It’s an online cooking party, and YOU are totally invited

Posted on by February 25, 2020

This Pampered Chef corkscrew was a wedding gift over eleven years ago. It’s still a goto favorite at our house. See, Pampered Chef is so incredible that even SCOTT, who is not ever awed by brand names, loves it.

If you know me at all, you know I’m not a girly-girl. Frills, bows, and uugh dresses do not excite me. I prick my fingers when I try to sew (just ask anybody who heard me cussing the needles last month at the ballet). And my housekeeping skills are bargain-basement-bad. (Scott’s, thankfully, are up to par.)

But.

There is one traditionally female thing I love to do. (And hey, guys enjoy this, too). And that’s cook. Baking, especially appeals to me. I’m in the middle of a fifty pound weight loss jag, though. Yes, I did say fifty pounds. And yes, I did say, in the middle. More like, beyond the middle. Even with Christmas accounted for, I’ve lost over 30 pounds so far. (35 of them actually,  but I have no idea what percentage 35 is of 50, and I can’t be bothered to figure it out.) I weigh 165 right now. That’s fifteen off what my final weight will be.

I’ve been using the Glycemic index diet (no, I’m not diabetic, but Jesus it works). I eat right. I eat plenty. And I’m not hungry. But also? I’m not baking. And all of my cooking toys? Are baking toys. (And people, I adore kitchen gadgets like some people are into S&M in the bedroom. I’ll just let you digest that nugget.) I haven’t been able to really play in my kitchen for months. I was so desperate over Christmas that I invented sugar free marzipan. Sugar. Free. Marzipan. (Not butter free, so tons of fat, sorry.) (I love you generic Splenda.)  What I need are new toys. Things that aren’t cake pans and decorating kits (I can’t decorate for shit anyway). Things that will make healthy cooking feel breezy-easy.

But I wasn’t going to actually do anything about that need. I have been doing my healthy cooking fine without healthy gadgets. And I am not a big spender. But then, something freaking awesome happened. All the useless newspaper Jumbles that I did over the Christmas break totally paid off. Because I was the first one to unscramble the word Stoneware when Pampered Chef consultant  Patricia Pagliai posted it. And she was offering an online party as the prize.

I won.

I WON.

I feel like I won the LOTTERY.

I have been to Pampered Chef parties. I have yearned quietly over their catalogs. But I haven’t actually bought anything in years, largely because I have a well stocked kitchen. But this is encouragement to get rid of some of the stuff I am not using and replace it with things I need. And the best part? The absolutely best part in the whole world is that because this is an online party, you’re invited!!

What: Pampered Chef Online Party

When: January 9-16

Where: www.pamperedchef.biz/PagsKitchen

How: Select ‘Shop Online’, then enter “Jessie B. Powell” as the host (you need that B, so copy and paste from here).

Can’t wait to see you there. I mean here. I mean … just COME already!!! And if you want to schedule your own party down the road, Patricia is so awesome, and she’d love to work with you, too.

 

It’s a Jungle In There

Posted on by February 25, 2020

Gratuitous adorable child FTW

Jungle Jim’s marketing plan clearly involved overwhelming people into buying more. Cars from carnival rides held up displays, and florescent lights assaulted our vision. My nine year old niece, Kaylee, bellowed, “Look, Nanny! They have pummelos!” She put two oversized grapefruit into the cart that Scott was pushing.

Mom, who was walking a little ahead with my two kids, said, “Sure, honey,” after the fact. Even though she and Kay had been to the store several times since its opening back in September, she looked like a first time visitor. Every bright flash distracted her.

I asked, “What’s a pummelo?”

“It’s like a grapefruit, only sweeter.” Kaylee added one more.

Besides the visual stimuli, the store was loud, its warehouse roof doing nothing to absorb the clamor of post-Christmas shoppers. In less than ten minutes, Sam and Caroline both showed signs of sensory overload. Sam darted up and down aisles, while Caroline looked more like Mom, wide eyed and trying to stare everywhere at once. I had already nudged her forward three times when she abruptly stopped, staring up.

“Rolling Stones!”

“What?”

She grunted and looked at the ceiling. Shit. If aphasia was setting in, we were closer to meltdown than I thought. “Try to focus. Come on.”

