Goldfish

Each semester I meet about eighty students, and of those eighty students I will like maybe forty. Ten will be lumps. Five will be evil or scary or creepy. Some--maybe another fifteen or sixteen or seventeen--will just be... there. They will be normal and steady and generally unrecognizable to me after the semester is over. The rest--generally less than ten--I will love. I mean love. I mean love-love-love-love-love.

Some of these students I will love for no rhyme or reason. They might be bad students. They might talk or act up when I'm at the board. They might be lazy. They might be instigators. They might challenge everything--and I mean everything--I say. They might never crack a book or think English is worth their time, but I will love them, and I will spend the next fifteen weeks trying to change their minds.

I will adore these students faithfully. I will always listen to what they say. I will be light with my reprimands. I will giggle when they crack foul jokes. I'll say, "Boys! Boys! Now, boys!" or "Girls! Girls! Now, girls!" when I'm scolding them so that they know I'm mostly charmed by whatever they are talking about now.

It's simply inevitable.

Today one of these favorites came in. This is the third time since the start of the semester (and if you're keeping track, that was only seven days ago) he's been in my office. He has a few minutes between classes, and he chooses to spend that time wandering into my office and making comments about things ranging from basketball practice to burritos. He chooses to spend that time with me instead of going to the lounge like other students, who spend their time before class checking Facebook.

I think it's just about the sweetest thing. And when he walked in today I had just finished having the best afternoon snack ever (half a bag of Parmesan Goldfish crackers). I'd put them back in my snack drawer (which is already running low and boasting only a fiber bar) when he was suddenly standing beside me, towering over me--the kid is tall--and looking like he needed a snack.

"Do you want some Goldfish?" I asked.

"Ohhhh," he said. "Goldfish. Yes!"

So I handed him my bag of Goldfish. This was a fairly sizable gesture of goodwill. After all, he is a boy who could probably consume ten of those bags of crackers for dinner, and I was letting him have free reign over my bag, my one bag, my sole bag, the bag that's supposed to hold me through the week--which it will certainly not. There are not many things I love in this world more than Parmesan Goldfish crackers (which reminds me of this, and let's just have a moment here, okay?) and my giving them up to this student was a pretty giant declaration of my love. That was me saying, I'd probably do anything for you, kid.

And I would.

A Conversation with My Father on the Occasion of the Second Bachelorette Party Penis Cake I've Baked

Dad: What are you going to put that cake on?

Me: This board you just cut for me. The penis board.

Dad: No. I mean, what are you going to cover that board with?

Me: Aluminum foil. I used aluminum foil last time.

Dad: Don't use aluminum foil!

Me: Why not?

Dad: Use parchment paper or something, not aluminum foil! Foil is too shiny! Too reflective!

Me: So what? So it'll shine penis back up at the penis. It'll be like a mirror. And it'll make it look bigger. Isn't that what men want anyway?

Dad: You're right. [Pause] We should have foil underwear.

I'm Moving to Owl's Head. Don't Try to Stop Me.

God, I love Maine. I mean, I really love Maine. And this past week only enhanced my love for the state. The Boy From Work was here for a spring vacation, and we used our day to go up and down the coast, seeing and eating the best things along the way. We ate lobster in Cape Elizabeth and fried clams in Freeport. We ate chowder in Rockland and Boothbay Harbor. We saw three lighthouses and explored some of the sweetest, quaintest towns in the whole state.

But none were as sweet and as quaint as Owl's Head. It's a tiny town near Rockland, and one I probably would've never realized I needed to go to if it wasn't for the Food Network's 50 States, 50 Burgers project that named the best burger in each state. Maine's burger--the 7 Napkin Burger--sounded fabulous. Juicy. Drippy. Cheesy. Everything good in the world. And the fact that you could get those burgers to go and take them down the road to tiny Owl's Head Lighthouse for a picnic sounded even better.

And the BFW, who is always ready to go on a trip just to eat something delicious, was up for it. So we headed off for a day trip to Owl's Head and Rockland. We were going to eat lunch in Owl's Head, tour the lighthouse, then head back to Rockland for a trip out to the breakwater lighthouse and shopping in the sweet galleries and stores that line Main Street.

The 7 Napkin Burger is the brainchild of the owners of the Owl's Head General store--a place where you can get homemade burgers and chowders, cookies and whoopie pies. In the warm summer months, there are ice cream novelties to be scooped up. And if you just ran out of ketchup or toilet paper and don't want to travel back to Rockland to grocery shop, you can pop into the General Store for the necessities, which are arranged in the back of the shop, right behind the small eating area.

