Brussels Sprouts Are My Spirit Vegetable

Somewhere in there are five very
tiny mushroom pieces and sixteen
fragments of onion. Their unclean
foulness must be rooted out (get it??)
and expelled from the plate!

Well, not according to the Internet. According to four highly authoritative Internet quizzes, my spirit vegetable is the pumpkin, mushroom, cucumber, or broccoli, which proves that either I have multiple spirit vegetable disorder, to the extent that is a thing, or that Internet quizzes may lack validity (!!!!). It is true that I love mushrooms and will attempt to sneak them into any dish. The children, who pretty much universally hate mushrooms, have been trained through years of experience to spot chopped mushrooms and push them to the sides of their plates. Frankly, since it took me five years to get get them to stop flinging the mushrooms onto the table and merely push them to the side, I'm sort of okay with that. Plus, I get extra mushrooms, thoughtfully piled up for easy collection.

They say Jack-o-lantern, or in this case, possibly
Weird Earless Cat-o-lantern. I say Pumpkin Seed Storage Container. Everybody wins.

I also like cucumbers and broccoli, in moderation, but that's as far as it goes. I am not a fan of pumpkin-flavored things, which is unfortunate in the fall, when everything from coffee creamer to salad dressing is pumpkin. I do, however, love pumpkin seeds. In fact, I buy the pumpkin at Halloween mainly to roast its seeds; the carving is just a sort of ritual that entertains the kids while I clean and roast pumpkin seeds.

No, lying Internet quizzes aside, my real spirit vegetable is the Brussels sprout. I never had Brussels sprouts growing up, because it is one of the few vegetables my mother doesn't care for. I didn't try them as an adult until a few years ago because (a) they have a reputation of being that one vegetable that nobody likes, the IRS audit of vegetables, and (b) they look like something a troll hacks up after a bad cold or the pilling on the particularly ugly sweater of a giant.

Betty is not a fan of Brussels sprouts,
which is a little surprising because
she likes most veggies and has even
tried going vegetarian several times
(her downfall is protein...she hates
pretty much all non-meat proteins).
This is an old picture and doesn't
involve vegetables, but is a pretty
fair representation of her NO face.

Then, several years ago, my boss (this was back when I could have the same boss for upwards of a year, as opposed to four in a single year) who told me his cats loved to eat Brussels sprouts. I've had cats since college and Lord knows, they are weird little creatures, but Brussels sprout eating seemed a little far over the cuckoo's nest, even for cats. This intrigued me.

Because I didn't want to commit to cooking something so sketchy from scratch, I bought frozen Brussels sprouts, and they weren't half bad...but not half good, either. Then, one fateful winter, my friend and I started frequenting Red Lobster and they offered roasted Brussels sprouts as a side dish.  On a whim, I tried them, and I was hooked.  When they fell off the seasonal menu, I had to take the plunge and start making them myself. Now, I use the fact that Bruce and I love Brussels sprouts and Eleanor and Mother will not openly complain about them as an excuse to fix them several times a month (silence implies consent, everybody knows that). Eventually, I figure I'll wind up feeding Mother all the Brussels sprouts she never fed me as a child.
BWAAA HAAA HAAA HAAA!

Anyway, none of the Internet quizzes probably even had Brussels sprouts as an option for your spirit vegetable, possibly because all the quiz takers would be all like, "I'm no troll booger!" and then rate the quiz one star and the quiz makers would cry. This saddens me, because I think Brussels sprouts have a lot to offer in the fake Internet psychology realm.

Congratulations! Your Spirit Vegetable is the Brussels Sprout

Trees of Deliciousness!

You are complex, layered, and frequently misunderstood. Your outer layers may be drab and slightly wilty, but those who take the time to peel off some layers will discover a freshness and zest that goes well with honey and a dash of balsamic vinegar. Some people may try to drown you in cheese and bacon--avoid them and let your natural beauty shine through. In the wrong environment, you can become bitter and cynical, but simple seasonings, sweetness, and about 45 minutes in a 425 degree oven make you magical!

Anyway, here's how I fix my Brussels sprouts. I found this recipe on Pintrest. I promise it's tasty, even if your spirit vegetable is squash!

ZUMVOLLEY UPDATE: While the Pandas had a very successful season, losing only two games, they lost in the second round of the tournament. Even during the tournament, spontaneous outbreaks of zumba would occur. Their name also evolved, from the Pandas, to the Orange Chicken Pandas, to the Orange Chicken Pandas with Sunburn, to ultimately, the Orange Chicken Pandas with Sunburn and Orange Crush, which made for some awkward team cheers. Betty even got better at serving, after I pointed out to her that the volleyball was the same general shape and size as her brother's head and, therefore, it would be a shame not to hit it harder. The team plans to reunite in the fall. May Zumvolley live FOREVER!

