Table for One 

This blog needs a reboot. I have been through many changes in the last year and I haven’t posted anything in even longer than that. I’m officially reinventing Ms. Martinifontaine.

One of the things that I’m learning this year is to be alone. Un partnered. Single. Technically speaking, I’m not alone-alone, because I have a child. I doubt, though, that I would get any argument from anyone that being a single parent isn’t about the most alone you’ll ever be. Here is a quick list that I made up to illustrate my point:

Being a single parent means:

1. being the only grownup on scene who is in charge, ever. So when the decisions get made you are the one with your butt on the line, always.

2. being responsible for All The Things: getting the garbage out on time, making sure there is toilet paper and knowing when you get to the store that you forgot to buy bleach last time and need to pick it up this time; knowing when the doctors appointments are supposed to happen, when the last time anyone (you) vacuumed, making sure the pipes don’t freeze and that the car has gas in it when you have to schlep to the school in the morning. And pretty much everything else.

3. Being the only person around for the child/children to blame when things don’t go their way. Which really puts undo pressure on the adult and creates an unrealistic picture of only one individual having control over a lot of things that are largely out of control most of the time.

4.  Figuring out things to eat that you can make one plate at a time, without having to throw half of it away at the end of the week. Unless you are one of the three lucky adults on the planet with a child who eats whatever you make, (oh sure, there may be more than that…like 10?), you are only cooking grown up food for one, and there just isn’t a lot available for single servings that doesn’t come out of a freezer package. Freezer food is not even real food.

5. Always being ON. There is no break. Even when you have a “break”, you are on a schedule to get back to your responsibilities, because there’s no one to back you up.

6. There’s no one to back you up. When you lay down the law, there isn’t anyone else around to back you up. And it’s a stone cold fact that children automatically outnumber adults 2 -1, no matter how many of them there are.

7. There’s no one around to bring you a cuppa or chocolate or wine when things get rough. I’m pretty sure this is why my Grandpa Toad trained each and every one of his grandchildren to make a toddy at the ripe old age of nine; he knew that someday grandma was either going to leave him or die, if he didn’t go first, and he made damn sure there’d be someone around to help out at toddy time. The man may not have had a terrific amount of formal education, but he was one smart cookie.

8.  No hugs and kisses, the romantic kind.

9.  No one else around to get rid of spiders

10.If you happen to wake up and find yourself in an existential quandary full of loathing and self-doubt and wracked the pain and isolation of your pitiful, meaning less existence (thanks, Weird Al), that is no excuse to just suck it up and keep going. No one else is going to do it for you.

My point is that when you’ve gone through a big change that leaves you alone, it’s not the big decisions that wear you down. It’s not deciding whether or not to date, it’s not deciding where to live or how to pay an attorney; those things actually bring excitement and distraction from the daily, little, chip, chip, chipping away decisions that every day take you further away from being a person who is one half of a team. 

There are a hundred opinions out there about how to “move on”: wait a year, wait five years, go to Vegas, go on a cruise, join a dating web site, get back on the horse, have fun, concentrate on being a parent, learn to love who you are, learn to recognize who you are, get therapy, go to yoga, stay home with your child/ren – the advice is endless. There is no formula for moving on with your life, for being alone, for being a healthy single person. 

I, personally, will not be found in the frozen food section, you can be sure about that.

But maybe the deli.

Fall is around the corner

As much as I hate to admit it, Autumn will be upon us soon. Here in the Pacific NW, summer was short this year. I'm not complaining - we've managed to escape without any major catastrophes, unlike a huge portion of the country, but still. Short. Like, a couple of weeks, short. So, while I usually welcome fall with open arms, I'm heaving a heavy sign of goodbye to my white pants.

I have been in a major clothes shopping mode. Which is not like me at all. I do not like shopping for clothes, and I usually do it alone. But the fashion all of a sudden is extremely appealing to me: flowy sweaters with leggings and boots and cute slouchy shirts with long necklaces...oh who am I kidding - THE 80's ARE BACK and they are calling out to me!!

