The RedMolly Picayune-Democrat

Dribbles and blips

Ah, disconnected malcontented ramblings... the Andy Rooneys (Roonies?) of the blogosphere.

• Spring has sprung! Well, not spring. Summer. It was like 85 degrees today, and it's like 307 degrees up here in my wee airless office, and it's supposed to be hotter tomorrow.
• Warm weather means fleas! I think an entire generation of fleas has hatched in my office carpet this evening. Yes, our cats are indoor cats. Yes, they escape whenever they can (well, one of them does... ahem... JEAN) and return with new six-legged pets in tow. And now their pets' progeny are BITING my freaking FEET. Disgust wars with horror and they both team up and pull a sneak attack on surly resignation.
• Remember those CDs I was going to send out? Yeah. I made them. I even made a special little individual cover/inlay card for each one. And tonight I even got them in envelopes--addressed envelopes, to boot! Perhaps a miracle will happen and I will get them to the P.Off. tomorrow, or maybe Saturday is a more realistic goal.
• Now I'm not sure at all about that playlist. 'Cos I downloaded like four thousand Silver Mt Zion/Thee Silver Mt Zion Memorial Orchestra and Tra-La-La Band tracks and now I am so so sad that I am not sharing any of them with you, especially the beautiful and highly disturbing "Sit in the Middle of Three Galloping Dogs."
• On Saturday, I got to meet up with the lovely and talented azureavian and meet her crew of amazingly well-behaved children. Astonishingly well-behaved. Astoundingly, even. I am wondering if her kids can give my kids lessons. (They are also cute and smart. Trifecta!)
• I think I need another root canal. But I am going to ignore this toothache for as long as I possibly can.
• We went to our Campfire gathering tonight, and our leader (actually, our co-leader's husband) had the boys doing a wide array of entertaining "team building" activities. One of them involved pairing off, blindfolding one member of each pair and having the blindfolded boy's partner walk him through a "minefield" of randomly distributed floor tiles using only verbal cues. It went well at first. Then Fisher wandered off from the group, still blindfolded, to amuse his co-Campfirists with his stumbling-about-type antics. They thought it was funny. Then they stopped paying attention to him. Then he walked directly, face first, hard, into a large tree. The good part: I was able to get over to him and clap a hand over his mouth in time to stifle the shrieks of "Fuckin' tree!" enough that none of his co-Campfirists could hear his inappropriate language. The bad part: he was teary and miserable for about ten minutes afterward, and I quickly ran out of steam for jollying him out of it. The sort of funny part: when Fisher insisted that I go get a chainsaw so he could cut down the tree and I was able to convince him that we should do it with a herring instead.
• I made a split pea soup recipe (featuring half a smoked "picnic ham," which is actually made from pork shoulder, and looks a little nasty on first coming out of the package, but which cooks up into like the tastiest tenderest and coincidentally cheapest thing ever) which was supposed to serve six. Ha! I laugh at Cook's Illustrated's idea of what six people can eat! We are going to be eating this pot of soup until August. But that's probably good, because it took like a month to make the soup in the first place.
• My office is about hip deep in envelopes, the little "Remove to Expose Adhesive" tab thingies that come off of envelopes, myriad pens, discarded photo corners and suchlike. But because it is The Way, I can't clean anything up 'til I meet my deadline tomorrow. Also because I am very tired and my tooth hurts.
• I have lots of cute rubber stamps. Why? I never make anything cute. Cute makes me twitchy.
• One of these days I will remember to put sunscreen on some part of my body other than my face, but I'm not counting the days. My arms and shoulders and ahem cleavage are steadily withering into leather.
• I love that I can look down upon a stoplight when I look out my window. There is no earthly reason for this to make me as happy as it does. But it always reminds me of the shot in the intro to "Twin Peaks" where the stoplight is hanging on a wire, swaying in the wind, and cycling from green to red silently and without cause on its timed schedule. No one goes through the light; no one is waiting for it; but it changes when it needs to change.

Happy day, you mothers

I hope a very lovely time is being had by you and yours (or "youse and you'rn," as some of us have been known to say).

My boys gave me a very lovely gold necklace with a wee red/brown stone and three teeny but 100% real diamonds. I've never owned a diamond before; I feel so fancy!

