An Experiment

I would like to begin by asking for a moment of silence. 

For the last five years, every night at 8pm, we were treated to yet another rerun of Friends.  For the last five years, we could always count on a little ridiculous comedy over dinner.  For the last five years, we have watched the gags coming and laughed every. Single. Time.  For the last five years, Friends has been our comfort food and blanket.  But no longer.  It’s a sad day.  Join me in silence.

And now, onto even more superficial discussions. 

Last week, I was engaged in a very important experiment.  In preparation for our mini-expedition to Morocco I didn’t blow-dry my hair all week.  I know.  Earth-shattering.  Let me try and explain. 

I have stick-straight, fine, thick, frizzy, limp hair.  I know it seems like that combination is a bit contradictory, but it is the truth, and every hairdresser I have ever had has marvelled at the contradiction that is my hair.  It has taken me the better part of my lifetime, and more mind-power than I would like to admit, to figure out the whole situation.  I have finally come to the combination of short cut, Aveda ‘mousse,’ good round brush, decent blow-dryer, let air-dry for a few minutes before beginning ‘styling,’ maybe a spray of dry shampoo.  This routine has served me well for the last few months and has relieved a lot of undue stress. 

We travel fairly regularly and I refuse to pack a hair-dyer (the centrepiece of my styling routine).  Usually, this isn’t an issue as every half-decent hotel has a hair-dryer-like contraption and most friends/families houses also have one in a cupboard as well.  However, on our upcoming mini-expedition, I am not expecting to find such a contraption in any of the accommodation set up for those two+ weeks.  Thus begins the dilemma. 

I know.  It’s completely superficial.  When travelling, hair condition should not be one’s main concern, and to be fair, it usually isn’t one of mine.  However, after looking back on our photos from Africa and those infamous wedding photos, I am distracted from all the lovely memories by the scraggly, oily mess that is my hair/fringe situation.  It's completely self-indulgent and ridiculous.  I know.  I will not have this anymore. 

Hence, the experiment.  In truth, it began as an accident.  Last Saturday morning, I got distracted after my shower and by the time I became un-distracted, I realized that my hair, sans blow-dry, was not too shabby (or scraggly or oily).  Yes, it wasn’t sleek, shiny and nicely shaped, but it was very passable for errand-running and, I figure, that works for expedition-ing as well. 

At this point, I would like to thank my hair-dresser for her amazing skill.  I have to believe that the pass-ability of my non-blown-dried hair to her skill with the scissors and her determination to get every Single. Hair. In. Line. With. Every. Other. Single. Hair.  She’s a magician. 

So, for the last week I abstained from blow-drying (being sick really helped that situation actually) and overall, it was a success. 

Amazing!!!! 

Now I can really get excited about Morocco and move on to worrying about how to deal with the inevitable car-sickness from travelling in a van over less-than smooth roads, trails, tracks, etc. 

Stuff and Stuff

It’s Friday!  Welcome to ‘The Chronicles of a Reluctant Housewife’ where I document my love/hate relationship with my current occupation.

I’m all over the place this week.  I pretty much wrote my Reluctant Housewife post at the beginning of the week.  My descent into sickness this week has totally thrown me.  But I think I have come to embrace the housewife thing a bit too much because for the two evenings I was laid up and Pete was cooking dinner and doing dishes and doing the grocery shopping alone, I was feeling crazy guilty for not helping. 

I mean really. 

After my discussion on Tuesday in which I likened a sink of dirty dishes to the ‘one’ ring I was, again, getting titchy about Pete treading on my territory. 

RIDICULOUS!!!

I have a beautiful husband that supports me in all my endeavours and also makes dinner, does dishes and will willingly dance with me when I ask, and I was titchy. 

It is official.  I am a crazy obsessed housewife and my identity is tied a bit too tightly to my relatively new- found ability to cook and keep house. 

I am drawing a line under it all.  When Pete offers to wash dishes, I will accept the offer without question.  This may throw him a bit as the request is often rejected.  It’s going to be awesome!

Times, they are a-changing.  I have always thought Autumn was the best time for new beginnings.