Check this out...I got this catalogue in the mail from a company called Simply Be. They carry clothes for sizes 10-28. Awesome. You literally could open that freaking thing to any page and point to something and I'd want it. Oh yes. There are some boots in there that will be mine. LL Bean has a whole BUNCH of cute things and they carry sizes up to 3X now! Hurray! Some of those Perfect Fit Pants will definitely be mine soon - thank you, free shipping! And a person I work with brought in a catalogue from Sundance - oh the slobber. I'm afraid I may have cause a few of her pages to stick together. And they do have sizes that go up to 16.  Now I also find out that Two Whole Cakes actually found cute on sale things at the Nordstrom Rack. Be still my heart! And she's giving away a $100 gift card to boot, so, go get 'em, girls! The last time I was in the Rack, the only thing I could find in my size was shoes. Which is not to say that I didn't find anything I liked, haha.

I guess I'm looking forward to working in a sort of fashiony work place this year and seeing what everyone comes up with. We like to brighten up our lives with cute clothes...and why not? Lord knows when the sun will come out again! Might as well find a cute hand bag and some killer socks.

Friday Night @ Freddy's

This is what a night out on the town is like when you are over 40. Are you ready?

First, at my friendly neighborhood Fred Meyer, outside in “the strip” is a pizza joint. Which means on Friday night when you come wheeling in the parking lot, you have to watch extra close for other children’s parents who are prone to come walking out into traffic, pizza boxes in hand, without bothering to notice you driving in their general direction. If you’re really good, you can find one of these hungry folks and follow them to their car. Like the other vultures out on a rainy Friday in JULY, you wait for them to put the pizza in the car, buckle the children in, shuffle keys around, change shoes, make a phone call and then pull away, nearly clipping your car, which they did not notice for the last 15 minutes, in order to procure you’re very own parking space. Joy!

But this is just the parking lot! Oh so much more fun awaits you inside this glorious retail establishment on a Friday evening.

You should maneuver as quickly as possible through the doors, as undoubtedly there will be a small group of adolescents in pajamas waiting to use the Red Box or another unlucky mom with toddlers who didn’t make it past the quarter machines.  And now you’re inside, you should immediately dodge right to get out of the way of shoppers with carts who are trying to escape. This should be a signal to you that it’s time to leave, but you bravely press on. It’s Friday and there is ice cream beyond these obstacles.

Thankfully, Fred Meyer has nice, large isles so you only get cornered by other carts twice: once when a frightened shopper abandons her cart and makes a clean get-away, and again when a sweaty throng realizes there are only two in-store coupons left for the deodorant which is on the weekly special.  You will make it to the ice cream section easily as long as the Blood Chilling Cries of the Tired Babies doesn’t do you in first. These poor kids have recently finished a grueling week at a compulsory institution, not of their choice, had their hearts set on a happy weekend at home with their Wii, when they were unceremoniously stuffed into a car seat and taken to the Super Market At Dinner Time. Their howls and screams echo off the cement floor and tins of coffee, threatening to throw you off course. You must not be distracted: if you try to give them cookies their parents will turn on you too. They are single-minded: they only need to get ONE THING before they can get home and make dinner. Do not stand in their way.

You get to the ice cream isle. You do not find the B&J flavor you really want because, let’s face it, Fred Meyer’s sucks that way. You settle on NY Super Fudge Chunk and head for the Family Friendly isle, post haste, bypassing the inconceivably chaotic self check isle where small, tired children lean on scales causing their grownups to wave frantically at the one bedraggled attendant for assistance while the computerized voice tells them calmly to, “Please take the item OUT of the bag”.

The Family friendly isle seems like a likely choice…it’s at the far end of the store, “family friendly” is usually a deterrent to the single folk, and there are only two other people in line. You are casually standing there, with your ice cream on the conveyor belt, scanning the rags for more news on the latest “Bachelor” when you realize that fate has dealt you one final blow: ahead of you in line is one of the deodorant  coupon holders who is in the middle of being checked out when the checker finds out that this shopper only has ONE deodorant coupon for the 20, yes twenty sticks of deodorant she’s trying to buy. There is a short conversation about the problem of there only being one coupon, which is followed by the checker picking up the phone to call someone over. This new person is sent on a mission. A Mission to Get More Coupons. It’s unclear just how long you’ll be in line at this point. It’s a toss up as to which would be faster – stay in deodorant line and wait, or move over to one of the other lines, all which have at least 3 of the aforementioned tired children wrestling a parent for lifesavers in them. You choose to stay put. The nice helper returns from her Hunt of the Wiley Deodorant Coupon with 3 more, which means that now the checker has to un-scan 16 sticks of deodorant.

