Historical Fiction

(Postcard via The Vintage Plum Shop)

The inestimable Christine Fernsebner Eslao recently observed that my parents' courtship sounds like a pitch for an indie romantic comedy.

My immediate reaction was, "What? No!" because I don't associate my parents with the words "indie," "romantic" or "comedy." But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that she was more right than she knew.

The context for Christine's comment was the cheap-ass but heartfelt gift I got my parents for Christmas last year: a vintage postcard of the Chappaquiddick Ferry (above). When my parents met in 1965, my dad owned the ferry. (He bought it in 1962, according to this comprehensive history.) Mom would pack a dinner, bring it down to the ferry, and their dates would be eating together as Dad drove the ferry on the five minute loop across Edgartown Harbor. (This is the whole ride, with a cameo by Dad Razor and a cooing Baby Razor.)

But the story really starts with a broken engagement. When my mother was 24, she dumped the IBM engineer she was planning to marry. The most I've ever managed to get out of her on the subject is, "I just realized I didn't want to marry him." There's got to be more to it than that, because breaking off an engagement in 1964 when you were in your mid-twenties was pretty damn ballsy. But trying to get a story out of my mother is impossible, so my whole idea of her history is pieced together from random comments she's made over the years.

So in 1964, my mother was working as an x-ray tech and living with her family--her parents and seven younger siblings. As far as I can tell, once she realized the engagement wasn't going to work out, she started looking for other ways to get the hell out of Rhode Island. She took a job at Martha's Vineyard Hospital because it provided housing. She didn't even know MV was an island.

The housing was a cottage on the hospital grounds. She told me once that she'd work all day and if it hadn't been for her friends, she would have gone straight home and never gone out. But she had two friends who would drag her out, one kinda slutty and one gay (her telling me about having the concept of homosexuality explained to her, an extremely sheltered Catholic girl, was hilarious.) Yes, that's right--my mother actually had stereotypical rom com sidekicks. She smoked, but never at work, so she'd go all day without a cigarette, then smoke a pack a night. She promised my father she'd quit by the wedding and ended up "quitting" on her wedding day. She snuck cigarettes from the photographer and hid behind the reception hall smoking them.

Mom met Dad at The Lamp Post, the only bar open on MV in the winter. She thought he was kind of full of himself. I'm sure she was right. Dad had also recently broken off an engagement. Well, he didn't; his fiancee did. And no one has ever told me that story, so your guess is as good as mine. But apparently the gossip was unfavorable, because everyone told my mom not to date him.

Dad, in an attempt to seem virtuous, invited my mom to church as a first date. And now I have to admit that I couldn't write this rom com, because neither of them has ever told me how they fell in love. I should ask, but both of them are excellent at dodging anything involving emotional content and I suspect the answer would be, "Oh, you know, in the usual way."

I'll leave you with my last scene from The Story of Mom and Dad, as told by my mother. Their first apartment, underneath Al's Package Store. It's New Year's Day, closer to breakfast than midnight, and Dad is frying bacon. Their kitchen is so small that when a slice is done, Dad's just tossing it over his shoulder to the plate on the opposite counter, right behind him. In the movie, the last shot would be my mother, drink in hand, smiling indulgently at him. In real life? She yelled at him not to get grease on the cabinets.

Food Field Trip: An Doughnut at Japonaise Bakery

(Photo via Nicole S. on Yelp)

I love red bean paste, but I have no recollection of when the love affair began. I know it was after I left Martha's Vineyard at 18 (not a lot of authentic Asian cuisine off the Atlantic coast, sadly) but before I met Mr. Razor at 25, because he remembers buying me mooncakes in an attempt to woo me. (Spoiler alert: it worked.) So that's seven years, a fairly large chuck of time to remember. Plus I was drunk for a lot of it.

Anyway, the point is that I love red bean paste, from its dense, silky texture to its earthy sweetness. I also love doughnuts, though I don't get them every weekend like my family used to when I was a kid and they were bribery for behaving in church. So when I discovered that Japonaise Bakery offers the An doughnut, filled with red bean paste? Well, we dropped Baby Razor at the grandparents' and zoomed off to Brookline.

You guys, it was sublime. The doughnut wasn't cakey but sweet and doughy like a funnel cake. It was crusted with a generous amount of sugar and filled with enough red bean paste that you got some from the first bite to the last. It was unusual for a doughnut in that the filling was heavier than the cake. Mr. Razor's review was, "I would like to eat two of these every morning for the rest of my life."

Although it would not be my choice if I was only allowed to eat one thing for the rest of my life (that would be Sofra's beet tzatziki), it's probably in my top five. We'll definitely be going back, and next time we might even share the goodies with the baby. Maybe.

