Adventures in Magnetism #1
I found these on the inside of the WC door.
Find, in every room of your house, a partially eaten Granny Smith apple. This is your reality now. Don’t fight it.
In a large bowl sift 2 cups of self-raising flour, 1 cup of brown sugar and a pinch of cinnamon. Add to the dry ingredients 1 tablespoon of vinegar (I use Apple Cider), 6 tablespoons of olive oil and 1 cup of luke-warm water. Mix until combined. Pour half of the mixture into a cake pan that you have either greased or lined or is made of silicone because you are terribly modern. Do this all very quickly, as to not attract the attention of the children. If they do wander into the kitchen, looking for something to eat or ruin, simply hold aloft one of the partially eaten Granny Smith apples and make leading and severe eye contact.
Thinly slice 2 partially eaten Granny Smith apples. Layer these on top of the mixture and sprinkle with brown sugar. Pour the last half of the mixture over top and smooth over with the back of a spoon until it is completely covering the partially eaten Granny Smith apples.
Bake at 175 degrees for 30 minutes, or until a knife comes out clean.
Cool on a wire rack, dust with icing sugar and serve.
Pro-tip: The children will still not eat the apples. But Partially Eaten Partially-Eaten-Apple Shortcake is so meta it’s best not to think about it.
Theo: ‘Mama, I need to go to the Animal Doctor to get my check-up’
Alice: ‘The Animal Doctor? Why, Bubba?’
Theo: ‘So they can fix the Chickenpox’.
Spend the evening in charming company. Drink cheap beer and expensive whisky and cider from Sweden. Solve all the worlds problems. Dance in your chairs. Tell each other all your stories until you run out and have to tell all of your secrets. Laugh until you cry and leave before you get thrown out. The radio will play your songs all the way home.
Fall into bed in your clothes. Sleep soundly for two hours and then fitfully for another two. Be unable to get back to sleep after 6am. Using only one eye, check your horoscope from your phone. Make sure to cross-reference it with the Person You Have a Crush On’s to see if today will bode well for postitve vibrations between you. This will also enable you to feel closer to them in the likely event that you are not speaking/they do not know you exsist. Feel free to assume a more preferable horoscope if yours is no good. It is important not to dwell on things when you are in your condition. Get the hell out of bed.
It is critical that you ignore your hangover at this stage. Any attention given to it will only increase its power. This phase is called ‘Action’. Clean your kitchen with great focus. This will serve you later in the day when your hangover evolves. Only when your kitchen is spotless should you allow yourself pause, albeit briefly, to swear and hold your face in your hands and vow never again. Now snap out of it. Make an enormous cup of very sweet tea and wait until it is lukewarm before drinking it. Your body will be very sensitive to liquids at this stage, so you need something non-threathening. DO NOT SIT DOWN. If you stop moving in these early stages you will never get up again. Think of your constant action as penance for posioning your temple.
It is now very important that you go and swim in a very cold ocean. Make it happen. March in with great determination. Do not pussyfoot around. The hardest part will be submurging your bits – this will be unpleasant but it will take your mind off your hangover. Get your head under. What you are doing here is confusing your body into not knowing which of the horrors it is experencing is worse. The cold or the hangover. The cold will win, I promise. The longer you are able to stay in the freezing water, the less hungover you will feel. This is science. When your body is pleasantly numb exit the water. Again, it is important that you do not stop yet. Drink the entire bottle of water you have brought with you and drive directly to the supermarket in your togs.
Do your grocery shopping. Productivity is the perfect thing for you in this state. The key to this, again, is DO NOT STOP. You are a perfect, unfeeling robot of efficency right now. Keep it moving.
The next phase is called ‘Peckish’. Once you have finished your grocery shopping, reward yourself with a very cold coke with lots of ice. It is important to keep your body thoroughly chilled. This will not only serve in assisting you to burn off all the calories of the alcohol you consumed, it will keep you at maximum freshness. By this stage of your hangover you will be ready to eat something. Keep in mind however, that once you begin eating today, you will not be able to stop. You will get stuck in that endless quest for the food item or product that will fix you. No such thing exsists. Bake a cake. Eat a huge meal. Eat a tiny meal. Have a snack. Eat an orange. None of this will fulfil you. But it is part of the process.
Now you are in the final phase; ‘Reward’. You got up…and cleaned your kitchen! You went swimming…in the ocean! You went and did the groceries…on a Sunday morning! All with a raging hangover! You are so good! Look at you! You are a saint. You are now In Credit. Send a few messages you’d usually regret…if you weren’t so virtuous! Eat the entire cake you baked…because you have excercised! Make an elaborate dinner…because you did the groceries! And finally collapse in a heap…because you haven’t stopped all day!
Try it out and report back your findings. Good luck and good livers.
I spend an inordinate amount of time singing to the children. This is often not of my own volition.
Theo: ‘Sing the dog song!’
Mabel: ‘YEAH, SING IT MAMA!’
Alice: ‘How Much is That Doggy in the Window?’, I ask.
‘NO! NOT THAT ONE!’, they roar in unison.
Alice: ‘…what other dog songs are there?’
I know where this is leading.