We're visiting my parents in California, as are Herm, Uncle Joe and the inimitable Augie; also my brother Ben. A fine time is being had by all. Especially because it's not raining. An unfamiliar brilliant orb looms overhead. Its rays are causing a strange darkening (Maillard?) reaction in my skin. I am uncertain how to respond. What can this astronomical anomaly be?

Variation on a theme

Is it OK to have deviled eggs and artichokes for dinner?

What about just deviled eggs and artichokes?

You're right. That's unconscionable. I should at least wash them down with a glass or three of scrumptious Oregon Pinot Noir.

Embarrassing, yet delicious

So this is what we ate for dinner. And by "ate" I mean "devoured," as in the boys sucked theirs up promptly and were sad that we had to save the rest for Papa. It's what my old friend Renee (not Renee Pearson, if you were wondering) would call "ditch bank Okie" food. She would call it that as she and her husband ate an entire panful.

This is dirt-freakin-cheap, which has been a theme for our meals around here lately, and would probably work just fine with veggie dogs if you were so inclined. (We were more inclined to use Hebrew National, which had been on a wicked sale.)

Corn Dog Casserole, or "Corn Dog-Like Substance" for the gourmets among us
serves 4-6
Melt 1 Tbsp butter in a skillet. Add 1 cup chopped celery and 1 cup chopped onion; saute 5 minutes. While veggies are cooking, quarter 6 hot dogs lengthwise, then cut each quarter into thirds width-wise. (Or "girthy-wise," if you happen to be a fan of that unutterably creepy commercial.) When onions are translucent, add hot dogs to skillet and cook, stirring frequently, until lightly browned. Remove 1/2 cup of mixture from skillet and set aside.

Meanwhile, combine 1 egg, 3/4 cup milk, 1 tsp rubbed sage and several grindings of black pepper in a large bowl. Fold in all but the reserved 1/2 cup hot dog mixture. Stir in a package of corn muffin mix (the 8.5-ounce Jiffy kind that comes in a retro-cheery blue and white box). Stir in a handful of shredded cheese; cheddar would be fine, 4-cheese Mexican blend is our default house choice. Sprinkle remaining hot dog mixture over the top. (You can poke the hot dog shards into the batter at artistic angles, if you're so inclined. This step might seem a little silly, but the protruding shards really get nice and brown and crispy... mmm.)

Spread into a greased 2-quart (I think... it's the small square Pyrex kind) casserole and bake at 400 for 30 minutes, or until well browned. If you like, you can sprinkle another handful of cheese over the top for the last 5 or so minutes of baking, but to me, that kind of seems like gilding the lily, or cheesing the hot dog, or something. Unnecessary, anyway.

Tastes pretty much exactly like a corn dog from the state fair, but is much tidier to eat and doesn't need to be fried.

This, that, also the other thing

• Birthdays make me tired. I can only imagine how tired my own birthday, currently bearing down on me like a skateboard full of elephants, will make me.
• We got a new stove. Hooray! Four-burner functionality action! Also: a broiler. Can broiled food be far behind?
• Enough with the damn grey weather, already. It's cold here. It's rainy here. I get it! I get it! Time for spring, now.
• When I got upstairs to my office this morning, Jean had her claws stuck in the window screen. She meowed piteously until I managed to set her free. Then fifteen seconds later, she was back up on my desk (where she is patently not supposed to go) with her stupid claws back in the stupid window screen.
• I am currently experimenting with sleep hacking. Jim gets home from work at about 1:30 a.m.; I'm asleep by 2:30 or maybe 3. Up somewhere between 7:30 and 8:30, depending on my sheer exhaustion level. Then after Jim leaves for work again at 4:30 or thereabouts, I take a half-hour nap. This will either increase my productivity hugely or result in my nodding off behind the wheel and running a red light and smashing myself (hopefully no one else) to bits. The jury is still out.
• There were eleven (11) kids at Fisher and Rhys' birthday party on Monday, all happily sticking Legos together into LEGO Racer format and then racing them against each other. A fine time was had by all, though the Fellow-in-Charge at the LEGO Store was a bit of a martinet (as Ute noticed). I made a cake that was supposed to look like a Lego, but was somewhat foiled by my complete ineptitude in all manners pastry-related. But I guess it tasted OK. Ute took a bunch of it home. Yay! Less leftover cake at my house!
• Here's the party:
  
