Lawyerish

Perk Me

As a follow-up to this post, I have something special to share with all you fabulous people. 

A reader who wishes to remain anonymous went to see the "Little House" musical, and kindly sent along the following review, for which I am quite grateful -- it's like a sneak preview for when the show comes to Broadway (eee hee!): 

No songs with "wagon" in the title; but, the first number, "Up Ahead," largely takes place in a wagon train... The production was well done; my kids, ages 6 and 8, enjoyed it, as did I.  Sets were simple but effective (I particularly liked the effect of lines of wheat bathed in golden light).  The cast stand-out was Kevin Massey as Almanzo Wilder (they say he was in The Mikado at the Fargo Moorhead Opera) who in addition to acting/singing demonstrated considerable pancake-flipping skills. 

Kara Lindsay (looking a bit like Lindsay Lohan, but without so many personal problems) as Laura was excellent.  Laura was played as quite the rebel/tomboy.  The only false note was Scene 7, "Uncle Sam, Where Are You?", which would have sounded at home in a Chinese propaganda film and didn't jibe with the self-reliant, up-by-your-own-bootstraps theme of the rest of the show.  I thought prairie populists didn't really hit their stride for another 35 years or so; I may be wrong, but it just didn't seem to fit in.
 
It was worth driving 427.3 miles (each way) just for the architecture of the Guthrie.  The walkway overlooking the Mississippi was wonderful; the kids marveled at the super-long escalators.  Guthrie-brand bottled water - a reasonable $2.  Afterwards the cast, including Melissa Gilbert, came out of the stage door to greet fans and sign autographs.  She was gracious and commented on what a pretty dress one of my girls had on.  One wouldn't have expected anything less; a class act.

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Pretty sweet, huh?  Thank you, Anonymous Reader!  You rock.

I'm afraid I really haven't got much else, which I suppose has been the case for some time now; I'm pretty much devoid of anecdotes or pith these days, and for that I apologize.  It's been practically funereal in here thanks to me and my dirges of self-pity and woe.  I won't give you the usual sob story about the waiting and the frustration, because I'm sick of hearing myself talk about it. The operative word right now is:  MEH.  Perhaps also SIGH.  And some WAH for good measure.

So, because I know I can count on y'all, I am reaching out to all of you for help:  Tell me, what do you do to perk yourself up when you need...perking?

Solitary Man

Neil Diamond did not disappoint.  Let me tell you, the man can entertain.  He sang for more than two hours straight without a break, and did plenty of favorites -- "Cherry, Cherry", "Holly Holy", "Solitary Man" -- and, of course, the all-time best crowd-pleasers: "Sweet Caroline" (with an extra chorus so we could all do the "bah, bah, bahhhhh" bit once more) and "America." 

I'm not sure there has been or ever will be a moment in my life as over the top as standing and singing "America" with tens of thousands of people while images of bald eagles soaring and flags waving and immigrants, erm, immigrating played on a Jumbotron overhead.  Led, of course, by a man in a sequined shirt (who, I feel compelled to report, appears to be a user of Just for Men hair color -- not that there's anything wrong with that; I'm just saying I don't know many 67-year old gents who are still sporting shoe polish-black hair, although, on the other hand, I also don't know any 67-year old men who wear sequined shirts).  It was fantastic.

The whole evening was pretty much perfect for us; the audience was comprised primarily of persons of advanced age (I imagine several busloads of retirement home residents were among those in attendance), so we got to sit in our seats for the majority of the time instead of having to stand just because everyone else is, as is often the case (although of course we stood during the aforementioned crowd-pleasers, which brought even the most infirm attendees to their feet) and were not subjected to anyone's excessive use of illicit substances. 

Although, actually, a man sitting two sections over did get forcibly removed by security during "You Don't Bring Me Flowers"; I'm not sure if he was drunk and disorderly or maybe he was simply enraged by the absence of Barbra Streisand to perform her half of the duet, but he was misbehaving enough to require five or six guards to strongarm him out of his seat. 

(It had occurred to me that, this being New York and all, perhaps Babs would make a surprise appearance during the show, but then I realized that they probably didn't want to assume the liability for potentially tens of thousands of heart attacks by all the Brooklyn-born matrons in the house.  Myself, I am not much of a Barbra fan; I never really liked her to begin with, but I think the whole thing on Oprah where she would only perform if they gave her a white microphone solidified my position in the anti-Streisand camp.) 