She remained rooted. “Rolling Stones!” she repeated. This time, she pointed at the ceiling.

And then it clicked. She was listening to the barely audible sound system.

“It’s not ‘Doom and Gloom’.” She twisted her lips.

Scott moved on with Kaylee, Sam, and the cart, but I stayed back with Caroline, while Mom scanned a nearby aisle of red jars looking for pepper sauce. Caroline stomped one foot. “Not ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’… Aha! ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’.”  Satisfied, she followed Scott at a trot.

“She can hear that?” Failing to find her sauce, Mom walked forward as well.

“Along with everything else. It’s her sensory processing disorder. She hears all sounds at the same volume. The candy wrappers are equally audible. Anyway, if she’s settled on the music, she probably won’t melt.”

Sam pelted out of nowhere with a glass jar in either hand. “Here, Nanny!”

“Is she right?” Mom accepted Sam’s offerings, but set them on a shelf. “Not quite sweetie,” she told him.

“About the song? Yeah. I caught ‘gas, gas, gas’ when she said the title.” I turned to my son as he reached for another random bottle. “I’ll help you find Nanny’s pepper sauce. We’ll catch up.”

“Will he be OK?” Mom asked.

“Yeah. He has a job now.”

An hour later, in the checkout line, Caroline shouted “Beatles!” Then, she added, “I can’t remember the title.”

I strained my ears and caught a few words. “It’s ‘All the Lonely People’.”

“No-o.” She rolled her eyes as she drew out the vowel.

Then, at the same time, she and my mother both said, “ It’s called ‘Eleanor Rigby’.”

Mom, who still couldn’t hear the sound system, added, “Everyone gets that wrong,” in a tone that suggested that I ought to have known the difference. Caroline hid a smile behind her hands.

Oh. I made eye contact with Kaylee, and we shrugged, then went on transferring fingerling potatoes and baby corn from the cart to the counter.

Pay it Forward January

Posted on by February 25, 2020

A couple of awesome bloggers, Missy over at Literal Mom and Carolyn of Hooked and Happy have a meme called Pay it forward. They ask people to do random acts of kindness and write about it in a post, not because they want back pats, but to encourage others to do the same. The meme was initiated before the Sandy Hook tragedy, but it has really taken on new significance in that light.

But my contribution isn’t some specific act I performed. I agree with Missy’s logic that it’s better to do good always, rather than to commit to a mere 26 acts of kindness, as thoughtful and symbolic as that gesture may be. And I don’t, quite frankly, go around writing about the things I do for others or that others do for me. Some of them, I can’t name here, and even by saying I can’t, I’m laying my foot on a boundary. Others are simple and simply done, and I have not yet done something that I feel would be inspiring to others if I wrote about it.

Still, I have something to say. In fact, I already said it, back before Christmas. (Then, I reposted it after I deleted my whole blog and had to restore from a point before that post was written; so if you feel you already commented on the post, but don’t see your remarks, don’t think you’ve been spammed. I just couldn’t resurrect the comments when I reposted. The post content is the same, as I was working from a Word file.)

What I have to say is this: My children have Asperger’s syndrome, and I’m furious about their being drawn into a debate about mental health and unmitigated violence. I’d be grateful if you’d follow the link above to my actual post from this one. Then, share the word. Share my post. Or better still, share the Autism Shines page on Facebook. It’s a community of people trying to counteract the damage done by the media in the wake of a tragedy. I believe it existed prior to the events in Newtown, but its importance is magnified by the things that happened on my birthday last year.

Earth, Wind, and Stars

Posted on by February 25, 2020

And when that bright wind blows, will it call for me?

Or will I instead remain solid, true?

Do the stars truly flicker in their black firmament?

The core is in the asking.

 

 

_______________________

Trifextra is all about layers this week. Come play and expose your own core.

Afterward

Posted on by February 25, 2020

Back row, Judy and Scott
Front row, Susan and Holly

A little backstory. Wednesday’s entry was complete fiction, but it was something of a tribute to my sister-in-law, Holly. (Don’t worry – again, this was fiction. My father-in-law’s health is fine.) Holly just spent the last long weekend hosting between fourteen and fifteen people, most of them actually sleeping at her house every night, and only four of them actually belonging to her on a regular basis. She somehow pulls together this amazing three-day-long family gathering every Christmas. Every. Single. Year.

