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January 11, 2005
I’m not sure how I managed to write a nearly five-page entry last time and neglected to record some of my thoughts on the horror that has befallen the countries impacted by the tsunami two weeks ago. I don’t think I probably have anything eloquent to add to the discourse except my own, selfish reflections. I think being a mother has made events like these strike at my core worst fears. Hearing stories about babies being ripped from their mother’s arms, a dad struggling to hold on to his three children and the lone remaining pole of his home…I am overcome by the despair they must be experiencing. I just feel so hopeless. I am ashamed that our country has come up with such paltry aide. We are spending unfathomable amounts of money in Iraq. Imagine what one-month’s expenditure in Iraq would do for the countries impacted by the tsunami? Imagine what it would do for our country’s image in the world to see money, supplies, man power at a fraction of what we’re expending in Iraq. I heard on NPR that the French government was donating approximately $10 per French citizen to relief efforts. By my calculations the US Government is in for about $1.10 per US citizen. We can do better. I hope as the needs are better identified in the coming weeks, months, years we do, indeed, do better. John and I gave some money to Save the Children Foundation. It just seems so paltry.
At the risk of sounding like a completely ungrateful wife I need to vent a bit. I have bragged extensively about my husband’s phenomenal cooking skills. Last week was a strange, sort of suspended animation with a 38 hour storm that dumped over a foot of snow on us. Storm stories will weave there way through this whole entry, I’m sure, but Wednesday we had a hard time getting home, we were socked in, the roads were terrible. John left to go pick up Meghan and Lane and go to the grocery store and it took him almost an hour and half. Normally this would be a 20-30 minute trip. When he got home he proceed to make this totally divine dinner – chicken breasts stuffed with goat cheese and basil, parmesan mashed potatoes and sautéed asparagus. It took him an hour. We ate very late, even by our standards, Ava was very cranky and the kitchen looked like a bomb went off. Just in case you need further proof that I can be a whiney b*tch all I could think in the face of that deliscious meal was “ I would have taken grilled cheese sandwiches to have more time with my husband, more help with Ava and not have our kitchen be an ever lovin’ nightmare.”
But this is where it gets good… Thursday Ava’s day care was closed due to inclement weather. They didn’t notify us according to the procedures they had laid out. In fact they didn’t notify us at all. John showed up at daycare at 8:15am, it was locked up tight and there were three other families there trying to figure out what to do. My fabulous husband took Ava to work with him for an hour, got some stuff he could do from home, cared for her all day AND cleaned the house. I suck. It must be very hard to be married to me. I’m trying to use this writing as a reminder that I need to be better about letting things like this go. John goes above and beyond in the division of labor in our household. If it is important to him to cook a nice meal then I need to appreciate that and not worry so darn much about the other things…
Last week was somehow my bad karma week. I hope it isn’t a predictor for 2005. I thought 2004 was a pretty rough year… Monday I was driving to work in a gross sleet that precipitated the gross snow and my heater fan blew out. My car is only 8 months old. Delightful. We spent basically the whole week with just one car while mine was being repaired. (Just so you don’t think I’m all doom and gloom the VW dealership fixed it for ‘free’ under the warranty.) Ava’s ear re-check resulted in another 10 day course of anti-biotics because the infection in her left ear hadn’t cleared up. Her pediatrician said he expects children her age to have 3-5 ear infections per winter, but she’s on ‘probation’ for the tubes discussion. She’s got the same cold we’ve all had for what feels like the last five weeks. I really hope this course of antibiotics knocks it out. Friday I was supposed to have my quarterly post-operative follow up with my gynecologist. My appointment was at 9:00am, so I showed up a few minutes early. I checked in, they took my insurance card etc… At 9:25am I went back to the receptionist and said “I’ve been waiting for nearly half an hour is there something going on?” I asked because 8:45am is the first appointment available, so I figured it would hard to be late already! She said no, that I should be seen in a few minutes. 9:45am I go back to the receptionist and ask what’s going on. She doesn’t know, goes in back to check. 10:00am she says she doesn’t know what happened, but the doctor won’t be able to see me for another 45 minutes. I am really frustrated and re-schedule the appointment. Like I have so much free time to repeat that whole thing again. But here’s the kicker – I get back to the office and I have a message on my voice mail from my doctor’s nurse saying I missed my appointment and I need to call and reschedule. I am liquid fury. I call the office and yell at three different people before finally getting the doctor’s nurse on the line. Something odd happened with their appointment software and I didn’t get checked in. They apologized, not like there was anything they could say to make me less angry. I hated how much I over-reacted to that whole thing. I could hear my voice and I was saying to myself “Kate, you sound like a shrill harpie,” but that didn’t stop me from frothing at the mouth with these poor people at the doctor’s office. I have my rescheduled appointment next Monday. Blah!
