This Is Not Delicious

** IMPORTANT NOTE FROM THE BLOGGER: This post is actually about how a certain class of cookie embodies the futile, broken dreams of Western civilization, but I take a really long time to get to the point. Sorry about that. In my defense, brevity might be the soul of wit but a didactic ramble is often its elaborate coffin, so, you know, have some respect. Also, writing about my doubleplus cute daughter is the only way I can smuggle in pictures that people actually want to look at and when you write blog posts this long it really is important to have pictures.** 

We've crossed a sad milestone here on Gumpen Village Street. It used to be that the child distinguished between things that were delicious and things that were disgusting. Now she recognizes that a lot of stuff is just...kind of okay. And I'm sad about it, because it is the beginning of the end of innocence.  

Waffles are delicious...for now.

There was a time when all food was good. Then she started rejecting stuff on the grounds that it was "yucky", "disgusting," or "spicy" -- more recently, "sour" or "nasty". These judgments are delivered with a look of horror, a grasping of the tongue and sometimes tears and even spitting. 

But at least it was cute. Like the rosemary incident. One dinner a couple months ago Noodle was tucking into a fresh bowl of pasta with tomato sauce, which she loves, when she froze. Mid-bite. 

Dammit, I thought. I knew it. 

"This is a stick," the Noodle said to me with distate, holding up a single, tiny rosemary leaf. 

"It's rosemary," I said. "It's an herb." 

Noodles with sticks. This photo is a poor recreation of the offending dish.

She peered into her bowl. "No, this is a stick." She went in like a monkey looking for fleas. "Look! Other stick."

She held each leaf up demonstratively before smearing it onto the table. "Stick," she said. "Stick. Stick." You stupid, stick-hiding fiend, she thought to herself. It was a long dinner. 

But in the weeks since she turned two, there is a third, sadder category of food: Stuff she'll eat but without pleasure. 

Rice crackers, for example. Our go-to playground snack. One recent day she looked up at me, rice dust on her lips, and noted: "This...this is not really delicious, Mommy." And then with a hint of sorrow she polished off the rest. 

Or last week. She was eating my soup and seemed to be enjoying it, so I went fishing for compliments. "Mmm, is it yummy?" I asked. "No," she said with a shrug, "It's not really yummy." And kept eating. 

In fact, the only things that she finds delicious are, I'm afraid, things that everyone finds delicious, like ice cream and candy and cheese. (And plain black bread, for some reason, but I'm sure that'll end soon too.) 

And I guess this makes me sad because it means the way is prepared for her to experience disappointment. The let down. The long slow process of becoming jaded. Heck, one day soon she's going to realize that sorting rocks and riding the bus to the supermarket actually constitute a fairly shitty Saturday, and then what will I do?  

On the other hand, it's an achievement that she can distinguish between things that are delicious and things that we eat because they keep us regular. It means she has a sense of personal taste. Maybe she'll be less likely to buy in to stupid fads. 

Which brings me to the actual reason I started this blog post. Ready? 

MACAROONS ARE NOT DELICIOUS.* 

I mean, HELLLOOOOOOO. They are not delicious, and they do not even keep us regular. 

Destined to break your heart. Actually I never made this recipe, so I shouldn't judge, but I will.
No macaroons are actually delicious.

Ya. Macaroons. That is what this post is really about. Macaroons are the insipid, overplayed arm candy of the confection world. And if one more shitty schlock shop starts selling these by the checkout counter, I might scream. Is there no escape? Every airport. Every bourgie supermarket. Every bakery. 

Sure, they're pretty to look at. Their smooth, bland form allows for fun with color and indeed many are beautiful. It's obvious why the people have been Instagramming them ever since Instagram was invented. But #yum? Please. 

Et tu, McDonalds? REALLY? 

Macaroons are disappointment itself. To bite into a macaroon is to feel your hopes dashed and, worse, to feel like a sucker for having hoped your stupid hopes in the first place. How could you have believed that something so beautiful would actually taste good? 

A bit Orwellian, really.

Remember that scene in American Beauty (reach way back, guys) where Kevin Spacey's character finally gets the girl of his burning imagination and then it turns out she's just a clueless child onto whom the man has been projecting his remarkably lame fantasies? They didn't even need to make that whole movie. Alan Ball could have just passed around a box of macaroons and waited until everyone took a bite and been like, "That? That feeling you just had? That's what our movie is about". 

