Category: Children

Possum Chronicles: Volume 1 (#391)

We have a lot of possums in our neighborhood. They freak some folks out, but they’re great to have in your yard—they eat bugs like ticks and they’re immune to rabies.

But those possums don’t always stay in the yard. Andy and I found one in the garage one night, sitting in a bag of dog food, chowing down. He blinked once at us and kept eating kibble. The possum continued to stuff his unbothered little face as Andy dragged the bag out of the garage and into the yard. Eventually the possum sauntered off into the night, sated.

We got a giant plastic container for dog food storage the next day.

Andy and I had a rare date night at a fancy gala when our son Dalton was in middle school. I was excited that there would be dancing. Andy was excited there would be good food he didn’t have to cook. Dalton was excited to finally be at home, alone, with unlimited time on his gaming computer.

But no sooner had the dancing begun than I got a phone call: “MOM! There’s a possum in the kitchen!”

“What?! Are the animals attacking it?”

“It’s in the corner under the chair and the dog barked but couldn’t get to it. I locked the dog and Boss Cat in my bedroom.”

“Well done, we’re on our way!”

We hurriedly exited the event (WHICH WAS NOT CHEAP, ALAS FOR DESSERT) as Dalton texted me a picture:

Halfway home, Dalton called again: “I got it out of the house!”

“Great job! How?”

“I set up exercise mats and cushions blocking off every path except for one to the door. Then I opened the door, got a broom, and kind of herded it along the path until it ran out the door.”

We congratulated Dalton on his ingenuity and speculated that the very small possum squeezed under the gap in our security door, possibly to escape a predator. Except fleeing into a house with a bully mix and a fierce cat was jumping from the frying pan into the fire. That possum was darn lucky that 1) our house is small, with minimal open space between furnishings, and 2) Boss Cat preferred to hunt other predators.

After we hung up the phone, Andy shook his head and said, “I can’t believe he got the possum out of the house.”

“Oh, I knew he would.”

“You did not.”

“Honey. Our kid is impatient as fuck. No way was he going to wait for us to get home.”

Especially not when his gaming computer was locked up with the barking dog and cat.

Don’t Fear the Reaper (#378)

My Chinese American husband has all kinds of hot sauce. There’s Cholula (his go-to for all things Mexican), siracha, Chinese chili oil (4 jars), Frank’s red hot sauce (for buffalo wings), gochuchang (Korean hot paste), sambal oelek (Indonesian chili paste?), and even jalapeno olive oil. He grows his own serrano peppers, which I once made the mistake of chopping and seeding without latex gloves. The skin under my fingernails burned for an entire day—despite soaking them in milk.

If it’s white people food with the inevitable weak sauce, Andy adds hot sauce.

Sometimes he overdoes the heat. Back when we were just dance partners, he made spicy Thai tofu curry. The man told me not to eat it, because “it’s too spicy, even for me.” I was appalled that Andy would let home-cooked food go to waste. I gobbled it up and declared it the greatest meal ever, with tears and snot running down my bright red face.

I was not raised on spicy food—not unless you think Hormel chili spicy. I didn’t do spicy until I moved to California. (Back then, “spicy” meant Del Taco’s spicy jack quesadilla.)

I learned more about heat when Andy watched the “Chili Eating” episode of We Are the Champions. It’s a half-fascinating, half-horrifying story about competitive eating involving the Carolina Reaper chili and its Scoville heat scale of 2 million plus (a jalapeño pepper is about 2,500).

Andy wondered what that tasted like. But not quite enough to actually order a pepper that has to be handled like a toxin.

My friend JM also loves spicy food. Whenever we go out for Indian food, she orders the highest spice level. The staff then side-eyes the shit out of her because JM is even whiter than me. I tell them, “I’ll give you ten dollars if you can make her cry.”

Nobody has made her cry yet.

JM was thrilled when a Dave’s Hot Chicken opened up nearby. They specialize in spicy. In fact, they even make you sign a waiver if you order their “Reaper chicken,” which is coated with a rub made from the Carolina Reaper pepper.

