Only Half a Lunch for Me ... (a truly horrific tale of lunchbox letdown)

Anyone who's read my post on New Year's Resolutions realizes that I'm trying to live healthier and to be more accountable.​

I'm exercising regularly, setting out daily menus, keeping a food journal, really trying to live a healthy and more accountable life.​  Unfortunately, on occasion this turns me into a rabid beast.  Not grumpy, not slightly disconcerted.  No, it actually makes me 100 per cent, absolutely, totally, undeniably, rabidly INSANE.  

Exercising means getting up at 4:00 a.m.  Not good.  I am NOT a morning person.  But I find that I do best if I exercise in the morning in the ME.  Unlike Canada, where returning from work would be a welcome invitation for a run, what with fresh air, bustling crowds and cool hilly outdoor venues to lure me back out of the house, I find myself depleted of energy when I return home after a day's work in Qatar.  

So instead of looking forward to a run at the end of the work day, I drag my @$$ out of bed for it 2 hours before the sun is even thinking of showing its face.  Note that I am NOT a morning person.  I'm not happy about getting up when the moon is still bright.  But I do it.  Because no matter what, after a run, everything does seem a little bit brighter.

Coupled with this dubious and decidedly un-delightful activity, I have included menus in my daily routine.  As such, I plan out a weekly menu, and a set lunch every day.  Lunch is prepared the night before, ready to be placed into my lunchbox as I head off to work.  It is a balanced and sensible lunch, with dairy, grains, fruit/veg and protein.  It is the highlight of my work day.  As meager as it may seem, by the time 12:00 noon rolls around, for me it is as desirable as a 3-star Michelin meal.  I know exactly what awaits me when I open that teeny tiny little treasure trove of calories.

Which would explain my disenchantment last Thursday as I opened up my lunchbox.  In the small container that should have harbored 6 thin slices of Hillshire Farms turkey breast, 1/4 cup shredded cheese, and 1/4 cup green pepper, I found ​1 slice of turkey breast (these are paper thin), barely a teaspoon of cheese, and the requisite 1/4 cup of green pepper.  My slice of bread was still intact, I still had a Tbsp of mayo in my container, but I was decidedly short in the meat and dairy container.  

Could I have been that tired the night before as I put lunch together?  Could I have miscalculated somehow, or gotten distracted as I pulled together this integral part of my day?  I actually thought long and hard about it.  Then I realized that 'no', there was no way I would have skimped.  And I re-tracked the events of the past night.​  Where could everything have gone so wrong?

And a lightbulb went off in my head.  I placed a call to Smilin' Vic, who was in a meeting at the time. ​

Me:  "Can you talk for a minute, it's really important."​

He:  "Sure, I'll just step out.  What's up?"​

Me:  "Last night, you went to bed after me.  Did you happen to have a snack?"​

He:  (silence)  "I might have had a bite to eat.  Why?  What's up?"

Me:  "Well, 3/4 of my lunch is missing; I have enough to feed Barbie on a diet.  I'm just wondering if maybe you picked in the Tupperware container marked 'Gypsy's Lunch - DO NOT TOUCH' in bright red marker?"​

He:  (silence)  "Uhhhh, well, yeah, uhmmm, I had a bit of turkey, and then I realized it was really nicely packed, and then I thought, uhmmm, maybe this is your lunch, and then I put it back.  But I SWEAR, it was only after the 5th piece of turkey, and then I thought 'something's not right, I shouldn't be eating this'.  And I stopped eating then and there."​

Me:  ​"And you never touched the cheese?"

He:  (silence)  "Uhmmmm, well, yeah, uhmmmm, well I kind of rolled the cheese in the turkey, and it's really good that way, and, uhmmm, but I SWEAR, on the 5th piece of turkey, as soon as I realized that this was probably your lunch, I stopped."​

Me:  "Seriously?  Seriously?  ​Do you realize I am sitting here looking at a slice of bread, one paper-thin slice of turkey and 5 shreds of cheese?  Seriously?"

He:  (laughing)  "That's funny."​ (more laughing)  "No, seriously, that's funny!  Baby, I feel really bad, but did you seriously pull me out of a meeting for this?"

Me:  (foaming at the mouth, nostrils flaring) "You're an @$$.  Karma's a B*%($.  Don't ever touch my lunch contents again Soldier.  You'll regret it.  I love you, but I'm telling you now, you will rue the day you ever touch my processed meats and cheeses again."

