And that was Friday

This evening I felt so Fridayish I wanted to go out, not stay inside thinking about work one moment more. So we did, getting Caroline all dressed again after she had too quickly stripped to jump in the shower and pee. Yes, that’s right, pee in the bathtub, but on her potty, of course. Pretending to take a bath was apparently just the right combination for her to decide to use the potty (this time). Toddlers are a bit like people with Asperger’s syndrome, always on the look for the right combination, that magical feeling, before they accede control.

After she successfully peed on her potty and got dressed again, we walked to the park. The park a few blocks from the TV tower, the one with the beautiful view, one lone rocking horse and a pub surrounded by tented tables, with plenty of lawn to run about on. When we got to the park we said "Caroline run! You can run on the grass and not worry about cars!" And she did, though she had to worry about dogs - a big Afghan, a medium sized greyhound type and a terrior. "Daddy mommy and baby" she named them before she clamored for Will to pick her up out of dogs‘ way. When they ignored her she did run and Will ran with her too. It was a beautiful evening and everything smelled so green and fresh. The wind blew in from the north and the dogs leaped up like marionettes on a string, so happy to be out together. C triumphantly climbed into the v of a tiny tree, and said, "look Mommie, look at me, I’m climbing up and up and up." And then she jumped down an entire two inches, took our hands and we walked home.

0-3 Czechia!!!

It has of course jumped from 48F to 80 and everyone is now complaining about the heat. But at least it feels really like summer. I took a walk tonight, as usual grabbing my jacket before I walked out the door, and laughed at myself when I got outside. It was 10:00 and the air was warm enough to swim in, the sky that dark cobalt you see on summer nights when the humidity holds onto the light and mixes it up with evening blue. I tied the jacket around my waist and proceeded.

Anyway, thanks to the beautiful weather and the World Cup, many many people were off work today. Anyone who wasn’t left their offices at 5 to head out to watch the game (U.S. vs. Czechs). We won, 0-3. Caroline and I watched it at home, and I had to start censoring what I said because after the first few "oh no!!" and "poor guy"'s Caroline started clutching her head and moaning, "oh poor guy no" each time CT2 showed a close up of someone heading the ball. I tried to convince her that it was just a game and the players were really having a fun time out there, but then they carried someone else away on a stretcher so I pulled out a banana as distraction. She can now say she almost watched the Czechs beat the U.S. in the World Cup 2006.

It was a fun game to watch, even mostly by myself, because I knew that so many of my friends were watching it too - a weirdly communal experience enhanced by hearing every score celebrated on the street, and getting sms from several continents, nearly simultaneously, all saying, "goal!!!"

Sun shone down sure enough

The sun shone today; grey parks leaped into green; old men smiled and met at tram stops to drink beer together. And this was in the city. If the sky stays clear like this the streets of Prague* will be empty Friday evening.

* Not including downtown and the Charles Bridge of course.

Found

Discovered in a notebook while cleaning out my desk Friday, a poem from after our grandfather's funeral two years ago.

I did not cry when we followed him in,
   nor when we sang
Amazing Grace, his favorite hymn.
   But when Grandmama fiercely wavered
the last stanzas of the last hymn,
   when the boys stood sentinel
as we watched the flag fold by fold -
     Only then.

Recipes for my brother (Easy linguini)

Remember those college days when a dorm meal of ramen noodles, cottage cheese and salsa represented the height of your creative cooking? Then you graduated to an apartment and started making pasta in earnest, with real noodles, and sauce in a jar, maybe some slightly plasticky parmesan to sprinkle over everything.

I remember. I ate that meal at least three times a week for several years, interspersed with music recital food (honestly gained by attending the recitals) and dinner at fancy Nashville restaurants (courtesy of my dating circuit). I can’t stand spaghetti noodles any more, but we still eat pasta, and I keep finding new sauce recipes that are so tasty they must be tried again.

Here’s one from last night, modified from an epicurious recipe to match what I could find on the walk home from work yesterday. Modified also for my brother, who has just embarked on apartment living. Happy cooking Bro!

