domes­tic bliss

Seri­ous­ly. My hus­band spent two weeks in Iowa and this was my gift upon his return.

Yes, John is home again, safe and sound, and I have to say this sign makes me laugh. The cats are all cir­cling it and whis­per­ing among them­selves. I can only wonder.

Avery and I were hap­pi­ly cud­dling togeth­er very ear­ly this morn­ing, try­ing to ignore the tick­ing clock telling us that we were per­ilous­ly close to being late to school, when Tacy’s ears pricked up and she sat bolt upright. I too thought I heard an intrud­er, only strange­ly the intrud­er seemed to be, from all avail­able sounds, tak­ing out the recy­cling. Do intrud­ers take out the recy­cling? I got up cau­tious­ly, crept up the stairs, and there was all John’s myr­i­ad lug­gage strewn around and the man him­self… tak­ing out the recy­cling! Hon­est­ly, he was­n’t home for a minute and he was already tak­ing care of the domes­tic chores I had neglected.

It is excel­lent to have him back. He wad­ed through miles of mail as I made scram­bled eggs for Avery and adjured her to eat her black­ber­ries and Nutel­la toast. Final­ly I got her to school and am sit­ting peace­ful­ly here at my desk while my poor jet­lagged hus­band sleeps off his dread­ful expe­ri­ence as a man of 6 foot 3 in coach for nine hours from Cincin­nati. The day holds noth­ing more momen­tous than a trip to the super­mar­ket, an ice skat­ing les­son after school, and… a real estate vis­it. Yes, it’s offi­cial. John’s home.

I spent the bet­ter part of last evening watch­ing Stephen Poli­akoff’s “Shoot­ing the Past,” which I have to say is a less­er cousin to his “Per­fect Strangers,” not the least because it’s lack­ing the mer­cu­r­ial and sexy pres­ence of Matthew Mac­fadyen. As well, I am annoy­ing­ly dis­tract­ed by the ter­ri­ble Amer­i­can accent of one of the leads, an inno­cent mis­cast Irish­man called Liam Cun­ning­ham (who I rec­og­nized from “A Lit­tle Princess,” thank you, imdb) and the Eng­lishisms the script forces him to utter. I have spent so much time in this adopt­ed coun­try of mine lis­ten­ing to Eng­lish peo­ple com­plain per­fect­ly rea­son­ably about Amer­i­can actors’ bad Eng­lish accents and being scold­ed in my fic­tion class for hav­ing my char­ac­ters say such out­landish things as “side­walk” instead of “pave­ment” that I had quite for­got­ten the shoe could eas­i­ly land on the oth­er foot. Hear­ing this “Amer­i­can” (who of course is writ­ten as arro­gant, greedy, insen­si­tive and igno­rant, all the favorite hall­marks of any Amer­i­can char­ac­ter in British hands) say things like “the post” instead of “the mail” and roll his Rs as if he were recov­er­ing from a hol­i­day in Dublin just made me cringe. There were fun­ny sub­tle anti-Amer­i­can­isms, though, that I don’t think the aver­age shtew-pid Amer­i­can not liv­ing in Lon­don would actu­al­ly get (not that any Amer­i­can has prob­a­bly ever seen “Shoot­ing the Past”, but even so), like Emil­ia Fox’s char­ac­ter pour­ing out a glass of lemon­ade osten­ta­tious­ly clink­ing, and say­ing evil­ly, “Ice?”

Ah well, nor­mal­ly I am as anti-Amer­i­can as an Amer­i­can can be, if my coun­try is rep­re­sent­ed by things like McDon­alds, iPods, real­i­ty tele­vi­sion and cer­tain politi­cians. But I do dis­like a ter­ri­ble Amer­i­can accent. I’ll play the role nor­mal­ly played by British peo­ple object­ing to Gwyneth Pal­trow (a per­fect­ly rea­son­able thing to object to): “Could­n’t they find an Amer­i­can actor to play that part?” I will have to wade through the rest of the pro­gramme, but I don’t think it will stay in my film library, sor­ry to say.

Any­way, now that John’s home I won’t be watch­ing tele­vi­sion any­way. He has already announced firm­ly that it is real estate, real estate, real estate that will occu­py us for the fore­see­able future. We have real­ly got to find a place to live that does­n’t involve the words “Grosvenor Estate.” While he was away, we lost yet anoth­er house that could have been per­fect. I think look­ing a bit far­ther afield might be a good idea. Par­sons Green, any­one?