I hung up.  Enough said.  ​100% absolutely, disconcertedly, rabidly INSANE!  

We haven't talked about this incident in our home again.  While I think Smilin' Vic tried to convince himself that my reaction was really cute and funny, I believe somewhere in his core he is afraid.  (I know I scared myself.)  I think he's realized deep down that you just don't touch a dieting woman's lunch.  You just don't go there - to do so is mad.  Next time, just reach for the peanut butter and jam.  Leave the pre-packed lunches untouched.  Or risk the wrath.

I can handle tight deadlines, a 7-year-old's meltdowns, flat tires, bad hair days, boardroom drama, bounced cheques, spilt milk, hot flashes, a burst water pipe.  But NOT lunchbox letdown.  Let it be known that every single shred of cheese counts.  I don't do well with only half a lunch.  

Don't mess with me and my lunchbox ....

Lunch as it should be ....

Just Call Me Mama Cuoco

"No, Peanut Gallery, I didn't mean 'coocoo'.  It's 'cuoco'".

'Cuoco' is 'chef' in Italian.  A female chef is actually 'cuoca', but I thought that might read as 'caca' in the title, which is even a little bit worse than 'coocoo'.  

Last August, my Italian brother-in-law introduced kiddo to the magic of homemade pasta. Surefire way to endear yourself to a 7-yr-old niece:  let her mix flour, eggs, and olive oil directly on the countertop (no bowls required).  Then let her pass it through a 'squisher machine' that flattens the dough and slices it into perfect strips.  Plunge those strips into a pot of boiling water and top them with nothing but mounds of butter and salt.  Then place that steaming bowl of her own creation in front of her and let her feast.  

His pasta magic way outshone my Saturday-morning crepe-making skills.  Kiddo went on about it for months.  

Smilin' Vic, softy that he is, came home in late October with a pasta maker.  We might not be able to match Uncle L's culinary expertise, but we could at least have fun trying.

I was thrilled.  What a fabulous kitchen gadget.  This one would not sit on a shelf unused for months.  No sir, we were going to make pasta every week.  I took this glorious culinary apparatus out of its box and immediately went out and bought Number 0 flour.  Pasta all'arrabbiata was about to take on a whole new meaning in our house.

.........

So ..... four months later, to the day, we finally got around to baptizing this lovely piece of kitchen art.  This afternoon I finally gathered up my motivation and my kiddo and said "Get ready to get messy, we're making pasta!"  

We emptied the flour onto a clean surface.  We dug a well.  We started breaking the eggs into the well.

(Just in case you didn't know ... moms don't come with as much patience as uncles.)  

When the egg started running over the sides of the well is when I adopted 'Mom Mode'.  "Smilin' Vic, we need help.  There's a mess going on here.  Kiddo, step back, I've got to stop the egg escape."  There was an egg white on the loose.  I admit I panicked.  I take my kitchen seriously.

Thankfully we corralled the runaway egg and I was able to revert fairly quickly to 'Fun Mode'.  The dough kneaded, we let it set for 15 minutes, then proceeded to roll, fold, roll again, fold again, etc. until we had a perfectly thin rectangular sheet of pasta dough.  We repeated this process several times until we had a countertop full of pasta sheets.  We let them dry for fifteen minutes, then passed them through the pasta shaper.

The result?

Perfectly shaped linguini An amazing boost of confidence to and sense of accomplishment for a little seven-year-old girl.

She was so thrilled to serve us supper.  Linguini with basil and artichoke pesto sauce.  A culinary feast that would feature well on a Michelin star menu.

I will admit to slightly overcooking

drowning the pasta. But lesson learned. In the end, this afternoon wasn't really about pasta at all; it had a lot more to do with living and sharing and laughing and bonding. And on that front, everything turned out 'magnifico'!

It's amazing what a couple of hours in the kitchen with your child can do.  Boost confidence, encourage creativity, increase focus, engage meaningful conversation, build patience, and feed the soul.

Thanks to Uncle L for motivating us all to spend a little more time doing something that actually means something.

Oh, and by the way, despite my al dente shortcomings, supper was amazing.  Kudos to Kiddo Cuoco.  

'Ciao' from Mama Cuoco.

Dear Me! Tinkerbell Lost Her Head ...