And that eating area was the cutest thing I'd ever seen. Big and small tables were covered with patterned vinyl table cloths and stocked with plenty of napkins--which you definitely need when eating the burgers. There were a few friends gathered at two of the tables next to ours, and it was clear that this was routine. This was what they did. They came to the store every day for coffee and a snack or a full lunch. When someone came through the door, they were greeted by name. The girls behind the grill--two nineteen year-olds in gym shorts--knew what to serve up for them. They settled in at their table to talk about the weather, to local school, their neighbors. It was so friendly and charming it made me want to lock my legs around my chair and stay there forever, even through the coldest months, when the town's residents would no doubt come through the door stomping off boots and rubbing feeling back into their hands before settling into their chairs for hot chocolate and a slice of crumb cake. I wanted to be one of those regulars worse than anything. Especially after the girls delivered our burgers, which oozed with ketchup and mustard and pickles and cheese. If someone had come into the store at that moment and announced they had a charming apartment for rent--one with a seaside view--I would've been on the phone with the movers, telling them to go on over to my apartment and pack everything up and move it on up the coast.

Of course, Owl's Head wasn't the only amazing place we visited while the BFW was in state. Here are some of the highlights:

This picture was taken at Owl's Head light, which is right up the stairs behind us. As you can see, it was a windy, windy day. When you are planning on going anywhere near the ocean, you have to dress expecting it to be substantially colder than it is inland, especially in the spring. The wind comes in off the Atlantic and rips right through you. We chose a ridiculous day to tour lighthouses--especially one that is a mile into the ocean. Yeah, that's right. We traipsed along the Rockland Breakwater Light in those winds and almost had our ears torn off.

When preparing for a visit to Maine, it's best to fast for a week before your arrival. After all, you're going to eat a lot of seafood. A lot. Here's Ross with one of the chowders we ate over the week. It was good, but it wasn't nearly as good as the best chowder I ever had, which was served up at a tiny cafe in Damariscotta.

This shot was taken at Southport, which is a small island in the waters outside Boothbay Harbor. There is a tiny beach on the island, and we took off our shoes and walked across it, pausing to examine the millions of shells that were scattered across it. The BFW was very impressed with the purple mussel shells. (I'm pretty impressed with them, too. The insides are pearlescent and beautiful. I've got a bunch of them on my desk at school.) In fact, the BFW was so impressed that he took a closed one away from the beach with us. He wanted to see what it would look like it it opened. We both got a littl squirmy about that, though, when the mussel, which cracked open a bit while we were strolling through Boothbay, sucked back shut when the BFW tried to open it further to investigate. We left that thing in the parking lot. I didn't want anything oozing out of its shell on my car floor.

This right here is me in my moment of glory. On our way from Boothbay Harbor to Damariscotta, where we were going to eat dinner at the place with the best crab cakes in the world, the BFW and I made a pitstop to play mini-golf. I got a hole-in-one on a really hard hole. Because I am awesome.

If you look in the background, you can see Hendrick's Head Light, which is in Southport. The gray areas in the photo? All shells. Beautiful, tiny little spiral shells I scooped into my hand and brought back with me. (Mine didn't have anything ooze-y living in them.)

I could write poetry about The Lobster Shack in Cape Elizabeth. The poem would start by describing the beauty of the shack's location--on a granite cliff just above the waves of the Atlantic--and then move into the beauty of the shack's food, where lobster rules the menu. The Lobster Shack's lobster roll is my favorite in the state. But that's not the only thing that's good there. Clams, crab, mussels, whoopie pies--all delicious. But their strawberry-rhubarb pie? It's perfection.

And then Ben Affleck Asked Me If I Wanted to Take This Outside

Yesterday morning a few members of my department hopped a bus and rode the short trip down to Boston for a celebratory day trip--after all, there are only sixteen more days in the semester!--that had us eating dim sum in Chinatown for lunch, wandering the harbor walk, seeing the Shepard Fairey exhibit at the contemporary art museum, and then, finally, strolling through the North End on our way to Maurizio's, the department's favorite dinner place in all of Boston, and Lulu's for cupcakes.

Everything was exciting, but dinner was the best. Mostly because after I finished my wine and veal and homemade ravioli, I turned around to find the purse I'd set behind my chair, and when I turned around, I accidentally threw an elbow into a guy sitting at the table behind me.

When I turned around fully to apologize for what I'd done, I realized had thrown my elbow into Ben Affleck. There he was behind me, wearing a Bruins jersey and drinking a beer. I blinked. I blinked again. Then I realized it wasn't Ben Affleck but a boy who looked like he could be Ben Affleck's identical cousin --you know, if Ben Affleck's mother had a twin sister and his father had a twin brother and they all got married and had babies at the exact same time, which made the babies--who had simmered in the same genetic stew--look exactly alike, which is the plot of one of my favorite novels from childhood, but, I am sure it's possible.

