Suburban Kamikaze

In which I go a little Brazilian, but this time it doesn't hurt

Let me tell you something about winter in Chicago: it is not looking half bad.

This occurs to me about halfway to the bottom of the Ultimate Seduction, a strawberry-rosemary-basil-sake-cachaca concoction that bartender Richard Tandoc has whipped up just for me from behind the bar at the Encore Liquid Lounge. 

Tandoc, of the New Jersey Rio Rodizio Brazilian steakhouse,  and five other VIP "mixologists" from around the country are hoping to convince a panel of judges that they have created the ultimate cachaca cocktail in the Cuca Fresca "Shake Your Way to Brazil" North American Mixology Contest.

What am I doing here, other than drinking like a pirate? 

I am the guest of Paul Abercrombie, whose book, "Organic, Shaken and Stirred" (Harvard Common Press; $19.95, liquor not included) has become the bible of the organic-cocktail imbibing suburban mommy set.  Or at least, that is what we are planning as soon as my copy arrives in its organic, free-range, Earth-friendly packaging. Paul has to judge the entries, whereas my only job is to try to finish as many as possible.  

Cachaca - pronounced "another please" - is an organic Brazilian specialty rum. As the handsome Cuca Fresca representative explains, cachaca is made from a completely different part of the sugar cane than other rums, which are made from some other part, which gives it a completely different something, something, something. It is not easy to take good notes when your hands are full of rum drinks.

Whatever it is, I can tell you this:  it tastes very nice mixed with ginger liqueur, oranges, limes, blackberries, rosemary, allspice, passionfruit, ginger beer, something called Domaine de Canton, hibiscus rooibos tea syrup, egg whites and everything else they shook, stirred, poured and muddled into it.

If this was Brazil's idea of an apology for that afternoon at the S&M day spa, well, I was going to accept.

My favorite was something called Ginger Dream by Los Angeles rum artist Francois Vera. I knew the minute I tasted it that he came from someplace where creative types gather under palm trees. It was my kind of drink; all sunny and gingery and full of pulp. Not too sweet. 

Later, I mingle with Chicago's celebrity bartenders and learn how to make homemade bitters. Which seems like a really good idea in the glow of Rico Wisner's Punch from Ipanema, the judges' favorite. Will I actually try this at home? It is hard to say. Sometimes pulling the cork out seems like too much work.  

Anyway, my point is this: Brazil, you are forgiven. 

Understudy to step in for bearded Sting in my sex fantasies

Announcement

The role of "pool boy 1" in all performances, including Sunday matinees, of the sex fantasy "Make Mine a Mojito," will be played by Goo Goo Dolls frontman Johnny Rzeznik until further shaving notice.  

 

Everything I know about parenting I learned from "Dancing with the Stars"

Pop culture parenting is so hard.

One minute you think you're in step and the next thing you know, all of your television-inspired parenting techniques are so last week.

Oh well, cha cha cha.    

Today's in-the-know parents? They're taking their cues from a dog trainer. And why not?

The Argentine Tango will get you only so far.  

Please, do not even think of trying to compete with the Midwest for appalling regional delicacies*

Then again, this has got to be better than it sounds. 

*Locution by SK reader Sue, who argued here, that hamballs to the contrary,  the Midwest has plenty of competition. To which I can only say, slider stuffing?  The envelope please. 

In Which Eeyore is Slandered by Corporate Sloganeering and We are All Arranged by Color

They do not tolerate workplace gossip at Livingston, Mont.-based PrintingForLess.com.

Which is a good thing, because if they did, somebody would certainly say something hurtful about whoever came up with the system for color-coding employees by their preferred style of communication.

For example, a "red" employee - whose preference for get-to-the-point communication is indicated by a red nameplate on his or her desk - might say, "This is the stupidest idea ever and makes me think they must be doing drugs over in human resources," whereas a "blue" employee, who likes "having all the details and time to process them" would say, "It could be the stupidest idea ever, but I really need to know how they are doing things over at HSN Inc. before I could be certain."

HSN Inc. is the shopping network company where chief executive Mindy Grossman does not need color-coded nameplates to recognize her employees' style of communication. 

