Here’s to 9 years of marriage and a lifetime of love. John + Christy 4EVRRRR
love
New York, New York
Saturday – in honor of John’s 37th birthday – we went to NEW YORK. Almost a year since our last visit. October 2007, boarding the Norwegian Spirit on our way to New England & Canada. As exciting as that trip had been (taking in the sights of the NYC passenger terminal and Penn Station), this time we wanted MORE.
Behold the American Museum of Natural History. Isn’t she PRETTTY?? YES_SHE_IS!
We got to the museum early. We’d debated the merits of driving v. taking the train and finally decided just to drive. Mostly b/c it allowed an extra hour of sleep. There’s a parking garage located conveniently beneath the museum, so we were able to park all day for just $46 bucks. WOW. My lovely friend Pannonica had set aside Super Passes for us and let me tell you. NOTHING BEATS FREE. The “insider touching privileges” and executive washroom access were just icing on the (proverbial) bday cake. Make no mistake, Biologists are ROCK STARS.
The museum is massive, so we had to prioritize. Several sections are similar to the Academy of Natural Sciences here in Philly, as well as the Penn Museum and the Smithsonian. So we skipped those. NO NOT ALL OF THEM. A few we walked through, doing the YES I AM PAYING ATTENTION dance. The place is just way too big to see in one day. So we did the best we could. We took in the scenic tour of the Food Court. I recommend getting there as soon as it opens, before the bagels are fondled too much. At lunchtime the place is an absolute zoo. I wanted to try the empanadas, but as the line was 5 deep, I gave up. The half of a bacon cheeseburger I pried away from my husband was o-kay. But not an empanata. We checked out one of the gift shoppes. The girls wanted cool moving-picture book marks, which were indeed neat, but at $6 a piece left me aching for an empanada.
2 meals in the food court and one gift shoppe visit later, we took in the actual museum. Which is very quiet and clean 1st thing in the morning. Disintegrating into a combination swap-meet/ Macy’s parade atmosphere as the day wears on. We saw as much as humanly possible w/ 2 children in tow and swarming hordes of on-lookers. The highlights included the breathtaking Hall of Ocean Life. Also, the Dinosaurs Alive! IMAX film, which positively enchanted my older daughter, though not my husband. Always a critic. We all very much enjoyed the Lizards & Snakes: Alive! special exhibit, which, I confess, has left me longing for a Burmese Python. The whole museum – from the dioramas to the miles-long array of minerals, to the beauty of the building itself – is awesome. Fascinating. Overwhelming. By the time we left, I felt like someone who’d tried digesting 5 billion years of history w/ one too few Tums.
BUT THERE’S ALWAYS ROOM FOR DESSERT. And what trip to New York is complete w/out a visit to the sweetest place on earth (at least for a child) – FAO SCHWARTZ. We made our way through Central Park, ambling towards 5th Avenue. It was simply lovely. The undulating trunks of the American Elms, the couples in love, the roller dancers making fools of themselves. AHHHHH. What a day to be alive. Even the teeming crowds outside the Plaza weren’t enough to throw off our bliss.
Until we arrived at FAO SCHWARTZ. I must confess that my daughters were MORE THAN A LITTLE skeptical regarding this particular store. They kept asking, over and over – What IS THIS?? WHERE ARE WE GOING?? IS THIS FUN>> IS IT FOR KIDSSSS>???? As though we’d lost our senses. TRUE the name does sound more like a financial institution than a toy store. But once we stood outside the glass walls, and the girls had spotted the doorman dressed as a toy soldier, they knew GAME ON. Once inside, we managed to make our way through the two stories and come away unscathed. The ladies agreed to one small Playmobil set each. I was awed by the life-size Lego recreations of Chewbacca, Hagrid and the Harry Potter gang. But enough is enough.
Next stop: American Girl Place. Anyone who knows me can JUST IMAGINE WHAT I WAS THINKING. And you would be right. But I kept it BUTTONED. Through 4 floors of crass commercialism, personal shopping, doll hair salon, and cafe. I simply smiled weakly and let Daddy treat his daughters. Afterward I needed a drink. BAAAAAAAAD. We walked up 5th Avenue, past stores I will never be able to afford, surging with the crowd. We ate dinner at a cozy Irish place, which YOU KNOW HAD ALCOHOL. We stood in Times Square, gazing open-mouthed at all the neon and craziness. And then we walked, slowly, back to the car, taking in the sights. Watching the blocks morph from tacky souvenirs into respectable stone. And silently wondering what life must be like for those fortunate enough to live in such splendor.
