Squashing My Appetite, or, Why Mothers Are Gray

I have a sure-fire way to kick my appetite to the curb.  I invite my 26 year old son over to dinner & make his favorite, chicken cutlet parmesan with a side of spaghetti.  Then, before he sits down to eat, he makes an announcement that he’s made a decision, one we aren’t going to like, but one that is set in stone nevertheless.  

My appetite starts to recede immediately.

I poke my small cake-fork around my salad plate, pretending to eat, and ask him to enlighten us with his Big Decision.

Spill ya guts kid.

He’s decided to quit his job today after giving 5 weeks notice.

He’s decided to go to medical school to become a doctor.

He’s decided to take a 4 week intensive study-course for the MCAT exams.

And the 4 week intensive study course is located in Las Vegas Nevada.

Where his ex-girlfriend lives & works, burying nuclear waste as a contractor for the Federal government.

The job she LEFT him for, telling him to either come with her or end their 5 year *at the time* relationship. She gave him an ultimatum & he told her goodbye, moving back in with me for nearly a year while he licked his wounds. And while mom fed him and listened to him and nursed him back to fighting form, so to speak.

So now,  1 ½ years after the bitter, ugly, horrifying breakup where she threw ALL of his belongings OFF of the condo balcony……

He is moving in with HER in Las Vegas for the duration of his 4 week MCAT study course!

Really? Really?

She will give him free room & board! YAY! What a deal!

The kid is racking up a quarter million dollars in loan money to see him through medical school, but he is getting FREE room and board for a month! WHO could pass up such an offer?!

Ever get a tingling feeling that starts on the top of your scalp & travels down to the tip of your toes with lightening speed?  While your stomach drops below your knees & the 2 ounces of food you’ve managed to eat threatens to make a repeat performance in your mouth?

UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

My son was flabbergasted that I had SO few words to say to him.

What on EARTH is a mother to say to a son who’s fought an endless battle with a selfish, egotistical, immature young woman who can’t see past the tip of her own nose, never mind be the kind of wife or partner he’d need while killing himself in medical school?

Meanwhile, my daughter is bringing up the rear & her head is all but spinning OFF while she tries to make 100 decisions about her future, now that she’s officially an ‘adult’ at 18. She did, after all, graduate High School LAST WEEK……


When she turned 18, the government forced me to sign over her considerable SSI account to her & now she has quite a bit of money which is burning a hole in her pocket.


Reaching 'adulthood' AND having a sizable bank account at the same time is a lethal combination.....

We’ve gone from her wanting a tongue piercing to settling for a small birdcage tattoo on her upper chest, with 2 small birds flying around on the other side.  The tattoo artist told her to come back in a week and she’d add a small red rose to the birdcage to spruce it up a bit.

The small red rose morphed into an ENORMOUS, bright red flower, more like a Venus flytrap,  that covers her entire shoulder & upper arm and dwarfs the birdcage. The pain was so intense, she almost passed out & she would have, had she not been shaking so violently from the epinephrine…..


Two days after getting the last tattoo, she went to Sally's Beauty Supply for tattoo make-up to cover it up, 'just in case'......

Then came the hair fiasco’s. FIVE times she went to Sally’s & purchased every-color-of -the-rainbow hair dye, which the consultants at Ulta would NOT sell her because they just didn’t ‘get it’. Oh, they ‘got it’ alright; they just refused to play a part in ruining the child’s hair.

The purple was Barney-like & horrifying. The ½ platinum, ½ black was like something out of a horror movie. The stop-light red was…well…..stop light red. That required an emergency trip to Walgreens, with my car, before I left for work one morning so she could do a ‘repair’ job & get it from stop light red to what she calls Chocolate Covered Cherry Red. The professional hairdresser had another word for it, Fried, and cut the vast majority of it OFF. Which led to her emergency purchase of real-hair hair extensions from Sallys, where else?

I hate Sally & I don’t even know who she IS.

When she finally corrected the color, my daughter had to bring those super-expensive genuine hair extensions from Sally’s into the salon to also be dyed to match, OF COURSE!

Yesterday was a spray tan session! Now her entire body is the color of a navel orange.

She spent the last 36 hours in the shower, trying to scrub it off with a loofah!

Did I mention the do-it-yourself-in-the-garage-because-of-the-stench acrylic nails?  Yep. Took her 5 hours to put them on, 2 hours to decorate them all differently, in Easter patterns, and then 15 minutes to yank them all OFF because they were slightly smudged!

And that’s only the tip of the iceberg here. She has big plans for herself for college which include moving in to her own place in December, with a roommate she plans to locate on CRAIG’S LIST, because she’ll need to know what it feels like to be on her own before she takes off to study in Europe.  DUH Mom, don’t you GET IT?

Sigh. This is why Mother’s Are Gray.

