the kitchen as sleight of hand

One designer thinks that kitchens are becoming soooo sophisticated that they will ultimately reach a point where they don’t even look like a kitchen — all appliances will be concealed, and we’ll see an increase in leisure items, like recliners, TVs, video games, and so on. So I say, why not just circumvent the whole ordeal of redesigning the kitchen and add a bar fridge to the end of the sofa, and a wall oven under the coffee table, so you can cook your food right there. TV dinners and tray tables anyone?


Another designer declares that with our reduction in cooking skills — and increased reliance on packaged and freeze dried foods – we’ll need something else in the kitchen, like TV, to interest us. Otherwise the kitchen will be a bore.

Another said that the kitchen will continue to evolve as social space, whether it’s used for actual eating or not. What a novel idea, and full circle from the culinary high artform that kitchens are touted to be these days. So if we don’t actually use them for eating, why bother with $6000 stoves, and two wall ovens, and so on and so forth. All you need is a bar fridge (beside the sofa) and a microwave under the coffee table.

Bon appetito!

Tooth Fairies and Other Fantasies

This was something I wrote a few years ago, and wanted to resurrect it because it is SOOOO like my kids still:
My daughter just had three baby teeth removed at the oral surgeon’s, and in addition to the almost $1000 bucks I spent there, I now have to fork over at least $5 to slip under her pillow, so that I can save the teeth to show off at her wedding or first baby shower.


There is definitely a rite of passage that happens, though, when your kids no longer believe in such fantasies. I’m sure my shrewd 8-year-old is well aware there is no tooth fairy, as I’m sure she’s positive that Santa doesn’t exist. After all, she has an eye for design, and proportion and can easily figure out that Santa’s portly dimensions would never fit our slimline-gas insert. And she hardly batted an eye when we claimed on Christmas morning that Santa helped himself to a banana because we’d neglected to put out milk and cookies. In her letter to him, sometime in November, she asked what were the odds she’d get the Scholastics order she placed, informed him that this was just one of so many letters he would receive, and signed her name twice — printed, in case he couldn’t read the cursive.

But we continue to hold on to these fantasies, in a strange tug of war to see who — parent or child — will admit first that there is no such thing.

When my son was about 12 — just two years ago — he had been making noises about Santa that led me to believe that he no longer believed. So when he asked me outright: Mom, is Santa real? I hesitated, but given that I’m Christian and expect him to believe all sorts of things that sound fantastical and impossible through faith, I didn’t want to lie, and set myself up as an unsound authority on such matters.


So I told the truth. No, he isn’t.


But I was unprepared for the reaction — my son burst into tears, and ran to his room, sobbing. When he finally came out of his room — an hour later — he was fine and had worked it out.
What am I saying here? Tread carefully, and think ahead to what you’re going to tell your kids. In retrospect, I’m glad I did tell him, but it was hard to take at the time.

Living a Better Story

I just came across Donald Miller's latest book, “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life” which is about taking stock of the story you are living. After his critical success, Blue Like Jazz, he was a couch potato until two Hollywood producers wanted to do a screenplay of his life. He started thinking about how he was living, and what kind of story that would be, and realized it wasn't the story he wanted to live. So he got off his butt, and made many changes.

My life isn't perfect, but it's not exactly screenplay material either. In many ways, I've been floating along, keeping my head above water, and not causing any ripples, either positively or negatively. My children are doing well, though, so I guess I must be doing something right. My writing is going reasonably well too, so must be doing something right there as well.

But who am I kidding? I hate not having things perfect. I am a certifiable perfectionist, and this is what I need to change, and I need to get real about not being perfect. That may be the real reason I gave this blog the name it has.

Sooooo if I were being honest, and really wanted to live a better story, I'd confess to being a perfectionist, and strive to change those ways.

1) not worry if someone spills something on the floor

2) invite lots of people over for dinner and feed them macaroni and cheese (with asiago of course)

3) stop writing lists of where I want to be in ten years, and consider what I'm doing now to live well and imperfectly (which are kind of the same thing)

4) stop cleaning the house or doing laundry..... hmm, well maybe not