I remember the first year, watching the adult siblings, the three sisters and their brother interact. Watching the family protect careful peace between their divorced parents while making sure their Dad’s wife was also welcome. Watching cousins with anywhere from two to six years difference in age find common ground.

I remember my own tension in comparison to their peace. I remember waiting for it to all explode. After all, in my experience, you couldn’t even lock up my parents, my sister, and I in a house for a whole day without fireworks. Scott’s family had eleven or twelve people the first year I attended the family Christmas. Even though I loved each of them, it was incomprehensible to me that disaster wasn’t imminent.

We’ve gathered every year since (as they had done every year before). Our numbers have only increased. And somehow, things have only gotten better.  A large part of that ‘better’ comes from Scott’s eldest sister, who hosts every year. Every. Year. She organizes and plans and makes it mesh. Another part is that Scott and his sisters are genuinely close, in spite of geographical distance and rather drastic political differences between the four of them. And that even though there are thirteen years difference between the oldest cousin, who is eighteen, and the youngest, Sam, who is five, the cousins (all six of them) somehow STILL find common ground. They put on this hilarious annual play (original each time, script written by the kids) that could entertain far more than just our little group.

Anyway, Wednesday’s story incorporated another of Holly’s many characteristics into its body. She’s not just a family gathering planner extraordinaire. She’s also a vice president at her company, the mother of two daughters (eighteen and fifteen), and a creative lady. She did this scratch painting in high school. She did it from a photograph. It’s a picture of their great-grandfather reading the newspaper. The painting is so intricate that it could have been done by a professional, but she made it in high school. Everyone loves to look at it. (No trains – those are because, why not do a train?)

So Wednesday’s story paid homage to those talents. The tale itself is, as I have mentioned twice, COMPLETE FICTION. None of the events or people are real, and the main character really only has those two things in common with Holly, the professional achievement and the scratch painting. So, I hope your holidays were grand. Ours were the best ever this year. And I hope the story resonated with you. (PS – if not, at least there were trains.)

From Scratch

Posted on by February 25, 2020

Dianne flipped through the album, rejecting anything that had either both of her parents or her siblings in it. She was hoping for a picture of herself and her father both, but she stopped at one of him alone. He was in a train yard, his face in profile and a hulking diesel engine visible in the background. Dianne slid her fingers under the clear plastic and pulled the photograph out. She held it up to the light, weighing it against her original idea.

On the one hand, she had wanted some image that captured them at a baseball game or sitting together at a fish fry. On the other, her father’s name was synonymous with trains. She had chosen railroad board for her canvas not only because it was the right weight of paper for a scratchboard project, but also because it resonated with a memorial to Driscoll Evans.

An engineer who was also the son of an engineer, Dianne’s father hadn’t stopped at making the rails a career. He was an avid hobbyist, and Dianne and her brothers had spent the heavy weekend dividing his collection as fairly as possible. The lion’s share went to Daniel, whose son was old enough to enjoy them. But there were plenty for all five of the siblings to choose between.  Dianne nodded at the picture. It would suit.

She clipped it to her canvas. She had delayed this decision until last, spending the first days of the project in coating the paper with beeswax and Plaster of Paris, then painting it solid. She had purchased etching tips for her scratch pens and a new brush to clear away the black as she sliced it.

Etching was both painstaking and easy to mess up. Capturing an image with negative space presented unique challenges. Dianne had been good at it in college, but she hadn’t done much art in the last twenty years. Not many women had achieved company vice president in their forties. But she had compromised on the hobbies to get there.

She didn’t really have time now. The twins seemed to alternate which of them slept through the night, so that one was always screaming at three AM. Neither Dianne nor Michael ever had five full hours rest. But she should have been crowding in trips to rail yards with her babies and her Dad right now. Instead, the last three weeks had been filled with phone calls and letters, the funeral, and the dividing of effects, not to mention the news that all of her brothers shared the defect that led to their father’s heart attack.

