Sleepies

I don't sleep very well. It's not because of Naomi-- she sleeps like a log-- it's because of me. I just can't do it.
Sunday night, I slept great until 3:30 AM when the computer set up in our room (long story) went to sleep and left its screen blaring bright blue. I turned it off, hopped back in bed......... and just lay there until 6:30 or 7. Thankfully, though, our housekeeper comes on Monday, so when the girls took their afternoon naps, I got to sleep too. I slept for 1 1/2 hours and felt GREAT. I couldn't remember the last time I'd felt so rested.
Unfortunately, this meant that last night, I went to bed at like 10:30 PM, and I wasn't tired at all. I kept glancing at my clock every hour or two, and I think I finally fell asleep around 4:00 AM. Then I woke up at 5:30 to feed Naomi, and I've been awake since.
I pretty much hate it. 'What are the problems?' my mom is going to ask. Well, first of all, our apartment is too hot. We get sunlight all day long, turning our home into a solar oven. I open the windows and the door, which helps some, but with the 24-hour construction just outside and the pollution, this isn't as helpful as you might think.

Surpies!

These pies were buckled up more than anyone else in the car, I'm sure

Pies, get it? Yeah...my title sounds lame even reading it. And yet, that still doesn't keep me from deleting it. But this whole post is about pies, so consider yourself warned.
Every year I have to relearn how to make a pie crust. Thankfully, my first tries are getting better and better, and perhaps soon I'll be able to just make a pie crust without a practice one first.
A few weeks ago, I was feeling festive, so I made a pumpkin pie to start of the holiday season. I made it from a pumpkin I bought here at the supermarket. I've got to say, China's pumpkins are really tasty! America's pumpkins are bred to be bright orange, round, and hollow in the middle. The flesh is pretty thin and waxy, and it doesn't usually get eaten. But here, it's like they breed the food to be eaten, or something weird like that. I couldn't carve a Chinese pumpkin if my life depended on it, unless I had a power jigsaw. The hole in the middle is about the size of my fist, and the rest of the thing is wonderful orange squash. So I made one into a pie.
Then the other day at the Consulate, there was a Thanksgiving shindig where we cut to the good stuff and just had apple cider and pies. I made a couple of lemon-meringue pies, and since this is my blog, I am going to brag for a moment. Or a few moments.
Making pies while watching two kiddos is an all-day endeavor. I packed up the girls and the stroller to go down to breakfast, and we left from breakfast to get lemons and sugar from the grocery store. Fast-forward to 11:00 PM, and I finally took the pies out of the oven. Oh, I did a lot in between those steps, but for most of the day there was flour, half-made pie crusts, or partially made pies on the countertops.
While I make pies, I always remember that line from Mary Poppins: "Oh, that's a pie crust promise; easily made, easily broken." I'm not sure where she got her idea that pie crusts are easily made, because mine sure aren't! I made these wrong, forgetting to prick them before baking them. They still tasted wonderful, but the whole thing poofed up in the middle, bringing the sides down about an inch or so. Ugh! Live and learn. And relearn.
We don't have a mixer, so I called around and borrowed one. I pulled it out to make the meringues at 10:00, and..... it didn't work. Gaaahhhh! So I got out my whisk and started beating. I've made a hand-whipped meringue in the past, and it was all of one centimeter tall. Basically, it was like pouring scrambled eggs on top of the pie. But this time, I used cream of tartar (like the recipe calls for... whoda thunk!), and the meringue whipped right up into a 2" froth. I couldn't move my arm the next day, but it was worth it.
The saddest part of my Thanksgiving was that the lemon part stayed a little goopy, so no one really ate much at the pie party. Sadly, this meant I had to bring 3/4 of both pies back home, and even more sadly, I had to eat them all myself.
I might have to make another one just to numb the pain.

