Eating crow

The best part about reading that last entry is realizing how much I sound like my father.

I'm a stranger here myself
Over the years, my friends and I have joked about the trials of childrearing and the various frights we forsee as our children age: strangers, cars, boys, cars again (but in a different way), college tuition. But what is never discussed is the greatest threat, the one that no one can articulate. Which is why, after 13 years of always having an excellent reason for why or why not to do something, I find myself nose to nose with my daughter, all rationality cast aside, hoping like hell that she gets through this phase unscathed because I am no help.

The frustrating part is that I can't explain what frightens me. She has found a group of friends at her school, a far more worldly crowd than that to which she used to belong. Kids of the hair-dye and piercing set. She says they are helping her figure out "who she is," whatever that is. Here's the thing: I was friends with those kids when I was her age, too. And now we're all a little older and mostly still friends. So why do these children frighten me? My guess is that I see a hollow protest against conformity that ends up being its own conformity. Throw into the mix some poor decision-making concerned controlled substances and you have kids that seem to be a great waste. They aren't raging against the machine, their raging against the easiest target, the one that costs the least to maintain (my god, kids with a social policy that mirror's Bush's foreign policy). I have to guess that we were that shallow and tunnel-viewed at that age, too, but how did I learn otherwise? How can I show her?

Married life

How can he possibly think my tea smells worse than his Bac-Os? What?

Treat me like a piece of meat
A photo journey through culinary love, loss, transformation and redemption

It all started back in October when Justin came to visit at which time we lamented the abundance of beautiful food here in the west, but the paucity of Barbeque Joint-like pork. I was reminded again at the end of November when recalling the swell pig-pickin' held in honor of my friends' birthdays a year previous.
And then the meat went on sale.

Who can know what, besides collegial homesickness, made me think I should buy a six pound shoulder roast, but there it was. So I took it home with me. A bit of research later, it looked like this:

And six hours later, with a little homemade sauce, it looked like this:


And when added with some cornbread and sweet potatoes, looked like this:



I was disappointed with the results however. The meat wasn't falling off the bone tender like I was dreaming it should. I resolved to try again. But in the mean time, what to do with multiple pounds of leftovers and a quart of sauce?

It turns out that the perfect use for imperfect barbeque is a pork pot pie made of leftover pulled pork, sweet potatoes and onions, with a little extra vinegar sauce cooked in. It is also the perfect foil for today, the 23rd rainy day in a row.

On the right truck

So we carry on. One of the hardest things about grieving is the funhouse magnification of your own grief that one must endure as one cares for others. I am tired and upset about Casey's death, but the knowlege that my daughter is in similar pain and that Casey's husband is hurting still worse, amplifies my own hurt and sense of frustration. You find yourself running around in little circles because your body cries for action to drain away some of the angry energy and little circles is all you can think of at the time. Bleah.

My friend's husband was asked to arrange a viewing even though his and her preference was to avoid that sort of thing. Still, some folks needed it, which made me think of how strangely we individually deal with death. I freely admit that my family is funeral-adverse (and rather burial and gravestone adverse--genealogists hate us), so I don't fully understand the concept behind any funeral-like production. My personal hope is that everyone will spend a morning remembering me in the way that seems most appropriate to them. Which is why we will be bowling and drinking beer and eating macaroni and cheese directly from the pan this weekend.