Neil didn't have an opening act or an intermission, so we were home before eleven.  As I said, our kind of night.  (To reiterate: we do not have the baby home yet.  Our boringness will know NO BOUNDS once we are parents.) 

Incidentally, although pretty much everyone took the "seated-until-otherwise-moved" approach, there was this one woman down in the floor seats who DID NOT STOP DANCING the entire concert.  She was shimmying her neck and wildly gesticulating (at times it looked like she was practicing her lay-up) and clapping like she was ND's Number One Fan.  Even from afar, I could tell she was singing at the top of her lungs, and she kept leaning down to shake her finger in her husband's face for emphasis.  You could see that the poor guy was just trying to get through the evening, and occasionally he would stand with her and execute the most painful White Guy Dance I've ever seen, his blue blazer barely crinkling with his stiff feints at moving to the music. 

When we got home, we watched maybe the most exciting night of Olympic competition I've ever seen, between the men's swimming relay and the women's marathon (poor Deena Kastor!  we had such high hopes) and the men's 100m finals.  Damn, I'm going to be sorry to see the Games end this week. 

At least I'll always have these to remind me of the greatness that Beijing has wrought:

My dad picked these guys up when he was in China earlier this year (he got the red and green ones, too, but we gave them to Maggie).  When you press on their stomachs, they say, "Ni hao! [something something something]!  Welcome to Beijing in Two Thousand and Eight!"  I am thinking of finding a way to reprogram them to say, "Michael Phelps is a god!" but maybe that's a bit much. 

Offenses in Silkscreen

The other day on my walk from the subway to my office, I passed a man -- a middle-aged, paunchy man, the kind you assume has a smoker's voice and occasionally uses the chewed-up end of a cigar to emphasize a point (not that I make sweeping assumptions about people based on their appearances, of course) -- wearing a threadbare gray t-shirt that said:

"The person wearing this t-shirt is a doctor.  Now lay down and do whatever the nice doctor says."

As I was absorbing the utter revulsion that such an article of clothing inspired, I saw another paunchy, middle-aged, likely cigar-loving guy in an overly snug black t-shirt that said:

"G_ F_CK Y__RS_LF.  Would you like to buy a vowel?"

Sometimes I long for the days when men wore nothing but gray flannel suits and fedoras and women put on proper hats and gloves for even the most pedestrian outings.  Perhaps as a society we have overemphasized our need to express ourselves through our clothing. 

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This week has been crazy and I'm way behind on my Olympics (and Intervention! And Project Runway!) viewing; however, I have seen just enough of the prime time broadcasts of the Games to ask, is beach volleyball ALWAYS on?  Is there any point during the day when Walsh and May-Traynor are not out there in their bikinis, spiking the ball into the sand?  I mean, good for them and everything, but I feel like I've had my fill. 

Also, have you noticed that every time there is even a five second pause in the action, the unseen yet all-powerful Beach Volleyball DJ blares some random 80s song ("Walk of Life", "Glory Days", "Walk Like an Egyptian") at a face-melting volume, only to abruptly shut it off the moment the ball is back in play?  I find it somewhat unsettling.

Not unsettling, of course, is the swimming.  It never ceases to blow me away to see Michael Phelps out there burning up the lanes.  He is unreal.  I'm just not sure that his almost superhuman athleticism belongs in the same building as synchronized diving, but I guess that pretty little sport is ok as an occasional diversion from the TOTAL DOMINATION in the pool. 

Finally, I would like to put Deng Linlin in my pocket.  I don't care how old she is. 

Older

I grew up listening to Neil Diamond; he was my mom's favorite singer (Barry Manilow was a close second), and his records ("Hot August Night" et al) were in heavy rotation on our turntable.  Naturally, once I hit a certain age, I thought his music was, like, the lamest thing ever, and found my mom's unabashed fandom to be -- like everything else about my parents -- endlessly embarrassing. 

(If there is such a thing as adolescence karma, I have so many gusty sighs and eye rolls and "MO-OOOOOOOOMs" coming my way in about ten to twelve years, God help me.)