Next week her father is having the Come To Jesus talk with her where he lays down the law, adult or not, and she says OK Dad or faces  his wrath & the withdrawal of all college funds set aside for her. Then I get to have the very same conversation with her the following day. The college money I’ve set aside for her does not cover bohemian European stints or tenement apartments with potential serial-killer roommates, it ONLY covers college tuition. Imagine the NERVE?

But hey, there’s some good news in all of this: My appetite has gone bye-bye! Now isn’t THAT something to celebrate? I think I’d better look for the silver lining in all of these storm clouds, or else I’ll be shackled up in a in straight jacket & babbling incoherently.

DIET Is A Four-Letter Word

Erma Bombeck once said, “With all the weight I’ve lost over the years, I should be hanging from a charm bracelet.” Boy howdy, do I ever understand THAT statement.

Sigh.

I would venture to guess that 90% of the human female species has been, or will BE, on a diet at one time or another.  Males too, of course, but the percentage can’t possibly be as staggering as it is for females.

Let’s face it, we girls have been trained from a very young age to hate our bodies.  We’re trained to think we should look like walking sticks & eat like birds.  The magazines we read portray attractive women as slim……even emaciated……..and so our opinion of beauty is determined by the media. 

We’re never satisfied with how we look, apparently, so the diet industry is THE #1 money maker in this country for that very reason.

At the same time we’re hating our bodies, we’re being told it’s OK to eat McDonald’s for breakfast, lunch, dinner & snacks.  Until we watched Supersize Me.  At that point, we either forced that knowledge out of our minds & continued eating high-fat fast food, or, we changed our ways & stuck to broiled, grilled or steamed instead of fried. Until THAT got too boring & we reverted back to our old ways.

Not surprisingly, I am no stranger to diets myself.  My mother signed me up for Weight Watchers at 12, and I would yo-yo around for the next 40 years trying to manage my weight, unsuccessfully, for the most part.

I remember trying all sorts of crazy, crash diets over the years. After I failed at Weight Watchers, primarily due to the liver requirement (back in the day when the experts felt that organ meat WAS healthy), I graduated to more extreme methods of weight loss.

The grapefruit diet, the cookie diet, the hamburger diet, the cabbage soup diet, the all carb diet/the all protein diet, the Suzanne Somers diet, the Spirolina diet, the Slim-fast diet, Herbalife,  to name a few.  Then there was the gym memberships, the exercise equipment (now known as Clothing Racks), the bicycles (stationary & outdoor), the trampolines, the stair-steppers, the ellipticals, the ab machines, the Nautilus, circuit training, and water aerobics.  I can’t forget the acupuncture, although I’d very much LIKE to, where my ear was stapled with a metal clip which I was to turn when I felt hungry.  I all but pulled my ear OFF and still, the excess weight would not release itself from my thighs.

I tried a full liquid fast where all I could ‘eat’ was 3 chocolate shakes per day for a total of 270 calories.  I stayed on that nightmare diet for 6 full months & dropped 87 lbs which I managed to pick back UP as soon as the fast was over with. Fasting taught me how delicious food really tastes & how sorely I’d missed it for 6 long months of starvation.

Sigh.

I’ve lost my hair, I’ve lost my monthly cycles, I’ve lost my sanity & I’ve lost plenty of hard-earned money over the years in my quest to be slim, but somehow, I never managed to lose the WEIGHT.  All that fat was evidently quite happy living on my hips, thighs & stomach, and had NO intention of leaving.

But still I pressed forward with my endless attempts to win the battle of the bulge.  I bought diet pills, supplements, lotions, potions & brews…….I signed up with a quack diet doctor & lined up in front of his office, outside in the cold, for hours on end waiting for my 2-week-supply-of-little-pills-guaranteed-to-work, but all I took from that experience was sleeplessness.  The little pills turned out to be amphetamines masquerading as diet aids.  The doctor turned out to be a criminal & his doors were eventually closed by the Feds. But not before he caused a lot of harm to an awful lot of women who relied on him to ‘help’ them.

I tried the Depends diets also…..you know, the diets which have you drinking SO much water you need to wear a diaper? Or, the diets, like Alli,  that prevent your body from absorbing fat from the foods you eat………..and instead, release that fat through ‘anal leakage’?  Yet another terrific reason to wear Depends.  When my family doctor tried to prescribe Xenical for me, he did warn me about staying close to home for that very reason…………anal leakage is just one of many unpleasant side-effects associated with that ‘diet aid’.

Frankly, I would rather chop off my left leg for a quick 40 lb loss than put myself through one of the Diaper Diets.

But hey, at one time, I’d have sold my SOUL to be slim.

But no matter WHAT Dr. Atkins & Dr. Pritikin recommended,  I STILL wasn’t able to lose weight & keep it off for any length of time.

My husband likes to say that everyone is selling snake oil.  Hmmmmm……snake oil seems to be the ONE thing I never tried for weight loss!

Nowadays, human growth hormones, or HGH, is being touted as THE answer to weight loss.  It’s available in sub-lingual drops or injection form.  Does it matter that the dieter may grow to be a giant? At least she will be a THIN giant, right?

