childhood memories

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Five for Friday

Happy Halloween! I know it’s not for everyone, but I adore Halloween. The costumes, the candy, the decorations. It’s all fun. 

Oddly (for me), I haven’t done much more than decorate. Okay, I haven’t done anything more than decorate. And even then, Carla did most of the decorating herself. I haven’t bought any candy, I haven’t made any Halloween treats (although there’s still time for baking!), and we didn’t even buy a pumpkin! The only jack-o-lantern around here is my ceramic one.

Why must you insist on photographing me with these strange objects, woman?!
  • Carla has been really into Halloween this year, and has been leaning into the scary side of it.We’ve been listening to some “scary” audiobooks in the car, which is so fun. Pleasingly, some of my favorite books from when I was a kid hold up pretty well. We’ve listened to as many Zilpha Keatley Snyder books as are available at my library: The Egypt Game, The Witches of Worm, and The Headless Cupid. I love how these books have a slightly supernatural element to them without being overly frightening. As a parent, I also appreciate how insightful they are about kid psychology. Carla loved them. We own the other Stanley mysteries, so hopefully we’ll get to those once we’ve finished reading The Witch of Blackbird Pond, which is not particularly scary at all and might even be kind of boring. We’ve been reading it for a long time and it’s kind of a slog. But in my memory it was so good! After we exhausted the Snyder audiobooks, we turned to The Dollhouse Murders, which remains an excellent novel and is, unfortunately, the only Betty Ren Wright audiobook my library carries. I see that Audible has Christina’s Ghost in its catalog, but none of Wright’s other wonderfully creepy novels. I get it, they’re old. But they are SO GOOD.  Right now, we’re listening to Doll Bones by Holly Black, another Newbury Honor Winner. It’s pretty good so far.
  • Our seasonal media hasn’t stopped at books; we’ve been watching some scary movies, too. My husband and I watched the first Scream movie with Carla. I think it holds up okay, for a 90s film. It wasn’t as scary as I remember, and Carla was unfazed. Then we watched The Sixth Sense, which I hadn’t seen since I first watched in back in the early aughts. It was much slower than I remember, and Carla didn’t seem quite as shocked by the big twist as I remember being. I suppose movies have gotten a lot twistier in the intervening decades. We tried to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which I remember was a lot of fun. But wow. It is SO BAD. My husband and I have also been watching some scary movies instead of our normal nightly TV show. We’ve seen Weapons, which was excellent, and The VVitch, which was also good but in a much less horror-movie kind of way. I liked Weapons because it was kind of a mystery story disguised as a horror movie. It did have some truly graphic violence though, the kind where I had to look at my husband watching the movie instead of looking at it myself. This weekend, we plan to watch Bring Her Back. 
  • Lenny / Leo finds Halloween to be quite perplexing. But he’s rolling with it. There are a lot of fun new things to sniff and bite and knock over.
Despite appearances, no pumpkins were harmed in the taking of this photo.
  • Will this be the last year of trick-or-treating? According to Carla, she is going to be dressing up and trick-or-treating for many years to come. But some of her friends have already indicated that they aren’t dressing up next year.  I don’t mind either way. If she decides not to trick-or-treat next year, we could invite a couple of friends over to watch scary movies and hand out candy. Of course, I’m happy for my kiddo to be a kid as long as she wants to, so dressing up and trick-or-treating sounds fine to me. I have no memory of when I stopped trick-or-treating. Maybe it was in middle school? I do remember that in middle school, I started to have friends over to watch scary movies. Perhaps this wasn’t just around Halloween, though; it seems like every sleepover I went to involved some sort of horror flick. I was big into witchy stuff – I had a Ouija board that I loved and pulled out at sleepovers as often as possible. We played games like Bloody Mary and Light As a Feather, Stiff As a Board and told each other scary stories. Being scared – while knowing you were ultimately safe and secure – was such a delicious feeling. 
  • If you dressed up for Halloween, what was your favorite costume? My mom handmade me a Halloween costume every year – how she managed that, between working full time and raising two kids, is beyond me; I am a strictly Store Bought Costume kind of mom – and my all-time favorite was a fortune teller costume. My mom found this gorgeous crimson paisley material and made me a long, full skirt. I think she made me a sleeveless top out of some sort of gold gauzy material, and a belt out of some sort of gold fringe. I felt mysterious and beautiful in that outfit and I think I had her repurpose it a few years in a row. Carla has been a ton of fun things for Halloween over the years, but I think my favorite was when she was two. She loved the Super Grover segments on Sesame Street, and she specifically requested to be Super Grover for Halloween. She was adorable. 

    As I mentioned, I have not bought a single piece of Halloween candy this year. I did ask that Carla try to snag me a Snickers or a bag of Sour Patch Kids while she’s out trick-or-treating. (I would also love a Milky Way Midnight or a Skor / Heath bar, but those are few and far between.) What kind of candy will you be hoping for tonight?

    That’s right pumpkin heads. BEWARE OF CAT.
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    Coffee Break

    It seems as though I am doing NaBloPoMo this month, which is 30 blog posts in 30 days. (Will I make it??? Only time will tell.) Details at San’s blog here.

    I started drinking coffee when I was eight. My mom brought home these beautiful bowls from a trip she’d made to Paris, and said that children drank café-au-lait out of the bowls. Obviously, I wanted to do this, too. So she made me café-au-lait, which is mainly milk with a splash of coffee.

    My next memory of coffee comes from my mother’s law office. Her office had a little kitchenette in the basement, outside the library. It’s two best features were an “Honor Box” of candy bars (which I dutifully fed dollars and coins into so that I could have Butterfingers when they were available and Fifth Avenue bars when they weren’t) and a coffee pot. I’d pour myself cups of coffee, doctor them up with sweetener and powdered milk, and drink them while I did my homework.

