Seymour’s Fat Lady

Turkey sandwich with cranberry chutney and brie

Turkey sandwich with onion compote

Barley risotto with minced turkey, pearl onions, and peas in a cream thyme rosemary sauce

Seriously, I have such agita from eating cheesecake for breakfast. Thank heavens Rod took all the chocolate out of the house. Well, most of it anyway. Like a wise man, he kept the Toblerone bar.

Frank and Lauryn’s pizza and champagne engagement party was fun. This is a tradition in Rod’s extended family, that engagements are celebrated with a pizza and champagne party. Frank is the latest cousin to fall prey to the marrying mania, so we headed to another cousin’s house (Jeff and his wife Tiffany hosted) in Bordentown yesterday. It’s a drag that most of Rod’s family lives in South Jersey because it takes us for frickin’ ever to get there–on average two and a half hours by train.

Today I spent most of the day copyediting, for which oh be joyful. I really do love copyediting, especially in the comfort of my own home. All I need are a few more clients.

I’m contemplating doing tarot readings in December while the writing center’s closed, to pick up some extra cash.

Read Deepak Chopra’s _The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire_. This is the first Chopra book I’ve read, and many of the principles he talks about are already familiar to me, such as how affirmations work. I enjoyed reading his seven principles and plan to try using the sutras:

Aham Brahmasmi: The core of my being is the ultimate reality, the root and ground of the universe, the source of all that exists.

Tat Tvam Asi: I see the other in myself and myself in others.

Sat Chit Ananda: My inner dialogue reflects the fire of my soul.

San Kalpa: My intentions have infinite organizing power.

Moksha: I am emotionally free.

Shiva-Shakti: I am giving birth to the gods and goddesses inside me; the express all their attributes and powers through me.

Ritam: I am alert, awake to coincidences, and I know that they are messages from God. I flow with the cosmic dance.

We’re also considering “Sweeney” and “Dodger” for puppy names. Although truthfully I’m torn between Dante and Groucho.

Thanksgiving went as well as it could possibly go, considering that I have the almost ungovernable urge to smack my parents about thirty seconds after we’re in the same room. I pray for guidance and wisdom and love and patience, as I always have, and I want desperately to rise above the small needs of my ego self and to tune into the divine plan regarding my progenitors vis a vis me.

Here’s what was on the menu:

Appetizers:

pita, hummus, baba ghanouj, muhammara, olive bread, onion compote, brie, crudite

Entree:

turkey, sausage/prosciutto stuffing, potato gatto (like a mashed potato lasagna, but without the red sauce), broccoli rabe, stringbeans and caramelized onions in a white wine vinegar reduction, mushrooms sauteed with onion and roasted garlic

Dessert:

cheesecake topped with strawberries, lemon granita with rosewater and honey whipped cream, two kinds of apple pie, and tiny pumpkins filled with curried tropical fruit compote

We won’t have to cook all weekend. Hooray! 

It was truly awesome to have a sit-down dinner for eight in the new apartment and not feel crowded.

“This is a real apartment!” my sister Jennifer said. “You’re grown-ups now. Look at this table. It looks like Aunt Rita’s table used to look when we were kids.”

It’s true. If my niece had been able to join us yesterday, she would’ve seen the rich ruby color of the tablecloth as it complemented the terra cotta orange of the walls, the candelabra’s flames flicking in the huge wall mirror, the baskets of fresh fruit, the crystal decanters of wine. She would’ve felt the pleasant lethargy at the end of a meal together. The desultory conversation. I used to be in awe of how my aunts, grandmothers, and mother coordinated such a vast effort.

Yesterday was a result of my editorial ability, to synthesize a meal out of disparate elements. To delegate. I did something different this year. Usually I cook what I know everyone else likes. Yesterday, I just cooked what I like to eat, and I asked all my loved ones to bring the dishes they make best. Consequently, I sat down to my ultimate meal, composed of every single thing I love.

Rod likes to brine turkey. He enjoys the science of that aspect of cooking. So he was on turkey and giblet gravy. Giblet gravy makes me sick to my stomach when it’s cooking; looks like a severed baby’s arm boiling up purple in a pot. The smell, also, is nauseating. I lit some frankincense during the process.