So there I was staring at Ben Affleck's identical cousin, and he cracked a grin at me and opened his mouth. And when he spoke, he sounded EXACTLY LIKE THIS.

"Hey there," he said, which sounded more like Haay thaah. "You gotta rough me up? You tryin' to throw an elbow my way? I see how it is. You wanna take this outside?"

I wanted to say, "YOU ARE SO FREAKING AWESOME, AND I DON'T EVEN CARE IF YOU AREN'T RELATED TO BEN AFFLECK--EVEN THOUGH YOU HAVE TO BE--AND WOULD YOU LIKE TO KEEP TALKING TO ME BECAUSE YOUR VOICE IS FANTASTIC."

But I did not say that. Instead, I giggled. And giggled some more.

"I see! I see!" the guy said. "I switched sides on the table because I'm tall--" And here he raised himself halfway up from his chair to demonstrate just how tall he was. "--and you don't like that, you think I'm in your way, so you gotta try to start somethin'. That's tough!"

I giggled some more. "Is my purse in your way?" I asked. I pointed to my giant purse that had been too bulky to rest on the back my chair. I'd put it on the floor, and it was closer to his table than mine. If he had chosen that exact moment to reach into my purse, pluck out my credit cards, and tuck them into is own pockets, I would've been completely okay with that because then I'd have a story about how a famous person's identical cousin robbed me.

"Nah, nah," he said. He grinned.

"Are you sure?" I asked. "I'll move it."

Ben Affleck's identical cousin reached over and put a hand on my arm. "It's okay," he said. "It's definitely not in my way."

That's about the time everyone else at my table got involved.

"Who won the game tonight?" someone asked. It was a big day for Boston sports. The Sox and Celtics and Bruins were all playing.

"Not the Celtics," the guy said and frowned into his beer.

"Are you going to the hockey game tonight?" someone else asked.

The guy beamed. He lifted his beer into the air. "Yeah," he said. "Me and my girlfriend and my little brother!" He slung an around around the guy sitting next to him. "Let me ask you a question," he said to us. "I want you to be honest. Very important question here."

"Okay," we said.

"Which of us is more attractive?" Ben Affleck's identical cousin gestured to himself and to his brother.

Everyone at our table was laughing.

"You're equally attractive," I said. Ben Affleck's identical cousin was cute, but his brother was way cuter. Still, the brother was grinning and blushing and keeping his mouth shut. There was a charm factor to add in, and Ben Affleck's identical cousin with his cartoony Boston accent oozed the type of charm that sweet, chatty, too-loud boys often do.

"Weak!" he said. He threw a light punch into his brother's side. "But I know you're just saying that because you don't want to hurt his feelings.

We talked a little bit more after that--we compared favorite hockey players (and, yes, I had enough sense to keep my eternal love for Ryan Miller and the Buffalo Sabres hidden while I was surrounded by drinking Bruins fans)--and then we were on our way out the door on the search for cupcakes for the bus ride back up the coast. And that--Ben Affleck's identical cousin--and the four cupcakes (vanilla with orange buttercream, vanilla with vanilla buttercream, chocolate with marshmallow buttercream, and chocolate with raspberry buttercream) the girl behind the counter at LuLu's had tucked into a box for me were pretty much the best way to kick off the countdown to the end of this spring semester.

This Is What Happens When You're No Longer Around a Whole Bunch of Polish People

This was the scene today in the local grocery store's pasta aisle:

I was stalking up and down the aisle, looking high, looking low, scouring the shelves. I was not alone. A silver-haired grandpa was stalking up and down the aisle, too, and he looked nervous, concerned, overwhelmed. It was clear he wasn't finding what he needed. Neither was I.

What I needed was kluski. I didn't know what the grandpa needed, but after four trips up and down the aisle I was beginning to suspect that he, too, needed some kluski and, like me, was becoming convinced that he was going to have to rethink that chicken soup he was planning on making this weekend.

I guess I'd never stopped to really think about kluski before. I just always assumed it was in the pasta aisle of every grocery store that ever existed, next to those other flimsy-looking egg noodles that schools everywhere roll out for the buttered noodle side on chicken cutlet day.

I knew kluski was Polish, but I didn't think it was one of those items you can find everywhere in very-Polish Buffalo but not find anywhere outside of it. It was just so available and so common that I assumed it was available and common everywhere. Everyone's mother had a bag of kluski stocked in the pantry because they are as close as you can get to homemade noodles without mixing the dough and piping it into boiling water yourself.

And today, as I stumbled through the grocery store on a comfort food bender--I had plans to make lasagna, banana bread, and chicken soup in the span of two days--I was getting irritated that I couldn't find something that should be right there, right next to the No Yolks.

I finally gave up and bent down to get the lasagna noodles I needed anyway. I sighed a heavy sigh.