I didn't think much about good old Neil while I was in the depths of my "heavy metal" phase in junior high or during my ballet-filled days when I didn't have TIME for music.  But senior year of college, my friends and I started spending every Tuesday night at a bar that offered $1 bottles of Rolling Rock and a cover band, ND made an unexpected reappearance.  Among other crowd pleasers like "Brown-Eyed Girl" and "Country Roads", the cover band played "Sweet Caroline" every week, and every week my friends and I got up on the table and sang our tipsy hearts out. 

Ever since, I've appreciated the particular genius of his throaty voice and often earnest lyrics ("Heartlight", anyone?) -- he's in heavy rotation on my iPod, and at Christmas his holiday albums play alongside those of Bing Crosby and Nat King Cole in our household.  And now I get to go see him LIVE!  We're going next Saturday night to Madison Square Garden, and I expect to stand on my seat and sing along as loudly as I imagine my mom used to when they'd see him in concert. 

Yes, it's official:  I have become my mother.  And I'm damn happy about it. 

Also among the birthday presents:  Tickets to see the revival of "All My Sons" on Broadway this fall (starring John Lithgow, Dianne Wiest and a certain Mrs. Tom Cruise); a 50mm lens for my Rebel (see below for my test shots -- this lens is going to be fantastic for capturing 80 million pictures of the baby); and a nice stack of books from Allison and my mom, many along a certain, ah, prairie-oriented theme (I can't say I ever went through a phase when I thought Little House was lame). 

I'm still waiting for the birthday paperwork update, but I accept late gifts.  Just not TOO late.   

Here's Noelle's birthday cupcake.  We lit the candle and sang a rather pathetic rendition of "Happy Birthday."  And then I cried. 

Books!  (The "Camp Camp" one, from Allison, is HYSTERICAL.  It is everything that we missed about summer camp by going to our, how shall we say, bare bones Girl Scout camp, where I lost nine pounds in a week because we had to walk over a mile to and from the dining hall for each meal in the smothering Georgia heat and we were warned to shake out our shoes every morning to get rid of the scorpions that could be lurking therein).

Some members of the family were not as excited about the festivities.

'Night!

One

I mentioned back when we got our referral that, just four days before Noelle was born, I had a dream about her:  "I dreamed that our daughter was born or something about where she is, but now I can't remember.  I have this feeling like something is getting ready to happen, even if it's just us moving up a bit more.  (Just in time for my birthday!)"

Then, about four days after she was born, I had another dream:  "J. and I went to the Ninh Thuan orphanage.  We were sitting in a large room packed with people -- families, nannies, Dillon staff.  All the NT families were there -- how my sleeping brain remembers which family goes with which province says something about how much time I spend reading blogs -- and we were waiting to find out if J. and I would be getting a referral right then and there.  At the far end of the room were rows and rows of cribs, but we couldn't see the children in them.  And then the dog woke me up, so I didn't get to find out what happened!"

I can't claim to be psychic, since Noelle is not in the Ninh Thuan orphanage (although out of all the provinces where Dillon works, NT is the closest to where she is).  On the other hand, in/around April 2007, just around the time we got on the waiting list, I found out that Dillon supported an orphanage in Noelle's province.  Before then, I'd only heard about the other four provinces where they work, and I posted a message to Dillon's online forums asking if anyone had heard of any referrals from there.  No one responded.  Lo and behold, a year later, there she was, the first baby they'd ever referred from that province!

I acknowledge that this isn't much, but to me, of course, these stories are evidence of the connection we've had since the very beginning of our baby's life, and even before she came into the world.  The adoption community is filled with tales of synchronicity between families and their children, sometimes seemingly impossible quirks of timing and the like, that make everyone nod and smile and say, "Yes.  That child was meant to be theirs."  I believe in those myths that we create, those things we point to as manifestations of the hand of God in our lives, and they are details that we will pass on to Noelle as part of her unique life story.

But even without the dreams and the birthdays and the shared love of striped socks, I can look into the eyes of the child whose picture adorns every surface of my daily life (desktop screens, BlackBerry, bulletin board, digital picture frame) and know that she's ours.  She just IS.  Of course, some might argue that I would say that no matter which child's photo had been placed before me, and perhaps that's so, but the fact is that THIS child was offered to us -- and with all the variables in this process, she could well have matched up with another family, but she didn't -- and the way I see it, it couldn't have happened any other way. 

This is all very circular, I realize, but any belief in the unknowable is inherently circular in some way, requiring, as it does, not logic but faith.  And that, ultimately, is what Noelle has given me most. 