JM brought the Reaper chicken home and convinced her super white husband to try it. He took one bite, drank all the milk in the house, and has yet to forgive her for “the unpleasantness.” And JM? She turned on the kitchen faucet and let the water run over her tongue for a very long time.

Dave’s Hot Chicken has a menu option called “Chicken Roulette.” They give you 4 mildly spicy chicken tenders, 5 medium spicy chicken tenders, and 1 Carolina Reaper tender. They don’t tell you which one is which.

I got Chicken Roulette take out for Andy’s birthday meal. (Dinner AND a potential show!) Andy was game. He dumped three tenders on his plate. I carefully sniffed and examined all the tenders. They all smelled the same. I cut a piece off of three different tenders. Our son Dalton did the same, then poured himself 2 glasses of water and a giant mug of milk. He shrugged off our laughter and lectured us: “It’s better to prepare for the worst.”

Andy reported that his tenders were spicy, but not too spicy.

Dalton chowed down. His milk remained untouched. He returned for seconds before I had eaten two bites.

My first two tenders were medium spicy. The third tender? A definite burning sensation. I offered the rest of that piece to Andy. “Tell me what you think of this.”

Andy eyed me warily. But since I wasn’t sweating or teary-eyed, he stuffed the entire piece in his mouth. He chewed, and then said, “OH MY GOD.”

Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead as he gulped water. Andy then hurried to the refrigerator…only to discover that Dalton had poured the last of the milk. Dalton laughed evilly as Andy ran to the garage fridge for a new carton.

Sweat was pouring down Andy’s face when he returned. He tried in vain to mop it up with his hoodie. Dalton laughed harder and then asked me, “Hey, which tender was that?”

“I have no idea,” I responded. And then laughed at Dalton’s horrified face. My mouth still burned. I ate dill pickle slices as Dalton sniffed at the tenders. He insisted that he could tell which one was the Reaper and cut off bits of other tenders to try.

I scoffed at him. “If I can’t tell by smell, there’s no way you can.”

“MY olfactory cells are young and strong, mother,” Dalton replied. He took a bite, chewed for two seconds, coughed, and then downed his entire mug of milk.

I laughed until Andy dumped two more pieces of chicken on my plate. “Try these, honey.”

The first one was a little spicy. The second one… “It’s BITTER,” I declared. “It’s not just hot, it’s BITTER. Ick. So that’s got to be the Reaper, then. Which one was it?” I ate a French fry.

Andy looked at the pile of nearly identical tenders. “Uh…I don’t remember?”

Readers, if you decide to play chicken roulette, plan ahead. Use paper plates or toothpicks and number each tender, then keep track of which one you ate.

Unless, like us, you want to play multiple games of chicken roulette. Andy and Dalton were so traumatized that they were ready to toss out perfectly good food rather than risk the Reaper a second time.

Just like with Andy’s overly spicy Thai tofu, there was NO WAY I was letting good food go to waste. I cut off and tested a small bite of each remaining chicken tender. Those tenders were consigned to either a “mild” Tupperware container or a “medium” Tupperware.

I got lucky during this process of elimination. The Reaper wound up being the last tender. Dalton suggested I try it, “just to be sure.”

Ha, ha, no. Not after my mouth had finally cooled off (with much less milk or drama than the two males in the house).

Dalton used tongs to put the remaining piece of Reaper chicken in a separate container, adding one piece of mild chicken and one piece of medium chicken.

He plans on offering a “mild, medium, and spicy” chicken sampler to an unsuspecting friend.

God help him.

Sweary Mommy (#369)

It might shock some of you long-time readers to know that I did not actually swear in my youth. (Yes, I have been making up for lost time. Also, smart people are the sweariest.)

Pretentious white Anglo Saxon protestant families like my own don’t do anything that draws attention in public (très gauche!). And while my mom thought of herself as a liberated woman, she was also a recovering debutante. Losing your temper in public was unacceptable, especially if you were a girl. Swearing? Beyond the pale.

