Pining for Spain

Rather than dwell on Saturday night's catastrophe (no pun intended - ok, pun intended) I prefer to dwell on the delight of finding a U.S. tapas bar that lives up to its name. I've been to many an American restaurant that claims to serve Spanish tapas, but really they're just capitalizing on the fact that while many Americans don't have a clue about what goes on beyond our borders, they will happily jump on any yuppie bandwagon that co-opts some "quaint" custom from abroad and call it their latest discovery. What you get at these places is a selection of sculpted, overpriced appetizers that you're supposed to order as if they were dim sum (drinks sold separately) so you end up paying twice as much as if you had just ordered the dang things as appetizers.

Real tapas, my friends, are tasty little morsels that come free with your beer at many bars in Spain. Some bars may charge you, but only a pittance, as the idea is to put a little buffer in the belly between you and inebriation. The best place for tapas, in my mind, is Granada, where there is a strip of bars that appear like Brigadoon only when I have given up trying to find them among the windy, cobblestone streets of the old part of town. Here you will find that each bar has it's own specialty of the house - like the tenderest piece of grilled squid prepared to order, or crisp and gooey cheese croquette, or a smokey slice of prosciutto served on a slab of chewy peasant bread (I was not a vegetarian when I lived in Spain) - and what you do is hop from one bar to the next, ordering a small beer at each so you can sample what each establishment has to offer, until your belly is full and/or you're no longer coherent enough to order the next beer.

And that brings me back to Cafe Pastiche. Granted, the tapas did not come free with a beer, (in fact they sold fairly pricey bottles of wine,) and the morsels had a bit of a nouveau cuisine air about them, (mushroom flan, anyone? How about a blue cheese truffle?) but the casual atmosphere was just right, and at one to two bucks a pop for each tasty treat, our meal was reasonably priced. (Forty bucks for the two point five of us, but that included an eight dollar bottle of wine.) Ok, so now that I'm writing about it, I get that Cafe Pastiche is only a distant relative of the tapas bars in Granada, so what was it that made me pine for Spain? Was it that they had ham and cheese croquettes along with the chick pea salad and roasted red pepper torte? That could have been it. Or maybe it was just the sitting at the bar sipping an alcoholic beverage, I felt more relaxed than I had in days.

The thing about Spain, and Southern Spain in particular, is they really know how simply to be. It's not just the institutionalized nap time; it's the holistic lack of urgency - the expectation that if you want something done after 3 p.m. on Friday, you're going to have to wait until Monday, and if you show up 40 minutes late for something you're right on time. I'm pretty sure the world would be a much better place if we could all just take a siesta.

We are bad mommies

A basic truth of parenting: Just when you think you've got it mastered, something happens to prove that you don't know what the heck you're doing.

Case in point: Last night we were the picture of savvy, sophisticated, together urban parents. We took The Boy to a great Portland place called Bar Pastiche, essentially a tapas/wine bar in the very funky Hawthorne district. This is an adult place, with tiny little tables, low lighting and no highchairs. No problemo; Supermoms took care of the situation, and our desire to experience the essence of Portland even with a toddler in tow, by propping him up at the tapas bar. He loved it, and why not? He had kid-sized little portions, a lot of bustle to watch, cute waitresses with multiple tattoos cooing over him and his favorite stuffed animal, a white cat known as No Cat. We left feeling well-fed and self-satisfied. We know what we're doing. We can have a life and a kid. We even felt good enough about the night to take a swing through Fred Meyer -- imagine Target with a little more grime or KMart with a little less grit -- for some non-essentials.

Anybody care to guess what happened next? We were almost all the way back to the car when we realized No Cat was nowhere to be found. I made a mad dash back to the restaurant, then did a Family-Circus-style retracing of our steps through Fred Meyer. No No Cat.

Fast forward to this morning. The Boy woke up happy, as usual. And with a simple request: "Want No. Want No. Want Nooooo!" What do you tell a kid in this situation? Mommies lost No Cat? Mommies were too pleased with themselves to keep track of your toys? Mommies SUCK???

We managed to put him off this morning with the promise of breakfast and some shiny objects. Meanwhile, we're on the hunt for a white, fluffy kitty cat that will fool The Boy. And if anyone has seen No Cat, could you let us know? She's about five inches long, white bordering on grey, last seen in the vicinity of Bar Pastiche, SE Hawthorne Boulevard, Portland OR.

More about The Boy

The Boy likes to line his babies up in an orderly fashion:

but he prefers to pull his books off the shelves into a heap on the floor.

