Month: November 2011

Stick a fork in me, I’m done.


You were probably expecting this to be a potato. I’m out of potatoes. But the reflection of the forks on the spoon caught my attention this morning as I was about to have breakfast.

Okay, looks like this makes my 30th post for November. SaYoNaRa, NaBloPoMo.

Oddly enough, I didn’t have much trouble with the daily posting this month. And it’s been a crazy month, what with the trip to California, trip to New York for Thanksgiving, and working up a study to submit to submit a paper to a conference. That deadline is today, by the way. Remarkably, the paper is almost done. And then I’ve got to barrel forward with the next phase of the study.

Thanks for all the supportive comments on my last post. You may not be surprised to learn that Phoebe was totally fine when I picked her up after school. And when I later tried to get her to explain to me what it was she was getting at in the morning, she just said “I just didn’t get a very good night’s sleep.” So I may never know what she meant with the gesturing or miming or what have you. The miming meaning remains a mystery.

bad mommy moment

At 8:25, 9 minutes before the school bus comes to the end of our driveway:

Phoebe, you still need to brush your hair. Did you use the bathroom yet?

She said she hadn’t, but then instead of heading to use the bathroom, she came up close to me. She stood in front of me, looking up at me with her giant blue eyes wide, arms stretched down and slightly behind her in some sort of gesture I couldn’t interpret.

What is it Phoebe?

She silently continued the wide stare and the apparent gesture.

I don’t know what you’re doing, Phoebe. Use words.

She followed me around, doing the same thing.

Phoebe, I have no idea what you are doing. Tell me what’s going on. You need to brush your hair and use the bathroom.

This went on and on while the minutes ticked away.

We need to hurry, the bus is coming in just a couple minutes.

Still no progress.

This is infuriating. That means you are making me really, really mad.

She still wouldn’t talk.

If you do something and it doesn’t work, and you try it again the same way and it still doesn’t work, it doesn’t help to keep doing the same thing over and over and over.

She still did the same thing.

I cracked.

If we miss the bus because of this, you have no idea how angry I’ll be!

I yelled.

I need you to talk!

I hurriedly tried to find the hairbrush that we keep downstairs. I threw some coats out of the way. I threw aside other coats that weren’t even in the way. I yelled some more.

I was the scary mommy.

In the end, Phoebe used the bathroom and I brushed her hair. She was in tears and I was livid. We ran out the door as the bus passed into view. We ran up the driveway, me carrying her backpack.

I hugged her and told her I loved her before she climbed onto the bus. I asked if she could quickly tell me what was going on. I got nothing. She climbed on to the bus, tears still on her cheeks. And I went back inside, still baffled and angry.

I found the whole thing to be deeply unsettling. That I could miss what she was getting at, perhaps trying to remind me of something. That she would continue so stubbornly to do something when I asked her to stop. And that she managed to make me so very mad by doing so little.

Not the best start to the day.

The Spud Who Loved Me

James Bond: Do you expect me to chop?
Auric Goldfingerlings: No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to dice. And then panfry with some onions.

The Bond Franchise meets the fast food franchise in these lesser-known action movies. Hold on to your seats and grab your ketchup.

  • Licence to Peel
  • From Russia with Latkes
  • Octopierogi
  • Quantum of Solanaceae
  • On Her Masher’s Secret Service
  • Dumplings Are Forever
  • The Living Homefries
  • Dr. Gnocchi
  • Live and Let Fry
  • Thunderbulbes
  • The Hashbrowns Are Not Enough
  • A View Tuber Kill
  • The Man with the Golden Spud Gun
  • Moontater
  • Goldfingerlings
  • You Only Bake Twice
  • Tuber Never Dies
  • Kartoffel Royale
  • Yukon Goldeneye
  • The Spud Who Loved Me
  • Fry Another Tater
  • For Your Eyes Only

No time to include synopses this time, as I’m beat and need to get my synapses some rest. Please feel free to contribute any plot summaries in the comments.

Ceci n’est pas une pomme de terre

(Et ceci n’est pas une vraie blog post, non plus. I have a big deadline coming up this week, and I have to get crackin’. This will have to stand in for my NaBloPoTaTo post of today.)

potato prints

This morning, I decided to do an art project with the kids. Specifically, we made potato prints. (I’ll let you guess what inspired me to do this particular project…) We’re at my in-laws’, and I didn’t want to risk getting paint on the furniture (or walls), so we worked out in the backyard. It was a beautiful day to be outside, but a bit windy for a project involving paper. Phoebe’s tendency to collect piles of rocks came in handy, providng us a ready supply of paperweights.

