Ordinary Me: Z

Z: Zinc oxide Ever since I burned my nose while on vacation in Aruba freshman year of college, I have to wear it when I am on the beach. Oh sure, I look like an idiot, but when your nose is removed because of skin cancer, I won't look so dumb. I also promised my podiatrist I would wear it on my scars this summer. And I did...the one day I made it to the beach.

zymurgy the science of fermenting. Thank the sweet baby Jebus that someone left the bread out in the rain, for indeed, where would we be without beer? My latest favorite is SkullSplitter, which is not even the best thing I know to come out of Orkney. No, that title is reserved for my mother-in-law. The daughter of a lighthouse keeper, she spent a number of years there.

Thank you all for sticking with me these 26 days! I appreciate all your comments.

Ordinary Me: Y

Y: Yogurt I am a huge fan of the Greek yogurt, Fage. It's not like the national brand yogurts made with gelatin. It's got such a creamy consistency. Mmmm. I never thought I'd wax poetic about yogurt (oh, have you?) but there you go.

Yeh-yay-yoh! I have no idea how to spell this. This is the best the dude and I can do. This is what Yay-o says when something stinks (and the origin of her nom de blog). It's very convenient to have a little secret code to say in public when something (or someone) smells. The dude and I use it all the time. When I was in ME with my parents, my dad said, "Whoa-aoh!" which is another thing my niece says a lot. Apparently, we're all a bunch of meanies imitating a retarded child. (With love, it's all with love.)

Yourami When Lala was 2 1/2 or 3, her dad took a trip. She asked her mother where he had gone; my cousin said, "Miami." The next day, my cousin asked Lala where daddy was, in one of those teacherly moments good parents have with their children. Lala thought for a minute then said brightly, "Your-ami!" I think watching children acquire language is the most fascinating thing about them.

Ordinary Me: X

X: X-ray. Jacque has been waiting for this one, but this is one of the easier letters--in fact, when there are fewer words that start with the letter, I find it easier to choose something to write about. R and Y (and many others) have sent me to the dictionary. Am I the only big dork reading the dictionary as a writing prompt?

I am sure this is going to be what everyone talks about. The times we've been x-rayed. I'm not going to mention the dental x-rays because they are too many to record. Once, I slammed my own finger in the door of my dad's SUV. That was a pretty good x-ray because we were in the ruralsuburbs and went to the emergency room at the country hospital. From the time I walked in to the time I walked out with a diagnosis took probably forty minutes. Yes, I broke it. I had to wear a splint to the Spirit of Cross Stitch Festival that year. Which reminds me, I must be due for a tetnus shot...

The more spectacular x-ray took place in Tczew, Poland. I was teaching ESL in a small mining town south of Gdansk with an American foundation. I had run upstairs to give something to a fellow teacher, and on the way back down, I fell off my shoe and down the stairs. I was walking right behind the program director, and of course the words out of my mouth were unprintable. My ankle swelled, and I was helped into my classroom. The students put me on some desks and I promptly threw up in front of them. (I'm not sure what a teacher's worst nightmare is, but this is up there.) A doctor was called. Interestingly, he arrived in the ambulance. That's sort of stunning to me--the doctor came to me. Makes sense, I am the injured party. The building we were in had no elevators, so the doctor and ambulance driver carry my fat ass downstairs. One of my students, one of the Polish teachers, the doctor and I all drive in the ambulance to the country hospital, where I am again carried downstairs to the emergency room by doctor and ambulance driver (can you imagine this story in the U.S.?). A doctor, with lit cigarette in hand, begins poking my ankle. He declares it broken. In the meantime, one of the American teachers--a nursing PhD--has arrived to "oversee" the process. She's a little shocked by the state of the hospital. Smoking doc orders an x-ray. The x-ray tech sets me on table and begins to exit the room. I use sign language to get a lead vest to protect me from this old and no doubt leaky x-ray machine. It turns out that I have not broken my ankle, but I have torn so many ligaments that it must be casted. And they give me a plaster cast--and a prescription for one crutch that I must pick up at a place that I must be driven to. I am not to walk on the cast. With only one crutch. When I return to camp, the city (Gdansk) doctor for the language camp I'm at is completely outraged by assbackwards technology. She insists on getting a fiberglass cast; we go back to the hospital where this little redhead is giving all the old white men hell. Eventually, one doctor sneaks over to tell her that he can change the cast if I visit his private practice. I have to pay cash ($60) to get a new cast. Everyone tries to scare me by saying, "you know how they take a cast off?" and making buzzing sounds...if only. The doctor cuts the old cast off with gardening shears. I walk around Poland--including public toilets--with a fiberglass cast and no shoe (ewww). Eventually, we fashion shoe from a Teva and a shoelace. Unfortunately, my toes start bleeding because the cast is cutting into them. My nurse friend and I decide to take off the new fiberglass cast, which we cut/saw off with a pair of old scissors. I walk around Poland in hiking boots and a skirt. Upon my return to Los Angeles, I visit an American orthopedist who says he would have casted it too; but my ankle seems to work fine now.

