Plantains with almonds and ginger and WTF walk in the woods
Jenny: Finish your dinner.
Gargantubaby: In your face, Thunderpants.
Jenny (choking): Thunderpants? Did you come up with that yourself?
GB: Yeah.
Jenny: That's a good name.
GB: Duh. For real.
SJ, trying to leave the room at bedtime after reading GB books:
SJ: OK, GB, I'm going to leave.
GB (soberly): It's hard when there's a boy cold in the darkness.
GB puts on his star sunglasses as we're leaving the house.
Rock star, he growls.
You're my rock star, I say.
Nope, he says. Errybody's.
He's picked up on my habits of speech but also my habit of making him repeat something I want him to understand or remember:
GB (frustrated with me about something): Say "I."
Jenny: I
GB: "Am."
Jenny: Am.
GB: Done. I don't want to communicate anymore.
Jenny: GB, when you're a grown-up, what do you want to do for a living?
GB: What's a living? And grown-up?
***
A few days ago I texted my guru, the writer and artist Janet Manley (who has a newsletter that is the smartest, funniest, most original thing on the internet right now, plus she will write your living obituary):
Somehow, amid the everything, I get this nagging feeling that I'm not doing enough, that I could be working harder. WTF is that?
Notwithstanding a pandemic, two full-time jobs between me and SJ, one 3-year-old at home, one 11-year-old at home half the time and attending school remotely, 12 meals a day, a young cat who pees inside the house, a dying dog who pees inside the house, a house, a car, and a minivan in and on which things often break or malfunction and which mostly are dirty and untidy, plus an advice column, a blog, and another Large Project I will announce soon (MARCH 15!!!), I have the gnawing sense that I'm not working hard enough.
As Janet responded: WTF IS THAT I have it too!!
I have actual anxiety that I'm not giving 100% to my job — but I COULD BE. Or 100% to my column — but I COULD BE. Or 100% to my blog, or my KID. Self-care is definitely in the shitter: I'm not taking enough walks, I'm not showering enough or changing out of the clothes I've slept in for two days, I'm definitely not listening to enough podcasts or reading enough books (and I get the newsletters to prove it: Every day I get emails about 7 NEW PODCASTS ABOUT VICTIMLESS CRIME YOU NEED TO LISTEN TO NOW or 14 BOOKS TO LOOK FORWARD TO WHEN YOU FINISH THE 14 BOOKS WE EMAILED YOU ABOUT LAST WEEK). I'm not keeping up on the news — I'm headlines only — and I register for webinar after webinar I have no chance of attending, in the futile hope that one day I will watch the recording.
And you know what? With all this shit going down, I'm NOT doing everything, and I'm definitely not doing very much very well. I'm not even calling back people I really, really want to talk to. And I'm convinced that everyone I know, rather than holding on by their own fingernails as THEIR worlds fling them madly out of orbit, are sitting in a basement somewhere, smoking Gauloises and saying, "Jenny Pritchett? I hear she goes to bed at 8:30 when she could be reaching out to influencers on her Instagram," or "Jenny Pritchett? She only listened to ONE EPISODE of Nice White Parents," or "Jenny Pritchett? She had a pile of literal garbage in her driveway for FIVE WEEKS because she couldn't get her shit together to call Recology for a bulky items pickup WHAT A LOSER."
SJ and I agreed we needed to give each other something to look forward to. It turned out he was talking about spring break, which is in March, and I was like HELLO I CAN'T WAIT THAT LONG. So a couple weeks ago we agreed to spend part of President's Day weekend at Kirby Cove, a beautiful curve of rock beach on the Marin side of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Sunday morning was wet, but still hopeful, we packed the red backpack, our go-to bag with the hand sanitizer, sunscreen, first-aid kit, and water bladder, with food and warm hats and sun hats and extra layers. SJ put the fold-up wagon in the car, and we bundled GB into a coat and grabbed our masks, and then we stopped by Wolhe Fdoos to get a package of the most delicious cupcakes ever, the chocolate cream from Rubicon (the red velvet are incredible, too).
It was a great day. Recently I started vaping CBD oil because [anxiety, pandemic, my sister-in-law left her vape pen in our house, pot is better now than it was in 1995, Mission Organic delivers]. SJ and I smoked, LEGALLY AND SAFELY, on the walk down, a fire road among Monterey pine, cypress, and eucalyptus. As expected it took fucking forever because SOMEONE has to climb every rock face and look at every bug AHEM SJ. But eventually we passed into the trees, and that is my favorite landscape ever. I don't care about wide, sweeping views. I love the forest, where it’s damp and close, the air temperature drops, and you can breathe in the cold, clean air and just feel the oxygen.
