VINE CHAT

Day #2 of Spring. Nine days until Opening Day. Finally, finally one of the major television networks decides to broadcast a baseball movie...and not just any baseball movie, Bull Durham, part of what I consider to be the perfect baseball movie trilogy:

Bull Durham

Field of Dreams

Major League

I don't have a favorite baseball movie. Bull Durham represents love (okay, sex) and baseball - with unparalleled wit; genius writing. Field of Dreams is mysticism and baseball - with the father/son angle poignantly woven in. And Major League is redemption and baseball - with humor I still laugh hysterically at after seeing it thousands of times. ("Just a bit outside")

But tonight it was Bull Durham and I told my five year old daughter, in a way I don 't normally do - this is what we're wathcing, sweetie. Throw a fit, I'll turn the TV louder. Put on a DVD and I'll go watch it in my room. This is what we're watching. The princess of the remote relented, and got her first lesson in baseball movies 101; all of the dynamics and implied lessons to be learned in such a non-linear way...these are the games, learn them. Laugh at the parts I laugh at and you'll turn out okay.

So we're watching Bull Durham, the baby eating crayons (non-toxic), Zoe laying on my lap watching without complaining (btw, all the R rated scenes were cut out), the only noise besides Crash's speeches were the loud thuds of my neighbors taking out their trash cans. All of my neighbors, must be, because the crashing thuds weren't stopping.  Maybe my neighbor is unloading pallets of something for his driveway re-paving. I don't know. I'm talking along with the lines in the movie. I don't care what's happening outside.

"It sounds like thunder Momma,", says Zoe. You know, she has a point. I got up reluctantly and peered through the kitchen window. It was pouring down rain and thundering. Just an hour ago there were blue skies. My husband was umpiring a game at the Little League Fields and my son went with him. I hope they're not playing through the rain. What a perfect night it would be to enjoy a Spring storm and watch the first televised baseball movie of the season.

"They just called it." (Yes!!)

"We're coming home now." (Better put the dog outside)

A surprise storm, surrender by a stubborn five year old, and a family night watching classic metaphorical dialogue when I thought me and the girls would have to go it alone.

I love those nights when we all just get to...be.

Happy Spring!!!!!!!!!

I won't bore you with any mediocre greeting-card grade references to spring and renewal, those things are a foregone conclusion, and I never make mention of things that everyone already knows.

What you may not, know, however, is that opening day is in eleven days (April 1st), thirteen days for the Padres (April 3rd)...but now you do.

Appropriately, my son has a ball game today and my daughter is playing a mini softball game, that is, if there is no rain out. What does it mean when it rains the first day of spring?

I could say it's cleansing, washing away, feeding the new... a simple but fitting symbol. No matter what kind of life you lead, there is something you must be happy to let go of, see the end of, relinquish, or release. Sometimes it's everything, other times, like where I am right now, I'm holding tightly the good in my life like a two-run lead in the ninth, gripping my blessings tightly as if they're a ball getting ready to leave my glove - because there will be another time when I am tested, and I can fall back on these days when they are committed to memory. So I am taking all of this in; the feel of the rain, the sight of green, green grass ("the thrill of the grass"), the sound of a "pop" when a strike hits a glove, the taste of citrus with bell peppers and coarse salt (or nachos, third base side).

I don't need a convincing lead...I just need what I have.

I have a good feeling about the rain.

Okay, so here's what I made for dinner last night:

Couscous with Lemon (lemon juice, lemon zest, evoo)

Macadamia Nut Crusted Chicken (chicken;  flour dipped, egg dipped, then dipped in macadamias ground with panko bread crumbs, sauteed in evoo and finished in oven)

Roasted Brussels Sprouts (the usual, vegetable roasted with evoo, coarse grain salt and pepper)

My Plate:  little bit of couscous, trying to cut back on carbs, big piece of chicken.

Hubby's plate: everything, he could eat six double-doubles a day and not gain an ounce

Zoe's plate: everything, "I only like your chicken Mama, take these green things away"

Melia's highchair tray: everything, she's a baby and I have to offer all food groups or I'll be voted off good mommy island

Alex's plate: everything, never know what food my little Taurus will be in the mood for, but unexpectedly, "Can I have more green stuff? I don't want this chicken"

My seven year old son ate his brussels sprouts ("baby cabbages", actually) and finished everyone else's. I had eaten my share as I roasted them in the Advantium, "checking them" every so often, letting the earthy goodness break apart in my mouth.