Remedial Home Ec

I found a pretty fabric remnant at Boomerangs last weekend and stood staring at it until I thought of something I could do with it. I have two magnetic/tack boards on which I hang my scarves and necklaces. They look like this:



I decided I'd cover them with the fabric. Here is the remnant, with bonus cat:



(I sincerely apologize for the [lack of] photo quality. I did this project as Mr. Razor entertained the baby and had to rush. Also, I'm a crap photographer.)

I cut the fabric so that the crest was centered over the board, then broke out my brand new hot glue gun. Despite having absolutely no idea what I was doing (Unlike many modern appliances, glue gun instructions are extremely simple: "Insert glue stick. Plug in. Pull trigger. Try not to glue yourself to anything."), I successfully attached the fabric to the board and only got glue on five of my fingers. Here's the finished product:



Looks good, doesn't it? I took that picture and thought that I'd make this post about how if someone with minimal crafting skills like me can make something this pretty, anyone can!

Then I turned it over.

And noticed that the board's hooks were on the bottom. Yup: I glued the crest on upside down. I'm not sure what I'll do with it now: either glue a new hook on or just rest it on my dresser instead of hanging it. It's not ruined by any means, but it is proof that, sadly, just owning a glue gun does not automatically turn one into Martha Stewart.

She's Thrifty

Updates:

1) Apparently all the shower needed was to be publicly shamed, because we are now getting hot-ish water regularly.

2) Food I forgot to mention from Leigh's visit: mini-cannolis, mini- key lime and chocolate tarts, caramel popcorn, chocolate truffles, garlicky green olives, gruyere, ciabatta bread, and artichoke tapenade. Nom.

All right, let's talk about that couch up there. How fierce is that thing? It's $100 at Boomerangs in West Roxbury if you're in the market for a swoopy, red-velvet bit-o-awesome. Although yesterday was half-price furniture day, so I make no guarantees for it still being there.

Since moving to Boston's faux-burbs in July, all of my "splurge" purchases have come from Boomerangs, which is a thrift store that benefits the AIDS Action Committee. Yeah, that's right: my idea of treating myself is a $6 pair of secondhand shoes. I've got a toddler, a mortgage, a car loan, and an unsteady income, meaning some weeks even TJ Maxx is too rich for my blood.

I'm not complaining, especially when these are the shoes:



They're J Crew and the interwebs tell me they retail for around $200. Granted, they're not exactly my size, but for $6, who cares? (The crock pot in the background is mine. It's not old, it's vintage, okay?)

Of course, the thing about thrift shops is that you can't go in looking for something, because their stock is unpredictable and ever changing. But I had so many things that I needed when we moved that I think I came home with something nearly every time I visited for the first three months or so. (I had a home with more than three rooms to decorate for the first time in my life, and I'd finally admitted to myself that buying clothes that fit was not going to doom me to staying my post-pregnancy weight for the rest of my life.)

Right now I'm on the lookout for furniture, which is the trickiest because if you see something you like, you really have to buy it immediately. I wanted an arm chair and a pair of end tables I saw on a Friday evening, and by the time I came back with my car on Saturday afternoon, both were gone. The feeling that you've gotten a great deal that no one else is going to get is the absolute best part of secondhand shopping, but missing out on a unique find is probably the worst.

Some people don't like thrift shops because they don't like going through stuff that used to belong to other people. I don't get this at all. I admit that I may have a bit of a skewed perspective, though, given that when I was a small child, my dad would take me dump picking. It's exactly what it sounds like: back in the day, before dumps became landfills, we'd spend the occasional Saturday afternoon picking through the pile of salvageable stuff and fending off territorial sea gulls. (Lest you think my dad was a hobo or a hoarder, this was a common enough practice where I grew up that one of the landfills built a shed to house people's reusable items and dubbed it the dumptique. Really.)

My mother, too, is a master of turning the old into new. Our house was built on another old dumping ground, and as they were digging the foundation, Mom picked some old glass bottles out of the dirt, washed them off and put them around the kitchen. She cracks up when people ask where she got such lovely antiques. (I also didn't realize until I started studying Victorian history in high school that our napkins were stored in a salvaged chamber pot. My mom really can decorate with anything.)

Mom, of course, adores Boomerangs and was gutted that I didn't get the arm chair. I told her it was fine, something else cute and cheap is bound to appear sooner or later, and this time I'll be ready to pounce.

Accidental Theme Weekend

My weekend was unusually busy, as I was entertaining my dear friend Leigh. She flew in Friday night and we watched Say Yes to The Dress and The Soup and polished off a bottle of red wine. Okay, that part is actually my typical Friday. It was the rest of the weekend that was more exciting than usual.

