Knowledge Is Power

The motto of David and John’s elementary school was “Knowledge Is Power.” I loved that as soon as I heard it.  I mean, what kid doesn’t aspire to more power when someone is always telling you “It’s time for bed,” “You’ve been out in the snow long enough” or “No more candy.”  The message is, if you want to take charge of your life someday, memorize those times tables, get the state capitals straight and finish that book report on “James and the Giant Peach.” How true!   As I come to the end of 2011, I’m taking stock of all the knowledge I’ve picked up this year.

For starters, I’ve learned if the toenails on your big toes die, it takes two months for them to fall off and five more months before they grow back and are long enough to be trimmed.  I’ve learned if I buy Christmas cards with glitter on them, even just a little glitter, I'll spend the holiday season with sparkles in my tablecloths, my dish towels, my fleece pullovers and my egg nog.  I’ve also learned there is a limit to how many cutting boards you can fit into one kitchen drawer before it gets hopelessly jammed.

I learned that, even when you have known someone since kindergarten and been roommates for 40 years, there are still some surprises left.  A few weeks ago, PAUL THREW OUT A RADIO.  I couldn’t have been more shocked if he had said to me, “I’ll take care of all the Christmas shopping this year.”  He has this thing about audio equipment – stereo speakers, turntables, records and, most of all, radios – and, to my knowledge, he still has every piece of equipment he has ever owned. After all, you never know when you might need radios that only crackle and hiss, records garbled with skips and screeches and disabled speakers the size of file cabinets.  I gave up nominating audio candidates for the trash long ago.  Granted, the discardee was a digital clock radio that was hard to tune and has not kept time properly since 1994, but I was worried. I guess Paul’s all right since his temperature was normal and the pupils of his eyes were the same size, but I’m still keeping an eye on him.

Although I’ve been cooking a lot over the past 40 years, I have learned some things this year that Martha Stewart, the Barefoot Contessa and my mom never told me. For example, flour and sugar bags look and feel a lot alike and, if, in the middle of multi-tasking, you dump the sugar into the flour canister (or vice versa), it’s a real mess.  Also, if your rice cooker has the dry heaves and, when the timer goes off, the rice is still crunchy, you probably forgot to put in the water.

While my mom says you’re more likely to get cut with a dull knife, I learned that you get the fastest, deepest cuts with a sharp one.  Somehow, I spent most of Thanksgiving with bandaged fingers – souvenirs of  chopping vegetables for minestrone soup, cubing bread for dressing, slicing apples for pie and mincing onions for just about everything with newly sharpened knives, courtesy of our butcher shop.  I learned to do a headcount every so often to be sure my bandaids hadn’t disappeared into the turkey, the mashed potatoes or the pumpkin pie filling.

I’ve learned that, once you’ve established a hostile relationship with a car (my post, “Why Can’t We Be Friends?”), you can’t let your guard down.  Early in December, we came home late from a holiday party and in my hurry to get inside to the bathroom, I apparently left the door of the Lexus slightly, and I do mean SLIGHTLY, ajar.  The door stayed open all night and, next morning, the battery was dead.  With the holidays coming, you might have thought the car would give me a little break but, NO. So, Paul missed his early morning run and it took forever for AAA to recharge the battery. Okay, I did make an uncomplimentary remark about the Lexus in a recent post but I didn’t think our garage had internet access.

I’ve learned that 60+ is not a good time of life to start on some big housecleaning jag. That Lysol tub and tile cleaner is strong stuff – so strong it took out the good, royal blue polo shirt I was wearing along with the mold in the shower – I’ll never try that again (and I don’t mean wearing the royal blue polo shirt.)   The reason the touch pad on our laptop stopped working is that I made the mistake of dusting it and accidentally hit the button that turns the touch pad off and on, which I didn’t even know was there.  The Geek Squad guy who fixed this for me promised not to tell my kids but I forgot to ask him the purpose of a button like that.

