Guests Merry With Your Cheer

My sister and her family are coming to visit this weekend. Among the routine logistical back-and-forths, the plans have involved a long Facebook thread about what we'll eat while they're here and where we'll buy it and how it will be prepared and whether or not I'll bother pleasing anyone but the two of us.

This kind of selfishness will surprise no one who knows me even a little bit well. It also has some precedent when applied to my sister and myself. We're the duo that, once upon a time, flew clear across the country to visit with our father's sisters and spent the entire long weekend with them eating pancakes at this very specific place and having dessert at that very specific place and so on (that we were young at the time and somewhat in their care comforts me in that it means we come by our obsessions honestly). Among other memories, I carry with me the yogurt and berries we ate at some posh hotel (the only breakfast we could afford), the peach daiquiris our grandmother served (it was the last time I saw her before her death less than two months later), the picnic lunch our aunt packed for the plane ride back to Philadelphia (shrimp & cream cheese spread on mini bagels which lasted until we just barely cleared the runway in San Francisco).

Some years after that trip we sat together in our parents' kitchen with the man that she would soon marry. Why we were there and our parents were not I don't recall, but I do remember what we ate. Brie and roasted garlic (hey, it was the 90s), a pesto made with half spinach and half basil (it shrunk in the micro), smoked salmon. That my future brother-in-law loves my sister was abundantly evident because knowing him better now I can say that there's no way on earth we'd get away with putting that array of foodstuffs on the table these days.

She'd like to do a bit of canning while they're visiting so I'm hoping to cue up some brandied blueberries or blackberries. That's an easy choice because we won't need to monitor a jelling point or whatever and can thus accommodate the distractions our collected five children will no doubt visit upon us. We'll also visit the local farm market, the merits of which she's listened to me extol for years now. I'll buy a couple chickens to grill and maybe some peaches to make into soup. Friday night I'll grill some cheese (yes! it's true - man, I love this stuff) and wrap bacon around jalapeños from the plants out by the old stone wall. We'll open the olives that are already marinating and the red onions I mixed up earlier this evening. Collectively, they'll be the perfect foils for a hot, humid Philadelphia summer evening.

When my sister comes to town.

No Place Like Home

On a recent post I noted my disinclination to travel despite my interest in seeing new places and meeting new people. As much as I'd like to do these things, the desire to do so doesn't outweigh my dread of the process of traveling. (I was once a girl who spent weeks at a go living out of a backpack but I haven't seen her in a while.) And so, since one never does anything for which one's interest doesn't make the hassle worthwhile, I rarely go anywhere.

Still, there are places I'd like to go and may well do so if I can get beyond the shudder-inducing thoughts of baggage claim, carbon footprints, finding a pet-sitter, an ever-increasing fear of airplanes, keeping track of the kids in a jungle or bog or whatever, getting lost in a new language (I cannot adequately press upon you how likely I am to become lost in any given place), convincing Brainiac that the cost is worth expanding our collective horizons, and so many other anxieties and neuroses that seem to plague me. If I'm able to overcome this not inconsiderable list of obstacles, I think I'd like to visit:

1) Scotland. Duh, where else am I going to find an immortal Highland warrior of my very own? Of course, not being unavailable for the intimate company of immortal Highland warriors, what with being married and all, I'd introduce him to a single pal right away, making a mental note to press shamelessly for all the details after they do...whatever it is that one does with immortal Highland warriors. And then I'd buy Brainiac a kilt.

All joking (mostly) aside, I think that Scotland must be a beautiful place and I have tremendous respect for its history and what has been endured there through the centuries. And? Scotch, golf, castles and salmon. Score.

2) Thailand. My dad lived in Thailand (in that in-the-Air-Force-during-a-war kind of way) before I was born and his stories of his life there captivated my sisters and me as children. Although I understand that he has held much of the truth of that time to himself, the portrait he created for us was of a wondrous and beautiful country with riches counted in ways beyond those I've come to understand. I'd like to see for myself if reality matches what I see in my head.

3) The "Fairy Tail Road" through Germany. I once spoke German more-or-less well (depending upon my mood at the moment) but now remember virtually nothing save a conviction that it might be about to rain. This would be woefully insufficient for spending some time exploring the towns and villages where the Grimm Bros. collected the stories and legends that have become so well-loved (if in slightly less macabre forms than the originals). I'd like to know if I have the mental grit to dig deep and remember enough to enrich a visit and not annoy anyone. Not too badly, anyway.