Ordinary Me: W

W: Waldorf salad--a staple of my childhood Thanksgiving table.
Warehouse--my father is a beer distributor. When we were kids, my sister and I would take every opportunity to play on beer pallets, climbing ever higher over the cement floor without a net. What were my parents thinking? (It was difficult to get to over two pallets high because the second pallet never had packages removed from it--no footholds.)

Writing--my job since forever--first I wrote display ads for a publishing house, then I wrote book jackets at an academic publisher, then I went to graduate school in English lit for a million years, while there I taught writing to college freshmen. Then I put together events and edited a newsletter--and wrote a little column (if you know my real name, and you do, you can find some of the pieces I wrote for that). Oh, I wrote a dissertation. Now, I write nonacademic stuff. It's funny, I write for a living, but I don't consider myself a writer. In the stuff I brought to PA from my parents' attic there are all sorts of scraps of my writing. And, boy, a lot of it really sucks.

Wigilia--our family celebrates on Christmas Eve with the oplatek. It's supposed to be a meatless meal, but ours never is--I guess it's because my Polish grandfather died when my mother was quite young and he either didn't adhere to it or my grandmother (the one you know and love) never noticed. Anyway, we have a sort of hodgepodge of Polish dishes (pierogi, kielbasa, babka--this is the wrong name for it, ours is a cake made from potatoes, a latke on steroids), New England dishes (lobster stew), and family recipes (spanakopita, liverwurst pate, my aunt's famous cheeseball, teriyaki chicken wings).

Auntie's Famous Cheeseball (I bet you thought you were getting the Waldorf salad recipe)

• 2 pkgs cream cheese, softened
• 2 jars Kraft pimento cheese spread (if you're really good I'll give the family recipe with Kraft Old English cheese spread. Mmmmm....spread.)
• 4 oz blue cheese
• Tabasco sauce
• walnuts

Mix everything together except the nuts. (My aunt's recipe says to use a dash of Tabasco, but I really pour it in; it gives a nice tang without being spicy. ) Form into a ball--I sort of do a half-sphere because, well, it's softened cream cheese. Pat the nuts onto the surface. Refrigerate. That's it. People love this stuff. When I first made it in grad school people laughed at me, but even the guy who doesn't eat cheese loved this. And I'm pretty sure it's why the dude loves me. I know it's the reason he consents to go to Christmas with my family.

Ordinary Me: V

V: What is V for? Venn diagram which I always use to describe relationships? Venus flytrap which I had as a child? Voter? Vilnius birthplace of my mother's paternal grandmother? Violence for my dissertation? A story about the sticky "v" on my keyboard, which makes logging in difficult? Or a Maggie story?

One Christmas eve, my grandmother asks the gathering to explain this "dot com" "www" stuff to her. The dude, perhaps naively, gamely undertakes explaining the internet to my grandmother who has never used a computer. My grandmother who can't operate her VCR, who brings scam letters to my mother to vet, who well, who understands little about this modern life she's living. The dude explains that on computers, you can find pages with these addresses; he even explains the difference between .gov, .edu, and .com. At the end of this rather sophisticated explanation, my grandmother asks, "so what's voice mail?" (Just in case I've portrayed her as a complete idiot, we do believe she meant to ask about e-mail.)

So, now, whenever the dude explains something crazy to me--like some chess opening or pot odds--I'll ask, "so what's voice mail?"

Ordinary Me: R-U, Catching Up

R: Copping out. See this list.

S: Sunday dinner Almost every Sunday the dude and I sit down with my cousin's family and Sissy to eat dinner. Sometimes it's just pizza that we've ordered in, sometimes my cousin outdoes herself and dinner includes appetizer, a knockout entree with two vegetable sides, and dessert. She makes cakes (I really ought to feature her here one day). Sometimes she makes marvelous cakes for our birthdays, sometimes she makes the cake for someone else and feeds us "the hump" (the part of the cake that gets cut off to flatten it and make it look professional). But the best part is that we are all together, taking part in each other's lives and helping my nieces grow up to be interested, interesting, loved, and lovable people. (The bitch, sometimes she gets sentimental...)