That’s it.  That’s all I have today.  The research project that has been the bane of my life these last two months, is done on Monday.  PRAISE ALL THAT IS HOLY!!!  However, I have a lot to get done before I am free of this weight so I must press on and make it all shiny and pretty.

Also, we have a plumber coming at some point today (you know, between 9 and 5) to check our boiler and it would probably be better for me to not be in the shower when he arrives.  You know, because it is soooo likely that he will arrive before 4:30.  Just tell me you will be here at 4:30 so I can get on with my day!  You don’t know that I am a housebound housewife.  I could be a very in-demand important person that must be out of the house running around.  Or, you know, just a normal person that has to go to work.  Whatever. 

Have a wonderful weekend.

Travel Sickness

Oh lovelies.

That great ‘back to the routine’ post?  Didn’t happen.  The post did, the routine did not.  As I was writing it, I was slowly descending into a sickness that knocked me flat for two days.  I am only now able to sit up and do something without having a tissue jammed up my nostrils. 

Here is what I discovered while ill.  Being sick and unable to sleep is exactly like the hell that is a long-haul flight.  For those of you lucky enough to have never experienced the hell that is the long-haul flight.  I envy you.  I want to be you.  I want the knowledge that being sick and flying to beautiful locations are similar experiences, erased from my brain. 

Not everyone may agree with this comparison.  Maybe you are a great flier.  I am not.  I dread flying, but I do it all the time.  Let me be clear.  I don’t fear flying.  I dread it.  The whole process.  Getting up before the crack of dawn, sitting on public transport for an hour, hanging around in the airport for three hours, five security check points require various levels of undress, recycled air (which means recycled farts, let’s be honest), bad food, limited personal space, aching back, constant roaring in the ears, headphones that continually fall off my head or chafe my ears, swollen feet (despite the sexy flight socks and stockings), pasty and oily complexion, bad TV/movies, alternating hot and cold flashes, surly customs officers, lost baggage. 

And that is just for short two-four hour flights.  Multiply that by six and you have my version of hell.  Have I said it enough?  Hell, to me, is flying.  But I love travelling.  It’s a dilemma.  In order to ‘travel’ you have to go through hell.  This is one time when the ‘journey’ is not nearly as important or enjoyable as the destination.  I long for the days when all ‘travel’ was done by rail or boat.  When travelling was classy.  When you weren’t squeezed into a tube with hundreds of people wearing tracksuits and flip flops.  When the journey was as enjoyable as the destination.  When the holiday could start when you left your home, not 10-24 hours later when you finally collapse in your hotel room, take a shower and order some room service, by which time everything is closed and all that is left to you is to roam the streets (which we do enjoy) or watch bad US TV with subtitles or BBC World Service.  This is not the way to start a holiday.   

Whenever we are planning a trip, a huge portion of my energy goes into planning how I will survive the flight.  I no longer carry magazines or books.  Reading on planes makes me nauseous.  I also have given up on music and neck pillows.  I now carry a plethora of moisturizers and dry shampoo and flight socks and Advil PM.  The latter of which only manages to take the edge off my gruelling situation so that I won’t have to scream into a pillow.  Although, I have done that on a few occasions.  I have yet to figure out how to get a footstool in my carryon.  I am convinced that if I could get my feet a few inches off the ground I would be immeasurably more comfortable.  I did have a blow-up pillow that sort-of worked, but I left it on a place somewhere.  Probably tangled in the three blankets and four pillows that I systematically requisition throughout the flight. 

So while I sat up in bed the other night, aching back and body, with tissues shoved up my nose, listening to the maddening buzz of the refrigerator and my sleeping husband and suffering through alternating hot and cold flashes and feeling trapped in our tiny bedroom and wanting to scream into my pillow, but unable to change the situation, I realized I could be on the way to NZ. 

If only the view out the bedroom window waiting for me in the morning was as beautiful.   

Back on the Merry-go-Round

Did you miss me? 

It was a public holiday yesterday.  We spent three days doing nothing. 

