Fig Stuffed Taro Cake

The other night Aaron purchased a fig stuffed taro cake for me from our local chinese restaurant. At first I was skeptical. Its corpse-like greyish purple color wasn't super appetizing. Its quivering gelatinous bulk called the movie The Blob to mind . But I didn't want to make Aaron feel bad so I took a bite. It was Heaven! I declare it my ultimate comfort food. Sweet and creamy and gooey. Soo good even if it is the ugliest food ever. I'll try to take a picture as soon as we get another which I hope is tomorrow. Unfortunately Reuben decided he was also a fan so I had to share.

This isn't my picture. It's one I found off the internet and these are much prettier than what our local place serves up.

And the other day I came across THIS - how to make snickers bars at home. I feel so enabled. I told Aaron for my next birthday I don't want a cake. Instead he can make me a giant snickers bar.

Competition

Aaron and I try to play a game together each night. While backgammon is our staple we've lately been enjoying bananagrams. To play you try to build a cross word puzzle faster than your opponent. It's sort of speed scrabble.

One of the best parts, besides my current winning lead over Aaron, is seeing what words manage to percolate from our heads at the end of the day. I've been reading and enjoying Albion's Seed: Four British Folk Ways in America which has produced an abundance of early english: maw, haft, quaker, etc. Aaron likes to throw in latin legal jargon and argue it's english. But I take the higher road and have not yet resorted to using my professional training by using comic book expressions. Fwop! Shazam! Take that!

Reuben in the Rain

It's been rainy but that hasn't stopped Reuben and me from getting outside. Mostly because Reuben insists on going "OUTSIDE! OUTSIDE!" from the moment he wakes. I'm glad we both have good rain coats.

Bold as a Lion

On Wednesday it rained. And Rained. And Rained. Even after three very soggy walks including one that got both of us completely drenched, Reuben and I were so cooped up we were driving each other crazy. CRAZY. Reuben is a restless soul.

So when Thursday dawned clear we were out the door. We went into the city and wandered around some monuments. Then I took Reuben to the Build Museum which has the best play room in the region. It happened to be the annual Smithsonian craft show so we couldn't run around the central courtyard like usual since it was filled with very nice grandmas in quilted jackets and big bead necklaces who kept pinching Reuben's cheeks. Here's Reuben hiding out from said Grandmas and enjoying himself in the play room.

Then my camera which is also my phone died which is why there are no more pictures. I was VERY angry. I went down to the mall (the grassy lawn) hoping to find some Earth day fun but it turns out DC only celebrates on the weekends. I didn't see a single picket sign. More anger. Reuben fell asleep in the stroller so I walked over to the National Botanical Gardens and got an hour of drawing in which helped me feel better. Reuben woke and started dashing around chanting flower! Flower! Flower! and playing in the fountains. Once he was decently soaked and the pangs of guilt for Reuben's determined flower destruction overcame me we moved on.

If you are a one year old here are the highlights from the rest of the afternoon:

Museum of the American Indian Museum - Great open space to dance around in

The National Gallery - Moving Sidewalks are so exciting that even if you get a major face plant getting off, it's worth getting right back on going the opposite way despite your mother's cries of protest

The Natural History Museum - Good fish tank and lots of exciting animals to look at, especially the bugs. And the gem and mineral gift store has a giant box of rocks which you can dig through and throw all over the place

The American Art and Portrait Gallery - So boring it's great to sleep through

I was happy I got to go back through the Portrait Gallery community portrait show while Reuben slept. I also spent some time looking through the American portrait section which got me curious about Daniel Webster. He was supposed to be a brilliant orator and stood as the main opposition leader idealogically to John C Calhoun. He spoke the works "Liberty and Union, now and for ever, one and inseperable!" As you can see from his portrait, he had some pretty serious male pattern baldness going on. According to some of the info at the museum, his contemporaries took his coronal prominence as proof of his brilliant intellect. A story that I think would make any balding man today wish for the by gone glory days of phrenology. That's a side point. I really am interested in Daniel Webster and think I'm going to try to hunt down a biography. If you know of a good one let me know.

Great White Reuben

Aaron Reuben and I have been working hard to get a garden set up. Thanks to a little negligence on our parts Reuben has developed a pretty healthy farmer's tan. To stave off a full on red neck and the family disposition to skin cancer I've started slathering Reuben in sun screen before we go outside. I try to explain to him that while his lily white skin is good for nothing in the sun, he might be slightly more effective at producing vitamin D if he ever finds himself trapped in the arctic regions for a long period. Reuben doesn't seem to appreciate this info or the sun screen.

But I find the science of pigmentation pretty interesting, mainly because white skin seems so useless, even harmful. Several of my fair skinned loved ones have developed damaging skin cancer making me wonder how light skin worked well enough to survive the evolutionary winnowing process. I've read a few articles on the subject. While skin pigmentation is complex process involving activating enzymes and complex molecular activity that gets way too technical for me to understand, more basic articles like The Biology of Skin Color give some interesting explanations on the evolutionary developments that affected human coloration. It also mentions that women exposed to too much sunlight early in pregnancy, usually through self subjected tanning sessions, had higher rates of neural tube defects in their children. And men who got too much sun also found themselves with some unfortunate consequences. So there's another reason to feel okay with being pasty.

Anyway, we have to work with what we're given. And in Reuben's case that means he also needs to work with a lot of sun screen.

A Quote for the Day

But there is nothing like work for toning down excessive fear or joy.

-From the essay Stickeen by John Muir. You can read it all here.

Stickeen tells the story of the survival of Muir and a small dog companion, Stickeen on an unexplored Alaskan glacier in the midst of a fierce ice storm. Great reading. I like to remind myself of Muir's above observation whenever I start to worry.

