Sueños con España

Blame the nisperos, but Spain has been on my mind this week, even moreso after reading Lucy McCauley's "Lesson from the Road" essay on mothering.com. She wrote about traveling in Europe with her kiddo and how wonderfully different (and challenging) it was. I can only imagine, but what I wouldn't give to try. Here's her take:

On our final day in Madrid, when I was trying to get us out the door to see some last sites, my daughter stopped me mid-motion. Unceremoniously plopping her little bum on my lap, she sat looking out the balcony windows, contentedly drinking from her sippy cup, as if we had nothing else to do. When I tried to move and get us both up and going, I was stopped by the sheer pressure of her body—and by the view in front of me, which I hadn't taken time to really notice before.

Two windows opened onto a wrought-iron balcony and a clear-skied fall morning in Madrid. Sunlight played on an ancient, five-story, ochre-stained building across the way. Each floor had balconies, and the shades were pulled out and over them—how the Spanish let in the air and keep out the sun. The scent of café con leche wafted up from the streets below, and I could hear people greeting one another in staccato phrases as they passed by.

We sat a long time gazing out that window, my baby and I, taking it all in as if we had nowhere else in the world to be, as if we had come all the way to Spain for just that moment. And in a way, I guess you could say we had.

Alicante, Spain, September 2003

Luscious loquats

Loquats are ripening around town. When I first saw the clusters of bright orange, egg-shaped fruit on trees in Austin, I could hardly believe it. We'd eaten nisperos by the kilos in Spain, but I'd never seen or heard of an equivalent in my own language, on my own terrior, to borrow a wine term I've been around lately. It's those Texas winemakers who've pointed out to me lately how similar Texas growing conditions are to Spain's. The heat, the infrequent, unpredictable rain, the lack of deep, hard freezes. So it was in Austin where I first plucked a loquat/nispero off a neighborhood tree. The city-grown ones are much smaller and more tart than the ones we used to get for cents on the pound at the biweekly outdoor produce market in Alicante, but they are a bittersweet reminder of those beloved days abroad.

Julian got to try a loquat today and he proceeded to drop it off the porch and return to his uvas. Yep, it's official. Julian has a Spanish word. Since "uva" is easier to say than "raisin," we used the Spanish word with him — well, technically, pasas are raisins and uvas are grapes, but I'll explain that to him in Spanish 2 — and sometime in the past few days, he took to it. I've been doing the same thing with fresa (strawberry). I think Ian uses ami (friend), one of the French words he remembers from Canada, with Julian. Call it smorgasbord language education if you like, but I'm OK if he combines different languages and signs to communicate even if it means fewer words overall for a little while.

Another fun new thing that I forgot to post about was that Julian drank out of the hose the other day at Tom's. He was exploring the yard and was extra curious about the hose and spicket. So I turned on the water and his first instinct was to put his mouth in the fresh cold stream for a sip. Then he shared with his oh-so-proud mommy, soaking us both.

Get this, there was a San Francisco band called Loquat at SXSW this year. They're not half bad.

The netiraptor, part 2

Julian's pediatrician had no idea what a netiraptor was, but she was very familiar with respiratory funk, which she confirmed Julian has, and sent me home with a nebulizer instead. Asthma doesn't run in my family, but my grandmother, GaGa, has a similar contraption that she uses every day. (The details of her losing the bottom half of each of her lungs is another story...) Now, little Julian gets to use one for the next few days to get rid of this reactive airway disease (also known by its undoubtedly much cooler acronym, RAD) he's developed. No, mom, he doesn't have asthma. Just a cold or allergies or something that made his air passageways constrict. Some misty albuterol should do the trick in no time, the doctor said.

She also said she loved us on What Not to Wear. :)

We used a a nebulizer at the office, and his wheezing cleared up right away. And by the time we got home, his sinus passages apparently had, too. Here's my artistic rendering.

