The New Girl

Turns Out, It Does.

The knife makes a nice sound as it goes through the frosting to the bottom and then up the side of the bowl.  A kind of muted Click and Swoop as I scoop some out to dollop onto my Orange Cookies.  It's repetitive and relaxing and I'm calm in the quiet kitchen, working alone, after the kids have gone to bed. Frosting and setting aside each cookie, wondering if the icing sets or not.  I can't remember.  The fleeting urge to call my mother to check flares up a stinging behind my eyes and then vanishes.

The recipe was my great-grandmother's and as far back as I can remember, we had these orange cookies around the holidays.  The recipe card came from one of the two boxes that I brought back from my father's house, when we cleaned it out.  One box was full of my mother's recipes and the other box belonged to my grandmother.  The recipe for the orange cookies was in my mother's handwriting and for whatever reason, it still strikes me as crazy that these things survive, even when she does not.  There it is, though.  Her writing.  As familiar to me as the sight of her making some of the recipes that are now in my possession.

This year I have both boxes of recipes and I've decided to bake the cookies of my growing up years.  I rooted around in my gram's recipes and found the recipe for the Magic Cookie Bars that she made.  I layered the ingredients for her specific recipe and I thought about her.  I thought about how many times she'd used the stained, faded card.  How many times she'd done exactly as I did.  How things always change and nothing stays the same and how, as I'm baking now, off the exact card she used--we are still connected.  Through the years, through the baking, through the ether.

In my experience, it is the women of a family who weave the tapestry of memory and history.  It is the lineage of the women in my family who are the carriers of the knowledge of nurturing.  My great-grandmother died the year I got married when she was 95.  A few years after that, my grandmother developed dementia.  A few years after that, my mother died.  While my grandmother was still alive, she could no longer follow a simple recipe.  She died a couple years after my mother.  For so many years I had so many people to call for advice.  Women whose job it was to know and remember.  Women who crocheted the blankets and fixed the broken angel's wings and baked the cookies.  Women who knew if the damned icing sets or not.

They're all gone.  In a few short years, I lost them all.

Now, the women of my line start with me.  It's a big responsibility, in a way.  A little scary and a little lonely and more than a little sad, especially around the holidays.  The Sister and I are forging ahead, making new traditions for our children.  I'm doing my best to document what's happening now, in case my kids don't think to ask questions about themselves, about their childhoods until it's too late.

About the icing--there's no one to call. 

So, I'll just have to wait and see if it sets. 

 

 

I Should Just Title This Post: Can't Skate On Any Of These Ponds Cause These Bitches Ain't Frozen Yet. Or, Alternately: If You Follow Me On Twitter, You Prolly Know All This Shit Already.

I feel wrung out. 

Like over the past two weeks, I've been full to bursting and then squeezed empty and then refilled and then squeezed again.  It's hard to imagine that only a short time ago, I was in NYC, staying at the Hilton and communing with some of the funniest, smartest, prettiest women (plus, like, two guys) on the planet.  There were lots of highlights for me, too many to link when I'm feeling so bleary-eyed and do you really want to read The Internet's Most-Delayed BlogHer Recap?  Honestly, in Internet Time, BlogHer was like, 10 years ago. So, it's like I'm sitting behind my word-processor, suited up in my Member's Only jacket, writing about something that happened before you were BORN.

I'll say that I got to see so many of my good friends and introduce myself and express my [writer's crushes] genuine affection for the work of most everyone on my 'I want to meet them and gush about their work' list.  I got to talk about things that really matter with a few awesome women.  I got to meet lots of people that I have wanted to meet. Plus, if you follow me on Twitter, you undoubtedly saw the CUPCAKE that I got to eat because I CRASHED the birthday celebration of a very sweet, tutu-making maven.

Of course there are 70 quadrillion people that I forgot to link and so, just know if it was you I forgot to link, I already understand that I suck. Prophylactically. 

And, if you are the ball-less motherfucker who stole the bag I got for [air-quote] running [air-quote] the Tutus-for-Tanner 5K? You know, the one with the autographed, sure-it's-awesome Dread Crew in it? YOU CAN SUCK IT. (I hope you liked the book, though, even though it WASN'T ADDRESSED TO YOU.)

Anyway.

