Sincerity

Sincerity is such a tricky wicket.

According to wordnik, sincerity is “the quality or condition of being sincere; genuineness, honesty, and freedom from duplicity.” All good things, right?

Yet in this snarky, self-concious, hipper-than-thou culture of ours, it is cool to mock everything.

I am, I think, a painfully earnest person. (“Marked by or showing deep sincerity or seriousness”–I love you, wordnik.) I take what people say at face value, responding seriously to the most ironic of comments and embarassing myself tremendously in the process.

One of my closest friends rarely passes a moment without engaging in heavy sarcasm. I knew her FOR AN ENTIRE YEAR before I decided that yes, she did like me, and she wasn’t just putting up with me for a mutual friend’s sake. She is that snarky.

Therein lies the rub. Like most of my generation, I think sarcasm and irony are funny. I love The Daily Show and Tom Lehrer. I try to be quick-witted and smart-mouthed at parties, because that is entertaining to me and my circle. Sometimes I even feel my face burn when a quip goes awry, especially in the presence of my second-snarkiest friend, whom I have for some reason never stopped trying to impress.

And yet. And yet.

I feel vaguely guilty and hypocritical when I’m sarcastic. Especially when it’s mean sarcasm. (To be honest, when is sarcasm not mean?) It’s hard for me to meet anyone’s eye when I’m snarky.

It’s a vicious circle. I’m not a sarcastic person. But I enjoy sarcasm, or perhaps I just enjoy the company of people who do. So I employ sarcasm. But it doesn’t come naturally to me, so I embarass myself. And the whole time I wonder if I’m doing something wrong, acting so blase and snarky about things and people I really do care about.

Too sincere for sarcasm, I think. Does that make me boring? Does it matter? Perhaps I should stop trying to be something I’m not.

“Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ.” — Galatians 1:10

Supper

How well do I follow my meal plan?

After a trip to Whole Foods in which the Bean inadvertently destabilized an entire pyramid of pears…I discarded my original idea. Nothing like the unplanned purchase of a few pounds of underripe but bruised pears to make one rethink one’s immediate gustatory intentions.

So we had turnip and pear soup (from Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant–one of my very favorite cookbooks) with green salad and blue cheese toast. The soup was interesting enough, though I doubt I’ll make it again. Just a little too bland, I think. The Bean took two bites and turned up her nose.

On the up side, I did manage to cook up another chunk o’ pumpkin, which should facilitate faster dinner prep tomorrow night.

Meal plan 11.15.09

Since it is now…uh…8:57 on Sunday night, and I only NOW have dinner underway, I’ve decided it is time once again to engage in a little MEAL PLANNING.

So. What do I have that needs eating?

• chestnuts
• celery
• pumpkin
• zucchini
• eggs
• leeks
• beets
• scallions
• cranberries
• Parmesan cheese rinds

Feeling very fallish in my refrigerator. So what can I make with this?

1. Chestnut soup with cranberry orange bread
2. Swiss chard and sweet potato gratin (de Smitten Kitchen) with maple leek salad
3. Chicken Parmesan soup
4. Pumpkin cannelloni with sage brown butter (sans clam sauce, thanks)
5. Lamb kebobs with zucchini fritters and yogurt sauce

Hm. Lots of heavy-lifting cooking. I suppose we’ll see how well the girls cooperate. Oh, AND I have choir practice on Wednesday (just joined, so I’m still trying to remember it on my internal calendar).

That still leaves me with beets, too, but I think I can deal with that. Perhaps serve them with the cannelloni. I actually saw a recipe for beet soup served in roasted acorn squash halves, but that sounded a little too risky a combination for my four-year-old. And me.

My week in pictures

Here in Omaha, we have eight days a week.

November 2 was my mum’s birthday. We went out to dinner, then came back here for cake. Unfortunately, I was running on a rather large sleep deficit (having only finished moving at 8 a.m. that morning), so did not have the wherewithal to bake a real birthday cake. Boxed Betty Crocker marble cake stood in for the intended fancy mocha cupcakes.

Tuesday I faced up to a jack o’lantern that was getting scarier by the hour.

The first fifth of his head made a delicious soup that fed me for three days…

We discovered that the bathroom rug and full-length mirror are a fantastic playground for the under-five-months set.

The end of the week found us craving a little excitement (as if unpacking a house with two little kids underfoot isn’t exciting enough!). So we called a few friends over for an evening of pizza and board games.