I also always had a bunch of baby siblings around. My father—master of emotional deregulation—averaged at least one profane eruption at the washing machine or vacuum cleaner a week. But if the elevator in Barbie’s Dreamhouse malfunctioned and a squeaky little soprano sang out, “Get your shit together, you goddamned sonuvabitch!” it was us tweens and teens who got smacked.

In college, my roommate was a Southern Baptist, which meant I self-censored for several more years.

Once I was in grad school and then working in the entertainment industry, I was free to indulge in all the swears. And I did. And it was fucking glorious.

And then I had a kid.

Damn it.

I mean, darn it. Or drat. Or some other very unsatisfying word.

Even though I don’t have a problem with cussing, plenty of other moms do.

Child scowling, but at least not swearing

Plus, I had a kid with the Ashbough temper who talked early. Baby D might be super popular with other kids if he shot out swear words like Nerf bullets, but he definitely wouldn’t be deemed playmate material by the moms. And my exhausting, super social child needed All The Playdates.

So I dug out phrases from my years as an English major. I borrowed words from or Baby D’s show “Thomas the Tank Engine.” I went from being “pissed” to being “cross.” When a pet misbehaved, they were dubbed a “foul beast” or a “wretched creature.” (My husband had it easier. He’d learned very bad Cantonese words when he was younger and muttered a lot of those. No one else in our house could replicate the tones.)

I don’t think I realized how much Shakespeare had permeated my son’s vocabulary until the day Baby D waved his hand imperiously and said, “Let’s away, Mother.”

There was still some swearing, but I thought I’d kept it to a minimum, either under my breath or only letting loose when the kid wasn’t around. I was proud of my sweary self.

Until the day when we were starting a long road trip and the DVR in the car stopped working. I wanted to swear, of course, as I pulled the car over. I did not.

And neither did my husband.

But as I dashed around the car and climbed into the back seat, three-year-old Baby D shook his head and said,

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

 

(Author’s Note: Just saw the post below on social media and am wondering why the hell I moderated my language for so many years.)

 

Guns, and Ships (#357)

I was never going to let my kid play with guns.

I hate guns. Guns make it far too easy to kill people (exhibit A: America). Yes, murder would exist without guns, but pointing and pulling a trigger is simple. Hacking someone to death with a weapon? At least a would-be killer has to work for it. And the time it takes allows potential victims the chance to fight back or escape.

My childhood playmate had no chance against a rifle. She was ten when she was murdered.

I let Baby D play with cars, trains, Legos, and stuffed animals. His screentime consisted of shows like “Thomas the Tank Engine” or “Bob the Builder” or documentaries about firefighters.

He still came home from preschool and promptly turned his Lego cars into Lego guns. He stopped using our dog Woofie’s tail as a fire hose and aimed it while making machine gun noises. When I put a stop to that, Baby D said, “Mommy, can we walk the dogs now?”

“Sure.”

“Yay! I can find some sticks and use them as guns.”

I took my worries about raising a warmonger to a therapist. She explained that most boys have a receptor site in their brain for weaponry (or something like that). Other studies show that “gun play” is important for childhood development and there is no correlation between kids playing with toy guns and criminal behavior.

Despite all the studies, parenting is the newest, least exact of all the social sciences. Parents must choose: ban weapons and risk making them even more desirable forbidden fruit or allow toy guns and risk them becoming a gateway drug to actual weaponry.

Baby D is as stubborn and contrary as children come. I opted for Nerf.

Once the ban was lifted, Baby D went wild in the toy aisle of Target with the piles of Lucky Money showered upon the Number One Son of the Number One Son. Occasionally Baby D opted for other weaponry, such as the Nerf mace (now discontinued because Nerf miscalculated and that sucker can actually do serious damage). For the most part, Baby D chose the latest firearm: zombie shotgun, six-shooter, and even the machine gun (of course there’s a Nerf machine gun). His weapons basket grew into a garage armory. The older kids on the block assigned him the role of sheriff or security when they played town, since he always had a gun. Various visiting aunts, uncles, and cousins engaged in Nerf gun shootouts for days.