Over the past two years (almost), since we took our initial plunge into the Vietnam adoption world, I've experienced virtually every emotion known to humankind (in case you weren't sure, the one I've probably experienced the most has been impatience, followed by frustration and longing -- and, of course, joy, love and anticipation).  And I've reached out to other people in ways I never had before. 

Not usually one to share my emotional load, I've learned to lean on my friends and family, to share with them the endless ups and downs of this wild ride (that is, they've listened to a whole lot of venting and wailing and possibly some whining), and we've become immeasurably closer as a result.  I've also gotten to know people I never would have met otherwise, friends I've never seen in person, but without whom I now I can't imagine living (you know who you are!).  I've seen families form and expand and solidify, and watched through the magical Internet as so many children have transformed in the loving care of their new parents. 

I've also been compelled to explore and deepen my religious faith, to trust in God even when I'm in the depths of despair in this often arduous process.  Though I've always had a reasonably strong faith (I'm usually very private about religion, as I'm hyper-conscious about not wanting to make anyone feel uncomfortable or excluded), I had never fully appreciated what a relief it is to give yourself over to your faith, to trust that God (or whatever your higher power might be) will not let you fall, and that He has everything worked out for you, so while you do have to make choices and grapple with the questions themselves and live your daily life, you don't have to suffer or figure it all out alone.  You know, "let go and let God" and all that stuff, which sounds terribly banal but in practice has gotten me through a lot of very dark days. 

(All that AND I've bought a whole lot of really cute clothes.  And also toys.  And books.  One can't discount the healing power of purchasing baby things.) 

(There has also been substantial chocolate consumption.)

I guess my point here, assuming I actually have one and that I'm not going to ramble on like a deranged Oscar winner for the rest of the night, is that Noelle has given me so much more than I ever expected in her short life.  I've always known that our lives would grow exponentially when we met her, that holding her in my arms would be the gift of a lifetime, but I never imagined how much I would be changed by her even before that moment. 

So, baby girl, for your first birthday (just a day away!), I am celebrating you and your life, and all of the beauty you have brought into our lives.  Your light shines on everyone who sees you; you cannot imagine how many people are praying for you, thinking of you and wanting only the best for you.  I am so thrilled to be your mother, to love you and comfort you and support you forever, and watch you grow into what I know will be an amazing woman.  We can't wait to put our arms around you and kiss your sweet face, and share with you all of the love in the world. 

Happy birthday, Noelle Thuy. 

Let the Games Begin

It's going to be a big week at Casa de Lawyerish. 

Wednesday is (1) Noelle's birthday, which we will celebrate with cupcakes and by watching (2) the big finale of So You Think You Can Dance (go Katee!  or maybe Joshua!  oh, hell, they're all awesome, but Katee is the most consistently excellent and has the best technique). 

There may also be some weeping and gnashing of teeth, since it is rather far from ideal to celebrate your child's birthday without your actual child.  But I am trying oh-so-hard to focus on the positive and not feel sorry for myself (or to think about how I was just sure that by now we'd be traveling, or how last year I was just sure I wouldn't have to go through another summer or another of my own birthdays without our daughter -- heh...heh heh!  SOB), and instead to think about all the love and joy that Noelle has brought into our lives, even without being here physically, and about how unreal the moment is going to be when we do finally meet her. 

Thursday is (1) my birthday (33, yawn), which we will also celebrate with cupcakes and wine and by watching (2) the results show of the big So You Think You Can Dance finale.  And I will open presents!  Because, despite my advanced age, I am still capable of being palliated with shiny paper and surprises. 

Friday, of course, is the start of the Olympics, which is exciting in itself, but also in its potential to distract me (a little) from THE INFERNAL WAITING and the persistent baby-less state in our household.  Probably I will get all hyped up by the opening ceremonies, and then I will manage to see maybe four events during the entire course of the Games, and it will be over and done with before I catch up with the inevitable TiVo backlog.  Nevertheless, I am looking forward to it.  Especially since SYTYCD will be over, and I will have two more TV nights to fill (Tuesday is already wide open; what DO people watch on Tuesday nights?). 

Of course, I may miss part or all of the above, as this week is going to become madcap at work around Wednesday when I have to start a very quick turnaround thing, which may also monopolize next weekend and will linger on through next week as well.  Hooray!

