me thinking... could I make a list of my favorite poems?  How long would I be able to make the list?  Could I get it down to ten all-time favorites?  I think this poem would make the top ten.)

~~~

Archaic Torso of Apollo
by Rainer Maria Rilke
translation by Stephen Mitchell

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.

~~~

For the more visual among us, here is a picture of the sculpture referred to in the poem:

The first time I heard this poem, I was participating in a summer intensive creative writing course (intensive meaning it was a full two week course - 9am to 5pm, sometimes later - not that the writing was somehow extra intense).  I believe the class was during the summer of 2003.  In the morning, we had mixed group sessions with the university's writing staff.  In the afternoons, we had sessions with visiting writers.  There were groups for fiction, non-fiction, and poetry writers.  I was in the poetry group and we had the remarkable fortune of having the poet Mark Doty lead our group.  I hate to admit that I hadn't heard of him prior to that summer, but I haven't stopped following him since.  If you are interested in contemporary poetry, check him out:  Mark Doty.  I really cannot say enough about both his poetry and prose.

I made the mistake of reading his memoir, Heaven's Coast, while commuting. The memoir is about the process of losing his partner, Wally, to AIDS.  The writing is so moving that I found myself nearly sobbing... on the PATH train.  The book is a truly amazing account of love, loss, and community.  His book Dog Years is like Marley & Me for the more literally minded, and another book that made me sob.  In that book, he is so adept at moving through the moments one shares with one's dogs that I would still be sobbing from a particularly sad passage but already be laughing out loud at a humorous anecdote.  His writing is so amazingly fluid that you move through moments and emotions like water flowing downstream.

I was really excited to read that he was nominated for and then won (!) the National Book Award for Poetry this year.  His writing is amazing and, without a doubt, my poetry top ten list would include one (if not two) of his poems.  In fact, I'd probably have to expand the top ten to include more of his poems.  To file in the "it's a small world" category, his partner (also a remarkable writer) graduated from the same graduate program I did and had the same thesis adviser I did.  When I friended them on MySpace, I made sure to point this out, lest they think I was just any other fangirl.

Anyway, one afternoon Mark read this poem to us... in that way that he reads a poem... a way that makes you want to get naked and take the poem to bed with you.  Every time I read this poem, even if I'm reading it out loud to students of my own, I hear Mark's voice in my head for the last line: "You must change your life."

Poets.org has a short talk Mark gave about the poem: On "Archaic Torso of Apollo".

"Change" is the theme for January's NaBloPoMo, so I probably could have saved this entry for January 1 but sometimes a poem just hits you and you have to take some time with it immediately.  This poem wasn't going to wait for Thursday.  It embodies the urgency of its last line.

Housekeeping!

Anyone have that running joke with friends where every time you knock on a door you say, "Housekeeping!"?  I can't see or say the word without hearing it in my head in my friend's brother, Daniel's, voice.  "Housekeeping!"  That and thwap.  Much love for Daniel.

Anyhoo, I am at work.  What am I working on?  Making this site a bit spiffier.  I changed to a three column set-up and added some new widgets.  I am not the most technologically adept person (I leave that up to the hubby, who can build computers) but I like to try and figure my way around simple stuff like this.  I'm proud that I was able to add my Twitter feed and a little text box of what I'm currently reading.  Eventually I'd like a separate tab for books, but let's not go all crazy today.

Also, housekeeping seemed surprised to see that there are people working here today.  A very nice gentleman came through the door by my office and was clearly surprised: "Oh!  Uh, mama, how long you be here today?"  I believe they need to clean the floors, which will trap me in the office (and my coworker, who shares the office, who is here for a half day today).  After I explained I'd be here until 5pm, the cleaning folks talked amongst themselves and then the nice man shut my door.  I don't know what this means.  I don't know if he just didn't want to bother me with the noise of whatever floor cleaning device I hear them using or if this means they decided to wash the floors and I am indeed trapped here until 5pm.  Thankfully, the bathroom is only about ten feet away so even if I had to walk there slowly on a wet floor, there is only a small chance I will fall down and crack my ass.

Christmas was enjoyable, although I did feel like something was missing this year.  I don't know quite what it is, but something was off.  Christmas (which I define as the time from the start of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade to the end of December 25th) is by far my favorite time of year but the only time I truly enjoyed this year was the time I spent baking cookies, the time I spent with my nephew on Christmas Eve, the church service (so much fun singing), and opening gifts with my hubby after the service.  Everything else was just okay.  Good, but not great.  We spent Christmas Day at my husband's parents' house and I think it's hard for me to adjust to spending half my holiday with someone else's family.  Okay, I recognize they're my family, too, but it's not the same.  I haven't spent three decades of Christmases with them and I wasn't really looking for a change.  In general, I can be slow to accept change that wasn't initiated by me.  When I initiate change, I can be really gung-ho about it.  When it's forced upon me, it's like taking my dog out in the rain, which we call "taking the dog out for a drag."

I'm all about the site change, though.  The Flickr widget is just a placeholder for now because I don't yet have a Flickr account, but I will; it will be part of my 101 in 1001 project.  I've been working on the list; as of right now I have 60 items on the list.  41 more and the list will be ready to post and start!

How this penguin is a penguin and has penguins...

Also known as "Why my husband totally rules."  I haven't yet mentioned this blog to my husband, but we do have an ongoing penguin thing (more on that in a moment) so for Christmas I got two little stuffed penguins and a fleece blanket with scarved penguins on it.  LOVE them!  :)  (I also got the Wall-E DVD and a new watch, both of which I desperately wanted... and I thought we weren't exchanging gifts at all.  My husband totally rules.)

