My Level of Awareness

…it just keeps getting longer and longer.

 And that is not a comment on the marital-enhancement spam that keeps hitting my spam-filters.  I am talking about the gap between my visits to my own blog.

I am on the road.   A lot.  More than I have any right to be.

And here is the scary thing.  My son woke up this morning and looked at my empty place in the bed and asked Kris “Where’s Mommy?”.   Kris told him “Mommy got on a plane today.”  And Harry pretty much nodded his head and said “Okay” and went on with his day.

My friend Trixie picked him up at daycare and took him home (Kris has a dress rehearsal for Handel’s Messiah tonight), and Harry got home and said “Where’s Mommy?”  And Trixie told him that I was away at work, and Harry pretty much nodded and went on with his evening.

Man, this study has GOT to end soon.  I have become a transient to my own son.

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The traditional Holiday Menu at Chateau Awareness :

 Roast Turkey and Winter Vegetables with Molasses Glaze

Mashed Potatoes

Sausage, Pecan and Chestnut Dressing

Roasted Sweet Potato and Banana Streusel (it’s divine, don’t knock it ’til you’ve tasted it)

Green Bean Casserole

English Peas

Home-baked rolls

Pumpkin cake with pecans and chocolate chips

Chocolate Meringue Pie

Quickly followed by a warm tryptophan-induced stupor.

Tomorrow we will gather with the family and count our blessings. 

We will have many to count, Kris and I.  

And many more years to count them together.

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Otherwise entitled “How I managed to spend over $500 on cookware in one weekend.”

My best friend, Amy-Renee has a deadly combination of traits.  First, she knows all my retail weaknesses - shoes, underwear, and kitchen accessories.  Second, she is a vicarious shopper.  Third, she knows that my entire life is driven by the twin forces of guilt and responsibility.  And as you read the following, be aware that she was, IN NO WAY, plotting nefariously for my material goods.  She is simply one of my two worst “retail enablers” (the second is my husband), and the occasional beneficiary of the side effects of these excursions.

These facts combined with the approaching holiday season to result in a confluence of events that led to a fated orgy of spending at Bed, Bath and Beyond.

The conversation started like this (my internal thought processes are in italics):

Me - You know, I have been really coveting a new set of really good pots and pans.  I think I am going to start looking around.  It’s about time I got the ones I really wanted.  Even if it is hard to justify it with a full set of Italian Mepra cookware in the pantry. 

A-R - I don’t have ANYTHING right now.  We couldn’t find it when I took my stuff out of storage.  We have no idea where it went.

Me - That sucks.  I would let you have my old set, but it’s already spoken for.  My mom’s set was lost in her last move, too, and she doesn’t have any.  The plan was to buy myself a new set early next year, so she can take my old ones back with her when she visits in February.  What kind of daughter am I anyway, to let my mom take my old hand-me-downs, while I get a new set?

A-R - I need to get something.  Just isn’t in the budget right now.

Me - Hmm.  I COULD just buy Mom a new set as a Christmas present, and you could have my old ones.  Don’t know exactly when that will be.  Although, it would be damned convenient just to send them out with her this weekend.

Kris - If you are going to buy a new set anyway, wouldn’t  you rather buy them BEFORE Thanksgiving?  After all, we have all those people to cook for this week?  You have those Bed, Bath and Beyond coupons, and she could take the old cookware back with her this weekend.

Me - Weeeeellll.  I guess it wouldn’t hurt to stop and look when we are out. How did he know what I was thinking?

(Later, in the Bed, Bath and Beyond store)

Me - Hey, look, if I buy $300 of Calphalon, I get a $50 gift card for “free”. 

A-R - I like free stuff.

Kris - If you are going to spend that much anyway, it says here, that with $400 you also get a free 10 qt. Calphalon stock pot.  It may be worth spending the extra $80 on stuff we could use anyway.

Me - Well, let me look around a bit … DAMN those marketing people and their promotions!

Which, dear Readers, is how I ended up with:

and this:

and these for my husband:

and, last but not least, to make my son’s Christmas Cookies, this:

My mother ended up with an early Christmas gift:

…and Amy-Renee went back to Birmingham with a trunk full of Mepra pots and pans.

At least, when I shop, I spread around a little retail love.

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And I mean the WAY past.

Millions of years past.

After a bit of trepidation regarding his two-year-old sensibilities, my husband and I took our son to his first “live show”.  Harry went “Walking with the Dinosaurs” at Alltel Arena this past Sunday afternoon.

We were a little worried that life-sized dinosaurs roaring with life-sized sound effects would be a bit much for a toddler to handle.

The answer would be, ah, NO!

Harry LOVED it.  He was in little boy heaven, transfixed for the entire two hours (including intermission). 

He was a little too young to understand the narration, which was a excellent balance between fact and public palatability.  But the spectacle he understood perfectly.  It was big.  It was loud.  It was colorful.  It was DINOSAURS!  From the perspective of a little boy - what wasn’t to love?

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Now that I am almost over it,  the verdict is:

Costochondritis.

It appears this was secondary to either the chronic coughing from the allergic bronchitis, or a viral infection that tailed onto my allergic bronchitis.

Painful but benign.  Now there’s an oxymoron for you.  But, by virtue of giving in to the liberal administration of steroids, albuterol and narcotics, I can breathe easy again.

