Back from the Dead and Ready to Party!

Things They Don’t Tell You About Weight Training

1.  It takes a long time to get big.  Years.  I’m not talking Hulk big, maybe Aquaman  or Flash, whoever, it still takes a long time.  And when you reach 40 your testosterone levels drop and even with a lot of work, the average person will only put on about 5 lbs of lean muscle.  SO, start young.  I really don’t need more than 5 lbs of lean muscle added each year.  In three years, that would be 15 lbs.  That’s plenty big for me.  It’s not a bad thing that it takes a long time, but if you are just starting out, don’t lose heart.  Just keep at it.   If you are in it for the long haul you’ll get less frustrated.

2.  Six packs are mostly a nutrition thing.  They show up when you have a low percentage of body fat.  There are bathroom scales that measure body fat percentages (around 30 bucks).  I have one, and it’s cool.  Oh,and if you want valleys and ridges in your six pack (once you are lean–I’m not yet) you’ll need to work them the way you do other muscle groups, with weights once a week pretty hard.  You can work them every day, too, but your muscles will develop differently.  Someone who runs every day will have strong legs ready for endurance stress, but they probably aren’t as likely to get as big as the guy who does squats and dead lifts.   From what I can tell, your abs work the same way.

3.  Muscles aren’t built when you lift. That’s when they get beat up.  They get bigger when they recover and come back stronger.  When do they do that?  While you sleep, so get a good night’s sleep or you won’t grow.

4.  If someone looks crazy big they are probably using steroids.  If you want to look like them, I wouldn’t bother asking them for advice because unless they really trust you, they’ll just make something up.  Why?  Because steroids are illegal.  I don’t judge guys who juice though.  In my opinion it’s just another supplement.  I won’t  be using them because with my hypotrophic cardiomyopathy, I can’t imagine it being a good idea.  From what I hear, once you stop using 90% of what you gain fizzles anyway.

5.  You have to be careful about the way you cut weight if you want to keep the muscle you’ve worked hard to gain.  It’s not as easy as eating less and moving around more.  In fact, at my current weight (195) I have to eat about 2200 calories to lose a pound of fat a week.  Anymore weight than that is supposedly cutting into your storage of muscle.  Having said that, I’m not sure you can really believe any thing you read about calories and nutrition.  There are a bazillion theories about “what works” and some are contradictory.  I do know I’ve lost weight while strength training in the past and did it pretty fast, and my muscle growth was lame during that time.   I’ve decided this time around to focus on gaining mass, so that means I’ll focus on eating enough of the right kind of calories, doing cardio 30 minutes a day, keeping my workouts mixed up and getting plenty of rest (the hardest part for me, actually).

6.  If you are not breathing hard and struggling to push out the last rep of each set that you do, you probably aren’t challenging your muscles enough for them to grow.

I seem to discover new things no one told me about strength training every week, so I’m sure i’ll add to this list as time goes by.  If anyone has any of their own surprises, please share.  A good dose of realism goes a long way in this hobby.

Workin’ on my Fitness: ‘Supp Protein

Anne at Henry’s coffee shop is giving me the stink eye for ordering my latte with non-fat milk. I can’t get mad at her. She makes sure I get out with all my stuff. I tend to leave things behind. I don’t care about the scowl. I just put my headphones on and turn on vintage Dreadful Yawns, which is my favorite band to listen to when it’s insanely gray in Indiana, as it will be for the next three months.

So Tony asked me to keep a log of my progress and experiences with lifting. Tony’s my trainer. I’m a big fan. He’s a hard worker, lets me play with his bulldog, Stafford, and is always giving me “suggestions.” I figured out that if I don’t follow his “suggestions” I tend to stay unmuscley, so I decided to write the damn log.

I will include some food stuff, but I find looking at food from the body management angle to be a HUGE eye-glazer. It starts to sound like a Little Britain Fat Fighters meeting so fast. Not saying I don’t pay attention to food. It’s way more important than I wish it were when it comes to adjusting your muscular form, but I don’t have an interesting way to write about it yet.

I can, however, start with protein supplements, which are technically food, bizarre, food with wacky packaging. Supplements sort of deserve their own posts anyway since there’s a million of them out there, all with well paid marketing departments who convince you that your dog will die if you don’t take theirs. Unfortunately their research departments don’t get the same love from the boss man (very few peer-reviewed studies), which makes knowing which proteins to suck up tricky to figure out.

I should say right here that my approach to researching supplements is to do a number of “review” searches on the internet when I hear about something I “should” be taking. Kind of hypocritical of me to slam the lack of science thing, isn’t it, but there you go. I have a pretty well honed bs detector, and eventually you start to figure out when a “study” or claim is bogus. Just look for signs of selling (like who published the info and where), and you’ll get an idea of how objective the source is. Oh, I also got over the fear of looking stupid and am happy to ask Tony or other successful weight trainers about what I’ve found and what works for them.

Two things that the fitness community tends to agree upon is that weight lifting is not actually what makes muscles grow, and your body is gonna need more protein than a sedentary person typically consumes. Your body needs the extra protein because lifting tears your muscles (a good thing when done correctly), and protein is what it uses to repair itself and grow stronger. Muscle growth actually happens after you hit the gym IF you have the right proteins running around your body.

From what I can tell you need two kinds of protein in your stash:

1. Quick digesting proteins (eggs are a good source, and “hydro” protein powders)–I take these before and right after a workout.

2. Slow digesting proteins (meats, cottage cheese, and powders that contain a mix of proteins). I take these when I won’t be breathing hard for a while and before bedtime.

As I said, most in the fitness industry agree that your muscles repair (aka grow) while you sleep (after they’ve been stressed in some way). I’m supposed to shoot for eight hours of sleep a night, especially on lifting days. This is turning out to be one of the hardest obstacles for me to overcome, and it’s kinda stressing me out. More on that some other time.

So how much protein do you need? This is where experts disagree and people seem to be making some educated guesses, which you then have to sort through. And let me tell you, the amount of information will make you crazy as a shit-house rat in no time. Until I’m convinced to do otherwise, I’m sticking with a little over 160 grams of complete (animal) protein a day. A general formula I’m comfortable with is .80 times your ideal lean body weight. Ideal body weight is pretty subjective for me at the moment, since I don’t even know what body fat percentage I’m shooting for yet (I know it will be below 19%, but not sure how much).