For those dieters who want to PREVENT themselves from being ABLE to eat, there is gastric bypass surgery available, stomach stapling, and lapband surgery.  Back in the 70’s, it was popular to have your jaw WIRED shut.  A friend of mine had that procedure……….and I found it amazing to see how many calories she could suck down through the little straw that she conveniently slipped through the wires. Chocolate milkshakes went down quite smoothly as it turned out.

Another friend of mine had the gastric bypass surgery. Now, she is ‘unable’ to eat any healthy foods like vegetables or fruit, because they’re too high in roughage…………and she’s ‘forced’ to eat only sugary foods to keep up her strength.

  She is suffering  from malnutrition thanks to her new diet plan, AND she’s gained back ½ of what she’s lost. So far. The other half is waiting in the wings to make an encore appearance.

So, 40 years after going on my first diet, what have I learned?

That there IS no magic diet out there; there IS no pill to fix what ails me, it’s pretty much ALL snake oil and no, snake oil does NOT melt fat away……………….

Sigh.

So, I hope I can save you a ton of time, a ton of headaches, a ton of money & a ton of embarrassment by letting you in on the secret to permanent weight loss FOREVER:

The secret is really quite simple, as it turns out. Put down your knife & fork & say No Thank You. Avoid the junk food aisles in the grocery store, avoid the fast food drive-thru’s, and jog over to Sunflower Market instead.  Keep your nose OUT of the magazines that tell you anorexia is desirable, and cut out ALL of the size tags on your jeans. The only place that size really DOES matter is in your bank account.

Love yourself as you are, be kind to yourself no matter WHAT, and stop falling for everything everybody tells you.

Please always remember and never forget, it’s ALL a crock of cabbage soup in the end.

In Our House, It’s My Husband Who Wears The Skirt

Even though I married my husband because he’s an Italian Stallion, he’s more in touch with his Scottish roots these days than his Italian ones.

Personally, I think he’s identifying so strongly with his Scottish heritage because he likes to play dress up & wear skirts.

The Scottish may call them Kilts, but I call them skirts.

I must say, however, that at 53 years old, he strikes a handsome pose when he’s all decked out in his tartans, complete with a felt beret topped with a bright red pom-pom & checkered ribbon cocked off to one side.  That ribbon kind of reminds me of his crooked, cocky little smile…..

In a cruel twist of fate, he’s somehow managed to rope a couple of his kids into the Scottish fanfare as well, namely, his 24 year old son who recently married his childhood sweetheart in a beautiful  outdoor ceremony in Licking, Missouri.  Father & son both dressed up in full Scottish garb, despite temperatures of 100 degrees with 95% humidity, and neither of them cared a bit that 100% wool, plaid tartans & overcoats would probably cause them heat-stroke in the stifling weather conditions.  When they posed together for photos, the wedding guests hadn’t a clue they were both wearing ice-vests underneath all that high-fashion kilt-wear….the strange  protrusions just looked like a beer-bellies.  And they say women fuss? Oh, by the way, in full Scottish tradition, nothing is worn underneath the skirts so it’s kind of like built in air-conditioning! J

At home here in Colorado, my husband pitches a huge  tent at the local Scottish festivals which take place a half-dozen times a year, in the area parks & fairgrounds.  His new passion in life is finding ‘treasures’ for his tent, which we shop for at garage sales every Saturday in season.  The vast majority of our 2-car garage is devoted to these ‘treasures’, as well as most of a kitchen cupboard.

The man does not drink alcohol & neither do I. Yet, he is obsessed with collecting different types of Scotch & glassware to offer a little nip to the visitors who come by his tent.  The everyday drinking glasses in my kitchen cabinet have now been crowded out by shot glasses.  Even though Scotch is not served in shot-glasses, my dear husband collects them anyway.

Does it matter that I can barely squeeze my car into the overcrowded, overstuffed-with-Scottish-tent paraphernalia, 2-car garage?  Soon he’s going to need a U-Haul-It trailer just to transport the enormous load of ‘treasure’ to these festivals.

Hey, maybe he can find that U-Haul-It trailer at a garage sale! Sooner or later, if it exists or has been invented, you can & will find it at a garage sale. It’s the law.

He’s managed to find everything else at the GS Boutique, that’s for sure.  And what he doesn’t find at the GS Boutique he finds at the GW Boutique.  That’s Goodwill for those who aren’t ‘in the know.’

Currently, my darling husband owns approximately 16 fancy, cut-crystal wine decanters which house the various types of Scotch he purchases.  How does a person transport 16 delicate, cut-crystal wine decanters to a festival one may wonder?

In hard-plastic Pelican cases, of course, how else?  So we also shop for special boxes to house the lovely crystal wine decanters that are a real necessity for the Clan-Douglas tent.  The 2-thousand shot glasses also require their own special, custom-made homes lest they crack or shatter en route to the festivities.  The most recent $5, custom-home purchase is a Rubbermaid Christmas ornament box, complete with cardboard separators to keep the contents safe from breakage. Of course, since the compartments are intended for large Christmas ornaments, they are way too large to house shot-glasses.  The good news is that dear hubby is planning to rig something up…….eventually.

