Thanks for the Pilgrims

Face it America, we have become a profligate nation, full of self-indulgent, self-absorbed, unreflective, religiously intolerant fatties! I hope the Pilgrims, God rest their souls, are turning over in their graves at what they have wrought. The spirit of their journey to Plymouth Rock undoubtedly gave to this nation and all those who fell upon her shores--either by choice or chains--a sense of creative innovation and self-reinvention. For years, these traits, have served America well, if not so much her native peoples. But "too much of a good thing is good for nothing." As we spread out from Plymouth Rock, cutting, burning, slashing and paving our way into a post-industrial-modern-digital future, we became blinded and bloated by our prosperity. We shed temperance and good sense for continuous re-invention and progress. Now we stand at the tipping point of self-destruction. We have laid the foundation for an unsustainable lifestyle and an unliveable environment. Our future, like our vast oceans now smothered by indispensable and indestructible plastic, is being choked by the output our own history and behaviour. In our race to the future, we failed to see how we were undoing its very foundation today.
So on this Thanksgiving day, I think about how those Indians saved those Pilgrims from starvation and certain death. And what did those Pilgrims and their offspring do to return the favour? Just look at what we've done to this planet and you will have your answer.

Rhymes with Mountain & Fountain

It's Plantain. It's delicious. Fried, baked, boiled, broiled, mashed or microwaved.
It's NOT a banana, people! And for God's sake and mine, please learn how to say it right. It's not Plan-Tayn. Do you go around saying "what a beautiful Foun-tayn? sheesh!
If you want that nice sweet plantain taste, you are going to have to let the skin turn black. the blacker the better. I know in the USA where spots on fruits or fruits with dark skin tends to turn folks off, this is hard to take. But if you want nice sweet plantains you are gonna have to let it get dark. It always tripped me out that Americans eat bananas when there are still green streaks on the peel. I wonder who sold you that bill of goods? A nice full flavoured banana, like a plantain needs to have the sugars develop and that means getting a few brown spots, and black blotches for the plaintains. Of course you can twice-fry a green plantain--yummy with salt. Slice them thin or thick (smash them between frying). But if you want to enjoy them in their full sugar flavour, you gotta get past this perfect waxy store fruit look. Get the dark, spotty blotchy plantains. I can tell when a fried plantain is going to be sweet, just by looking. If the color is pale yellow and doesn't have a nice caramel glaze, you are going to have a mouthful of starchy yuck. So many people think they know what plaintains (rhymes with mountains) are supposed to taste like but until you get yourself some made by someone who's not afraid of dark skinned fruit, you are sadly mistaken.

Electronic Birth Contol

My petite pregger pal is clearly trying to keep me from blithely wandering into motherhood. This one scared the Uterus out of me. She sent this email to a select group of her friends. Consider it "electronic birth control."

Hi girls, So I am going to be one of those women that tells it to my dearest friends straight up. This way you are in for NO surprises when this happens. Sorry this is early in the morning, so don’t read on an empty stomach.When I envision a smiling baby it does help to cheer me up..i get there by trying to chat OM. .it actually works for about 3 mins, and then I have to pee..which takes about 10mins to do (by the time I heave my body up). It’s bad enough that the baby is SO on top of my bladder that I have to pee frequently, but I got diagnosed with another bladder infection. So, during the 3 sec intervals of my life when I’m actually NOT peeing, I am now spending it feeling like I have to pee, along with all the fun burning as well. Add 2 more horse pills to my daily 7 pills, and I’m at a total of 9 pills..half of which you take with food, the other half you take 2hours after food. Huh? It’s all very confusing and I’m convinced I’m going to have a jello baby. My morning always starts off with a bloody nose, and last night ended with me on the floor, waiting for indigestion to pass. Indigestion! Me! Ms Whole grain, green veggie, 3 pieces of fruit a day! I avg about 3-4 hours of sleep, and I get sooooooo happy when it happens. Usually the sciatica, groin, contractions, or pee wakes me up. [my hubby] has given up completing his repeated question “ Honey, are you okay?”…now he just shortens it when he hears me move, “Hon?” then…Snore.
And here’s the bestest part…at week 34 (where I am)…they encourage you start massaging your perineum. Perineum you say? Oh, the fun area right at the end of your vagina and btwn your anus..the area that RIPS or TEARS when you are having a kid shoot out of you. Massaging is a misnomer. You are supposed to lay 2 fingers down on the ring of the perineum and push back and forth so it stretches. imagine a U shape and your fingers are at the round part of the U and you are to increase the pressure there for a couple of minutes, daily, for the following weeks till labor. This is all to avoid the dreaded episiotomy…you know, when the dr has to sew you up because you ripped at that special part. The theory is (as many midwives and drs attest) that a bit of pain each day will help keep the episiotomy at bay. ...To further humiliate yourself, you must remember that you can not see past your belly at this point, so never mind finding your perineum on your own. This is when I truly do envy long armed women.Anyway, because of my bladder infection and (let’s not forgetting contracting uterus), I am not to do the perineum massage yet. Basically nothing but toilet paper is allowed near my parts at this delicate time. I’ve been getting contractions since week 29..but the ones this week have been really strong. The right side of my belly becomes completely raised, totally lopsided in sight and feel. It’s really trippy..and the insides tighten up, exactly like a menstrual cramp but you can SEE it as well as feel it. Some contractions have lasted about 3-4 mins. Dr says it’s ok as long as I don’t get 5 qty in an hour.. Keep in mind, all the above is completely individual to me.. I mean, I had 2 great trimesters, and some women have 180 days of vomiting..so it’s all about perspective. And yes, I’ve had to pee for real and for fake, like 18 times while writing this. I know I got myself into this and I’m totally happy about the baby..I don’t want the baby to come out early..but I so want the pregnancy to end. Please remember to guilt the baby for me..please!

