mommy despot

Avoca-Whoa!

Hell Yeahz.  Cinco De Mayo viniendo pronto.  10 years of marriage and 2 kids later…I don’t throw back as many tequila shots as I used to…but I can still get down and bring the fiercest guac drunken gringos have ever laid their booze soaked taste buds on!  Now EVERYONE has a guacamole recipe…or three–especially if you’re from California.  Why not, right?  What’s not to love about an avocado…though I once dated a guy that had never tasted one…um, check please.  Avocado’s creamy yumminess perfectly tops, well,  just about everything…from salad to eggs to couscous to a sammie.  A dip girl at heart, my true love is a simple guac with tortilla chips.  The above recipe is entirely easy and wholly delicious.  To give it a bit of festive, Cinco de Mayo party kick–and to stand tall and proud among a herd of fiesta guac competitors–I like to garnish mine with ripe pomegranate seeds.  A beautiful accent but also a sweet and tart compliment to the smooth and creamy taste of the avocado.  De nada, amigos.

Serves 6 to 8 (or like 2 linebackers)

INGREDIENTS

3 medium to large ripe avocados

2 serrano chiles finely chopped

1/4 chopped white onion

1/4 cup of chopped fresh cilantro, reserve a bit for extra garnish

2 tablespoons of fresh lime juice

handful of fresh pomegranate seeds for garnish

reserve pit for garnish

salt

pepper

DIRECTIONS

Halve avocados and scoop inner flesh into a mixing bowl while reserving one pit for garnish.  Mash avocado coarsely and mix in chopped serranos and onions.  Add chopped cilantro and stir in lime juice.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  Transfer to a serving bowl and place reserved pit in center.  Garnish guacamole with a sprinkling of pomegranate seeds and a dash of cilantro.  Serve with black corn tortilla chips as a nice color accent.  Buen provecho!

Time to stuff my silly face with an entire humble pie full of sour grapes.  Yes, I eat my feelings.  Apparently NYC’s Department of Education (DOE) has the technological where-with-all to electronically crush your dream of a “free” and exemplary education for your child…so that’s convenient.  Gifted and Talented results were emailed last week while we were off vacationing (though we spent half the time with my in-laws, so I use the term very loosely). Pass the sunblock…oh and a noose.  I’ve never been the diligent jump-through-hoops-type and this stubborn and completely self sabotaging quality has apparently carried over into my parenting style.  We did virtually zero test prep for the G&T…other than crack open a figural analogies review book (yeah, my eyes glazed over just writing that and uh, those questions were hard…for a 38 year old!) less than a handful of times (loaned to us by an upstanding, responsible and concerned parent friend) and followed the DOE website’s considerate and utterly useless advice: “Children should get adequate sleep and eat a nutritionally balanced meal prior to taking the assessments. Families can also help lessen anxiety by helping to ease their children’s minds about the test.” In more of our paltry defense, we did feed her breakfast and put her to bed by 8pm the night before…and only mentioned to her ONCE that our early retirement rests in her more than capable barely 4 year-old hands.

To be fair (and/or further pad myself with judgement cushioning excuses), I have never viewed living in NYC as part of our long term family plan.  5 years later, I still feel like an interloper.  Coming from a temperature controlled idyllic suburb of Southern California, crammed apartment living in 6 months of frigid, virus invested climate has made me understandably non-committal.  I fantasize about returning West someday (soonish…10 years later and counting) or perpetuating the middle (upper middle, basically all variants of the un-uber rich) class NYC family cliche of fleeing to one of the tri-state ‘burbs.  Where you then trade $40K annual private school costs for 5 digit annual property taxes (at least the money is going somewhere/pretty good/great schools depending on your bankroll, right?), which, incidentally, also works out as breeding incentive (forget antiquated biblical tenets…divide that real estate bill by 3 or more kids and you’re getting a steal in quality education!  But, at last, (fill in the blank town) we’ve still got the 182.5 days a year cold and bleakness problem.