  
• See? Eleven kids; I wasn't lying. Also pictured: Elizabeth and Ute (who, in reality, looks very little like this picture), as well as a crew of non-blogging but extremely helpful adults, among them super-nanny Eryn (black shirt, short hair, glasses). Thank goodness for partygoer-corralling assistance.
• "Corralling" is one of those words that looks misspelled no matter how you spell it, as is "misspelled." And speaking of spelling, I'm taking a break from the Portland Spelling Bee next week; the boys (or, as I am calling them these days, the Smallitarians) and I are visiting my family in Stockton this weekend. Again, hooray!
• Rhys got a library card. He insisted on getting a library card. He would not hear of not having a library card. He even filled out the form himself (except for the part where I had to tell him how to spell our street name, and "Portland," and his last name). So once again I felt validated as a homeschooler. He may not really know how to read, but he sure does dig books. (And he sat still for a long time while I read to him from a book about ancient civilizations, aimed at probably a 14- to 17-year-old audience. A British audience, at that.)

With 32 minutes to go...

Happy birthday to my favorite nine-year-old, Fisher Aloysius!

(Silly ratafratzin' TypePad wasn't letting me post earlier.)

Highlights of the day:

• Awesome (and intimidating-looking) Lego Technic set from Grammy & Pa
• Book about RAF aircraft of World War I, also from Grammy & Pa
• Remote-control airplane from Grandma & Grandpa
• World War I flight simulator game from Papa (are we sensing a theme here?)
• Lunch at the Doug Fir (mmmm, chicken pesto sandwich)
• Homemade chocolate cake (by Papa) with homemade cocoa frosting (by Mama) before Papa left for work
• Cake for dinner, largely because Mama was feeling too lazy to make real dinner
• Watching Molly: An American Girl on the Home Front, which featured Molly Ringwald as Molly's mom, much to Mama Molly's delight (it was actually pretty darn cute for a kid movie)
• No fights all day. This was a present for Mama, apparently.
• Jean willingly wore a bandana on her head for about ten minutes. Sadly, there are no photos to prove this fit of uncatlike behavior.

And completely unrelatedly: has anyone seen Iron Man yet? We're thinking about going on Monday after the boys' joint birthday party at the Lego store. Oh yes. Birthday madness. Legos everywhere. Eleven children between the ages of six and eleven, building and racing cars in the very small confines of the Lego Birthday Zone. And, um, I'm going to try to make a Lego cake. Hold me, I'm scared.

When veggies (are about to) go bad

Another installment in what appears to be evolving into something of a series: "Stuff I Made for Dinner that Turned Out Well."

This is the second time I've made this particular soup. The kids love it (each of them had seconds tonight), Jim seems to quite like it, and I'm just a sucker for soup in general. Great for when there are veggies on the verge of inedibility in your refrigerator. It doesn't matter if they're kind of limp and schlumpy, because you're going to cook them into limp schlumpiness anyway. And the cream rounds it out very deliciously, too...

Cream of Borderline Veggie Soup, adapted from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything
Serves 4 to 6; leftovers reheat well
Trim and chop 1 to 1-1/2 pounds of substantial veggies. I used broccoli tonight, but cauliflower, carrots or asparagus would all work well too. Peel and dice 1 small-to-medium baking potato. (You can also use 1/4 to 1/3 cup of white rice, but I like the potato better. It thickens the soup nicely without being too assertive in the final result.)

If you're going to use an immersion blender to puree the mixture (as I was), chop the pieces fairly small, or you'll end up having to fish them out after cooking and re-chop them (as I did tonight). If you're using a food mill or a blender, you don't have to be so fiddly about the size of the pieces.

In a large, deep pot, combine chopped veggies, potato and 4 to 6 cups broth/stock/water (veggie or chicken broth would be OK; I just used hot water with some Better than Bouillon thrown in). Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 15 minutes or until veggies are falling-apart tender.

Puree mixture, either in situ with an immersion blender or, after a brief cooling period, with a food mill or blender. Return to pot. Whisk in 1/4 to 1 cup cream or half-and-half. (I like to use just a few tablespoons of cream and then half a cup or so of half-and-half. I guess you could use soymilk too, if you're feeding vegans or are one yourself.) Salt and pepper to taste, adding other seasonings if you like. I think a quarter-teaspoon or so of nutmeg and a couple shakes of hot sauce round out the flavors beautifully. Heat through, but don't let it boil.

Serve with garlic bread, biscuits or corn muffins. Yummy!

The Empire Strikes Barack

And now, for something completely different:

Best part: cameo appearances by Howard Dean and Michelle Obama.