OK, not nothing.  We slept a lot.  We ate like teenagers (and suffered like 30-somethings).  We did some light shopping.  We read.  Had really bad ‘Mexican’ food and then made ice cream sandwiches to console ourselves.  Pete went for a run.  We went to the movies and laughed pretty hard at really painfully embarrassing scenes while eating a large popcorn and sipping a large soda.  I was buzzing the rest of the night from the sugar (I haven’t had a soft drink in years). 

Like I said, nothing.  It was awesome. 

But now it’s time to get back to work.   Time to get back into the routine of work. 

Except I am still working on my routine.  I find that having a routine is a touchstone for me.  When the days start to blur together in a swirl of laundry, food prep, cleaning and personal projects, it is helpful to have a routine to click things back into perspective.  I know compartmentalizing can be dangerous, but it can also be helpful.  It can give you the freedom to get things done without feeling guilty that something else is moved to a different to-do list. 

I try not to be too rigid with my routine.  I want to be able to jump at opportunities, even if they are just getting coffee with another young housewife.  However, I need my routine and when it gets disrupted too frequently I feel a bit disconnected and lost and nothing gets done.  Like the routine is somehow still going without me and I can’t quite grasp it to get back on.  Like if I could just grab a hold of a particular moment, I could get it back.  I could get that control back. 

Because that is what my routine is to me right now.  It’s my way of feeling in control of my life when it feels very uncertain.  I swing between being Type-A and going with the flow.  Marriage has helped.  Being a housewife has helped.  When I was a student and in charge of house-stuff by default, I would cling to particular chores.  My research was always in a state of ordered chaos so being in charge of making the bed or particular meals gave me a bit of control.  This was mine.  Now that I am a full-time housewife I have let go of some of those chores.  Odd, I know.   And it is only recently that I have let go and let Pete help me. 

At first, when I was coming to terms with being a housewife, I had to do it all and do it well.  I had all the time in the world so I had no excuse to not me the best young housewife.  It gave me a purpose.  But then I would feel trapped by my own expectations.  I would irrationally be angry with Pete when he offered to wash dishes.  (It’s always the dishes, isn’t it.  I remember our ‘Marriage Prep’ course talking a lot about dishes.  There is something about doing the dishes that triggers exhaustion and frustration. Maybe it has to do with scrubbing stubborn foodstuffs and making huge leaps to links with one’s own metaphorical stubborn foodstuffs.) He was offering to do this chore I hate and I would be angry with him.  I had obviously gone a bit crazy.  But then, the stringy hair, slightly soiled robe and week old pajamas I was wondering around in probably signalled my mental state as did my irrationally crouching over dirty dishes muttering about 'my precccioussss' and snapping at Pete when he tried to share the workload. (Ok, I'll let the Tolkien references rest now).

But something about building our little team has let me let go of some of my housewife expectations and let me concentrate some of that energy on ‘personal projects.’  I am still hashing out those personal projects, but I can see some semblance of a general routine appearing.  Letting go of some of those expectations is helping our little team as well.  Being a bit selfish about my time and wellbeing has made our house a bit happier. 

It is a gentle balance, obviously.  Staying in bed all day reading is great for my personal wellbeing.  Very enjoyable.  But not so great for our joint wellbeing when there is no food for dinner or clean dishes on which to serve said invisible dinner.

Right now, that is my work.  Today, for me, getting back to work is getting back to crafting a routine.  First up, showering before or after breakfast?  Hmmm. 

Life as Ginger Chicken Salad

It’s Friday!  Welcome to ‘The Chronicles of a Reluctant Housewife’ where I document my love/hate relationship with my current occupation.

I have a lot of thoughts about house-wifing today.  I haven’t been able to put them in a sensible form, although I think this picture sums me up right now.

Maps, Laundry & Sparkle.
(please ignore the dingy bath towel)

And I’m kinda fine with that…for now.

Despite my muddled brain, I wanted to give you something today, so I am offering up my ginger chicken salad recipe.  This started as a recipe I tore out of a magazine and now I can’t even remember the original.  I pre-made this yesterday afternoon.  This is not a usual or necessary step, however, I had defrosted the chicken the day before and we ended up having pizza for dinner (I know, housewife fail) and yesterday we were both out doing our own thing and ate separately so it needed to be done.  Luckily, it is not a hard recipe, but the chicken does have to marinade, so allow time.