The grandpa--brightening suddenly, seeing that I'd possibly found what I was looking for--came over to my side. "Excuse me," he said, "but did you happen to see the lasagna noodles?"

So he wasn't after kluski after all. He was after lasagna noodles, which were stocked in many varieties on the bottom shelf.

"Right down here," I said, gesturing to the whole wheat, the no-bake, and the regular lasagna noodles.

"Whew," he said. "Thanks."

Clearly he was running a very important errand for someone else, someone who needed lasagna noodles as much as I needed kluski. He would be able to walk out of the aisle satisfied, but I would not.

Still frustrated, I wheeled around to the small ethnic aisle and scanned the falafel mixes, the chow mein noodles, the basmati rice just to make sure kluski hadn't gotten lumped in over there. Nothing.

I had to call in reinforcements. I plucked the phone from my purse and called my mother.

"Okay," I said, "I'm sure this is going to sound like a completely bizarre question, but kluski is always in the normal pasta aisle, right? You've never seen it anywhere else, have you?"

"No," my mother said. "Kluski's always next to the egg noodles."

I sighed and shook my head. "Mother," I said, "there is no kluski in this store."

"No kluski?" she said. She sounded like she didn't quite believe me.

"No kluski," I repeated. "None. This is what happens when you don't live in Buffalo. All the good things go away. I think kluski might be considered exotic here." I sighed. "I'm going to have to drive to the big grocery store and see if it's in their giant Foods of the World section."

Which is exactly what I did. I drove from one grocery store on one side of town to the other grocery store on the opposite side of town. I made a beeline for their long (and pretty impressive, for such a small town) Foods of the World section, which is one of my favorite aisles in the whole store. It's where I can get my fix of the candy bars I would normally eat in Canada. It's where I can get my fix of cookies that are bundled behind packages featuring strange animal mascots. It's where I can get my fix of that thick peach juice that comes in tiny tin cans.

It's also were I can get my fix of kluski. There is an entire Polish section--I already knew that; I've been steadily working my way through the various Polish cookies for the last few months--but I'd never bothered to look for kluski there. It was there, but I'd never noticed it before--probably because I'd just assumed that if I ever went looking for it, I'd find it in the pasta aisle.

I snatched up a bag of kluski and then thought about taking all the bags because there were only three left, and how could I be sure that the grocery store would think to refresh its kluski stash, which was relegated to the bottom shelf in the Foods of the World aisle?

In the end, I talked myself out of stockpiling the kluski. I told myself that there was hope--that surely they had originally ordered more than four bags of kluski, and now that there were only a few left, that must mean there was someone else in town who'd grown up on chicken soup with noodles tastier than the normal fare stocked in the pasta aisle. In fact, I was so hopeful that I walked toward the registers wondering if that person was at home right that minute, stirring a big batch of borscht and cracking a palm of dill into the broth. And then I wished she'd call me up and invite me over for dinner.

Celebrating That Scottish Poet Who Knocked Up a Whole Bunch of Girls

I had never heard of Burns Night before coming to Maine, but last night--on the 250th anniversary of the birth of Scotland's favorite poet son--there I was, celebrating his birthday and wearing a traditional tartan and being welcomed to supper by the call of bagpipes.

Burns Night--a big to-do in the state of Maine--celebrates the fame, exploits, and poetry of Robert Burns, the man responsible for gems like "Auld lang Syne" and "My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose."

He was a dandy, a cad, a man with VD. He slept with every barmaid he laid eyes on and fathered fourteen children--most of which were illegitimate. He loved Scotland and loved the ladies, and he wrote rhymes for both of them.

And last night we gathered to praise his poetry and insatiable appetite. And Burns Night celebrations aren't casual gatherings with some hodgepodge of food, some cluster of cheap beer and wine. No, they are carefully choreographed nights where most of the time is spent at the dinner table watching the pageant.

First, there is the presentation of the haggis. After all, what Scottish celebration would be complete without some leftover cuts of sheep that have been boiled in sheep stomach for a couple hours? Our haggis came decorated:

After the presentation of the haggis comes the toasting and the homage to scotch, which is passed around the table in giant decanters. Then, dinner. And after dinner, the traditional toast to the lassies is given by the men. Ours was read by a man with a thick Scottish accent who began like so: God bless you lassies, with your breasts and your assies. Throughout the poem, which had been worked up that day, the lassies were compared to many things--the most literary, perhaps, being big-bossomed butterflies. And after every stanza, the men, appropriately moved by the charms of the lassies, would loft their glasses and yell, God bless you lassies!

Let me tell you this: there were a whole lot of drunk people in that room.