Weather and broken big city dreams aside…and back to the fated results and cliffhanging email over margaritas and sunscreen: Dun dun DUN…the kid bombed it–and rather phenomenally.  The husband and I plan on keeping and garishly framing the rejection/percentile rank hard copy letter as a later in life “ha ha” moment as she settles into her (hopefully) fruitful adulthood (call us naive or stupid or negligent or all of the above) but we still think she has a rogue shot at success with less than a 97% G&T ranking…fingers crossed!!!).  Though I will most definitely take one for the team here.  I completely own up to her less than stellar results falling squarely on my shrugged, historically half-assing shoulders.  Peers and friends who we know (scream it from the roof tops…you earned it, Mamas and Papas!) performed well (97% or higher) were professionally prepped and prepped well at the urging of responsible, loving and proactive parents.  Tiger Mom leanings, fiscal desperation, neighborhood mom list serve hysteria, anonymous vitriolic parenting websites or the plain old wanting the very best for your baby fueling their determination, they gave the big FU finger up to the DOE’s small and utterly useless fine print: “in the judgment of the test administrator, principal, or site supervisor, a student has had prior exposure to the test, the principal or site supervisor must follow the NYCDOE disciplinary procedure for student cheating and invalidate the student’s test”.  Ha! DOE! Just you try and invalidate 90+% (1.5 or less percent might actually fall in the Little Man Tate category) of the test takers scores!  This is New York for fuck sakes!  Rules were meant to be ignored, broken and bought out of!

So hindsight being (gasp) home school or (gasp gasp) parochial school or the fateful tail between your legs trek out to the ‘burbs, my advice to parents of kids born the Year of 2007 (Yes, the DOE G&T website classifies your wee ones like this in big Logan’s Run/Hunger Games inspired lettering) and later: PREP PREP and then for the love of your child, PREP some more! Below, I’ve included some local and online options with price points.  Good luck and good coaching to you and yours…I’m now busy browsing Redfin Westchester and bubble wrapping my tail.

Some Local & Online Test Preparation Resources

1.  Fast Trac Kids:  Course Tuition $1190 (includes class materials, homework materials and parent seminar). http://manhattanenrichment.com/TestPrep.html

2.  Bright Kids NYC: eight, 45-minute one-on-one sessions, $1,000 http://www.brightkidsnyc.com/

3.  Aristotle Circle: a one-on-one tutoring at $150 to $350 an hour. http://www.aristotlecircle.com/service/prek-12-admissions-testing

4.  NYC Gifted in Flushing: 12-week session, $1,399. http://www.nycgifted.com/Pages/AboutTests.aspx

5. TestingMom.com packages starting at $24.99 to $39.99 per month. While more affordable, Mom, Dad or Grams or Pops sits in as tutor.

I’m still here…and still starving.  Just one week to go until we head off on our spring break beach holiday in Miami and a huge family wedding in Mexico City.  Great news: I’ve lost 5 SOLID lbs!!!  Bad News: I still have another 5 to go…unless–upon arrival–I take shots of tap water at the D.F. airport (beauty has it’s price but, at last, this is too great a ransom), I’m most likely not hitting my goal of 10 pounds…but I will get close, dammit…even if I lose bone density in the process.  I’m confident this sparkling glass of thirst quencher will guide me just a couple pounds short.  What is this glistening deep magenta concoction, you ask?  Agua de Jamaica…or another way to spell powerful diuretic in Spanish.  Additional translation: dried hibiscus leaves. The husband’s Mexican family drinks loads of this stuff, a big cold pitcher on the table at nearly every meal.  The women are all fabulously thin and gorgeous…coincidence? I think not.  I’m on to their powerful beauty elixir and I’m zealously brewing up batches like a haggard witch with a cauldron full of promising and glorious youth!  I’ll get you, My Pretty!  In addition to the shallow–though compelling–vanity benefits,  the leaves are rich in Vitamin C and loaded with flavonoids and antioxidants…all immune boosters.  I prepare mine without sugar, to maximize the healthy in this refreshing drink.  But the flavor is quite tart.  If you prefer a sweeter beverage, I’ve included an optional sugar addition.  You can find the leaves packaged at your local Mexican Supermarket.  For locals in uptown Manhattan, I get mine here: http://www.tehuitzingo.net/ on 10th Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen.  Bottoms up and big bottoms away!