Okay, even I’m tired of talking about proteins for now. I’ll get to the other supplements I’m taking later, but protein is a good place to start figuring out what will work for you. If you’re not giving your body enough extra bricks, it won’t build you a bigger house no matter how hard you work.

Lee Hayward has a decent breakdown of the protein theories and the science behind them here. Even though he’s using the article to sell his book, his ideas seem pretty even-handed. No time like the present for you to start sorting through the amazing world of protein supplements for yourself.

Welcome Oprah!

Okay, as a muscle bear in training I don’t eat a lot of simple carbs, but once in a while I have an Oprah moment and dive ass over tea kettle into a pile of dinner rolls.

It’s hard to find good bread at home these days. Here in Indy, Breadsmith bakes the best commercially, but homemade table bread worth the insulin spike? Let’s just say it’s hardly a daily indulgence at our house. Some families are lucky enough to have a roll baker in their family tree. John’s mom makes excellent crescent rolls from scratch, but if we’re honest, on most home tables Sister Schubert should get the credit for most of the yeast bread found there.

In my family it was my Great Grandmother Cora who made the rolls, and they were impressive enough that even as a kid I found them remarkable. When she died none of our family bakers had the heart (or the guts?) to take on the task of making rolls. Who could blame them? Those warm, fragrant, light (plus any other adjective you also could apply to heaven) clouds were how family memories were made. The standard was set a bit too high, perhaps.

After all of these years of dinners sans homemade rolls (at least the meals I’ve made it to haven’t had them. Maybe my Arkansas relatives make them when I’m not around), I’m starting to believe that even efforts that miss the mark might be better than Sister’s go to freezer options.

Just as I was longing for something more, Aunt Judy and my mom presented me with an instantly treasured Christmas present–a family cookbook. OUR family’s cookbook. And right there up front, humble but proud just like her, is my Grandmother Cora’s roll recipe. My aunt had the presence of mind to watch Grandmother make them one day before she died back in the 1980’s.

I’ve tried making rolls before. They were tough, didn’t rise and tasted nothing like Grandmother’s. I wondered what it would be like to give it another shot with the magic spell right in front of me.

As with many amazing foods that have only a few ingredients, I discovered that technique matters as much as ingredients. For example, I saw the word mix, but no mention of a mixer. I asked my mom about it, and she said Grandmother never owned a mixer. She would have used a wooden spoon. That simple fact explained a lot about my past failures. I’ve tried mixing and kneading old roll recipes in my stand mixer, but have always had my doubts about using the times recommended. So, I decided I would use a wooden spoon, a big chunky one good for bossing around a stiff dough.

I used my favorite Oxo rubber footed mixing bowl to keep the bowl from sliding on the counter as I stirred. After a few tasty, but otherwise unimpressive runs at the recipe, I realized I could use a lot less flour if I kneaded the dough on my silicone baking sheet. Nothing sticks to it, so there’s no need to cover the surface with a ton of flour. Just a little here and there to keep your hands from getting too sticky. Less flour used means more tender rolls.

Since our kitchen is cool, I have to place the dough on top of a warm stove to get it to rise. I use a thick, ceramic bowl on top of an aluminum cookie sheet turned upside down to keep the heat evenly distributed. The dough gums up around the bottom in a thinner bowl and takes too long to rise if I just set it on the counter. Such is the rigging you have to figure out for your own kitchen. My advice is to buy yeast in bulk (it’s cheap), and don’t be afraid to fail. Consider it part of developing your own personal style, which all good home cooks have to do anyway.

So here is how the best batch I’ve made so far looked.

Grandmother Cora's Yeast Rolls

Honestly, I was pretty happy with them, happier than with any other batch I’ve baked. They tasted good, too. Not as good as my Grandmother’s, but as my Aunt Judy says, that kind of taste comes only with baking bread every week until you are in your 80s, which Grandmother did. But at least now, on that fateful day when Oprah pops down to Indy from Chicago I can offer her something I’m not ashamed to serve.

Here’s the annotated recipe, from our family to yours. Happy New Year!

Grandmother Cora’s Yeast Rolls

In a 1/2 c of warm (not hot) tap water, stir together:
1 tbs sugar
1 package (2 1/2 tsp) yeast.

Let bubble until doubled in volume. Stir down and let rise until doubled again.

While yeast mixture is rising, warm until melted:

2/3 c milk
1/4 c sugar
1/3 c shortening
1 tsp scant salt

Stir mixture and set aside.

In large bowl, put:

3 c all-purpose flour
1 egg, room temperature

Add yeast mixture and milk mixture.

Beat well with a large spoon, adding just enough extra flour to make dough stiff and prone to pull away from the sides of the bowl, but still pretty glossy.

Pour dough out onto a silicone baking sheet to knead for eight minutes (I set a timer). Here’s a quick video to show you how to knead (not hard). Note how the dough looks when she pours it onto the counter. That’ll give you an idea of what yours should look like after you’re finished beating it.

Place kneaded dough in a large greased bowl. I like to use a bowl that is tall enough to give the dough some head room as it rises. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap, then with a clean towel and place in a cozy warm spot to rise until its volume is double. I heat my oven to 375, place an overturned aluminum cookie sheet on the top vent and then place the bowl on that. The dough seems to really like it.

When dough is doubled in volume punch it down a few times with a fork and let it rise until doubled again. About rising times: don’t be in a big hurry to make your dough. Regular rises typically take a couple of hours, maybe more or less. If you need to slow things down (say you’re going out to eat), just put the dough in the refrigerator and take it back out when you get home. You can even leave it in over night. The dough will taste better, in fact, but leave yourself plenty of time for it to warm back up to room temperature. By the way, dough smells awesome while it’s rising, not just while it’s baking. We bears know how powerful scent is in creating positive experiences.

After the second rise, melt about a half stick of butter and pour it into a 9×13 cake pan.

Pinch off 24 golf ball sized pieces of dough and shape your rolls. I’m gonna come clean right here and tell you that I’m still learning how to shape rolls. I like simple and round rolls. Grandmother’s rolls are very soft, so handling them lightly is key. My friend Naomi is practically an Amish baker when it comes to shaping rolls, and when I get her technique down, I’ll try to put it on here (or have her do it). I used it when shaping the ones above, and they turned out fine.