Wives and Daughters

Goodreads keeps sending me these emails asking how my progress is going on my book I started reading 150 days ago.
Not well, as if they needed to ask.
Wives and Daughters is by Elizabeth Gaskell. It was written 50 years after Jane Austen died, and it doesn't have quite as much of a literary feel to it. I think it was the pop fiction of its day. It has been a nice read.
At the beginning, I especially loved the father character. He is hilarious, and he also has a close and comfortable relationship to his daughter. Unfortunately, it's not called Wives and Daughters because it's about the dad. A stepmother enters the picture, and while she isn't terribly wicked, she does drive a wedge between the father and daughter. I found myself missing the father, which was probably the point, as the main character misses her father as well.
So I liked it for the first 550 or so pages. But now I'm on page 600, and for the life of me, I'm not sure I'll ever make it to the end on 644. These last pages have been torturous!
First of all, it's an unfinished novel. Gaskell died before it was finished, meaning that while I know what's going to happen (main character is single, long hoped for suitor is suddenly available), it's not actually going to happen. Not much motivation to get to the end when there is none.
Second of all, and most importantly, I'm sick of everyone getting sick and dying. I swear, someone gets startled by a thunderclap, and next thing you know they're sick, pale, and in bed with a fever for a few weeks. A bunch of the characters have already died, and none of them from any good reason. They just gradually felt kind of uneasy, and next thing you know, they're dying of consumption or something. I realize that back before they knew about germs, that's how they thought these things worked, but it still doesn't make for a very compelling read.
Okay, I should probably just finish the darn thing. Back in high school, I had to read Middlemarch by George Eliot, and I got about 600 or 700 pages in it before I realized the plot had never started. I just couldn't read another page of "a day in the life of a bunch of boring people in a boring little town called Middlemarch." I didn't finish it. I failed English that term and ended up with a C on my transcript my final semester of high school. I kind of wish I'd finished that one.... but not enough to go back and actually do it.
If any of last year's English students are reading this, please disregard the previous paragraph. I was always a perfect student and always did all of my homework. In fact, I read every single page of every single book my teachers assigned me.
Ahem.
So I'm going to finish the last 44 pages now. Don't expect an update on how it ends. Because it doesn't.

Saucy

On Friday afternoons for the last little while, some of my friends have been inviting us over to cook lunch and hang out. We went to my Japanese friend, Kumiko's house and made sushi. I missed most of the making part, but I was very helpful in the eating part. Then we went to my Chinese friend, Elaine's house and made wonton soup. Now I know how to make wontons! We all have kids about the same age, so we let them play and wreak havoc on the house, while we wreak havoc on the kitchen. Good times!
I really wanted to teach something American, but I couldn't think of anything cool. I could teach them how to make peanut-butter sandwiches. "Here, you take this knife, spread peanut-butter on the bread just like so, and then choose from this half-used jar of grape jelly, or perhaps some honey." I was less than impressed just thinking about it.
Ooh, I make really good cookies! We could make chocolate chip, or we could make sugar cookies and let the kids decorate, or we could make gingerbread houses!!!
Is there any wonder why Americans are fat?
So when I realized apples are in season, I bought a whole bunch and decided to make applesauce. It's not half as cool as sushi or wontons, but it's kind of cool. And I like to eat it.
I was worried how my friends would take it. I was imagining working to peel, cook, and then mash the applesauce, then displaying... tadaaah! the final product!... only to have some polite smiles, nods, and inner thoughts saying, "Wow, it's some overcooked, mushed apples." Or, "Mmmm, baby food."
I wasn't sure how it would go over, but it's something I like, something I know how to make, and by golly, it's the only American food I can think of that doesn't A) have a base of butter and sugar, B) drown in its cream-of-soup, or C) take an hour to bake.
It went awesome. We used my apple peeler/corer, which is pretty awesome and no one had ever seen before. Same goes for the food mill, although it's not as cool as the spinning apple peeler thingie. So we had fun making it, and then everyone happily ate some. Both kids and parents enjoyed it. Everyone ate some and then had seconds. But the best compliment was that everyone started making reasons why they needed to take some home. "Can I take some for my husband?" "I'm just going to take a little bit more for the baby to eat this afternoon." At this point, I don't even care if I get any of my tupperware back. People liked the applesauce!
And I know I shouldn't let my pride rest on this so much.
But I'm even worse at potlucks.

Water... Earth... Fire... Air

We have a little airbender in our midst. 

She seems to be a little disappointed that she doesn't look like this:

Such is the life

In our neighborhood, they're extending an underground shopping center and possibly doing something to the subway. I'm not sure exactly what's being built where, but I know there's a lot of construction around. This brings me to my first photo.

We see this all the time. Apparently in order to make ramps instead of curbs, the construction sites dump their extra cement on the roads and sidewalks like this. This one was very fresh-- you can tell because it doesn't have footprints or wheel ruts in it yet. Heaven forbid we should pick up those traffic cones and section off the wet cement. That would just be asking too much! (But to be fair, for what they're paying the construction workers here in China, it IS asking too much.) 

It's really not too much of a problem, because most of the time, the concrete is of such a poor quality that after it dries with all its footprints and wheel ruts in it, it crumbles into gravel and gets swept away. This doesn't make me feel much better, considering the building I'm living in is made of concrete.

Penny modeling her lovely scarves

There's a fabric market not far from our house. While we were out running errands (by which I mean shopping for fabric), we stopped by this silk shop. Penny had a blast sorting through their silk remnants, and we bought several (1 kuai each-- about 15 cents) to add to her dress-up box. Shortly after this picture was taken, Penny grabbed the yellow stool in the background and brought it over to the pile. The shop ladies were like, "Oh how nice, she's bringing a stool for her mommy to sit on."
Nope. She plunked it down for herself to sit on and kept rummaging through the scarves and bedecking herself in them.