The best laid plans of Mice & Men………

The Christmas ornament carrier is resting comfortably in the overstuffed garage along with the broken sewing box that needs repair, the vacuum that ‘just’ needs a new electrical wire, the brass lamp that ‘only’ needs a new switch, the various drapery rods that need ‘adjustment’ before they can house the various Scottish flags for display in the tent, the particle-board lumber that is to become something ‘useful’…for the tent, naturally, with the help of some of the 1,592 tools he’s collected over the years from the GS & GW Boutiques.

Sigh.

What good are all those tools if they aren’t used to fix broken things around the house?

If I didn’t love the man so much, I’d load up a U-Haul-It & drive all those ‘treasures’ to the local dump myself!

Did I tell you about his extensive collection of brooches which he displays, in the tent, on a large swatch of red & green tartan? They are all women’s brooches, but he will insist they are uni-sex…appropriate for men or women, even though I cannot recall ever seeing a man sporting a gaudy, marcasite pin with a large faux-pearl in the center….except maybe once, at a costume shop on Broadway, where a guy & his ‘significant other’ were shopping for women’s  evening dresses, sincerely hoping they’d find  some to-die-for, matching  shoes in a 13 extra-wide….

“Sell those pins at the festivals,” I tell him. “Good idea,” he tells me, flashing me his crooked little smile, and we both know full well he has NO intention whatsoever of parting with his loot.  One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, or so they say, it’s just too bad he buys all the other man’s trash!

I think there’s a new TV show on these days called Hoarders, isn’t there?

We have an ongoing argument over who’s pins are who’s…..mine are stored in a special drawer in the bedroom, but every time I go looking for one, it seems to ‘mysteriously’ have gone missing.

Currently, 6 coolers, in varying sizes, reside in the garage along with the rest of the tent crapola.  I still have no idea why he needs that many coolers. Yes, he’s a big man; yes, he is a thirsty man, and yes, he is a very hungry man as well. But how many water bottles, sandwiches, & bags of ice are necessary for one human being, I wonder?

I may suggest he use a few of those coolers to house his glass collection! That would kill two birds with one stone, come to think of it.  And it would free up some extra cash that would be otherwise spent on unnecessary housing units for glassware and free it up for the incredibly necessary items I enjoy purchasing at the GS Boutique………..

Jewelry, clothing, shoes, purses & lots of cute & adorable little accessories!

See…..I have an intimate understanding of what’s important in life, and, even better, I have 95% of the huge walk-in closet in our bedroom! He may be crowding me out of the garage, but I am crowding him out of the closet! But, I have given him 24 inches worth of closet-space for his various garment bags filled with Scottish clothing, which I think is very fair & even generous.

Hmmm…..now, who was it that said women can’t wear the pants in the house?

Aging With Grace?

I’m not sure that I’m aging with ‘grace’……….but I’m definitely aging with humor.  If I can’t laugh at what gravity has done to my body, then surely I will cry instead.

I wonder which is worse: the ravages of gravity on the body or the ravages of time on the mind?

I guess the body damage is worse because it’s visibly evident to me as well as to others.  The mind damage isn’t immediately apparent at least, and that’s something to be grateful for, huh?

My eyesight has taken a leave of absence these days.  I wear bifocal contact lenses & I still had to use a magnifying glass this morning to read the color on my lipstick tube.

When I look in my 4X magnifying mirror at my face, I can feel a piercing scream building up in my throat.  Who in his right mind would buy a 4X magnifying mirror to actually view her FACE in?  One who would prefer NOT to have a unibrow & has to see the hairs that need to be plucked out I suppose.

I don’t just have a crow’s foot or two on either side of my eyes, my 4X magnifying mirror informs me I have a whole MURDER of them.

So, I finally decided to go through with Lasik surgery on my eyes a few weeks ago.  Sadly, now I can see how old I've actually gotten.

Sigh.

After losing 100 lbs, to say I have even more loose skin than the average 54 year old woman would be an understatement.  My upper arms, or Batwings as I not-so-lovingly call them, take flight on their own these days.

I started going gray at 28 years old and if you’d like to know why, you’ll have to read my  blog about my first-born child entitled Who Was the LIAR That Said Motherhood Is Fun?  So I’ve used L’Oreal Preference for the past 26 years because, hey, I’m Worth It and redheads DO have more fun than blondes.  At first, I would pluck out my gray hairs as they showed up, one at a time.  Not too long after starting that little habit, I noticed I was going bald.  That’s when 5MB made its debut into my life and hair color has been a monthly practice ever since.