Bingo is a Family Value

My previous experiment, OSTRICH
(Obtusely Still Try to Relentlessly
Ignore and Continue Hobbling)
was, oddly enough, unsuccessful.

This afternoon, I was lying in bed, thinking about what to write while experimenting with RICE (rest, ice, compression, and elevation) for my bruised foot. I got the munchies and reached into the nightstand for some Bingo loot, a giant-sized Hershey bar I had been saving for just such a situation. If you're doing a double take because you don't associate Bingo with chocolate, I can assume you're not family. Those of you now nodding and drooling know exactly what I mean.

Two weeks ago was the annual Dusek-Olsovsky Family Reunion. For more years than I've been alive, the descendants of the Duseks and Olsovskys (my grandmother was an Olsovsky) have congregated in the Guardian Angel Catholic Church Parish Hall in Wallis, TX, on the fourth Sunday in April. I've missed very few of these reunions, and my kids are just as determined to go for two, very important reasons: (1) each family must bring a dessert and we come from a long line of fabulous bakers, and (2) bingo.

The inside of the church. Guardian Angel is one of the beautiful painted churches in Central Texas. Our family is one of the many Czech families that settled there in the late 1880s. I suck at genealogy, but I have learned two important facts:
(1) Great-great (ish) grandpa had to renounce allegiance to Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, the much hated
occupier of Moravia and other places and the catalyst of WWI, which is kind of ironic: "Yes, we know you hate the jerk,
but do you pinkie promise not to be his loyal subject?" I imagine Great-great (ish) grandpa rolled his eyes and said whatever the Czech equivalent of "I'll try" or "Whatevs" or "Sure, you moron" is. (2) Great-great (ish) grandpa's dad (who never emigrated) was named Peregrin Dusek. Peregrin: Just. Like. The. Hobbit.
No wonder we all like to eat and run around barefoot!

Eleanor in 2007 with some of her winnings. That is the
expression of unbridled aggression, the savage intensity
of a four-year-old Attila, intent on decimating an army of
letters and numbers so that she can ravage a table of
hapless sugary items and cheap toys. Cross her at your peril.
Her cousin Christian appears somewhat despondent with
his sad little box of juice packets. 

After lunch and the business meeting, someone says, "Bingo!" and children emerge from tables, run in from tossing footballs and shooting hoops on the covered porch, and descend upon the opened treasure chests where thousands of bingo cards, some barely held together and peeling with age and covered with stray marker, others brand new and shiny, lay waiting. When I say 'treasure chest,' you should not think about a pirate's treasure chest, because that is entirely too small. These treasure chests are so massive that is entirely possible some poor bingo player may have once leaned in too far to get a luckier card and fallen in, buried forever in the vast drifts of condensed luck. Kids who are too young to keep up with numbers and letters sit with a mom or granny, who usually plays three or four cards at once. My kids are very serious about bingo, and that is because every one of the 45+ families brings prizes. A row of four or five long tables is piled high with dollar store toys, candy, snacks, sodas (and, for some reason, this year, a fern), and we play bingo until every item is gone. It is like combining Halloween and gambling. After ensuring that all three kids had won several items, Mother and I scored a few treats of our own, including the delicious Hershey bar I savored today while experimenting with Staying Still as a means of healing my foot. (Shockingly, this is working quite well. Does the medical community know about this?)

All of which explains why, when I ask, "Do y'all want to go to the family reunion?" all three children light up, sort of like when you wave bacon at a dog or rattle a jar of Kitty Krack, and even Bruce, who rarely leaves the house by choice, perks up and says, "The one with bingo?" No one complains about the car ride, or interacting with people they don't know very well, because it is so worth it. As I once did--as probably all adults once did--they'll sneak back through the dessert table at least twice while the grownups are distracted, before heading outside to play until that magical moment when someone yells, "Bingo."

I have two very specific childhood memories of the reunion. One was that we had to drive up from Corpus to attend, which seemed forever at that age, and either there weren't a lot of bathrooms on US 59 at that time or my parents chose not to stop at them, so I vividly remember at least one time pulling off to the side of the highway to look for a bush. Those of you from South Texas are laughing right now, because you know there's no such thing, just tall grass, stickerburrs, and snakes. The other was that horrible, horrible time when I got the chicken pox right before the reunion and had to be quarantined in the Winnebago. Imagine: no multiple trips through the dessert buffet, and (really, this could constitute child abuse or possibly some sort of war crime) no bingo. Here's a poem about that tragic day that I read at NeWorld Deli last month.

Solitary Confinement on the Open Road

Wallis, 1974

The open road was closed,

the Winnebago a quarantine.

They took me to the reunion,

an annual tradition, barbeque

and bingo, running on concrete

under shade of metal awning

of the Guardian Angel Catholic

Church social hall, anticipation

squashed like a South Texas

mosquito thanks to a badly timed

outbreak of chicken pox.

