Author: NouveauSoileau

Optimistic mother, devoted lover, careful writer

We have a 2319

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If you’re like me and have children, you’ve seen most Disney movies approximately 3,298 times each. In addition, you probably foresee a future when you watch one Pixar offering or another at least another dozen times or so before it’s retired and the kiddoes have moved on to MTV, Horders, slasher flicks or some other horror that passes for popular entertainment.

But some of us are still squarely in the Cars, Up, Finding Nemo, and Monsters Inc. phase. With each repeated viewing, the dialogue becomes ever more cemented in we, the adults,’ consciousness and with alarming frequency, we start quoting them as we go about our daily lives.

To take an example from television, any form of agreement is now rendered, in my house, as “Yes. Yes I am,” a la Phineas from each episode of Phineas and Ferb on the Disney Channel. “Aren’t you a little young to be building a nuclear reactor?” he’ll be asked. “Yes. Yes I am.”

Similarly, we went through an intensive few years when Trassie was addicted to the Disney/Pixar feature Cars. At one point Mater, the grungy tow-truck voiced by Larry the Cable Guy, is asked if he’s got his tow cable. “Well yeah, I’ve always got mah tow-cable,” he answers. Now, if anyone is asked if they’ve got a particularly something with them … purse, car keys, water bottle, whatever … the answer is always, “Well, yeah, I’ve always got my tow cable.”

Which brings us to Monsters Inc., a general favorite and in heavy rotation a few years ago. If you recall the movie, you’ll remember that it’s a huge plot point when the scream factory is contaminated with an artifact of the human world. A sock returns to Monster World with a monster just fresh from a kid’s closet. Immediately there is a shut-down on par with a nuclear core meltdown. Decontamination experts are dropped from the ceiling. It’s a 2319!!

Much to our amusement, the address of the local elementary school which Christopher attended for one year and where now Trassie is a kindergartner is 2319.

Yes, sirree. The location that is filled to the brim with children, those toxic beings of Monsters Inc. The individuals who could bring Monster World to its knees, to quote the movie, merely with their mind powers are contained each day within a school at street address 2319.

This amuses us to no end … and often, when we take one child or another over there, it is just impossible not to say, “We have a 2319! 2319!”

It helps if you can make your voice sound like it’s being broadcast over a PA system.

“2319! 2319! Bye kids, have a great day! If anyone tries to run from you, don’t pick them up with your mind powers, now, and shake them like a dog!”

Let George feed you

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I like to cook. I mean, I really do. I enjoy being in the kitchen, selecting ingredients, whipping things up for my family to eat with my own two hands. Growing herbs, yeah baby! I sprinkle them on everything.

Like lots of people, apparently, I gravitate to about 10 different meals. These have morphed over the years; for example, I almost never make baked chicken and rice any more because I’m thoroughly sick of it.

Now I tend to make a lot of homemade pizza because I’m a loon and obsessed with it. I make the crust in the breadmaker, make the sauce in the food processor, and whip up an obscene number of toppings on the stove or fling ’em raw from the fridge (like olives; don’t worry I’m not killing my family with raw meat). Recipes coming next week.

I also like to grill indoors. Meet George.

Specifically, this is the George Foreman Lean Mean Fat X Grilling Machine. With George Foreman signature.

George holds quite a nice amount of food. See his nice wide maw?

You will also, no doubt, notice the yucky looking spots, which are not crud but probably water spots from the dishwasher for lo, this George Foreman model grill features removable grill plates, which can be washed in the dishwasher. Let us pause for a moment and thank all the saints.

If you don’t mind cutting up a few things, you can have a decent dinner on the table in a half hour with George. Here’s what I did the other night.

Here we have some marinated pork slices, which I purchased already cut this way at the grocery. I usually marinate cuts such as this with a mixture of olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic, and balsamic vinegar.

Then I halved some “baby bella” portabello mushrooms, a few green peppers and half a Vidalia onion. Simple and easy peasy lemon squeezy. I steamed the broccoli in the microwave, and drank the wine.

So throw the meat on the grill.

And close the lid. After about four minutes, it’s cooked. Just put it on a plate and cover with foil, and then grill the rest of the meat, if you have more.

Now here’s the funny thing. The George Foreman grill is designed to grill things without fat. All the fat and juice runs off into the little tray below. Since I always choose lean cuts of meat, I have no problem whatsoever with saving the juice. Frequently, I’ll pour it over the vegetables so they don’t dry out. Then I grill them as well.

And so here you have it, my finished dinner. Served with broccoli, and possibly a green salad, it’s a low-carb, healthy meal that’s fun to make … if you invite George along.

Of course, now that outdoor grilling season is upon us, poor little George can go away in the pantry until next winter. But eh, I grill indoors a lot in the summer too.

It’s simple and a fairly obvious dinner, in my view. But if you’re like me and sometimes stumped for easy dinner ideas, I offer it to you … and George, if you ask him along.