I just don't have it in me...

...to argue.

...to stand up for myself.

...to risk rejection.

...to be honest.

...to hope.

...to try.

EPIC FAIL. Better luck next week...

</self-involved whining>

Segregation in the classroom--hurt or help?

New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof edits the regular "On the Ground" column, which publishes essays by teachers in public schools around the US about education and its discontents. Yesterday's essay, "The Mire," by Chicago inner-city teacher Will Okum, talks about the problem of trying to teach those few students in a class who are genuinely engaged and hungry to learn while the "kids at the back" make noise and trouble for everyone else:

Midway through another brilliant lesson on five-paragraph essays, chaos erupts in the back row among the students who do not care. My first-period English class crashes to a standstill as several failing students ignite a hysteria of insults. Other students stew in frustration as they wait for me to restore order and continue the lesson. Sitting in the front row, Kentrail is visibly exasperated that I cannot do my job. Shatara’s teeth and fists are clenched; she stares at me with accusatory anger. Finally, Ronetta screams, “Make them shut up!” Only after the temporary removal of the two instigators six minutes later does the class return to our discussion of thesis statements.

Class time not wasted on discipline is often squandered explaining make-up work to oft-absent students or reviewing remedial skills that should have been learned in early middle school. Intelligent, motivated students like Kentrail, Shatara and Ronetta suffer the most on such days when academic progress is glacial. Too often, their individual brightness is consumed in the mire of the whole. They should not be in this class; they should not be in this school.

Did you have a class like this in high school? I know you did. I did too. Sometimes I was one of the kids at the front. More often, alas, I was one of the kids at the back (though I was seldom really loudly disruptive... I was usually just tuned out and scribbling in my notebook).

This situation strikes me as one of the most critical affecting public education. Schools have a mandate to serve every student; students are required by law to attend school.  A handful of students want to be there, or want the reward of the good grade enough that it's as if they want to be there. A few more are actively unhappy to be there and take out their frustrations on everyone else, demanding more than their share of the teacher's time and energy. Most of the rest don't really care and just want the bell to ring so they can get outside and talk smack with their friends or engage in PDAs with their sweeties or drive their cars fast through the parking lot and escape.

What's the solution? Okum suggests that disruptive kids should be removed entirely and that high-potential, high-achieving kids should never have to suffer the indignity of sitting through another class interrupted by those Rotten Apples. I'm inclined to agree, on one level; but then there's the problem of what to do with the Rotten Apples. Segregate them all in a big warehouse-like classroom where monitors patrol with stern eyes and Tasers at the ready? Sounds like a perfect prep school for prison. Load them down with punishments so harsh that they'll just drop out of school altogether and become somebody else's problem? Once again: fast track to prison (where more than 1 out of 100 US adults are currently cooling their heels, a rate higher than any other country's--including China's).

I guess in my happy little liberal puffy-cloud dream world I like to imagine a public school system where different resources exist to serve different needs. Kids who want to master the five-paragraph essay (and beyond! Maybe someday they'll grow up to join the exalted ranks of bloggers!) could have a nice quiet place to do so. Kids who want to work on cars while listening to speed metal could have a nice speed-metally place to do so. (And I guess kids who want to master five-paragraph essays while listening to speed metal could just be issued iPods or something.) Kids who need some serious mentoring from people who grew up in similar situations to their own and managed to emerge un-pregnant, un-addicted and ready to move on... well, maybe there could be a big living room with couches and books and art supplies and maybe even an Xbox for those kids.*

Pipe dream, yeah... what makes me think that a one-size-fits-all world would ever adopt the radical notion that kids are people... and that people deserve to be treated as individuals, not statistics or prodigies or problems? Hmmm. Crazy dream though it is, it seems to have at least slightly influenced the architects of the Finnish education system--supposedly the best-performing system in Europe. (Imagine: vocational schools pairing up with apprenticeship programs to ensure students have good jobs before they even graduate! A comprehensive lifelong education system designed to allow anyone--regardless of age--to jump back in at any time! Not trying to teach kids ABCs and 123s and the joy of the phonics-based reader until they're at least seven years old! "Polytechnic" schools that provide advanced career-oriented training for those students who don't need or want university degrees!)

*I am biting my tongue and not mentioning how much, except for the cars and speed metal part, this idyllic pipe dream resembles the daily scene at Village Home Education Resource Center, our local "homeschool school." Well, OK. Maybe just briefly.