Mmmmm... smoggy!

This is why I feel no motivation to exercise. I'm healthier breathing as little of this as possible. Plus, it's below freezing first thing in the morning and only slightly above in the afternoons. And see all that lush greenery? Oh wait, there isn't any. So we stay inside.

Celery is in season now. There's Chinese celery and Western celery. They're just different varieties of the same stuff. The Chinese celery has skinnier, leafier stalks and less of a flavor. But I bought some Western celery and made some stuffing to go in my chicken. Nothing like a little holiday cooking to make you feel at home. With the leftover celery we made ants-on-a-log. Penny enjoyed them. She ate the ants, ate a bit of the peanut butter, and then took a bite out of the back of the celery-- not along the ends or anything, but just right there in the middle of the log. I didn't realize how unoriginal I was by just eating them from one end to the other.

And of course we have Meimei. During our fabric shopping expedition, she was bundled up and sleeping in the stroller. During the ants-on-a-log, she was taking a nap. But when she does decide to grace us with her presence, she is a delight. Until she's ready to sleep again, that is.
She's working on some teeth, as you can see from the drool all over her bib. She's been salivating like this for over a month, so I'm about ready for the teeth. We started feeding her some applesauce sometimes. She has a little mesh binky that we can put some food in, and she takes her pears that way. Naomi is very good at turning from her back to her tummy, so much so that she thinks arching her back and flipping over will always improve her prospects. It's not always true, especially when I'm trying to nurse her.
All these new talents combined make for some uneasy nights. She doesn't wake up too much, but when she does, she's usually lying on her tummy with her face in a puddle of drool.

Can't stand the heat

On Halloween night, I heard water gurgling through the walls, ceilings, and floors of our apartment. Normally, this would be a cause for alarm. I read Harry Potter; I know where the basilisks live. But on that day, it was a welcome gurgle because it meant the central heating was coming on.
China still has laws about when certain parts of the country may turn on their heaters. Here it's November first. Other places, like Nanjing where I did a semester abroad, they don't have central heating, because southern China is supposed to be warm. (Yeah right.)  You can use space heaters and other electrical heating devices, but if your building has central heating, it can't be turned on until a certain date. It's nice to be reminded every so often that you're in a communist country.
So they turned on the central heating. Now we can't get them to turn it off.
Our apartment is luxurious and has in-floor heating, which I was excited to hear about after learning about winter temperatures here that dip down to -20 or even -40. We'll be so nice and cozy in our home. Our 6 south-facing windows also help warm the place, too. Problem is, it's not that cold outside yet. But the heat's on, the sun's up, and we're baking in our little solar oven. We had the maintenance staff come turn off the in-floor heat, but they could only find the controls for half the house. So half the house is kind of normal now, but in the other half, we're still running the air conditioner just to keep from sweating to death.
I didn't anticipate this, moving to the coldest place on earth and everything.

Cats again

I really thought I wouldn't write any more posts about my cats, especially since I don't have them anymore. When we moved to Arlington last year, we decided to give them to new homes rather than drag them all over the world with us. Howie found a great home with some New Mexico friends. He joined their family of a couple kids, a dog, and even a goat, if I'm not mistaken. They love their animals, and when we went to visit him, Howie was happy, renamed Sully, and well adjusted. Toby found a home in a little bit less-ideal situation: a family needed a mouser to keep their garage pest-free. The wife is allergic to cats, so Toby spent all his time by himself in the separate garage. They assured me that the kids visited him all the time, but I know how long that probably lasted. It wasn't ideal, but we weren't at a point where we could be picky.
It took me several months to be able to read Goodnight, Moon without crying at the part where we say goodnight to the kittens. But we're doing better now.
Fast-forward to this week. It turns out that Toby's family had been letting him go outside to play during the summer, but now that it's getting cold-- and some problems with a neighbor cat, I guess-- they feel bad keeping him shut in all winter. Plus, the mom is deathly allergic.
We've really missed Toby. He was our favorite cat, hands down. We're looking into pet shipping companies to see about sending him over here to us. It costs a lot, but maybe it will be worth it. Thing is, though, winter is coming. Airlines have regulations about what temperatures they will and won't ship animals, and the longer we wait, the more likely it is we'll be below their limit. Remember, Shenyang is like the coldest place in the world. It hasn't been bad so far, but it's supposed to get really bad in the winter. If we could have planned this starting a month or two ago, it would be much more possible.
Our next option: wait until we go back to the States and bring him then. Problem: we're visiting in February. I have no doubt it will be too cold in February. Plus, the family who currently has Toby didn't want to keep him all winter.
Ugh!
I have no idea what we're going to do.