I promise never again to take oxygen for granted.

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But, peace of mind is at stake.

I know you read my site.  They’re called IP loggers - look it up.  Mine’s a paid service, it’s very, very good.  I can get down to square blocks if I spend enough time on it.

This is also an open site.  I don’t password protect and I don’t plan on starting.

 But…

Our life is no longer your concern.  Focus on your own and leave us alone.

(PS - You know who you are.  And if you are in doubt, it isn’t you.)

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10.  I have a two year old.  This is a far different and time-consuming activity than having a one year old.

9.  I am seriously overworked.

8.  I am trying to spend more quality time with my family.

7.  I am trying to spend more couple time with my husband.

6.  I am trying to spend more time with my violin.

5.  Oh.  My.  God.  Am I overworked.

4.  I have started treatment for Internet Addicts Anonymous.

3.  Have I mentioned that I am overworked?

2.  I am on the road every other week, including a trip a month to Washington D.C.

And the primary reason I don’t get to blog anymore…

1.  I am absolutely, seriously, positively, without-a-doubt OVERWORKED.

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…is this not the cutest little elephant ever in the entire universe?

Come on, you know it is.

Admit it.

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Following with my usual run of luck with air travel, my direct flight home out of Kansas City was delayed.   In the realization that I would run far past my dinner hour, I went back through security to kill some time sampling the usual run of airport cuisine and taking advantage of KCI’s civilized offering of free wifi.

Turning the curve of the terminal past the usual selection of fast food establishments, a familiar name caught my eye.

A slick sports-bar of brass and wood bore a sign that took me back to my early adulthood, and I had to do a double-take.

Arthur Bryant’s Bar-B-Q.

No way.

A sports bar?

It was sacrilege.  But sacrilege never had that kind of stomach- and heart-tugging aroma.

I left engineering school after my second unsatisfying year in a quest “to find myself.”  Or, if I had been more honest with myself at the time, so that my bohemian-artist-type boyfriend could find himself while I worked to support his personal addictions.  It seemed like the same thing at the time.  We moved to the Westport district of Kansas City, a community of starving artists and free spirits, predominately either homosexual or bi-adventurous.  It was a collection of brownstone buildings promising $100-a-month studio flats, sandwiched between the gay bathhouses, strip clubs and galleries of pre-gentrified midtown Kansas City.  It had the advantage of convenient thrift stores, flea markets, bus lines, and a Colonial Bakery complete with a day-old-bread store.  In short, it had every necessary ingredient for la vie Boheme in a ten-square-block area.  It was the most unfettered and the saddest time of my life.

We lived entirely off of my salary, first as a makeup artist and then as a coffee taster with a local roaster.  It was, literally, a lean existence.  We were the very caricature of shabby chic - lean, hungry, and oh-so-very-trendy.  The reality was not as romantic, unless the idea of slingshotting squirrels off the front porch for added dietary protein appeals to your sense of the aesthetic.

We would save for one meal “out” each week. On lean weeks, it would mean deep fried chicken gizzards from the Go-Chicken-Go just over the state line - a pound for a dollar.  I swear when they finally shut their doors, every prostitute in Kansas City, Kansas must have starved to death.  Along with a fair number of the artistic crowd.

On good weeks, it was Arthur Bryant’s.

 Bryant’s gave whole new insight into the term “hole in the wall”.  A tiny joint (restaurant was far too glamorous a term) located between the housing projects of Kansas City, Kansas, the dining room boasted a listing linoleum floor, and old tarnished chrome cafe tables.  There were three layers of bulletproof glass between you and the server, and the smell of woodsmoke and sweat permeated the place.  The menu was limited to the usual meat groups and included a “burnt ends” plate.  Sandwiches were on white bread ONLY.  The heavenly vinegary-peppery sauce was dispensed from a coffee can with an industrial paint brush, squeegee-like, between the top layer of bread and meat, and served by the largest, most well-muscled African-American man I had ever seen, wearing a white apron stained with smoke and sauce.  There was no air-conditioning in Bryant’s and you ate in the close-pressed heat of humanity.  In winter, it was heaven on earth.  In summer, well, in summer you got your brisket and ribs to go.

As a New York girl, it was my first experience with “real” barbeque, the kind worth risking a drive-by-shooting to acquire.  It was real, it was dirty, and it was sublimely addictive.  And I stood there in the airport and realized just how much I had missed it.  Oh, I have lived in the South for twenty years since my Kansas City days.  I have had the sweet, juicy, melting pulled pork of Memphis, piled high with coleslaw.  I have enjoyed spicy grilled andouille and savory boudin in Louisiana.  But for nostalgia, nothing matches the aggressive woodsy tang of Bryant’s.  My mouth watered.

The “new” Bryant’s derives questionable benefit from not being shut down once a month by the health inspectors.  Burnt ends are still on the menu, but I am not sure I can ever accept the concept of quesadillas sharing the space.  However, if I closed my eyes with a mouth full of dripping brisket sandwich, and screened out the drone of the sport-announcer on the large screen, I was back in the old building, with the woodsmoke filling my sinuses and the pepper burning the back of my throat. 

It was beyond good.

It was heaven, and just a spark of melancholy, shoved between two pieces of white bread.

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