And then, after the lassies were appropriately praised, we toasted the laddies. After the laddies were coddled, the floor opened for spontaneous Burns readings. Whoever felt like he was sober (or drunk) enough to get up and raise his glass and do a few stanzas of Burns's odes to his mistresses, his wife, or his bastard children--who, in fact, he called just that--graced us with his poetic stylings.

We left the table as the clock was nearing midnight. Desserts--oh, the shortbread--were served while we sang a couple traditional Scottish tunes and handed out a ceremonial cup to the best reader of the night.

And that--all the haggis and scotch and poetry, all the kilts and toasts and giggling--is exactly how a bunch of English nerds party. Don't let anyone ever tell you we don't know how to have a good time, how to rip-roar with the best of them.

My Love of Buttercream Knows No Bounds

Last week sometime I sent the Wily Republican a link to this cake over on Cake Wrecks. I included some snarky little message to the tune of wouldn't it be just oh-so-funny if your in-laws rolled out something like this at your wedding?

I hadn't really thought about his wedding since he announced he was engaged. He and his fiancee had some seriously different ideas about when the blessed event would take place--his idea was of the extended engagement variety--but he knew his ideas were probably going to get trumped by bride fever. And it looks like that might have just happened.

The WR e-mailed me back to tell me that he was never going to get a cop-themed donut cake with buttercream frosting because, well, he doesn't like donuts, cake, or buttercream frosting. If he had his choice, his groom's cake would be made of ice cream.

I was appalled by his response. He didn't like donuts? He didn't like cake? He didn't like frosting? He recently let it slip that he's taken up chewing tobacco to keep himself awake on the overnight shifts ("WILY!" I screamed when I heard the news. "YOU ARE MARRYING A DOCTOR! ARE YOU AN IDIOT?!" "Listen," he said, "come talk to me about it again after you try to pull a couple million overnight shifts.")--and apparently the taste of chew is okay, but not donuts, not cake, not buttercream.

I wrote back to tell him I didn't think ice cream cakes went over so well at wedding receptions, and was he going to make an exception for the big day?

The entire conversation was happening in the abstract, and it occurred to me that it had been months since he had talked about specific plans for the wedding, so I figured I should ask about the progress, if they had a venue, if they had a date. And the next time I got him on the phone I did.

"Are you, like, getting married any time soon?" I asked. "I mean, do you have a date?"

"Oh," he said, "yeah. We're getting married in August."

"AUGUST?!" I said. "So much for the extended engagement."

He snorted.

And then--because I am a girl, because I am predictable, because I am a predictable girl--I rattled off about a thousand questions about the wedding, trying to construct an accurate picture in my head. I wanted to know about flowers. I wanted to know about rings. I wanted to know about the cost and who was footing the bill.

And the answers to those questions were as follows: lots, expensive, thirty grand, and him.

"What do you mean expensive?" I asked. "How much did her ring cost?"

And then he said a figure that was so obscene I almost swallowed my tongue. I quickly composed myself. He must have been kidding. He must have made a mistake in the way he phrased the cost.

"Are you kidding me?" I asked and then repeated the obscene amount. "For real?"

"Yeah," he said. He didn't seem to think it was a big deal.

"Jesus," I said. I pictured his fiancee walking around Minnesota with her left hand held straight out in front of her so that everywhere she went everyone could see the fantastic rock on her ring finger. "Oh my God," I said. "Why didn't you ever want to marry me?!"

I wasn't serious, of course; it was just interesting to think what it would be like to get a wedding that included pretty much everything I've ever wanted. And from the sounds of it, the Wily's girl is going to get just that.

"I didn't want to marry you because you're a liberal," he reminded me.

"Right," I said. "Because of that."

Later, after we'd hung up and gone on with our days, I saw that the WR had written back to the snippy comments I'd shipped his way after hearing about his hatred of cake and frosting. There's going to be a buttercream cake at the wedding, he said. Doesn't mean I have to like it.

Have you been to a cake tasting yet?! I wrote. Is it pretty much the best thing in the world? Tell me about it!

He wrote back to tell me that no, he hadn't been to a cake tasting yet, but one was scheduled for the end of the month and he would tell me all about it after it happened.

I had a better idea. Can I come? I wrote. Do you think that would be awkward? You could tell your girl I am your butch lesbian friend who just so happens to be a cake expert. I'll wear lots of plaid.

And what a scene that would be: me draped in ribbons of plaid, plaid, plaid, standing shoulder to shoulder with the dimpled girl the Wily Republican will marry, sharing forkfuls of cake and frosting with her, giggling. I can see the WR in the corner, his arms crossed, his eyes rolled to the ceiling, his brain off dreaming about all the chilly edges of some ice cream cake. "Don't worry about him," I will tell his girl. "Let's try that pear-ginger one again. Or the cherry-almond. Or the butterscotch-walnut. Let's try them all." And we will. And the WR won't be able to say one cross word to either of us. Not a one.