I got home and it was official that The Boy was weaned.  Fully weaned at 10.5 months.  Hard to describe how I feel about it, really.  The fact that I went without nursing for 4 days and never ONCE leaked or felt full/tingly led me to believe that he hadn't been getting that much anyway.  My production was a challenge for months and months and man.  I really just don't want to totally get into it.

A couple days later, I had to turn around and leave my kids for ANOTHER four days to go to my childhood home to pack up my dad's stuff and move him close to The Little Sister and I.  It's hard for me to articulate what that experience was like but I'm sure that you can imagine it.  On Twitter I posted all the reeeeediculous things that we unearthed there (plus, the world's WORST EVER wallpaper which NO ONE commented on because by the time it made an appearance, they were all immersed in the crazy and didn't EVEN NOTICE,) partly because it was funny as hell and partly because I deal with the not-funny by turning it into the funny.

Then I came back to two kids who were crazy out of their minds, testing like motherfuckers, trying to adjust to Mommy being away-coming back-being away. Not to mention that they both had some bug that manifested in horrible napalm-poo explosions of the 'Requires A Morning Bath' kind.  When those cleared up, there came a baby who refused to sleep at all (AT ALL!) confusing the shit out of us before it became apparent that he was suffering from a cold, that he gave to his sister.

So, I had my first Total-Without-Sleep night since my son was 2 months old.  It was as sucky as I remember.

Anyway. So, now you're caught up.

Geezuz.

What's new with you?

The Reason I Never Say Never Anymore.

We laid on our sides on her bed. Me, curled in a ball with him curled around, enfolding me.  We laid on her bed while she lay in another bed, dying in a hospital 8 miles away.  I heaved body-racking sobs while he held me, his strong, steady support the only thing keeping me tethered to the Earth, or so it seemed. It felt like gravity had given up on me. 

I remember saying over and over, 'I don't want to do this. I just don't want to do this.' I meant, of course, that I didn't want to go through what was coming. I wanted, in the most desperate way, to go around it. To wish it away. To wake up and find it had all been a dream. You know, a bad dream. One that leaves you feeling weird, even over your morning tea. Any bad dream would be better than waking up, again, to find your reality altering itself so horribly. To find that a new normal is unfolding and there's no way to stop it.  A new normal that's not going to include your mother.

I didn't want to watch my mother die. I didn't want to sit at the funeral home and hear people's condolences. I didn't want to go to her funeral.

There are a lot of things that I thought I knew about myself before my mom got sick.  Before accompanying her to the precipice, knowing that she was going to go sailing off into the abyss and that I would be left alone on the edge, little rocks crumbling at my feet.  Crumbling and falling in along with her, while I stood watch.  While I witnessed and wavered there. Swaying a little. Woozy from the loss.

I knew, for instance, that I would never, ever be able to touch a dead person.  Having attended countless funeral home viewings, watching people lovingly caress their dead, I was certain that the small beads of cold revulsion in my belly would prevent me from making physical contact with a corpse.  No matter who it was.

Responding to my sister's 11:30pm The-End-Is-Near summons, I rounded the corner on my way to the hospital room and the nurse said, 'I'm sorry.' I knew my mother was gone.  But there she was, right on the bed.  Her body was cool. Not cold.  Cool in an unnatural way.  The way that passes heart-collapsing information right through your fingertips, up your spine and into the back door of your brain.  I touched her again in the casket.  I stroked her hair, her hands.  I gave not one moment of thought to any onlookers' cold beads of revulsion.  Because she was my mother. I knew her. Knew her. The way that her cheek felt against mine when we hugged, the way her hands looked when they were covered with flour from baking, the sound of her laugh, the vaccination scar on her arm and the birthmark under her eye.

I simply didn't think about it until later.  About how I surprised myself.

I surprised myself over and over and over. 

Knowing yourself, not just *thinking* you know yourself, but really knowing yourself requires examination and insight and observation of your life, of your behaviors.  I've lived an examined life, to be sure (the therapy bills say so, anyway) and being that it's a priority for me, I know myself pretty well. I have to say, though, that it was interesting, refreshing, even, to surprise myself.  To see what behaviors, what responses, what experiences expressed themselves, without my full awareness.  And thinking about that, talking about that, gave me a comfortable place in my head to process the overwhelming and sometimes terrible reality.