I’ve learned not to accidentally leave a frozen block of vegetable soup on low heat when I go out for a three hour walk, unless I want a pot containing black concrete flecked with bits of carrot, corn and green bean.  This mishap turned out to be a knowledge bonanza, however, as I also learned from the internet that you can save the pan by boiling a mixture of salt, baking soda and water in it.

Unfortunately, I’ve also found that you can’t trust everything you learn on the internet.  When I spilled red wine on our beige love seat, my frantic online search for remedies came up with salt, again. Heavily salting the stain and leaving it overnight was supposed to draw out the red wine. I visualized waking up to a miraculously cleaned cushion, but, instead, I woke up to a pink, salt-encrusted mess.  The dry cleaner just laughed.  He made some progress but the fabric still has a faint pink tinge and feels like it was left out at the beach all summer.  I had to turn the cushion over and that loveseat is now a “White Wine Only” zone.

Saving the best for last, here’s my favorite bit of new knowledge from 2011.  If you want to put real pizazz into your Halloween party (or any other outdoor party), drop a can of Reddi Whip on the pavement.  It instantly turns into a little whirling dervish, spewing whipped cream droplets all over baskets of chips, sandwich trays, paper plates and napkins, shoes and hair. What an icebreaker!  The only downside is that, if your car is parked nearby, you’ll need to hit the carwash the next day.

So, as 2011 draws to a close, I may not be thinner, have fewer wrinkles around my eyes, or be better at remembering why I went into the laundry room, but I do feel more powerful.  Here’s hoping you have a powerful New Year.

P.S. In the spirit of full disclosure, here are some things I have not learned this year – how to get my wristwatch off of military time, how to tie a scarf, or how to text, store and find phone numbers or do anything except make calls from my cell phone.  I also have not learned how to keep New Year’s resolutions.  Maybe in 2012.

P.P.S. Thanks to Megan for the photo of Willem, the Brooklyn Powerhouse

Tis The Season

It’s the time of year for fun things like Christmas trees and cookie baking and surprises. It’s also the season for not-so-fun things like addressing holiday cards,  The Chipmunks’ Christmas album and, especially, running errands. 

If you read my post “Park and Shop,” you know I’m a world-class errand runner with extensive on-the-job training and millions of car miles and sales receipts in my resume.  This year, however, the pre Christmas rush of busy streets and crowded parking lots is getting to me. What keeps me going is the music of the 50’s and 60’s on my car’s Sirius Radio.

The Sirius Radio connection started out to be Paul’s birthday present two years ago. Unfortunately, the control box would have had to be installed right out there on the dashboard of the Lexus rather than stashed away neatly in some little compartment – SO unaesthetic!! That was a deal breaker for Paul who has neatness issues (my post “The Secret Lives of Dentists” explains this) and for the Lexus which has snottiness issues (my post “Why Can’t We Be Friends?” explains that.)

My van and I don’t have any issues.  So, while I’m navigating from Macy’s, to Kroger’s, to Target, to Barnes and Noble, to Dick’s Sporting Goods, to the Party Store, to Bed, Bath and Beyond, and beyond, I can sing along to the music and enjoy the tunes, the lyrics and the memories.

I can count on getting a lift from the Supremes – the ultimate feel-good group.  On the radio, their music absolutely shimmers. I can’t see them, but I know they always shimmered, too - slinky, sparkly gowns, shiny hair, glittery eyelids and glossy lips.  And, what I like best is the Supremes never fail to sound upbeat and happy, even after some guy has ditched them as in “Where Did Our Love Go?” or “Reflections” or “The Happening.” (Click  The Supremes and see for yourself.)

Surf and drag racing music is also fun and I’ve always loved the Beach Boys.  I picture them rolling out of bed, bare-footed, wearing faded t-shirts with stretched out necks and frayed cutoffs, sun-bleached blonde hair in their eyes, swigging milk right out of the carton, belching, and, then, stumbling through another chorus of “Barbara Ann.” (Click this link to hear them: Beach Boys )  Raffish but wholesome, they take you on a “Surfin’ Safari,” urge you to “Be True to Your School” and wonder what life will be like “When I Grow Up to Be a Man.” (By now, they must know the answers to the questions in that song including, “Will my kids be proud or think their old man’s really a square?”)