What you need:

-Enough chicken for however many people are eating.  I would say a breast each is fine.  Cut into whatever form you wish.  For salad I like strips, for pasta, maybe chunks. Your call.

-Stuff to make your favourite salad base. This time around I used Red Cos Lettuce, seedless cucumber, spring onions, red and orange peppers, strawberries, sliced almonds, feta, cran-raisins, avocado, Newman’s Own balsamic dressing

-olive oil

-runny honey

-garlic cloves crushed (or garlic powder if you’re feeling lazy)

-Chinese five spice (or black pepper, powdered cloves, powdered cinnamon, which does not make Chinese five spice, but is what we use and prefer)

-grated ginger root (or powdered ginger, which is what we usually use)

-griddle or grill pan

-baking sheet covered in foil

-oven

For the marinade:

This depends on the amount of chicken, and your personal tastes.  I no longer measure, but I will give it a shot. I marinade in a bowl but I am sure it works just as well, if not better, in a large freezer bag. All measurements are ‘-ish.’  Feel free to experiment.

-2 TBL olive oil

-1 TBL runny honey

-1 tsp Chinese five spice (or equivalent)

-2 tsp grated ginger (or equivalent)

-2-3 cloves crushed garlic

Pretty, No?

Mix it all up, throw in the chicken pieces, mix it up again making sure the pieces are equally covered.  Unlike most marinades, this isn’t really liquid-y.  When you first throw the chicken in, it may appear that you haven’t made enough. You have, just keep mixing, it will eventually coat all the pieces. 

Let the marinade sit, preferably in the fridge, for at least a half hour. 

While the chicken is relaxing in its spice rub, do a few pre-dishes* and prepare the baking sheet with foil.  Get out the grill pan, find some tongs or other implement to handle the chicken, and turn on the oven.  I think I pre-heat mine to about 180-200C, but I can’t be entirely sure. 

After 30 minutes:

-Turn up the heat on your grill pan/griddle.  NEVER oil the grill/griddle.  It will smoke you out.  ALWAYS oil the meat/veg.  Your chicken pieces are good to go due to the oil in the marinade.  Make sure the griddle is HOT!!  If not, you will lose most of your chicken to the grill.

-When hot, start laying the pieces of chicken onto the grill.  They seriously only need to be on there for a few seconds each side.  The object is to ‘mark’ or sear each piece, not cook it.  You are locking in the flavours and moisture (I think).  If you’re reading this while cooking, you probably have already left the chicken on too long! Go! Turn them or get them off the grill! Transfer the ‘marked’ pieces to the baking sheet.  Depending on how much chicken, you might have to do this in a few batches. 

I think the red salt-pig in the back makes the shot, yes?

-When all pieces are seared and on the baking sheet, take a brush and brush any remaining marinade onto the seared pieces.  There really shouldn’t be much left in the bowl, but you want to get the most out of those spices. 

-Then pour some boiling water into your grill pan (heat is obviously off at this point).  You have inevitably left a lot of chicken on the grill and this will enable you to wash it a bit easier. 

-Throw the baking sheet into the pre-heated oven for 15-20 minutes.  Check around 15. 

-During this time I like to make the salad bases and do some more pre-dishes.

After 15 minutes:

Check the chicken.  Depending on your taste, you may want to remove them.  We like ours a little bit crispy, so we go a bit longer.  However, we have a fan oven and the food at the front cooks faster if we don’t rotate (I rarely rotate) so we get a nice selection of juicy crispy pieces. 

When the chicken looks right to you, pull it out, turn off the oven (I do tend to forget this step) and divide between salad bases.  Add dressing.  Enjoy.

No, it's not a salad balancing on a fork.
Blogger flipped the photo and I can't be bothered to fix it.

This is a regular meal around here and if you have timed it right, you only have the dinner plates, cutlery and baking sheet to wash at the end.  Extra Bonus!!

A meal that is tasty, quick, and allows for housework multi-tasking.  It's the perfect recipe for the Reluctant Housewife.   