I needn't tell you that all I really want for my birthday is a trip to Vietnam.  Like next week would be good; I could clear my schedule for next week, definitely.  It would be great if, at the very least, we could move off the step we've been on for over a month now.  I'm sure everyone is sick of hearing about it, but it's pretty incredible that we've put so much waiting behind us, yet there is still an unknown amount, possibly not a small amount, left to go.  I've been doing pretty well with my letting go approach and my reliance on my faith to bear what has become, at times, an unbearable burden, but the ache is still there.  It's always there. 

Well, that's quite enough of (as Allison would say) that dirge. 

Go make Smitten Kitchen's Blueberry Crumb Bars!  I made them this weekend, and they are so so so so good, whether straight out of the oven with vanilla ice cream melting over them or chilled in the fridge and eaten off a hastily torn off bit of paper towel, because you can't be bothered to get a plate and fork. 

How Much Would You Wager That There's a Song With the Word "Wagon" In the Title?

People.  The Little House on the Prairie Musical lives and breathes.  It lives and breathes, my friends!  It has now opened at the Guthrie in Minneapolis (in/near which I believe SEVERAL of you reside {looking around pointedly}).  If it does well, it could be coming to Broadway in the next year.  It stars Melissa Gilbert as Ma and a bunch of other unknown people as everyone else (sadly, it appears that Patrick Swayze must have had to abandon the Pa role in favor of cancer treatments), and Rachel Portman did the score so I would think the music would be pretty good, or at least wouldn't make your ears bleed. 

Someone.  Anyone!  Please, PLEASE go see it and report back.  I need to know how it is.  I DO.  It has the potential to go in any number of directions, so it could be campy and awesomely awful or it could be heart-swellingly wholesome and nostalgic.  Either way, it's hard to imagine that it wouldn't be worth the price of admission.  (And I'm not a musical person at all -- but this is different; this is LITTLE HOUSE.  I am sure I would have a similar reaction if they made Breyer Horses: The Musical or Space Camp: The Musical.  Or You Were a Huge Geek and a Social Outcast: The Musical.)

I suspect that there will be no clown-masked rapists or heroin addicts in this adaptation, but I could be wrong.  I have NO recollection of either of those episodes, by the by, and I am so glad you all could enlighten me on what I missed.  I mean, REALLY?  What the EFF, Little House?  Either I blocked those episodes out, or by then I had thrown up my hands because they'd strayed so far from the books that I couldn't take it anymore.

Notably, as Stefanie pointed out, the TV series had the Ingalls living in Walnut Grove, which is not right for that period of their lives and anyway, when they lived in Walnut Grove they lived in a DUGOUT (although Walnut Grove has capitalized on the show's inaccuracy and now has a Laura Ingalls Wilder PAGEANT every year, which I will one day see, because I MUST -- come to think of it, there is totally a documentary here, OMG imagine the awesomeness).  However, we can all breathe a sigh of relief because the musical situates them in De Smet, where they belong.  Perhaps now I will stop waking up screaming in the night.

So.  I think that's about enough excitement for one day, don't you? 

The only other news I've got is that the other day, I saw a man shaving on the subway.  Yes, shaving.  Just raking a cheap plastic disposable razor over his face (no shaving cream or anything, not even a hot towel or some lotion), for all to see.  That was a first for me.  I've seen people clipping their nails (finger and toe, unfortunately) more times than I can count, but shaving was a new one.

You've got to love this city.  People find new ways to be crazy every day. 

My Precious Moments Day Planner Was Also Very Full

This weekend I paged through some of my old journals from high school, and aside from the cringe-inducing prose in every breathlessly composed entry, what struck me most about it was how BUSY I was back then.  I went to school all day, attended club meetings or did homework in the afternoons, then spent several hours in ballet classes and rehearsals and came home to finish off more homework before bed.  On the weekends, my parents drove me to Atlanta for more ballet classes, rehearsals and auditions, and oftentimes we'd add shopping and/or an evening of dinner and a ballet performance or movie on top of that -- and that was just Saturday.  Sundays were church and then still more hours upon hours of ballet and then Youth Group in the evenings. 

Amid all of that, I spent tons of time at Allison's house (and she at mine), went on youth retreats and ski trips and lock-ins, wrote countless letters to my friends from various camps and summer programs, babysat for three violently hyperactive boys, read everything within arm's reach, and devoted many hours to mooning over various boys, none of whom were aware that I existed. 