She only hires one style of employee and that style is staring at himself in a mirror thinking he has stumbled upon his identical twin. Except when he is stuck in the top of a tree after belatedly discovering that he cannot, in fact, fly. 

Because Grossman can sum up her hiring philosophy like this: "You only hire Tiggers. You don't hire Eeyores."

Grossman does not explain who on the HSN Inc. board of directors has forced her to stock the entire company with nothing but characters from the Hundred Acre Wood, but if it were up to me, Tigger would be low on the list.   As Alan Greenspan might say, enthusiasm is all well and good until somebody gets pushed off the bridge in a bounce of irrational exuberance.   

Grossman seems not to have noticed that it is Eeyore who has to talk Tigger down from the tree.  Or that, as risk management could not fail to notice, the stuffed tiger is a liability.  

Please accept this adorable kitten as a token of my regret

The sixth-grader and her friend sneak up on me just as I am putting the finishing touches on an e-mail reply that goes like this:

Expletive deleted.

I wasn't going to send it. Or maybe I was. I hadn't decided.

An area writers' group had sent out an invitation to meet for coffee. The children's book author couldn't make it.

"Thanks for the offer," the author wrote, "but I am much too busy for my own good!! I'm trying to meet a deadline on my third book!! Can you believe it? It's crazy how successful I am!  Have fun at your little coffee gathering and I hope you all inspire one another!!" 

Okay, so I have added the exclamation marks. Also the stuff in italics. This is what is known in writers' circles as literary license. Or, informally, as being a bitch. For which bitterness, inspired by having my resumé ignored by editors young enough to have kittens on their Facebook pages, deserves much of the credit.  Not that there is anything wrong with kittens!!! OMG they're so CUTE!!

Anyway, my point is, being a bitch is not the kind of thing you are supposed to pass on to your children. Especially when they have so much more to teach us. The girls decide they will write their own reply. "I didn't care for any of your other books," it begins.

"Girls," I say, astonished at how unkittenlike they are. "I was only joking. The point of a writers' group is to celebrate each other's success. The correct response is "congratulations!!!"  Perhaps with a photo of a kitten attached.

Study: 30 percent of fall leaves end up in house

Pop-Tart label to be serialized under new HarperCollins imprint

Tinkerbelle is so last week

They grow up so fast. One day you are hitting the "buy now" icon for a $29.99 Tinkerbelle costume and the next thing you know, they would not be caught dead in a Tinkerbelle costume at any price.

It seems like only yesterday, but in fact it was almost three weeks ago.

She gave me the news on Halloween morning. No one was dressing up this year.  Not even the sixth graders who insisted on matching shoes and hair accessories.

She's on to us

We're going to need a new secret handshake.  All new passwords. 

The little ones? They're getting suspicious.

I tuck the girl into bed a little earlier than usual. "You're getting sick," I tell her. "You need extra sleep."

Her eyes are glazed, her cheeks are pink and she manages to stop coughing only long enough to hiss her accusation: "You lie," she says. "That's just what grown-ups say when they want to be left alone."

Was it too much C-SPAN or was she on to us?

"You're right," I say. "Sleep is the last thing you need. You should be outside picking up leaves."  My sarcasm doesn't fool her. She watches me closely as I leave the room. I can't risk my usual bedtime dance outside the door.  

The next morning brings fever, headache, an unsettled stomach. She throws up, falls back asleep, wakes up hungry. I give her toast, 7-Up, oatmeal. She wants chocolate chip cookies and milk. "No," I say. "You can't have chocolate or milk when you have a sick stomach."

"You lie," she says again. "You just don't want me to have any cookies."

Later, as I eat the last of the cookies that will bolster my immune system and guarantee me a lifetime of superior health, I begin to worry. 

We've been lying to the children for so long, about so many things. Pretty much everything, really. Had we gotten careless somewhere along the line? Or was it just the ibuprofen talking?

How much does she know?

Two roads diverged in a wood but only one of them had color-coded trail markers. Shouldn't that have made all the difference?

We have walked for miles through the yellow wood following a trail we expect to loop back to its starting point but which deposits us beside a highway instead.