*pre-dishes are dishes washed during food preparation, before the meal is actually consumed.  I like to get as many done as possible during this time.  It isn't always doable, but with meals I know well, and a good soundtrack, I can manage it.  Sometimes.

In memoriam

One of my more superficial Life List items is to have an office filled with knick knacks from our life adventures.  We have quite a few of these kinds of knick knacks already.  With the recent riots in our corner of London, we got to thinking about what we would grab if we only had a few seconds to evacuate.  I know we have all played this game: ‘if you could save 10 things from the fire…’ 

Except a few weeks ago, it wasn’t a game.  People had seconds to leave as their houses went up in flames and none of them were jumping into the waiting arms of the fireman carrying 10 items on their back.  I know I appeared to ignore the riots in this space.  I didn’t.  I just didn’t know what to say.  My thoughts were with the people that lost everything because of some bored kids. 

As we watched Croydon go up in flames, we seriously thought about what we would save.  It was incredibly hard.  We realized so many of our memories are preserved in the materials of our lives.  How do you decided which material-based memories to save?  We ended up getting very practical: business paperwork, passports, family documents, the laptops/hard drive.  Then we moved on to Pete’s wedding suit, my Grandmother’s dress (both of which are hanging on the living room door so we don’t have to dig through the overstuffed wardrobe in those precious moments).  I realized I would have to leave behind Monk, who has been with me since before I was born, all my research, all the mementos of our travels and adventures and our life together. 

But I guess, the point is you still have your life.  The materials may be lost, some irreplaceable, but the memories will remain, despite the destruction, hopefully.  We all have moments that we would prefer to forget and we have moments that we have forgot.  Let’s be honest, University was an experiment in memory retention and erasure. Some of us have legitimately lost memories due to accidents or disease. 

I have been thinking about memories a lot lately.  Partly because I just finished writing a book chapter about the flexibility of circus memory, but also because I am experiencing (from afar) a loved one losing their memory.  It is incredibly painful and sad to watch someone’s life story disappear.  The stories of their life preserved in a few snippets they passed on over dinners or coffee or long drives to campsites. 

Part of me loves the ephemeral-ness of memory.  The way it can shift and twist and rewrite itself.  But I also mourn the complete loss.  I love how a seemlessly innocent item can spark a string of seemingly unrelated memories.  I think almost every item in our home has a story connected to it, even the IKEA furniture is full of assembly/relationship stories.  Our couch alone could tell a day long tale…

Happy Shower Scene

Each of these items has a story.  Just out of frame to the right, is an aloe plant Pete bought while I was away with the circus.  He spent those 5/6 months working double shifts and making jumbo size vats of jambalaya for dinner.  But he also took great care of our house plants.  Before I left, we had purchased a Yucca plant.  Somehow we managed to drown it a bit and allow it to get over-run with aphids.  Pete was determined to save it and started trapping spiders and relocating them to the Yucca.  A bit unconventional perhaps, but all those nature programs must have taught him something because it recovered and was with us until February of this year when someone stole it when we were away on holiday.  The aloe plant just keeps getting bigger and bigger.  Then there is the orchid.  This was a gift from our friends who gamely attended my first Thanksgiving Dinner.  It sat in the living room until the flowers fell off and I accidentally over-watered it.  I threw it in the shower for a little visual interest.  Then, a few months ago it started budding again.  Apparently, the shower is a great place for foliage.   The little blue bird is a ceramic Pukeko from New Zealand named Polly.   She used to sit outside on the deck.  Then one of the neighbourhood cats attacked her and we found her in pieces below the deck.  Now she peeps at us in the shower.  The pile of shells and rocks are collected from a variety of locations: Makarska, Rhodes, Kerikeri, San Fran, Fiji, River Thames.

These aren’t earth-shattering memories.  But every day when I step in the shower, no matter how crappy I feel, I smile a bit at this hodge-podge collection of memories.  I begin to think about when we collected that purple shell or the stories Pete would tell me about the aphid battle when I was lonely and shivering in a motorhome in the middle of nowhere, Arkansas. 

These are precious, simple memories but the loss of them would be heartbreaking.  My thoughts go out to all the precious, simple memories lost in the flames of the riots. 