Here’s a video of another way that I haven’t tried but that looks promising Let me know how it works if you give it a go.

Dip the tops of the rolls in the melted butter and then space them evenly in the pan (four rows of six rolls). Let the rolls rise one last time with the pan covered loosely by a piece of wax paper.

Then bake on a middle rack at 375 for about 15 minutes or until golden brown on top. Aunt Judy starts hers out on the lower rack to get a browner bottom crust. If you do that, don’t open the oven until the rolls have baked for at least seven minutes (a good rule of thumb for most baked breads), and plan on adding a few extra minutes to your baking time to account for heat that leaves the oven when you move the pan.

I’m not gonna say roll baking is easy the first time out, but if I can get the hang of it, I know you can, too. And believe me, the other bears in our den LOVE having fresh yeast rolls to eat. So give it a try and let me know what you learn.

Bear Den

So somehow all of us in the Smythe-Moore-Garcia home have acquired bear names. We have lots of nicknames for Carlos. Somewhere along the way I started calling him “Little Bear.” He calls me Papa Bear and John is Daddy Bear (even though I’m “Daddy” in other contexts). Our Newfoundland, Elvis is Baby Bear and little Claire is Claire Bear.

Elvis (Baby Bear) and Claire (Claire Bear)

In the gay world, John and I are both considered bears (actually he’s more of a wolf or otter). Bears are guys who are on the bigger side of things, typically hairy. Bears are known for being friendly and accepting of all kinds of physical types (though I’m not sure this always holds true).

Until recently, I’ve kept in touch with the bear world via online articles, etc., or with friends who happen to be bears. And I clap really loud for them at Pride parades. As I’ve more consciously integrated myself into the gay community, I’ve tried to make more of an effort to get to know “my people.” Somehow that has carried over into our home life.

I like bears as a metaphor for family. They are strong, protective, cuddly, and the human bears are in principle friendly and accepting of differences. Who wouldn’t want their child to pick up those traits?

I’m in the process of trying to become a bit more of a muscle bear (a subcategory of bears–I know, crazy, right?). Part of that is just about being in shape, confident, attractive to John and able to wear the clothes I want. But an even bigger part has to do with Carlos.

When Carlos came to live with us, his biggest fear was that we would die suddenly. He talked about it constantly. Any time John or I got sick, he would shift into a hyper-caretaking mode that in part is his sweet personality but is also a manifestation of his hope to keep us from slipping away and leaving him alone again.

I know I don’t have enough control over the world to promise Carlos that I won’t die sooner than he’d like. We don’t really talk about that when he asks if I’m gonna die soon. I typically just laugh and tell him I plan to be around a good long time since I want to live long enough to spoil his children rotten so he can deal with the aftermath.

But the reason I’m moving into muscle bear territory is to ensure that the parts of my life that I can control (my body and environment) are giving me the best odds possible for long life. I think big bellies are hot (seriously), but with my family’s history of heart disease, they aren’t healthy for me. And frankly, there’s nothing all that sexy about being dead.

So don’t be surprised if the language of bears and gym talk starts showing up in this blog. Just consider it an extension of the food, health, and relationship parts of home.

Oh, yeah. As a bonus for you, the picture below is one I’m hoping to turn into a tattoo on my calf in honor of Carlos. It will probably just have the image of Smokey and Carlos’s initials beneath his feet. It’s a surprise for him, so, shhhhhhhh! Will be a few months before I can save up enough money for it anyway.

Smokey the Badass

Brown Christmas

Earlier this season I popped up to Allisonville Nursery in Fishers, Indiana for their Holiday open house.

Lately I’ve been toying with the idea of what Christmas would be like if the only box of decorations I drug out were for the tree–no sit around stuff, none. Any remaining decor I’d put out would be natural wreaths and and hanging greenery. I nearly went that route this year, and it was MUCH easier. I’m also dreading clean up a lot less since all I have to do is walk around the house with a trash bag to collect the dried stuff. Maybe next year.

But while I was looking at naturals, I noticed some other at least natural looking things there that reminded me of my friends Duane and Dave who use natural items, colors and textures in more carefree and unstudied ways than I can typically pull off.

For the winter months after the holidays.

Good old-fashioned natural looking wreath

Brown and sparkly! You don’t see THAT every day.

Backing Up

Sugar skull from Day of the Dead altar

Stomps the snow off my feet and walks back through the door.

Phew!  It’s been awhile.  It isn’t that nothing’s happened, it’s more like a life’s worth of stuff has.  Trying to unpack it all this second though makes me tired to think about, even though it’s all pretty awesome.  I figure most of the important things will pop into posts as needed.

So what’s with the skull?  Well, I’d planned to start posting again back in October, and my visit with Carlos to the Indianapolis Art Center’s Day of the Dead exhibition was going to be the jumping off point.  Oh yeah, Carlos!  He’s officially our son now!  Getting through the adoption process was a big chunk of what was going on all this time.  Anyway, he and I always take a trip on his Fall Break to see the DOTD exhibition.  It’s always so touching, and beautiful, and at times a bit bizarre.

We had a special reason to go this year since C and I decided to make an altar at church in honor of our friend, Parker who had died earlier in the year. So we visited the exhibition and paid a visit to Parker’s widow, Margaret to learn more about his life and borrow some of his things.  I wish I had a photo of the final piece we made.  We were satisfied with it.  Margaret said it meant a lot to her and her family, which made us very happy.

I do have some photos of the other altars at the Art Center.

I think I like Day of the Dead so much because I love the idea of recalling our loved ones.   That it happens in the fall when the air is cooling and the earth is putting itself beautifully to bed makes perfect sense.  I also like that these altars are sort of visual poetry, full of distilled thoughts, rich emotion, and striking imagery.  And it seems like a great act of hospitality for the maker to invite me into these little personal memorials.

This altar was made by a woman in honor of her mother and father.  It was full of all of these these tender love letters they wrote to one another over the years, and I swear you could feel their affection alive and well.  This was one lucky daughter.

An altar from a daughter in honor of the love between her father and mother. Their old love letters frame the altar.