Theo: ‘The Dog Song!’
Mabel: ‘THE DOG SONG, MAMA!’
Alice: ‘Oh. You mean, as always, The Elmo Song. But about a dog?’
‘YES!’
(The things I have sung this song about, I couldn’t begin to tell you. Well, I could. We would meet at a bar and talk about our days; you’d tell me about the project you were working on before we combed the emails The Person You Flirt With had sent you for cryptic nuances. And then, when it was my turn I’d say, ‘Well, today I sung the shit out of The Elmo Song. For 8 hours. Oh, you don’t know it? It goes like this…’)
Alice: ‘This is the song, la la la la, The Dog Song. This is the song, LA LA LA LA, THE DOG SONG!’
Alice: ‘Now…what do dogs like?’
Theo: ‘Food!’
Mabel: ‘STICKERS!’
Theo: ‘No, no, NO, Mae-Mae! Dogs DO NOT like stickers!’
Mabel: ‘Oh.’
Alice: ‘And why not? I thought that was a good suggestion.’
Theo: ‘Because the dog has claws! They aren’t like hands! He couldn’t get them off! He wouldn’t like stickers!’
Alice: ‘Oh, yes. I see. But don’t you think the dog could just enjoy looking at the stickers?’
Theo: ‘…But…his claws!’
Mabel: ‘…the dog likes flowers now.’
Alice: ‘Are we all happy with that?’
‘YES!’
And we take it from the top.
For the rest of the day.
We always have the radio on in the kitchen. We listen to some old time a.m station. It soothes me.
Harry Belafonte’s ‘Banana Boat’ invariably comes on once a week. It is one of the songs the children and I can agree on. Hearing him sing ‘Hides the deadly/Black Tarantula’ makes me happy in a way it is hard to explain. It’s just one of those songs that makes you feel better no matter how you are feeling. It is worth listening to veritable hours of ads for life insurance and naturopathic treatments for erectile dysfunction just to hear that opening Day-O while I am loading the dishwasher or neutralising whichever turf war has broken out between the insurgents.
Theo: ‘I like that song. It’s by the Wiggles.’
It is bed time. But someone had a nap today.
Mabel: ‘Mama, lie down. Close your eyes.’
I comply. She pries them open.
Mabel: ‘Say you like it! Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you. I’m the Christmas Mae-Mae. Open your present, Mama. It’s a flower! Here, this is Theos present. No, don’t open it! Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you. Look it’s my bum!’
Get swept up in New Years Resolutions.
Somehow commit to doing only things that will guarantee to bring with them an abundance of stress and washing up. Vow ridiculous things that, perhaps, in the haze of champagne and idealism, actually made sense.
Pledge to get more creative about breakfast! Be resolute; mostly that little good will come from this. That now, instead of flinging toast at the children as they sit, dazzled by whatever electronic entertainment you allow until you are rightly caffienated, you will torture yourself to create an opportunity for Wholesome Family Togetherness. But that’s parenthood for you.
The reality of this lofty goal will see you storming about the kitchen in your undergarments; bleary-eyed as you bang all the pots and pans together, as if trying to cast a spark from the rubbing together of two sticks. You will fall over the cat and shake your fist at the toaster, that haughty bastard. You will yearn for the days when breakfast meant a coffee and a fag.
Then you will brush the hair from your eyes, drink a cold cup of tea with three sugars and smash out something delicious and beautiful, because you adore your children and they deserve the very best. Even though it is taking years off your life.
Enter:
Polenta Three Ways (Hello, freaky google searchers. And welcome.)
Have no idea how to cook polenta. Place a pot of water on the element until at a rolling boil. Then unceremoniously dump a serving of polenta in there too. I went with a 3:1 ratio, water to polenta, because it felt right, you know? It worked out okay, I think. Look, I have no idea. Stir with great vigour over heat for 10 minutes or so, until the polenta has combined and scrapes freely from the side of the pot. It should be like a single substance now, a beautiful combined entity. It will taste like nothing. It’s consistancy should be like that of a very smooth scrambled egg, though, which as a Vegan is exciting (our lives our dull, but our karma is good).
ONE:
Polenta with button mushrooms, black beans, tomato and coriander.
Season the bejesus outta that thing. I added a heaping tablespoon of Olivio and got liberal with the salt and pepper. Listen, polenta is never going to be the star of the show. But it will hold its end up if you treat it right.
Pro-tip: Serve this as brunch to those who mock your Veganism. This shit is delicious. And won’t leave you feeling burdened like porridge.
TWO:
Polenta with brown sugar, soy milk and bananas.
Pro-tip: The children will love this. A great option for gluten-free baby breakfasts.
THREE:
Pink Polenta!
Pro-tip: Natural pink food colouring can be made by grating a fresh beetroot and the pressing the juice out through a sieve! The taste is undiscernable, but the colour is POW!
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Wrangle your disinterested children away from the television. Ignore their bitter cries for Bob the Builder and bloody boring old bloody jam on bloody boring old toast. Lay before them a sumptious feast; prepared with love and minimal expletives, considering the conditions. Stand over them expectantly, awaiting the appreciation you so deserve. Keep waiting. Keep on waiting, sister.
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