    Once when I was in high school, my father and I drove to a Big West Coast City. It’s possible we were on our way to check out a university there; I remember the visit and hating the bustling, city-like school with all my heart. We stopped at a resort on a lake, about halfway between my hometown and BWCC, and had a fancy dinner. After dessert, on a whim, we ordered the coffee tray. My father does NOT drink coffee, but he and I were both delighted by all the accoutrements – marshmallows, sugar cubes, whipped cream, chocolate shavings. We mixed our coffees into sweet oblivion. 

    That’s where my specific memories of coffee-drinking stall. I have flickers: gratefully seeking out the break room coffee machine when my eyes started to flutter during an especially tedious internship; sipping that first pumpkin spice latte of the fall; searching for just the right flavor of those tiny tubs of flavored creamer crammed into a bowl in a diner. 

    But coffee just doesn’t do it for me anymore. Hasn’t for a decade or more (despite my best efforts). Now, I’m into tea. 

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    Football Season, After-School Activities, Dinners This Week

    Football season is back, baby! It’s super problematic and fills me with conflict and yet I just can’t quit it! My husband and I enjoyed a luxurious afternoon watching our team win yesterday and sampling some Octoberfest beers, all from the comfort of our living room. Carla made herself a couch out of blankets and the cushions from the actual couch, and sat there through the whole game. She was originally very excited about football, but then realized after only a few minutes that she finds it quite boring. Well. It took me many decades before I learned how to enjoy it, so I get it. She watched a few shows on her iPad, then started doing a “research project” on her computer that seems to involve googling photos of animals and pasting the photos into a google doc. There may be an element of alphabetization at play. (“Mommy, Daddy, what’s an animal that starts with a G? All I can think of is ‘gnu.’”) Delightful.

    We’ve been having fallish weather, which is pleasant. And makes me crave all the soups and stews and hearty foods. We made impromptu chili last night, which was delicious, and which means we have leftovers for dinner tonight. 

    This week also marks the start of all of Carla’s after school activities. To be fair, we started one activity a little more than a month ago, and then there was a week of tryouts for the sport she’s doing. But the real, FULL schedule begins this week. (Technically, it’s not “full” yet. We will add a second Monday activity in late October as part of her music lessons. I am apprehensive about that one, because it means Carla will need to eat dinner in the car as we drive from one activity to another.)  

    I did after-school activities as a kid – piano and gymnastics starting when I was in elementary school – and I remember dinners being tricky. Well, they were also wonderful because I had a sanctioned reason to eat fast food; my parents both worked right up until the time of the activities, and our house was too far out of town for us to go home for dinner. I have no recollection of how I got from school to my parents’ offices. But I do remember fighting with my brother over whether we were going to get tacos or McDonalds for dinner, and then eating whatever we’d decided on at my father’s paper-cluttered desk while he finished seeing patients and dictating notes. This was the time before smart phones and iPads, too, so I am not sure what we did while we waited. Looked through old medical journals and bickered, probably.

    I don’t remember feeling overscheduled when I was a kid. But until high school (when I still did piano, but also added debate, cheerleading, individual voice lessons, and a capella group practice), I had two, maybe three activities spanning two or maybe three nights a week. Carla is going to have something every single day. Yikes. She and my husband and I talked at great length about the scheduling and the time commitment, and I am hopeful that it won’t be too overwhelming. Carla doesn’t really have homework yet, so her only requirements at home are playing her instrument, reading for 15 minutes, and keeping her room and play areas tidy. And even though she’s doing something every night, she really only has three activities. (Sport: 3 nights a week. Instrument: 2 nights a week. School activity: 2 afternoons a week.) And she is SO excited about all of them. 

    She’s a very busy, active kid, so I don’t necessarily worry that much about her being overstimulated or tired. My main worry is that she won’t feel like she has any time to play, which is really so important for kids. But she will be able to come home after school three days a week and play a bit before her sports practice. Plus, her weekends aren’t terribly crowded. Well. I forgot about Girl Scouts. She will have Scout meetings once a month. But that’s not too bad. And then there’s skiing, but that doesn’t start until January. 

    Well. We’ll see how it goes. If it’s impossible, or she’s too exhausted, we will apologize profusely and back out of one of the activities. 

    Did you do after-school activities when you were a kid? Did you feel overscheduled? If you are a parent, what is/was it like for your kiddo/s? Do you think Carla and I are nutso for doing this to ourselves on purpose?

    With all these activities, I am back to planning super easy meals with plenty of leftovers. Here’s what’s on the agenda for this week:

    Dinners for the Week of September 12-19

    • Leftover Chili: This reminds me that I have never posted my chili recipe. It’s very good. I make it with ground beef and beans, but it’s very adaptable to be vegetarian or to accommodate alternate types of ground meat or your particular preference for beans. 
    • Spinach and Artichoke Chicken: I don’t know why, but I’ve been dreaming about something like this for awhile. I think it should make some good leftovers, and it sounds perfect for fall. 
    • Crockpot BBQ Pork: This was on the menu a couple of weeks ago, but I didn’t execute it for whatever reason. So it’s happening this week. I slather my pork on a baked potato, my husband eats his in a sandwich with coleslaw. The pork tenderloins at Trader Joe’s were teensy, but I think I can make this stretch to two nights anyway.
    • Lentil Soup: I haven’t made lentil soup in a good long while, but it sounds really yummy. I got pre-made mirepoix from Trader Joe’s, which makes this meal very simple to put together. Perhaps I will also make a loaf of miracle no-knead bread to go along with it. I’ll make a nice big pot, which should make enough for another night of dinners and maybe even a lunch or two.

    Are you having fall weather in your neck of the woods? Are you a football fan? Any fall meals on the docket for you this week?