Altar for Jimmie Dean

The one above is in honor of Jimmie Dean, the sausage king who died earlier this year.  I love the pig and fork.   That’s another thing I like about DOTD altars.  They typically have some humor thrown in there to keep you from getting too caught up in melancholy.   The pairing of humor and death is a good way to get over the fear of  it.  Maybe that’s what the sugar skulls are about, too.

It took me years not to link DOTD to Halloween.  They are not actually related except for the spots they share on the calendar.  Don’t get me wrong. I like Halloween, too.  Candy!!  Kids (and dogs) in costumes?  Please, what’s not to love?  But I like the memorial quality that DOTD brings to the season and since Carlos’s roots are in Mexico, I want to try building that tradition into our home a bit more.

Anyone want to help us make sugar skulls next year?

The Week’s Kid Highlights

Kid highlights of the week so far (There will come a time when I have more to blog about, I promise, but I need to write this stuff down or I’ll forget about it.):

• Coming out of Target with C. the other night we were behind a man on one of those motorized shopping carts. C. asked me if we could help him with his bags. I told him he could ask the man if he would like help. The man said “no thank you,” but I was still proud of my son.
• C. went from throwing a tantrum on the floor because he didn’t want to see his caseworker to making said caseworker a Mii on Wii. Then we had a good talk about other ways he can express his anger over seeing people who make him sad.
• C. and I went to Circle Center Mall to get a black shirt for his school play today. He LOVED it. He kept saying how much fun it was – the mall that is. We went to the Gap to get a black shirt. They had a nice polo, but he didn’t want it. I asked him why and he said, “it’s nice, but it’s spiffy. And I don’t really look good in spiffy. My friends think I look weird in spiffy.” Then as a giant guy walked by us, he said, “Hey, that guy looks like Bob Sanders.” Whatever, the black t-shirt we got at H & M was actually cooler and a LOT cheaper. Now I have to figure out a kid style that isn’t spiffy, but that involves something besides Colts jerseys and sweats (young urbanite maybe?). It sounds bad to say, but at least he likes the mall. And he was really impressed when we ran into Mr. Frank there, who is our friend who helped Miss Indiana become Miss America.
• As C. wrote out his class valentines he gave the girls two pieces of High School Musical Heart candy so that it would equal the size of one Sponge Bob “crabby patty” candy that each of the boys were getting with their valentines. Fair is fair.

On My Transfiguration into a 1950’s Housewife

There was once a time when I used to stare out of the kitchen sink window at the viburnum bushes pondering one of my life’s great mysteries: namely that I knew I was destined to be a 1950s housewife but didn’t actually feel like one. Well, I’m here to tell you, we can safely put that one in the solved column. The problem was that I didn’t yet have children.

I’m not sure how it happened, but the second I became a parent a switch inside me was flipped.

I used to dread mornings. Now I get up at 5:45 a.m. I walk Claire, cook a full breakfast for three, empty the dishwasher, start a load of clothes and have C. to school with his bed made and his room picked up by 7:40. Those of you who know me well, know that before fatherhood I used to think getting up at 8:00 was something of an imposition. And the weird thing is, I have a strange feeling of satisfaction about the whole ordeal.

My joy over completed loads of laundry coupled with a strange desire to keep C.’s drawers stocked with clean socks and underwear is particularly surprising to me. Before I was a dad I used to moan to my mom that I sometimes had to do laundry twice a week. She said, “When you were a kid I typically did it twice a day.” I presumed she was exaggerating. She wasn’t. Today is Sunday. C. is going over to a friend’s house to play after church, and I’m actually thrilled that I have a day just to laundry! What has happened to me?

And don’t get me started on how much I love a clean house now. It’s as if disorder and chaos are crouched around every corner waiting to attack the house, and I’m the superhero in charge of keeping them shaking a fist in the air and muttering “curses!” I need to come up with a name for my new super alter ego (The Orderizer? Put It Away Man?). And it isn’t just me. John springs into action to help me out. C., too. No lie! He is a wiz with the dust cloth and the vacuum cleaner. Sure I have to set up little rewards for us: “Okay, if we can get the entire house cleaned by 3:00 we’ll go see Pink Panther II.” But you should see them scurry.

I’ve even started meal planning and preparing dinners in advance! This morning we had French toast casserole (easy to prepare the night before – I included the recipe below. John and I loved it. C. was lukewarm. Said parts of it were too soft – he was talking about the buttery brown sugar part!).

I have a feeling this may be just a delayed nesting reaction, since we had such a short “pregnancy.” (I did catch myself last week putting off a trip to the grocery store until we ran out of plastic poop bags for Claire.) I guess I’ll just ride the wave for as long as it lasts.

Here’s the recipe:

Virginia Willis’s French Toast Casserole (From her cookbook Bon Appetit Y’all)

Ingredients:

4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, melted
3/4 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1 loaf brioche or challah, sliced 1-1/2 inches thick (about 1-1/2 pounds)
8 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup whole milk
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger (I substituted a little cardamom)
Pinch of salt
1/2 cup chopped pecans
Confectioners’ sugar, for accompaniment
Sorghum, cane, or maple syrup, for accompaniment

Instructions:

Combine the melted butter and brown sugar in a baking dish. Arrange the bread slices in the dish. Whisk together the eggs, milk, vanilla, cinnamon, ginger, and salt in a bowl. Pour over the bread, letting it soak in. Top with the pecans. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 3 hours and up to 12 hours.

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Let the chilled casserole stand at room temperature for 20 minutes.

Bake until browned and set, 30 to 45 minutes. Remove to a rack to cool slightly. Sift over confectioners’ sugar. Serve hot or warm with sorghum, cane, or maple syrup.

Biggy Smalls

Not the rapper. That phrase describes our life now- a much smaller world that feels much bigger. When we first shared the good news about our son with our friend Sarah, who is a mom and the librarian at C.’s school, she said, “You don’t know it yet, but your social life has just changed.”

At the time I sort of knew what she meant: we’ll meet a lot more parents with kids, etc. The truth of what she really meant finally dawned on me as I was driving home yesterday from school with C. and his friend James in the backseat. My new social set is made up mostly of nine-year olds whose parents are trying to get a break from them! That’s really fine with me. C. is a very social animal especially if you are a nine year old and/or willing to play Lego Star Wars for hours on end. He and James really hit it off fast at school, and C. told me that James already feels like his “cousin” (translation = best kind of friend).