Running faces

It’s Tuesday Fit-Day.  An occasional  meditation on physical and mental fitness goals, successes and failures. 

The other day I went for a run.  In between gasping for air and forcing my legs to keep pumping, I noticed that I get a collection of responses from the passer-bys.  I run along a fairly popular path with a variety of users.  There are the business folk, taking the scenic way home, with their suit jackets slung over the shoulder.  There are the proper runners with lycra and spandex and water bottles.  There are miscellaneous couples in various relationship stages.  There are the groups of young moms and large strollers.  There are young ‘hipsters’ on break from the O2 or Ravensbourne.  There are students.  There are cyclists.  There are environmentalists.   There are construction workers.  There is a random scattering of lost tourists. 

As I weave between these groups I encounter particular facial expressions.  From some, it is a nod of acknowledgement.  This is usually from the other runners or cyclists.  This brief acknowledgement makes me feel like I am part of the cool kids.  I have no desire to run in any organized sort of race, but this a rare experience for me and I'll take it. 

Then there is the blatant stare.  This comes from a cross-section and I’m not sure what it means.  It is just a following stare that doesn’t register that I am returning the gaze.  Is it really that unbelievable that I am out running?  I mean, I know I am moving incredibly slowly so maybe it is astonishment that I am moving forward, or maybe I am foaming at the mouth.  Actually, that might be a viable option.

Then there is the encouragement.  At times this is a ‘you can do it’ kind of nod and smile, maybe even a little air punch.  In my oxygen-deprived state I might have hallucinated the air punch, but I don’t think so.  I have also received the verbal encouragement.  This is weather-specific.  When the weather is overly hot or torrential downpour I have been on the receiving end of ‘You go girl!’

Then there is the laugh.  Now, in all fairness, this is probably brought on by my running antics.  I have recently been forced to change my route due to a path closure (for some cable car/sky walk shenanigans) and it means I have to run along a boring stretch of road.  However, this piece of road has a line of blue poles running parallel along the sidewalk.  The colour is irrelevant, and I don’t know what the poles are actually for, but I have devised a way to make this section of the run a little less boring.  As I run this stretch I weave in and out of the poles.  I figure it counts as ‘changing up the routine’ and I have to admit I get a little vision of myself in a training montage of some sort.  The laugh comes from the guy that sits at a gate along this stretch of road.  I like to think it’s the highlight of his day.

Then there is the wistful smile/glance.  This is usually from the mums loaded down with a few kids and the related equipment.  I don’t know, but maybe they are thinking of the days when they used to have the free time to run.  Or maybe they are wishing they could follow me instead of removing their child from the fence for the tenth time in 3 minutes.  Obviously, I have no idea what their kid is actually doing since I am past in a flash, leaving them tumbling in my slip-stream.  OK, that was a bit of an exaggeration as my passing barely produces a breeze strong enough to knock one of those baby fine hairs out of place. 

Then there is the mocking, haughty, scorn.  I get a kick out of this one as I used to produce this same face at passing runners.  As I have previously covered, I used to be of the opinion that exercise was for the vain.  Moderation was all that was needed to keep us nicely in the ‘healthy’ range.  I was on board for regular exercise in the form of dance, yoga, circus skills, etc.  In short, anything that didn’t resemble actual exercise, or gym-class.  Of course, I then decided to become a professional student and my caboose began to expand in direct proportion to the amount of years spent ‘studying’ while my skin got progressively more and more pale and pasty.  And while all that makes for an even better mocking and scornful face (like something in a Tim Burton cartoon) it doesn’t lend itself to haughty.

I would like to take this moment to apologize to the many runners, cyclists, etc. that were subject to my mocking, haughty, scorn.  I now understand that you were on to something and I was a naïve, brooding, secretly jealous, voyeur.  As I get older, my body likes to remind me that it is calling the shots and the only way to keep a relative peace is to engage in regular exercise.  Phooey.

Then there is the stringy hair, soaking wet, blooming red and exhausted shake of the head.  Me, in the mirror, appalled at my physical state of dampness but pleased that it is all over and hoping the endorphins from all this running will kick in soon.  

Still waiting for those endorphins. 

Any moment now.