Then, there’s “I Can’t Help Falling In Love With You,” sung slowly and suggestively as only Elvis could do it. (Click for Elvis) That song, and other like it, brings back memories of junior high parties and dances. To launch me into adolescent social life, my mom sent me to weekly social dancing lessons with a bunch of other 12 and 13-year-olds - boys wearing clip-on ties and girls wearing anklets and white gloves.  Two years of lessons taught me important stuff like how to meet people in a receiving line, how to accept punch and cookies from a dance partner and how to do the jitterbug, the waltz and the fox trot.  I went to a lot of eighth grade parties and never once did I find a receiving line or punch and cookies or someone who wanted to foxtrot.  What I wished I had learned was how to dance in low light with a partner holding me so close that I couldn't watch my feet.

There is so much entertainment in these oldies that sometimes I have to wait until a song like “American Pie” is over before I tackle Hobby Lobby.    I get a laugh out of the names of the groups like the Orlons, the Ronettes, the Chiffons and the Shirelles.  I love the politically incorrect songs you’d never record today like “A-Hab the A-Rab,” “You Better Come Home, Speedy Gonzales” and “Johnny Get Angry” – with lyrics like “Let me know that you’re the boss” and “I want a brave man, I want a cave man,” music that Gloria Steinem could really relate to. 

The Mamas and the Papas’ “California Dreaming” takes me back to my first all-night work session on the high school annual. The Fifth Dimension’s “Wedding Bell Blues” reminds me of Friday nights at the sorority house when everyone was showering, powdering, perfuming, hot rollering and dressing for dates.  And every time I hear “We Gotta Get Out of This Place,” I feel the strobe-lit pulsation of loud music and tightly packed bodies at college parties.  Those were the days . . . I think.

This summer, a disillusioning and frightening encounter with the musical past confirmed the value of radio when it comes to oldies.  I was with a group of women friends on what one husband called a “Cat’s away weekend” when, late one evening, “Malt Shop Memories,” a PBS special about music of the 50’s and early 60’s came on T.V. 

We were just in time to see and hear Frankie Avalon who was cute but definitely flat, and, with my musical ear, if I can tell he’s flat then he’s a pancake – no, make that a crepe. Fortunately he and most of the other guys talked a lot of their lyrics, but the talk wasn’t always on key either.  Bobby Rydell had the best voice and moves of the group but he’s gotten a little fuzzy around the edges like the rest of us.  The biggest disappointment was Fabian who has a size 25 neck and was unrecognizable. He and the rest of those formerly sexy Italian boys from Philly have apparently gone overboard on cannelloni and cannoli.(The photo at the left shows Frankie, Bobby and Fabian with Dick Clark - the Malt Shop photo is at above.)   My friend Carol just kept shaking her head and muttering, “That is NOT Fabian.”  From beginning to end, “Malt Shop Memories” was something you might call “sweet” but certainly not what you would call “pretty.”  Part way through the show I took out my contacts which helped a little.

The biggest surprise of all came at the end when Lesley Gore burst onto the stage. I always thought of her as an annoying whiner (“It’s My Party and I’ll Cry if I Want To”) with a snarky, vengeful streak ("Now It’s Judy’s Turn To Cry.”)  Well, she was outstanding that night – right on key (a welcome change) and to top it off, she pranced around the stage like a 30-year-old or at least like Mick Jagger at Super Bowl XL.  I’d like to get hold of whatever Lesley’s taking.

After that, I decided to stick with Sirius Radio, especially since I can’t take the “Malt Shop” with me when I run my errands, thank goodness. I’m counting on the entire crowd from Buddy Holly to Ricky Nelson, from Simon and Garfunkel to Sonny and Cher, from the Monkees to the Turtles to the Beatles to the Animals, from Dionne Warwick to Connie Francis to Petula Clark, and from the Big Bopper to Little Anthony, Little Richard, Little Stevie Wonder and Little Eva to stick with me through all my holiday preparations this year.  And I’m hoping that when I’m 85 or 90, those songs of the 50’s and 60’s will still be around.  I’m going to need them.