I’d like to say Baby D eventually got bored with guns. Instead, he requested a bootcamp themed birthday party in first grade. Then a laser tag party with inflatable tanks all over our yard in fourth grade. He proceeded to use everything he learned from reading The Hunger Games to form short-term alliances, shoot his friends in the back, and win the “Last Man Standing” round. I didn’t know whether to be proud or horrified.

Sometimes, when no other playmate was available, I would take up Nerf arms and play with Baby D. But I think he always knew I’d rather play a board game, or pit a plushie dog/bear army against his plushie cat army.

One day, Baby D grinned mischievously and said, “Hahahaha, Mommy, you’ll be so sad if your little boy grows up to be a soldier.”

I instantly countered with, “Oh, no, Dalton. Our family goes into the NAVY.”

“We do?”

“Absolutely. Your great-grandfather served on a warship at the Battle of Midway in World War II. Your grandfather was a Navy helicopter pilot in the Vietnam War. And my big brother went to the Naval Academy before serving on submarines.”

Dalton thought about this for a few seconds and then said, “But why?”

The real answer was probably because being on a ship is safer than being Army cannon fodder.

But parenting is a long game and mothers are crafty. I leaned down and whispered:

“Bigger guns.”

The Baseball Dad (#355)

My son wound up in the competitive local Little League—oops, I mean PONY League. (God forbid I don’t use proper terminology for the U.S. baseball caste system.) It wasn’t planned. We just happened to run into a fellow preschool parent on their way to the first meeting and my kid wanted to join his classmates.

I’d heard rumors, but I lacked firsthand knowledge about how insane some Pony League parents were until I watched a dad insist his (sobbing) child bat left-handed.

“I didn’t know Ty was a lefty,” I murmured to another mom.

“He’s not,” the mom whispered back. “But if he learns to bat left-handed, he’s got a much better chance at playing in high school or at a D1 college. Pitchers have a hard time with lefties.”

The sports advantage of being a lefty made sense. I played volleyball, and it’s much harder to block and defend the rare, left-handed hitter.

But to deliberately turn your kid into a lefty? Dalton, like most kids, was right-handed. He could barely hit the ball that way. I couldn’t imagine making it even more difficult by insisting he bat backwards. No wonder Ty was crying: batting had gone from being fun to being miserable. Which was anathema to me. I coached Dalton’s soccer team and the AYSO mandate was to make practices as much fun as possible.

Pony League did things…differently.

Over the next three years, I watched boys mess up their shoulders from pitching and cry. I watched a kid get his orbital socket broken by an errant pitch (the pitcher cried almost as much as the kid who got hit).

There was so much crying in baseball.

There was screaming, too. If it wasn’t a psycho sports dad, it was a player. One boy, who had just recovered from a broken orbital socket (apparently a common baseball injury), got dragged up to the plate by his father, despite his screams of protest. As soon as his dad let go, the kid bolted, carrying his father’s dreams of the Major Leagues with him.

Other parents sighed and offered the dad sympathy. I silently cheered the kid on: “Good job, buddy! Way to stand up for your poor face! I hope you find a safe home with theater or band kids some day!”

Dalton sliding into second

Obviously, I did not envision Dalton playing first base in high school, getting a scholarship to a Division I college, or going to the majors. All I wanted was for him to enjoy some team camaraderie, learn a few skills, and hopefully not sit on the bench too much.

We got two out of three. At least he couldn’t get injured when he was on the bench.

And, unlike with soccer, I didn’t have to coach baseball. There were tons of dads who volunteered. Each team had four coaches. They were almost all white. They were all young. And they were all committed baseball dads (i.e., not rational).

In addition to regular practices, mandatory time at the batting cages started at age six. (Some dads also had their own batting cages in their backyard.) The normal practices (beginning in February) often ran late, on fields without lights. Sunset is an ideal time for enthusiastic young boys to swing bats and throw hard balls—if you are trying to achieve concussions and broken noses.