T: tonic When I was growing up, this is what we called soda (pop, coke, fill in the regionalism). When you think about it, it makes as much sense as soda, and on the days you use Coke or ginger ale to settle your stomach, it makes more sense than any other word for the fizzy concoction. It makes a helluva lot more sense than calling it coke. If you want to call the brown stuff cola, that's one thing, but do not tell me you want an orange coke. Other words people laugh at me for using: grocery shopping and pocketbook.

U: Ulcerative Colitis. I believe in a humanistic medicine, so I don't define myself by my disease. It is what it is. I am fortunate to have a very mild case, with very few flare ups. It still means I have to stick medicine in unthinkable places and have medical equipment stuck up my bum pretty regularly.

I try to deal with it all with a sense of humor. The story of my diagnosis cracks people up--it must be pretty good to do that given the subject matter. I've been thinking about writing a book about my experiences. I'm calling it "My Big Fat White Ass."

Ordinary Me: Q

Q: Quilts I'm sure this is going to be everyone's Q, except maybe if people live in Queensland or Quincy or happen to be named Queenie. If I had thought about it, I would have photographed the quilt I am working on--have been since one summer when I was in college I told my mother I was bored. She owned a quilt store then--or maybe she had just closed it and was jonesing to teach people. We decided I'd make a pinwheel charm quilt. It was blue and white. One day while we were combing fabric stores, we ran into a quilter who learned of my project and sent me 5" squares of navy fabric. My first exchange! Of course, these days you just have to go to an online quilting group to exchange charm squares or even some of the bigger fabric stores will sell them. But back in the day, you had to accost strange women in the store to get some of their fabric. ;) Nevertheless, the charm quilt was not finished. When I got a queen sized bed, I thought I should change it from a single to a queen, and the thought of collecting all that fabic (med to dark blue and non-blue light fabrics) made me shudder. Plus some of the squares are really, really ugly, as in not square. Maybe this should make the list of goals in 2008...

Ordinary Me: P

P: Parent Trap I don't know why I love this cornball movie as much as I do, but I do love it. (the original). I especially love the camping trip.

pomegranate I love eating these. Sure, they make your fingers all red, but it is the only fruit that I know of that delivers the same taste sensation (sour and sweet) as those sour cherry balls I love so well. Only it's fruit, so I don't have to be embarrassed to admit that I love sour candy. What am I, seven?

Portland, ME Went today for the first time. Visited the Victorian Mansion and shopped. I was with my mother, of course we shopped. You should see the shoes I got!

Ordinary Me: O

O: O'Rooney I don't think we know anyone named O'Rooney, but in our family it's a term of affection. So Pops becomes "Daddy O'Rooney." Sissy, "Sissy O'Rooney." At least, I think that's how it's spelled. It could be more like Rice-a-roni--Mommyorooni. No, it's definitely Irish. Though we are not.



Joyce Carol Oates My dissertation sprung from an assignment I had to do on her work. Too bad it didn't spring fully formed from her head--in the time it took me to write my dissertation, she published like six novels, a few plays, some collection of essays, and probably some poetry. It all started when was doing a bibliography of her work, and I noticed that people thought her work wasn't feminist because it was violent. And so it was my research was undertaken. I was going to call it "Violent Femmes" but my director thought it was too cute.
Edited: Just in case you thought I was exaggerating about Oates's output, from the time I passed quals to the time I handed in an accepted dissertation, she wrote 13 novels and novellas, 5 collections of short stories, 1 book of poems, 2 collections of plays, 2 essay collections, and 2 children's books and edited 7 anthologies. Check it out.

Ordinary Me: N

N: New Hampshire I was born and raised in NH by people born and raised in NH by people born and raised in NH, but that's where it ends. And my parents were born and raised in the section of Nashua where people spoke French at home and went to school to learn English, so I'm not that kind of New Englander. I always thought of it as a pretty ordinary place. Sure we could drive to the mountains or the ocean or the lakes in only an hour (we lived in the south central part of the state). And the leaves turned in the autumn, and we made maple syrup at school. But pretty ordinary. When I went off to college, upon hearing I was from NH, people would tell me they had a "summer place" in NH. It started to piss me off. Mostly because they were missing the point. New Hampshire has year-round joys.