Nothing propels parents to their feet like the unexpected bloodcurdling screams of their child.

One minute she is playing peacefully upstairs with her dollies.  The next, an agonizing wail resonates throughout the house.  We jump up, terrified the worst has happens.  The piercing cry is followed by wretched sobbing.  

We rush up the stairs.  She comes running out of her room and collapses in my arms.  I grab firm hold of her, temporarily reassured that at least I see no blood.  

Smilin' Vic, the man with the deepest voice I know, shrilly shout-squeaks "What the hell is going on!?  What happened?"  (I never realized he had such range; the high pitch momentarily distracts me from my fear.)

"Tinkerbell's head fell off!"  Wails of despair.

I step back, hold her at arms length.  Get a good look at the tears streaming down her cheeks.  Stifle the hysterical laughter welling up in me.  I'm relieved;  I now find the whole situation incredibly funny.  I hug her close again so I can hide the smile that will inevitably break free.

Smilin' Vic does not see the humor.  The Big Voice returns "You scared the living crap out of us!  What's with the crying?  It's no big deal.  I'll fix it!"

My daughter's eyes grow wide.  Horror and disbelief at his callousness, his apparent indifference.  A fresh wave of tears is cresting.  "Not a big deal?  How would you feel Papa?  Tinkerbell lost her head!"

I can't take it anymore; I disguise my laughter with a snort, try to pass it off as a sob. I hug her closer.  Smilin' Vic turns and walks silently away in apparent defeat.  It's hard for a former military man to conceive how very intense a little girl's relationship with her Barbies can be.  I've lost Barbies' heads before.  I've lost my head before.  It's a big deal.

I pull myself together, take Tinkerbell's body in one hand, her head in the other, and inspect the damage.  Tinkerbell's head has, in fact, been viciously torn from her neck.  This was no simple dolly decapitation, the kind where you can pop the ball at the tip of her neck back into the hole at the base of her head.

No, the damage seems irreparable; it does indeed appear that her fairy days have come to a violent end.  I ask my daughter how this happened.  Between sniffles, she explains that she was trying to take off Tinkerbell's pants, had Tinkerbell's head squeezed between her knees as she was yanking on the pants.  That's when her neck shattered, pieces scattering into  Tinkerbell's now decapitated head.  My daughter is starting to fall apart again as she relives that horrific moment, that horrible 'pop' when Tinkerbell lost her head.

Obviously they don't make Tinkerbell like they used to.

Smilin' Vic reappears, a tube of Crazy Glue in hand.  He delicately picks up Tinkerbell's head, applies glue, and somehow sticks it back onto what is left of her neck.  It holds.  My daughter looks up at him, her eyes filled with amazement.  She hugs him tightly, then skips away, back into her room, with convalescing Tinkerbell.  Not a word is spoken.  And just like that, he makes everything better.

No matter that her head now sits slightly askew on her shoulders.  No matter that she no longer has the slightest range of motion in her  neck.  Tinkerbell may have lost her head, but Papa put her back together again.  All is well with the world.

Dear me.

In the weeks since her unfortunate accident, Tinkerbell has turned to her fellow fairies for support and is gradually learning to spread her wings again.  Her pants will not come off again, nor will her little green cape, which is now forever crazy-glued to her stunted neck.

N.B.  We've actually been through this a few times before.  The first Barbie our daughter ever got came out of the box with a leg severed at the hip (this was a gift from a doctor; even he was powerless to save her leg ... we improvised by tying a rubber band around Barbie's knees and always dressing her in floor length gowns).  Our neighbor split Disco Ken in two at the waist when our daughter was 4 (she retold the nightmare of that misadventure for at least a year).  A Belle (mini Disney Princess) was also severed in two at one point (unfortunately no glue was ever able to put her back together again).

Give Me a Little More Time ...

But what minutes!  Count them by sensation, and not by calendars, and each moment is a day.  

~Benjamin Disraeli

These days, I find myself constantly asking for more time.  More time to spend with my daughter, more time to spend on my husband, more time to spend on work, more vacation time, more down time, more me time, more sleep time, more gym time, more reading time, more family time, more social time ... 

Tonight I'm trying to focus on the time I actually have, the time I actually have had, not the time I wish I could have.  

Because I'm faced with the hard fact that I can't change time.  I can't buy more time.  I can't save time, or stretch it, or bank it.   I have no more, no less time than anyone reading this post.  The passage of time is measured in equal increments for us all.