More crying. More screaming. Blood, even.

I have never understood increasing the risk of injury to a child. And how insane is it to do it to your own child, the very child you want to play a sport so long and so well that it either saves you money or makes you money?

Welcome to the baseball edition of toxic masculinity. Put your son in harm’s way, then insist they fight through their completely unnecessary pain and mental trauma because that makes them real men. Oh, and make your love conditional on their performance. That won’t mess them up AT ALL.

When Dalton opted to focus on club soccer and drop other sports, Andy and I cheered. Club soccer cost a small fortune, but we could retire from coaching. Our son would have a professional, paid coach—not an insane baseball dad.

When I met my first club coach at tryouts, I told him, “Even though he’s fast, Dalton’s also pretty good in goal, if you want to try him there.”

The soccer coach gave me an incredulous look and said, “He’s left-footed. I’d be mad to put him in goal.”

I closed my gaping jaw and weakly echoed, “He’s left-footed? Really?”

I watched the coach mentally lumping me in the “American who doesn’t know shit about soccer” category before kindly offering me a way to save face by asking, “His coach never told you?”

Dalton’s coach thought back to her very first day coaching Dalton’s team.

I had taught ten five-year-old boys to plant one foot with the toes pointed in the direction they wanted the ball to travel and to then kick the ball with the other foot. I never told them WHICH foot to use. Dalton must have used his naturally dominant right foot to aim and kicked the ball with his left foot…and kept doing it. For almost 4 years.

OMG. I had turned my son into the most coveted player in team sports: a lefty.

I was a baseball dad.

The Hoarder (#342)

As a child, the conversation at my family dinner table was always better than the food on the table. (I kid you not–Kraft Mac & Cheese was the best meal of the week.) My dad might have political anecdotes from Capitol Hill.  My stepmother might tell us how one high school gang tried to break into her classroom to get at another gang. Or we might get a story about our great-grandfather learning how to swim by diving off a piano in a flooded southern parlor from my mom.

My Chinese American husband’s family was all about the food. I learned the hard way that no one expected conversation at the table. Everyone concentrated on eating. This makes sense when the food is both tasty and served immediately (e.g., dim sum). It also makes sense if you’re eating a dish like chicken feet, which involves considerable mouth aerobics, ending in spitting out chicken toenails.

Young boy grimaces as he bites down on a fried chicken foot.
Baby D meets chicken feet.

Andy’s dad also wasn’t much of a talker, unlike practically every person in my family. My family told jokes, made fun of each other, and competed to get the best laughs. We all also like to show off share information.

Maybe this is why Andy’s a better cook than I am. He tastes as he goes and even plates artistically, believing the food should always take center stage.

I love good food, but I also want to hear about spouse/ spawn’s days. The breakfast/dinner table is the place where I find out what’s going on. I believe that communication is connection and sharing is caring.

Andy, on the other hand, hoards information. And he hoards it as long as he can.

I’d walk into the kitchen and say, “That smells good. Whatcha making?”

“Stuff.”

“Sooo…what’s for dinner?”

“Food.”

“Oh my God, would it kill you to tell me what’s for dinner one time?!”

Apparently, it would. Because not once did Andy actually volunteer to tell me what he was making. I had to piece together clues from ingredients and cookbooks on the counter.

Now, when Andy asked me what I was making for our Christmas party, my response was: “Oh, I’m going to do cream cheese sugar cookies with buttercream frosting with about one-quarter teaspoon almond extract, plus candy cane and chocolate meringues—and I’ll need the food processor for both the candy canes and to chop up the chocolate chips extra tiny so they don’t get stuck in the piping tips and also maple sugar rugelach and did you know that I had to order maple sugar from Ben’s Sugar Shack in New Hampshire this year?! I can’t find it ANYWHERE. Or and I’ll make those chocolate cookies with white chips that are your favorite, do you want coconut in them or not?”