She needed something for herself right now, some way to hold onto him for just a few weeks longer. The picture would serve her need. Dianne picked up an etching pen and sat down at the black canvas. She studied her father’s features and began oh so carefully to cut herself apart.

_____________________

Since I’ve been off taking care of life for over a month, I thought I’d get back to writing by getting back in touch with some of my favorite memes. Appropriately, the editors at Write on Edge have initiated a new regular challenge for 2013. They want us to Write at the Merge. This week, that meeting point comes at the intersection of the word “wish” and The Shins’ ”Past and Pending”

Satan in the Basement

Posted on by February 25, 2020

“He was standing right there.” The little boy stayed on the stairs and refused to step into the basement proper.

“Where I am now?” His father pointed down.

“Yes.”

“What did he look like, Dennis?” John Trinkle followed his son’s quick feet back up to the kitchen.

Dennis sat in front of his cereal and tucked his knees under his chin. He wrapped his arms around his legs. “He was made out of fire, with a face like a bull. He had horns.” The father poured himself a mug of coffee and sat beside his son, rather than across from the child where his plate of toast lay untouched. “Daddy, he said he’s coming back for me. He said he’s going to take me to hell.”

The man ran his finger across his son’s temple. “Other than that, what do you remember about the last couple of days?”

“Not much. My hospital bed. The doctor who told me what a seizure was. Drinking the white stuff.”

The father grimaced as he sipped his coffee. “That stuff let them see inside your head. They showed your Mom and me the picture. You have something called a tumor growing in your brain. It’s pushing on parts of you and causing the seizures. It’s making you see and hear things that aren’t really there. You need surgery to have it removed.”

“But Daddy, what if it’s not? What if Satan was really there?”

The father stroked his son’s temple once more. “That’s why your mother’s gone right now. We’re putting a lock on the basement today.”

“Thanks, Dad.” Dennis leaned into his father. “Do I have cancer?”

His father slid an arm around his son’s shoulders. “Yes, son. You do.”

“Will I survive?”

“Where did you learn a word like that?”

“From Satan. He said I wouldn’t.”

“Lord, I hope he’s wrong.”

They sat  at the table like that together, watching the back door, waiting for Dennis’ mother to get back from the hardware store.

_________________________________

Happy New Year folks! The Jester is back. This is my entry for this week’s Trifecta Writing challenge. It’s creative nonfiction, for the record. Dennis and Kristi Trinkle, thank you so much for your hospitality these last few days. It’s been wonderful to see you, and we can’t wait for Chattanooga. Dennis, we’re glad that neither Satan nor the brain cancer managed to kill you. Although hell would surely have been richer, it would have been a tremendous loss to the world.

Note: In context, it might seem I have used the second definition of survive. However, I would argue that the second and third definitions are actually very close in nature, and I would say that this is about this kid’s resiliency as much as his physical survival.

My Children Have Asperger’s

Posted on by February 25, 2020

My kids’ Christmas party was yesterday. It’s the first time I’ve been to their school since the Sandy Hook tragedy. In the lobby, one mother asked if the front desk could have a panic button installed, just in case. The secretary, whose son also attends the school, agreed it would be a good idea. I’m not typically given to worry about the grand scheme. You want small scale frets? I have them in plenty. Conspiracy theories? I’m your woman. But the big stuff doesn’t usually bother me.

This does.

My kids were with me on Friday, December 14. It was my birthday, and the opening night of the Nutcracker, in which they both performed. And they were with me all weekend as the fucked up media started attesting that Adam Lanza had Asperger’s syndrome and implying that this drove him to be a killer. (Newsflash, not even. Take a look at John Elder Robison’s extremely well worded rebuttal of this outrageous theory.)

Now, I’ve started to see Facebook pictures showing real kids with autism, talking about the gentle, wonderful things they love. Calling itself Autism Shines, it’s an effort by parents and the autistic community (and oh hell yes there is such a thing) to rebut the cruel false assumptions being spread.

In fact, the mother who first asked about the panic button said, “After all the work we’ve done in the last twenty years to educate people, after all the progress we’ve made, to see things slip backwards so fast is disheartening.”

“I know.”

We looked around the foyer one more time.