In a weird way, it's not so much different from ushering a baby into the world, this ushering a loved one out.  At least that's how it felt to me.  When I walked into the room, despite my mom's physical body lying on the bed, it was incredibly obvious that she was gone.  'Where the fuck did she go?' The Little Sister and I asked each other.

Two years later, when I watched The Nephew come into the world, a brand new person, materializing out of nowhere, we asked each other, 'Who is that?  Where did he come from?'

And The Little Sister would, every so often, look at him and ask him this:

'Are you my mother?'

Blurry. And Stuck.

When the phone rang and the caller ID said that it was my father's number, I picked up right away. He almost never calls me and it seems whenever he does, there's something wrong.

"Hey Dad," I said.

He said my name and my heart picked up its pace.  The tension in his voice was obvious. It sounded like it did the time he called to tell me that my mother was in the ICU on dialysis.  

"What's going on?" I asked, "How are you?"

"Not too good," he responded, "I had a mini-stroke."

The words took a second to sink in and so, because he'd continued to talk, I was trying to get the pieces of the story to fit together, like some kind of three dimensional, floating in mid-air, puzzle.

Two days ago, he'd woken up to find his vision blurred.

Did he say two days ago? Two? DAYS ago?

He was seeing double of everything. When he went to the mall to walk, the floor looked slanted.

He went to the mall to walk when he couldn't see right?

He called the doctor and they sent him to Dr. S and he diagnosed a mini-stroke and said that there wasn't much they could do.

Isn't it important to see if he has blockages? Aren't there tests that have to be done? Why did they send him to an Opthamologist?

"How did you get to the doctor's dad? Did you drive yourself?"

"Yeah. And it was hard to get there, too. It was hard to drive."

Oh my god. Oh my god. I'm not ready for this.

Eventually, from what I could gather, my dad's doctor is going to do a complete physical work up, but there is little in the way of treatment for the mild stroke.  It should get better on its own and in the meantime, he's talking about getting a patch to cover one eye, as that fixes the blurred vision.

It is hard to separate how I feel about my dad's health complications from how I feel, generally, about our situation as a family.  And that is hard to separate from how I feel about my family without my mother in it. 

My mother was the glue that stuck my father to the world, socially speaking.  My father went to work and worked hard and came home and worked around the house and that was basically it, until he retired and started to make wine for a hobby.  My dad never socialized with his coworkers.  He doesn't have any buddies.  He has no pastimes and nowhere to be or go, in a social sense.  He owns apartments, for which he does all the maintenance and upkeep and that functions, now, as his work. And his hobby.  Right after my mother died, he joined an Over-50 Singles Group.  He had a couple girlfriends and, I think, became somewhat disenchanted.  I don't know. We don't really discuss much. 

He is a remarkable man, my father.  He has done remarkable things. Truly remarkable.  I may have written all about this somewhere else, but I can't find it.  My dad grew up in Italy, where he lived through World War II and watching his friend get blown up by an old landmine.  Where he tended sheep and found his father, a master carpenter, dead in the wood shop when he was only three years old.  He was 16 when he came to this country.  He spoke no English.  He had $50 in his pocket.  He lived with his aunt in a two room apartment that had no furniture.  He took two jobs and went to high school and made his own luck and mine too.  He worked as a builder, a bowling alley manager, a steel worker.  He built the house in which I grew up and the apartments that remain a source of income for him now.  He planted and grew and tended and cleaned and organized and fixed and built and and and and. 

But he is shy and socially anxious.  He feels out of place and inferior and undereducated, sometimes, I think.  He is closed and difficult to read.  He worked and worked and worked and saved and saved and sacrificed to make a better life for my sister and I and for that I am deeply and utterly and completely grateful. 

One of the things I dreaded after my mom died, was that my father wouldn't be able to care for himself.  To my knowledge he'd never, ever stood in front of a stove (unless he was fixing it,) or went grocery shopping, or clothes shopping or made his own doctor's appointments or gotten his own medicine from the pharmacy, or used a computer or a credit card or a cell phone. You get the idea?  Much to my surprise, he did well.  He made his own appointments.  He learned to use my mother's cell phone and how to order his meds online.  He learned how to cook things and figured out the need to carefully read packages, lest you come home with tuna in OIL vs. tuna in water.  He's been doing all right.  Nevertheless, the little sister and I want him, need him, to move closer.  We've talked, cajoled, pressured, persisted, and haunted to no avail.

