5:00 Fridays

I am a huge fan of all things chai. My whole being clamors for it come fall. I sip it indulgently by the fire on Sunday mornings while I read the paper in winter. Come spring I add some ice and savor the spicy tea into the warm months. The stuff just doesn't get old.

Oh, the hints of vanilla, cardamom, clove, cinnamon, fennel, ginger! An olfactory sensation indeed.

And so you can imagine my sheer delight at this Internet discovery, chai liqueur! Oh, Internet, I love you so. Yes, I hit upon a beverage custom made just for Dirt & Noise's 5:00 Fridays! Well, not really, but let's pretend, mkay?

Leave it to the Dutch to create this masterpiece: Voyant Chai Cream Liqueur. I guess those crazy Dutch learned a thing or two from the Dutch East India Company. Tea and spices were a huge part of that spice island monopoly after all. Why the heck did this creation take 300 years is the question?!

So when I manage to get my hands on this delectable ambrosia, I'm going to simply pour it over ice and sip. Maybe I'll add a shot or two of milk, you know, for the calcium.

There's a reason that the word "chai" means both "tea" and "want" in my native language.

Wordless Wednesday: Warning, Hearts Melting Ahead

Time Travel

When my babies were tiny, I used to spend hours gazing at their slumbering faces. Little nostrils flaring, breath setting a hypnotic beat, eyes twitching in dreamland, itty bitty fingers swatting away invisible itches on a scrunched up nose. Their little faces contorted this way and that. Their gaze so fixed on me upon waking. In their faces I would imagine them as toddlers, boys, grown men. It was an involuntary slideshow running before my eyes.

In a flash I would catch a glimpse of them as their older selves.

Now that my boys, my babies, are teetering on the cusp of six and four, I see time reeling backwards and forwards in a cruel teasing tango. In a random giggle I see them as their infant selves. Perhaps it’s in a pensive moment while chilling out in the back seat. Perhaps it’s while they rest their heads upon each other, a scrambled mess tucked onto the beanbag chair.

At other times, I see my boys as men. When Bird glances at me sideways and snickers in jest at some silliness, I see him as a high schooler, rolling his eyes at my latest faux pas. When Deal perches on the couch with a toy catalog in hand, knees crossed, fist tucked beneath his chin, I see him as a contemplative adult. His gestures already too grown up for his three years.

Time is at once a thief and a jester. We want more of it, we want it to clip along at a faster pace, we want to switch it to slow motion, we want to hit the pause button, and sometimes we want to rewind. Yet Time controls us. We simply live to its ticking. It’s infinite and eternal beat.

And so, at night when I am restless, I slip out of the comfort of my quilt, kneel beside my sleeping boys, and watch them sleep. Inhale, exhale, twitch, rub, toss, flutter, turn, sigh. And I watch Time travel before my very eyes.

Race Relations & Gender Equality, as Explained to a 5 and 3 Year Old

I have been having some heavy conversations with my sons lately. Racism. Race relations. Sexism. Gender equality. Heavy stuff for any age, but even more so with a five and three year old. Admittedly not the typical fare for car pool lines and kitchen conversations everywhere. But my sons sit perched at the breakfast bar while I cook dinner, and we talk. Mostly they ask questions, and I wrack my brain coming up with an honest yet meaningful answer that will make sense to their innocent blank slates. I tread lightly, knowing this will likely be the beginning of their developing self awareness. So what's the catalyst for such heady talk at our house?

Barack Obama.

You see, my children are mixed race first generation Americans.

My husband is a born and bred Midwesterner from a town of 500 people. I am an Indian girl who was born in Calcutta, a city of 16 million people. I say it's kismet that brought us together 31 years after our birth.

My sons are starting to recognize that we look different from each other, and that I look different from other moms. The beauty of childhood is that they view these differences with no judgment, no preconception, no expectations, no bigotry. Some call it naivete. I call it bliss.

I spent the better part of 2008 campaigning for Barack Obama in my home state of North Carolina. Political chatter surrounded us, and we tuned in the children when we felt it was appropriate. Granted, they were Obama walking billboards sporting their "Yes We Can" T-shirts. My husband and I told them about this historic election, and pointed out the significance of the Clinton vs. Obama primaries.

I brought my boys to the voting booth with me. Bird, my kindergartener, even filled out the ballot for me, proudly marking Barack Obama's name. It's no surprise that "Obama" was one of the first words he could read on his own. On November 5 I showed a picture of the past 43 presidents to my sons and asked what they noticed about the people. First they said, "There are no girls, Mommy." Home run! Then Bird said, they all look like Daddy. They are pink." I explained that the terms we use are white, black/African American, to which he animatedly replied, "But we are brown, Mommy. And no one is white. They are pink!" How could I argue with such logic?

And then came Lily Ledbetter .

I happened to flip on the TV during Obama's press conference about signing the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act . The boys shouted for me to move so they too could see the TV. Obama! Obama! We all sat mesmerized as he spoke, with a tenacious and victorious Lily Ledbetter at his side. They were particularly excited when Obama mentioned his daughters in his speech. They love to hear about kids in the White House (which we just visited recently). I explained that when Mommy and Daddy met, we both had the exact same jobs (Yes, an office romance!), but Daddy got paid more money than I did. I told them that I had actually been in the job longer, but Daddy earned more money. "No fair!" they shouted in unison. I regaled them with the tale about me marching into our manager's office demanding an explanation...and a raise. My next pay stub reflected a significant bump in pay that equaled my husband's. Whether it was my gumption or my boss' fear I'll never know. I explained to my sons how many, many women earn less money than men doing the same things. I told them that that lady standing next to Obama got fed up, and America finally listened.

