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Hermit crabs: A love story

There is a hermit crab named Ichiro, slightly bolder than his female counterpart, Sylvia. (Truthfully, they might both be boys. Or girls. They might be homosexual hermit crabs. But they've already been named and assigned gender identities.)

Ichiro inches closer to Sylvia, sometimes climbing onto her shell. He is painted orange and white, decorated with a dragon that is supposed to look Chinese. This doesn't impress Sylvia, smug in her natural shell.

Immune to Ichiro's charms, she stays clenched inside. She'll come out only at night, after Ichiro has whispered promises to keep his distance. She eats and drinks. She bathes quickly in salt water, then huddles back down into the damp substrate.

If only he were less flashy, less willing to let the curious humans see his small, twitching eyes. Once, right in front of them, he hurled his body from one shell into another. Then back again. Show off. She prefers a crab more low-key. Authenticity is what she's after. Not theatrics.

But there is no third or fourth hermit. It is just Ichiro and her. She must depend on him for every morsel of socialbility she craves. And hermit crabs are social! Oh yes. The literature says so. If she wants an opinion on the purpleness of her claws or an analyzation of the dream she had the night before, Ichiro is her sole sounding board.

Maybe, she thinks, it will be like an arranged marriage. She might come to love him, in time. And, possibly, sensing her disdain for all things histrionic, Ichiro may quiet. Will she ever feel comfortable enough to molt, to let him see her naked in the Seattle Municipal mist that rains over their habitat twice a day?

She can only wonder. And wait. God forbid, she could live ten years. And then what? Hers is not a species to mate for fun. She'll be stuck on a stick trying to make conversation with a vaudevillian while avoiding big human faces that loom like full, hopeful moons.

Perspective

How many people in the world would love to open a full cupboard, a bulging refrigerator and try to decide what to feed their kids?

Keep it in perspective. This isn't so bad.

Max got skin tests yesterday for egg and milk and the flu shot. He was cleared for the shot and got it, grimacing bravely. He still can't have dairy products or anything egg-laden, though.

Keep it in perspective. This isn't so bad.

A filling fell out of Max's mouth and a small cavity formed.

He has a bumpy rash all over his torso that the allergist thinks is viral. At the allergist's office, in fact, Claire smashed her finger in the hinge side of a door. I must've turned white when I saw her soft, small pinky stuck in there, because it looked flat.

Claire's chest hurts. Dull, she says. Often. Like mother, like daughter? Or something worse?

Keep it in perspective. This isn't so bad.

Max's handwriting is horrendous and requires extra lessons. That I need to provide. We have to go back to Kindergarten books so he can relearn how to shape his letters. And Claire's speech. Claire's speech. So cute, yet so distorted. The schools tell us to wait. She doesn't need therapy. My gut tells me she does.

Keep it in perspective. This isn't so bad.

Worry. I'm worrying more than usual these days. Reminding me of my former, pre-medicated self. I'm a little too flustered. A little too lonely. Yet all I want is to be by myself.

Keep it in perspective. This isn't so bad.

My kitchen is nice. Granite. Semi-fancy appliances. But...all that time I have to spend in there. All that damn deciding and cooking and cleaning up. The kitchen. It drives me insane.

   

 

Toasty

I went and knit myself some legwarmers. I've even worn them out in public. Now I'm sans a knitting project. Which is sad. Knitting is meditative. I love it.

Liver and prunes, anyone? Or, Ode to my Grandma Lucy

Those of you who took a gander at my scintillating bureau-top saw a photo of my great-grandmother Lillian. Lillian's first child, the one daughter she had the privelege to know and love (for a couple years anyway) was my grandma, Lucy.

Lucy had her faults, I am sure. But she had many strengths. One of them was her generosity. She was generous with her time, spending hours playing with my sister and me when we visited. She was generous with money, slipping us tens from her insubstantial allowance so we could buy a trinket (that would soon end up lost or broken). And she was generous with her things, letting us drag out all her costume jewelry and every one of her pairs of shoes so we could play Store.