Untitled.
My heart feels like a flaccid orange and my mind is numb. W/out exaggeration, the past 2 days have simply SUCKED BEYOND BELIEF. YES I know I joke about a whole lot of things, but for once I am totally serious.
Yesterday morning I got into a car accident. My daughters and I are all fine. The car is okay. But I saw first-hand how emotionally charged people can be following a collision, and road rage is a DAMN good reason why handguns should be outlawed. W/out rehashing all the details, I got rear-ended. It was a stupid accident. The driver of the other vehicle did not want to be at fault. Rather than take responsibility for her error in judgment, she wanted to take it out on me. She & her large male companion threatened me repeatedly w/ bodily harm. They screamed. They cursed. I do not like being threatened. I do not like being cursed out by two enraged human beings hell-bent on being right when they are wrong. and especially NOT IN FRONT OF CHILDREN. It was ugly. Very, very ugly.
If I saw these folks on the street I’d think they were a lovely family – an attractive mom & dad w/ a beautiful little girl. But the time I spent w/ them. The threats. It was totally surreal. Is it normal for a grown woman to threaten to KNOCK ANOTHER WOMAN OUT?? I haven’t heard this kind of stuff since I was in high school – and even then, it wasn’t ever directed at me. People I know do not act like this. It’s barbaric. INSANE. People who try to look like middle-class America, driving around in a fancy SUV, dress well, and then act like street thugs? Is this real? For the LOVE OF GOD what are people doing to their kids in this day and age?? When you teach your children to hate first and think later – to play a race card – you are as good as crippling them. They will never be more than that. They will never see more than that. Here in Philly – people act. and they think too late.
I spent all day yesterday dazed. Feeling off-sorts. Saddened. angry. sad again. even scared. Trying to reconcile everything. And then, Last night, after dark, raccoons crept into our rabbit’s fenced-in pen and attacked her. We didn’t even know until after the fact. Our good friend & neighbor, Jim, saved her from being mauled. Locked her in her hutch. Broke the bad news. One look, and I knew she was hurt badly. I could see visible puncture wounds on her right side, and she wasn’t moving her one arm.
6 months ago, I spent weeks nursing this rabbit back to health via syringe feedings. You simply cannot stare into the eyes of a creature that close to death, feeding them as a child, holding them, encouraging them, without seeing them as your own. Prudence had been just this side of the pearly gates, wagging her cotton ball tail through the slats for fun. She bid adieu to St. Peter, and rejoined humanity – for what. For THIS? The indignity of being mauled by a hungry raccoon trying to feed her young. I know that God exists, and I know that nature is cruel. But the injustice is too much.
This morning the ladies and I took Prudence to the vet. I knew what they would say. I knew the options. But I took her all the same. How could I do anything else? To keep something I love in pain, safe, at home? To allow her to suffer b/c I could not bear to lose her would be abject cruelty. But taking her…. In my heart, I knew that I was leading her to death. The chance – however slim – that she had or would contract rabies from the bite. that was all that mattered. How could I live w/ myself it it happened? If she bit me. My children? My heart aches. My beloved rabbit, Prudence, my friend. Who’d been at death’s door and had overcome, blossoming into better health and spirits than she’d ever known.
I’ve written before about my love of pets, and I’ve written briefly of their loss. I’ve introduced you to several of our cast of characters – most notably, Kiwi (my crazy ass bird) – but this post… this is a tribute to Prudence.
Spring through fall, Prudence lives/d in the backyard in a wooden hutch w/ her own fenced pen. It had become sort of a joke, that she was a “free-range bunny”, b/c most days we left the gate to her pen open and she would hop in-and-out at will. Although our yard has open fencing, and Prudence could have escaped if she wanted to, she never did. The most she ever did was hop over to our next-door neighbors to sample the clover. So most days I would gaze out the kitchen window to find a Teletubbie-esque scene, with Prudence hopping from spot to spot in the yard, munching grass. Although we have a ton of cats on our block, none of them ever gave Prudence the slightest grief. In fact, the total opposite. These cats would (no joke) actually come to hang out w/ her. Our one cat Bixby would sometimes laze up on top of her hutch, and our other cat Milkshake slept INSIDE of it. Prudence seemed to think this was just fine, and somehow here in West Philly, it WAS normal. They all just got along. Different. But happy. Prudence was as close to a “wild bunny” as a totally domestic fed pet could get – she’d even felt inspired to recently begin digging a burrow in the corner of her pen, like her rabbit forebears. Somehow she just knew. She knew how. She wanted to. And it was okay.