Just reading about it was exhausting.  What in the world am I DOING with my time now?  Granted, working takes significantly more energy and time than school ever did, if only for the sheer alertness and focus required -- and it's not like I'm running a drill press; I'm writing briefs, for crissake -- and as an adult-type person I have, like, a household to take care of, dinners to prepare and a dog to walk and that sort of thing, and I don't have an all-consuming hobby/passion like I did when I was a wispy ballerina, but STILL.  Even with just the time I'm saving by no longer having to obsess over whether someone will ask me to Homecoming, you'd think I could have written the Great American novel, piloted the Space Shuttle and solved global warming by now. 

It's odd to feel inadequate as compared with your teenage self, but in that sense, I do.  If I tried to do as much now as I did then, I would be dead within a week.  Or at least I would need to go convalesce somewhere for a while, being massaged with peppermint oil and fanned by loincloth-wearing Brad Pitt clones.  Did I simply have more energy back then?  More drive?  Why am I so lame now?  I guess the lack of a specific, burning desire to pursue some interest is the main thing (does watching So You Think You Can Dance count as an interest?  Because I am definitely driven to do that (Will!  You were robbed!  I mean, dude, why wouldn't people vote for him just to keep that torso around to gaze at?  COME ON)). 

Of course, I'll have lots more to do and think about and devote my energy to when Noelle is home -- not that she's a HOBBY, obviously, but I expect I'll be pretty passionate about motherhood (as dorky as that may sound).  Not that I'll lose or ignore my own interests, but I wouldn't be having a child if I didn't want to like, be with her and get to know her and teach her and read to her and play with her and observe the world from her eyes and SO ON.  

If we could just GET HER ALREADY then I could get going on that.  We heard last week that we are still on the same step as we were almost four weeks ago, even though by all accounts we figured we'd blow through that step in a week.  I...I didn't take it well.  It was not a good day. 

I'm better(ish) now, and I'm working on letting go of my attempt to have a vice-like grip on this process.  As much as I'd like to, I can't control any of it or conceive of how long any portion of it is going to take, and every time I've tried, I've been wrong.  At some point, it will happen, the big payoff, the best day of our lives, and boy howdy, will that be amazing.  I know that day has already been determined by a power much greater than I, and there's some reason that the timing will be whatever it is.  It's a lesson I've learned over and over again in the past couple of years, and I think it's finally sinking in. 

And once we're united with our daughter, I have no doubt that my life will be as full as I can imagine, so full even my teenage self would be impressed. 

Cool

My husband is having dinner elsewhere this evening, which can only mean one thing:  I am in complete control of the temperature.  As a couple, I'm sure we fit neatly into many Married People Cliches, but none so perfectly as the classic battle over the thermostat.  In classic gendered fashion, he likes it so cold that you start to panic when you're changing clothes or fresh out of the shower, the threat of death from exposure taking hold as your skin turns pallid and clammy; whereas I like it a reasonable temperature, one at which you don't really feel the air around you one way or the other -- you're just pleasantly there, and no ice particles are forming in your nostrils. 

If he were to come home right now, he would stand in the doorway, aghast, and shout, "WHY ISN'T THE AIR ON?  MY GOD, WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO DO?"  That's right.  It's, oh, about 85 outside, down from a high in the sultry 90s at midday, and I am sitting here with the window open and the ceiling fan on.  And I'm loving every minute of it.  Granted, I had the A/C on for a bit when I first walked in the door, because I was sweating like a farm animal in my tropical-weight wool suit, but once I got the temperature to a comfortable level, I turned it off, cracked the window and put on the overhead fan.  Ahhhhh.  No jet engine compressor sounds, no snap in the air, just a gentle breeze wafting the temperate air around me.

I think gazpacho helps -- it's like air conditioning from the inside out, and I had a heaping bowl for dinner, accompanied by a refreshing ginger ale/white cranberry juice mocktail.  I think you all need to make this gazpacho.  This recipe yields enough for two people to have a bowl's worth for about 3-4 nights straight (and it gets better by the day as the flavors...I don't know, coalesce in the fridge).  I like to serve it as a side dish to whatever we're having, or make it the main course with a salad or a small panini for a light summery dinner.  It's super easy:

Chop up 1 lb of ripe tomatoes.