So This Is What It Feels Like to Be a Man

This weekend I was struck pretty hard by a craving for waffles. It's all I could think about. Waffles, waffles, waffles. I wanted to sink my teeth into a batch that was made just-right: crunchy on the outside, warm and fluffy on the inside. I wanted to puddle butter in waffle divots and drown a stack in maple syrup.

I didn't make them for breakfast. The reasons why aren't complex. First, I had a box of Cocoa Krispies in my cupboard, and if there's anything that gets me up in the morning it is the promise of a giant bowl of chocolate cereal. If anyone tries to get between me and a box of Cocoa Krispies, I will fuck them up. So, as you can imagine, I was set on my breakfast food. Second, I was lazy. I usually have plenty of energy in the morning. I am one of those irritating morning people who, mere seconds after she wakes up, is revved and ready to go. I have never once in my life hit the snooze button. Not. Ever. Once I'm up, I'm up. And it doesn't even take much to get me up. My alarm is my radio--not one of those terrifying metallic clang!clang!clangs!--and the volume of the radio when it goes off is low. I set it for four. To give you perspective, here's an interesting fact: when I'm at home and listening to the radio at a normal level, it's usually on nine or ten. It really doesn't take much to set me into motion.

Still, I felt very little like being in motion on Saturday morning. I'd just done pilates and I was already mapping out my day, which was full of paper grading and cleaning. I wanted nothing more than to start the day with a quick chocolate-y fix, which meant cereal instead of, say, chocolate chip waffles. But when I couldn't silence the internal chant for waffles, I compromised. I made them for dinner.

Or, more precisely, I attempted to make them for dinner. Now, listen. I like to think of myself as a whi in the kitchen. I am capable of making a lot of really good, really complicated things. Which is why I shouldn't have trouble with waffles. After all, I've been making waffles for years. Years! And what's hard about making a waffle? I don't even make my own batter. I pour out the mix, stir-stir-stir, and then I pour.

Well, alright, it's been a while since I made waffles, and I guess I had a momentary lapse of good judgment. For one thing, I filled the iron too full. But usually I am too conservative in my pour and end up with spiky waffles that aren't at all uniform. This time I was going for a fully-formed waffle. I got a little too carried away, I guess.

That didn't even bother me. I laughed. I mean, here I was trying to get a plump waffle, and I'd gone and over-plumped it. A lot. It would be disgusting to clean up, but at least there was a full waffle cooking under the plates.

Except when the steam stopped and the light signaled my waffles were more than likely done, I couldn't lift the latch. It was stuck. Glued together, almost. First I figured it was because of the overflow and that as soon as I tugged it would give. But when I tugged nothing happened. So I tugged some more. And then I tugged some more. And then the whole iron yawned open and one side of the waffle went with the top part and the other side of the waffle went with the bottom part. The insides looked lovely: perfect, fluffy. But the waffles weren't coming out of the iron. And it's not even that they were burned to the machine. They weren't. In fact, when I chipped the outside away from the supposedly nonstick griddle, the crisp outsides were just the right color of done. They were beautiful, but there was no saving them. And I had to salvage what was left of the batter and turn it into pancakes, which I was absolutely not in the mood for.

The waffle iron was a mess. A MESS. I could only peel back the crisped dough with immense force and a knife, and I got so frustrated trying to do so I had to stop before I stabbed the waffle iron right in its gut. I went on with my pancakes and ate my dinner and thought about how good those waffles would have been. And the next time I walked out into the kitchen and saw the mess again I was so disgusted that I almost picked the waffle iron up and threw it in the trash because--well, let's face it--throwing it out and spending $35 on a new one would have been much less effort than actually cleaning it. And if the Boy from Work were standing in my kitchen and surveying the damage, he would've already made the decision to chuck the iron and would've moved on to swiftly calculating how longer dinner would have to be put off while he ran to Target to buy a new one.

Sometimes I really envy boys.

The Great Sandwich Debate

Earlier this semester in my technical writing class, there was a day when each student wrote a little something for an in-class assignment and then they got to share their writing with the class. One by one, the students slipped me their papers and I projected them onto the big screen so we could all see as I read them aloud.

In the middle of one of those papers I stumbled over a sentence because I didn't think it was constructed correctly. "Now you can go inside and make yourself an Italian?" I asked. "Did you make a mistake there? Did you write the wrong word?" I couldn't imagine any way that sentence could be correct. How did one make himself an Italian? Did it involve marinating oneself in a vat of sauce while guzzling Prosecco and meditating about Venice?

Even though I was pretty sure I was in the right and that the student had made a mistake, that didn't change the fact that the entire class looked at me like I was insane.