4) Vienna and Budapest. I bet they're fabulous and wear the weight of history exceedingly well. And? Pastries.

5) Marrakesh. I just...the past...so much...swoon. Yes. Marrakesh.

6) Canadian Rockies. On a train. Wonderfully huge and iconic and magnificent, an excellent place to feel small.

There are other places - Hadrian's Wall, Pyramids, the Acropolis, among others - I might like to see in a perfect world of safe and affordable on-time travel with no environmental repercussions or lost luggage. The above contenders, though, are those that might just provoke me to get outside of my head and on the road.

Did you ever read these weekly Works for Me Wednesday (WFMW) lists? There's nothing I love better than a tip (or two or three) to make my life easier so I've been really attracted to them lately. It's like reading Heloise on steroids and I've learned everything from how to hand sew button holes (good for the button hole challenged me) to ideas for new songs to sing to the kids on long car trips to how to buy a properly fitting bra. Really, it's like having a couple hundred BFFs who can't wait to e-mail or call with their latest great ideas.

I've actually been tossing around a few canning-related WMFW tips but figured I could wait until gardening and canning season are at hand, to keep things topical and all. Then I had an experience driving home from my parents' last week that I've been talking about since then with all the moms I know and it seemed like a pretty good topic. So here goes, my first Works for Me Wednesday tip, from my house to yours.

The kids and I take a few car trips a year without Brainiac. For this reason (and because our cars are always wretchedly old specimens - no in-car movies here!) we've always carried AAA. The expense has proven useful over the years and, whenever I'm tempted to drop the coverage, I'm reminded of being on the Beltway pulled over, pregnant and in the rain, with a flat. Or the time that I drove over some big old construction bolt and lost a tire. And just last week I had my front driver's side tire changed just a couple miles from the Lehigh Tunnel - there was a two-inch bulge in the sidewall that developed after I hit the Mother of All Potholes and immediately knew that I could not drive my babies another mile with that tire. (At this point I'd love to say that my tip is that I learned to change my own tires, but no.)

It's with this backdrop that I make my little WFMW offering to the world: Make sure you have an operational spare tire, and if at all possible keep a full-size spare. If you don't have a working spare, AAA can't help you. So even a "donut" spare is a good idea and I'm a little surprised at how many people I found in a short, totally unscientific survey that don't keep even this minimal solution around.

A full-size spare is helpful because not only can you resume your driving at a normal speed and with normal conditions, but because it buys you some time in having to get a new tire. Since I resent automotive-related expenditures of just about any kind and the need to purchase new tires always seems to come just when I have something more fun I'd like to do, having the full-size tire as a back-up can give us some breathing room to complete the trip without seeing the inside of an tire dealership, shop for price or gather the money from the budget without worry.

In a WFMW nutshell: Keep a full-size spare if you can (or make sure your donut is workable if you can't).

So, if you just celebrated Thanksgiving, did you have a nice holiday?

If you didn't, did you have a nice Thursday?

The kids, their au pair and I arrived home Thursday night after nearly a week away visiting relatives in more northern locales. We enjoyed snow flurries, learning a Russian card game called Durac, eating too much coffee cake and TimBits, and hearing about my 80 year-old grandmother's new boyfriend. It was a lovely vacation in every respect.

Still, it's nice to be home. I missed my own bed and my own kitchen, however ill-equipped it is. And after Brainiac told me about the holes he cut in the ceiling above my desk (ostensibly to fix a leak from the bathtub above but he sounded as if he enjoyed making those holes so much that I'm not at all convinced it took him the three tries he claims it did to find the leak - I think he just wanted to cut more holes in the ceiling) I knew that much work would be required to put the house to some level of order for the upcoming holidays.

So with post-trip laundry underway, a kitchen enhancement project about to start, boxes of all sizes siting about waiting for me to unpack their festive contents, four pounds of butter thawing for the first batches of Christmas cookies (chocolate chip, crinkles and probably pizzelles since I have a lot of eggs on hand) and a glass of wine at my side as I type I feel very ready for Advent.