Another sign of my advancing age is my body temperature, which fluctuates even more than the stock market these days.  I lie down in bed and get all comfy under the covers.  Within 2 minutes, I’m sweating bullets and throwing the covers off of my damp body.  I get up to put the overhead fan on……..the one my husband calls Hurricane Christine. I lie back down in bed and sign with relief………Ah……..that’s better!  Within 2 minutes, I’m freezing to death and yanking the covers up over my shivering body.  My teeth stop chattering the moment my poor body is hit with a hot flash.  My hair is slicked down to my scalp within a few minutes, saturated with perspiration from the 14 hot flashes that followed the first teaser.  I look over at my husband peacefully snoring away and I honestly feel like strangling him.

Obviously, God put women on the earth to suffer and men to live comfortably without night sweats, hot flashes, menopause, Aunt Flo and cramps, childbirth, C-Sections and episiotomies, swollen-with-milk-and-tender-as-hell breasts, hormones, PMS, or violent mood swings that may or may not be associated with PMSD which should NOT be confused with PMS.  They don’t have to worry about which birth control device may or may not kill them, disfigure their babies, or prevent them from HAVING babies, period.

Sorry for getting a bit carried away there folks…………….

So, aside from hot flashes, night sweats & waking up every 90 minutes due to fluctuating body temperatures, I sleep like a baby.  Thank goodness old age hasn’t affected THAT part of my life, huh?

UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Another sign of my advancing age is my need for a bra that lifts and manages to hold UP the girls.  If they were left on their own, they’d be grazing my ankles these days so Playtex, I’m giving YOU a run for your money.  You haven’t managed to invent the ‘right’ bra to do the job it promises.  And, if you have, I have NOT managed to find it, in spite of trying on 1,232 models at 17 different stores over the past few months.

For some aging problems, apparently there IS no ‘answer.’

Take, for instance, my memory, or lack of memory is more like it.  Have I told you about all the trouble I’ve had finding a bra to do the serious job I need it TO do?

Oh. Oops.

It’s just my short term memory that requires me to purchase a case of Post-It notes every month.  If it wasn’t for those little yellow stickies, I’d forget my own phone numbers …..all 3 of them.

Sigh.

But getting old is not all misery and forgetfulness.  In the midst of all the nuisances, there is a whole lot more freedom.  Freedom from trying to look perfect, wisdom from all the years of built up scar tissue from making so many mistakes, grown children who no longer Hoover the very life out of me, and no worries about feminine pads, PMS, or which birth control will actually BE effective this month.  I’d like to think I’ve earned every wrinkle on my face, and that each one represents another bit of knowledge and understanding.

Yes, it’s great to be 20, but 54 ain’t so bad either.  If I could go back in time to recapture my youth, I’m not sure I would.  After all, if youth is wasted on the young, then old age should be appreciated by the rest of us! I think I’ll stay right where I am, wrinkles & all!

High School Home Economics.....…A Thing of the Past

When I was in High School back in the 1970’s, we were required to take Home Economics.  We didn’t have a choice; it wasn’t an elective….it was a necessity.  And with good reason.

In Home Ec, whether we felt like it or not, we learned the basics of running  a home; cooking, sewing, you know…domestic engineering.

Nowadays, very few women are domestic goddesses. Heck, nowadays, very few humans are even able to navigate the most basic elements of a kitchen or laundry room!

Take the stove for instance. Some folks don’t even know how to operate one.  What with microwaves being so convenient, why would a person ever need to use an oven?

Well, to cook a Thanksgiving turkey would be one reason.  Microwaving Thanksgiving dinner just wouldn’t be the same as slaving over a red-hot stove for 3 days prior to the big event. Nuking up some Ramen noodles instead of baking yams covered in marshmallows & pineapple wouldn’t feel right.  Holidays should be infused with the wonderful aromas of baking, not the odd scents coming from frozen & plastic wrapped trays being nuked for 2.5 minutes before rotating half a turn & being left to stand, covered, for 2-3 minutes before serving.

My son’s girlfriend had an unfortunate run-in with some new fangled kitchen contraption she’d never seen before: a gas stove.

When she opened the bottom ‘drawer’ of said stove & saw some Tupperware plastic bowls residing there, it never occurred to her to remove them before turning the temperature to 425.  Within 30 seconds, all that plastic caught fire & covered the entire house in black soot & toxic fumes. 

The ‘drawer’ turned out to be a broiler. Had she taken Home Ec in High School, like I did, she probably would have known that, huh?

$2,000.00 & 4 days later, the professional crew finished cleaning up the mess from the $10 Tupperware bowls.

These days, we’re more likely to know how to operate a smart phone, a PC, an IPod or a GameBoy than we are a standard kitchen appliance.

My daughter wanted to know what I was doing the other day when I was washing out a bowl in the sink.  I told her I was washing my bowl so the oatmeal wouldn’t dry out & create a cement-like coating which would later require a chisel to remove.  “Mom, Duh, why aren’t you putting that bowl into the Dishwasher?” she asked.  “Well dearest,” I replied, “It appears that I am the ‘dishwasher’ in this house, huh? Besides, I’d still have to rinse the bowl out before I put it into the dishwasher anyway, so why not get ‘er done once instead of twice?”