The Boy puts up a mighty struggle when it's time to get undressed, then puts up a mighty struggle when it's time to put clothes back on. (Apparently, he dislikes transitions.)

The Boy likes eggs this week and hates broccoli. Last week, The Boy liked broccoli and hated humus. The week before that, The Boy liked humus and hated eggs.

The Boy is not really interested in using consonants, unless he's saying "banana," which has a couple more Gs and a D that I was previously unaware of.

The Boy eschews the stroller, preferring instead to walk along side it or - even better - to push it himself. This rule is suspended when an offer of food is on the table, in which case he will allow you to strap him in so he can sit and eat. This anything-for-a-snack attitude is the only trait of mine I see in him, though AnnaRay says he reminds her of me more and more every day.

Ok, so I may have some vaguely OCD tendencies that could be reflected in his desire to line things up in an orderly fashion, and there is the crankiness when tired, but other than that I have no idea what she's talking about. I am continually surprised to see what a straight-haired, WASPy looking kid I popped out. He doesn't look like anyone I know, though our next door neighbor said to me just today that he looks like Anna. She's not the first to say it, I'm pleased to report. I guess that's just a testament to the fine job we did in picking the Y half of his genetic material.

One of us has a shoe fetish

So Portland is turning Judybat and I into weird, Bizarro Superman versions of each other.

It's turning The Boy into Imelda Marcos.

I'm only partially kidding. He has a new dinner-time game that he plays while the adults eat. First he runs into his room and brings out his blue, slip-on shoes, then he demands -- imagine a 2-year-old looking up at your plaintively and saying, "Shoooo, shooooo!" -- that you help him put them on. Then he runs back into his room and brings out his new Nikes with the velcro closure. Cue more "Shooooo, shooooo." Then he scampers around the house once more, this time bringing his new yellow rain boots (which are already too small and gave him little baby-sized blisters." You can guess what happens next.

I think a child psychologist would have no trouble recognizing this as yet another variation in the endless cycle of, "Pay attention to me now!" games that the kid seemed to learn in utero. It is, however, getting a little old.

Role reversal

Good golly, such rancor! While it's true AnnaRay is know in some circles as "The One With The Rage" it's not at all like her to be so freakin' vocal about it. She's a seether, not a spewer. That sort of inarticulate lizard-brained rant is something you'd be more likely to hear from the likes of me. What's going on here? Is it the blogging? Is it Portland? My whole world is topsy turvy.

Like the other night: we're at a Sushi restaurant, and you know it's good because it's tiny, unassuming and packed. We've really got the sushi jones, so we decide to wait out the line, but the clock is ticking because The Boy will last only so many minutes before erupting in a voluble mass of toddler energy. The containment window is small. We get a table in a reasonable amount of time, but for some reason we are invisible to the wait staff. Did I mention this place is tiny? Maybe a dozen tables and at three waitresses working (well, one was working, and that may have been the problem) but 15 minutes go by without someone acknowledging us. The boy has already tired of poking things with chopsticks, removing the ice from our water glasses with a fork and lining the sugar packets up in an orderly row on the sodden table. He has moved zooming the toy cars we keep in the diaper bag for just this sort of emergency off the table when AnnaRay - the one who makes me ask how much longer it's going to be whenever there's a wait, the one who insists I am too pushy when I march up to a counter and place my order when the people ahead are standing around like grazing cattle - this AnnaRay gets up, walks over to one of the waitresses and tells her we would like to order before The Boy starts swinging on the curtains that separate the eating area from the restrooms. Very Bold. And yes, I do find it sexy.

But Anna's not the only one acting out of character. Not long after our food has finally arrived, I realize we are in desperate need of napkins. There are some right there at the abandoned waitress station not three steps from where I sit. Normally, I would slide on over and grab a handful, knowing that catching the eye of our waitress and alerting her to our plight is an impossible dream, but I didn't. Why? Good lord, I think I was afraid of getting in trouble! This from a person who never has any qualms about stepping into an empty men's room when the ladies' is full. What the hell is wrong with me?

It was Saturday night, but it felt like Freaky Friday.

This is getting ridiculous

Enough is enough. I am sick of these stupid Chowderheads with their stupid Johnny Damon beards and their stupid Red Sox hats and their stupid Tom Brady posters and their stupid Sam Adams beer and their stupid Duck Boat parades and their stupid Reverse the Curse shirts and their stupid snowstorms and their stupid Logan Airport with its stupid delays because of stupid air traffic problems and stupid Harvard Yard and stupid out-of-control real estate prices and stupid stupid stupid stupid.

