The bruiser

My sister has three kids. These kids don't really hang out with their father's side of the family, so we are all they know. They drive me crazy. As soon as the eldest girl turned 2, she figured out the speed dial, and thought it would be great to call me. It was not. At least now she is 7.5 years of age so I can have a somewhat normal conversation with her. Unfortunately, the youngest is 2 and the cycle of unintelligible phone calls started yet again.

As so many things in life, the raising of children has changed. When I was little, we got threatened a lot (my Dad would give a menacing tap with a rolled up newspaper), and my Mom was quite liberal with the spanking. "Because I said so" was a valid reason to listen to what my parents told us to do. Even back then, I thought I was getting it easy because after spending time with my grandparents, I realized my parents were pushovers in comparison.

I have been thinking about this subject for a while now, ever since that Tiger mother thing came out. You don't want to be a Tiger mom is fine, but calling someone terrible names because they choose to be one is acceptable? You don't want to spoil your kids, fine but yelling at that parent who does is okay? Parenting styles come in all forms, and no matter what children will both need therapy and have affection from whatever you choose (within reason).

So my preachy rant stems from a recent story. My sister has chosen the let's-reason-with-the-child-and-not-yell-or-spank-the-child-of-parenting. A very different approach from what we grew up with. And the kids seem pretty okay with it, except for driving me nuts with phone calls all the time. In the past week my eldest niece has taken to hitting a girl in her class. As she told me tearfully, "Emo[Aunt], she was really bothering me and not leaving me alone so I had to hit her to make her stay away."

I found all this mildly amusing, as I had spent my fair share of time in the vice principals office.
(Although in my defense I never hit another girl nor did I ever hit anyone who did not hit me/sit on me first.) My sister, on the other hand, has found this whole thing very distressing. First, she could not understand where my niece learned to hit someone as hitting is not allowed in her house. But more distressing were the mothers that were whispering behind her back at the supermarket, and the fact that they all speculated she must hit my niece and that is where she learned the behavior.

I told my sister to chill out, that bougie moms have nothing better to snicker about, but that seemed to have no effect on her. My sister seems to still be upset at those judging her and her poor parenting skills.

When did the pressure to be the perfect parent get so crazy? Why is it a competitive sport? What really is the consequence of not being a perfect parent?

Personally, my dad and I are happy about the incident. Not because my niece is a bully, or that my sister is distressed, but because it broke up a little of the monotony in our lives. Quite frankly, my niece's last phone call about her class room drama was really the most interesting phone call I have ever had with her.

High school is forever

It is a well know fact that the Evil Twins love slurpees. In Evil Twin #2's massive archive of photographs, there are a number of them with us drinking slurpees. We do differ on our flavor selection, she prefers Blue Razz and I normally stick to Coke.

This love of slurpees started at an early age. When I was 5 years old, we lived in a small apartment in Moraga, CA. During this year, my dad was living in London and my mom worked full time. I would stay an hour later at kindergarten with one of the aides, and then my sister and the neighborhood kids would come to pick me up. On bottom of the hill there was a 7/11, that was on our way home, and some days we would stop by to grab some slurpees, or go to the bowling alley to play arcade games. Maybe I am romanticizing it in my head, but it was such an idyllic childhood.

Over the years, I have spent a lot of time in mini mart parking lots, eating junk food, and hanging out with my friends. So I was shocked when I moved to San Diego, and met 2 guys who had 1) never had a slurpee before in their life 2) never hung out in a parking lot at night doing nothing. Even stranger one was from Wisconsin and the other was from Missouri. I mean I can understand if someone from NYC never did these things, but from the Midwest?

On Saturday night, we decided to rectify this fact. I picked up NS, J, and C in my Nissan Versa (They for some reason all drive BMWs which simply is not suitable for this kind of endeavor). I played a bunch of 90s mix CDs. We had the windows down. First stop was the 7 11. We all bought slurpees, and I bought a bag of Cheetos and Funyuns. We sat in the parking lot. The owner came out and gave us a weird look, but decided not to hassle us. (A big bonus to being in my 30s instead of my teens.) At first there was excessive commentary about how all of this artificial coloring and flavors is bad for them. C's wife gave him special permission over text message to eat the Funyuns. No one could argue it was delicious. They started a game of kick the can. We spent time with a running catty commentary about the 7 11 clientele. An hour and a half had passed before we checked out our watches.

We decided to go grab some food, so we went to a local gastropub for some burgers and tater tots. I tried to explain how one time in high school a friend of mine stole a bunch of nips from a plane, and how we used to use those to put in our coke slurpees. They were flabbergasted. J being the only other normal person in the group agreed except they stole liquor from their parents and would water down their parents bottles. The bartender, who was eavesdropping on our conversation, mentioned that she used to make fake MaiTais by mixing Cherry and Pina Colada flavored slurpees with rum. We all reminisced on the stupid stuff we would do, which included driving around the town with no destination in mind. NS,J and C were all drunk at this point and thought it would be so much fun to do that. We all hopped in the Nissan Versa and drove downtown.

The guys kept shouting out the window "Hey ladies, lookin' good." I did my fake drag racing move that I learned from PeiPei, the most fun girl at Columbia. We sang along to Beyonce "Single Ladies." We did a Chinese fire drill. (However this was in a remote street that had no traffic because NS was worried the cops would arrest us. This also might explain why he never had a slurpee before.)

Sure we acted like idiots that night, but some times you got to keep the spirit of the teenage years in your heart.

Tamales

I have lost my desire to wear a Halloween costume this year. Well actually, I was sick sick of seeing 20 something women parading in 4 inch stilettos, flared mini-skirts and and some sort of corset top and passing that off as some sort of costume. Really, a grown woman wearing a tight and short Catholic school uniform is supposed to be sexy and not actually promoting pedophilia?