Tonight, my heart aches. Tomorrow we will bury our sweet bunny’s remains in the burrow she’d been digging these past weeks. A fitting tribute to her work.
Life, liberty & the pursuit of happiness
It’s amazing how a day away from things can give perspective. Severed from my electrical umbilical cord, I AM A WHOLE NEW PERSON. Well not really, but it did allow me to put a day’s distance between me & THE DISH.
Part of the reason I had to stay off the computer was so I wouldn’t cave. B/c part of me just doesn’t want to stop doing The Daily Dish. Day in and day out. Forever and ever. Amen. This *part* of me is stubborn. It doesn’t care about ME. It is devoted to others. Their well-being. Their welfare. Their nutritional goals. SCREW YOU, it says. I call it Utilitarian Me, after John Stuart Mill. This part of me is always super determined. Disciplined. Moral. And now. ANGRY.
It is hard giving something up. Doubly so, when a part of you reeeeaaaaalllly doesn’t want to. Even if it’s bad for you or drives you crazy or makes you smell. Which isn’t my case, really, but you catch my drift. The Daily Dish is a good thing – a great thing, even. But it isn’t good for me right now. I am already juggling too much between the website, the kitchen, and my life. And now that summer’s fast approaching, I have been spending an exorbitant amount of time stressing over how I will get everything done with BOTH daughters at home. I shouldn’t be worried about any of that. I should be thinking of all the fun we’ll be having over the next few months. The beautiful weather. The hot days full of adventures and memories and time together. Instead I am thinking about the stupid website.
My daughters are, and have always been, my first priority. I gave up my career to stay home full time and I’ve never regretted it. I should feel no obligation to maintain a website I created out of the goodness of my own heart. And yet, I do. OF COURSE YOU KNOW I DO. But WHY? When I do it for no pay and it is becoming too taxing for words, that’s a bad thing. Lately I’ve felt like a fox in a trap, wondering whether I’ll have to chew off my own leg to save myself. My urge to maintain the status quo is almost too strong for my own good.
For now, it’s necessary to take a break. The website will remain as it’s been. I am not taking it down. I have avoided even changing it from the Memorial Day page, for fear I’ll CAVE. For the past year and a half, some part of my brain, sometimes all of it, has been consumed with this website. It’s like a baby. I literally gave birth to it, and it has been my passion. Developing recipes, deciding what to make, how to make it. What to work on, what to drop. I was already crazy about food and photography, but you put them together and I AM INSANE. When I was sick, I kept going. Doing anything dizzy is not a lot of fun. But still I did it, because I felt others were counting on me. When I went on vacation, I worried about my readers. Would they be okay? Would they be cheating? I thought more about them than I did myself.
I cannot tell you how liberating it is, after all these months, to taste FREEDOM. I spent 8 hours today cleaning my house. And even though I despise cleaning, today it felt good. No website. No recipe. As I scrubbed toilets, I thought about how SPARKLING THEY WERE. As I vacuumed, I thought how wondrous a machine a vacuum is, and how glad I am to have one. As my back ached while I bent over mopping the last floor of the house, I thanked GOD that I was finished. I wasn’t preoccupied with getting THE DISH done so I could take pictures while the light was good. Or having to orchestrate cooking of THE DISH so that it would conveniently coincide w/ mealtime. I didn’t have to think about any of that. Now my house is clean. And NOT ONLY THAT. BUT my priorities are straight, and summer is almost here.
So please don’t be sad. I want you all to know that this isn’t the end – it’s really, truly, the beginning. I have the next 3 months w/ my girls. I am SO EXCITED!! We will have so much fun together, and I will be blogging here about it all, sharing everything w/ you, my friends. In the fall, my daughters will BOTH be going off to school. And then – the fun BEGINS. The start of a real adventure for me. I’ve spent the past 8 years at home, being here for my family. Loving them, taking care of them, making everyone else a priority. For good bad & or UGLY, I’ve done it all. But come September, it’s Christy Time. IT’S ALL ME. And then anything is possible. Stay tuned. B/c come what may, I promise, it’ll be fun.
I’m BACK!