“What’s that green squishy thing?” she wanted to know.

“You mean the sponge?” I responded.

Then there’s the hand crank can-opener I was using to open a can of tuna fish yesterday.  My son looked at me like I had 3 heads. 

“Where is the electric can opener Ma?” he demanded to know.

“Under the stove…..you know…..that contraption designed to house Tupperware?” I said with a tone of sarcasm he’d have to be tone-deaf not to have heard.

Not everything requires a specialized gadget, does it? Must I use a $675 Kitchen-Aid Stainless Steel Electric Mixer to scramble an egg? Or a $250 Italian Pannini Machine to make a grilled cheese sandwich? Won’t the $5 Teflon frying pan do the exact same thing?  All I need is a coffee mug to press the bread down for petesake.  And a $3 knife can easily replace another $500 worth of useless kitchen gadgets, when you think about it.

I caught my daughter using Velcro to ‘hem’ up her jeans the other day.  What?  Who has the time or the know-how to thread a needle anyway? 

The ironing board is a near-relic, hiding out in the garage next to one of the deep-freezers my husband has purchased over the past couple of years.  2 stand up models & 1 deep meat locker is a necessity for a  4-person household, isn’t it?  Yes, if one’s nephew is the HR director for Swift Premium & happens to get ‘good deals’ on large quantities of meat.

When I opened the stand up model this morning, a 75 lb side of beef came tumbling out & shattered a 3 foot square of cement on the floor of the garage.  I wonder how much the repairs for that will cost?.But hey, that side of beef was such a steal!

But I digress. I was talking about the ironing board relic before I got sidetracked by the dead-but-frozen-cow story.

In my house, the ironing board is used for craft projects so the kitchen table doesn’t get covered in Elmer’s glue, staples or magic markers.  Because let’s face it, nobody in my house irons.  There are dry cleaner’s to do that little chore, after all.  Even I have retired the Steam Iron to the junkpile in the garage in favor of a Conair stand-up clothes steamer I bought for $5 at a garage sale! When I was a kid, I remember my grandma Anna-May-Her-Soul-Rest-In-Peace did all the ironing in the household.  Sheets, towels, washcloths, tablecloths, absolutely everything we owned was ironed. For some reason, she would BANG that iron down on the fabrics, over & over again. I have no idea why she did that…….perhaps she was taking her hostilities out that way.

Nowadays, we want to streamline our lives….find a shortcut to do everything in a timely, efficient manner. Which means take-out, send-out, order-out or go out.

We hire a cleaning service to dust, vacuum & mop, we hire dry-cleaners to launder our clothing, we get in line at restaurants to pick up take-out food for dinner, or we drive our cars through McDonald’s for a few sacks of burgers to feed the family.  Yet, for some reason, we still feel the need to over-complicate our lives with specialty gadgets.

How such a thing makes one iota of sense I’ll never know.

My son’s new girlfriend is quite handy around the kitchen, fortunately, so I don’t imagine we’ll have a repeat performance of the Tupperware Incident any time soon.  

But then again, she's smart enough to use Corning Ware.

Abbondanza: Eating Italian Style

I grew up in a middle-class, Italian Catholic household nestled solidly in the suburbs of Long Island, New York.  In addition to an Italian’s flair for the dramatic, they have an incredible love of food. Some would call it an obsession even.  Abbondanza is the Italian word for abundance or plenty.  In a normal Italian famiglia, there is no such thing as too much food.  And when you’re stuffed to the gills & ready to hurl, a little dessert & an espresso with Annisette was just what you needed to ‘settle your stomach’.  2 Alka-Seltzers & 3 Briosci’s later, you were STILL tasting those speecy-spicy-meat-a-balls that lay like a ton of bricks on a tender & bloated gut. Or maybe I should say, like a pair of ceeee-ment shoooz, eh?

Before we get into the storyline here, a lesson in Slang/Soprano Italian may be in order.

Oobatz: Male crazy person.  Usage: Ay yi yi, that Little Paulie Junior is oobatz for trying to rob that bank.

Aabatz: Female crazy person: Usage: Ay yi yi,  Angelina must be aabatz for hookin up wit dat friggin Little Paulie Junior, eh?

Stunad:  Drunk   Usage: Yo, Little Paulie Junior musta bin stunad when he tried ta rob dat bank, eh?

Jooch:  Big, awkward goon.  Usage: Mamma Mia, whatta  Jooch Little Paulie  Junior is for being stunad enough ta  try an rob dat bank, oobatz.

Goumada:  Girlfriend, generally to a married man.  Usage: Good ting that Goumada Tessie dint know about dat jooch boyfriend of hers Little Paulie Junior bein oobatz enough to try an rob dat bank, eh?