Bold faced

Last night Penny told me her first lie. She was sitting on the potty playing with the iPod (this is normal in our house), and I told her to push the button to turn it off. The first time I told her, she ignored me, so I told her again. She held the iPod against her body, looked straight at me and said, "I did push the button." She kept her eyes fixed on me while her face looked guiltier and guiltier, the iPod music playing cheerfully against her body.
I know I'm supposed to be upset that my daughter has started lying, but honestly I thought it was hilarious and very, very cute. Oh, I didn't let her know that. I just ignored her and had her give me the iPod. But I'm enjoying watching my little baby grow up, even with these new developments.

Motivation: an addendum

The Zumba workouts I like are by this lady on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/tiffanyloveszumba

They're posted song by song, so that's why they're only 3 minutes long each. But after doing like 6 of them, I was really sore. And that was with a terrible internet connection and stopping to select a new song after each one ended. Yeah... I'm out of shape. :)

And speaking of shape, I forgot to mention that just because I'm going to be 'bikini ready,' as the magazines call it, it doesn't mean I'll go prancing around in practically nothing. I'm a 1-piece girl all the way! This comes from a sense of modesty as well as practicality. I like my suits to stay where I put them, whether I go down a waterslide, go snorkeling, or chase a toddler around on the beach. One less thing to worry about. :)

Motivation

It's hard to find motivation to exercise when the air outside looks like old dishwater. I really think I'm healthier lying on my couch breathing as little air as possible than going outside for a walk.
However, in a few months we're going to Hawaii. You're probably thinking I'm shallow and want to make sure my body is 'bikini ready' so I can go strut my stuff on the beach. I went to Hawaii last year and saw entirely too many bodies heaping out of bikinis they shouldn't have been laced into in the first place. Compared to those images which are indelibly and horrifyingly etched into my brain, I'm fit and ready to strut my stuff. I'm always bikini ready.
But whenever I think about visiting Hawaii, I can hardly wait to get out and move: hike, swim, go for walks, enjoy the stars, jump up on stage for a touristy hula. I salivate over the thought of all that clean air I'll be breathing. But at this point, I'll probably go out walking for about 5 minutes before I'm winded and ready to head back in. I'll be the one heading back to the car because I'm too tired to keep hiking. Or (shudder) I'll get water in my snorkel, choke and die, and then the fish will eat me. Keep away from me, you humuhumunukunukuapua'a! I guess that one doesn't have so much to do with my being out of shape as my slight fear of snorkeling. But really, I would love to have the stamina to go do fun things from sunup to sundown.
So I've started an exercise regime. Last night and tonight (wow, already two whole days!) I found some zumba workout videos on youtube, and bit by bit (as the video would load), I'd shake my booty in front of the TV. Penny joined in after her bath (it was very scandalous), and even Kevin joined in for a few shakes.
There are tons of zumba videos online, but my favorites are done by this lady who has a VERY bright smile the whole time and finishes every dance with some clapping and a 'woohoo!' I wonder who was a cheerleader in high school....
Sometimes it helps to have motivational imagery or goals in mind. Here are mine:

To be fair, this is Beijing.

Thank you, internet, for your awesome picture!

Food storage

These days, everywhere you look people are drying onions for the winter. 

People have stacked up their vegetables on the front porches of stores, out their windows, even on the steps of a bank!

More onions, the tops all wrapped to make little bunches

Cabbages, too. I think some of these are for storage all winter, but people here make pickled cabbage, too. We're pretty close to Korea, but it's not kimchi. Kimchi is spicy pickled cabbage, and Chinese pickled cabbage is just pickled.

 I have been wanting to take pictures of the vegetable trucks for several days now. Every time I'd seen them, though, I was in a car zipping past it while my camera sat somewhere in my purse. I told some of my Chinese friends that I wanted to go find some and take pictures, and they both laughed at the idea. "Why would you want to take a picture of that?!" This is just so normal for them, like a mail truck or a lawnmower. To me, though, it's totally foreign!
Today I took a long walk and spotted these guys along the way.

On the right we have big radishes or turnips, the middle truck has  bags of sweet potatoes, and you can't really see the cabbage truck on the left.

But here's another cabbage truck!

An onion truck, half empty already

A cabbage truck. The one on the ground is actually on a scale to sell it by weight. I think the price these days is about 0.1 yuan per 1/2 kilo. That means less than 2 cents per pound.

This little courtyard was heaping with onions on the ground to dry, cabbages on the steps in the background, laundry hung to dry, and also strips of green turnip hung to dry. I usually just see buildings as I walk by, but I love seeing evidence of lives being lived.

Here's a close-up of the turnips hung to dry. It reminds me of New Mexico's ristras.

 Sometimes it feels like Shenyang is just a city: concrete, cars, pavement, and noise. But I love it when the humanity shows through like this. Happy fall, everyone!