In other words, Go Eagles. Even if the continued and inexplicable success of Boston-based sports teams represents some kind of karmic payback for the Old Man of the Mountain falling off and John Kerry imploding, ENOUGH ALREADY.

At least the Celtics still stink.

Do I laugh or cry?

Two years ago, Judybat got me the best birthday present ever, an iPod, serving as the enabler of what would become a serious iTunes addiction. (It's cheaper than crack, slightly.) I could spend several days explaining everything that is wonderful about Apple and their music service, how it's broadened my musical horizons and made me a better person and filled those long hours in the car and helped me find 8 different covers of "Against All Odds" when I'm really in a mood to get on my beloved's nerves. But . . . I do have some issues with Apple's newest way-to-spend-money, what they're calling their 'iTunes Essentials.'

The idea is to offer those of us who are musically challenged collections of songs that we might want, grouped into easy-to-find categories. Like, say, "Motown Classics." Or "Ella Fitzgerald." Or "Guilty Pleasures." Or, and here's where the ranting begins, "Gay Pride: Girls."

Now, I've got no problem showing my gay pride, whatever that's supposed to mean and whatever Judybat might say. (See below for a discussion of my frequent attempts to ravish my sweetpea in public. See my closet for all the sartorial proof you need.) What bothers me here is the assorted crap that the good folks in Steve Jobs-land seem to believe lesbians think represent them. There is, of course, the stuff you would expect: Indigo Girls, check. kd lang, yep. Janis Ian, of course. They've also, to their credit, included artists you might never have heard of unless, you know, you're a dyke. (Nobody out there wants to hear my ode to Catie Curtis, do they?)

But after that, it sort of falls apart. Jewel? Diana Krall? The Go-Gos? "She Bop???" (I love Cyndi Lauper, but don't straight girls masturbate too?) We need a rule: Just because a song was used in "The L Word" or, even worse, "Kissing Jessica Stein," that doesn't mean I have to take any pride in it. OK? OK.

Oh, yeah, and just because I ripped Apple, that doesn't mean I'm giving up my iTunes. Or that I don't already have a lot of these songs on my iPod. As I said, I have a problem.


Useless information of the day: Cyndi Lauper is 50, and recently toured with Cher. Be-bop-a-lu.

where do i start?

Great Googlimoogli! What's so radical about that last post is that AR just came out of the closet as a liberal. Portland really has taken hold. But what makes you think I was only talking about Christians in middle America? I'm condescending to everybody. Well, everybody who sticks his or her head in the sand rather than pay attention to what's going on in the world. And I never called anyone stupid. (Well, not in my last post, anyway.) I just suggested that there are a whole lot of people out there who would rather look at pretty pictures than live in the real world. Understandable, but irresponsible in my book.

I will not accept that going with your gut when it comes to voting is an intelligent choice. Whether a candidate comes off as your best pal or a snake has everything to do with the caliber of his or her P.R. staff and nothing to do with actual character. Heck, you were the one who told me that Bush's style of talking became much folksier when he started running for president. He went to Yale, for pete's sake; tell me what he's got in common with the average guy hanging out in a bar in Ohio. But, if you look at his record, you may actually get a sense of who he is. Would you call someone who promises to work toward bipartisanship then shuts down anyone who disagrees with him a man of character? Or someone who promises to pour money into education in order to get his initiative passed then pulls the funding once he's gotten what he wants? Or someone who says he's a follower of Christ, but makes tax cuts that disproportionately favor the rich while doing so little to help the poor? I'd call him a hypocrite.

So you want to know what I did to pull myself out of a post-election slump? I chose to love the sinner, but hate the sin. That, and I moved to Portland. If you look out the window as your plane descends into PDX, you wonder 'why are the lawns are all blue. Then you realize: it's just the John Kerry for President signs.

A radical idea . . .

Actually, an anti-radical idea. What if, instead of ranting about middle America and how white bread and lemming-like it's gotten, we found a way to accept that the rest of the world has different priorities than we do? That's not to say I'm not horrified by the MSNBC thing. I am. (Kittens, bad! Tsunami victims, good!) But it seems, at least to me, as if many of the problems we're bemoaning today - like, say, the fact that the Democratic Party is incapable of running a decent national campaign, or the fact that George Bush is dismantling the New Deal, or the fact that many people would rather look at pictures of clouds and puppies than destruction and disease - aren't going to get solved until those of us on the left stop being so condescending toward the right. We can throw up our hands and be frustrated at how stupid the rest of the country is . . . or we can acknowledge that part of the problem here is our own unwillingness to bend our worldviews even a bit.

