There are very few blogs I read regularly - I figure I already spend too much time sitting in front of a computer screen without developing any other addictions - but two blogs I do enjoy are New York Social Diary (http://www.nysocialdiary.com) and The Fat Doctor (http//fatdoctor.org).

I read NYSD because David Patrick Columbia's reports on the glitterati of Manhattan have an interesting edge. He seems to go to absolutely EVERY party, but he and his photographer just buzz in and buzz out again. And sometimes, sometimes, I believe I catch the sound of him laughing up the sleeve of his hardworked tux . Also, I'm an avid spotter of ridiculous facelifts, and the photo galleries on NYSD provide rich pickings. It's sick, I know, but hey, I never claimed to be perfect. I never even claimed to be nice.

I read Fat Doctor because she's a very fine, funny writer and could easily be doing it for a living except that that would be a loss to medicine. Her blog for September 23rd addresses the problem of patients who'd rather stay in hospital than go home. Doctors write these patients up for Standard Orders, a regime designed to remind them they're not at the Hilton.
Walk the halls for 20 minutes three times a day.
Only two 1 hour naps permitted.
A 1500 kcal diet.
Removal from a private room to semi-privacy.
This, as Fat Doctor points out, might also provide a useful template for parents whose adult children refuse to leave home, and that is why I bring it to your attention.

In the UK it is no longer unusual for kids to return home after college and stick. Friends tell me it's because of the high cost of housing. But housing was always expensive relative to starting salaries. My first husband and I lived in one room when we were first married. Our next home, where we started our family, was a tiny cottage heated by coal fires and furnished entirely with cast-offs. I don't know anyone starting out like that today.

But I know of many households where kids well into their twenties are getting a rent-free fully-catered love nest. The laundry is magically laundered and the fridge keeps on filling with goodies. I tell you, Fat Doctor has it right. And if I were one of those besieged parents, I'd take Standard Orders a step further. No romantic sleepovers, no cordon sanitaire around a room full of smelly sneakers, and a lock on the fridge.
Until you've moved out, shaped up and invited Mommy and Daddy to dinner at your place at least twice, Nil By Mouth in this house, baby. NIL BY MOUTH.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 03:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yes folks! Two blogs in one week. Only because I know many of you will have been holding your breath waiting to hear what I did with that lavender sugar I made such a fuss about. Well, I finally tired of dusting the jar and got round to using it. I made lavender and blueberry muffins. And you know what? They were terrible. They were leadenly, taste-free and straight-in-the-bin awful. I hate it when that happens.

And now, with my culinary confidence shattered, I have to decide what to make for tomorrow's lunch, something that will tickle the deadened tastebuds of a friend just emerging from Big Gun chemo. Maybe a red pepper tart?
Maybe raspberries and chocolate to follow? Of course the food doesn't really matter. The real point is that the cancer treatment consumes her life. Neither of us knows when we'll ever sit at a table together again. Not for six months, at least. So perhaps I'll just hope for sunshine so we can eat on the terrace. If she can taste the food that will be a bonus.

Mr F says I shouldn't have dumped the muffins. He says we could have offered them to someone for skeet shooting.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 04:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For the shortest while yesterday I felt like a spring chicken. I was waiting to be fitted with one of those miniature sphigmos that monitors your blood pressure over 24 hours, the youngest patient there by at least ten years, and a mere probationer when it came to blood pressure stories. One woman claimed to have had a diastolic reading of 200mm. I think I have to check that out. I mean, 200mm? And she was still breathing.

Now the thing about the 24 hour monitor is that the cuff inflates every 15 minutes and takes a reading. Day and night it keeps right on squeezing and after just one hour wearing the darned thing I knew I wouldn't be getting much sleep. So I prepared to move into the spare room. Mr F was upset. He thinks he doesn't sleep well when I'm not at his side. But as I pointed out, he wouldn't sleep well with my reading light blazing all night. Then there would be all the noise; pages being turned, tea being slurped. And maybe the occasional whimper as the cuff squeezed.

