Archive for home sweet home

Next up: Jeans with an elastic waistband.

March 16, 2010 · Filed under home sweet home, me me me, the way I see it · Tagged

A month or so ago, Aura and I were rattling around the latest sale at Kohl’s. Painfully aware that my delicate underthings had lately been looking more threadbare than delicate, I directed Aura to follow me to the lingerie department, where I was determined I would find at least a couple of new bras. 

As I’ve mentioned before, Aura is rather smitten with the idea of bras. Having been informed that she herself will not be able to wear a bra for another 10 or 12 or forever years, she took it upon herself to help me locate one. While I rifled through the underwires, Aura disappeared momentarily, soon popping back with an armful of ruffles and lace and hot pink. I’m telling you, if kindergarten doesn’t work out, I’m shipping her off to those stripper conventions in Vegas and calling her a really short salesperson. She’ll be in heaven, helping Candi/Bambi/Diamond find rhinestone-studded bras to match their g-strings.   

Aura would also feel at home in Frederick's of Hollywood.

After more fruitless searching, I gave up, dragging a reluctant Aura away from the Maidenform racks. On my way out of the department, I noticed packs of Hanes underwear on sale. Normally I’m loyal to Calvin Klein underwear, but desperate times called for desperate measures. I tossed a package labeled “low-rise” something into the cart, too intent on making sure Aura hadn’t stashed a Wonderbra on her person to actually read the package. 

When I got home, I didn’t give more than a fleeting glance to the new underwear as I threw them into the washer. I do remember thinking they looked a little…larger than I would expect. But I chalked that up to 100% cotton and the need to adjust for dryer shrinkage. That Hanes, I thought admiringly. Now there’s a company that thinks of EVERYTHING. 

And then I slipped on a pair. At first, I was just confused, thinking that perhaps I had put a leg through the waist hole? Was wearing them inside out? Had accidentally sewn two together? Then it dawned on me: These were briefs. Unlike the low-rise bikinis I typically wear, or the very occasional thong I don when dressing up to go somewhere without coloring placemats, these underpants were BIG. Like cover-your-stomach-and-some-of-your-hips-and-maybe-a-third-of-your-thigh big. 

So kind of like this. But without Lady Gaga, and bigger.

I really want to say that I hated them right away. Eeeeeeeehhhhhh. Hear that? That’s the sound of me trying to say that.  

But I can’t. And you know why? I LOVE THEM. No, I don’t wear them during the day, when someone might see them peek over the waistband of my jeans or possibly get caught on the hem of my jacket. However, when I change for the evening, slipping on my old sweats and tying back my hair, you better believe I reach for a pair of these babies.  

Such support! Such coverage! Such…stretchability! I tell you, I am a better, entirely more agreeable person wearing these—God help me—briefs. If Adam wants to go out and buy a bottle of rum that costs as much as a small sovereign nation? Sure! A charity telemarketer calls for a donation? Why not? Hell, when I’m wearing these suckers I’m apt to agree to support ALL of PBS’s New England stations, that annoying WordWorld and Antiques Roadshow be damned.  

Big underwear has changed my life. In fact, it reminds me of a story Adam once told me about a coworker named Radu, who hailed from Romania but moved to the United States when he was about 30 years old. Every day at lunch time, Radu would go out and buy himself a big, steaming bowl of clam chowder. This went on for months and months. Finally, Adam asked him why he never bought anything else for lunch. And so Radu explained: “For 30 years, I never knew about clam chowder. Now that I know, I cannot waste any time.”  

I TOTALLY GET WHAT HE MEANT.

Comments (15) »

Grrr, or why Rachael Ray needs to meet a bad end.

March 4, 2010 · Filed under home sweet home, nutrition schmunition · Tagged , ,

Hi. My name is Kate and I hate cooking.  

And this was no big deal until Aura arrived. Before that, there was take-out and there was defrosting and there were Trader Joe’s meat+ beans+ sauce entrées, but dinner was never An Event. Once in a while, just for chuckles, we’d spend a weekend afternoon making an actual meal, after which we’d congratulate ourselves heartily and draw historically inaccurate comparisons. “Look!” I’d yell gleefully to Adam. “We flambéed corn JUST LIKE THE PILGRIMS DID.”  

Then Aura came along and I cut down on work. It seemed…obligatory that I take on the brunt of the cooking, and that it involve things like ingredients and pans and nutrition. So far, I think I’ve done passably, my quiches and Thai peanut noodles and buttermilk chicken uncolored by the hatred I feel while making them.  