What kid does that - gobbles up brussels sprouts with out being threatened? I've seen him eat two plates of broccoli for dinner before, but brussels sprouts? I swear by roasting veggies to make them tasty, but my son devouring brussels sprouts made me think I have less to do with his genetics than ever before. I'm not bragging about my child's precocious food choices or sophisticated palate - I'm envious that little shit who is my child is so voluntarily healthy.

Couple of weeks ago, baby Melia scarfed up the golden beets I roasted. "That's the Greek in her," says hubby. Oh, of course, Celtic people, like my ancestors, never ate root vegetables at all. There was never any crisis called a "potato famine", apparently.

But I have to admit he was right...beets are native Mediterranean plants and my kids have a tendency to eat the way their Aegean ancestors did, they seemed programmed to eat food in its most organic, close to natural state. I grew up on mayonnaise and Lawry's! I have had to re-program my metabolism and seek therapy for my eating habits, but my kids gravitate towards fructose and whole grains over processed, refined sugar and have the energy of ten Olympians. Plus, their gorgeous olive skin hardly ever burns, even when I don't apply SPF 2,000+. Every vacation I went on as a child involved long, painful vinegar baths due to overexposure to El Sol.

Then there was a time in Hawai'i when someone asked me if I was my child's Nanny. Yep, I did all that gestating just to be considered hired help.

Oh well, next time they have a temper tantrum or get dramatic over the seams of their socks "poking" them, I will be reminded of how much they are like me.

But at the dinner table, I'll be envious of my own kin as I scrape the burnt, oil-laden breading crusties from the bottom of the pan and my son opts for green vegetables.

I imagine my son, years from now, reading Plato's Republic on a beach in Santorini..."So, what did Celtic people contribute to the world, Mom?"

"Why, Stonehenge, Camelot, corned beef, cabbage, potatoes and ale, honey." And probably sunscreen.

Telephone conversation, a few years back:

"Hi honey. I just wanted to tell you I had my first Krispy Kreme. Oh. My. God."...Pete, my husband.

"You had a Krispy Kreme?"...me, sad, rejected puppy dog voice.

"Two, actually. They're amazing."...hubby again.

Click.

He was supposed to wait for me. He ate his first Krispy Kreme without me. It was a huge event for Krispy Kreme to finally come to San Diego, on the opposite side of the country from which the air-like, sugary, American phenomena hailed.

And he didn't wait for me to experience it with him.

Betrayal, nothing short of it.

I got over that...after he took me to Krispy Kreme, a half hour drive from our home. I ate two original glazed before we were out of the drive-thru. I understood what everyone was talking about...starting with hubby. "Told you," he said, bravely. "Don't let it happen again," I said with my mouth full, glazed sugar on my face similar to the way a baby wears mushed peas on its chin.

Then hubby and I discovered chocolate souffles at Roy's, that would be Roy Yamaguchi, at his restaurant that is reminiscent of the Islands. We made the longer drive to his restaurant for a anniversaries, birthdays, Valentine's Day dinners. A friend of mine called it a "dessert destination". This is true...if you want the chocolate souffle for dessert, you have to tell your server right when you order dinner, or you won't get it.

We have never found chocolate souffle at any other high-end, upscale restaurant or dessert cafe we have gone to...we have eaten pots de creme, molten chocolate cake, chocolate lava cake, chocolate brownie cake, all unappetizing compared to a chocolate souffle. So as we only enjoyed it on special occasions, it became our "thing" to have them together.

This weekend my husband went to Arizona with my father and his buddy to visit my stepson, Dillon. My hubby, Dad and his buddy Roger stayed at the Biltmore (it's a golf thing) and decided to have dinner there last night.

Whenever my parents travel and enjoy a particularly innovative or flavorful meal, I get the standard call from my father taunting me about the food he got to eat, and I missed out on. So when the call came in 7:00pm California time, I expected it to be my Dad.