It’s a point of pride that, when asked “why?,” by Baby D, I never once responded with “Because I told you so.”

Instead, I dumped elaborate reasoning and detailed explanations on my child until he either fled the room or could out reason/ argue me into changing my mind.

Storage containers and boxes crammed on wire shelving units.
Andy’s least favorite view

The only information my husband shared freely was how much he hated all the boxes in the garage. We had many boxes. That happens with a house less than 1200 square feet and minimal storage space. Heavy blankets, comforters, and winter clothing were stored in the garage in the summer. Window fans and tubs of light linens got stored in the garage in the winter. There were two bicycles, suitcases, pet supplies, cleaning supplies, the extra refrigerator, extra chairs, an extra banquet table, portable chairs for soccer matches, a team soccer canopy, a team bench, and 8 containers of holiday/ season decorations.

Every so often, when Andy got snarly, I cleaned out/ donated anything we no longer used. Andy’s grumbles subsided, especially when I pointed out we’re one of the only families on the block that actually put a car in our garage.

I kept tabs on all the storage containers with decorations, though.

Not long into the pandemic, packages started arriving for Andy. There were at least a dozen. Some were large. One was very heavy. A few were small.

“Gardening supplies?” I guessed.

Andy said, “Stuff.”

I rolled my eyes and let it go. The following weekend, Andy spent an entire day moving items around the garage. He went to Lowe’s and returned with giant mobile shelves—the kind that you can roll together so they take up less space but then roll apart for access once the car is out of the garage.

Also the kind of shelf energetic offspring will try and ride down the driveway when Dad is carrying “excessive” Christmas decorations to the garbage bins.

After rescuing child, shelf, and decorations, I planted myself in front of Andy and announced “That’s it. You’ve been bitching about the garage more than usual and there all these mysterious boxes. What are you DOING?”

“Stuff—”

“NO! No more bullshit ‘stuff!’ For all I know you’re setting up a fucking meth factory!”

Andy said, “It’s not a meth factory.”

I crossed my arms and inhaled. Deeply.

Andy hurriedly added, “We can’t go to the gym so I’m turning one of the bikes into a stationary bicycle so I can ride it to get cardio because I can’t run anymore on my bad knee and walking takes too long. I’m trying to make more space in the garage to set up the bike.”

“That’s…great. But…why wouldn’t you just tell me that?”

Andy shrugged.

“You know, mouths are for more than eating!’ I told him. “They’re for talking! For sharing information! If you’d just explained what you wanted to do, I would have helped you. I could have gotten rid of some boxes, consolidated a few things, figured out how to make more space.”

“Really?”

“What, did you think I’d say no?! To something as important as you being healthy?”

“Uh…”

And that’s when I realized that Andy HAD thought I’d say no. Just like his parents always said no—no sports, no extracurricular activities, no curfew extensions. Andy was so used to his family saying no, he’d learned to never offer information which could result in a “no.” It was maddening…but also understandable.

I consolidated a few boxes of decorations and donated some boxes of older blankets to charity.

Andy’s cardio area, with gardening/ soccer hat on bike.

Andy set up his bike. He rides it several times a week.

Sometimes, now, he’ll tell me what he’s cooking.

The other night, at the dinner table, Andy stopped eating long enough to ask Baby D, “So, little boy, what did you do in school today?”

Baby D replied,

“Stuff.”

Taste vs. Appearance (#341)

My neighborhood holds an annual cooking competition over Labor Day every year (with the exception of Plague Year 2020). Each year has a different required ingredient.

My amazing chef of a husband crushed the competition for years, starting with the salsa competition. Until he foolishly got tired of me micromanaging the presentation of his dishes: “My poutine does not need to in your grandmother’s cut crystal bowl! It’s fine!”

“But the flyer says you get judged on taste AND appearance.”

“I’m using the pie dish! You want to use crystal, make your own contest entry!”

I’m a baker, not a chef, but I figured out how to sneak potato flakes into a chocolate cake and won. Because everyone likes chocolate AND I put it on a pretty crystal platter.