So... the bookish penguin.  My usual online moniker was already taken and active on Wordpress so I had to come up with something else. It was actually kind of difficult to think of something to symbolize me and my life (especially since the name has to be chosen before the blog even takes shape and becomes whatever it will be). I finally realized that the whole "penguin" thing would work since my husband and I have an affinity for penguins and I really like the symbolism: they mate for life, the females go to work and provide for the family while the males are the caretakers of the eggs/young.  My husband and I have even talked about getting penguin tattoos; his would be a penguin with a guitar and mine would be a penguin with a book... and then I got it: Bookish Penguin.

Now, bookish doesn't actually mean someone with books. In fact, it's not an entirely positive word all the time. So why choose a word with occasional negative connotations? Well, let's look at the meaning (as per dictionary.com):

book⋅ish
–adjective
1. given or devoted to reading or study.
2. more acquainted with books than with real life.
3. of or pertaining to books; literary.
4. stilted; pedantic.

One - check. Two - not as true as it used to be, but still true-ish, so check. Three - I will write about books I'm reading, so check.

Four - I looked up both stilted and pedantic to make sure they meant what I thought they meant.

stilt⋅ed
1. stiffly dignified or formal, as speech or literary style; pompous.
2. some architectural thing

pe⋅dan⋅tic
1.     ostentatious in one's learning.
2.     overly concerned with minute details or formalisms, esp. in teaching.

Okay, four. If we take stilted to mean a form of uptight, then check. I can definitely be uptight. As for pedantic, it's a quality I've actually worked on overcoming. I'm definitely not an braggart about my education (there's no basis for it) but I do hold education highly. I used to be more concerned with minute details and formalism in my teaching, but I've learned to ease up on that and focus more on content than form. So while definition four of bookish isn't a strong check, it is sort of a faded check.

So there's that. Now I just need someone to design me a nifty penguin with books banner for the page. Right now I have a picture of the Trinity library (in Ireland) since it's the most beautiful library I've ever seen (sorry NYC Public Library).

I used to actually consider myself somewhat of a writer. Not an ACTUAL writer, but someone who liked to write... and that all fell by the wayside after I finished my B.A.. I kept written journals in high school and college (I actually hate to think what I would have written publicly had blogs existed back then) and also wrote poetry. That all just withered away, like so many things I used to do for myself (like go to the gym). So maybe this is step one in my "take back my life" mission. Now, I recognize that my life will never be what it was. I will never be an undergrad again. I'll actually never be a FT grad student again. I'll never be single again (well, hopefully not, anyway). So my life has inherently changed... but it shouldn't change the things that I'm interested in and want to do for myself, within reason.

And now, as I sign on to Wordpress, I see something about cheat codes for a DS game named Club Penguin?  Oh, game, where have you been all my life?  I should beat Million Heir before I get a new game, though.  Too bad I can't bring my DS to work tomorrow.  It would make for an infinitely better work day.

P.S. "Penguin" is one of those words that looks less like a real word the more you look at it.

It's a holly jolly (icy) work day.

I don't recall when the last time was I had to work on December 24th.  I might have to dip back to 2001 for that, but even then I'm not totally certain if I worked that day or not.  Even if I did, it now seems like a lifetime ago.  I work for a school but only faculty and students are off for the winter break; staff has to be here... so here I be.

It's so icy out that it probably would have behooved me to put on ice skates to get to my car this morning.  Instead, me and my Anne Klein loafers just schlepped and slid our way out.  Two of the school's campuses have delayed openings due to the ice today, but not the one I'm at today.  Joy to my world.  Now I know what you're thinking: "But don't penguins love ice?"  Mais oui, but this one also prefers to not crack her ass on the ice.

But I've been cranky enough about having to work today and just need to drop it.  I am thankful to just have a job, even if it is making me work December 24 - oh, and did I mention I have to work a full day on December 26?  Okay, no really, I'll stop complaining (for) now.  I do get out early today (3pm) so I can spend extra time at home with my family, including my brother who flew in from Florida last night (where he's in his last year of law school) and my sister and her husband and son, my absolute favorite child in the whole world.  Sometimes I feel guilty calling my nephew the love of my life because, well, he's not my son and I also have a husband . . . but my nephew is just so darn cute; I can't get enough of him.  This is his first Christmas and while I'm not a big fan of training future consumers, I am looking forward to watching him tear open presents and then, inevitably, enjoy the boxes more than the toys themselves.  (Hm, perhaps we are all anti-consumer at heart since we all seem to enjoy the vessels more than the products when we are young?)

After dinner we're going to church.  After attending the same church for 25 years, you'd think I'd know what time the service starts, but I can never remember (it's some time around 10:30pm).  I just always remember that we get out at midnight so it's "officially" Christmas when we go home.  Organized religion and faith are not things I find myself needing as regular parts of my life, but I do appreciate what they do for some people (my parents, in particular) and I enjoy the traditions and pageantry (although Lutherans are relatively low on pageantry).  For Christmas Eve, though, there are lots of extra candles and all the best hymns; it's a wonderful service.

This is probably an odd time of year to start a new blog because it gets bogged (err, blogged?) down with things like what one does for the holidays.  I missed blogging through my engagement and wedding (I got married last month), through graduate school (just finished in May), my summer as a temp, the new jobs I started in September, and so much else that will all be revealed in time.  I'm also going to start a 101 in 1001 list.  Stay tuned.

For now I'm going to continue sipping my french vanilla coffee until it's finished and get crackin' on some work so as to actually earn my paycheck today.  But first, a little holiday gift to my non-existent readers: a sneak peek of what I'm sure will be a topic to come - my wedding.

Photo credit: Kella MacPhee