This does not surprise me. This is the sort of thing that comes of venturing into the forest without a plan, a map, a first-aid kit or a 20-pound bag of rice.

Considering the list of all possible outcomes, having to retrace our hike to get back to the car is about the best we could hope for.

I do not say I told you so.  Out loud.

Our scoutmaster does not put much stock in things like "plans," "maps" or bags of rice. He relies on manly intuition and his sense that things rarely go wrong, and when they do, are rarely fatal.

This is known as the I haven't killed anyone yet school of risk assessment.   

And so we set out for a day of exploring the woods with little more than the scoutmaster's assumptions about where the trail will lead. We are accompanied by two sixth grade girls who alternate between running too far ahead and lagging too far behind. They laugh, they hide, they send text messages back to civilization.

The trail winds through thick woods in autumn colors and is crisscrossed by horse paths. A couple of deer amble past. It is a nice walk. But after a few miles we pick up our pace, eager to reach a Starbucks what we believe is the end of our hike. Except it's a highway. A forest preserve worker at the nature center across the road gives us a map and tells us to head back the way we came.

We head back the way we came. I'll be honest; it's not as pretty on the way back.  There are an awful lot of dead leaves. Where did all this horse poop come from? I make a prediction: "At some point, the scoutmaster is going to announce that he has discovered a shortcut," I tell the girls. "We must not, under any circumstances, take the shortcut."

The girls look at me but all they hear is shortcut. 

"Yay!" they say. "A shorcut!"

We are not even 20 minutes back into the wild when the scoutmaster pulls out the map and brings us to a halt at a fork in the trail.  An unmarked path branches to our left.

"I think this will take us back to the parking lot," he says. "We won't have to go all the way around."

"Yay!" sing the girls. "A shortcut!"

"No," I say. "There are no trail markers." But no one can hear me. They are already skipping down the unmarked path.

There is nothing to do but follow. I know how this is going to end. "It is going to be a long walk back," I say. The scoutmaster knows too. "Trust me," he says. Again? I think. 

But we are both wrong about what we will find at the end of the trail. Because the right answer, as it turns out, is a bride on a Harley.  Also, the parking lot.  

Ad hoc like an Egyptian

Only one week left till Halloween

And we're ready to head out in fairy green

We bought accessories at Claire's (oh way oh)

Wings, toe polish, even fairy hair...

It's not like us to be prepared so early.  But the sixth-grader settled on her costume early this year, abandoning the Goth trend for the shimmering green optimism of a storybook fairy. 

We buy a costume online, find shiny green shoes to match and head to Claire's for glitter-covered accessories.  The 14-year-old will panhandle for candy as himself.  No purchase required.

Buy candy. Carve pumpkins. Pour the wine.  Done.

I unpack the skeleton hand goblets and offer a toast to my perfectly-organized self.

This is what is known as tempting the Fates.

The Fates, as anyone familiar with Greek mythology knows, are the social studies, language arts and science teachers whose creative whims control the lives of mortal parents from kindergarten through eighth grade.

Next Thursday, the Fates have decreed, will be  "Dress Like an Egyptian Day."

Lucky for us, the Egyptian god Ak-tut-something is pretty much a ringer for Tinkerbelle.

Okay, that is not true and the girl knows it. We have absolutely nothing useful for depicting anything remotely Egyptian.  

We are back at the costume store to check out our options. 

Don't know exactly what we're looking for -

But we've only got a few days more (oh way oh)

Shop like an Egyptian...

We reject Cleopatra. Too expensive, I say. Too obvious, says the girl. Duh.

As a recovering Goth, she likes the look of Anubis, the jackal-headed god of the dead.  We are not going to find Anubis here.  But a $4.99 Batman mask seems like a good start. 

Like the ancient Egyptians, we are resourceful.

All we have to do is build a cardboard snout, lengthen the ears, add the side flaps, papier maché the entire thing and paint it black and gold. Then we will fashion a tunic from an old bed sheet. We will fashion Egyptian looking accessories from beads and strips of cardboard. 

Then we dance.

Photos: Top right, Anubis mask from fantasyguilde, $275; bottom right, we are halfway there...