Soup of the Evening, Beautiful Soup

With November’s hint of winter in the air, I’m thinking a lot about soup.  Paul and I made two different kinds this weekend and I just bought the ingredients for several more batches today.  Soup is comforting and delicious, it comes in a variety of flavors and styles (thick or thin, chunky or smooth) and it’s not that hard to make. Even Nana K. who was never much of a cook (See “A Tale of Two Nanas”) could fill her blender with chopped up celery, cucumbers and onions and V-8 juice and immediately serve her favorite summertime treat, “Gestapo” soup. 

When I was sick, I always could count on my mom to make a soothing batch of chicken soup, aka Jewish penicillin.  She also made a terrific vegetable soup with soft meatballs which I was hoping she would bring over when I had my wisdom teeth taken out. Instead she made her chunky ham soup, which didn’t work out that great. (Mom doesn’t relate to any physical ailment which she has not personally experienced – she still doesn’t believe my sister really couldn’t walk with a broken ankle.)

Paul and I started soup production on a grand scale when we lived in our first house and had a kitchen big enough to make it and a freezer big enough to keep it over the winter.  Our minestrone soup recipe was hearty and tasty with enough vegetables to meet the required 5 servings a day and then some. We bought storage containers and a 28 quart soup pot from a kitchen supply store and turned out huge batches every fall. When I saw that array of full soup containers lined up in my freezer, I felt like a contented squirrel.

After a few years, we teamed up with our neighbors, splitting the work and the end product, although the work was more of a three-way split.  Gail would cheerfully tackle any assignment from onions to parsley to carrots, and, unlike me, she wasn’t annoyed by Paul’s lesson in correct carrot peeling.  Tim, however, had a history of work-related injuries and, after dealing with a particularly tough bunch of celery, he retired to the couch to nurse his blisters.

Minestrone remains a winter staple at our house but we’ve branched out in many directions.  Split pea soup was our first venture. David loved it so much, he learned to make it himself and, as a second grader, offered it for sale in his school auction.  When we reach the end of the Christmas HoneyBaked ham, it’s hard to decide whether to use the bone in split pea, black bean or navy bean soup – a problem that I often solve with my friend Jean’s 12 Bean Soup recipe which gets the post-holiday season off to a roaring start.

Of course, when it comes to tomato soup, it’s hard to beat good old Campbell’s and now it comes “Heart Healthy,” which means you can have Graeters double chocolate chip ice cream for dessert.  I wasn’t even looking to make my own tomato soup when a neighbor brought hers to our Halloween street party.  WOW!  I’ve been using her recipe ever since although I do toss in a can of Campbell’s which keeps me from feeling guilty and disloyal.

Like Sir Galahad, I conducted a long and arduous quest for my personal Holy Grail – a good mock turtle soup recipe.  Mock turtle soup is primarily a Cincinnati German dish and there are as many variations on the mock turtle theme as there are for chili or turkey stuffing.  Vinegar, catsup, Worcestershire sauce and ground beef are in most recipes but the additional ingredients vary wildly.  Mock turtle soup can be flavored with cloves, marjoram, pickling spices, Ginger Snaps or savory, bolstered with dry sherry, Bordeaux, white wine, whipping cream or canned gravy (yuck!), and finished off with lemon peel and/or hardboiled eggs.  Needless to say, mock turtle soup does not contain turtle meat or any other authentic turtle parts (If you wonder what a Mock Turtle looks like, see the drawing on the left.)

While I’ve been successful at making everything from Carrot Orange to Minted Spinach and Green Pea to Potato Leek Soup, I do remember one spectacularly disappointing failure.  I wanted to do something special with the big tin of prime crabmeat my parents had brought back from the Outer Banks of North Carolina so I tried a recipe for Crabmeat Gumbo. After most of the ingredients were in the soup pot, the gumbo looked and smelled wonderful.  All I had to do was add the final, authentic touch – okra, fresh from Findlay Market.  One second after the okra was in the pot, however, my Crabmeat Gumbo turned into a steaming cauldron of rubber cement, hanging in gluey strands from my big wooden spoon – a prime candidate for the garbage disposal.  Nana K, a native of Alabama, always talked about how great okra was so there must be a better way to prepare it but I have no idea what that would be.