The other thing I learned pretty quickly was just how white NH had been (98.8% in the late 80s). The upshot is that I realize the limitations of NH, but don't you go badmouthing my home state!

nonprofit With the exception of the 6 months I spent in retail and the year as a paralegal, I have spent my whole career being frustrated by the nonprofits I've worked for. That's 17.5 years of banging my head against incompetence.

Ordinary Me: L & M

I've been trying to stay off the computer when I get home at night. I think it's nice to try to spend time with the dude; once I'm on, I'm sucked into blogs and other things until bed time. Isn't screwing around on the computer what work is for? Yes, yes, it is.

Thanks for all your comments on my gifts. Jo, I called that finishing ladder stitch, but it's because I had my head up my ass again. It's similar to the finishing you describe on your heart ornament--stitching together the backstitches. But instead of whipstitching, I do more of a lacing thing which makes a decorative edging of sorts...

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On to the encyclopedia
L: Locanico and linguica Two of my favorite sausages. Eating locanico at a Greek fair in the Valley once put me in such a state of rapture I declared to the dude that we should travel the world eating sausages! I'd still like to do it one day, but we have arguments over Germany. The dude thinks Germany is the home of all sausage and must be included. I say any culture where the people eat fat sausage (that is, sausage made out of fat) is one to avoid. And I won't hear a word against black pudding, or as we called it blood sausage (which is actually a different sort of thing). It's the Canuck in me. (And wikipedia is wrong: in New England, we call it linguica, we're not a bunch of xenophobic halfwits. We can speak Portuguese.)

Luna Moth When I was a kid, I had The Children's Book of Knowledge. I read it until the covers fell off. I loved the pictures of the various peoples in their native costumes. But I was totally entranced by the luna moth. It was just so huge! About 4 years ago, I finally saw one--it the Natural History Museum's Pavilion of Wings. It was like achieving a childhood goal.

M: Manhattan The drink, not the place--though I did live there briefly. I drank four of these at the wedding. Now you know why the dude's first responsibility as part of a married couple was to announce to those gathered at the post-wedding brunch, "On behalf of my wife, I'd like to thank you all for coming." (Actually the first was to hold my wedding dress out of the vomit.) I couldn't stand up until 1:00 pm. We had to get a late check out. I was miserable. A year or so later, I was visiting a college friend and her husband got us drinks. He asked if I wanted bourbon. "I love bourbon!" I enthused. "Yes, I know," he responded. I was a little embarrassed, but only a little.

Macaroni and cheese my mom makes the best!
2 T butter
2 T flour
2 c warm milk
1 lb grated cheddar, preferably Vermont, the white kind (let people know you're not eating boxed M&C)
1 lb elbow macaroni, boiled but underdone
2 slices bread, buttered

Melt the butter in a medium pot. Stir in the flour, brown. Slowly pour in the warm milk--it's gotta be warm, people. Whisk until thick. Stir in the cheese. Yes, all of it.

Put the macaroni in a buttered 2-qt baking dish, pour part of the cheese sauce in. Stir. Continue to pour in the sauce until it's slightly creamier than you want. You're probably going to have some leftover sauce; use it on baked potatoes or broccoli. Slice the buttered bread into 3/4" squares. Sprinkle on top of the macaroni. Do not omit this step. This was my sister's and my favorite part of this favorite meal. The bread will suck up the cheese oil. It is the best flavor ever. Bake at 350 for 30-45 minutes. Use the croutons as your guide--see how important they are? Don't let them burn.

Ordinary Me: K

K: Korean food A lot of these encyclopedia entries have sent me back into my memory banks, but this one is of the moment. I have been craving Korean food lately: bibim bap, bulgogi, kimchi, and little side dishes like spicy tofu or the perplexing potato salad.

Across the street from USC, there is the nastiest mall. (Circumlocute the mall and count the rat traps!) They have a food court that no one should eat in but everybody does. There's a little Korean dive there that makes the sweetest barbecue sauce for the jap chae. I crave it. They also did the fieriest pork dish that they only served in the winter. Mmmmmmmmmmm, fiery.

When my friend Sunhee found out I ate there, she was appalled. So she took us up Vermont to some real Korean places. And fortunately, before she and her husband left L.A. they took us to Chosun Galbee, a Korean barbecue (try the Daeji Bulgogi). Oh, okay, one story from the memory banks.