He is as stubborn as an Old-Country Goat.

Which has been more or less fine with me.  Truthfully, I haven't been in any hurry to sell the family home or uproot him.  I know that he's afraid and that letting go of the house and his apartments, somewhere in his mind, is tantamount to being dependent and giving up all that he worked for (my father is financially solvent and will probably die with a vast sum left over--amazing if you think about that measly 50 bucks.)

But with this latest? Ahhh, shit.

I'm a goer. A doer.  A fixer.  An I'll-be-right-there-even-if-I-have-to-drive-all-night-helper.  Knowing that the roots that I've laid down here are so deep and right this minute, don't have any give, knowing that I can't just go when he needs me...it's so, so hard.  I can't adequately express how helpless, how hamstrung, how stuck I feel. 

I know, though, that he's an adult.  He's living the life that he wants to live.  I respect that.  But also knowing how much easier his life could be, here with us, surrounded by grandchildren and willing, hardworking, sons-in-law, and the smell of food cooking for him, made with love by someone else, well, that makes me want to shake the shit out of him.

And then there's this: I read that up to 20% of people who have mini-strokes go on to have a major stroke within 90 days.

To me, it feels as if somewhere, a silent, invisible, count-down clock just started.

Tomorrow.

You know, I've tried to write this post about five times. It goes like this:

I write.

I read.

I hate.

I delete.

Then, I feel frustrated and blocked and I walk away.  As is my custom, I have lots to say. There are lots of posts in the queue behind this one.  Seems like they can't get by.  This one has to get its ass out of the way.  Did you ever have that feeling?

So, I'm up at five o'clock in the AM, VOLUNTARILY for fuck's sake (everyone! is sleeping! but me!) and here I sit, trying to tell you what's going on in my head.  Maybe trying to explain it to myself.

Tomorrow is my mother's birthday.

It [snuck] sneaked up on me this year.

I wish that her birthday was at another time of year, maybe.  But as it is, it is the kickoff for the Season of Dark.  It marks the beginning of the end for her.  And for us. 

Five years ago, The Little Sister and I went to see her for a surprise Birthday Visit.  It was highly unusual and she was super excited.  During our time home, she complained of back pain, thinking that she pulled a muscle in her water aerobics class.  She felt good otherwise, though, and we had a great visit.  She was upbeat and happy for the most part.

But the retrospect is hard to get over, see.  As grateful as I am that we were there, that we got to celebrate what turned out to be her last birthday, it's so difficult to shake the realization that she had already begun the process of dying and none of us knew it.

The pain in her back, treated with muscle relaxers and some physical therapy, turned out to be small cell lung cancer that had spread to her spine.  The weight loss that she attributed to faithfulness to the gym was also probably partially due to cancer. (BTW, FYI, PSA: not a great form of weight control no matter how effective.) I have gone over and over and over those last few days that we spent together, finding and remembering 'clues' that no one picked up.

Soon after I got home, the process started in earnest.  Things began unfolding rapidly and she was hospitalized, still without awareness of the thing that was going so terribly wrong in her body.  The next time I saw her, she was hospitalized and psychotic from kidney failure.  And as a lot of you know (or could guess) it went rapidly downhill from there. 

It's not that I would have wanted to know any earlier but thinking back to that visit is like watching a movie.  A movie in which the main character is blithely enjoying herself while you, the viewer, know that the car accident or the man around the corner with a knife or the earthquake or the shipwreck is coming.

So, I'm kinda wishing that her birthday was in August, is what I'm saying.  Wishing that it wasn't so directly connected to the sick and dying time.  I'm wishing, too, that there wasn't such a memorable beginning of the Season of Dark. 

I'm thinking that the memory of my own shipwreck may be more easily set on a current if it wasn't attached to such a huge fucking anchor.

Patterns.

She opened her drawer and threw the green blanket out, searching.  "I don't want this one," she said, 'I want...I want...I want the..."  I knew what she wanted.