"What do you mean 'How do you make an Italian?'" they asked.

"An Italian is a thing?" I asked. "A non-person thing?"

They exchanged glances. Some started mumbling. "What would she call it?" they whispered to one another. There was some low discussion and then one student shot his hand up.

"A SUB!" he said.

"A sub?" I asked. "An Italian is a sub?"

"Yeah," the student said. "Sort of."

I was stumped. Stumped and disappointed. I'd just assumed the people of Maine called their subs grinders--excuse me, grindahs--like their neighbors in Vermont and New Hampshire. This I had been prepared for. This is what I'd been led to believe would be the case. After all, the last time I was up in New England with Ex-Keith, he and his family had to brief me on this very subject after we'd passed a pizza place that advertised Grinders! on its sign. I'd been confused.

"That's just what they call them up here," Keith said, waving his hand out the window as if to indicate the entire patch of New England. And I'd just gone on believing that to be true.

To hear that I was incorrect rankled me. "No, no, no," I said. "You guys call them grinders. I know this. I was told this."

A female student wrinkled up her nose. "A grinder?" she said. "That just sounds silly."

"It's Italian country up here," another student informed me. "They are delicious."

I was still a little sore on the subject. I wanted some answers. Concrete answers. "What is on an Italian?" I asked. I wanted to see if we were really, truly, honestly talking about the same thing.

"Oh, you know," one of my students said. "Meat, vegetables, oil--that kind of stuff."

"I see," I said. I nodded sagely. "What you are describing is a SUB."

"Italian!" they insisted.

Before the move I had made space in my heart and vocabulary for the word grinder, but there was no room for me to store the term Italian. I felt robbed of a folksy-sounding regional specialty. Italian is already a word with other meanings that have nothing to do with meat on bread. Grinder, however, is just a goofy-sounding word that could mean something else if you wanted to define someone who sharpened things, but who's ever used it in that capacity? So, really, grinder is more separate, more contained, more specific than Italian.

Because I was so disappointed and because I was in mourning over potential opportunities to drop the word grinder into polite conversation, I attempted one last time to convince my students that they were wrong, and that the term Italian was just goofy. If the sandwich wasn't going to be a sub and it wasn't going to be a grinder, then it might as well be dead to me.

"Listen to me," I said. "You know that restaurant where you go to get your Italians? Is it called Italian-Way? No. No, it is not. It is called Subway."

"Ha ha ha," my students laughed. "You're so funny. You're so cute."

I've been through this before. I spent three solid years in the Midwest trying to convince its residents that the phrase green bean hotdish was NOT NORMAL and that chicken noodle hotdish sounded like a science experiment gone terribly awry. And when I rolled out my own version of hotdish--my famous Smoked Gouda Chicken Casserole--it was criticized. The noodles instead of tater tots (or a similar form of potato) were unacceptable. And an expensive brick of cheese? The Midwesterners scoffed at such an idea. If they weren't able to produce a hotdish with whatever they had in the fridge--staples every Midwestern home should have: a bag of frozen tater tots, a sketchy brick of mild cheddar cheese, ground chuck, and cream of mushroom soup--then it was scarcely worth the effort. Any hotdish that cost over four dollars to assemble was an affront to hotdishes everywhere.

Minnesotans were as passionate about their hotdishes as I was about, say, wings or fingers. And while I think it's been clearly demonstrated that the Midwestern palate is--for the most part--a sad, sad thing, and that anything they say about cuisine or things that are supposed to have flavor should be discounted as hugely false, I am not yet sure I can say that about Maine. In fact, I might have to defer on this whole Italian business. I might have to give in and start using the term--especially when you consider that my mailbox keeps being stuffed with coupons for local sandwich shops that run Italian specials every week. I might be willing to give Mainers their silly term because... you know what? These people know how to eat. I mean, consider their state cookie: it's actually two cookies smooshed together with a hearty dose of frosting. Also, here there is unfettered access to things from the ocean, which proves for some mighty fine eating. The lobster you got in Minnesota had been through a long and bumpy journey across several thousand miles before it reached your plate.

And so I give Maine good, good grade when it comes to issues of food, taste, culinary history, and the like. (This judgment does not include pizza, which will be a subject for anther time.) And because of this good grade, I am more willing to be lenient when they start throwing around silly terms for such common everyday food items. Minnesota is not so lucky. But for Maine? For Maine, I'll let this one slide, although I'll probably still be mourning the word grinder this time next year.

(Here's more information about Italians, and what they share and do not share with subs, hoagies, grinders, etc.)

The Happenings, Part Two

The Boy From Work left yesterday morning. When it was time, I walked him down the back stairs to his car. I was wearing sweatpants and flip-flops. I cried underneath a shower of gold and red leaves from the tree overhead. I cried all the way back up the stairs, in the shower, even as I watched an episode of The Golden Girls while I ate breakfast.

