Mummy, PhD

It has been a long time since I blogged about anything. I suppose I stopped blogging because I decided that all of my writing JuJu should go into my dissertation. That was a good decision because I am now the proud mother to my very own doctoral thesis. As I sat down to write this blog, I realized that I am out of practice writing more than one sentence at a time because I am on Twitter now. I tweet because I got an iPhone and it is sort of charming to be able to tell the 14 people who think I'm interesting, "Hey, I'm eating muesli because it has lots of fiber." Twitter also turned into that thing I do while nursing a very easily distracted baby. Oh yeah, that reminds me, I have a baby now. My beautiful little Helen (a.k.a. Nell, Nellie, Nellski, Nellie Moo, Moodles, Moodle Bear, Boodles McGoo, or Gollum) came into my life in January, just before we moved to Ireland. Did I mention we live in Ireland now? Recounting the hows and the whys for all these major life events would take more time than I have right now in my new job as Mummy, PhD, so I'll leave those tales for another day.

Instead, let's talk about sinus headaches. I'm on Day 4 of the Worst Sinus Headache Ever. For the last two days, my eyes have felt like they are being squeezed slowly out of my head. I have never been punched in the eye, but I suspect that is what this feels like. I also have a throbbing tingle in my teeth, which seems to be following the rhythm of my pulse. I'm trying to avoid decongestants on the advice of the pharmacist who seemed to think that breastmilk is better without xylometazoline hydrochloride. The irony is that my child is the one who gave me this cold in the first place.

Perhaps the worst part of this sinus infection is that I can't smell anything. Many times in the past, I've had a cold and said something like "Poor me, I can't smell this delicious chicken soup." Old self, I laugh at you, for you had NO IDEA what it is like to really lose your sense of smell. For days now, food has been reduced to an experience of temperature and texture only. Popsicles are cold. Noodles are squishy. Muesli is crunchy. I hoped that spicy ethnic food might clear my nose and awaken my taste buds, but alas both Indian balti and Thai curry left me with a mild tingle in my throat and nothing more. Yesterday I got so desperate that I cleaned the toilets, hoping the pungent cleanser smell would cut through my congestion. Nothing.

There is one small advantage to not being able to smell anything--I can't detect the Tooty Fruity my baby leaves in her diapers. If you have changed a baby's diapers before they start solid food, you know the smell. That nostril-piercing, sickly-sweet, over-ripe fruit odor. Daddy, PhD and I have both gagged on the smell. We call it Tooty Fruity because, first Nell toots, then comes the fruit. We have an unspoken rule that "He who smells it, changes it." Several times during this illness, Daddy has remarked, "Gosh, she's smelling fruity. Can't you smell that?" Then he carries our stinky little Boodle Bear into her room at arms length, as if she were radioactive. Moments later, I hear "Oh. Eegh. Aagh. You need to see this!" I suppose being sick does have some perks.

Swimming and the Primal Survival Instinct

I "swam" laps today for the first time since I was, oh, 11 years old. I say "swam" in quotes because it was a pathetic display of unswimming, or more-appropriately, floundering. As an aside, the expression "floundering" doesn't really make sense to me because a flounder, being a fish, should be a pretty good swimmer. Unlike me, apparently, which brings me back to my story.

I took swim lessons for a couple of years when I was a kid. I remember learning rotary breathing and the backstroke. I know I wasn't the worst kid in my classes, because that kind of humiliation would have stuck with me. I think I enjoyed going to the pool. So it was quite a shock when I jumped in the water today and realized that in the 15 years since my last swim class, my subconscious has become convinced that I will die if I exhale with my face in the water. Having a primal survival instinct is a good thing, except when you try to do something like make bubbles underwater and find that your abdominal muscles inexplicably received a massive dose of botox.

After six gasping, sputtering, frozen-diaphragm laps, I gave up and went for the kickboard. Actually, that's probably not a bad thing, because I went to the pool because I've been having some knee troubles and wanted to get a no-impact leg workout. At any rate, I guess it'll take more than 45 minutes in the pool to get my groove back. Until next week, then...

Amish Friendship Bread

Someone recently offered me a portion of Amish Friendship Bread starter. Their offer brought back a flood of AFB memories, and I feel compelled to share my long and sordid history with AFB.

I was a 4-H kid. In case you haven't been acquainted with 4-H, it is a youth program historically designed to introduce children of farmers in rural areas to modern agricultural concepts. Since its inception, the 4-H program has grown to encompass many other non-agricultural topics including community service, leadership, public speaking, civics and government, and science (mostly ecological). Hence, I was in 4-H, but I lived in suburbia and had no livestock (except for the market lamb I raised a friend's house...but that's another story).

My family became a "4-H family" when I was in 2nd grade. During those early years, most of the other families we met were farm families, so its not surprising that my two best friends both lived on farms. Their names were Wendy and Jody. But I digress...

Sometime around 7th grade, AFB became something of a fad. Everyone was making it. You must remember, this is before AIM and text messaging. How do children from conservative rural families feel connected to each other and drive their parents crazy? The answer is Amish Friendship Bread. My mom calls it the Amish Friendship Curse.

For you to understand this, let me explain the AFB process. You receive a "starter", which is a cup or so of bubbling fermented goo, usually given to you by a "friend", and let it sit on your counter. For several days you ignore the goo and the vague sensation that the prospect of eating this mess is kind of gross.

About a week into the project, you feed your new pet some flour, sugar, and milk. You continue to let the mess sit on the counter, bubbling away and collecting its own constellation of fruit flies. Sometimes you have to dispose of a fruit fly who met a sticky end in the Amish Friendship Vat of Death. About this time, you start to realize that your house is smelling fermented.

Finally, on day 10 or so, you feed the slime one more time and divide it into portions. You bake a portion into bread by adding more flour, sugar, and seasoning. You keep a portion to start your next batch. Then you "bless" your friends by giving them an AFB starter of their very own.

As a child, the first time you get Amish Friendship Bread is thrilling. What kid wouldn't enjoy the prospect of a culinary chemistry experiment? Then you experience AFB and realize that all you want to do is secretly dispose of your remaining starter in hopes of extinguishing the trail.

But then it comes back to you. Somehow, more than one person thinks you'd enjoy the AFB experience. Unexpectedly, your friend opens a tote bag, hands you a nasty-looking ziplock bag and says, "Here...I thought you might like an Amish Friendship Bread starter." You can't say no because that would be rude. So you take the baggie, saying, "Aw, thanks for thinking of me." Then you go home and dump the stuff down the garbage disposal. Later, when your friend asks you how the bread turned out, you mumble something about going on vacation and not being able to feed it.

So that, in short, is my experience with Amish Friendship Bread. To anyone out there who really loves making, giving, and eating this stuff, please don't let my bad attitude sour the experience for you. AFB really is one of those cultural experiences that everyone should have at least once in their life. I've already eaten my lifetime quota of AFB, so I won't be offended if you leave me out of the loop.

Happy baking!