INGREDIENTS 

When did we all become so hermitted and guarded with our personal space? I’m assuming this is a NYC shoebox apartment restriction thing, but maybe it’s not.  Maybe it’s a very general post-kids socialization thing and spans out over the great United States and even crosses international borders?

When we moved to Manhattan 4.5 years ago, I answered an online ad of sorts (Meetup.com, which is like Match.com for Moms…and asexuals) promoting a First Time Mommy and Baby group.  My daughter and I became fast friends with a large group of like-minded gals and their sweet kids.  Though almost 5 years later–strangely–I’ve never set foot in the homes of 1/2 of them.  Seriously, I’ve never even made it to their elevators, let alone the threshold of an actual residence.  That’s not to say, these women haven’t extended generous and ample invitations to congregate at parks, museums, building playrooms and pools together…but their actual apartments? Crickets…apparently, all really is quiet on the home front.

Here in New York, there’s this odd guardedness, the need for mystery and personal home boundaries. Though, maybe it is just an American thing? Or yikes…worse: a Me thing?  What if there really is like a standing Saturday potluck with this group…awkward.  To be fair, my Spanish and North and South American Latina expat friends seem to be a bit more comfortable opening their doors–no matter how humble or extravagant–here in NYC.  (Really, I’m BIG in Europe and Latin America.)  I’m assuming that’s cultural…mi casa, su casa…after all.  When we visit my husband’s family in Mexico, we often socialize with old friends and invariably meet new people…inevitably, within an hour, you’re invited to lunch or dinner at a virtual stranger’s house…and it’s sincere…and you actually go…with no pretenses or suspicion AND you have a great time.  That has been quite rare here.  Que Pena )-:

Pre-kids, while living in LA and Miami, our dance (well, really, dinner party) card was very full.  We often had friends for raucous meals, music and the occasional good old fashioned drunken argument…and they, in turn, happily reciprocated.  I get that young kids put a real cramp in our non-parenting lives and downtime.  We’re all exhausted, we’re all just one ankle twist away from a major head injury thanks to the countless toys strewn about our floors.  We all share in the endless piles of laundry, the sticky oven ranges and a closets doubling as potential avalanche trigger sites.  At this point in our lives–and for most of us–parenting is pure chaos and yes, it is often overwhelming.  Most of us are just holding our marriages together…fighting to preserve date night and so it becomes sacred and a testament to tiny bit of freedom.  And then we’re even more exhausted from the diligent plotting of the prison break dinner and a movie (and stuff).  Ultimately, sacrifices are made and new and old friends and leisurely lunches and wine-soaked dinners fall to the wayside.  I’ve made some effort here.  I’ve hosted a girls‘ lunch in my home while 9 months pregnant, invited new friends for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter and the occasional brunch or lunch.  But recently, I’ve been lazy…and  the bulk of my NY friends, even lazier.  Top of my Things to Do…okay, 3rd to Top: try to turn this sad isolating trend around.  Again, maybe this is my own uniquely pitiful predicament…the perpetual lost invite, stuck washing my (kids’) hair on a Saturday night.  Maybe I need to create another Meetup ad:  Tired Couple Seeks Like Minded Friends…hmmm, that’s more creepy Craig’s List…how about WE HAVE GOOD WINE,  BASE LEVEL WIT & HUMOR, LOVE TO ARGUE ABOUT RELIGION AND POLITICS, MAKE AWESOME TACOS and the kicker, YOU’RE ALLOWED INSIDE OUR APARTMENT…Disclaimer small print: but watch out for tiny rogue My Little Ponies and Lion King figurines waiting to trip you up and NEVER EVER open a closet door.