I like all of the friends C. is meeting. They are most entertaining. If you haven’t spent much time with nine year old boys, you should know that they think they are hilarious and typically are, but not for the reasons they believe. I’m starting to see that nine year olds are sort of like 80-year old men in that they can be entertained by talking about their bowel movements for hours. Yesterday as we drove home C. and James were trying to top one another’s stories about who had clocked in the longest recorded number 2 effort. James said he nearly missed an an entire Reds baseball game sitting on a toilet getting rid of the remnants of a Lean Cuisine meal that didn’t agree with him. “Two hours, I was in there! I haven’t eaten Lean Cuisine since,” he said.

Even C. was amazed at that one, and that’s saying something since he’s known for taking his own sweet time in the bathroom, too. Sometimes when he’s been in there a good long while, he’ll call out for us just to make sure we’re still somewhere in the house. Even though we would probably have time for a trip to the mall and a stop at the grocery store before he emerged again, it hasn’t sunk in for him yet that we would never leave him in the house by himself.

So our home has become our world in a way that it never has before. C. is becoming a homebody, which is good news because it means he is starting to experience his home as “home.” That can be challenging for someone whose life has completely changed recently. That we are spending time at home is a good thing in a lot of ways. And fortunately, our neighbors and good friends who have a son about C.’s age invite us over for dinner and to play a lot, which is helping him love his neighborhood, too.

As our life becomes centered on the geographic locales of school, church, home and neighborhood, we are starting to notice things that we never did before, like new friends and challenges to keeping friends without kids engaged in our lives. And our eyes are ever scanning the horizon for good babysitters as John and I prepare for the day when we can have a date night. Having C. has certainly brought John and me closer as a couple. At least that’s the way I’m choosing to characterize recent comments I’ve made to him, things like “You know you can never divorce me now. I will chain you to the basement stairs before I ever let you leave me.” Could be time for that date night sooner than I think. Don’t want the world to become TOO small.

Welcome Home, C!

Four years ago as I wandered through one of those organic everything food coops in Minneapolis with my friend Kris, I shared a secret with her.
“John and I are trying to adopt,” I said.
“Adopt a what?” She asked as she clasped the most tender of the leafy greens from a bulk vegetable bin with small pair of plastic tongs.
“A kid,” I said holding onto the cart.
She dropped the tongs, turned to look at me and said, “Are you out of your mind? Don’t do it!”
“Why not?” I asked, immediately offended by what I interpreted as a lack of confidence in my latent parenting skills. “You’re a parent!” I laced that last accusation with a thick layer of if you can do it, I can.
“Which is why I can tell you in full confidence that this is the silliest idea you have ever had. Heartache! Heartache! That’s what you’re shopping for! Don’t you know?” Kris has a charming ability to overstate her case in a way that actually makes you think about the case she’s making. And for the record, she’s actually crazy about her college-aged daughter.
As we shopped, Kris continuing her diatribe and me feeling sorry for her daughter whose middle name it seemed might as well be “heartache,” I did find myself taking one of many of the steps back I’ve taken over the last four years and asking myself, “is this really what we want?”
The good news for same-sex couples is that we aren’t in much danger of “accidentally” getting pregnant. Almost all children who end up in families like ours are planned for. There are many opportunities along the way for reflection and healthy second-guessing.
Well, I’m happy to inform any reader who may not know the truth already that after four years of thinking, praying, studying, home studies and document filling out, John and I are now parents.
Our new son, who I will call C., is nine. We met him over Thanksgiving. After meeting and talking (he had to meet three potential families) he chose us and we chose him. He came to live with us in mid-December and man, what a journey it’s been so far.
He’s a mighty fine gift. I’ve known for some time that children are a gift from the Lord, but I’ve since decided that I never knew just how many ways they could be. Having C. in our lives is like having a magnifier held in front of the sun and over every aspect of our lives – more light, more heat, and a clearer view than ever before. Not to mention a sense that things are going to spark up at any moment.
So Good Home will be getting a family twist in the future. I can’t promise posting will be regular, since we are still getting into our routine, but I’ll do my best. I hope you will hang in there with us. And please pray for us as we create the life God has for us together!

A Near Perfect Holiday

Hope you had a great Thanksgiving. Ours was a near perfect holiday. I have a bad habit of expecting all of them to be that way, but we kind of lucked into this one being darn close.

We had dinner with John’s mom and his grandmother and Jim at Broadway Church. Every year our church hosts a Thanksgiving lunch for anyone in the parish who wants to come, and they deliver meals to those who can’t make it. John and I’ve volunteered in the morning before and then gone on to our family Thanksgiving dinner, but this year we asked John’s mom and co. to eat with us there because everyone was too busy to host. Best idea we’ve had in a while.

I donated the turkey we brined and baked and some fresh cranberry sauce (easy recipe below). I’ll never buy canned cranberry sauce again. If I’d trussed the legs on the turkey it wouldn’t look like it was about to get up and march off, but it was still super tasty. If you want The Goose’s brine recipe and other turkey tips, just send me a message in the comments. If I get enough I’ll post them. If not, I’ll be happy to just e-mail you.

Thanksgiving at Broadway is so ding-dang festive. I just love it.

The food is good. They have great live music and everyone, even people you don’t know wish you a Happy Thanksgiving. When we sat down a woman we’d never met before came and joined us. Her name was Donna. She’s between Jim and Linda in our photo.

Turns out she’s a Special Olympics state bowling champ. She told us she had to eat a big dinner because finals were next Saturday.

The Sell family started the Thanksgiving at Broadway tradition about 30 years ago (Roger if that’s not right, feel free to correct me). And it’s been going strong ever since.

Pat Pearson, Broadway’s kitchen queen (hugging Conor in this photo, precious) is one of the main reasons it happens. Her mac and cheese was awesome.

This is Mr. Jim, one of Broadway’s hospitality staff people. I’m a big fan. He makes me feel good every time I see him.

After we had dinner at Broadway, John and I drove down to catch up with his dad’s family. Had a great time there, too, but my favorite thing was watching how excited John’s dad was to show off his new motorcycle, which John’s cousin Mary models here.

Once we got home, Dave and Conor came over for our final yearly Thanksgiving tradition, watching White Christmas. Dave even managed to stay awake until the end this year.

Like I said, it was a near perfect holiday. The only thing that would have made it better was if I’d gotten to see my family and one other person. But I’m truly grateful for all that we have.