Baby Belly

My very pregnant friend recently shared proofs from an "expecting" photo shoot. She wanted my opinion on which ones to print. I scrolled through page after page of a beautiful, happy, fecund woman in her biological prime. "Wow." I thought. "Look at That Belly." Click, click, click. Picture after picture scrolling by, I stopped seeing her smiling happy face and could only see THAT BELLY. Something came over me and I suddenly FREAKED OUT! Utterly and completely. I was a bit shocked and ashamed by my reaction to seeing her belly. To me, it seemed like my petite friend, usually a scant 90 lbs sopping wet, had been consumed, yes! consumed, by this enormous protrusion. I began to hallucinate that my dear friend had been invaded by some kind of alien life form. Sure, I see *clothed* pregnant women of all sizes all the time, but here was my friend, no bigger than a mite in the full flesh. Very full flesh. Given that I hadn't seen my friend since the early days when her belly looked like she'd just eaten too many beans, I was now overcome by her fulsomeness (is that a word?). Gassy belly bloat I can handle. This? Nnn-nnn! I realised it was about me and not her. I was freaking out about the fact that I have been freaking out about whether I should get on the mommy-train. At my age, things, I fear, are not as elastic. What if there is not snapback for me?So for someone on the fertility fence, the pictures were a bucket of cold water--make that two buckets! Set my feet right back down on to the solid ground of barreness!

Zucchini Farewell

At certain times of the year, it's never hard to find someone who is trying to get rid of bushels and bushels of zucchini! Since it grows like a weed, many backyard gardeners plant it to make themselves feel green-thumbish. But do you ever wonder why they end up giving away so much of their bountiful crop? I suspect that it's not all about generosity!
Take me, for example, if I had a bumper mango crop, you can bet I’d find a way to consume every last one of them—mango pie, mango juice, mango sorbet, mango soup, mango tea, mango lotion—you get the picture. I love mangoes so I’d eat me some mangoes till I dropped from mango-itis.
Not so with the zucchini. Face it. Zucchini is to vegetables as "Wonder Bread is to real bread. Bland, bland, bland. At least you can slap some peanut butter on the white bread and have something good stuck to the roof of your mouth. Can't say that about a zucchini! Among the zillions of recipes for zucchini this and zucchini that, I've yet to find one that makes it taste like a damn thing. It's the cardboard of vegetables--tasteless. I don’t have a lot of time to cook so if I am going to chop or grate, dice or slice, fry or bake something, it better end up tasting like something. The saddest thing? With a name like Zucchini, you’d expect it to be more. I wish I could appeal to the VRC—Vegetable Renaming Council to reassign the name of Zucchini to some worthier vegetable--like Kale. I keep buying zucchini and it keeps rotting in my fridge alongside the hope that someday I can make something great with it. So today I say, no more. Arrivederci Zucchini!

Relative Bonds

Word came late Sunday that a rather young cousin had died unexpectedly. My reaction was remarkable for being unremarkable. I didn't know this cousin very well. He was the son of a less than favored uncle whose death some years ago, stirred nothing in me. I shan't discuss the reasons for my antipathy toward that uncle except to say, if you mistreat on my mother, you've made an enemy of me.
In recent days, before I heard of the death, I'd been thinking about the bonds of relativity. I was annoyed that a relative with whom I had no personal relationship had taken it upon himself to print my wedding pictures (damn online albums) and sent them off to yet another relative. I thought: "how dare he usurp my experience." I thought of my numerous cousins and how little I knew them--even the ones I had been close to as a child.
Some years ago I had planned to organise a family reunion in the old country but ultimately scrapped it. I decided I was happy with the relatives I knew--happy in the "better the devil you know" sense of happy. I didn't need any more relatives I decided. The ones I had were enough trouble.
By the time Monday rolled around, I'd forgotten that the poor chap was dead. Talking to my sister today she said she felt terribly guilty that she felt less for the cousin than she did for her ailing, incontinent, 20 year-old cat, now near death. "I'd feel sadder if Kitty had died," she said. "Me too," I replied.

Yammer, Yammer, Yammer

I love my cell phone as much as the next person. I can send pictures to my blog and it's the key to a world of information available by text. Simply marvelous. How did we ever live without them?
But people do me a favour and don't bother to answer your phone if you are in the crapper! Go ahead, admit it. You've been in the loo and have done your best so that you don't transmit the strain or the plop. Forgive the scatalogical inferences. I bring it up just to make the point that the addiction is real. I firmly believe that people can no longer just be alone with themselves, walking down the street, looking at the sky. Every moment has to be connected. If you are not onthe phone with someone then you are no one. Scary thought that.
Recently I watched a teen, out on a lovely whale watching excursion with her family, stare cross-eyed at her mobile, texting and being texted. Sounds like a new state of being,doesn't it? It is! I think we are about to see a new generation of younger people developing serious eye issue. People will evolve with eyes even more closely spaced--in direct proportion to the miniaturization of the devices.
It makes me just a little sad, I suppose, the the cell phone is so present in all our lives, mine included. Sometimes I just like to have a moment to myself and leave the cell phone in the closet.