"You want the one that Grandma Karen made?" I asked.

"Yeah."

I opened the drawer and pulled out the soft, white, crocheted baby blanket.  One of the million that my mother made in anticipation of future grandchildren.  She gave them away.  This particular one, I'd given to a co-worker who adopted a daughter about 5 years ago.  After my mother died, The Little Sister and I found extra, un-gifted blankets stored in a container.  We were relieved that we would have some but I needn't have worried.  Several of the blankets I'd given my friends were gifted back to me after my loss.

Reaching for the blanket, my girl asked, "She was your friend?" still trying to figure it out.

"No," I answered, she was my Mommy."

**************

My mother, her mother and her mother all were skilled crocheters.  None of them, to my knowledge, liked to knit, but each of them had crochet supplies next to her living room chair, stretching back to my earliest memories.  My great-grandmother and my mother each crocheted until the very end of their lives.  My grandmother stopped when she could no longer manage the task.

In the summer time, my mother would crochet dishcloths and other small items, so as not to overheat from a big blanket laid across her lap.  I can remember her trying new patterns and stitches and yarns, again, for as far back as I can remember anything.

**************

My great-grandmother (a stubborn, proud, German woman) lived alone, in a neighborhood that decayed around her, until she was 93 years old.  Then she fell and broke her hip. Twice. That got her a one-way ticket to a nursing care facility.  Having vowed, solemnly, to leave her house 'feet first,' she spat nails at having to move and lose her independence. Initially, she was bitter and angry, venting all of her spleen onto my gram.

Within a relatively short period, though, she adjusted. She started crocheting. One time on a visit, I asked her what she was making.  Still whip-crack sharp, she lowered her voice, so as not to offend, and then answered me, waving her hand around for illustrative effect:

"I'm making lap blankets for all the old women here.' 

I don't think that she was including herself in that group, mind, but was almost certainly referring (easily) to her 75 year old roommate.

*****************

When my mother was admitted to the hospital, she was in acute kidney failure.  The toxins had backed up into her system and she was floridly psychotic.  As in: Paranoid and Delusional.  We didn't know any of that before we arrived to see her in the ICU and so, when The Little Sister and I got to the hospital after our 7 hour drive, it took me a few minutes to determine that the crazy shit that she was talking about was, uh, literally Crazy Shit.

I had to explain to TLS that they really WEREN'T making a movie (a training video?) on the unit in the middle of the night and that the guy who played The Pretender (or maybe the REAL Pretender) WASN'T on the unit, either, and the nurse WASN'T a stand-in for Marcy D'Arcy from Married With Children (although she certainly WAS a bitch.)  To be fair, The Little Sister is quicker on the uptake than all that, but it's a disorienting thing to see your normally very-lucid mother all crazified without the benefits of heavy narcotics or what have you.

Before we left the unit, my mother had a request (which she made about 17 times):

"When you come tomorrow, bring me the crochet bag by my chair with the WHITE YARN.  Not the off-white. The WHITE."  She put her hand out, palm down, and moved it toward me in time, "The whi-i-i-ITE."

I looked at the tubes and the machines and the crazy and said:

"Sure, all right, will do," knowing for sure that she'd forget by the next morning.

When we arrived the next morning, the very first words out of her mouth were asking for her crochet stuff.

"Oh, man! I forgot!" I said (IN-CRED-U-LO-OH-OUS.)

"Honey," she said, her tone--disgusted--"I ASKED you to bring it."

*************

The Littlest New Girl likes to be covered a certain way with that blanket.  Around her shoulders and covering her legs, all the way to the toes.  She gets frustrated if she can't get it right.  I help and explain that it's small and may not fit exactly the way she wants.

"It's small?"

"Yes, it's small."

[Pause.]

"Your Mommy's not here right now?"

"No, she's not.  But she made this for us."

[Pause.]

"Is she coming home soon?"

.

.

Awkward Introductions.

She watched me from the doorway as I unpacked and put away my jewelry.  She walked into the room, and as per her current usual, was narrating my activities in question form.

'You're putting away your neck-a-less, Mommy?'

And for some reason, I told her.  That, yes, I was putting away the necklace.  The necklace that had once been my mother's.

'This necklace was my Mommy's,' I said.