Culo:  Butt. Culone: Big Fat Butt.  Usage: Mamma Mia, dat Goumada Tessie’s got some culone on her, eh?

Agita: Heartburn.  Usage:  Madon, dat macaroni sauce  Goumada Tessie made gave me sum friggin agita.

Skeeve/Skeevy: Disgusting.  Fuhgeddaboutit, I ain’t eatin none a dat sauce Goumada Tessie made, I skeeve it.

Ok, now that we have a basic understanding of Slang Italian 101, we can move onto the story….

Mom was fond of packing me a ‘light’ lunch to bring with me to Catholic elementary school every day. For years I wondered why I was the ONLY kid whose lunch came in a shopping bag. Funny how all the other kids had a PB&J sandwich & an apple while I had a hunk of mozzarella, a chunk of aged Genoa salami, a slice of lasagna (with sausage) in a quart-sized Tupperware container, a tossed salad, 3 figs and 4 Zeppole’s stuffed with cream.  How crazy is that?  Oobatz …..

I earned the nickname of Il Guatalone………..the fat one.  My grandmother, bless her heart, had bestowed that nasty moniker upon me as a young child.  At 4’10” tall and weighing in at 88 lbs, she was one of the dozen ‘small Italian women’ I knew of. The rest of them had the same vertical measurements as they did horizontal……64 inches tall & 64 inches wide.  And they all wore aprons 24/7….even while they slept.  I thought hairnets, rolled nylon stockings & bobby pins stuck into  teeny tin buns atop a woman’s head were fashionable. Who knew?   Aprons were a necessity of life since the kitchen was the hub of the home & where all the action took place. Never a moment went by when there wasn’t a pot of something simmering on the stove. The kitchen was a flurry of sights, sounds and aromas. Tomatoes, garlic, fish, flour flying everywhere, and deep pots of fragrant oil were the norm in our house.  What wasn’t frying was baking, simmering, stewing or marinating. With two Italian women in charge, Ma & Grandma, there was always something to cook, something to peel, or something to chop up to become something else.  If grandma put a cake into the oven, she first made the sign of the cross over it, and then instructed everyone to SHHHHHHHHH, and to walk quietly for the next hour so the cake wouldn't 'fall.'

While most children play with Lego’s and Barbie dolls, I played with lumache……snails.  Mom & I would walk down to the neighborhood fish monger’s shop on Friday afternoons & look around for ‘interesting’ dinner ideas.  The only rule of thumb was that the fish had to be disgusting, slimy, or have tentacles in order to be dinner-worthy.  We’d pick up a few pounds of lumache, some calamari (squid), a pound or so of scungili (conch) & every now & then, some polpo (octopus).  If the creature had tentacles and suction cups, how cool was that? Ma would get out a big pasta pot & fill it with water, placing the live lumache in there to soak.  Up the pot the slimy little buggers would crawl, right up onto my hand, tickling their way up my arm. I thought this was the neatest thing on earth. We bonded, the lumache & I, right up to the time they were thrown into a pan of red-hot olive oil with plenty of garlic & a touch of salt.  As much as I enjoyed their company whilst in the soaking pot, I enjoyed them even more in my mouth. YummO.

I have fond memories of visiting the relatives on the north shore of Long Island, about 40 miles away.  Uncle-Angelo- God-Rest-His-Soul, would take us to the beach to go clamming & fishing in Eaton’s Neck where Goumada Maria & Goombata Benny lived. While the other kids were building castles in the sand, my cousins & I were turning over rocks on the shoreline to see if we could gather enough mollusks for a decent dinner that night. Uncle-Angelo-God-Rest-His-Soul, would pry the tiny slime-balls off of the rocks we’d found, pop them into his mouth & suck the live fishie right out of the shell & chew em up.  How we all didn’t die from salmonella in those days is beyond me.

When Uncle-Angelo-God-Rest-His-Soul caught Porgies (and to this day, I have never again seen or heard of a Porgie….)he’d pluck the eyes out of the head & eat them both in one bite. I think he did that more for shock factor than anything else, but then again, coming from a man who sucks mollusks clean out of their shell, who knows?

The other odd thing Uncle-Angelo-God-Rest-His-Soul would do was drink red wine from a gallon jug that sat next to his plastic covered chair at the head of the dining room table.  He’d mix that cheap red wine with Coke, of all things, and he’d drink glass after glass after glass of that foul concoction.  Yet, never once did I see him stunad.  He’d laugh heartily while eating his catch, and I’d see his gold teeth glinting in the light of the Italianate chandelier dangling from the ceiling.

Christmas was another excuse for a food orgy unlike any other.  Christmas was special.  Christmas celebrated the birth of the baby Jesus & that meant dozens of once-a-year foods that held some sort of significance for Italians everywhere.  My Aunt-Concetta-May-Her-Soul-Rest-In-Peace would spend weeks slaving over the old stove in her kitchen in Brooklyn.  She’d wheel her little push-cart down to the specialty markets all over the neighborhood to pick up all sorts of different foods for the feast.  Uncle Johnny-Boy would arrange a monstrosity of an Antipasto platter to start off the lavish meal. Dad would help him because they were partners in an Italian Deli together which made them experts in the field of vegetables soaked in oil & pickling spices, and all varieties of processed salami’s, cheeses, and lunch meats of all kinds.  The antipasto platter was so enormous, it took both men to carry it to the table. And that was just the start of The Meal.