My sister Jennifer was on stuffing. Our great aunt makes an amazing stuffing with Italian sausage and prosciutto in it. I’ve never been able to duplicate the recipe, but Jennifer can! She also brought gatto, which is a casserole of mashed potatoes mixed with eggs, parmesan and mozzarella cheeses, and parsley, and topped with bread crumbs. Also makes a wonderful midnight snack or breakfast when it’s ice cold from the refrigerator. I tend to overthink my gatto and put too many things in it, like caramelized onions, soppressatta, and peas. Jennifer’s gatto is proof that you can’t improve on simple, wonderful ingredients baked with masterful delicious intention.

My sister Patt brought the tiny dessert pumpkins filled with tropical curried fruit compote, which took much more attention to detail than I’m usually capable of, and which were beautiful and dainty as well as tasty.

Our friend Kenwyn brought the onion compote, which is a Splendid Table recipe that tastes a lot like the sauce for Chicken Marbella, as it involves prunes and capers and mustard. 

My parents brought the table cloths, for which I’m deeply grateful, as Rod and I don’t own any. We just got the table a few weeks ago!

Here’s the short list for puppy names:

Groucho

Gomez

Dante

Egon

Got any other ideas?

We’re having my family over our new apartment for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow. I don’t enjoy cooking for my family, because they don’t really like trying new things, and I get bored making the same old saturated fat extravaganza of antipasto, etc. etc.

So I’m making Middle Eastern apps instead: hummus, baba ghanouj, muhammara. My friend Kenwyn’s bringing an onion compote that is wonderful eaten with brie and crackers. I’m feeling defensive already because I know I’m going to hear complaints about the appetizers:

“Where’s the mozzarella?”

“How come there’s no stromboli?”

Life does not revolve around stromboli, however compelling the illusion may be that cheeses and meats wrapped in a pizza crust can save your life and give it the kind of purpose that your kids, your job, and your spouse don’t.

Here’s the problem: When I have PMS, all I want to eat are egg rolls. And my cooking mojo goes out the window. I just made a cranberry apple chutney that’s making me sick to my stomach because of the burnt sugar smell. It tastes fine, but I can’t even go near the pan because it smells so vile.

I located a bed frame on craigslist. Rod and I went to the Slope to look at it. Liked it, since it’s a unique oak four-poster with charming engravings. Bought it. Went to U-Haul, rented a van, moved the bed frame here, set the bed frame up.

It looks ridiculously tiny beside our gigantic queen-size mattress.

Oh, sure, it *fits*. We can sleep on it and not be pitched onto the floor during the night because the mattress is unstable.

But it looks like a hippo stuffed into an anorexic’s prom gown.

I have just about had it with buying things online. First there was the Doc Martens on Ebay debacle, in which nineteen pairs of Docs arrived at my house simply reeking of mildew that would not be killed even though I left the shoes out in the sun for four days and washed them with bleach.

I feel so stupid for buying this bed frame. It looked huge in the picture, and ginormous in that couple’s tiny apartment in Park Slope. Did I measure the mattress, like a smart person, before I put my agreeable husband to the trouble of hauling this bed frame home? No. That would’ve been too easy.

Someone just came by to look at the bed frame today–a potential buyer. She was so imperious and jerky that I’m sorry I let her into my apartment, because her assy energy is all up in here pissing me off. Must sage the entryway before I start cooking.

I’m so disgusted that I’d like to take the frame at a loss and just put it out on the street. Anyone want a full-size headboard and footboard?

Lately I’ve been immersed in preparing for our puppy. I’ve watched the first season of The Dog Whisperer and have read two of Millan’s books, _A Member of the Family_ and _Be the Pack Leader_. I’ve also reserved several books that Millan recommends, such as Deepak Chopra’s _The Fulfillment of Desire_ and the Monks of New Skete’s _The Art of Raising a Puppy_.

I’m starting to panic about the responsibility of having another being’s happiness in my care. It scared me when I fell in love with Rod, to know that I might (let’s face it–would) cause him unhappiness through my limitations. What I couldn’t predict is how much loving Rod would help me overcome those limits, because I want so much to be fair and gentle and honorable in my dealings with him.

I’m hoping it will be the same way with the puppy. One of the reasons I want a dog is so that the dog and I can help each other to be social members of the pack. Readers of this blog know that I tend toward the antisocial. My closest friends and family are snickering a little bit at the thought of me owning  dog, since I am so much more like a cat than a dog.

