Monthly Archives: September 2011

No Other Way To Go With It

Posted by Tata on

So pretty you look around for the pick pocket.

This morning, I held up my hand and counted the correct number of fingers, so before my first cup of coffee I put jars in water on the stove. A few weeks ago, I lamented that the season may have passed me by and I hadn’t gotten nectarines into jars. At the farmers market on Friday, I found some beautiful white nectarines and snatched them up. I cut them up, tossed them in lemon juice, made an ultra light simple syrup adding a cinnamon stick, a thumb of fresh ginger and a teaspoon of ras el-Hanout and simmered the nectarines in the syrup before processing. I added a little more lemon juice before sealing the jars, just for good measure. It was so easy I couldn’t believe I hadn’t done it by accident a few weeks back or something.

My adorable grandchildren both have teeth now, which I admire in budding omnivores. Miss Sasha informed me recently that tiny Buckwheat likes food with actual flavors, which is exciting and means I will be standing next to the spice rack, cackling. Lightning will strike. My lab assistant will beg me not to throw the giant switch, but I will throw it! My hair will fly in an unnatural wind as I shout, “Give my jarred fruit SPIIIIICE!”

A Lifetime Run Over And Over

Posted by Tata on

Sometimes when I’m out on the bicycle in traffic, I see things I have to file away to think about later. One of those things has been NJ Transit bus signs in English and Spanish asking women not to abandon their babies.

Last night, I looked up the New Jersey Safe Haven Infant Protection Act site because I was curious about how big a problem abandoned babies might be in the state that has certainly seen highly publicized abandoned baby disasters.

Yeah. That happened here in New Jersey. Twice. In general, though, an abandoned baby anywhere is not the kind of news that penetrates my carefully-constructed cocoon of self-absorption, so this morning, I called the number for further information and asked for just that. Seriously: how big a problem is this? Does it happen every year or just often enough to drive Seth MacFarlane tastelessly up a wall? The woman answering the phone directed me to a series of statistics pages.

Well then. This is certainly a different problem than I imagined. Every year for the last ten, at least four babies have been abandoned in the state, at least one in unsafe circumstances, though the chart does not describe those circumstances or the outcomes. As much as I would like to let the rational mind handle thinking about this matter, I can’t get past knowing what it feels like to have a baby you can’t take care of and not knowing what to do. These numbers hint at a lot of suffering and, strangely in my opinion, that news of Safe Haven protections hasn’t reached everyone. The agencies involved are asking for help.

Pretty But I’ve Never Been

Posted by Tata on

Shiny yarn drives the pussycats especially crrrrrrazy.

Drusy is curled up on my lap, explaining everything that boy in her French class said in the lunch room – either that or I’m confused about the fall hemlines and why five people in my office turned up in purple shirts today. Turns out I’m sensitive to chemicals in paint the construction guys are using in an office immediately adjacent to mine and several times in the last month I’ve spent whole days unable to count how many fingers I was holding up. Still, I thought they were finished. That site was opening up today. Just after noon, I realized I’d been reading the same paragraph for half an hour, so I went and looked. Sure enough, one of the painters was pouring paint just on the other side of the wall.

Then I was happy because at least I was stooopid for a reason. Reason, however, fails these people altogether.