Here’s my recipe for Sweet Tart Cranberry Sauce. Try it for Christmas, and let me know what you think. It’s a recipe I’m toying with, so I’m open to suggestions.

Sweet Tart Cranberry Sauce

3 cups fresh cranberries
3/4 cup sugar
2 tbs. water
Zest from one orange (Just the outside of the orange, not the white pith, which is bitter)
1 tsp. fresh ginger, finely grated (handheld Microplane works well for this and for zesting the orange)
½ tsp. cinnamon
¼ tsp. ground cloves
¼ tsp. allspice
Pinch of ground cayenne pepper

Mix all ingredients in a medium saucepan. Set over medium heat without stirring until most of the cranberry skins have split, about ten minutes. Stir gently. Let cool to room temperature before serving.

Now That’s What I Call A Brine

Darn that giant magical food elf, Chris Eley. So I was at Goose The Market’s website ordering a country ham for Christmas dinner. On their home page Chris, one of the owners and in my opinion a closet Southerner (no one likes the pig as much as you do who isn’t, Chris), has a cute video of him brining a turkey. And we’re not talking just throwing your bird into a bucket of salt water.

Toasted star anise, cinnamon stick and mustard seeds, sliced oranges, brown sugar, flat leaf parsley, garlic, lemon, bunches of other things and of course salt (He even provided the full shopping list that you can print out). And, I promise, he makes it look easy.

We weren’t going to roast a turkey for Thanksgiving since we’re having one at a friend’s house on Sunday and then having Thanksgiving dinner at Broadway Church on Turkey Day. But I’m thinking we might have to order one of Chris’s fancy free runnin’ birds now and try this recipe.

I wonder where I can get a turkey injector this late in the game.

Update: So I went to The Goose to order my turkey and found out they will even put together all of the ingredients you need for the brine and sell it to you along with the turkey! I just pick it all up along with the bird on Saturday. If it’s tasty enough I’ll take a picture and post the results.

Return to Boggy Creek

Well, the holidays are here. That means it’s time for our annual Legend of Boggy Creek party. Those of you who know me well, know that I’m obsessed with Bigfoot and by extension his Arkansas cousin, the Fouke Monster (or “munster” as Mr. Willy calls him in the movie). Boggy Creek isn’t much of a party. It’s typically on a Tuesday night. There aren’t many refreshments, just bottled Coke and this year a big foot cake that I made myself. I tried to swirl the icing to give it a hairy look.

As with all good parties though, the guests make the night special. But it is not an exclusive list. Anyone is welcome as long as they have a healthy respect for Bigfoot and the horribly bad movies made about him. Be forewarned though, the movie does suck and attendance is frowned upon if all you’ve come to do is make fun of Dave and me for being dressed like this:

Guests don’t have to be in costume. It is encouraged, but if you haven’t seen the movie and don’t know what to wear, comfortable pajamas are appropriate (see Eric and Max below). Most of the women in the movie are dressed in nightgowns and big rollers, so Dave did a little shopping. We’re dressed as Mother Searcy. We didn’t make an attempt to look particularly matronly, since the woman in the movie who plays her sort of looks like a dude anyway. I don’t know if there’s much of a market for it, but Dave totally rocks granny chic. The cigarette is fake, kids. Remember, don’t smoke, and stay in school.

Eric jumped at the chance to wear his pjs to a party. And Max is wearing the new Fouke Monster shoes I found when I was in Arkansas last. No, that’s not how they were marketed, but it’s the way they should have been.

When Max put on the rest of his costume it was clear that he was a little confused. Instead of “Fouke Monster”, he thought I said “Fez Monkey”. I cut him some slack since he’s only nine months.

But you got to hand it to the boy. He’s a tech whiz already. Look at him go at that DVD player. He couldn’t wait to get the movie started!

And, Max, that’s how you get invited back.

Batesville Home Tour (Last Installment)

Baxter-Byers House – 1850s – 1940s

When I started studying American architecture I began to notice I had a hard time categorizing some of the homes in Batesville, like this one. That’s because it and many others were built in one style in the mid-19th century and later modified. In Batesville, homes often went from Queen Anne to neo-colonial style. It is a transition seen throughout much of the U.S., but one that is typically botched. The Baxter-Byers home pulls it off well mainly because of the proper proportions of the porch and columns and the railing detail on top of the house and side room. The railing is strictly decorative as far as I can tell, but the house would fall apart visually if it weren’t there.

Landers Theater

Okay, it probably doesn’t belong on a home tour, but my Batesville readers will be interested in seeing the Landers movie theater. Don’t let the marquee’s message fool you though. The theater is hardly “back.” Here is what it looks like on the inside:

My mom said that some enthusiastic developer started the project and then realized how much of an effort it would take to get it up and running as anything commercially viable. I’m sure it was a firetrap…but I wonder what happened to the naked lady lamps that used to line the walls. I always thought they were kind of naughty. The whole endeavor looks like a metaphor for aging business districts in small towns across the U.S.

Pioneer Cemetery – 1826

If you walk behind the Landers you’ll see Pioneer Cemetery. Founded in 1825, it’s the resting place of many folks who would remember Batesville when it was just an oddly angled set of streets on an outcropping of land between the White River and Polk Bayou. This young man was born just 33 years after the birth of our country. I can’t imagine how he ended up in Arkansas around that time.

Dr. Calvin Churchill House – 1936

Built new in 1936, the Churchill house is not as historic as some of the others on the tour, but I still like it. It is across the street from the church where I grew up, and I can’t remember a time when I didn’t think it was handsome. The dormers aren’t much to look at but they aren’t horrible either. The lunette window above the front door, the just this side of fancy double columns on the porch as well as the home’s scale and proportions make it look inviting to me.

First Baptist Church – 1925 (built with stone from the 1881 church on the same site)

Some places are so interwoven into your life experience that you can hardly see them with your eyes. First Baptist’s homey and warm gothic look escaped me for years. All I could see were the things that interested a kid, like the Nandina bushes where my friends and I picked berries to throw at each other after weekly suppers on Wednesday nights. In those days, my favorite architectural feature was the built-in stone slides flanking the front door (actually railings hidden by a large bush in this photo). Years away allow me to see its simple beauty more clearly, but only sometimes. At other times the building ceases being a building again and goes back to being a place.