Tear up about half to 3/4 of a loaf of French bread (the amount of bread you use dictates how thick/hearty the soup is -- I like to use maybe 2/3-ish of about a football-sized loaf; you can use sourdough, baguette, or a plain soft loaf).

Peel and chop a cucumber. 

Chop 1/2 of a red pepper and 1/2 of a yellow or orange pepper.

Throw everything in a large mixing bowl.

Sprinkle in some cumin (maybe 1/2 teaspoon or more) and minced garlic (don't be shy; I probably use 1 1/2 tablespoons), plus salt and pepper.

Pour 4 cups of water, 1 cup of olive oil and about 3 tablespoons of red wine vinegar over everything, then give it a stir. 

Cover the bowl and let it sit for 30 minutes.   

Throw as much as you can in your blender (it takes two batches for me to blend it all) and put it on the "chop" setting; let it run until it looks soupy and the veggies are well-blended. 

Refrigerate for several hours before serving.  You can toss some ice cubes in before you serve it to add to the chill. 

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Make it now!  I command you.  It is delicious.  I wanted to bathe in it when I got home tonight. 

Finally, apropos of nothing, today as I was waiting for the subway I thought of that Little House episode when that crazy neighbor woman hides Laura in her basement because she thinks Laura is her dead daughter.  And every time she looks at Laura, she sees this hazy vision of her daughter, and she unbraids Laura's hair to make it more like the dead girl's.  Remember that?  That episode FREAKED me OUT.  It gave me nightmares.  LITTLE HOUSE.  It was extremely disturbing.  So was the one where Laura steals the music box from Nellie Olsen's house, and she dreams that she gets sent to jail and it goes all nightmarish with the distorted judge's voice and Laura crawling across the floor in rags with a tin cup.  That one messed me up, too.  I couldn't watch it or I would be unable to sleep for days.

Seriously, what was going ON with that show?  I mean, they basically disregarded the books entirely aside from the characters' names (hello, Pa did not even have a BEARD, which was an OUTRAGE of epic proportions), and then they went into these dark, frightening psychological plots sometimes and it was just ALL WRONG.  Wrong I say!  I feel like there should be some redress for this.  Some network should be required to make a series that is 100% loyal to the Little House books.  Can you imagine what Laura's progenitors thought of the show?  If *I* find it horrifying, I would think they would have been beyond incensed.

But maybe that's me.  And maybe they didn't take these things quite so seriously.  They probably did not have hand-sewn calico dresses and bonnets for re-enactment purposes, nor did they attend historically accurate living history camps. 

I...don't really know where I was going with that.  I do know that at least one scene in the books still haunts me -- not in a nightmare sort of way, but in a heartbreak kind of way.  It's when some people come to visit the Ingalls -- neighbors or something or other; I think it was in On the Banks of Plum Creek, but it might have been By the Shores of Silver Lake -- and they have this bratty little girl, and Laura lets the little girl play with her rag doll, and when the family is getting ready to leave the girl won't let Laura have the doll back, and everyone tells Laura to be a big girl and let her have the doll, and Laura is sad but she puts on a brave face and lets it go and then -- THEN! -- later that night she and Pa go out in the driving wind and rain/snow to collect wood or something, and there, in a deep puddle, is Laura's doll, discarded like so much trash, the dye from its red mouth bleeding onto its fabric face and one of its button eyes missing. 

I think that's one of the most tragic things I've ever read; just thinking about it makes my chest hurt.  But then, I did always become a little too attached to my dolls and stuffed animals. 

Carry on!

Drive

My first car was a 1990 Geo Prism, which I mentioned before in retelling a happy little story about how I was almost killed in it once by an oncoming train.  I inherited the car from my brother when I was in college and he moved to New York, joining the ranks of the carless city-dwellers.  It was a fairly bare-bones vehicle, with a manual shift and a faded cloth interior, but it got better gas mileage than most of today's hybrids and it never conked out on me, even with the brutal winters of the northern tundra and the long drives between Michigan and Georgia. 

My memories of the Geo are inextricably tied with those of college itself -- spontaneous trips to Meijer in the middle of the night to buy ice cream and Pull'N'Peel Twizzlers; pulling out of my driveway for a groggy early morning rowing session while the party at the fraternity next door raged on from the night before; stopping off with my teammates en route to a crew race to buy Peeps at a drug store, then laughing riotously as I pulled back onto the highway, the sugar high taking hold of us; summertime drives back to campus after a day of boating and kneeboarding on a lake, my friends asleep on each other's shoulders in the backseat. 