I cried because now that he's gone, I will plod through another month without him, and my life will be much less bright, much less filled with things as fun and beautiful as these:

(1.) The Boy Making Me Dinner

Here's what I've learned: there is nothing more spectacular than teaching all day and then coming home to a full, huge, and delicious dinner on the table. When I walked in the door from school, the BFW said, "Dinner's ready. Come eat." He'd filled the table with dishes of sage roasted potatoes and homemade cranberry sauce and roast duck with skin so fatty and delicious I wanted to smother myself with it.



There was a salad, too, and carefully-selected wine. For dessert we had brandy-soaked pluots served up with vanilla ice cream. It was a really impressive spread. Now if only I could decorate my dining room...


(2.) Dragging the Boy to Freeport

As has been previously noted, I am a big fan of Freeport. I knew I couldn't let the BFW leave this state without seeing the town that plays host to the giant LL Bean boot, so off we went. And even though we had lunch at a seafood joint in town that turned me green, green, green, we still managed to sneak in a few brilliant moments in the winter weather section of LL Bean:



The BFW used to have a hat like this. He has since misplaced it, which relieves me. I'm fairly certain he would wear it every single day if he knew where it was.



Well, it was pretty warm. Nicely played, hat.


(3.) Carving Pumpkins with the Boy

When we picked through the orchard the other day, the BFW and I also got to kick around a pumpkin patch, where the BFW finally realized the extent of my anal Virgo tendencies: I must, must, must have the perfect pumpkin. My pumpkin needs to be just the right size, shape, and color. It must also have a good stem--one with a bit of curl and oomph. I spent entirely too much time in the pumpkin patch saying things like, "Well, this one is cute, but see this little dimple in its skin? Wait, what about that one. Looks good, looks good... oh, but that stem is jacked up. What's over there by your foot?" All this while the BFW was balancing our 20 pounds of apples and his pumpkin--one of the first he'd seen--in his arms.

But we both did good in the end. Real good.



My pumpkin turned out much happier than the BFW's. He started carving his in the mouth-region, and when he turned it around to show me the progress I was horrified. "BFW!" I exclaimed. "Your pumpkin is PERVERTED!" That gaping mouth looked like it was up to no good. No good at all.



In the end, though, it ended up looking more like a mildly constipated and cranky pirate pumpkin.



Mine had a tooth.



And it looked pretty badass when it was lit with its tea light.



Actually, they both did.

The Happenings

It's not that I've disappeared. I haven't. I really haven't. It's just been a strange week. The Week from Hell. Well, the first part of it, at least. The Week from Hell landed me in the ER, then the doctor's office, then in my bed, where I remained sleepless and in pain for a few days.

But you'll hear about that later. After all, the week took a turn. The Boy From Work arrived early yesterday morning, and everything became so much better. He'll be here for a few more days, but here's what we've done so far:

(1.) Shaved Him



When I met the BFW, he was bald and he had a lot of facial hair. Because I once said to him, "I wonder what you look like when you are clean-shaven," and because the BFW wanted to impress me, he shaved. I really, really liked him shaved. The BFW has the world's best dimpled chin, and it's practically a crime to cover it up with facial hair. But since we've been living in two different states, the BFW has let himself get hairy again. The hair on his head curls over his ears, and his face--not to mention the dimpled chin--has disappeared behind a beard. But last night the BFW went to CVS and got a package of disposable razors, and this morning he went to town.

The dimple is officially back.




(2.) Went Apple Picking



Today when I asked what he wanted to do, the BFW said he wanted to pick apples. This was an amazing choice, since today was the perfect fall day. It was in the upper 50's, sunny, gorgeous. The trees were turning, the air was crisp, the skies were stunningly blue.

So we went. We drove into the country hills and picked almost twenty pounds of apples. We also picked two pumpkins that are now sitting on my kitchen floor, waiting to be split open and carved. We also picked up some whoopie pies--the traditional Maine dessert--and fudge and cider. It was the best day ever.




(3.) Ate Whoopie Pies



We decided to avoid the traditional chocolate with vanilla cream in favor of apple-flavored cookies with vanilla cream. It seemed appropriate for our apple-stocked day. And it was appropriate. And delicious.


(4.) Went for a River Walk



If you walk down my street, you can follow a path down along the river and across it on several old railroad bridges. I took the BFW on this walk today. I took him across the river and to the small waterfall that rushes under a small footbridge. Once we were there, the BFW took several fantastic pictures of me, including this one:




Tomorrow we're planning on going to Portland, on carving pumpkins, and on making apple muffins and an apple crisp. A giant, giant apple crisp. Is there anything better?