This is the interior of the sanctuary. The spare look of it surprises me now, because like I say, a part of me can only see it filled with people I love attending countless weddings, a few funerals, service after service after service after service, morning and night, year upon year, shoulder to shoulder; people who knew the best and worst of me. I see me taking a lonely walk at the age of ten down the aisle on the right to tell my pastor that I couldn’t imagine my life without Jesus or a forever in hell. I hear us all singing hymns we somehow knew without looking at books. I feel myself one well executed leap and one more verse of “Just as I Am” away from jumping high enough to grab a lantern so I can swing on the others like a monkey up and down the length of the ceiling just to show God just what I was capable of. I try to see the lines and the structure, the space and the materials, but I can’t really. All I see is life.

I think ultimately that’s what I like about a lot of the buildings I see in Batesville. I have either experienced life there or can imagine it easily. If I can do neither, a building will typically not hold interest for me. I’m kind of conservative that way, I guess.

Batesville, Arkansas Home Tour (Part 2)

Edward Dickenson House – 1879-1880

Kind of screams Arkansas Gothic, doesn’t it? But there’s a sweetness to the rounded windows and gothic arch. Not too much, but just right. Early photos show shutters for the bottom story windows. The millwork is from the historic Batesville firm of Charles L. Gorsuch.

First United Methodist Church – 1913

First United Methodist is my parent’s church now. I’ve always thought it was a handsome building. I grew up going to the church across the street, so I saw it no fewer than three times a week until I went to college. The rock for the columns was extracted from and carved by the Pfeiffer Stone Quarries north of town.

As I walked by I saw the sign for the Chubby Menard Pancake Day. My family never missed Pancake Day, which as far as I know has always been hosted by First Methodist. I never knew who Chubby Menard was, but if he loved pancakes (and sausage, which they serve along with the pancakes) as much as I do, I know how he got his name. When I was in high school I used to work Pancake Day as part of my Key Club duties. Fun and tasty.

Brewer House – Late 19th Century

No one is sure how much of this house is original, which is why I’m giving you such a sketchy date. But it still looks well designed even if it was cobbled together over decades. I’ve always wondered about the Chippendale looking balustrade on the porch. It seems unusual for this late style, but it still works, I think.

J. B. Fitzhugh House – 1884

Like a lot of the Main St. houses, J. B. Fitzhugh House was changed from an elaborately painted Queen Anne mansion with plenty of turrets into a more reserved Colonial Revival home around the turn of the 20th century. In most cases this meant scalping off a turret or two and dramatically increasing the porch size like you see here. As hot as it is in Arkansas, I’m not surprised porch sizes got bigger and bigger.

Barnett-Grace House – 1921

All I really know about this house is that it’s where my friend Rob’s sweet grandmother and grandfather lived.

Burton-Arnold House – 1904

This house is across the bayou in West Batesville, which was once a separate town called Charleston. It’s small scale, big porch and shady lawn makes me want to live there. I kind of like the red roof, too.

Christian Science Meeting House

I have no history on this building, but isn’t it sweet and kind of perfect? It just sits there on its little built-up hill like a cake decoration. I do know that for such a tiny place it has a really nice pipe organ, which is located inside the lower window of the steeple tower. My first experiences playing the organ were here. It was when my music teacher Mr. Hess got a wild hair. He let me talk him into giving me a summer of organ lessons instead of piano. It didn’t really pay off, not for him at least. I’m no organist, but I did develop a love for organ music. That counts for something, right?

Final part of the tour is coming soon. It will be shorter.

Batesville, Arkansas Tour of Homes

I visited my hometown, Batesville, AR last week to see my family and do some writing there. Folks from Batesville, including me, are uncommonly proud of their town. Being the oldest functioning settlement in Arkansas, you might think historic domestic architecture would look something like this backwoods example from the 1850s (now at Lyon College), which I love:

But being a prosperous river town meant that there were more refined homes built in the “city.” Batesville is still a beautiful place even though right now there are FAR too many cheap aluminum buildings popping up on the landscape. My parents got sick of hearing me moan about them. They are the small town version of suburban sprawl, I guess, but I still hate them. Oh, and Riverside Park looks pretty skanky at the moment, too. Get on the stick city council!

The older parts of town are still very fine. For a break one day, I parked at the top of Main (beginning of the standard parade route for you homeys out there) and walked Main, College, and Boswell Streets. I tried to photograph at least most of my favorite homes.

The next few posts will be a tour of some (not all, there are actually many more that I didn’t photograph) of Batesville’s fine home and church architecture.

Garrott House – 1842

The church I went to as a child is across the street from Garrott House. Once we had an “old-fashioned day” at church. The entire congregation dressed up in old costumes. We had dinner on the grounds of the Garrott House. Even in the heat, it was the perfect setting.

Glenn House – 1849

Glenn House was not only a residence. It was once a Methodist school and served as a Civil War hospital. At one time it had a full porch across the front with double ionic columns. I love the side balcony.

Morrow Hall – 1873

Once part of Arkansas College’s (present day Lyon College) original campus, Morrow Hall is now part of First Presbyterian Church, most of which I did not photograph, though I should have. In my opinion, it is the most beautiful church in Batesville, and I’ve never even been to a service there! First Baptist, where I went, was catty-corner to First Pres. We used to all pray that our service would dismiss before theirs so tables at restaurants would still be free for lunch.

Wycough-Jones House – 1872

This home was originally three stories with fancy dormers and a tower. But the third floor was struck by lightning long ago and burned off (happened a lot). With its bungalow-style roof, it is probably more humanly scaled, at least in my opinion.

Moore-McCaleb House – 1872

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This house started off as a one story straight line home. Like a lot of houses it was both added to and subtracted from (by fire again) until it reached its present t-shape style. I like it’s simplicity.

Handford-Terry House – 1888

This house was built in 1888 along with its exact mirror image across the street. They were owned by two brothers. Now they are restored to period colors. They were featured in the book America’s Painted Ladies in 1992.

If you weren’t bored by the tour, check back in a few days and I’ll try to post more.

Ranch House Lately

So lately I’ve been getting the home design bug again. And for some inexplicable reason, I’ve been thinking about designing ranch style houses, those low slung single story numbers that originally popped up like mushrooms after a rainstorm during the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s.