You wouldn’t expect a post about soup to end with a confession but this one does. The night everyone brought a different soup to dinner club, we were the ones who brought the container labeled “Latin Fiesta Soup.”  Nobody could figure out where it came from; and, although it looked pretty funky with its uncooked macaroni, banana peppers and green olives floating in a “broth” the color of Mountain Dew, I think several people tasted it to be polite - they’re all still alive so, no harm done.  Anyone who knows Paul will believe me when I say this was not my idea.  With Thanksgiving almost here, I also have a second, small confession to make.  I will have to throw away the turkey carcass again this year unless somebody can rescue it by sending me a good recipe for turkey soup ASAP.

“Alice In Wonderland” is the source of this post’s title – click below to hear Gene Wilder as the Mock Turtle singing the praises of soup.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDG73IAO5M8

Just Eat It

At 17 months, Willem is working his way up the food chain and reminding me how trends in food have changed with each generation.  For example, he eats spinach, mango and pea puree which you squeeze out of a tube like toothpaste, onto a spoon.  This wonder product contains super grain salba, whatever that is, plus omega 3’s and is “packed with antioxidants” along with fiber and protein and is organic and gluten free to boot. That’s an impressive resume.  When you compare it to what I ate growing up, combined with exposure to DDT, mercury and second hand smoke, it’s a wonder I didn’t grow a second head like some of those mutant frogs they find in polluted backwaters.

My mom was and is a great cook (See my post “Food, Glorious Food”) and made a lot of mostly healthy meals from scratch, but the 50’s were the era of processed foods.  We ate sugared cereals like Frosted Flakes, Sugar Pops, Sugar Smacks and Cocoa Puffs, and we buried cereals like Cheerios and Shredded Wheat in sugar ourselves.  We ate bacon and sausage for breakfast, hotdogs, baloney and chicken liver (aka braunschweiger) for lunch and ham or Spam for dinner. Turkey sandwiches only made an appearance the day after Thanksgiving.  Miracle whip and Mayonnaise popped up in everything from salads to sandwiches to casseroles and the concept of lite mayo (or lite anything) wasn't even on the drawing board.

My mom served vegetables and a salad every night, but Jello with mandarin oranges and pineapple counted as a salad in the 50’s.  Tossed salads were made of iceberg lettuce which we now know has the same nutritional value as shredded tissue paper with salad dressing. 

At least we didn’t go through soft drinks the way kids do today.  Sports drinks like Gatorade hadn’t been invented.  In fact the only energy drink we ever had was an eight-ounce Coke on Friday night and it worked like a charm.  Naturally we did go a little crazy on special occasions – picnics with other families on Memorial day or the Fourth of July were a time for sparklers, wiffle ball and draining as many bottles of Dana  root beer, red pop, orange pop, and lime-green pop as possible before the adults started counting the empties.  One year, my dad’s high school friend, Bud, a W.C.Fields knock-off, told my brother, “If you take any more of those, I’m going to dump the rest in your dad’s gas tank.”  And he meant it.

In the 70’s, there was a lot written about the ill effects of too much salt, sugar, and chemicals like nitrites in kid foods, especially baby food.  I took it seriously and followed a book called, “Feed Me, I’m Yours” to what now seems like crazy extremes.  I made my own granola and edible Play Doh.  I cooked and pureed carrots, spinach, sweet potatoes and peas, laid out blops on a cookie sheet, froze them and then stacked up the frozen blops to use as needed. That worked well except for the time I used a knife to pry the frozen blops apart and wound up in the emergency room with a stab wound in my hand. 