I can’t remember when I last made potato prints. I’m not sure I have done this as an adult, even. It was a lot of fun. (It would have been more fun if not for the wind.) And I did like the way the prints came out. I loved the way the thick paint made veiny patterns on the prints. (We used some washable Crayola paints that John picked up at the grocery store.)

See the slideshow, below, for more photos from this morning, and this morning’s results. I put even more photos up on Flickr.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

…three potato, four.

Here are the leftover potatoes from yesterday.

  • Here’s a potato riddle, courtesy of this post of potato jokes. (Yes, of course there are potato jokes.):

    A skin have I, more eyes than one. I can be very nice when I am done. What am I?

  • Jamie O’Rourke and the Big Potato: a picture book by Tomie dePaola based on an Irish folktale. Apparently not about small potatoes.
  • The Enormous Potato: by Aubrey Davis. Also a retelling of a folktale. Not actually sure whether it’s the same folktale.
  • How big is my potato? A website that allows you to calculate the size of your potato. I’m serious. There’s even a related blog.
  • potato battery: harness the power of the potato
  • meat and potatoes: the main substance of something. (Also can be used as a more literal description of someones dietary preference, as in “a meat and potatoes kind of guy.”)
  • potato prints: the results of a printmaking technique in which a design is carved in a flat sliced section of potato (usually a half of a potato) to make a stamp. The potato edge is then dipped in paint or ink, and pressed against paper (or other surface) to imprint the design.
  • The Prince Edward Island Potato Museum: “The only museum of its kind in the world.”
  • The Idaho Potato Museum: a potato museum in Idaho
  • Potato Museum: seems to be more of an organization than a location. The real-world location of the museum collection has moved around. They offer up many tidbits of potato goodness. I just lost about 15 minutes doing an online jigsaw puzzle of a potato.
  • For an encyclopedic yet entertaining post on potatoes, their origins, history and etymology, check out potato on polyglot vegetarian. Also find a load of potato poems.
  • Want more potato history? (And who wouldn’t?) You can investigate further with books like Potato (by Patrick Mikanowski), Potato: A History of the Propitious Esculent (by John Reader), and The Potato: How the Humble Spud Rescued the Western World (by Larry Zuckerman).

And if that’s still not enough potatoes, then there are these:

Okay. That was a lot of potatoes. I’m full now.

One potato, two potato…

It’s been some time since I’ve served up a ThThTh post, but the recent wave of tuber-related posts got my mind churning up a big heapin’ mess o’ potato-themed things. Plus it’s Thanksgiving Day here in the US, and potatoes are part of the feast tradition.¹

Dig in!

  • One potato, two potato: a “counting-out game.”

    One potato, two potato, three potato, four
    Five potato, six potato, seven potato, more

  • Mr. Potato Head: a classic plastic toy from Hasbro, shaped like a potato with re-arrangeable features and appendages. Was featured as an animated character voiced by in the Toy Story movie franchise.³
  • Viva la Papa! Long live the potato! I don’t know how true it is, but I remember that there was allegedly some confusion about the Spanish phrase meaning “the Pope,” (El Papa) and possibly some misprinted merchandise.
  • Green potatoes: are apparently somewhat toxic, according to Snopes. (Snopes was not able to help me about the la papa, el papa question, and had this to offer on the topic of potatoes.)
  • The Potato Famine: another name for the Great Famine, which occurred in Ireland between 1845 and 1852 when potato crops failed due to the potato blight.

    Although blight ravaged potato crops throughout Europeduring the 1840s, the impact and human cost in Ireland – where one-third of the population was entirely dependent on the potato for food – was exacerbated by a host of political, social and economic factors which remain the subject of historical debate.

    Sinead can tell you more about it.

  • Famine, a song by Sinead O’Connor

    OK, I want to talk about Ireland
    Specifically I want to talk about the “famine”
    About the fact that there never really was one
    There was no “famine”
    See Irish people were only ALLOWED to eat potatoes
    All of the other food
    Meat fish vegetables
    Were shipped out of the country under armed guard
    To England while the Irish people starved

  • taters: a slang term for potatos.
  • tater tots: the children of potatoes.⁴
  • spud: a slang term for potatoes
  • Spuds MacKenzie: not actually a potato.
  • drop like a hot potato: an idiom meaning “suddenly stop associating with” whoever or whatever is likened to the hot potato. Example: She acted like she wanted to be my friend, but when she learned that I was only small potatoes , she dropped me like a hot potato.
  • Hot Potatoes: a song by The Kinks from 1972 [listen on YouTube]
  • mashed potatoes: what might happen to hot potatoes that have been dropped.
  • mashed potato: a dance step that was popular in the early 60s
  • small potatoes: an idiom meaning “insignificant.” (Small potatoes are really tasty for roasting, though.)
  • new potatoes: small young potatoes (that are not tater tots)