Macaroons are not disgusting (actually, I had a foie gras-stuffed one this summer that was SUPER disgusting, but that was an exception). They are just...nothing. They are okay. But you should only eat food that is just okay if it contains vitamins or supports your ability to poop. 

You should definitely not be paying (way) upwards of fifteen euros for six cookies that are just sort of okay. Bizarre liver-based varieties notwithstanding, your average macaroon is made out of egg whites and food coloring. Sure, the gorgeous cardboard boxes are fit to be used as the display sarcophagi of tiny dead pharaohs, but still. Have we lost our damn minds? The Emperor is naked, y'all, and has been for years. 

Laduree has boxes fit to bury tiny Care Bear kings. Still not that delicious though.

Enough already. Let's go back to eating rice crackers and cupcakes. I mean real cupcakes. The kind that don't have a three-inch butter-boner on their heads...and on that note, I'm going to stop because I feel another food rant coming on. 

Oh man. This blog post is such a macaroon. 

-------------

*Betcha didn't see that one coming, eh? Keeping it fresh. 

Everyone Sucks

So, happy belated Mother's Day! I love my mother. She is awesome. I also love being a mother. It's great. As you know, I will be a mother times two in October. By which I mean I am pregnant. 

Unlike being a mother, being pregnant is not awesome. Okay, let me qualify that. It is LITERALLY awesome to be pregnant. It is an undeserved privilege and also, you know, super magical and fundamental and biological, or whatever. 

It's super great that two twisted ladders of information are twisting together again, reassembling into something both ancient and new. Each strand carries the genetic history of a thousand thousand ancestors. Each of whom ate and prayed and worried and wondered whether they were pretty and wished they owned nicer stuff and fell in love (or didn't) and couldn't actually believe they were really going to die until the moment they did. But whether saints, martyrs, or total jerks, our ancestors had one other thing in common, too: they managed to breed, and so did their kids. 

And now, in the case of me and Alex, all that information has again duked it out in a very tiny game of dice and the resulting individual is currently constructing herself in my stomach. And all while we watch Spartacus and eat chocolate! 

So, you know, on THAT level, I'll give it to you, pregnancy is pretty cool. 

On the other hand, my clothes don't fit, I'm SO tired, and I can't take my skin medication. Therefore I am crabby. Or, to put it differently, everyone who is not me sucks. 

Three whole people have struck up conversations about my skin in the last couple weeks--people that I have never met before. Seriously now. What is their thought process? 

Do I walk up to people I have just met and put forth, as a point of entry into conversation, my opinion about the mole on their neck? Do I casually tell new people that the way they wear their boots makes it look like they are about to invade Poland? Do I inform them that sensible people no longer underline their eyes in pale metallic blue? No. No, I do not, because I wouldn't like to make them feel bad. Whereas they, apparently, enjoy making other people feel self-conscious and also like to demonstrate their incredible knowledge of skin diseases. 

All psoriasis-driven conversations, for all of my life, have gone something like this: 

"Oh wow! Sebborheic dermitis?"
"Big words. Not what I have."
"Does it itch?"
"Yep."
"Have you tried avoiding strawberries?"
"There really is no cure. I'm going to go hang myself in the next room, if you'll excuse me."

"Oooh, would you look at that! My cousin had that."
"Did she really."
"Yes. It's a fungus. You have to stay out of the sun."
"It is not a fungus."
"The thing my cousin had looked JUST like that, though. She had to shower with anti-dandruff shampoo for ages, but then it cleared right up. You should try it!"
"I hate you."

"Have you ever tried a macrobiotic diet?"
"No! Why?"
"I've been on one for ages. I've never felt better."
"Tell me more."
"Well, it's great for your energy levels. And it like cures all allergies. And, you know, stuff for your skin." *Looks interestedly at my arms*
"There is no cure for psoriasis."
"You should really try it!"
"I hate you." 

"My dentist has psoriasis!"
"Great!"