Com­e­dy class yes­ter­day was quite enter­tain­ing. I just love being in that total­ly British atmos­phere. I con­stant­ly have to stop peo­ple talk­ing and ask for clar­i­fi­ca­tion of an arcane (to me) cul­tur­al ref­er­ence. The num­ber of tele­vi­sion pro­grammes I have nev­er heard of! I must watch “Green Room,” and I must get famil­iar enough with come­di­an John Inman to be, belat­ed­ly, sor­ry that he died this week. As well, I love hear­ing the con­ver­sa­tion pep­pered with my favorite Lon­don expres­sions like when plans go “pear-shaped” and the ever-pop­u­lar rebut­tal, “Fair enough.” We are try­ing valiant­ly to write an episode for our sit­com (set inex­plic­a­bly in a gym owned by a petro­chem­i­cal plant, but there you go), and every­one was mad­ly con­tribut­ing ideas yes­ter­day. Final­ly we have our main evil lady lead being told by her titled CEO to shut down the gym and replace it with a restau­rant for his rich, spoiled daugh­ter to run. We’re con­tem­plat­ing a cameo by Gor­don Ram­say. Nat­u­ral­ly he would grace us with his pres­ence. My fel­low class­mates and the tutor are real­ly such charm­ing, intel­li­gent peo­ple that I will real­ly miss them when term ends in just… sob… two weeks.

I must find anoth­er class to take. I hate to think that I’m run­ning through every pos­si­ble skill to be taught at CityLit, only to find out every term that I’m not good at that EITHER. Let’s see, so far I’ve attempt­ed act­ing, fic­tion, screen­writ­ing, and com­e­dy. What’s left? Under­wa­ter bas­ketweav­ing, I sup­pose, or com­put­er pro­gram­ming. Ah well, even if I nev­er write a suc­cess­ful sit­com, I have learned a num­ber of valu­able life lessons, among them this gem from yes­ter­day: “Mis­un­der­stand­ing is your best friend. If you ever run into one, take it home, give it din­ner, and take it to bed with you.” Who knew?

Well, I’m off to turn last night’s roast chick­en into soup for John for lunch. He has spent such a busy, drain­ing, reward­ing, life-chang­ing two weeks away from home that I feel he needs to be cod­dled. And any­way, every­one should make chick­en soup, and you get a mighty nice roast chick­en din­ner on your way to mak­ing soup, so where’s the harm in that. Here’s how.

Cod­dling Soup
(serves the masses)

1 large roast­ing chicken
1/2 cup white wine
1/2 cup chick­en stock
herbs to scat­ter (take your pick: basil, rose­mary, gar­lic salt, thyme, or ALL)
3 tbsps butter
1 onion, peeled, quar­tered and separated
hand­ful small tomatoes
salt and pepper
1 cup uncooked Man­is­che­witz small noodles

Place your chick­en in a large roast­ing pan thor­ough­ly sprayed with non­stick spray. Pour over the wine and chick­en stock. Scat­ter your choice of herbs over the chick­en and place the large dol­lop of but­ter just at the top of the breast, so it will run over the whole chick­en as it melts. Roast for two hours at 400 degrees, bast­ing if you think about it. Carve off the breast for your din­ner. Pour the cook­ing juices into a gravy sep­a­ra­tor. Do you know about these tools? Here’s one in Amer­i­ca and here’s one in Eng­land. Nor­mal­ly I sub­scribe to the Lau­rie Col­win rule of hav­ing no item in your kitchen that serves only one pur­pose. The two excep­tions to this are can open­ers and gravy sep­a­ra­tors. It looks like a mea­sur­ing cup, and it is. But it also mag­i­cal­ly makes all the fat in the cook­ing juices rise to the top, where­upon you can pour the good juice out of the spout and leave the fat behind. Do this, and then pour the juices into a skil­let, throw in a table­spoon or so of flour and a half cup of cream and whisk over low heat until there are no lumps. Per­fect gravy for the chick­en and what­ev­er on the side, for your dinner.

Now, after din­ner, remove the rest of the real­ly good meat from the bones and reserve in a dish in your fridge. Throw the car­cass into a large stock­pot, cov­er with water and lots of salt, and boil low for the rest of the evening while you go about the house putting dirty horsey clothes in the wash­er and clean­ing up cat barf. Every once in awhile, poke at the chick­en with a spoon to help it fall apart and fla­vor your broth.

When the soup has boiled a long time, say a cou­ple of hours, strain it through a colan­der into anoth­er stock­pot (I know that sounds obvi­ous, but can I tell you that once in a fog late at night I actu­al­ly strained my pre­cious broth right down the drain? don’t let it hap­pen to you). Refrig­er­ate overnight and then skim off the fat that ris­es to the top. Cut up the reserved chick­en and add the noo­dles to the broth, bring to a nice sim­mer and test for salt.

Noth­ing is more com­fort­ing. Enjoy.