I’m tired of feeling drained and exhausted by other people. The basic psychic hygiene exercises I’ve been doing have helped retain my energy when dealing with others. Before I die, I want to live life to the fullest. I want to experience what it is to embrace life wholeheartedly, not to always have that Persephone experience that Gluck describes in “Persephone the Wanderer”: “My soul cracked with the strain of trying to belong to earth.”

Sadder than dying is not being here in the first place, spending life palliating the inevitable griefs and pains with an ever-refined series of distractions. Life, I’m for you. Come at me. I’m ready.

My last surviving grandparent passed away on Friday night. As I was doing my basic psychic hygiene exercises on Saturday morning, I got a visit from the Great Goddess, who in her bear form put her arms around me and howled so that the cosmos shook; ten minutes later, my sister called with the news that my grandmother had passed.

Grandma Anna was well into her nineties and had been living with dementia for years; we’ve been watching her die slowly, and it’s hard to feel too sad when we know that she’s no longer confused and in pain but in a blissful state.

There’s no doubt that my grandmother’s in heaven. She was one of the gentlest, kindest people I ever knew. Taught me how to make a pasta frittata when I still needed a step stool to reach the stove. Singlehandedly cooked the Feast of the Seven Fishes for Christmas every year. Owned a chatty Siamese named Pywackett and saved everything–in her closet I once found a mayonnaise jar filled with the metal bands that go around pencil erasers. 

She did have an unfortunate tendency to tell people that the Christmas gifts they’d given her were useless and/or ugly, which sort of scarred me for life when she tried to give me back the candle I’d bought her at the holiday gift shoppe in our first-grade classroom.

I hope that she is romping through the stars, plucking a choice few to wear in her hair.

Rod bought me a puppy for my birthday. Squee!!!!!!!!

Actually, we reserved him because he’s too young to be away from his mother. We will be driving out to the wilds of Pennsylvania to pick him up on December 20.

Why must we drive four hours away for this puppy, you ask? First, I have not located a Bug puppy breeder (you heard me–hybrid of pug and Boston terrier= Bug) in NYC. Second, what with several puppy mills making the news in the NYC area, I’m afraid that all the breeders around here are corrupt.

It’s not ideal to pick out a puppy based on his pic; I’d like to have met him first to determine whether we’ll get along. However, the breeder does sound very compassionate and knowledgeable.

And I just find it funny that Rod’s dad is an entymologist and we’re going to own a bug.

For the longest time, Melissa and I’ve been wanting to do an Alien vs. Predator bellydance. We’re both science fiction geeks, and Alien vs. Predator bellydance strikes us helpless with giggles every time we talk about it. Melissa has gone so far as to choeograph her first Predator dance, with a staff. It is awesome.

I found a rubber Predator mask in a thrift store and gave it to her as a gift on the night I went to see her in the latest Venus Uprising show. “Well, this explains why we’re working together,” she said. “Other people just brought me flowers.”

Little does she know that I’m going to call her “pussyface” while she’s wearing that Predator mask, which looks like a giant vagina.

I’ve been really hung up on the Alien dance, and I think it’s because the right music hasn’t come to me. I’ve tried everything: goth/darkwave, all kinds of percussive music including but not limited to rockabilly, psychobilly, Cambodian rock, Indonesian gamelan, Middle Eastern, African, Haitian, and South African percussionists.

Tonight I realized that I’ve been listening to the same George Abdo album for two weeks. And wouldn’t that be HILARIOUS to do an Alien bellydance using the most old-school, traditional bellydance music there is? It’s blooming in my mind, the scenario kind of a Jamie Gumm in “Silence of the Lambs” as he’s talking to his prey down in the well where he’s got her trapped: The Alien strutting its stuff, so sure of victory that it’s taking time to seduce the Predator and do a premature victory dance.

The Voodoo Sisters are running our monthly salon tonight at the TenEleven Bar in the East Village. Because each of us just moved, we can’t locate our regular costuming. It’s a good thing that this salon is experimental…I have no idea what we’ll be wearing tonight. I only know that my shimmies have become extremely easy thanks to the all-carb diet. You can see me shimmy from space.