I would ASK if you all missed me, but those butterscotch-sweet comments speak for themselves. You guys are the BEST! Thank you for making me feel like the belle of the ball. Unfortunately, in real life I am feeling a lot more like the Ty-D-Bol Man caught in a perpetual flush. This weekend was F-U-N with a capital F, but the 30 hour car ride has left me reeling. With my head on spin cycle, I am ever-so-slowly rejoining reality. It’s almost 8 PM. I am still in my PJs, I have not brushed my hair, but I did this morning brush my teeth. Things are looking up.
We left Thursday morning for the reunion, and drove straight through to Davenport, Iowa. The family had reserved a block of rooms at a local hotel, and upon arrival John & I discovered we’d been given the “Honeymoon Suite.” Sweeeeet. Well, it would have been, were we not also sharing it with our two children. Oh well. We joked about the mirrored ceiling the rest of the weekend, and instead of a seductive soak in our massive jacuzzi, the ladies and I took a pre-party bath together. As my younger daughter said, a little weird, but still fun.
We spent much of the weekend partying b/c THAT is what my family does best. Some families drink to escape, but us, we drink to further enhance our feelings of good will. We are one fun loving bunch. We played games, swam in the indoor pool and spent a boatload in the arcade. We ate. We are SCHOLFIELDS after all. We ordered pizza from 2 different Midwestern chains, with specialty pies called The Inferno, The BLT, and The Taco Joe. I had never seen a pizza covered in Doritos before, but now I have. Not quite as strange as seeing that pizza with a whole fried egg on top like I did in France, but. strange nonetheless.
The weather was cold and rainy for much of our stay, making Philly seem positively balmy by comparison. On Friday, a hotel employee came round to announce a *Tornado Warning* until 5 PM, saying we might have to evacuate to the basement. WOW. Getting my drunk on in a darkened basement might not have been my first choice, but I’m always game for something new. The wind shook the building, and the rain came down in buckets – actually leaking through the roof in places – but that was it. No evacuation. Perhaps next time.
Saturday was the formal luncheon at Deere Run, the John Deere golf club. It’s a lovely place and seemed a particularly fitting choice for the event, given that my grandfather worked for them most of his life. After eating, we took turns lining up for posed portraits, which although slightly tedious was still sort of fun and of course much appreciated by G-ma. It’s amazing how little everyone has changed in 10 years. My cousins, aunts & uncles all pretty much look the same. If it weren’t for the kids, we could still be back in 1998. I will keep telling myself that anyway.
Later in the evening, we met at the hotel-cum-retirement home where my grandmother lives. This rendezvous was for a very special event. The Wearing of the Scholfield Family Reunion T-Shirts. This tradition states that all family members as well as Guests (and yes, we do provide t-shirts for them as well) must don an Official Scholfield Family Reunion T-Shirt for a prescribed length of time, during which many photographs will be taken for posterity. This tradition seems to divide our family into one of two vocal groups: The Lovers of the T-Shirts and The Loathers of the T-Shirts. These white tees are emblazoned with emblems from all of our past reunions, and on the back is written your name and a catchy slogan. I will not tell you mine b/c it is a FAMILY SECRET, but this year there were some new winners. For instance, my cousin’s new husband from Down Under got, “Lawrence: Australian for Scholfield”. Yes, We ARE CLEVER. These t-shirts switch hands every so often, as a new person is elected to produce the new batch of emblems. At this reunion I requested that my Aunt send them to me next. This may or may not have something to do w/ the fact that my mail service is so PISS POOR I’ll likely never receive them. Oops. No need to confess where I stand on this most precious family tradition.
This weekend was a trip. It was a physical haul, driving straight through from Philly to Davenport, Iowa. BOTH WAYS, With only 2 DAYS of heavy drinking in between. I of course have vertigo. again. Which makes me almost as depressed as leaving my family. I have lived my whole life so far away from my relatives. And now my parents and my only sister also live 800 miles away. When we parted on Sunday, I was sobbing like a baby. But worse. I love my family. They are GREAT in every sense of the word. Fun. Full of life. Even my 95 year old grandmother. Now that I am home again, I miss them terribly. I know scores of people who long to escape from their relatives, but not me. I only wish we lived closer.
Today is my grandmother’s 95th birthday. It’s hard to believe. 95 years is a damn long time. 90 years longer than my younger daughter has lived. 60 years longer than I have been around. A whole lifetime of time. And although her body is failing, her mind is still strong. She dishes her guilt with almost surgical precision. She may have a brain tumor impinging on her thoughts at times and occasionally garbling her meaning, but she is still very much with it. So she’s confined to a wheelchair, she gets around. And even has a BOYFRIEND. My 95 year old grandma, as frail as she is, is one tough old bird. God bless her.