Linguini (it is so much tastier than spaghetti after all)
Red onions, chopped into bits (3), garlic works too (6 cloves)
Olive oil
Pancetta or English bacon or regular bacon (as you wish, but at least 4 slices)
Red pepper flakes (two good shakes)
Sun dried tomatoes in oil, cut into bits. (1/2 cup)
Cherry tomatoes halved or larger vine tomatoes, chopped (2 cups of cherry or 3 tomatoes)
Parmesan or Romano or Pecorino, grated (2 cups)
Salt to taste

Follow instructions on packet for linguini. Test when near done to keep that al dente taste. Don’t bother throwing pasta on the wall to test it, your teeth are much smarter than the wall. When done, pour into collander to drain water, then return drained pasta to pot.

Mix oil from sun dried tomatoes with olive oil, enough to cover the bottom of the frying pan. Heat on medium until hot, but not smoking. If it smokes, carefully throw oil away and start again. Add onion bits. Cook for longer than you think, until they are soft and nearly translucent. Add pancetta or bacon, saute (stir but not incessantly) for 4 minutes or until starting to crisp.
Add tomatoes of both sorts, saute for 4 minutes.

Pour frying pan contents into drained linguini. Stir together. Add most of cheese to pot, stir to coat the linguini. Salt to taste. Serve, then sprinkle the rest of the cheese on top. Consider adding basil if you’ve got it growing on your patio.

If you don’t have the red pepper flakes or dried tomatoes, no worries, it works anyway.

Eyes Wide Open

Dinner table conversation the other day -

C: You have blue! Two blue eyes!

W: Yes I do, what color eyes do you have?

C: Green.

W: You have green eyes? What about Mommie?

(Caroline peers into my eyes and then thinks for a bit)

C: Hm...She has half brown and half black.
(looking closer at Will and pointing to his iris)
And you too - half blue and half black. (then she pulls up her own eyelids)
Look! I have half red!

May traveling

We didn’t venture out much this winter. I realized just how little when I happened to call our rental car company to see about renting a car for the weekend.

“Julie, you’re alive!” our car guy said. “Wait, but you’ve bought your own car, is that it?”
No no, I promise we haven’t.
“Then,“ (his voice chokes up) “you’ve found someone else?“
No, really Alex, we haven’t rented a car in months! But it’s spring you know, so time to start traveling!

That was five weeks ago. We haven’t been home on a weekend since. Last Thursday found us in Paris, where we experienced French life with a toddler, a stroller minus a wheel and winds that threatened to blow the horses off the carousel in the Jardin du Luxembourg. At a certain moment I had to remind myself - in a year you won’t remember the pollen lashing your face like a sand storm, you’ll remember the foie gras, the coffee and the pain au chocolat. You’ll remember playing gamba with your teacher while Caroline pretends to play harpsichord on the music stand, the fountains blowing across the gardens at Versailles, the Sunday market at Versailles with more fish than you’ve seen since South Carolina.

And mostly that is what I remember from our weekend in Paris. But I am guessing I’ll also remember having to floss my teeth late Sunday night, just home from the airport, to get rid of that last tricky piece of pollen, wedged there by the winds of the North Atlantic blowing into Versailles.

What's in your Google history today?

Google search histories are a bit like a Scrabble board after a game - cues to what its players are mulling over. At lunch I looked through my Google history to see what my morning’s ponderings (not including work) had covered. Here they are:

• where was Tara supposed to be in Gone with the Wind¹
• when was Jonesboro, Georgia founded (and Tara built)
• what is a loutka kachna
• where does the word loutka (puppet) come from
• is there a metro to the Prague zoo yet
• what street is close to the super playground in Smichov
• what buses run by the super playground
• who wrote "Will to Fail"² and when
• what type of musical genre is "Will to Fail"
• what is space aged pop?
• who is Les Baxter?

1. Just watched Gone with the Wind for the first time this week. I had a hard time believing that this movie shaped so much of what, in the 40s, 50s and 60s, the South thought of as antebellum. I also decided that the movie's portrayal of a Southern business woman is pretty damning and could explain some things!
2. A favorite Caroline song (because of the cool textures). I wanted to see if I could find more music like this, minus the psycho-therapy lyrics. I did! Check out www.spaceagepop.com for more, and download tracks from the site here.

Night light

Caroline likes to stay up late. She’s not a morning person, and hates to wake up once sleeping, but falling asleep is hard for her. In the last few months, she’s tried to stretch her bedtime later and later. She’d stay awake playing in her room by the light of her star-shaped night light (star light she calls it), until she tired of her books and ran into our room to demand more milk, or for me to stay awake with her. We tried to be civil and explain it was bed time, we tried ignoring her, we tried time out, but mostly Caroline just got more riled up and stayed awake anyway. Finally, Will said - turn off the star light, it’s as bad as coffee. We did. She got mad at us and another week of mayhem and late nights ensued.