I couldn’t puree any meat to a texture David would eat except chicken livers (the real thing, not braunschweiger) which I put in spaghetti sauce.  I didn’t serve bacon, baloney, ham, sausage or any processed meats except nitrite-free turkey hot dogs from the health food store. And, I now acknowledge that I was pathologically obsessed with David not starting on sugar at an early age to the point that, the first time someone gave him a cookie in a store, I grabbed it and popped it into my mouth. 32 years later, I still get a hot flash of embarrassment just thinking about that scene.  And, by the way, the theory that kids who don’t have sugar as toddlers won’t develop a taste for cookies, cake and ice cream later in life is totally bogus.

For today’s baby, eating combines gourmet foods and natural ingredients, beginning with the bib.  When Willem started eating real food, I was excited to find the best piece of baby gear on the Internet - a flexible plastic bib which catches everything that comes out of the mouth, rolls over the chin and heads for the floor. These bibs look and work exactly as they did when David and John used them, but now they have a pedigree a mile long – no PVC’s, BPA’s, Phthalates’s (look that up in Wikipedia), lead or anything even mildly toxic. I thought it was ridiculous to make a bib safe enough for a kid to eat until Megan sent us this YouTube video last winter. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cOMfkZ2xZk

Willem’s culinary adventures started with Baby Mum-Mum Selected Superior Rice Rusks.  He has segued from pro-biotic oatmeal, to macaroni and cheese with butternut squash sauce to chicken mango risotto.  As a child, my acquaintance with delicacies from exotic cultures was limited to Chef-Boy-AR-Dee Ravioli and Chun King Chow Mein.  Willem, however, has savored couscous, hummus on bagel, black beans on crackers, pureed mango and pasta with both basil and sun dried tomato pesto and he isn’t even two yet!

It’s a little overwhelming, and I was worried about how we’d tempt Willem’s highly developed palate when he comes to visit us again.  Which Kroger’s carries sushi or dim sum or escargot in the baby food aisle? On our latest trip to New York, it was a relief to see him devouring cream cheese and turkey sandwiches.  And, apparently, it was love at first bite when he met up with Mrs. Paul’s fish sticks at his friend Mason’s house in Connecticut so the pressure's off.

Click this link for the source of this post's title   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Za_hBk8gdZU

Yard Sales

At this stage of my life, I find myself doing things I thought I’d never do like shopping for eye wrinkle cream or going to bed at 10:30 on a Saturday night or eating a low-sodium turkey sandwich with low-sodium and low-fat swiss and lite mayo.

Now, unbelievably, I find myself ready to put in a good word about yard sales.  I admit that, in the past, I’ve viewed them as blights upon the landscape – really just heaps of trash with price stickers on them.  Yard sales were something you just had to put up with like a crying baby on an airplane or a woman with a fistful of coupons ahead of you in the grocery check-out line or getting crowns on your teeth.

We got an early, bad exposure to yard sales with a next door neighbor who ran one every weekend for a year or more.  On Saturday mornings, Bill would cover his front lawn with tables of glass and ceramic vases, piles of chipped china, boxes of rusting tools and kitchen utensils, mounds of discarded clothing and shoes,  and stray chairs, desks and bookshelves.

It drove Paul so crazy that, one day, after disgustedly surveying Bill’s merchandise, he said, “Why don’t you just put that stuff out for the trash?”

The indignant reply, “This is all GOOD stuff!” summed up the motivation for every yard sale aficionado.

Soon Paul began fantasizing about making a film short in which he would drive up to yard sales in the neighborhood and, at each one, offer to buy everything they had to sell.  Then he would motion a gigantic garbage truck in and throw every last tea kettle, roller skate, lamp and Encyclopedia Britannica into the truck.   He relished the thought of the camera recording shock and awe on the faces of the sellers as an energetic trash masher chewed, chopped and pulverized all of their “good stuff.”  I had not planned to accompany him on that film shoot, which, fortunately, never got past the planning stage.