Graying gracefully

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Or, going salt-and-pepper in a Clairol world

Ever since watching a video the other day of the woman who’s had the most plastic surgeries in the world, I’ve been thinking about aging.

Specifically, about me aging.

Well, that’s not entirely true. I’ve thought about going gray ever since my mother began coloring her hair years ago.

Specifically, I vowed not to.

“You’ll change your mind, Ellen,” she predicted. “Just wait until the gray starts coming in and you look old.”

Looking old. That’s the problem. Like everyone else, I maintain that I’m the same person inside. I may have changed some of my opinions, sure —  may have even actually abandoned some previously held notions due to two strange things that seems to have happened to me: namely, wisdom and experience.

That said, though — I can still relate to the thin, dark-brown-haired 22-year-old version of myself. I remember much of what I thought and felt at the time. Then, my life was before me. Now, a good chunk of it is over. Yet youthful optimism has not left me, despite the slings ’n’ arrows of outrageous fortune and other Shakespearian tragedies that I have endured.

So what’s all that white stuff in my hair? Do I look old?

Strangely, I don’t think so. Or more specifically, it doesn’t scare me and I don’t think it looks bad. Those coarse gray hairs have brought a little curl with them. The variations in color give my bushy head some depth. They add a little — dare I say it? — style to my general appearance that I think looks pretty good with the cowboy-boot-and-swinging-serape thing that I’ve had going on the last few years.

I’m starting to think how hip it might be to look like a colorful old broad with a lot of life left in her. Seriously, I realize I’m not really breaking new ground here. Like everything else that’s happened to me in the last 10 years, many Boomers already got there first and their brand of aging with style has already become well-documented — particularly in car commercials and ads for erectile dysfunction medications.

But no matter. I’ve already taken a tip from the best of them. Several years ago, a friend who’s about 10 years older than I told me what she found so great about turning 50. She no longer cared what people thought. She’d emancipated herself, she confided, from the shackles of others’ negative opinions. She’d do what she liked, wear what pleased her and generally divorced herself from the crippling tyranny of the judgmental disapproval of others.

So I thought, hey I’ll beat the rush and start not giving a damn now. By the time I’m 50 I’ll have gotten the hang of it perfectly.

So that’s pretty much what I’ve done.

I should add here that I certainly do care what I say or do, if it hurts others’ feelings. I’m not talking about blazing through life like I’m the only person that matters.

No, I’m talking about dressing to please myself, listening to the music I enjoy, going against the grain and completely avoiding television and maintaining a completely oblivious state when it comes to either college or professional sports.

And letting my hair go gray.

Sure, like Mom predicted, I might change my mind if I indeed start looking too old. But I figure by the time that day comes, I’ll actually be old, instead of just being a little gray and a little wide in the butt.

As my 40s spin out and 50 seems more and more to be an actual age I’ll become one day, I see also the possibilities of 60. As my mom heads toward 70, somehow that doesn’t seem like the end of the world either. And as I glance at my now-age-spotted hands, I don’t see imperfections, I see the hands of my grandmother — hands I loved dearly and miss every day of my life.

And becoming like her … well, that’s not so scary either.

Spot the comatose teenager

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Over the weekend, my 13-year-old son, Christopher, spent the night out at a friend’s where, predictably, they stayed up most of the night playing video games.

This leads to the Sunday-afternoon phenomenon known as Zombie Teen.

When you let your son or daughter spend the night with a friend when he or she is, say, 8, what you get the next day is Psycho Kid. This monster resembles your darling child only physically; and then, only remotely so — you don’t recall such vast black circles beneath the eyes of said child only a day earlier. And in disposition, oh my no. This new being is grouchy beyond any conceivable normal limits. The snarling anger and immediate dissolve-into-tears the instant Things Don’t Go My Way is completely off the charts. You question why you let them go in the first place. An evening’s peace? So. Not. Worth. It.

Then they get a little age on them and, while generally a cantankerous lot, teenagers who are sleep-deprived are dreamcicles compared to the tired versions of their former selves when they return from an overnight with a friend.

No, the returning teen is a comatose teen, droopy eyed and lethargic — until the inevitable moment when he or  she starts to sink into (in this case) the couch and is rendered nearly completely invisible.

Can't see him no how

Please excuse the untidiness. This is my living room, den, all-purpose room, playroom, and partial office. A lot goes on here. A lot of stuff gets dropped here.

Think of it as camouflage.

Where’s the sunken kid?

Ah, there he is. Melted into the couch.

Amazing, isn’t it? Television a-blarin.’ Computer beeping. Music playing. Oblivious. Oblivious he is, the youngster operating on three hours of sleep. He knows nothing but the slump and the slumber, deep in his beige cocoon.

There he blended, until suppertime, when the only other thing known to drive children of this age springs into action — the promise of food. Since I’d planned a balanced meal, the pull was not quite as forceful as say, junk food or McDonald’s. But it did propel him back into the land of the living.

I just hope I don’t lose him again. Good thing we’ve got the maroon blanket — he might have stayed gone for good.

Hm.