"Hi honey," said hubby. "Guess what I had at dinner?"

"Steak?", which is what I expected four guys to eat, with no wives or mothers present.

"No, chocolate souffle! They had chocolate souffle!"

Click.

I lay in bed last night with envy, wedged in between three kids who all seem to end up sleeping not next to, but on top of, Momma. He's eating chocolate souffle. I'm watching Nickelodeon. The kids don't even have the decency to fall asleep so I can watch Eric Bana in Munich on digital cable. This is perfect.

Hubby called me this morning while playing golf. "This is culinary infidelity. You ate a chocolate souffle without me," I said, giving three kids a bath, watching them drink bath water as if it were Coca-Cola. "Culinary infidelity - I like that." He gratifies my creative segues and tangents, smartly. But he still broke our husband-wife dessert law.

"I thought about you the whole time," he adds.  How can he say that? He's calling my bluff, I hate - no - love it when he does that. He so gets me. His voice, when he plays along, is chocolate-y...not too sweet, not bitter, just right.

I'll forgive him, again, becaue I just can't help it. And in his defense, according to my father, as he read off every item on the menu, said, "I wish Sami were here for this, she would love the food here." That could just be the whole appease-the-father-in-law-thing. Then again, it verifies his alibi of thinking of me as he indulged in culinary infidelity. He was thinking of me. He loves me. And would I have done the same thing, tempted by irrestistible, steaming dark chocolate topped with confectioner's sugar, so elusive in fine restaurants, the perfect ending to a steak dinner?

Faster than you can say Prince Hector. 

But today the Padres play Oakland at #30 is pitching. It's not on television either...what's the reason for that?

I don't want to see Chicago teams play.  I am in San Diego, and I want to see California teams play.

But I am not disheartened.  Spring is here (at least in my corner of the world), Vons had a special this week on vegetables I have been pairing up with olive oil, salt, pepper, pasta and parmesan, I had the energy to spring clean and de-cluttered some long ignored piles in the house, and everywhere I look I see green grass, sprouting perennials, and little birds in my plants.

I think I have given spring a lot of mileage in my recent and upcoming columns, but humor me here...spring is so symbolic, and who couldn't use a little renewal in some aspect of their lives? Everything has room for improvement - or reinvention.

I think Louis Armstrong probably wrote WONDERFUL WORLD in spring, just listen to the botanical references. Have you ever heard the medley of WONDERFUL WORLD with SOMEWHERE OVER THE RAINBOW by Bruddah Iz? You know, the song from the e-Toys commercial, at the end of Meet Joe Black, etc. etc...people everywhere use it for everything, which is fine with me, I never get tired of hearing it.

My dad celebrated his 65th birthday yesterday, and I thought about that song, as it ends the beautifully poignant (but a little long) movie of Meet Joe Black. The movie is centered around the 65th birthday of Bill Parrish, played by Anthony Hopkins. It's loosely based on "Death Takes a Holiday", a movie I've never seen, and I don't know how I know that but it's true.

The irony is, the father of a friend of mine died this past week, he was just a bit older than my Dad.  I had a discussion with a different friend about how some parents of our peers have passed away, how mortality is now more of a reality that our own parents who we have always taken forgranted - they'll always be there - and not only do we need to be hyper aware of our children's fragility, but also, our parents. We're right in the middle of life, sounds horrifying at the Clinique counter, but it's so reinventive, how we can finally appreciate our parents as we now know what they are talking about, and we can also let them lean on us a bit too, from our own carved-out niche of nuclear family, steady income, call you back when the kids take a nap existence.

It's kind of scary, but what kind of way is that to live...scared. I'm superstitious, I find themes in things without trying, and sometimes I get lost in what could happen, rather than what actually is happening. But I'm realizing here in my mid-life that I am an optimist. I'm not afraid, because the sun always comes up, spring always returns, and there are reasons, divine reasons for all things that occur. When a game isn't televised, there is a reason, when there is a lunar eclipse, there's a reason, when your heart aches inside your chest and tears burn acid in your throat, there is a reason. When red peppers are two for $1, there is a reason. Red peppers make a perfect heart shape when you use a cookie cutter.

Red roses, too.