I don't ever really discuss my mother with my daughter.  I don't have a good explanation for that, in truth.  Other than it has seemed too early.  Like she wouldn't understand.  For the first year and change, I was just trying to make it through with this crazy kid that I have and although she has been naming those in her immediate circle for a long time now, it just didn't seem pressing or natural to insert my mother into the rotation.  And although she would occasionally ask me where my sister's Mommy was (she's met my BIL's mother,) she's never, ever asked me about mine.

But a few months ago, things began to change. She started to become more attuned, she's started to ask more questions, more persistently.  We watched enough of the opening scene of Finding Nemo for me to recall why the movie centers around Nemo and his Dad.  When I saw the Fish With Teeth, I fast forwarded to the next scene, hoping to avoid the obvious and for the Rest Of The Movie, my daughter asked this:

'But where's the Mommy? Where's Nemo's Mommy?'

I dodged the question.  I made up whereabouts.  I didn't want to say the word dead to my two year old. 

After I told her about the necklace belonging to my mother, she asked me this:

'Who is your Mommy?  What's her name?'

'Her name is Grandma Karen.  You've never seen her.  Do you want to see a picture of Grandma Karen?  I have one.'

She said yes and I took the funeral card out of my sock drawer for her to see.  I held it up and she approached it.

'That's your Mommy?'

'Yes.'

'Where is she?'

'She's not here.  But that's her.'

My girl looked at the picture as I studied her expression.  Reflected there was a mixture of wonder and amusement.  An initial glimmer of awareness, perhaps, that I am a seperate entity.  I fell down deep into that moment and for a second I experienced the most surreal juxtaposition.  There, in front of me was my daugther, my darling, whose face I know so well, who is such a huge part of my life as to make up the lion's share of it.  And in my hand, an image of my Mother, my memory, my attachment, my loss, my grief.

Looking at my daughter regarding the grandmother she will never meet, one who would have loved her beyond measure, made my throat close, my eyes sting.  I struggled to keep composure, to arrange my features to reflect only the wistfulness.

But my girl's got a finely tuned meter. 

She sensed the shift in the wind of my mood.  She became unsure, hesitant. She took a step back from the picture and looked at me with a question.  And then she asked it:

'She's not here?'

'No, baby, she's not here.'

And that's when I realized that the reason I avoid talking to my child about my mom isn't because I don't want to explain death, per se.  It's that I don't want to convey the idea, the knowledge, the awareness that Mommies can disappear into the ether.  That they can vanish and be lost and that can leave you feeling set adrift, floating aimlessly.  That sometimes Mommies don't come home ever again.  I know that it's the truth and it's part of life.  I just think she's too young for a bite of that apple right now.

Then I tacked the card up onto my mirror and went to find our wedding pictures.  Because I think the days of her asking questions are here to stay. 

And so, it's time to put Grandma Karen into the rotation.

A Bit Of Family History And Chocolate Oil Cake. Or, A Bunch Of Boring Stuff And A Recipe In Desperate Need Of A Name-Change.

When I was a kid, my mom cooked all the time and also baked quite a bit.  It was only after I left home for college that I truly appreciated her culinary abilities (She could make a DELICIOUS pie crust. From, like, SCRATCH. A feat which seems HERCULEAN to me.)

She used this recipe for chocolate cake that she got from my grandmother, who got it from her mother (who, incidentally, was still alive and making it her own damn self when I was a kid--she lived to be 93 and died the year I got married.) 

Shortly after my great-grandmother died, my grandmother started forgetting things.  It became apparent that it was a problem when she could no longer follow the steps in a recipe for cookies. And five years later, my mother died.

Because so many family traditions reside with the women and the women of my family are no longer, it has been difficult to carry on traditions like that chocolate cake my mom used to make.  My mother's memory was such that she didn't really REQUIRE recipes and the ones that she had were for things like 'Baked Taco Mash' and [shit like that] [stuff that Tess might like] things I don't recall having for dinner.  My grandmother's recipes were intact but reside at my father's house.

To make a long (and somewhat grim, as its turning out) story shorter, The Little Sister and I were left without the recipes to many of our family's traditional baked goods. I have been wanting the recipe for my great-grandmother's cake and I remember that she had called it 'Oil Cake.' (I know. YUM, right? You'll just have to trust a sister that it's DAMN GOOD.)