Then, last weekend in Germany, hanging out in a hotel room, I got C ready for sleep and turned out the light. I thought we’d both go to bed, since I knew the light would keep her up. Caroline started asking for star light, the room light, anything to see by. The dark was too much, falling so fast.

I told her I knew a trick, and if she wanted, she could try it too. I said - hold out your hand and start counting, by the time you get to five, you’ll be able to see your fingers. She counted. She saw her hand. We counted to five again and she could see the end of the bed, next she could see the door and the curtains on the other side of the room. She fell asleep a few minutes later. Now at night, before I sing her lullabies, I turn out the light and we watch our hands reappear. She doesn’t try to turn on her star light any more and tonight, she fell asleep at 9:00. Perhaps my nights will reappear too, I’ll wait and see.

MPs cut VAT on coffee, tea, chocolate

Isn't that a nice headline to wake up to?

Heading to the online library

It’s Friday night, and I’m between books. I’ve read the New York Times from top link to bottom and I’ve visited each of my favorite blogs to see if by any chance, they’ve been updated. Nothing happening (it is Friday after all). I decide it is time to click to the University of Pennsylvania's Online Books Page to see what’s new.

English language libraries are a bit rare here in Prague and new books pricey, so I've gotten in the habit of reading ebooks. The Online Books Page is a prolific indexer of electronic books - some days they add twelve or more books to their search engine. That sort of addition accumulates and in November, they celebrated adding their 25,000 book. Tonight I scroll through the newly added list, then search out an old favorite just remembered. In a zip, I've got a handful (mouseful?) of ebooks to check out.

Here are some of the notables:

The evening's most creative author name (and her work) - The Refugee’s Cookbook, by One of Them, 1906. Listed in honor of the anniversary of the Great San Francisco earthquake of 1906. You can't download the entire book unfortunately but you can read samples. Let me know if you think those recipes are constructible in a tent!

A favorite children’s book, refound - Mother West Wind 'Why' Stories by Thornton W. Burgess. For more Burgess books online, here's the index.

A Thousand Miles Up the Nile, by Amelia Edwards. After reading the first chapter, I suspect one of my favorite mystery characters - Amelia Peabody - of having A. Edwards inclinations.

Text to send to a British friend who thinks humor was invented in the mid 20th century. Bill Nye's Comic History of England, by Edgar Wilson "Bill" Nye.

That's it for tonight. Hesky vikend*!

*Nice weekend!

Green green green, unless you are asparagi

Everything is turning green green green outside my office window. Even the spindly birch growing from the roof of the decayed atelier next door has draped itself with festoons of pollen, like a May Day pole wreathed in one color ribbon. From one day to the next I can see the leaves unfurling on all the trees, shading from yellowish green to darker as they absorb the sun. Photosynthesis at play.

But other signs of spring, untouched by sun, have arrived in town. White asparagus is back on restaurant menus and on ours too. Last night Will made a detour on his way home from work to run by the green grocers near by. He was going to pick up some strawberries but the asparagus changed his mind so he arrived home with a bag full. Luckily we had eggs, the near rind of a parmesan chunk and some prosciutto left over from Easter. Our first dinner on the balcony this year turned nearly gourmet thanks to the leftovers and asparagus. Here is the recipe:

Prosciutto or ham slices
Eggs
Asparagus
Parmesan, sliced or grated
Olive oil
Salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 400F/200C

Fry the prosciutto or ham slices in a pan until crisp. When done, remove from heat and arrange on plates.

Trim asparagus of woody parts (not the tips!) and if still a bit stiff, use scraper to remove excess skin (bark?). Toss with olive oil. Assemble on cooking sheet. When oven is hot, place sheet in oven and cook for 10-12 minutes, or until roasted. Top with parmesan and place back in oven until melted (3-5 minutes). When done, arrange on plates.

Boil two inches of water in large pot. When water is simmering, crack shells and drop eggs into pot. Let cook three minutes or until whites are set. Using slotted spoon remove from pot, arrange on top of asparagus.

Salt and pepper to taste.

That’s it. So easy and good. Best of all, it took 2 minutes to clean up! Happy Spring.