As the mother of boys, I hope to raise them in a manner that debunks gender biases. My three year old's favorite color is pink . My five year old loves to draw and paint. My husband often cooks spectacular dinners, and he has breakfast duty on weekends, for which he spoils us with creme brulee french toast and the like. We share duties as primary care givers. My goal is to raise my sons as open minded citizens who see the worth in all people, regardless of race, gender, or anything else that adults deem worthy of judgment. And I hope, as their mother, that the world grants them the same respect.

This original post is cross posted to Deep South Moms Blog.

5:00 Fridays

I happened upon this drink at a friend's house recently. I'm not on the cutting edge when it come to soda. I didn't even realize that Tab and Fresca have seen their glory days and tried to relive their heyday a time or two. We don't buy soft drinks, so if you ever stop by for a visit and you're panting and sweating and gasping for air, all we can offer you is water, beer, wine, milk, or liquor. Don't come a knockin' asking for a soda. We'll have to send you to the BP down the street for a liter.

But this new fangled green tea ginger ale intrigued me. I wouldn't drink it on its own, but it was begging for a shot of something grizzly.

And so I bought some and mixed it with a shot of vanilla vodka. OK, perhaps not grizzly, but it was gggoooood. A tasty sweet treat that has worked its way into my hot weather repertoire. Tonight was a sampling party. The summer will hold a liquid feast.


Vanilla Antioxidant
1 shot vanilla vodka (You should still have some Stoli Vanil left over from last week.)
Canada Dry Green Tea Gingerale

Get yourself a tall glass and fill it with ice. Add the vodka and top it off with the gingerale. Finish it with a sprig of fresh mint.

Cheers to spring getting a fast forward on the weather track!

Wordless Wednesday: Mess Amassed

Valentine's Bounty

The lovely Julie at The Artful Flower has written quite eloquently about a new phenomenon in classrooms all across America. I'm feeling the need to vent and share my $0.02 too so hang on for the ride.

The boys and I made homemade valentines this year for their classes. We figured we'd give something both useful and homemade. We poked pencils (10 for a buck at the Target One Spot!) through little flags we made of scrap craft paper we had stashed away in the over flowing art box. Deal's flag read "Pencil me in for a playdate." Bird's pencils read "Write on, Valentine." Bird wrote his friends' names and then signed his own. Deal added rainbow glittery stickers for just the right finishing touch. We were quite proud of our crafty creations.

I volunteered at Bird's school and helped the kindergarteners decorate their Valentine mailboxes. Those red wrapped shoe boxes were decked out with more bling than the Kimora Lee Simmons section at JCPenneys. I'm talking crepe paper flowers, doilies, heart stickers, bejeweled ribbons, faux rose petals, crystal hearts, foam hearts, and glue galore. Memories flooded back to me in a slow motion blink. I remember painstakingly decorating my shoe box back in the day. Wwwaaaaaayyyy back in the day. My crowning glory was the mailbox flag I fashioned out of leftover wallpaper scraps and a paper fastener. Being the OCD adult I am, you can imagine what type of child I was. I cut and measured and glued all the details with scientific precision. My doilies were perfectly centered. My name was signed with a just-so flourish. I spent ages making the slot the perfect size - large enough to hold an envelope, small enough to not allow busy bodies to peek inside at the goods.

The slot of my Valentine box would not have been adequate to hold one single valentine my kids got this year. Apparently I did not get the memo that Valentine's Day is Halloween in February, sans costumes and scary creatures (though Cupid in a diaper ain't the stuff sweet dreams are made of). Bird's shoe box was bulging from all the candy. Candy! Deal's class made darling mailboxes to hold their cards. Deal brought his loot home in a brown paper bag. Nothing fit in that little puppy mailbox. Not one thing. Candy. And I ain't talking the token Necco conversation hearts that are forgivable because the sayings are so darn entertaining. I'm especially fond of the new fangled high tech ones like "Be my icon" and "Email me."

Bird and Deal came home with chocolate bars, lollipops, Hershey kisses, licorice, candy necklaces, bubble gum, and a few stickers and tattoos. Not one person gave just a simple token of friendship on a homemade heart. Granted, neither did we, but our intent was clearly not a sugar crash or oneupmanship. As a rule, I don't even bother playing those mom of the year games, and the Joneses are dead to me. So what's triggering this obscene display of false affection? When and how did a simple, fun, sweet celebration turn into an event?

What's worse, Bird came home upset that people made fun of his valentines. Some children went so far as to mock him and say, "I don't want that stupid pencil. Don't even put that in my box! Whadya mean you don't have any candy?!" Imagine the horror I felt when he relayed this to me, confusion and sadness coloring his voice. I grabbed the reins of this teachable moment to explain gratitude, manners, respect, friendship, and above all, the whole point of this freaking Hallmark holiday. And inside I was F.U.M.I.N.G. Even at age five Bird didn't understand why candy, that would be chewed up and pooped out in an instant, was more valuable than a pencil that a kid could use for a year or more. "A year or more, Mommy!" he wailed. I had no words to explain the over-the-top parenting today that will hand over to us a sickening generation of entitled brats. I had no words to explain why everything has gotten so out of hand and why the simple precious tokens of life are no longer cherished.

And so I told him about my mailbox with the flag. I told him how I so anticipated giving and getting those treasured little cards adorned with funny sayings and cutesy images. I told him how I used to go home and lay out all my cards, stacking them in order with my best friends' cards on top (as a fellow OCD neatnik, he could totally relate to this). I spoke of tucking that box under my bed and sneaking out of the covers to read and reread them by the faint glow of my night light for weeks on end. I showed him the stack of Valentine's cards Mac Daddy has given me over the last 12 years, tied daintily in a red satin ribbon.

And I told him that no one hangs on to a candy wrapper.