The kids only had school one and a half days last week due to the storm, extending their vacation by almost a week. Meghan is swinging into her final semester of high school. I need some advice though… Meghan left her planner on our kitchen table this weekend and while I was moving some things around to clear the table a piece of paper falls out where she has clearly practiced signing my name, my signature. I can think of no good reasons why she would do that. Occasionally I have signed notes to excuse her from school for things like doctor’s appointments. My initial reaction is that she is trying to sign my name for something like that. Generally Meghan is pretty trustworthy and responsible. I certainly signed my mother’s name to get myself out of school my senior year. Should I say something to her? She does have an expectation of privacy, in my opinion, but she did leave her planner on our table. I didn’t go looking for this piece of paper, but I did look at it when it fell out. I’m stumped as to what to do.
Our weekend was nice, pretty low key. John and I are joining the legions of people trying to begin the new year with an improved focus on our physical health, so I went to the gym both Saturday and Sunday. I have added something to my new year’s resolution list… There is a race in Des Moines – the Dam to Dam, a 12.2 mile race the first weekend in June. Before Ava was born I used to run a lot – I trained for the Marine Corps Marathon. But I haven’t really run since I got pregnant, now over 2 years ago. I’ve done other things – elliptical trainer, aerobics, rowing, biking…. But I’ve decided to train for the Dam to Dam. It is a do-able distance. A distance I have run before. I think it’s a nice goal – still six months away. I have been asked to join a crew of very competitive rowers for the coming season, once day light savings time begins. I’m very, very excited to join that group and want to be in good shape once the season starts. For the most part I am a fairly consistent gym goer, so I just want a couple of touchstones to keep me motivated. I did two, three mile runs this weekend. It went ok and it felt great. And, btw, the iPod mini makes that a much more enjoyable process. The gym was jammed with people this weekend, everyone working on their New Year’s Resolutions. I talked to the owner who is trying to be very creative to keep all those people there in February.
We got Ava’s hair trimmed up this weekend. About five months ago she got just an awful cut at a Great Clips. That’s what I get for cheaping out on a hair cut. I’m a big believer in the principle that you wear your hair everyday and you shouldn’t skimp on products, cuts, color etc…. So why I took Ava to a Great Clips for a trim I’ll never know. Seemed like a good idea at the time. Anyway, she got this awful cut, a baby mullet, really. So we decided to just let it grow out for awhile. I had hoped we could let her bangs grow out and just sweep them to the side, but Ava won’t keep barrettes in her hair. She loves having ponytails, but the bangs still hang in her eyes. We took her to an Aveda salon this weekend and for $5 more than Great Clips she got a totally darling little ‘do. Mostly a trim, but she cut bangs and put in a few little layers across the back. She looks great. Ava was fairly well behaved at the salon. Although while we were waiting she was quite diligent about moving the little sample size bottles of shampoo and lotion from the display to a chair and back again. She was only minimally squirmy for the hair dresser. We’ll definitely take her back. I won’t be so cautious about going for trims now that I know we can trust this person.