Andy sulked for a year or two while I raked in the wins. The hostess then created two winners: one for Sweet and one for Savory. Andy promptly trounced me with his ice cream.

After that Andy and I dominated in our respective categories. The hostess then decided to have two winners in each category: one for taste and one for appearance. Last year Andy lost out to blander dishes because his hot wings made the neighborhood children cry. I lost on taste to what Andy called “an overly sweet” key lime pie, but my piped maple buttercream cupcakes won for appearance.

Maple Cupcakes
Andy’s wings and dressing.

I shook my head over Andy’s loss and opined, “It’s kind of on you, babe. If you aren’t going to modify the taste to suit the neighborhood, you gotta at least TRY to win for appearance. Those kids have never had real buttercream and some of them spat out my frosting because they expected the usual sacrilegious American mixture of powdered sugar and shortening. But my piping and display were pretty, while you tossed your wings into an aluminum pan and stuck your blue cheese dip into a takeout container. Appearance matters!”

“No one cares about how it looks, Mom,” Dalton interjected, with an eye roll.

“YOU don’t care how things look,” I shot back, with an eye roll of my own. “You don’t even comb your hair. Other people care. If it doesn’t look good, they might not even try it.”

“Good,” said Dalton. “Then it will be all for me!”

Dalton, a growing boy who was growing more ravenous as he played more soccer, now wanted ALL the food. My chocolate chip cookie recipe made about 85 cookies. 24 hours after I made those cookies, they were gone.

I stared at the empty cookie cannister and asked Andy, “How many cookies did you have, honey?”

“I had maybe five yesterday and two this morning.”

“And I had three, meaning…Dalton!” I yelled. “Get your butt in here!”

Dalton dribbled his soccer ball into the kitchen, eyes wide and innocent.

“You ate SEVENTY-FIVE cookies in twenty-four hours, young man!”

“But I couldn’t have, Mother,” Dalton answered. He lifted up his shirt and pointed to his trim midriff. “Where could they have gone? Not in this belly—look, nice and flat!”

“You’re hilarious, skinny boy. Go wash the empty container.”

I began modifying recipes in an effort to slow the child’s rate of consumption. I used whole wheat flour. I added oatmeal. I tried an orange and cranberry modification when we had oranges on our tree. I finally settled on an oatmeal, coconut, chocolate chip cookie with toffee.

It wasn’t the prettiest cookie.cookie dough on parchment paper It was more high maintenance than my other drop cookies, since it had to be baked on parchment paper or the toffee bits would stick to the baking sheets. But Dalton couldn’t eat them all in 24 hours and he declared it his “favorite cookie.”

a container of lumpy cookies
D’s Favorite cookie

******

This year, Dalton had a soccer tournament over Labor Day weekend. We’d have no time to cook before the party started. We probably wouldn’t even get home until after the judging ended on Sunday afternoon.

I sighed and told Andy, “I guess the Ashbough-Wong winning streak is finally over.”

He shrugged and said, “It’s really too hot to cook anyway.”

Even at the coast, it was close to 100 degrees. On the turf soccer field? 110 degrees. (The players were dumping ice on each other when subbed out.)

Saturday evening, the cooking competition hostess texted the neighborhood: It’ll be 100 degrees tomorrow at noon. Should we move the party to tomorrow evening or Monday?

I texted back immediately: Monday! We can definitely make it on Monday!

The neighborhood voted for Sunday at 5 PM.

“The fix is in,” Andy joked on our drive home.

“I can make something, but it doesn’t give me enough time to make the golden butter cake with the diced almonds and raspberry buttercream frosting,” I fretted. “What pretty dessert can I make in two hours or less? With ground, diced, or minced ingredients?”

“Cookies!” yelled Dalton from the backseat.

“But they aren’t pretty. And they don’t have ground, diced or minced—wait. I do use the stone-ground wheat flour…”

I made “D-Fav” cookies.

picture of a cookie with ingredients listedAndy threw together spicy Thai tofu. We made it to the party with fifteen minutes to spare.