Actually, he slept just fine. When I tiptoed to the kitchen at 1am he was doing his comatose starfish impersonation.
I slept too, but not very much. And then this morning I couldn't even take a shower. So when we all showed up to turn in our monitors I sensed I'd lost some of that youthful edge of yesterday. I looked as grey and seedy as the rest of them. Knowing little smiles were exchanged. The fleeting brotherhood of a bunch of strangers who'd all had a bad night.

As she was unstrapping me from the monitor the nurse asked me how I'd coped, but before I could answer she found some pretty eloquent evidence: a fragment of chocolate chip cookie trapped down the front of my vest.
The shame of it. Still, it could have been worse. Imagine if I wore a double D cup. Imagine if there were such a thing as an All Night Chinese Take Away in this town. She'd have found a couple of pork dumplings and a fortune cookie down there. At the very least.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 10:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This isn't a picture of me wrassling our youngest grandson into a clean diaper, but God knows it could be. Can I really have forgotten how physical child care is, or is it just that I now have thirty more years' mileage on my clock.

We did some good stuff during our time with Alexander. Draped a sheet over the TV for one thing and bought him some new books. I mean, how many times can you read GOODNIGHT MOON before you run screaming into the street?

He learned two new words: 'crocodile' and 'spider'. Sadly we weren't able to convince him that horses do not say 'moo', but he did learn to dribble a ball. We went to the zoo and let the animals look at us. We went to a shopping mall and did ditto. The toyshop where we hoped to find junior building blocks was piping Heavy Metal into the store, loud Heavy Metal. Also, at least two sales clerks were wearing lip jewellery. Imagine the ones who didn't make it past the first interview. Bolt through the neck, I guess.

But it was the racket we really objected to, so we went in search of the manager to ask her what the Sam Hill she thought she was doing. We pointed out that every customer in the shop had at least one child in tow. So why wasn't she playing nursery rhymes? Or just plain old silence?
'Well,' she said, 'I'll make a note of your comment but nobody ever complained before.'

We filled out a report card for Alex before we left. I'm afraid he only merited a C minus for steering his tricycle and a B minus for decorum - he would keep pulling his trousers down in public. But we gave him an A for Good Attitude and an A plus for Table Manners. First time I've ever seen a child carefully spoon the spilled food out of his pelican bib for a second go-round to his mouth. Mister Neatie!

And you know, I'd really love to get hold of some of those pelican bibs for certain adults of my acquaintance. I name no names, but there is more than one reason Mr F wears bow ties.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 09:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I just realised that by Tuesday I'll have had a perfectly balanced week. In just seven days I'll have seen one of my daughters fitted for her Top Secret wedding gown, I'll have laid my Mum's ashes to rest, and I'll have read a bedtime story to our youngest grandson. A corker of a week, you might say. And as if all that isn't enough I've also started work on two new projects and taken several curtain calls as Domestic Diva. This usually happens when I get a new cookbook.

I recently bought Silvena Rowe's FEASTS, Food for Sharing from Central and Eastern Europe and so far I've made the Veal and Paprika Stew and the Rabbit with Plums - a delicate undertaking, this last, because Mr F is rabbit king in this house, famed for his honey mustard dipping sauce. I sort of pretended I wasn't cooking rabbit until the deed was done and I could slide the plate onto the table. And Mr F conceded that it was pretty damned delicious. So now we have two bunny dishes in our repertoire. There may be a deeply buried element of revenge in this. Of all the pets my children had - cerebrally challenged dogs, Houdini hamsters, dispirited fish - their rabbits were the ones I dreaded most. They may have had cute floppy ears but that hissing and ground thumping was a dead giveway.

But to return to FEASTS, today, a Bulgarian zucchini and feta pie assembled like a coiled up serpent, and coming very soon, smoked salmon potato cakes with garlic cream. First though, I have to pack for 10 days of babysitting.
I guess that'll be my fully-spongeable, EeZee stretch wardrobe in machine-washable shades of soggy rusk and dried sniffle.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 04:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)