This weekend we finally got around to watching a Netflix movie we got before Christmas – “A Door in the Floor.” It is based on a book I absolutely adored called “A Widow for One Year” by John Irving. The book was interesting, funny, sort of an epic and at times very sad. The movie was just plain sad. The book is told from the perspective of an adult recalling childhood traumas, but having incorporated them into the person she is now. The movie simply shows the childhood trauma. It is done very well with very talented actors – Jeff Bridges and Kim Bassinger. But I wanted to turn the movie off because it was so heavy. I can’t say I’d recommend the movie, but definitely pick up the book.
Ava has just been sleeping horribly the past few nights, waking up several times a night crying. I suppose it is a stage of some sort, but it does make me wonder how on Earth we survived it before she started sleeping through the night. My aunt Sally got Ava a number of wooden puzzles with shapes, animals etc… on them. Ava just loves them – what a spectacular gift. She sat with John and I for almost an hour ‘solving’ the puzzles. Very quickly she started associating shapes with objects and parroting back the correct names. It was awesome. Another fairly recent phenomenon for our girl is she is starting to show fear of things – and things that surprise me. Her little See and Say got low on batteries and made sort of an awkward droning noise and it completely freaked her out. She loves “Monsters Inc” but all of the sudden Sunday afternoon the abdominal snowman really scared her. There is just this heightened awareness of her world that is very curious to me.
I realize this will sound a little strange, but I am very sad that Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt are separating. They got married just before John and I did (I desperately wanted my hair to look like Jennifer’s did on her wedding day. It didn’t.) and they always seemed like a relatively sane Hollywood couple. We all know that no one can be sure of what’s going on in a relationship except for the two people in it, so I wouldn’t even speculate on the reasons why they broke up. Ironically I’ve seen photographs of the two of them cuddling on vacation two weeks ago… So I will just add that it must have been a really difficult decision for two people who clearly care about each other. Sheesh Kate, it’s not like these people are your friends!
Yesterday (1/10/05) started the first day of the legislative session. I have wondered if it will make it more difficult to write updates… this is certainly the craziest time of my life, professionally. But usually there are lulls in my day where I can check email on the computers in the library at the Capitol and today I just sat down with Microsoft word and very much enjoyed taking the time to type through some mundane life stuff. So hopefully that will continue.
I’m going to close and share this fabulous salmon recipe that John and I made for the first time this weekend. Waistband friendly, super easy and soooo good I can’t tell you. And note that if you don’t have fresh herbs you can substitute dried, just use a little less because they’re stronger. We also left ours under the broiler for a few minutes longer than she did – maybe our oven isn’t as hot? We made four salmon filets and ate the left overs cold the next day for lunch on a salad – equally delicious. I copied it directly from the Food Network – Everyday Italian. This is definitely a keeper. Yum!
Thanks for reading—
--Kate
Mustard Glazed Broiled Salmon
2 garlic cloves
3/4 teaspoon finely chopped fresh rosemary leaves
3/4 teaspoon finely chopped fresh thyme leaves
1 tablespoon dry white wine
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons whole-grain mustard
Nonstick olive oil cooking spray
6 (6 to 8-ounce) salmon fillets
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
6 lemon wedges
In a mini food processor, combine garlic, rosemary, thyme, wine, oil, Dijon mustard, and 1 tablespoon of whole-grain mustard. Grind the mustard sauce until combined, about 30 seconds. Transfer to a small bowl. Add remaining 1 tablespoon of whole-grain mustard to the sauce and stir to combine. Set aside mustard sauce.
Preheat the broiler. Line a heavy rimmed baking sheet with foil. Spray the foil with nonstick spray. Arrange the salmon fillets on the baking sheet and sprinkle them with salt and pepper. Broil for 2 minutes. Spoon the mustard sauce over the fillets. Continue broiling until the fillets are just cooked through and golden brown, about 5 minutes longer.
Transfer the fillets to plates and serve with lemon wedges.
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