As an aside, who, on God’s green earth, needs 20 sticks of deodorant? How much of that stuff are you using? And if you’re stocking up for an emergency, can I suggest something that will serve you better than deodorant? Cigarettes. That’s right, you heard me. You don’t have to be a smoker to know that if they whole world goes to hell in a hand basket, stinking is going to be pretty far down on everyone’s list of priorities. Altering consciousness however, high, high up on the list. So to speak.  And a pack of cigarettes is just about the same size as a stick of deodorant. You see what I’m saying. Also, if you’re planning on stock piling a bunch of stuff people will want badly…ammo. You're welcome. 

The end is nigh! You are checking out! There were paper bags! And now you’re headed back out to the parking lot. You not only get to the car without having to dive out of the way of a frantic cart-pusher, but the car in front of you leaves just ahead – your perseverance pays off and you pull out of the parking lot with the ring of Victory in your ears. Turn that radio up! Crack the window a little (not too much, it’s still raining)! Sing loud! It’s Friday night, you just survived Fred Meyer AND you have ice cream. It’s gonna be a good night. 

MmmmmPudding!

Pudding has always been a favorite dessert of mine. It is great comfort food. And believe me, when it's 60 degrees and rainy all day in JULY, you need some comfort, my friends.  It seems like there was a Judy Blume book that I read at a relatively young age in which the main character talked about eating the skin off the top of the pudding and I remember thinking “what skin?” because all I had ever made was the Jello instant pudding. I think my mom made cooked pudding a few times, but I’m sure that I gobbled it up so fast that she was not inspired to do it very often.

These days I usually succumb to Kozy Shack pudding from the grocery store. For a convenience food, it is near the top tier of decent food – I can easily read and understand each ingredient without a dictionary.

We are lucky enough to live in a state now where we can buy raw milk from a local dairy pretty much any time we want. If you do not live in a place where you can legally buy raw cow’s milk, I’m so sorry. There are a lot of reasons that has happened, which I will not go into here, if you want to learn more about it, there is a video you can watch about the subject called The Whole Truth About Milk: Raw or Pasteurized.  We found a copy at our local library. One way you may be able to find raw milk for “animal consumption” is at your local farmers market. It may not be where you can see it, but ask the meat and egg people if anyone sells raw milk for animal food and you might just get lucky.

I happened to have a half-gallon of raw milk in the fridge when my son started asking for pudding. “Can we go to the store and buy pudding? Pleeeease????” I started looking up recipes on line and discovered that for most of the recipes I had all of the ingredients to cook up some homemade chocolate pudding. YUM is what I thought to myself.

So I used a recipe that I found at food.com and then made up a couple of parts myself. The result is pretty darn tasty, if I do say so myself.

½ c. sugar

¼ c. cornstarch

1 Tbls cocoa -original recipe called for three…I only had one so I added:

½ c. semi sweet chocolate chips*

2 ½ c. milk (if you can’t get raw, I would use whole)

1 egg yolk (my addition)

1 Tbls. Butter (original recipe called for margarine, which I don’t believe in)

1 tsp. vanilla

Put the dry ingredients into a saucepan and slowly add milk, while stirring. Put the saucepan on a burner on medium heat. Pudding comes out best if you stir it constantly, so that it’s smooth and creamy. I use a whisk. In not too much time, the chocolate chips will dissolve and eventually the mixture will start to thicken, and bubble slightly if you pause in stirring. You want to have your egg yolk in a small dish off to the side. Remove the pudding from the heat, take a small amount of the hot mixture and add it to the egg yolk and mix it up. Put all of it back into the saucepan and put it back on the heat and mix it in well. Cook it for about another minute, then remove it from the heat again and add the butter and vanilla and stir them in well. Put the pudding in cups and, if you can, let it cool in the fridge for at least an hour. Yay for pudding!

