My Daughter is Trying to Kill Me

I have no idea why The Child is trying to effect my demise, but it is obvious that she is. Evidence:

1). The move to an apartment in the city

2). The creepy alley entrance to said apartment

3). The multiple car accidents.

4). Gallivanting off by Herself to New York City.

This is the scene of her latest attempt:

This is the Sun Trust building in downtown Richmond. It is 25 stories high. And this:

is The Child’s bottom coming over the top of the building. The baby that I carried for more than 9 months is on the edge of that precipice and I am on the ground holding a camera.

The Child’s middle name is the same as my maternal grandfather. This was decided long before she was born. And it is apt. She is as fearless as he. She also has the same soft heart that he hid behind gruffness and bluff. This was a fundraiser for Special Olympics. She raised over $1100 and came down carrying a picture of our adorable cousin Luke. We were equal parts terrified and proud. Both emotions clutched our throats and filled our eyes.











She fills me with awe. I wonder where she came from. She is somehow so much more than I have ever been – braver, stronger, smarter and so very, very bright.

The author Elizabeth Stone said: “Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.” How my heart could have been in my throat and coming down the side of that building at the same time is a conundrum, but it was.

The Child Can COOK!

This was The Child’s first holiday in her new digs and with our imminent trip to England, I was NOT cooking a big company meal, so when she invited us to Easter lunch, I JUMPED. I knew she was a good cook – she’s prepared various things for us in the past: a side dish, a dessert – that kind of thing. But I don’t think she’s ever given us an entire celebratory meal all of her own devising. It was a HUGE success – everything was delicious! I was amazed and proud.

Pre-dinner nibbles:

Crackers and cream cheese with pepper jelly and fig preserves (Southern classic). And:

Sweet and spicy rosemary cashews.

Dinner included a perfectly roasted chicken:

Lemon and herb stuffed with roasted heads of garlic and bacon (very English). A prime test of a cook and she really nailed it.

A gorgeous salad:

Romaine, endive, red onion, dried cranberries, candied pecans, pears and a lemon/olive oil/herb dressing.

Asparagus and corn salad w/ feta cheese:

This is her own creation and it’s the perfect spring side dish – crisp, fresh and cool.

Roast potatoes with pine nuts, bacon and Locatelli:

PERFECT roast potatoes – crisp outside and creamy inside. Again – a hard thing to accomplish and she aced it.

Pasta with two cheeses and spinach:


I contributed (by request) deviled eggs:

Is it even LEGAL to have Easter dinner without deviled eggs???

Yes, this was all for THREE people. She needs to work on amounts (but I cook that way, too – so she comes by it naturally). My babygirl can cook and she has a wonderful palate. Everything tasted wonderful, went together and was just RIGHT. It also, in some weird way validates me and my food focus. I’ve always seen myself as the ultimate ‘normal’ (read a little dull) person. Nothing special. But The Child is an extraordinary person – bright, funny, beautiful – a real individual. So if she is drawn to cooking and creating things in the kitchen, if she gets pleasure from nourishing folks, then I’m not too weird for loving the same things.

Dessert was my domain this year. I made the Easter cake:


This is a Key Lime Coconut Cheesecake. The bottom layer is cheesecake and the top layer is sponge cake – both flavored with Key lime extract. Filled with Key lime curd, whipped cream and coconut. The whole thing is frosted with whipped cream and sprinkled with coconut. We ended up taking this to Mr. Kim’s mom’s house for dessert.
Slice:

This was just delicious. Everyone said that it was one of the best things that I’d ever made.

So we had a Happy Easter – family, food and being together. My girl had a rousing success. And we were a part of it. In the midst of getting the dinner on the table, when we were all three busy doing this and that, she apologized for not having things all ready when we got there but said that it was actually fun doing it together. I chopped things (I has mad knife skillz), Mr. Kim whipped up the salad dressing and carved the chicken. We were sous and she was the executive chef. And it WAS fun – Mr. Kim and I agreed completely on that. All her life, that was exactly how I wanted our family to be and, most often, it wasn’t. I had this picture in my head of the ‘happy family’ that I wanted us to be – cooperating on projects, working together to create a meal, make a garden, paint a room. More often, we did our projects individually. I don’t really know why – perhaps it was because of expediency or lack of interest. But this day was different – we were a team, the team I’ve always wanted us to be. It was a wonderful feeling and one I’ll remember forever.