My grandma Lucy had a cookbook. It was called The Household Searchlight Recipe Book and was published in 1936. Somehow it has found its way to me.

The book is battered and stained. Full of recipes for things jellied. Prunes abound. Salads are not arugula and frisee, but are often made with gelatin and meat, then plopped on a bed of lettuce.

Throughout the 304-page tome, Lucy has made notes.

She was a jotter. Throughout her adult life, she wrote, in plain, small notepads, what she wore each day, what she cooked, her level of success with both. Her cookbooks were no different. She annotated tweaks she made to the recipes, what "Georgie", my grandpa, liked.

She was funny, self-deprecating, unafraid to call herself out.

Her oldest daughter, vanished from this life just a couple years after Lucy, scrawled across many pages with a fat, purple crayon. I imagine these doodles amused my grandma, rather than irritated her. She simply wrote: Marilyn, 17 months and etched an arrow to the first of the purple hieroglyphics.

Most of the recipes she claimed to have tried at some point in her marriage were fairly sensible. It seems, by her lack of annotations, that she avoided the Creamed Brains (ingredients: one brain, white sauce, paprika, salt and pepper), Egg coffee and Prune Onion Salad.

Her favorites were meatloaf and fudge.

The Household Searchlight Recipe Book is 72-years-old now. Just two years younger than Lucy was when she died in the late eighties. I miss her. I miss her generosity.

I even miss her cooking.

A summary of our Michigan trip

We did go all these places.

Yes, indeedy.

Lest you think Northern Michigan has nothing better to offer, however, I need to proclaim that Harbor Springs, my hometown, has many charming qualities. An adorable main street with some shops too expensive to even step my be-Croc(ked) foot in, a majestic white church whose tall steeple can be seen over the treetops, a quaint old library with creaky floors that, in the summer, shimmers with the smell of warm fudge from the candy shop below.

Harbor is an odd dichotomy of the have and have-nots. Neighborhoods brimming with mansions (called cottages) with their great, green lawns reaching into Lake Michigan. Then, dotting some of the more rural landscapes, manufactured homes butting right up against crumbling country roads.

It means a lot to me though, and it always will.

My little heart goes flippity flop

I valentined my ass off last night.

I was actually kind of proud of these Valentines that Fruit Bat, Kitty Cat and I whipped up at the eleventh hour. (There's a lollipop taped to the back.)

Happy heart day to you!

On scrambled tofu and Corelle dinnerware

Here is this morning's very vegan breakfast of a chocolate chip pancake and scrambled tofu. That fluorescent yellow is the effect of dumping tons of turmeric into the frying pan. I also added dill and onion salt. I thought it was quite fabulous.

Fruit Bat, who I made it for, wouldn't allow the tiniest morsel past his lips. Even when bribed with a gumdrop the size of giant sea scallop.

Also. I am in awe of the Corelle plate pictured above. Kitty Cat threw one from way up here

It gashed the banister on its way down

and came to a twirling, banging stop on our wood floor.

With nary a scratch or a chip to the dish itself.

We use these for the kids, but you can find many different patterns (some that are even hip-ish) on Amazon. They're often on sale.

You should know that they stack so compactly they hardly require any cupboard space and are feather light if you have, like, carpel tunnel or a broken wrist.

I'll post a link in my left sidebar for anyone who might be interested.

A touch o' the Christmas Angst

Last night we were driving home from our ritual of gaping at Christmas lights in a nearby neighborhood. I straddled Fruit Bat and Kitty Cat's car seats because our vehicle is too small to hold three adults and two children comfortably. It was unsafe, sure. But we all laughed hysterically and had a better time for it.

As I was contorted there, my six-foot-two-inch frame bending in ways it should not, I explained to Fruit Bat and Kitty Cat that when we got home we would scramble upstairs and into bed before Santa came. I had hoped to encourage hasty pajama donning and teeth brushing. What I hadn't counted on was my phrase "scramble upstairs" becoming Fruit Bat's mantra. He repeated it various times throughout the rest of the evening until he was a frazzled mess, afraid that Santa would come crashing down our nonexistent chimney before the household's children were nestled snug in their beds.

