Saturday, July 22, 2006
making love in the shower
I must say right up front, this post is not going to live up to its title. At least not in the prurient sense. Sorry.
Several years ago when I was feeling rather low and in need of affirmation I growled at my rather non-expressive wife, “How come you never say, ‘I love you?’”
She responded that it’s the way she was raised. Never once has either of her parents expressed their love for each other or for any of their kids in words. As a result, she just doesn’t think in terms of expressing herself that way. Period.
She explained, however, that her mother before her, and now she, expresses her love constantly by running the household and, most importantly, through her cooking.
Because of this, my house is a living version of Eat Drink Man Woman with my wife in the starring role. Actually, it’s even better since not only does she cook Chinese, but also Mexican and Italian and American and more. (As I speak chicken breasts are pan-braising in olive oil and garlic. Later they will be sliced and will join sun dried tomatoes and shrimp and fresh bell peppers in a light fettucini dish which is one of our favorite pastas. The fact that it was 102 degrees today hasn’t kept her out of the kitchen.)
In spite of the nearly 20-year drought of verbal affirmation of love, I live in a house full of love.
Which leads to the shower. Building this shower the right way – by hand, step-by-step, from the layer after layer of the pan, sloping the drainage just right, cutting the marble and choosing a challenging design for the floor which greatly increased the amount of work, grinding off sharp edges, polishing exposed cuts, and today spending the entire day wearing myself down to an exhausted puddle as I grouted everything – it occurred to me that I’ve finally completely adopted my wife’s way of expressing love. This is a shower built for us. Built as an expression of love.
Tonight at dinner she’ll say, “Thanks for all your hard work, the shower’s coming along nicely and looking great.” I’ll say, Thanks for making dinner, it’s wonderful, as usual.”
And we both know that means, “I love you.”
Saturday, July 08, 2006
Never trust a skinny cook: A short foodie rant
Being, as I am, cable-deprived blessed with no cable television at home, vacation was a time to soak up all things good on cable. By that I refer exclusively to the Food Netork.
Alas, as Bakerina so well put it (tho I can’t find it in her archives, (Bake, can you drop the link in the comments below?), the trend to eye-candy, non-chef “hosts” on FN is apalling. Awful. Bad.
Seriously, when I look at a bleach-blonde bimbo cooing about the joy of making colored ice cubes, I have no choice but to give up and turn off the fucking television.
From now on I live by one simple rule which I will call the Rachel Ray Test: Never waste even one minute watching any show on the food network where the host/hostess (or better chef, we like real chefs folks, that’s why we tune in!) is thinner than Rachel Ray. And even Rachel is looking a little scrawny lately as she tries to survive on $40/day.
Friday, July 07, 2006
A few of my favorite things
Thursday, June 15, 2006
Are you passionate?
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Grandma’s Advice
Thirty years ago when I was nine, I spent most of a summer with my old Swiss grandmother. There are many stories from that summer. I’m so glad I had the time with her and I learned an incredible number of things that have stuck with me to this day.
One thing she passed on to me stands out above all others though. Her mantra, which was, “If you see something that needs doing, do it. Now.”
For example, if she got out of the shower in the morning and noticed the towels were smelly, she’d immediately gather them and head for the laundry machine. On the way she’d see a plant was dry. She’d water it. Looking out the window while making coffee she’d notice the hummingbird feeder was empty, and so without hesitation, she’d mix up some sugar water and get the stepladder and refill it. On the porch she’d see a loose nail coming up, so she would put the stepladder away, get the hammer, pound the nail down, put the hammer away and then finish her cup of coffee, stopping to hang up the laundry which was now ready to dry on the line—why use a dryer burning up fossil fuel at at the electric company and paying for electricity when the sun was abundant and made the clothes smell nice. Etc.
Of course, she didn’t just live like this in her physical environment. She’d write letters to the editor. She’d organize neighbors. She’d even take homeless people home and then find them jobs and places to live.
She was cheerful and organized and thrifty. She was ethical and smart and involved. The only harsh words I ever heard spoken about her were from my mother, who was upset when grandma visited her when she was newly married and spent the visit doing things around the house, like putting contact paper in the bottom of the underwear drawer so that mom’s panties wouldn’t get caught on the rough wood. She was unstoppable when it came to leading by example.
So what’s the point of this rambling post? Two really. One is that modern life is sometimes simply so fast and so complicated and so busy that I don’t think a person could ever make it through a day by simply zen-like doing the most immediate project in need of attention. And second, that I realize that the self-defeating rationalization I’ve built into that last sentence is complete bullshit. If I worked as hard or as optimistically and with as much purpose as my grandmother, with her ethics, her work ethic, her organization and her first-generation immigrant energy, I’d be far happier, calmer and more successful.
On that note, I’m off to put some towels in the laundry, water the plants, pound down those loose nails, and spread smiles where I can. Thanks grandma.
Sunday, June 04, 2006
Another day, another floor
I can’t decide if this is big progress or not. It’s just one more step of many. The floor is layed. My body is beat to death from carrying and cutting and handling those 18x18 tiles. Sometime this week I need to grout the tiles and then I can reinstall the toilet. As for the shower, the pan liner now has one layer of about six that go into making a shower that doesn’t leak.
It’s a good thing I’m having fun or this’d be unpleasant, hard work.