Beware the netiraptor

Julian has been feeling under the weather lately. He's had this lingering hack for weeks, and it got juicier over the weekend. His nose has been running and he even had a fever a couple of times. The hard thing about sickness in kids is that with these symptoms (well, minus the cough), it could just be teething. And being in Austin, it could just be allergies. Or it might be something that could lead to freakin' pneumonia! So we're taking him in to the doc to make sure it's not the latter. He's supposed to have a well-check this week (he'll be 15 months in a few days), so we'll do the two-times-in-one-week doctor's visits, which is how it always seems to work, right mommas?

Poor little guy. You can just tell his body's doing
its best to get rid of whatever it's got.

In our collective hazy April state (see Austin allergies, above), talk always comes back around to the neti pot. I hadn't heard of this device until I moved here, which probably says a lot about not only what's in the air in Missouri, but also the traditional approach toward medicine people use. Vince introduced me to the neti when I was living at the Cathedral, and lots of folks swear by them. Next time I'm saddled by a sinus infection, I'll probably go get one of my own. Here's how one guys uses them:



And since I'm YouTubing this post already, here's what Erin does with her inner velociraptor:

Stipeful

Oh, Michael Stipe. How you still have it. I really love this single off their most recent album Accelerate, but I think I love even more that they've posted the original video data online and are encouraging listeners to re-edit the video for "Supernatural Superserious."

REM has been together longer than I've been alive, and even though they are on a major label, they are coming up with some of the coolest stuff in the industry. No, they aren't the first band to do this, but this is right up there with Radiohead giving away In Rainbows.
Users are given an artist's work and encouraged to do with it what they please. REM also agreed to let NPR stations across the country broadcast their show at SXSW last month. And they're even giving great interviews to Terry Gross on Fresh Air. They're all over the place, working the media and letting the media work them.
So. Very. Smart.

Long time no post

I've been slacking on the posts lately. Hope you don't mind the sporadic bursts of posts or photos and the ocassional dry spells. Since we've been back, I've been doing double duty at the paper. I won't officially start as food writer until the end of the month, but I've been dabbling in activities several days this week and again tomorrow. The Texas Hill Country Food and Wine Festival is going on and it's been fun meeting some of the folks I'll be working with in the future. I even got to go to a wine tasting yesterday and introduce myself to some winemakers in the state. Much fun, indeed. I've also been trying to come up with a name for the blog I'll soon launch on statesman.com, that I promise I will tend to with more regularity than I have this one. Addled Appetite seems a bit negative, no? Almost Full could be fun. Relish Austin is another idea. Broyler Plate was something else I was toying with (get it? broiler plate?). Anyway, your suggestions are encouraged.

I'm in the middle of a seven-day stretch at work, and I have a split weekend this week. So things are a little wonky for everybody right now. Bless Ian's little heart for being so great to take care of Julian extra while I do double duty elsewhere right now. He's probably not going to make his self-imposed deadline of finishing his album by this summer. Maybe we can scrounge up some alone time for him in the next week...

For now, something fun the New York Times led me to: www.barackobamaisyournewbicycle.com

Addie's What Not to Wear on YouTube

...well, the first five minutes are on YouTube.



Here's a link to the videos I did while in New York.

Giant

Whew, what a nice break from everything. We drove out to the Big Bend of Texas (not Big Bend park itself, but the area just to the north) to take in Fort Davis, Marfa, Alpine and any other adventures we stumbled upon. We found much success in our main goal, however, which was to get away from the craziness that has built up around us in Austin and enjoy each other with the help of Mother Nature. Eight hours of driving was worth it to be surrounded by miles of open land and open sky and a couple million of our closest stars. Javelinas outnumbering e-mails and phone calls. Julian running around wild-child like among the brush and rocks. Addie and Ian filling up the wells. Feeling small never felt so good.

I've posted a slideshow over in the Through My Lens section of the Web site, which I reserve for other photo galleries. Here are a few of the highlights:

Julian photos March

Very little time for photo editing today, but here are some pics from last month. Just think of it as stop motion animation.:)