My father-in-law and his girlfriend were visiting from England. We took them to El Cholo (try the green corn tamales or the shrimp fajitas). FIL had the steak fajitas (he pronounced it FA-jit-tas). After the first bite he had to take out his dentures to eat. Um, okay, gross. This happened again the next day at the farmer's market with the croissant. Before we went to Chosun Galbee that night, the dude took his father aside and told him he had to do something about the ill-fitting teeth. At dinner, the girlfriend proudly announced that he used his denture fixative just for me. Why would you not use that all the time? WTF? And even more, if they give you free dentures in your country, why would you not demand that they be fitted properly?

Back to the near-present: last Tuesday, in the 100 degree heat, I walked eight blocks to get me some Korean. I mistakenly ordered the bibim bap cold. It was pretty good--especially since it was so hot out--but it didn't fill that craving. The barbecue sauce was spicier than it was sweet. And where's my spoon? What am I a barbarian eating my rice with chopsticks?

Today, I tried the Jap Chae. (And I noticed I have to ask for a spoon.) If I could smuggle in sweet barbecue sauce to drizzle over it, I might have found my madeleine.

Ordinary Me: J

J: "Just junk" When we were kids, my grandmother would take us out to dinner for our birthdays (just the two of us) and she would give us a bunch of little presents. When she gave us the little presents she would always say, "It's nothing, just junk."

When we were little, we loved getting just junk. It was all those glittery and sparkly and feathery things that would catch your eye in the gift shop or five and dime that your mother would never buy for you. It was awesome. I remember, though, when I hit the age when "just junk" wasn't so awesome anymore. My grandmother had bought me a giant peach feather pen, like one you'd use for a guest book at a wedding. I was about 15, and this junk didn't hold appeal for me any more.

When I stitched my sister her Shepherd's Bush stocking, I filled it with little trinkets, and attached a note "Just Junk." She loved it. I think it was partly the sentimentality, but also, I chose better junk. One thing I remember putting in was a rhinestone belt buckle that I bought in the jewelry district in L.A. for $5. Rhinestone belt buckles were hot (attributed to Sex and the City, I think).

One year my grandmother bought my sister these shopworn candles that were in the shape of Christmas pastries. They smelled so rancid. They looked used, like some little kid had stuck his fingernails in them. They were awful. (To be fair, my grandmother is losing her eyesight.) Auntie Em took grannie aside and told her, "no more junk." But she just can't help herself, and she has bought a few gifts that she wraps and doesn't put names on. She'll foist them on guests, or if we're unlucky, on us.

Ordinary Me: I

Ice Cream: I think the best way to describe this one is to reprint the toast I offered to the dude at our wedding reception. (To the best of my memory.)

Anyone who knows my father will understand why I am beginning with a bit of trivia. New Englanders have the highest per capita consumption of ice cream in the United States. And [the Van Schurmans] do their part to keep those numbers up. Sometimes, we even have ice cream for dinner. When [the dude] joined our family, he balked. He demanded to have a proper dinner. And those of you who know my mother will understand why we drove through McDonalds for him. So it is with [some meaning] that I share these soon to be immortal words of Sarah McLaughlin, "your love is better than ice cream, better than anything else that I've tried."

When I finished, I turned to my sister and said, "Did that sound like I was imitating Rita Rudner?" Which it did. Totally. I have no idea why, and if you ask me today to imitate Rita Rudner, I don't think I could.

Ordinary Me: H

H: Ho. My younger niece is developmentally delayed. She's at an age where it is still difficult to tell the extent of her retardation--she seems to have age-appropriate comprehension--but she has a fairly extensive inability to speak. She has a few words she can say clear as day: mommy, daddy, puppy, and "Tant too," which even strangers recognize as thank you. She has a few words that we all know, "eeeee" with the gesture to her mouth is eat, but if she puts her hand on her belly it's please. Ho mostly means horse. She does hippotherapy to help with the hypotonia. And she loves horses. (She rides at Thorncroft, a very special place that works wonders for kids like her.) She has a giant stuffed horse, Pa, that she rides in the house--sometimes, like a circus performer, standing on his back.

Ho can also mean hole. It is articulated slightly differently, but not a difference that I could spell. She's obsessed with a hole in our staircase. (The home was owned by older women who needed a chairlift to get up the stairs. When they removed it, they left a hole in the carpeted stairs--really why remove the carpet to fix the hole?) As my cousin's family was preparing for their second visit to our house, my niece insisted on bringing her tools. She came in and went right for the ho. She spent several hours poking it with her plastic screwdriver, pounding it with her plastic hammer, and trying the wrench too.