So, I Googled and came up with one from All Recipes.

CHOCOLATE OIL CAKE

INGREDIENTS:
2 cups white sugar
3 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 cups water
1 cup vegetable oil (I use canola)
2 Tablespoons distilled white vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat oven to 350.

2. In a large bowl mix dry ingredients

3. Add wet ingredients. Beat by hand until smooth.

4. Pour into 9x13 pan. Bake for about 40 minutes.

It is the simplest, easiest cake.  It's also VERY GOOD.  Moist and delicious, with frosting or without.  The name is disturbing, I know.  It's made without dairy or eggs and so, you COULD call it Vegan Chocolate Cake but honestly, that inspires just about as much confidence as oil cake, I think.  But it is the taste I remember from childhood.  The next best thing to a family full of alive women, who still bake.

Kinda.

Just trust.

It's YUMMY. 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Edited to add this:

 

And this:

 

And this:

 

At least she can just check the blog to get the recipe, should she want it when I'm, er, you know.

Big.

During my last pregnancy, I was literally too sick to register the multitude of typical but 'lesser' pregnancy aches and pains as annoyances.  I remember the nausea, the barfing, the reflux and the no-eating with a small side of posterior pelvic pain, which I think I only registered because it felt like someone was impaling me through the ass with every step I took.  Due to the lack of nutrition and severe anemia, I was tired, slow weight-gaining and miserable.  I was also pregnant through fall/winter/spring, giving birth in early summer.

This time around, things are quite different.  I still have consistent digestive *issues* but NOTHING like last time.  I am slowly but steadily gaining weight this pregnancy and I will be pregnant (in my last trimester, gah help me) throughout the summer.  As a result, I am more *tuned in* to the kind of physical discomfort that oft heard tale of the first time around.

Plus, there's this: 

I feel Big.

I feel so big now that, as I enter my third trimester (already!) I am wondering how it's possible that the Biggest three months are still ahead of me.  I have to scoot sideways in bed before I roll myself over and get up.  I have to make room for my belly when I lean forward.  I stand so far away from the sink when washing dishes, that I bend from the waist and rest on my elbows. I lumber upstairs, slowly, and sit down to catch my breath when I get there.  It is wearing on me.

And lest you think that I am [complaining about this] writing this out of concern for my current (or post-partum) waist line, fear not.  I am relatively unconcerned with the actual numbers on the scale or the way I look.  (At least so far.)  The sensation of being Big and the labored, physical maneuvering that I employ to move around conjure for me an all-together different type of discomfort.  It is a re-enactment, very familiar.  For years and years I awkwardly watched that kind of maneuvering, adjusting and compensating from the sidelines. 

It is how my mother lived her everyday life.

My mother was a Big person, in every sense of the word but it was her physical bigness that drew strangers' attention.  As I imagine that it is with obesity in general, I watched as my mother grew out of her individuality and into 'The Fat Lady' in the eyes of strangers.  She became invisible to them.  And then, as she kept gaining into the territory of morbid obesity, there came a (very sharp) point in time when she became visible again.  I can't adequately describe the painfulness of the experience of standing across a crowded restaurant lobby, watching one adult nudge her companion and then nod in the direction of your mother, making a face that should be reserved for the occasion of realizing that you just stepped into a pile of dog shit with your bare foot.  It is one of a hundred painful memories that I don't like to think about.

Watching her struggle with her weight, not just emotionally but also physically took up such an enormous part of my core being that when she died and that died along with her, it left me feeling lighter.  Like I could breathe deeply for the first time in a long time.  Gone was the (unrealized but perseverative) worry that she would be incapacitated and that we wouldn't be able to care for her at home.  Gone were the restrictions, the inconveniences, the awkward situations.  The pain, the awful, chronic, throbbing pain that I felt for her, for us, when we were together.  And although it was and still is desperately hard to let go of my mother, letting go of all of that other stuff proved a much easier task.

*Poof*

Gone.

I believe that my mother's issues and struggles with her weight (which were a portion of the sum of her issues and struggles in general) affected me and my attitudes and ideas from the earliest possible time.  I could probably write a memoir.  If I actually liked to remember this shit.  Maybe one day.  But not now.  I've worked through a lot and like I said, letting it go wasn't all that hard.