Card games

I read an article last weekend that claimed an "alarming number" of parents in the United States report that they talk to their children for only a few minutes each day. I started to think about my conversations with Caroline. Would reading books count as a chat? Probably not, Caroline’s favorite books right now are poetry that we sing in our own form of recitative. Sometimes I can get her to talk about her books with me, but mostly she will interrupt anything she thinks sounds educational, turn my head back to the page, and demand that I "stop and read!"

Then I thought about dinner time. We always do ask her how her day has been, and talk about whether she went to the park, but the majority of our discussions seem to dwell on whether she will or will not chew her food all the way through. I decided we needed to expand our conversational mediums.

This morning, full of resolution, I sat down with Caroline and tried to teach her to play a matching card game called Snap. In our family, playing cards has always been one of the best times to have a conversation. Someone will put out the cards, softened to a velvety patina with age, set up a bowl of M&Ms and tall, ice filled glasses of water, and we’ll draw to deal, then start a round of Hearts, Spades, or Canasta, depending upon who calls the game. We’re pretty competitive, so we’ll pay attention to the game, but mostly it is a good way to be together and to catch up.

Caroline, like most toddlers, resists rules. Each time we try to play a game, I bring out my unoriginal explanation that a game, with two people, needs some sort of rule to make it fun for each person. But really, I haven’t quite come up with the best way to explain this annoying phenomena to her - some clever explanation that will fit into her toddler perception of world revolving around self. As usual, the game this morning didn’t go over very well, because she wanted to hold all the cards, and each time I placed a card down, she’d snatch it up and say, "mine, Caroline’s card!"

Finally I asked her if she wanted me to play with her and explained (again) that if you want to play with other people you have to share. I thought that we’d have to pack it up and go back to reading books. I waited. Caroline waited. We sat there for a good two minutes, Caroline holding onto all of the cards while I contemplated the unmade bed, the dishes in the sink. Then she handed me half of the deck so that we could try again. We played four rounds of Snap. We talked about matching colors together, and how green meant go and red meant stop. Then the babysitter came and I went to work.

The politics of nursery school

Yesterday was registration day at the local nursery school in our neighborhood. Our babysitter decided we needed to make a good first impression, so she dressed Caroline up in her favorite dress (navy blue top over a green plaid skirt), pink sweater, brilliantly white tights, and Sunday shoes. Then all three of us: babysitter, Will and myself, herded Caroline to the little skolka that is just across the street from our flat.

When we walked in we realized there was a crowd of people ahead of us. Czechs are expert at self-regulating lines though, so we just had to ask to find out who we would go after, how many families were in front of us (four), and how long the wait might be (an hour). We spent the hour entertaining Caroline, chatting with the other waiting parents, and trying to figure out just why it took twenty minutes to sign a three year old into a public nursery school program.

Our best guess is that the filtering system so obvious in middle to high school education in Europe gets its start with 3 year olds, and that these meetings are designed in part for the director to check out the parents and child and decide if she wants to see them again. It’s a guess only because we didn’t get a chance to hear the regular spiel.

Instead, as we sat down for our meeting, the director said, “Aha, you are the foreigners who visited during open house. I’m so sorry to tell you but because you are not EU citizens, your daughter probably cannot go to this school.“

It turns out that the government doesn’t pay schools a stipend for children who are either not Czech or non-EU. In the past, schools have gotten around this problem by charging foreigners a certain amount a month, but then a story appeared in the Czech press about a town where the elementary school was funded mostly by the Vietnamese families who sent their children there. Although what the school was doing was technically legal, the story created a stir around the country, and so some schools now have decided it is just easier to not accept foreigners until the laws are straightened out.

We spent most of the meeting listening to the director explain all of this, and then in the end, she asked us what we did and if the laws get worked out, if we could afford the stipend. She didn’t care a whit that I had my own company (only question, when will your next child be born?) but when she found out that Will works in the educational sector and what he does, her hands started trembling and she began to randomly apologize (for spelling his name wrong on the application form, for the bother of the whole thing). It amused me at the time, but when we got home and started talking about the meeting, we both thought - do we really want Caroline to go to a school that didn’t want her until they found out what her father does?

So now I am looking into private schools for Caroline. Some place in Prague 2, 4 or 10 that doesn’t charge outrageous prices for children to get to together and play. Some place where Czech kids go but a kid from another country could fit in happily too. Suggestions welcomed.