Then came the lasagna, manicotti, the Pizze Rustica, the Pizze Ran, (both made with pure lard) the braggiole stuffed with hard boiled eggs, and the escarole with l’aglio, the sautéed broccoli-rabe, the string beans with red sauce, the string beans with white sauce, and the finocchio, which is fennel.  After the second course plates were removed, next came the third course fare: rare roast beef, oven roasted potatoes, baked macaroni with 4 cheeses, dinner rolls, a variety of salads & even more vegetables.

After everyone had unzipped  their pants, yanked off their girdles,taken their shoes off and swallowed a few glasses of Brioschi for all the agita, it was time for Dessert. After letting loose with a few humongous burps thanks to the Brioschi, we managed to find a bit more room in our bulging  stomachs. If you didn’t join in on the eating orgy, you were a guastafesta or a gavone: a party-pooper or an embarrassment to the famigilia.

Dessert began & ended with espresso, of course. Ma’s offering was a Casada: a cake that weighs at least 10 lbs & is made in a spring-form pan lined with Lady-Fingers. Then the cream filling is added. This filling contains full-fat ricotta cheese, sugar, pistachio nuts, chocolate chips, liquoer, and heavy cream.  A 1 ounce sliver of Ma’s casada was about all a person could tolerate, even though she’d cut you a 6” slice which would have been plenty to feed the entire table. Then there were the stroffoli…..fried dough balls rolled in honey & covered with sprinkles & candy coated almonds. Not to forget the Bow-Ties, Zeppoles,  cream puffs, assorted Italian cookies, spumoni and tortoni ice-creams. Every place setting had a small box of Torrone as well…..an Italian almond nougat candy that was specially wrapped & placed into a little box. I absolutely loved those little boxes of Torrone and  one day 40-some years later, I found a box at a garage sale!  And, not giving a flying fig how ancient it was, I bought it for old times’ sake.

Growing up Italian means a lot of things, but most of all, it means You Will Get Fat.  If 4 people sit down at the table to share 2 lbs of pasta, 24 meatballs, 16 sausages, 2 loaves of garlic bread & a side of Manicotti with extra ricotta, guess what?

You guessed it.  They get the nickname il guatalone.

Pure starch stuffed with pure fat & swimming in a sea of red sauce, Alfredo sauce, or sometimes, clam sauce, all made with some more, pure fat olive oil and butter, or sometimes lard, and topped off with a lot more pure fat parmesan cheese.  One does not need to be a mathematician to figure out the calorie content of these meals was astronomical.

Sigh.

When I was 12 years old, I was introduced to Weight Watchers meetings for the very first time. Not the LAST time, certainly, but at 12 I was inducted into the ranks of being Fat & Needing a Diet…..This was 1969, remember, and so, the tree huggers & bleeding heart liberals hadn’t yet evolved from the Hippies, Beatniks & Flower children that walked the earth in Peace & Love Man.  So the cruel & inhuman leaders of the Weight Watchers meetings were allowed to make us wear pig masks if we’d happen to gain weight during the week.

Tsk-tsk Miss Piggy, YOU ate TOO MUCH and GAINED 4 OUNCES this week. Shame-shame-on-you, now put ON that PIG MASK & FEEL the agony of defeat you so DESERVE. Yep, me & a bunch of fat, irritable & middle-aged housewives sitting around a room learning how to weigh & measure food correctly.

 What?

So  Minestrone soup wasn’t served in individual tureens? Bread actually came in slices versus loaves?  Come on, give me a break already.  Fuhgeddabouit, diets were obviously meant to be broken, especially on holidays, birthdays, christenings, weddings, anniversaries, Holy Days (all 249 of them),  during sleep-overs, family vacations, visiting the relatives, and certainly while taking long trips to Brooklyn in the car. Oh, and on Sundays, which were macaroni days in my house hold.

Over the course of the next 40 years, I learned all I ever needed to know about cottage cheese, celery stalks, low-fat yoghurt, canned tuna in water, turkey-burgers with no buns, lettuce, diet soda & Special K with 2% milk.

But, no matter how much good-for-you-food knowledge I may have acquired over the years, nothing beats the comfort & pleasure of a big bowl of Ma’s homemade lasagna or better yet, her famous eggplant parmesan.  Quite often, I find myself yearning  for the good old days when scales were only meant to weigh salami, cappicola & provolone instead of BMI’s, and fat-to-muscle ratios.  The old days when the best medicine on earth for what ailed me was unwrapped slowly & lovingly from a special little box of Italian nougat candy called Torrone.