And yes, I know that I cooked my “raw” milk. I just like it better straight from the cow, without any tampering. If I need it cooked, I don’t mind doing it myself, thanks.

*You could probably omit the cocoa altogether or use one or the other, your choice. It was very chocolaty and sweet. 

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary

Turns out, I'm not the only thing around here that's contrary. The weather isn't being very cooperative. Despite that fact, we have very optimistically started seeds. We bought heirloom seeds this year, from an outfit in Missouri. You can read all about heirlooms on that website. Today we started tomatoes, peppers and something called a Wonderberry. I'm hoping that by the time the little seedlings are ready to go outside, it will be into the 50's, at least.

Tomorrow night I will by at McCaw Hall in Seattle watching Red State with The Kevin Smith. Very, very exciting! And I'm not really into horror flicks these days, but for Mr. Smith, I'll make the exception. A night out on the town! In Seattle, even. We're going to hit a local brew pub for dinner before hand. Maybe after some good ol' local brew, I'll feel less contrary. 

Me and the Wicked Witch of the West

I'm reading the book Wicked by Gregory Maguire. It occurs to me that I actually *do* have a lot in common with the so called Wicked Witch of the West. Mr. Maguire paints a much less wicked picture of her than L. Frank Baum.  I don't want to give it away - although I'm guessing I'm the last person in the free world to read this one - everyone was talking about the play last year, and I wanted to go, but never did make it. I'm always happier with a book anyway.

I can really relate to the witch in Wicked. She represents that witchy side of myself. When I was very young, I would watch Bewitched with my mom and wonder if the two of us weren't actually witches;  an idea enforced by her sewing us matching witch outfits for Halloween one year. I tried so hard to wiggle my nose.

I was about halfway through the book when I realized that I had purchased two new pairs of red shoes. Subliminal? The shoes in wicked are symbolic - for different things than in the original story. It is an alternate universe, but I think I have been there. Everyone needs a pair of red shoes. I have always talked myself out of them before. I LOVE red shoes, but you know, when you see red shoes on someone, you think, "Oh, they are that kind of person. The kind who can pull off Red Shoes". I wanted them, but I guess I never believed I pull them off. Until now. I am embracing my Red Shoes. I am embracing my inner witch. And I am going to enjoy them both.

Mardi Gras = Gumbo!

I have never been to Mardi Gras. I have been to New Orleans. Once, when I was 9. It was just after Mardi Gras, I think. Mostly what I remember about New Orleans is learning how to tie a cherry stem in a knot with my tongue at a jazz bar, and walking past many strip joints, into one of which my sneaky peek awarded me a lady on a stage in front of maybe 5 tipsy individuals trying to see around her huge feather fan. Good times!

Admittedly, my love of New Orleans lore and the idea of Mardi Gras comes mostly from Tom Robbin's ridiculous novel, Jitterbug Perfume.  It's on my top 10 list of favorite books. I try to read it every year. This year I went looking for it....and couldn't find it! I think I may have loaned it out to someone. You would think this would lead to an angry tirade about people not giving back lent books, however when it's one of my favorites, I like to think that they couldn't give it back because they loved it at least as much as I did and possibly passed it along. I've been through at least three copies of this book...I guess I'm ready to check the used book store for Number 4.

Along with Jitterbug Perfume, Mardi Gras at Chez Fontaine means gumbo. In the finest cajun tradition (minus okra, which I cannot stand), I have made a simple, but delicious recipe for many years now. We look forward to it every February (or March). This year I have been so busy at work and tired when I get home that my Dear Husband made the gumbo. Ladies, I have this to say, if you make no other advance in whatever relationship you are presently engaged, teach your partner to cook. It pays off again and again. My husband's first Gumbo was even better than my own, made so by the fact that it was cooked by someone other than me and served with a smile.

Now, go get yourself a copy of Jitterbug Perfume and make some Gumbo. And Laissez les bon temps rouler!