On second thought, maybe this impulse is explicable. I grew up in the ’70s. Our first home in Quail Valley was a ranch, a super simple one with giant picture windows in the living room that begged to be plastered with construction paper pumpkins and toilet paper ghosts at Halloween and lined with big fat C7 Christmas lights in December.

With modern lines and little exterior decoration, ranch houses turned into inexpensive blank canvasses on which to project fantasies and ideals of home. Consumable print–wrapping paper, magazine advertisements, even Christmas songbooks like this Karl Schulte classic

from the 1970s– gave us poppy, saturated and kind of wacky color combinations that easily layered “traditional” or space-age images onto the neutral frameworks.

I’m sorry for kids who didn’t grow up in the ’70s. As atrocious as the more extreme Graceland versions of home fashion were, it was also the era of the awesome appropriated culture party!

The Ranch House was the perfect backdrop for “fondue,” the traditionally Swiss communal way of eating that Americans morphed into a dipping orgy of bad cheese and chocolate, which a Swiss friend of mine assures me he would never have recognized.

And the luau! Carved watermelon fruit salads, teakwood bowls and utensils, shish kabobs, tiki torches and hanging lanterns with no irony attached. Someone, usually an overweight guy, inevitably strapped on a grass skirt. An affront to island culture? Surely, but so much fun.

Now a new generation of first time home buyers who can only afford older ranch homes are discovering that they like them because of their casual party ready spaces. Plus they are human scaled, no ballroom sized bedrooms and separate rooms for every activity. You don’t have to squander the kid’s college fund just to furnish the place.

My problem with ranch houses typically is not what they are, since they are easily stripped and revived, but where they are. They are typically suburban phenomena. Still, suburbs born in the ’50s through the ’70s are something different than what sprawls into infinity today.

Here in Indy I think I could totally live in Glendale and be happy. Gay people for a lot of reasons that have to do with everything from economics to feeling welcome push into uncool places and try to make them cooler. As more and more gay couples end up with children of their own, could the mid-20th century ranch be the icon of the new gay frontier?

Fry Day 2008

Some days were just made for frying.

A couple of weeks ago we had our biannual artery jamming hootenanny, Fry Day, which is basically a good time with a fryer, friends and family who happen to be around. Folks from Arkansas (Lori, Felley, Georgette and Julie) who always bring a car load of good food to go with our good times made it extry special. And even our new next door neighbors joined us. I wasn’t sure how they would take to something so backwoods happening in our backyard, but they were totally down with it.

Here’s MY Fry Daddy. Hot.

This year we had two fryers going. Duane and Todd loaned us one of theirs. I love this picture of Duane. We were totally feeling the power of the oil.

Some food highlights:

Eric and Chris brought Spam to fry, inspiring several trips down memory lane. I hate to admit it, but I still like it.

Dave was the poster boy for fried mac and cheese, the sleeper hit of the day.

Jane’s first hushpuppy. I loved the expression on her face when she first heard the name. She gave it a thumbs up. Rev. Mike is a harsh judge of hushpuppies, and he said these passed the test. Virginia Willis’s recipe I think.

The deep-fried brownies were tasty. The deep-fried Kit-Kats were better in theory.

Lil’ Peachez is so cute he didn’t need to be battered and fried for us to want to eat him up.

Six Random Things About Me

I got tagged by Granny Smith Green to share six random things about me. I’m happy to do it, because my Good Home well has been dry for a while (focusing on other writing projects). Dave has been kindly nudging me to post something, (Dave, you owe Granny Smith Green a big green thank you.) So here are the rules:

1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post these six rules on your blog.
3. Write 6 random things about yourself.
4. Tag 6 people at the end of your post and link to them.
5. Let each person you have tagged know by leaving a comment on their blog.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is posted.

Where to start:

1. Roy Lichtenstein once gave me a private tour of his studio in Greenwich Village.

The Dallas Museum of Art where I worked at the time had just closed a show of his, and I happened to be in New York with a friend who knew his publicist. He’d said to drop by sometime, so we did (well, we did call first). We did not expect to see him, but he answered the door and hung out with us for about an hour. He wore a heather gray Polo sweater and told me that he ran laps around the studio for exercise. It was during his brushstroke series.

2. I have the same heart disease that causes 20-something basketball players to drop dead on basketball courts. Hypotrophic Cardiomyopathy. I was just diagnosed two months ago. Turns out that my 41 years of a generally sedentary life may have bought me a few years. Thanks laziness!

3. I once fitted Anita Bryant, Florida orange juice queen and 1970s D-lister, for shoes at Dillard’s Department Store in Fayetteville, AR.
I posted about the day here, and to date it has the highest number of views of any of my blog entries.

4. I love wearing nice suits, but I don’t do it very often because I sweat more than a glass Coke bottle in July. And when people comment on the fact that I’m sweating it embarrasses me, which makes me sweat even more! Obviously I’m a fan of lightweight fabric, but I’ve never owned seersucker anything, except for a pair of shorts with whales embroidered on them that I got a J. Crew earlier this summer.

5. For some reason when I’m on a road trip I feel compelled to buy Big Red soda and pork rinds. Most of the time I resist dropping the cash for the pork rinds because I typically freak out when I bite into them, and then immediately wish I’d bought those Andy Capp’s hot cheddar fries instead, which I’m not sure they even make anymore. I know they still make pork rinds though because I looked for them at a BP station when John and I drove up to Cleveland to visit our friends Julie and Tommy and their dog Bob this past weekend. I didn’t buy the pork rinds this time around. I didn’t buy a Big Red either, but I did buy a Mt. Dew Code Red, which may be even more hillbilly, now that I think about it.

6. Speaking of hillbilly, I once tried to put a penny on a train track while a train was traveling on it.

So here are the folks I’m going to tag:

Jennie at Trim and Fashionable (who probably has already been tagged with this before, but is so interesting that I’m sure she’ll have no trouble coming up with six more things).
Scott at All I’m Saying (whose blog always makes me say, “where does he find this stuff?”)
Susan over at H Squared (a true Arkansas blogger)
Duane over at Potter Dad (who is most likely to take as long as I did to post his six things)
and
Anne, over at Indy Anne (a fellow southern transplant!).

Okay, that’s only five, but it’ll have to do.