You scoff at the George Washington biography on my side of the bed, but my recent refusal to read fiction has reminded me of a few things that have helped pull me out of my post-election funk. Most importantly: We need to accept God and faith into our political lives, or at least accept that there is a whole slew of smart, well-educated, well-meaning people out there -- Hi Dad! -- for whom the notion of 'character' and 'values' in our elected officials means an awful lot. We're rolling our eyes at them and talking about specifics like Roe v. Wade and Yucca Mountain. They're going with their gut reactions: "This guy is a snake," or "This guy talks like he's thinks he's smarter than me." That doesn't make them stupid, but all too often we act like it does -- even when we don't intend to.

The blame cuts both ways here: We're all too quick to call those Bush-loving red staters dummies. And they're all too quick to label us all liberal elite know-it-alls. But - and here's where I will get radical for a second - the onus is on us. WE are in the minority, at least in how we make up our political minds. We have to go out of our way to show the other side some respect, to give them their kittens and their clouds and their surfing dogs -- and to slip in some actual content while we're at it.

If anybody knows how to do that, please let me know.

Excuse me while I rant

If you're puzzling over how people can be against the war in Iraq, complain bitterly about lost jobs and still vote for another four years of the same administration that got us here, don't go running to the moral values argument for an answer. The fact is, most Americans are completely capricious when it comes to voting because they're living in La La Land. Here's the proof: MSNBC's The Year in Pictures multimedia presentation. In it, you will find two separate galleries. One - the editors' choice - is a highlights reel of the year's big events - most of them painful - accompanied by an audio track of reports covering those events. The other - the readers' choice - is highlights reel of your favorite wall calendar pictures, accompanied by an audio track of music for an eighth-place World Cup Skating routine.

You might ask, what criteria would you use to edit the choice photographs from a whole year's worth of images? Well, given that MSNBC is a news outlet, I'd say newsworthiness is a good start, followed by the ability to move the viewer in some way, be it to laughter or anger or tears. Good composition, of course, is a key element. The photo should tell a story, and beauty always helps. Looking at the reader's picks, you may come away thinking the big story this year was a horse befriending a cat.

Mother nature kicked the crap out of us, people; she rained down fire and flood and pestilence - and lets not forget the locusts. What little she didn't get around to decimating, we the people did our best to destroy. Oh, and there was a presidential election and a new leader of Palestine (over Arafat's dead body) and some big upset in the world of sports that I'm not allowed to mention, lest I be kicked out of the house, but who's got room for that when you've got a cat sleeping on a skateboard? There were three (THREE!) pictures cats, and a trifecta each of horses and ducks. Amazingly enough there was only one dog picture, but the elephants, giraffes and polar bears made up for that oversight. Ok, the picture of the minivan in the swimming pool was pretty good, but two pictures of fallen leaves on still water (when none would have been enough) and the quintessential dentist office decor photo of footprints on sand completely obliterate any points for that.

Now, you might say the editors' picks go way too far in the other direction - it's all sensasionalism with the media. They show us nothing but searing pictures of human agony. Where are the happy human moments? But I say: life is pain, Princess. Anyone who tells you different is trying to sell you something. Besides, they included picture of Buddy the terrier catching a wave in Ventura. Heh heh - a dog surfing. That cracks me up.

For the record

The pants do look gooooood. And if the lady finds me sexy when I'm brave, I'll be brave more often.

On another matter, I don't see anything wrong with telling the child to speak, rather than point, to the things he wants. "Use your words" is just another way of saying, 'You ain't the boss of me,' or, 'Forgive my ignorance, my liege, but I did not understand your request. Please repeat in a language my poor, slow, sleepy serf brain can understand.'

MY mother, whose mannerisms and tones I began unconciously adopting at birth, worries about the weather in Portland, but today it was 60-some degrees and stunning. I had an appointment on the 18th floor of a place downtown, and Mount Hood looked like it was across the street. Stu-freaking-pendous. Plus, I got to the bus stop this evening, and my #9 was pulling away, and I ran, but didn't catch it. And then, 5 minutes later, another #9 pulled up, even though they usually run every 15 to 20 minutes. Somebody was running way behind or somebody was running way ahead: Either way, it's further proof that we're supposed to be here. At least in my world.

Stick a fork in me; I'm done

For the record: the wedding kiss does not count as PDA, but I like this bold new AnnaRay: very sexy. I feel different too. though not so much braver as older. I used to think having a kid would make me feel my age, (34 at the time. Maybe 35. I lose track,) but when I was out and about with The Boy, I often wondered if people might think me too young to have a kid. I certainly felt that way - like I was play-acting this whole parenting thing. So it came as a real shocker to realize not long after we moved that I finally feel like a grown-up. At first I though home ownership jolted me into adulthood, but now I think it's my new pants.