We were afraid for our children. Yes, we do fear that someone with a gun could come through and wreak havoc. But we also fear the bigots and misleaders and the danger they present. We have to. Our kids are autistic. Our school exclusively serves students with Asperger’s, high functioning autism, and ADHD. Most of the children at that school are on the spectrum. All of them have a disorder that makes typical classroom function hard. Most of them have been isolated, ostracized, or outright expelled from schools that serve neurotypical children.

Yet these are some of the sweetest children I know. They rush to comfort their friends (even if it means dashing out of a lesson).  At school functions, the high schoolers shepherd the lower school kids whose parents can’t attend. They are bright and quick to cooperate, as long as they understand the reason. Some are verbal, and some are not. They work hard to achieve things that might seem simple to others.

And they are in real danger right now, not because of the horror one man rained down on innocents, but because of the contemptible bigotry and idiocy that has followed. The threat of a gunman is meager here. (As it is everywhere. As it was at Sandy Hook.) It’s possible, yes. But it’s far more likely that the voices of fools will be heard over the opposition. Several intelligent media groups are fighting the trend, arguing that Asperger’s syndrome has nothing to do with becoming a killer, that there are no statistics connecting the disorder to such heinous behavior. But I worry that their words will get lost.

So I have something to tell you.

My children have Asperger’s Syndrome, and it horrifies me to be talking about them when twenty other kids and six adults will never go home again. The inappropriate media focus is a source of anguish for me. The conversations about gun control and access to mental health are appropriate and long overdue. Don’t give me bullshit about killing with fertilizer and cars. We regulate both things, as well we should. And don’t let the media distract you from the real conversation, which is about Newtown,  Connecticut, which will never be the same.

You clicked THAT?

Posted on by January 2, 2013

People, I just deleted my blog. DOH! I’ve restored it. But my restorepoint was from before yesterday. Obvs. I will be recreating the last three entries, so ignore the Spam you are about to receive from me.

Confession

Posted on by February 25, 2020

I have to tell you something. As of this writing, I’ve singlehandedly gone through nearly a full handle of vodka in the last couple of days. The time kind of runs together. I’ve never done anything like this before. But it feels so right, the way I can hold the bottle just so before I tilt it up. The way the lid doesn’t like to stay screwed on. The fumes.

You know, they say vodka doesn’t smell like anything, but that’s not true. It’s similar to isopropyl rubbing alcohol. If I open the bottle in a stuffy room, the place takes on a faintly medicinal odor, as if what I was doing belonged in a hospital, like I might turn to the doctor next to me and ask if Nurse Green had given him a scalpel and could I borrow it for awhile.

My mind wanders.

At one point, I sloshed some all over my feet because of that stupid lid that kept opening itself. Two or three ounces wasted. I wanted to cry. Then I realized it was four o’clock in the afternoon, and I hadn’t eaten anything but a banana all day. Scott came in, and I said, “Get me a sandwich and the cheapest bottle of vodka the ABC store will sell you.” He wouldn’t meet my eyes. But he bought it. God love him, he bought it.

“Certified rotgut,” he muttered as he went out the door to protect the children, who wouldn’t come inside.

I just turned the new lid and smiled.

Hello, my name is Jessie Bishop Powell, and I …

Have been cleaning costumes.

 

 

When something is sweaty, but you don’t have time to wash it, or when it’s so delicate that you can’t launder or dryclean it, you apply liberal amounts of costume spray. Costume spray is one part vodka to two parts water.  And if that doesn’t kill the odor, you can upgrade to straight vodka, also applied with a spray bottle. It would, I presume be easy to get a contact high.  But quite hard to snort it. And it is strong enough to kill the germs, but it oxidizes long before it gets put back onto a dancing body.

And you go through a LOT of that shit on tutus. Ballerinas and danseurs look all graceful on the stage, but they sweat like other athletes. And make no mistake, what they’re doing is intensely athletic. All that grace comes at the price of extraordinary physical strain.

When Candace asked if I would be willing to spray the costumes, then said she had to get me the vodka, I assumed she was making a joke about the tedium of the job. When she walked back in with a nearly empty bottle, I knew I had a blog post.

 

Oh – and those spray bottle lids DO unscrew themselves when you keep picking them up and putting them down again.