"Classic. Neurodermititis."
"You mean neurodermitis. It's not neurodermitis."
"Oh."
"It's psoriasis. Psoriasis. With a "p". It is genetic."
"Isn't that the same thing?"
"You know how they say all happy families are the same, but every f***** up family is f***** up in its own special way? That's how skin conditions are."
"Oh man. That must be really hard for you. Have you tried meditation and neem tree extracts? This one time on my spiritual journey to India I met a guy who said people who meditate never get these common ailments."
"Mm."
"Like, they don't have allergies or dandruff and they never get colds."
"You don't say."
"You should try it!"
"Thank you for this unique advice that I have never heard before." 

And it is not just my skin. It might seem like I'm being unreasonable, but I assure you it is true: ever since I got pregnant, everyone else has sucked more. Fact.

More examples? Fine. For example, the people who work at the grocery store don't make eye contact anymore plus they ring up my stuff extra slow. Like what, they think I have all day to get home and make dinner? 

Except you know what's worse? When they ring up the groceries all extra super fast so you can barely bag them, and then they start ringing up the next guy before you're done, and his ugly tubs of coconut-pineapple yogurt get all mixed up with my delicious, normal flavored yogurt. 

Mind you, these ultra fast scanning people don't care about customer service. They just want to see how fast they can scan things. I've worked at a convenience store before, so they're not fooling anyone. I was just like them. 

No, the speed with which you scan groceries does not say anything about your adequacy as a human being. It won't get you to the end of your shift any faster. Are fast counters good rocket scientists? Are fast hand-washers better surgeons? No. No, I don't think so. What are you, six? Scanning groceries fast doesn't mean you are good at your job. 

If you want to be good at your job, grocery store girl, convince the overlords that Spar should sell ripe avocados like an effing real store. I'm serious. What is this graveyard of pitiful, hard, green plant excretions? Seriously. It's like Spar stocks its fruit and veg on the basis of a Peppa Pig episode. Bananas, oranges, apples, and broccoli. Ah yes, some strawberries, because spring. Yes, Spar. Clearly these are all of the fruits that Mother Nature has bequeathed unto humanity in the year 2015. Give yourself a little pat on the back, Spar, since your work here is obviously done. 

Anyway. I'm clearly very pleasant to be around these days. 

I'm searching for something heartwarming to say. 

Oh yes. On the plus side, it turns out our little family obviously has a career singing together. We're like the freaking von Trapps. (And if you don't know who the von Trapps are, you must be Austrian). 

Watch the magic on this video below, which features terrible sound and a blurry picture. I'm sorry about the blurry video. It's not just everyone else who sucks, you see. It's ME TOO. I'M SO SORRY. 

*runs away, eating*

Beached Noodle: Bubble's First Seaside Adventure

Lignano, like any really popular tourist destination, is in many ways just awful. Located in very northern Italy, Lignano has Austria's closest beach. As a result, the place both feeds on and is totally ruined by hordes and hordes of pink, German-speaking mountain people seeking a plunge in the sea.

Sand mouse.

It is filled with gaggles of drunk teenagers on spring-break type trips. The beach is packed with endless rows and depressingly deep columns of umbrellas and deckchairs, all of which are strewn with low-maintenance holiday-makers and their noisy offspring (like us). Long-suffering immigrants march the beach doing the hard sell on shitty trinkets. Miles and miles and miles of beachfront property are filled with medium-sized hotels that range from soulless to cheesy. 

From the neck up, baby.

But the good outweighs the bad: you can always find a room and an umbrella, there are arcades and amusement parks (never been myself, but Gulliverlandia sounds intriguing), they sell ice cream and sunscreen every ten feet, and you have to walk about 100 meters from the tideline into the placid sea before the water gets up to your waist. It's like going to the pool, only safer. The beach is soft and sandy and devoid of all life besides the very occasional mollusk, bait-size fish or crab. And despite the fact that it's 90% Austrians roaming about, you are actually in Italy, and so the fruit and veg, restaurants and coffee are all great. 

I've been there with friends several times over the last ten years or so, and have usually stayed in the same hotel, where you have bring your own sheets and towels and toilet paper and pay extra if you're not going to personally scrub the room clean afterwards (which I'm not, thanks). The mattresses and pillows are salty and lumpy. But every room has a kitchen and a balcony with a table and plenty of chairs, and it's directly on the shore, and in general feels like a home. I kind of love it.

Destruction.

On this trip I asked Clemens, who is responsible for making arrangements (because he speaks Italian and his family have been staying in this hotel since time immemorial) what the rooms would cost if we used booking.com. He looked at me like I was insane. 