While Leigh went to meet up with another local friend on Saturday morning, I decided to dye my hair. I've been coloring my hair since I was fifteen, and I have never seen a process as complicated as the one I went through to get my hair Ruby Rush. Instead of two liquids to mix, there were four, including a tube that contained, as far as I can tell, all the red in the world. Then, after applying goop the color of arterial blood to my hair, I was instructed to wash it out, shampoo twice with the special included shampoo, and then condition. I was also advised to use a dark towel and pillowcases I didn't care about for a couple of days after coloring. I feel like this product might be more useful for getting revenge against people you don't like than coloring your hair.

Anyway, I ended up with dark, purpley-red hair. It doesn't look remotely natural, but I like it.

In the evening, Leigh and I ate stuffed shells with red sauce, drank two bottles of red wine, and watched RED, thus cementing the weekend's theme. The movie didn't require much thought (which was awesome after two bottles of wine) and provided enough of a Karl Urban fix that Leigh and I didn't have to have our usual get-together viewing of Star Trek XI: Only Bones' Scenes.

Sunday morning, we joined our friend Athena for brunch at Gaslight, where I remained committed to our theme and ordered poached eggs in red wine sauce with ham & mushrooms. I also showed my non-foodie underbelly by announcing that my sweet & citrusy martini tasted like fancy gin & juice.

Our plan was to do some vintage shopping, but it was a bust, so we returned home, where Leigh prepared an excellent dinner that probably should have been eaten by someone who appreciates excellently-prepared food more than I do: Herb-roasted chicken, garlic-roasted butternut squash, & mixed greens in vinaigrette w/homemade duck prosciutto. (Athena made the duck prosciutto as part of her goal of becoming a world-class charcuteress. She handed two cured duck breasts to Leigh and I when we met up. "Good luck explaining that to the TSA," I told Leigh.) And, of course, a bottle of red wine.

It was all absolutely delicious, and now I really, truly have no reason to be afraid to roast a chicken.

Baby Razor missed out on Leigh's cooking, but don't feel bad for her: she's a bit underweight so she's on what we're calling the Everything Awesome Diet, where we add peanut butter, cheese or butter to every meal. Her dinner last night was scrambled eggs, half an avocado, and a huge hunk of gruyere. Yes, the entire world is jealous of her.

Leigh left this morning and I miss her already. Although if she was around all the time, I'd probably weigh 600 pounds, so perhaps it's for the best.

Like Falling Off a Bike

Whoa, this writing thing is harder than I remembered it being! For the past six months, I haven't been writing regularly for the first time in nearly eight years. I started my first blog in March 2003, got my first professional writing job a few months later, then wrote for fun and profit until August of last year. Then I moved, and my daughter started walking and, more importantly, falling down, and suddenly all of my free time was taken up with childproofing and taking deep, calming breaths.

Sadly, this means that I haven't worked in so long that my husband now has to take deep, calming breaths whenever he looks at our bank balance. So I started this blog to get back in the habit of writing every day while I begin resurrecting my freelance career, and I'm glad I did, because writing that first post felt like trying to swim through pudding. It was like writing in something other than my first language; I kept thinking that if I just had the My Brain To English dictionary I'd be fine.

But I got through it, and I posted, and it's not great, but it's something. Now I just have to keep something-ing until it all starts feeling natural again. Which, at this rate, may not be until sometime in 2018.

(Mostly) Successful Adulthood

Since we moved into our first house six months ago, my husband and I have generally kicked ass at taking care of the stupid vagaries of home ownership. We replaced the hot water heater, weatherproofed, bought furniture, decorated, and planned our long-term renovation projects.

Then there's the shower. We only have one, and the water gets lukewarm at best. It's not bad when the weather is fine, but when it's ten degrees out, you feel like you've volunteered to become a human popsicle. Weirdly enough, the water from the bath tap is fine--it runs cold, warm and hot. But who, besides Baby Razor, has time for a bath? Since I'm at home with an 18-month-old, I barely have time for a shower at all, which may explain why I'm still flapping my arms and squealing as I dance as far away as I can from the shower spray and try to wash the soap out of my hair at the same time. It's not like I have more than three minutes anyway, so I might as well not enjoy it. And Mr. Razor is chronically late, so the speed showering has actually helped him make the bus.

Other plusses? I don't have dry skin like I usually do in the middle of the winter, our water bill was all of $26 this month, and we're definitely doing our tiny part to conserve water.

But. I would shank someone for a baby-neglecting, dry-skin-causing, money-wasting, planet-destroying, twenty-minute-long HOT shower.

We need to get it fixed, but it's become the task that keeps getting pushed aside by all the other little money-suckers of adulthood. Christmas presents, a new car seat, curtains to keep out the draft, a guest bed. That last one made us realize that it's kind of awful to have guests over just to turn them into human popsicles, so really, for real, the shower is the next thing we're spending money on.

As long as that scratching in the walls I heard last night didn't belong to anything living.