Saturday Sweet Pea experienced the joy that is Missouri Valley…

And Tuesday was Crazy Hair Day at the Y:

Coming Soon…

Though you couldn’t tell from here, I have been silently and sneakily preparing a ton of fun posts. Commencing tomorrow (or later tonight if I can find the photo card reader) will be:

1. My week in pictures
2. The scariest coloring book EVAH! (This was supposed to be for Halloween, but time got away from me.)
3. More hideous cookbooks
4. Preservation marathon!
5. Silly parties galore

…as well as the usual ramblings of a madwoman. Hopefully a good time will be had by all. See you soon.

Lukewarm life

I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.

–Revelations 3:15-16

Does anyone else ever feel like they are living their entire lives in a lukewarm state? Not necessarily regarding God (although, obviously, that can be a big part of it), but in general. Not committed to one life path or another. Not pursuing anything in particular. Not excited about anything or distraught by anything or worked up about much at all.

That’s how I feel just now.

Here I sit. Wife of one. Mom of two. Co-owner of fairly successful business. Unable to decide whether to go back to seminary, pursue law school, apply for a full-time job or just part-time. Etcetera.

Bleah.

I can’t even get my act together enough to unpack my cookbooks, and cooking is one of the few things I know I love.

(Yet I know I don’t want to be a full-time cook.)

I can’t seem to fully focus on my business, because it isn’t what I most wish I were doing…but what do I most wish for? I don’t know. Clarity? A goal?

I thought writing out my thoughts would help, and this post is just as muddled as I am.

Photo of the day

Because I’m so freaking busy trying to finish moving and make Halloween fun and file taxes and do those other things I’ve already forgotten…

A photo. From last spring’s trip to Spain.

Is it possible to be more crabby and still be photogenic?

Unobtainium

Unobtainium is the non-word of the day.

Definition (inferred): an unobtainable substance.

Thanks to Erin at www.dressaday.com for the reference (see the October 19 post). I laughed for 20 minutes.

Good hair

Chris Rock has a new documentary that just came out entitled Good Hair. It’s about the black hair industry, how black hair (in its natural state) is perceived, self-image…and so on. It looks really interesting and, because it is Chris Rock, really funny.

My hair is not a huge part of my self-image, I must admit. I have been known to hack off a foot of hair without blinking an eye. But there are things I’ve always wanted to try with my hair, and Good Hair reminded me of that, because they are traditionally black hairstyles.

When I was in high school, a teen style magazine–either Sassy or Jane–ran a feature on African braids. There were thin ones and thick ones, ones that required additional (synthetic) hair and ones that could be done with what nature gave you. I fell in love with some gorgeous fat spirals. Unfortunately, I can’t remember the name of the braid style. Even more unfortunately, my thick-ish white-girl hair is not enough to sustain these braids.

In college, I tried to acquire dreadlocks  following the steps Alice Walker gives in Anything We Love Can Be Saved. I didn’t brush my hair. I washed it regularly. I twisted handsful of it to help the hair knit together. But at the end of six or seven months, all I had was unbrushed hair. Of course, I may be missing the key ingredient she mentioned: at least one drop of African blood.

I don’t want these hairstyles because I’m trying to become black. That would be silly and pointless besides. I just think they look beautiful on women and men I have seen, and I want to see if they would be beautiful on me, too.

Stupidest crime

As the Bean would say, it isn’t nice to call someone stupid. But you be the judge.

When the Bean was still in diapers, we lived 45 minutes north of Omaha. Michael worked in Omaha; I worked in Winnebago. We wanted the Bean to wear cloth diapers without us having to wash the dang things, so we signed up with American Diaper Service, which is located in the Big O.

The delivery driver, understandably, did not want to drive 45 minutes north to drop off 60 diapers each week. So we worked out a somewhat awkward plan. Michael would haul the dirty diapers to work once a week, pop his trunk and leave the lid ever-so-slightly ajar. The driver would open the trunk, remove the bag o’ dirty diapers, replace them with clean stock and close the lid.

It worked like a charm until one week, when Michael received a call at work. It was the driver, calling from the parking lot. You forgot to pop your trunk, he said.

Now, Michael had only arrived at work 20 minutes before, and he was sure he had popped the trunk. But perhaps the wind had blown it shut. Who knows? So he made his way out to the parking lot and reopened the trunk to find…nothing.

In the short time he had been at work, someone had discovered the open trunk and stolen the first thing they could grab…which happened to be 30 pounds of urine- and feces-soaked diapers.

I wish I could have seen the thief’s face when he opened the bag.