One of my college roommates had a decades-old Buick with a hood so rusted that it had to be hammered shut; another had a barge-sized Grandma car with a perpetually empty tank because she didn't like to keep money "tied up in gas."  Our cars were sources of constant amusement and good-natured ribbing, and the question of who would drive the carless roommates around, or who could borrow whose car, was always subject to negotiation (no one ever took my Geo, because most of my friends couldn't drive a standard and, anyway, my dad had given me strict instructions never, ever to let anyone borrow my car (ever!), which I dutifully followed).

Back in high school, I'd been one of the carless masses, relying on Allison and Sarah (and, more often than not, my mom) for transportation.  Allison drove her dad's 1968 VW Beetle, which lacked power steering -- or power anything; you could break an arm trying to get the window down -- and required a fair amount of urging to get up to highway speeds.  Still, it had its charms; you could always hear her coming thanks to the Woodstock-era muffler, and you had to respect a machine that had over a quarter of a million miles on it.  I can hear her clear as day yelling, "Come on, CAR!" as we took an especially precarious turn or tried to make it through a light before it changed. 

Those high school years after we all turned 16 were largely spent tooling around in Sarah's Volvo.  She had been blessed with a luxury automobile, the preppy red sedan of her dreams, and we all took full advantage of its heated leather seats and state-of-the-art sound system. 

It was the Volvo that we took out to her lake house in the summers to swim all day and scare the crap out of ourselves at night, up to Little Five Points in Atlanta to buy bootleg 10,000 Maniacs CDs, to the ER when I cut my hand trying to help her mom take the trash out, and around town, just riding with the windows down and "Blackbird" or "Two of Us" blasting from the speakers.  In college, Sarah emailed me with the news that she had been rear-ended at high speed and, while she was fine, the Volvo was no more.  It was strange to know I would never sit in it again; an era had somehow ended, and as it happened I'm not sure if we ever rode around town together after that, as we all scattered to grad school and jobs, our trips home less frequent and seldom overlapping.   

My mom's minivan from my high school years has its share of associations, too -- long treks to and from Atlanta for dance classes and auditions, tearful road trips home from ballet summer programs and the occasional steely teenage silence as I wondered when my life would finally cease being so dreadfully tedious and provincial (boy, I can't WAIT to have an adolescent daughter!).  That van had a hair-raising tendency to stall at the most inconvenient times, and when I was a novice driver, it seemed to have a vendetta against me; I would be in the middle of an intersection, making a left turn with three lanes of traffic poised to hurtle toward me at any moment, and the steering wheel would seize up, the car huffing to a stop as I frantically braked and tried repeatedly to get the engine back to life.  Oh, how I hated that van. 

All of this somehow came to mind because we took a Zipcar to a quasi-work-related thing outside the city this weekend, and the only car they had available was a BMW.  That car was extremely awesome to drive, I have to say.  Usually I'm happy to have the chance to get behind the wheel at all (how novel!  we could go anywhere we want, and no one is going to be sitting nearby clipping their toenails!), but this was especially fun because, well, it was a BMW.  I'm no brand whore, but that was a NICE car; it was smooth and quiet and comfy and very responsive.  And since we sat in standstill traffic for over an hour both ways, I had lots of time to contemplate these admittedly random memories and appreciate the fine craftsmanship of that car.   

While I don't know that we'll be buying a car anytime soon (the closest parking garage to us costs -- ahem -- $468 a month, and that's BEFORE the city's massive parking tax and, might I add, does not include the cost of the car itself), I sometimes like to think about what I might drive if we did have our own wheels.  The Honda CR-V seems to be a very popular choice among my friends, and it's certainly efficient and economical, ideal for the growing family.  For its high-ranked safety features and its beloved boxy shape, I remain drawn to the Volvo station wagon (especially the Cross-Country) -- for some reason, I always thought that's what I would drive, but then, I also thought I would live in Connecticut in a house with a white picket fence and prize-winning hydrangeas and my husband would have a family compound on Nantucket.  And then there's the Beemer, which might be rather conspicuous and not exactly a bargain, but very fun to drive.

All of this to ask, how about you?  What do you drive, and how do you like it?