Somehow, after a lifetime of obsessing over my weight, then having a kid, nursing him for a year, weaning him while still eating as if his life depended on it, I find myself at my high school dress size. In high school, of course, I thought I was fat, but I'm a lot smarter now, so I get to enjoy it. I bought myself a new pair of pants - lovely, grey, low-riding slacks - and they look gooood. Definately the clothes of an adult.

How interesting that I started dressing better after quitting the work scene. Maybe it's the need to distinguish day time from pajama time, now that my life is a blur of primary colored plastic and child-safe activities. Though now that I think of it, maybe it's the stay-at-home mom thing that's making me feel like an adult. I'm not play-acting anymore; I'm actually saying things like: "but you like broccoli" and "can you say thank you to the nice lady?" (If you EVER hear me utter "use your words,"use your words" please shoot me in the head.) There's something so familiar in all my mannerisms when I interact with The Boy. It's the echo of a million housewife moms I watched on t.v. as a kid. No wonder I'm feeling aged. When I was 8, I figured those moms had to be, like, 30, which was about as close to death as you could get with your heart still pumping.

But wait a minute - it's not a stereotype I'm thinking of... Good grief! I've become my own mother! Those are her mannerisms I recognize and her voice I hear when I'm with the boy. Oh, the irony of turning into exactly what you promised yourself you would never become. Not that there's anything wrong with my mother. My mother rocks. I just always saw myself as completely different. Of course, my mother was a lot younger than I am now when she was in my position, yet now that I'm in her shoes, I feel so much older.

Public displays of Portland

I'm not even going to begin to get into this notion that the kiss outside City Hall was our first public display of affection. We're married, for golly's sake, whether Multnomah County acknowledges it or not. I have witnesses. Many, many witnesses.

That said . . . Yes, something feels different. Not because of the domestic partnership. That is a bone, a big, fat, meaningless, marrow-free bone that symbolizes nothing. Except health insurance for you and, eventually, The Boy. (Thank you, pinko liberal Major Media Company.) But this place is bringing something out in me, and I don't think it's just the fact that we're living in a community that is as close to San Francisco as we can afford. Maybe it's leaving our North Carolina nest, maybe it's moving a continent away from our family, maybe it's owning a house or being a parent or finally having no credit card debt or seeing middle-age creeping up, but I'm feeling braver these days. I don't really care if the homeless man on the bus looks askance as we celebrate our silly little certificate. I don't even care if my sources see me catching a smootch on my way back to work.

Besides, I've always felt fairly normal. Stereotypical, if you get right down to it. Two women, two Subarus, two dogs, one baby boy. What's unusual about that?

Refugees of a red state

In our Raleigh neighborhood, back in North Carolina, we were known as "those women who live together," and it always surprised me that we were known at all. I kept forgetting that two women making a life together, not to mention a baby, was a bit unusual, exotic even, not to mention illegal. But here in Portland, Oregon, our life is no longer illicit, and we are in no way remarkable. We could well be the most boring people here. We even came with Subarus, which seem to be a prerequisite for moving into our current neighborhood.

So I guess I should not have expected the non-event that was our registering as domestic partners to be anything more than a bureaucratic chore - one more form to fill out to qualify for health care benefits, one more line to cross off of our to do list. Still, it felt extraordinarily mundane, perhaps because we didn't actually fill out any forms. Or show any ID. Or give the folks at the Multinomah County offices any information whatsoever. We did have to fork over 60 bucks. That and our signatures got us a Certificate of Domestic Partnership and a card that read: "Congratulations on this important day! Best Wishes For the Future, (signed) Diane Linn, County Chair."

It seems to me, this whole domestic partnership thing is like a bone they've thrown us so we won't notice the steak on their plates. The fact that it was so easy to qualify is a testament to how meaningless the designation is. Afterwards, we had coffee (for Anna) and cocoa (for me) and a cookie while sitting outside in the freezing cold because there were no tables inside the coffee shop. It seemed an appropriate reception. Before Anna headed back to work and I hopped on a bus for home, we kissed each other goodbye, on the lips, in broad daylight. It was our very first public display of affection. I had been anticipating it, wondering if Anna would turn her cheek to me as she always does, diffusing a show of love into a friendly peck. I wonder if she thought of it, as I did, as a conscious and deliberate act to mark our new life together.