You know what I hate most? The pressure. And for that, I wholeheartedly blame:  

  

Before the Food Network came along, a person could just tool around the kitchen, doing her best and then serving the end result. Yes, of course, some creations would be better than others. But that was to be expected, such as with, I don’t know, American Idol contestants, or children.  

No longer. Now EVERYONE is an expert on cooking, because EVERYONE watches the Food Network. Hell, you don’t even have to cook to be an expert, not that this stops most people. The other day, Adam peered down at the cutting board as I was chopping. “Wait!” he exclaimed anxiously. “Is that a three-quarter-inch dice?”  

“Um, it’s a dice alright,” I replied, my grip on the chef’s knife tightening. “I’m not sure how many inches it is.”  

“Kaaaaateeee,” he moaned, shaking his head with a level of distress typically reserved for natural disasters. “If the dice is wrong, the entire dish will be wrong. DON’T YOU KNOW BETTER THAN TO MESS WITH THE SUGAR-PROTEIN MATRIX?”  

I’m not sure, but I think that was right around the time I offered to three-quarter-inch dice his left testicle. Let me try to remember. Yep, it was then.  

I place the blame for the matrix comment squarely on Alton Brown. You know where he can shove his food-chemistry diagrams? You get one guess.

From here on out, I’m instituting a severe weekly cap on how much Food Network people in this house can watch. That goes for Aura, too. The other day, she walked into the living room just in time to catch the end of a Rachael Ray episode. “Mommy!” she called excitedly. “This lady just made super yummy noodles and caramel cake for lunch!”  

I sat down to join her on the couch. Slinging an arm around her, I said, “Yum! And you know what that lady likes to cook for dinner?”  

Still wide-eyed with newfound adoration, Aura turned to me. “What?” she answered.  

“Little girls,” I told her, then changed the channel.

Comments (18) »

The kicker? We won’t even be able to sleep during the upcoming blackout.

February 22, 2010 · Filed under home sweet home · Tagged , ,

I must say, I was rather taken aback when I received the following Home Energy Report in the mail last week.

Actually, I wasn’t only taken aback. I’d say I went through several stages of reaction. I’ll openly admit that the first stage was pride and perhaps a little self-congratulation. We, the people in this apparently rampant-with-energy-greed household, are above average! A full 114% above average! Not everyone can make that claim, you know! Particularly not those crunchy hippies with their REUSABLE SHOPPING BAGS and AIR-DRIED CLOTHING and GOVERNMENT-APPROVED ENERGY-EFFICIENT APPLIANCES.

Then I realized we were those hippies. So I moved on to the embarrassment stage, which I believe was probably the main objective of this nifty line graph:

As I ran around turning out lights and pulling the television plug right in the middle of Aura’s nightly viewing of The Electric Company, I began to panic. Did all my neighbors get this same report? On their reports, was it noted that #19, that house up on the hill, was totally skewing the neighborhood average? Were there forcible suggestions that maybe the people at #19 should not be invited to any more neighborhood BBQs and, also, that little girl whose balls periodically roll down the hill into their yards? KICK HER. As I stood there in our kitchen, now eerily silent thanks to the newly unplugged refrigerator, and listened to the sounds of Aura fumbling her way through the darkness, I couldn’t help but wonder.

The embarrassment eventually gave way to anxiety and fury and a bunch of other emotions I typically reserve for Senate campaigns and the American Idol results show. By the time last weekend rolled around, I was terrified to even drive through the neighborhood, slumping low in the driver’s seat as I waited for the sound of compact fluorescent bulbs pelting my windows.

Honestly, I’m stupefied. Our heat is oil. We cook with natural gas. Sure, I run the washer and dryer a lot, but what can I say, besides that we’re evidently a sloppy lot? We’re pretty good about turning out lights when we’re not in a room, and we rarely forget to power down our laptops. And for heaven’s sake, I can barely remember where the vacuum is, never mind USE it.

All I can come up with? The fans. We all have fans next to our beds for white noise. It started with me in college, then I passed on the addiction to Adam, and we collectively helped Aura develop her own dependence. We even hooked my mother, who has been living with us for several weeks. It’s like Fan Central here. One can only imagine the furrowed brows of the electric company officials, huddled as they surely are around our file, perplexed by the fact that our energy usage actually goes up at night instead of down.

Poor patsies. They’ll never figure this one out. Well, they might, once our house is the catalyst for the blackout of the Northeast corridor. But for now? I think we’ll sleep just fine, our fans drowning out the sounds of neighbors rioting outside. They can stomp their Birkenstocks as loud as they want. We won’t hear a thing.

Comments (10) »

« Previous entries
Next Page »