We had a picnic at a table overlooking the beach, including the delicious cupcakes (which everyone, especially GB, agreed we should eat first), watched a trio of egrets below us, carried the wagon down to the shore, and laid out our blanket. I got very interested in some rocks, SJ got very interested in making a basket out of sea grass, and GB got very interested in all of the above. A couple of young men near us made a seesaw of a piece of driftwood and launched rocks into the sea. We cheered. We took little walks up the shore and ate more cheese. We stayed for hours.
On our way back up the hill, we stopped in the camping area to go to the bathroom. Coming back out, one could choose the long way back to the path, or cut through some tall grass partially obscured by a dead bush. This is important. SJ took the shortcut. After I emerged from the bathroom, I took one step toward the shortcut and the overhanging bush and turned around.
"I'm not doing that," I distinctly remember muttering. Then I looked at the longer path around, calculated the 30 seconds that would be lost to me forever, a needless walk alone in peace along a forest trail ho-hum, turned back to the shortcut, pushed through the overhang, and rejoined my partner and my son (4 seconds).
That was at about 2 p.m. on Sunday. That night, GB and I went to sleep together in the big bed because husband who? Throughout the night, I had an uncomfortable feeling on my left calf, which I ascribed to the familiar feeling of my grown-out leg hairs rubbing against my pajama bottoms. In normal times, I don't shower very often — I find showers EXTREMELY boring. The pandemic has not helped, and as I adjusted my leg multiple times and went back to sleep, I determined I would for real shower the next morning.
At about 10:30 a.m., with my entire family sitting at the kitchen table (late breakfast? Early lunch? Who knows what we're doing anymore!), I claimed the bathroom. (A fun feature of our house is that the bathroom is literally through a door right next to the kitchen table, so that if you're very, very lucky, you can hear your loved ones taking a shit or peeing as you're eating.) Behind the closed door, I stripped off my pajama bottoms, and as I ran my hand down my leg I FELT SOMETHING ON MY LEFT CALF. SOMETHING WAS THERE.
I knew immediately what it was. I peered at my calf to confirm. But my vision has gotten worse and worse since I turned 40, so wearing a tank top and no pants and sporting a huge pandemic bush, I shot out into the kitchen past three people who were eating (see what I mean about the bathroom?) screaming, "OH MY GOD OH MY GOD." I ran down the hall into the office, found my reading glasses on the desk, contorted my body to look at my left calf, and there it was: still alive, back legs still wriggling, feisty jaws still eating their way into my flesh, as it had been for at least the last twelve hours. A fucking tick.
The skin around the bite was red for two inches in every direction and sore to the touch. I shot back up the hall, panicked enough not to even stop to take a picture, commandeered the tweezers from the bathroom, and announced to my family that I had a tick in my leg.
"Are there any more ticks in the house?" my stepdaughter asked weakly, at which point I realized I would NOT be allowed the luxury of panicking because children and I needed to switch from panic to reassurance now, with a tick still lodged in my calf spewing Lyme disease.
"No, no," I said. "This is from a hike we took yesterday. You can't get a … there aren't any ticks in the house. You're fine."
Then, SJ in tow, my pandemic bush and white jiggly pandemic butt shot off down the hall. In the office I laid on my stomach on the futon, and SJ pulled the tick out in two parts and dropped it in the plant.
So I've been on antibiotics since Thursday, in the hopes of avoiding Lyme disease, Rheumatoid arthritis, and a host of other things that apparently can be transmitted through bacteria that live on ticks. Best. Pandemic. Ever.
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SJ has a new bedtime routine with the kids where he pretends he's on Hee Haw, singing the banjo music and then telling a joke he makes up in real time. I catch him one night putting pajamas on GB.
SJ: Hey, Clem!
SJ: Hey Martha!
SJ: Have you ever noticed how sometimes when you look in a cow's eyes they don't look back?
SJ: No.
SJ: That's because they're cow-ified!
GB scratches his cheek crawling through the crabapple tree looking for the wooden arrow he’s just shot. I run inside to get a piece of cotton with witch hazel. I rub his cheek with it and say, "How does that feel?"
GB: I find it very relaxing.
GB picks a dandelion and starts huffing.
Jenny: You gotta make a wish!
GB (annoyed): I wish that I can blow this.
Having a kid is like setting up camp and breaking down camp every day.
***
I learned about a new food! SJ has a gardening buddy he meets with once a week who's from Ghana, and he told SJ about his favorite childhood recipe: plantains fried with chopped almonds and ginger. I happened to be near a Mexican market in the Mission that week, so I bought plantains. You need:
1 large green plantain
Large handful of chopped almonds
1 tablespoon chopped ginger (we used a couple of those frozen cubes the first time and fresh ginger the second time. Fresh ginger tastes better, duh.)
Some vegetable oil
You need to:
Cut the plantain (maybe half the plantain) into discs.
Heat oil in a medium pan over medium heat.
Put everything else in the pan.
Sauté, turning the plantains until the discs are brown on both sides.
It's so good we made it twice! Thank you, Kweku!