EDITED TO ADD: I forgot to post pictures of The Child's adorable table:




So, not only can she cook and write, but she's crafty, too! She may look like her Daddy, but she's got a little of me in her, too!

Mr. Kim Blogs: Moving Day

I have devised a new workout plan that I recommend to everyone.

1. Have and raise a child. (This part takes a while, stick with it.)

2. Allow child to get an apartment at college so as to facilitate the accumulation of a lifetime's worth of crap and heavy furniture in four years.

3. Place all said belongings in storage after college and allow child to move home to find a job, save some money, and get established.

4. Wait 4 years for said child to "find herself."

5. (And here's where it gets good) At long last celebrate child's location of suitable grown up apartment. Do happy dance. Rent a truck, return to storage unit, load truck with 120 rooms of heavy furniture, boxes of books, boxes of what appear to be bricks, kitchen stuff, more lamps than can be found in a furniture store, what appear to be more bricks, and misc crap, all destined for a one bedroom basement apartment.

6. Arrive at apartment to find it flooded, less than a week after signing the lease. Call weekend emergency maintenance number, wait for plumber, and learn that the problem may be in a wall and will take up to a week to fully rectify. Reject idea of jumping out of window. It's a basement.

7. After laughing, then crying, then looking for the nearest liquor store, drive truck back to self-storage, unload everything including the bricks which appear to have been breeding in the truck because there are now four times as many. Find out that just because everything came out of the storage locker doesn't mean it all will to be easily fit back in again. Apparently bricks like sunlight.

8. Return truck, return home, and realize that part of what went into the storage locker was daughter's bed. Reluctantly agree to sleep on couch for a week.

9. Lie awake thinking that you have to do it all again next Saturday.

And voila! a 1200 calorie-burn workout. (Not including the have and raise a child part, that burns even more.)

Somebody pass the Ben-Gay.

Drag Stories, Part Deux

I, of course, have no business sitting here blogging away. Blogging, in my mind, is sometimes akin to the legendary bonbon eating that idle housewives are supposed to have done. There is a possible Ms. magazine article in that idea, but not now. Laundry is calling, I have veal thawing on the counter that wants to be Milanese’d. Dust bunnies are procreating at a faster rate than their real live cousins. I really do have a lot to do. BUT…I need to add the pictures and the shameful tale of the final night of the Drag Show. The pictures are of The Child and all. The shame is all mine. I’m afraid that Mama Bear came out. When The Child was given what I thought was an uncalled for low score, I became a bit…unruly. I might have shouted out something. A slur on a judge. The judge in question was a former friend of The Child’s. Former. Not an enemy now – just back to an acquaintance. Because of difficulties in on a trip to Paris. I thought perhaps he was thinking of Paris and not the wonderful, delightful exhibition that The Child was giving on stage in front of him. Occasionally things come out of my mouth without making a detour through my brain for a bit of thoughtful consideration. I think that this was one of those times. It is all a blur. But I did make somewhat of a spectacle of myself, though I did my best to be charming and funny when the judge came over later. And that WAS the night that I was pressed to consider becoming a contestant, so I guess either not that many people actually heard me or else they thought it was Diva-ish enough for me to qualify. Something like that.

Anyway, enough about me. The Child was wonderful. It was her 27th birthday and she celebrated in High Style. Here she is in her first number:

She was much ‘free-er’ this week. She flirted and played and shimmied and just had a blast up there. Nothing but fun to watch and be a part of.

This is her in her second number:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I’m told that this is a Lady Gaga costume. (Those are telephone cords, BTW).

Some more shots:


With her proud Papa.


And Momma.


With some of her buds. The tall one with the beard is my ‘son’ Andrew – he of the wonderful boobs quote last week.


This is her with her BFF Kevin. My other ‘son’, Andrew’s partner and the editor/publisher/creator of the incredible website: gayrva.com.

And lest you think that our birthday celebrations are all glitz and glamour, here is my girl, dressed all ‘normal’, wearing jeans, hair pulled up in a ponytail:

Every bit as gorgeous and fierce and smoochable.