Sorry, got lost in my rant. I still wanted to honor the holiday and since moving to San Diego, I have been getting in touch of my Mexican roots. I decided to make tamales for el dia de los muertos.

Preparation the day ahead:

I bought some pork back fat at Whole Foods. Washed it and cut it into small slices. Placed it into a 250 F oven for 5 hours. Poured off the fat into mason jars and cooled it in the fridge. That's right folks, I had my own lard for this adventure.

Also, I bought the butcher's special at Whole Foods which is the leftover cuts of meat, mainly bone in shoulder chops. I put it in the crock pot with a head of garlic, salt, and pepper. It went for 5 hours on low. For the sauce, I took some of the pork broth and rehydrated pasilla peppers with some cooked onions, cumin, and jalapenos.

All of the stuff went in the fridge overnight.

El dia de los Tamales

On Sunday, I woke up early. I did all my usual Sunday business and by 10 am, I was back in my pajamas ready for my cooking adventure. I set up a tamale assembly station on the dining table, which was moved closer to the television. While many an abuelita told me that I need to purchase fresh masa, I realized that tracking down fresh masa for my tamales was excessive. So I purchased the one
available at the MexiMart down the street.

Following the instructions on the bag of corn flour, I mixed all my wet ingredients which was leftover pork broth and water with my dry ingredients of maseca baking powder and salt. On the side, I whipped up my lard, and gently folded it into the batter.

With my batter, rehydrated corn husks, and pork filling, I went into zen mode. I assembled tamal after tamal. Flatten husk. Spread batter with spatula. Spoon in filling. Roll. Fold in sides. Tie it all together. I was a machine: a Korean-American, Mexican-inspired, football watching, pajama wearing, tamales assembling machine.
Here is the conclusion. Purchasing 2 tamales from Don Carlos Taco Shop in La Jolla is $4.56. Making my own costed $28.22 for the supplies, unknown energy costs, 4 hours of total labor with product that tastes like Don Carlos's tamales. So next year to honor the day of the dead, I am marching down to Don Carlos's, purchasing two tamales and a Pacifico with lime and calling it a day. Who knows, I might even wear a sexy pirate costume so I could look pregnant with my tamales filled belly.

A trip to the desert.

Since moving to San Diego, I find myself growing soft. I eat donuts with greater frequency, so my belly is softer. I take constitutionals at night without mace, so my guard is softer. And I got acclimated to the southern California weather, so my temperature core got softer.

For the past 2 weeks now, we have been covered by a marine layer. It has made me cranky and vitamin D deficient. I hated work. I hated the boy and yelled at him on the phone. I found myself feeling sad and watching a lot of Bravo TV.

I called Evil Twin #2. "I want to go to Palm Springs. It is totally impractical." Her reply, "Sounds like a great idea." Sometimes, all you need is approval to let loose. So I packed up my Nissan Versa and headed out for the desert.

Palm Springs is 2.5 hours away. I stopped at a premium outlet mall along the way. I was perplexed by the throngs of European and Chinese tourists carrying suitcases with them going gaga over Tod's driving moccasins, Judith Liber clutches, Jimmy Choo stripper shoes, Zegna ties, and Gucci scarves. I tried shopping for an hour, but then gave up. It was a sunny day 85F with desert sun. I sat with a lemonade and watched people.

My next stop was Palm Desert and Palm Springs. I took a self guided tour of Mid-century modern houses. I have no idea what this term means except I saw a lot of houses with a lot of glass and learned someone named Lautner is awesome. (I will buy a book so I could feel a little less like a country rube.) Then I went into Palm Springs itself. I saw a collection of bakelite jewelry and other costume styles of the 20s. I also drove by 3 dialysis centers. I am not sure if my eyes are just in tuned with them, or there are just a lot of people who need dialysis in Palm Springs. At around of 3:30pm, I was feeling a little peckish. I stopped by one of the italian restaurants (there are a lot in Palm Springs each one claiming to once have served Al Capone) and ate a dinner special. That is right. I ate dinner at 3:30pm in Palm Springs.

After a large meal, I moseyed onto Dessert Hot Springs. This town is in the middle of nowhere. I mean there is the desert and this small town pops up like Brigadoon. My "hotel" was a 7 room yoga retreat place. In the center of the hotel was a pool. At one end was water that came out of the hotspring and was 168 degrees and as you went down the pool the water was cooler. According to the two old lesbians (naturally) who owned the place, the minerals in the water would heal almost every ailment you would have. I laid by the pool, getting in occasionally, as I waited for my treatment. I got a scalp massage, and then was ordered to shower immediately as not to contaminate the pool or the Frette sheets (I still don't know what Frette is, but that is also on my to do list today.) By that time it was late, so I went to for a late night soak. I stared at the stars, drank some champagne I bought at Trader Joe's, and listened to two girls talk about how bitchy their friend was and how awesome LA was. I stayed in the healing waters for 2 hours before going to bed at 9pm.

I awoke at 6 am. I could not believe how trippy the night had been. Before going to bed the old lesbians told me that nothing was more magical than floating in the pool as the sun rose. So I trudged to the pool. I put some cylinder floating things under my feet. I lay there staring at the crescent moon as the sun came up and painted the normally unattractive San Jacinto mountains a perfect shade of persimmon. It was a rather religious experience.

After the sun came up, an old Brazillian couple that were staying in the deluxe room asked me to join them in some morning yoga. Why not. I got some more sun, a little more soaking in the "healing waters." By 9:30am, I was ready to go back to marine layer. I drank a shot of wheat-grass and had some yogurt and was back on the desert highway.