Time is no different for me than it is for a third grader, for a corporate CEO, for a single mother struggling to hold down a full-time job while bringing up four kids on her own.  I have the exact same number of hours in my day as an Olympic gymnast, a socialite, a refugee, a doctor, a philosopher, ...

But what do I do with the time I have?  My challenge and my struggle tonight is to make sure I transform the time I have into moments.  Time will pass, but the moments remain. 

It's not as easy as flicking a switch and saying I will use my time more wisely.  I am struggling with time tonight; I am thinking about my Dad.  Wishing I had more time to spend with him.  Wishing I knew the right 'time' to go and see him.  Hoping the oncologists he sees this afternoon will tell him he has too much time left and will outlive us all.  Wishing I could buy him more time.  Wishing I could buy us more time.  Wasting my time agonizing over the passage of time.

I know my Dad will not get more time.  But I also know he still has time.  I still have time.  And no matter what the oncologist's prognosis for my Dad, the time he has left will tick by at the same pace as mine.  

Being so far away from him, my head tells me I have to start reflecting now on the moments we've had, and those we can still have, rather than pining for lost time or continuing to wish for more time.  

And we've had such a wonderful time making moments.  Moments over the years filled with laughter, and understanding, and knowing silence, and pride, and excited chatter.  Moments filled with sadness, moments filled with love.  Moments that made memories.  

Time spent enjoying a meal, singing a song, sharing a dance, laughing at a joke.  Time spent mourning the loss of loved ones, time where he consoled me, time where I tried to console him.  All this time spent making moments that will live on forever in me.  

More recently, time spent with him in hospital.  Time spent talking to him and joking with him on the phone.  Time spent just taking in the sight of him over Skype.  Time spent praying for him.  Time saying I love you.  And I know it's not time that has shaped and sustained me over the years, it's the moments.

And now the time has come to face losing him.  And so it's easy to slip into the cycle of praying for time while cursing its passage.  I don't want this time to turn into 'the' moment I know it will inevitably become.

I'm not ready yet, but I never will be.  I will never be prepared for my Dad to die.  So tonight, as I lay my head on the pillow, I know that despite everything I've written above, I will say a prayer, and it will go something like this ...

"All I'm asking for, God, is just a little more time, enough to see him again, enough to say a proper goodbye, enough to share a few more moments, enough to make a few more memories.  I'm still his little girl.  I'm not ready yet.  Please, God, just give me a little more time ..."

Father Daughter Sunset

Those Little Moments that Mean So Much to Me

This is actually copied from a second blog I had started in 2011.  (Gypsy in the Me is my 3rd attempt at getting it right.)

Original post dated April 30, 2011.

So I was bringing my daughter up to bed tonight.  And speaking to her only in French.   She understands so well now.

I asked her if she would be speaking to her Pepere in French when she sees him at Christmas (2011).  And she answered "Je ne sais pas" ("I don't know"), "but I will try".  "And Maman?  Do you think we could bring home those Barbies he has just for me?"

And I had no clue what she was talking about and said so.  So she said "You know Maman, those dollies that he bought and put on the fridge for me, with the clothes and everything.  We could take them off the fridge and bring them home."

OK.  So my daughter is 5.  She last saw her grandfather when she was 4 ... in July 2010.  About 9 months ago.  But she remembers these dollies that he has on his fridge for her.  He actually put them up there in October 2009.  He left them there, and when we came back in '10 he said he'd left them there just for her.  Incredible the things that mean something to a child.  I was amazed that she still remembered this today.  I had completely forgotten.  I told her maybe we should leave the Barbie dollies on the fridge so he could remember her when he saw them.

She answered "He doesn't need them.  I will draw him a picture of me and him, and he can remember me that way.  And it's not from the store.  It's right from me.  And he also has me in his heart.  He doesn't really need anything on his fridge."

She really is his descendant.  She got all the best of her Pepere.  And it is so obvious on days like today.  

I remember visiting him when she was about 2.  And she put her little fingers all over his living room windows.  And I apologized profusely and said I would wipe the smudges up once she was in bed.  And he looked at me and said "Why would you erase them?  They're memories.  I'm so lucky.  I'll get to look at them and see her every single day."  

It was one of those moments.  That just meant so much.

KG memento posted on our fridge door ...