"Have you seen Frau Kohlrabi's book?," he asked. (Everyone calls her Mrs Turnip. Apparently her actual name sounds a bit like "Kohlrabi," and she looks like one, too.) He explained that paying up involves a ten-minute wait while the Turnip licks her fingers and flips back and forth through the pages, making notes and erasing numbers with a stubby pencil. "I have no idea what she's doing in there," said Clemens. "Maybe she's just acting important." 

Bubbles helping to dismantle a castle.

We spent the evenings with our friends, drinking vino on a balcony next to the baby monitor. Ten years ago we'd be up all night at one of the truly terrible discos and would sleep it off on the beach. Now we pushed the sleeping baby down past the bars at nine p.m., shaking our heads at the sight of shirtless boys and glittery girls drinking vodka out of hollow watermelons. They were hopping around to commercial techno, showing off their boring tattoos and their very nice bodies, getting it on with randoms, and ultimately vomiting on everything nice. It's actually quite heart-warming. There is nothing more feral and human than a bunch of drunk youths. 

In the early morning Alex, the Noodle and I would go stroll around the mostly-empty main strip. A smashed watermelon, lost hair decorations, broken glass. In some cases you could almost picture exactly what had happened where. 

I should never have let her taste ice cream. She's a machine.

For instance, I tried to withdraw some money from an ATM and realized only after several minutes of pushing diverse buttons (I speak zero Italian) that it was empty and wasn't going to work. Then I noticed that the wall and floor all around the cash machine were covered in big, wet stains. Elementary, my dear Watson, I deduced. The machine must have stopped working some time last night. And then I thought, I should probably wash my hands. 

What has not changed over the years is my deep affection for building sand castles. If Alex and I have one thing in common, it's the fact that we can both really get into crafting something tedious. This year we had the added benefit of the Noodle, who was our personal Godzilla. Her presence also seemed to justify buying all the fancy plastic tools we wanted. Well, her and the fact that we no longer calculate the opportunity cost of beach toys in terms of vodka-filled melons. 



This year, with six of us working to pile sand, hold passers-by at bay and keep each other well-moistened with light white wine spritzers, we managed to do quite the project--a larger-than-life sand mermaid lying around on the beach. Lots of little kids and their parents came by to take pictures and help donate seaweed, shells and blobs of sand. (You know you're in Europe when no one gives a hoot that you've built sand hooters.) 

Noodle, for her part, had a blast at the beach. She was either laughing hysterically at the waves, the sand, the muck and the algae, or she was fast asleep. Needless to say, this was also awesome for her parents. 

First baby beach trip was a great success. Can we go back yet? 

Family selfie!

The youthful hordes I was talking about? They liked the mermaid too.

Look on our works, ye mighty, and despair!

Oh Barf

Okay seriously though. The kid needs to stop barfing. The child is perfectly healthy (thank goodness), so I use the word "barf" advisedly. I realize that with respect to cheery, milk-guzzling little wiener people the preferred nomenclature is "spitting up," but let's call a spade a spade. Milky it may be, but barf is barf, and make no mistake about it. 

An oldie but goodie: Noodle at four months, barfing...she's
lucky she has me wrapped around her little finger.

When she started eating solid food I thought the barfing would slow down but as usual I was wrong. My sugar pumpkin barfs onto her pants. She barfs onto my shoulder. She's barfs while we're Skyping with my mom and she barfs while she's playing with blocks. When she's crawling around she's been known to do a little casual barf off to the side. 

I feel a song coming on. 

Barf on the couch and barf on the floor, 

barf down your front; don't stop, barf more!

Barf to the left and barf to the side, 

barf pooling below or barfed far and wide. 

Now in a haiku:

After a bottle

of nutritious formula

comes, like the rain, barf.

Between our also barf-happy cats and my daughter, I would conservatively estimate that I spend approximately 16 hours a day cleaning vomit off of surfaces. I split the rest of my time between poop, enthusiastically reciting ancient and oddly dark nursery rhymes, and having fitful dreams about running out of paper towels. 

I don't really mind though. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Thank God babies are so freaking cute. I'm especially partial to mine. 

The cats better get their s*** together, though, or I'm hurling them out the window. 

Hope you're having a great weekend!