Until now.

Now, I have these unbidden and uninvited images flashing from wherever it is that I stuffed them, right on into my consciousness.  An unforeseen side effect of pregnancy.

Like the posterior pelvic pain isn't enough.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Guys, I'm turning off the comments because it's all too...I don't know.  Full of awk and ick.  If you are so inclined, you are welcome to email me...I don't mind hearing what you have to say or having a discussion about it, I just don't want you to feel obligated to say something here, in the comments.

Grab Bag. Or, A Nice Way To Say 'A Bunch Of Random Crap.'

* Today is the 4th anniversary of my mom's death.  She died at 11:30 at night and I am hoping to sleep through the actual MOMENTS.  It hasn't been as present on my mind today as it has been over the last week or so but this weird-ass memory keeps popping into my head.  I have an ASSHAT relative (whom I never could stand) who fancied herself *close* to my mother.  After my mom died, I was talking about it in front of her, when I mentioned the 28th.  She said,*reproving tone* 'TNG, it was the twenty-NINTH.'  I said, 'Uh. NO.  It was the TWENTY-EIGHTH.  They didn't pronounce her dead until the Twenty-Ninth.'  I have NO idea why THAT little trivial bit of nonsense is stuck in my head, but there it is.

* My dad's here.  He FINALLY came to see The Niece.  It is a seven hour trip from his door to ours but I'm not exaggerating to say that it's like, SEVEN TURNS.  It's basically a STRAIGHT SHOT.  And he gets lost every. single. time.

* This weekend, one of my goodest-ever friends is coming from NY to see us.  I can't wait to see her and for her to see TLNG.  She hasn't seen her for the better part of a year and whoo-boy, it's going to be a sight to behold.

* I have been sick a number of times since I've been irregularly posting.  Right now, I have no voice (The Man is not complaining) and I am congested.  HIDEOUS.  I can't even remember what I've told you and what I haven't.  Did I tell you that while The Man was out of town and The Little Sister was on vacation, I got a MASSIVE HORRIBLE VIRUS and had to go to the ER for fluids and anti-vomit medication?  No?  With my poor MIL?  And we didn't get out of there until THREE AM?  And the effing BIRDS WERE CHIRPING?  Obviously, I'm still not over it.

* I'm trying to clean my RIDICULOUSLY DISASTROUS house before my friend comes because, LERD, who in the hell put all those WADS OF DUST AND PET HAIR all over?  And whose EFFING BOOKS are these stacked all around?  And WHAT ON EARTH IS THAAAAT?  ugh.

* Did you know that for the last few months, I've been embedding pithy things in the 'descriptions' of my photos and links (you have to hover to see it, I guess)?  I am thinking I am really funny, right?  But so far, NO ONE has even mentioned it.  It's like my own little joke to myself.  Which is, you know, equal parts funny and er, weird.

* My friend asked me please, please not to clean because if she comes here and my house is super-clean and I have a two year old, she's going to feel bad about herself.  I love her for that, really I do.  But she is petite and if I don't clean?  She'll be SWEPT AWAY inside a DOG-FUR TUMBLEWEED and I don't need THAT SHIT on my conscience.

* Soon I WILL be posting on why I've been so fucked up.  Things are good but, you know, hectic.  But don't worry, inquiring minds!  INFO IS ON THE WAY.

*  Here's a little peek into my life with my dad, and maybe you can empathize.  We had this conversation, probably about 10 years ago.  You have to picture him with his Italian accent, it makes all the difference.

Dad: [Comes into the house through the garage] 'Hey, TNG, you know that hasshole who fills up my truck with peat moss?'

Me: 'Why's the guy gotta be an asshole?'

Dad: 'I dooon' knoooow.  'E just ees.'

Me: 'I mean, he's the guy who fills up your truck with peat moss, right?'

Dad: 'Right.'

Me: 'So, he's just a guy making a living.  Why's he gotta be an asshole?'

Dad: 'I. Don'. Knooow. TNG.  'E just ees.'

Me: 'Well, are there any people in the world who AREN'T assholes?'

Dad: 'Whyyyy Certainly.'

[Pause]

'But _I_ don't know any of them.'