  • Potato-potahto: From the song “Let’s call the whole thing off” While the tomato/tomahto variation happens, it would seem that the potato alternation probably doesn’t exist outside of the song.
  • Potatoe: a mispelling of potato which achieved great fame when former Vice President Dan Quayle incorrectly corrected a kid at a spelling bee to add the e at the end.
  • couch potato: a term for someone who sits around a lot, especially on a couch. (This totally does not apply to me, as right now, I am sitting on a chair. Not a couch. The dent in the couch cushion in no way suggests that I spend too much time sitting there. Nope.)
  • Potato: a song. (Thank you Sally for bringing this potato to the table!)

Okay, it turns out I dug up too many potatoes. I decided to save away some of the extra potatoes. I’ll reheat them for you tomorrow…
—

¹They also go well with the ThThTh posts served up on Thanksgivings past: turkeys, bread, and utensils.²

² It’s ThThThThanksgiving.

³ I feel compelled to mention that this potato is being reused. Mr. Potato Head has already appeared in one of my ThThTh lists. Over 4 years ago.

⁴ Assuming that “children” is a term meaning “small cylinders made of shredded bits of the parents, who happen to be potatoes, which have been deep fried.”

image credits: Mr. Potato Head (Hasbro)The small poatoes were mine.

unearthed

My post of last night, with my flourishing root vegetables, reminded me of a painting I did in an art class a number of years ago. (I think that number may be greater than 10.) I can’t remember what the class was, as I had many classes with the same teacher over several years. For this particular assignment, though, we were to paint something in response to a poem my teacher read to the class. The poem was one by her husband, a poet, and involved memories of his mother and potatoes. (Sadly, I don’t have a copy of the poem, nor do I remember the title.)

Here is what my brain cooked up:

The Potato Madonna

The painting is somewhat modelled after Medieval or Renaissance Madonnas. It wasn’t quite finished, as I’d originally imagined a more ornamental/ornate background. It’s been sitting in my basement for quite a few years, and has curved in the dampness. This was before I started stretching my own canvas, and would just buy whatever cheap canvas or canvas boards. Cheap canvas boards really don’t last well. On the other hand, I think the wrinkling and the warping rather suit the subject matter. As does the musty basement smell…

houseplants

I don’t know about you, but I can’t keep a houseplant alive to save my life. Happily, I have never had the need to, nor can I envision those scenarios. (Well, actually I can envision them. My imagination likes to come up with all sorts of improbable scenarios. Like one in which my very life is tied to the life of a spider plant. Or maybe a ficus. Like some sort of living, leafy voodoo doll. A bug climbs on a leaf, I feel my skin crawl. I get weird cravings for plant food. I forget to water it too long, and suddenly I don’t even have the strength to reach the watering can…I imagine I’d last 2 weeks, tops.)

Seriously, though, we have no houseplants. I have killed many houseplants over the years. I like plants. Don’t get me wrong. I just seem to be unable to consistently remember their existence for a long enough period of time to keep them alive. Pets I could handle, because they would typically make their needs known. Well, not itemizing their needs. But they would make it known that they had needs. By making noise, or looking at me with sad faces, or chewing on things, or getting smelly. Or piddling on the floor. Houseplants are just too quiet and too immobile. They just sit there in a pot. They might drop a leaf here and there, especially when they’ve gone a few weeks without water, but beyond that they don’t intrude. And then before you know it, you happen to glance over at the shriveled corpse of the thing.

Surprisingly, I’ve had some success in my life with gardening. Not that the plants are any noisier, but somehow the greater needs of a garden are easier for me to remember than the occasional needs of a potted plant. I wouldn’t call myself a gardener, by any stretch, but the handful of times I’ve gardened, I’ve kept the plants alive long enough to get some sort of rewards.

I also seem to have a remarkably green thumb when it comes to growing vegetables. Not vegetables that I’ve planted, but those vegetables that I have purchased with the intention of using them as food. But then they grow into plants. In the house.

That makes them houseplants, right?


We kept this sweet potato around for several months, and it was the healthiest looking plant this household has seen in years. It stayed on the kitchen windowsill for several weeks. (Eventually, though, we released it to the wild.)


This is our current project. This rutabaga sprouted while I was in California.

How about you? Have you the thumbs of green? Or are you a plant-killer like me?