But my favorite is when ho is strung together with ho. Ho Ho is, of course, Santa. Last Christmas, before the lawn reindeer made it out of the house, she lined up every reindeer decoration from smallest to largest in front of a train of dining room chairs. She put the presents that were under the tree in the last chair. She was Ho Ho. And if you asked her what she was doing, she made intricate hand motions and said, "Flew." She was devastated when the reindeer had to go out on the lawn.

She doesn't always speak our language, but she shows me new ways of interacting with the world every day.

Ordinary Me: G

G: Great Salt Lake Desert When I was three, my father moved the family cross-country. He had moved to San Diego to take a sales job, but didn't like it. By the time my mother, sister, and I joined him, he had moved up to San Francisco where we lived in a motel. One of my first memories was drawing on a naugahyde chair with pen in that room, and my sister sleeping in her car carrier, this sort of giant 60s picnic basket for babies. Eventually, my parents decided it was time to go home to New Hampshire. On the drive home, we passed through the Great Salt Lake Desert. My mom, always thinking, made my dad stop the car so she could scoop up some desert "for the kids to take to show and tell*." She grabbed one of her Avon powder puff boxes, discarded the powder, and ran into the salt flats to scoop up salt. Upon her return, my father said, "It's a good thing I didn't tell you about the rattlesnakes." My mother's response--as is typical--"Jesus, Dick."

This long apocryphal story--I have no idea whether the Salt Lake Desert has snakes or not--leads to the next important "G"--grammar. Consider the horror of Christians everywhere at the lapse of one little comma. My mother's swear directed at my father, Richard, becomes something entirely different.

Praise be to the comma; blessed are they who use punctuation correctly.

* That salt did end up in some classrooms in Thorton's Ferry School, and a good thing too.

Ordinary Me: F

F: Feminist I'm not sure there are many more misunderstood words in English than this one. I think several factors contribute to this problem. First, the conservatives shout the loudest, so their definitions get the most airplay. As a result, not many people can define "feminist" but most know exactly what a "feminazi" is. I once asked my students to define the word feminist, and they refined it until we came to this: "A woman who bulldozes her way over men to get what she wants." Ahem. Then I asked the gender studies student to define it for them. It sounds so harmless when you look at the face of it.

The other problem is that there are many feminisms, and things that make people think can so easily confuse them. It is a label I embrace, and if you wonder why, I invite you to do research into the subject to find out. You didn't think I was going to make this easy, did you?

Ordinary Me: D & E

D: diet Coke
I can't even stand the taste of full sugar coke. It makes my teeth itch. Pepsi 1 is an acceptable alternative, but only just.

E:
ESPN I'm a sports fan--all sports. And I love watching ESPN. I once ran into the station's basketball talking heads in my hotel in Texas. Almost knocked (former) Coach Van Gundy right over.

Eggplant. My favorite vegetable--and color too! My uncle is a haberdasher, and he told the dude the secret of getting men to wear pink and purple--call them salmon and eggplant. The dude wears his purple shirt and tie, but does remind me that he knows what he's really wearing. (It doesn't work with the salmon, period.)

Here's an eggplant recipe even the dude will eat.
1 T olive oil
1 eggplant, peeled and finely chopped
1 red onion, chopped
3 minced garlic cloves
6 plum tomatoes, finely chopped
1/2 c dry white wine
1 T chopped oregano
1/2 c water
3/4 lb medium shrimp, peeled and deveined
1/3 c crumbled feta

Heat the oil in a nonstick skillet. Add the eggplant and saute until lightly browned. Stir in the onion and garlic and saute until fragrant. Add the tomatoes, wine, oregano, and water, then bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until most of the liquid evaporates. Add the shrimp to the veg until they turn pink. Sprinkle with feta.

Ordinary Me: C

C: Cross-stitch A form of embroidery that I have done since 1988. A form of relaxation that can cause stress when I 1) start more projects than I finish 2) stitch a gift that I have to get done in a short amount of time. Overall, accounts for my low blood pressure.

Craft Room a constant source of stress because it is a big fat disorganized mess! But between my gastroenterologist appointment (things look good!) and the breast ultrasound (we still don't know because USC won't give me my films!) I did manage to move three pieces of furniture and three boxes out. I think we might take up the carpet this weekend.

Ordinary Me: B

B: Birthday Books.
Last month when the dude was opening his birthday books he said, "you always get me the books that I didn't even know I wanted to read."

Ironically, I do not take book recommendations from others.