His anxiety evolved into fear not just that Santa would come too soon, but that he was coming at all. And I can't say I blame him. The idea of an elephantine man tiptoeing around the living room in black, steel-toed boots is a bit worrisome, even to me.

Fruit Bat was so worked up I was tempted to confess Santa's true identity. In the end, I kept mum and we agreed to leave milk and cookies just outside the front door for the Big Bad Man, who would telepathically and expertly position the presents under the tree.

Santa came and went without incident (besides the fact that he left 505 toys for the kids and an ipod nano for me) and all was fairly festive throughout the morning. I spent the entire afternoon downloading music to my new, shiny saltine cracker and succumbed to a deep but fleeting depression when I noticed the waste of this:

A few months ago, as J. and I were preparing late in the night for a flight to Michigan the next morning, he sighed and said, "It's so weird that we're the parents now". That we were the ones arranging it all, anticipating the worst that could happen, readying the supplies. Because we were (and still are) totally unqualified, just kids ourselves, right?

On Christmas Eve as we filled stockings and dispersed wrapped gifts, trying not to rustle too loudly or approximate in any way the sound of big boots clomping across wooden floors, that quote flickered through my head over and over.

It is so weird that we're the parents now.

Here are some nerdy garden pictures

Because that's the kind of nerd I am.

These are just taken with a Canon Elph. I'm no Dooce.

And here's a shot of the "M" that Fruit Bat wrote in preschool the other day! I'm so proud.

Top of the food chain? I'm not so sure.

A while back our neighbor offered me two Dungeness crabs. He used to fish in Alaska (think, The Deadliest Catch) and still earns his living in the industry managing fishing boats. He thrust a bucket toward me. Inside were the crabs, still stirring, their legs twitching in the robotic way they do when nearly expired.

"Oh," I said. "That would mean I'd have to kill them, right? No. I couldn't."

He looked exasperated, but offered to steam them for me. He did and graciously delivered them the next day.

Fast forward to this afternoon, when I finally decided to butcher the frozen crustaceans. First I had to heat them back into pliable form. Which I did, in my large Le Creuset pot. Then I took my filet knife and began to dismember the first unlucky, little guy. Let me tell you, there is nothing more gross than the underside of a Dungeness crab with all its legs snapped off. Okay, maybe there is something more repulsive, but I don't want to know about it.

I am, you see, a reluctant carnivore as it is. I like my meat, oh yes I do. But I don't want to like it. I am ashamed of eating cute, furry creatures, or just furry creatures, or creatures in general. But when Fruit Bat was diagnosed with many, many food allergies and having nuts around the house was no longer an option, I abandoned my vegetarian lifestyle for one where I mutilate animals on my kitchen counter.

Alas, I dug out what meat I could and plopped it into the bowl already swimming with mayo, bread crumbs, lemon juice and Old Bay. I then looked at the crab's body and wondered if I dared pare into it. I could fetch Jay, where he played with the kids in the basement, and ask if he'd do the honors. But then I would have to interact with Fruit Bat and Kitty Cat and I felt like I'd been doing too much of that lately. So I stabbed into the crab's torso and saw nothing, in there, that I would want to eat.

Between the multiple steps involved in de-meating a crab, I washed my hands obsessively. I didn't know if Fruit Bat had a shellfish allergy or not and, frankly, I did not, on a Sunday evening, want to find out (he would be eating his usual fare of chicken nuggets or potstickers anyway).

Without eggs (which, besides my giddy french toast phase after Fruit Bat started preschool and it was determined that Kitty Cat could, indeed, eat anything without fear of a trip to the ER, we don't keep in the house), the crab cakes cooked more like crab hash.

I served it, sweating, hands scrubbed raw, muttering that I never wanted to handle another crab lesser than an Alaska King again in my life. Then I ate it and it melted over my tongue, buttery and spicy and totally worth all the work and even the cleanup of the sticky, yellow viscera pooled on my granite afterward.

Here's a shot of the second crab trying to escape my pot:

(not really. he's dead.)