This year, there were more kids at the party than food dishes. Families would bring one entry…and three children. Our hostess was thrilled to see my enormous platter of cookies.

“Thank goodness,” she exclaimed. “So far there is only the one apple-bread-cake thing and some lemon bars on the dessert table.”

Andy’s tofu was competing against Persian kebabs, homemade naan, smoked pork belly, meatballs, caprese salad (with no ground anything that I could see), shrimp ceviche, a chicken dish with shredded carrots, and various other forgettable dishes.

I liked Andy’s dish the best, but he wasn’t optimistic. “It’s tofu. Nobody votes for tofu.”

“Well, at least you brought something. I don’t think there’s enough food.”

Sure enough, almost every serving dish was empty by the end of the judging—including my massive platter (much to Dalton’s dismay).

The teens tallied up the votes and handed the results to the hostess.

She announced, “In the savory category, pork belly wins for taste and the kebabs win for appearance!”

“Told you,” Andy whispered as folks cheered. “It’s meat for this crowd.”

“And for the sweet category,” the hostess continued, “the winner for taste is the D-Fav cookies, and the winner for appearance is—wait a minute. Kids, I told you the same dish can’t win in both categories!”

The teens gave the hostess blank stares. One youngster muttered, “But the cookies won both categories. And they were the best.”

The kid’s mom gave her an elbow in the ribs and said, “You should know, you ate ten of them.”

To the teens, a lumpy appearance didn’t matter. Neither did arbitrary adult rules.

The kids are all right.

Picture of a wrapped gift with a gold bow and a card that says "Congratulations."

But the hostess still wouldn’t give me two prizes.

Power Trip (#340)

I didn’t plan to take the summer off from blogging. Every day, I’d think, “I’m going to write the post about rescuing the cat! Or the one about husbandly information hoarding!”

And every day something would happen. Maybe an ant invasion. Maybe non-stop emails about soccer. Maybe another volunteer organization needed something handled. With the country opening up again (sometimes in very stupid ways), I had more visitors this summer than ever.

It was also summer vacation, which meant Baby D was home. I dread summer vacation. Yes, Dalton is more independent now that he’s older, but also more argumentative about chores. About screen time. About EVERYTHING, actually. Continue reading Power Trip (#340)

Post Father’s Day Post (#323)

Compared to Mother’s Day, Father’s Day is pretty recent. It only exists because certain politicians got all whiny about how dads in America were bereft of recognition. Instead of self-soothing with their higher wages, or their ability to assault women with impunity, or their success despite white mediocrity, they demanded their very own holiday.

President Nixon signed Father’s Day into law in 1972. Yes, NIXON, the most corrupt U.S. President until Trump demanded Nixon hold his beer.

Mother’s Day, at best, says “thanks for all the unpaid emotional labor of child-rearing, please have this one day off.” Ironically, it often means more work for a person who is already overworked and underpaid.

Father’s Day? Father’s Day is ridiculous. We live in a damned patriarchy. Every day is Father’s Day. Continue reading Post Father’s Day Post (#323)

Skirmish of the Sides (#322)

I did not grow up gourmet.

I grew up excited about McDonald’s. This might have been because my parents’ ideas of cooking meant throwing protein and potatoes in the oven for an hour or two. Sometimes we had rice as a side, but mostly it was baked potatoes. With margarine. (I didn’t discover butter until I was in high school. Whereupon I ranted to my parents, “Why have you been keeping this deliciousness from us and giving us MARGARINE?!”)

My husband Andy is Chinese-American. In his family, rice isn’t a side, it’s necessity. The angriest I’ve ever seen Andy’s Engineering Cousin was when her Quite White husband went on the Atkin’s diet. “It’s ridiculous!” she ranted at Andy on Thanksgiving. “It’s all meat and fat! Not a grain of rice ever! How can you have dinner or holidays without rice?!” Continue reading Skirmish of the Sides (#322)