Later, when the David and John were young, Paul’s mother showed me the possibilities of yard sales.  In order to have toys on hand for her many grandchildren, she scoured the neighborhoods, finding things David and John loved like a Fisher Price airplane, a schoolhouse and puzzles.   She got a little carried away when it came to buying used bikes, however, and amassed a huge collection of derelict two-wheelers in all styles, colors and sizes for the lake house, which gave the entire family plenty of hands-on experience at replacing chains and changing tires.

Without telling Paul, I checked out some sales myself, scoring things like a Fisher Price garage, a big yellow truck full of blocks, a toy treehouse and a metal board with alphabet letter magnets. I couldn’t justify buying the boys a play kitchen at full price but I found a toy stove and refrigerator for $10 at a yard sale.  Sure, they were scratch and dent models but the boys didn’t care, plus they were stocked with play food including plastic apples and bananas which doubled as hand grenades and guns. (See my post “Arms and the Boys.”)

I never got around to having my own yard sale – after all, I could only push Paul so far. Besides, when my friend Tina held a yard sale in the upscale Chicago neighborhood of Winnetka, she attracted a horde of rapacious bargain hunters, like a reincarnation of Genghis Khan and the Mongols.  Her 4-year-old daughter Claire was so enchanted by the crowd and the excitement that she didn’t want it to end.  She had brought out and sold most of Tina’s designer lingerie and was back in the house emptying Tina’s sweater drawers when her parents caught on and cut short her brilliant sales career.

One September when David and John were in grade school, I had nightmares about all the new toys, books and games that were about to descend on our house for the boys’ November and December birthdays and Christmas.  (See my post, “Toy Story.”)  Finally, I issued a Mother Edict - no more stuff was coming into the house until some stuff went out - and suggested they have their own yard sale.  It worked out great – the boys cleared out toys that were past prime, made some money and had fun bargaining with the buyers – or mostly great, although John immediately plowed his profits into a PlayMobile castle and, when the kids next door left with a wagonload of David and John’s old junk, I was afraid their mom would never speak to me again.

Now, as a grandparent, yard sales have become my new best friends.  You can find necessities like car seats, high chairs and porta-cribs at great prices, along with tons of toys.  While I had saved David and John’s Legos, PlayMobiles, matchbox cars, trains and big metal trucks, I didn’t have much in the way of toddler toys for Willem’s visits this past summer.  Thanks to yard sales, The Boss played with a fire truck, a farm, a Noah’s ark, a push and ride toy and a big car instead of my food processor, Paul's golf clubs and our ceramic tulips.

While it wasn’t apparent to Paul, I did exercise discrimination in what I bought.   I said “No” to some great deals - a grocery cart (only $1), a lawnmower (only $2), and a tool bench (big and flashy) because a Brooklyn baby has groceries delivered, doesn’t see his Dad cut the grass and wouldn’t know what to do with a tool bench except climb on it.  I also risked being labeled a “No-Fun Nana” when I turned down an electric riding car and, in fact, nixed everything electric or battery powered.   I neglected to do my homework, however, when I bought a toy garage with all sorts of cool features like an elevator, a car lift, ramps, a tow truck and a gas pump.  What I didn’t see but what Willem saw first was the battery-operated sound panel – just push the buttons and you get a phone ringing, gas pumps dinging, an engine revving and tires squealing.  Caveat Emptor.

Now, Megan has been making the rounds of “stoop sales,” the Brooklyn equivalent of yard sales, because there’s no point to pay full price for toys that the Boss may only play with for a week or two.  Recently, she brought home a toy stroller which saved Willem, who had been snatching them from other toddlers in the park, from a life of crime.  She also scored hits with a toy recycling truck and a fire truck, which Willem embraced like it was a newborn baby.

With Christmas coming, I’d suggest she focus on finding what Willem loved the most when he stayed with us this summer – a Schwinn Airdyne stationary bike.   Every chance he got, he was in our unfinished basement cozying up to the Airdyne, admiring its big, caged wheel, lovingly caressing the frame, and reverently spinning the pedals.  So, if Megan is a really good Santa, she’ll get it for him, and while, she’s at it, she might also pick up a lawn and leaf blower as a stocking stuffer.

Thanks to Paul for photographing all the Brooklyn street scenes.