My Day Off

With all the moving stuff, I got behind on work and had a miserably dull but important project that seemed to grind on FOREVER. I finally told myself that if I got it done I could reward myself with a day off. Well Monday night around 1130 I finished it up so Tuesday was my day off!

I decided I would go downtown. I dressed Reuben in a breezy summer outfit, pulled on some capris and headed into the city. It was chilly but it's always chilly in the morning.

Reuben saying hi to a "meow-meow" aka a Red Panda

We were at the zoo more than an hour before it opened which was great because the grounds open at 6 am. So we wandered the mostly empty park and got to see a lot of the animals without the crowds. Reuben described most of the animals - the mongoose, meerkats, the red panda, etc - as being meow meows which means he was a fan.

Around 10 the wind picked up, it started to sprinkle and I started to kick myself for not checking the weather more closely. We had rain coats but it was COLD! I gave Reuben my jacket so he could layer up and hoped a brisk pace and the stroller pushing would help me stay warm until the storm blew over. The storm didn't blow over. It rained ALL day accompanied by a cold wind. So Reuben and I now own souvenier Smithsonian sweatshirts. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

Reuben in the Hall of Birds

After the zoo we took the metro in to the Smithsonian and spent the next couple hours at the Natural History museum. It was a good time but I sure hate school groups. And it turns out Reuben hates butterflies. Well, he likes them, he simply wants to kill any that come near him. Th video at the very end of this blog looks laid back but the balance of life and death is tipping every time that little mindless bug swoops close to Reuben.

Reuben sleeping at the National Gallery

Somewhere in the ancient mammal hall Reuben fell asleep so I headed over to the National Gallery for a wonderfully peaceful hour and a half of art appreciation among french and japanese tourists. I even got a chance to sketch a really bored security guard. I love doing that.

And I found myself a couch and sat for a while in front of this portrait Lady Elizabeth Delme and Her Children by Joshua Reynolds. Lady Elizabeth Dulme's depiction intrigued me. Though the mother she is decidedly childlike. Her arm surrounds her children indicating appropriate Maternal care but she is not overwhelmed or overly attached to her children. She is domestic but aloof from the domesticity. She like her setting is pristine, an untouched Eden. Anyway, I found it a well synthesized visualization of the conflicting ideal of an 18th century wife. Basically, a traditional version of the perfect wife - a good mother to a man's children who is immune to any signs (physical, emotional, etc) of maternity.

So if you ever wonder what I think/talk about at the museum, there's a taste. I think a lot of other things about loud middle schoolers and people who wear sharp clicking high heels that wake up sleeping babies but I try to keep this blog free from obscenities so I will not repeat those thoughts.

Reuben waving to the LL Cool J (um..I think?) at the Portrait gallery

Around 4:45 Reuben woke up and became decidedly unimpressed with our surroundings which was fine because it was just about then that the security guards kicked us out for closing time. So we headed to the American Art and Portrait Gallery which is one of my favorite museums. We played in its wonderful courtyard disturbing the collection of first meetings among the internet daters who seem to congregate there.

Then I dragged Reuben through an awesome Community Portrait show which I LOVED. The idea was three artists capturing a whole community through series of individual portraits. The paintings were wonderfully well done. I really want to go back and see it again. You can check out the website here.

Then Reuben found a pho-velvet round couch which he could climb circles around making it his likely highlight of our whole excursion.

Around 630 we fought the crowds and met Aaron in Dupont circle. After a quick stop at Kramer Books (which was fun) to warm up, we snuggled into a cozy booth for dinner at a place by Aaron's office and watched the crowds wander in the rain and wind. Reuben alerted us and the other patrons anytime a bus "BUS!! BUS!!" passed by. Then we commuted home as a family.

It was a great day off.

The Butterfly Movie

Reuben's Little Friend

Reuben has a new friend. We call him Gnome because he is a gnome. He appears to originally be from China but came via our local supermarket. For some unknown reason, Reuben has decided he likes picking Gnome up and carrying him around the yard so he can be close to wherever I am. Once Reuben deposits Gnome close beside me, he wanders off to pursue other interests.

You can tell Reuben is concentrating very hard on his gnome moving in this picture because he's sticking his tongue out, just like Michael Jordan.

Reuben is surprisingly quiet while making these moves. As a consequence, several times I've turned around and been startled to find our little gnome friend staring up at me alone, a good twenty feet from where I saw him last. It's a little unnerving - I almost feel like I'm stuck in some silent and bizarre game of red light green light. Anyway, I'm pretty sure it's Reuben that's moving him but maybe not, gnomes are magical folk. Even the plastic ones from China.

Ewok Adventure

Coming up to Maryland felt a lot like traveling back in time. I was so happy that Spring had arrived in South Carolina. Arriving in MD was like being sent back to Start. It was cold and wet and everything still looked dead. As an example of the contrast here are two pictures of what Reuben was doing right before we moved North - playing barefoot in our backyard stream's sand bed.

It was fun to see him play in the sand. Since it wasn't a playground I figured there wasn't any harm in him throwing it. I was kind of curious to see what a kid would do when allowed to throw sand since they always start and if you're stuck in a civilized area you have to immediately stop them. Turns out if you let Reuben throw sand he will simply continue throwing it for the next quarter of an hour.

Once we got up to MD we had to find our coats and bundle up. Despite the cold, Reuben reveled in the glory of having a small yard and has cultivated a devotion to large sticks which he uses to hit and stab the ground. With his short stature, brown coat and weaponry he looks just like a little Ewok.

Thankfully, the cold abated and Reuben and I are loving the arrival of spring to our neighborhood.