I spent the reunion alone,

itching, pock-marked, forbidden

from socializing or scratching,

listening to the fun I wasn’t having,

confined to the Winnebago,

visited occasionally and at distance

by cousins who were known survivors,

fed from a plate curated by my mother.

No thrill of hearing letters and numbers

that could spell a bag of candy or new toy.

Just me alone, failing not to think

about itching, stung by boredom,

completely unable to scratch it.

Cry Me a River, Or Don't

Inside every trainer is a
overachieving perfectionist,
whose anger at herself over
only making 114 on the
Charms final will lead her
to develop an even more
elaborate study system
in time for the next exam,
probably involving color
coding and tabs. Trainers
also love office supplies.

As with most people in the training profession, I can not only tell you my Myers-Briggs personality type, but can pretty accurately assess other people's types without having to pass out the #2 pencils. Trainers love personality assessments. It's part of that whole seeing potential, helping people be their best, rose-tinted let-me-help-you-change nurturer thing that led us to teaching to begin with (and, not infrequently, makes us such fun in relationships).

One way the Myers-Briggs classifies us is on how we make decisions. Thinkers are the logicians, the rationalist, the King Solomons, who use logic and reason to decide. Feelers, on the other hand, are those softies who decide with their hearts, who value relationships and feelings over rules and policies.

Most of my life, I've tried to be a Thinker, and occasionally succeeded. My friends are mostly Thinkers, my family are mostly Thinkers, and because I value harmony and relationships (i.e., because I'm a Feeler), I have often convinced myself I was a Thinker, too. For years, I tested that way on the assessment, because, no matter how much the instructions tell you not to do this, I had convinced myself those were the answers I should pick, that reason and logic were somehow moral because most of the people I loved thought so.

One of those is Eleanor, my eldest daughter, whom I call Queen of the Rational. If she notices that I seem unhappy, we invariably have this conversation:

"So, these...emotions...what do you
do with them? Please explain."

Eleanor: You look sad. What happened?
Me: [abridged version as appropriate for 14 year old]
Eleanor: Huh. That doesn't make sense. I mean, you don't KNOW that's going to happen. So I don't know why you're upset about it.
Me: ....
Eleanor:  <clearly pleased at solving problem, puts in earbuds and plays Linkin Park>

The only other Feeler in the household is Betty. Everyone else in the family is perplexed by Betty; she is an interplanetary tourist from the Land of Emotions visiting their calm, subdued and rational world in her pink Hawaiian print shirt and gold shoes. I've often found myself having to translate Betty to Rational, and doing so has made me realize how much she and I see the world in a similar way.

Eleanor: Why doesn't Betty want me to come to volleyball practice?
Betty: You're mean to me! I don't want you there!
Eleanor: I'm not being mean now. So why don't you want me there?
Me: Betty is still upset with you because you took a picture of her when she accidentally wore her shorts backwards and texted it to your friend Annabelle.
Eleanor: WHAT? That happened a month ago! I forgot all about that until just now. That doesn't make any sense!
Me: Perhaps IF YOU APOLOGIZED, said something like, "Betty, I'm sorry if my actions hurt you..."
Eleanor: Wait, are you the Thought Police now? We say rude things all the time--we're sisters. Then we move on. I moved on. It's over.
Betty: I hate her.
Eleanor: <puts earbuds in and turns on Halsey>

Bob and Daisy make decisions primarily based on food, 
rather than on thinking or feeling, which may explain why 
Daisy's paw looks like it's punching a fur-covered balloon.

Betty has always been overwhelmed by her emotions. She has cried so hard she's thrown up on more than one occasion. When Betty starts crying a river, her siblings come straight to me, because I am the only one who knows what to say to calm her down. They'll say, "Betty's crying about something. IDK what--there doesn't seem to be anything wrong." Then they'll shrug their shoulders and go play Nintendo or watch Netflix because any problem that can't be explained probably doesn't exist. I go find Betty and we hold each other for a while, and then, when she's calmer, we talk about what she's feeling, and what the other person involved might have been feeling, and then, when we figure out all these feelings, she stops crying, cheers up, and goes back to watching anime. Then, because I feel an obligation to attempt to educate the Thinkers in the family, I head over to the person who reported the crying so I can attempt to explain why somebody might be upset about perfectly rational people telling her The Facts and a detailed analysis of said facts. "But, it was true!" they say, and I invariably reply, "Maybe, but it wasn't helpful." And then they wander off, frustrated, because how can facts not be helpful?

I Love You to Proxima Centauri B and Back

The corollary is, whenever I need a bit of emotional support, it is harder to find than tofu in a barbecue joint. Betty is always good for a 10 minute hug, three drawings, and a dozen "I love you" and "Best mom in the universe," but, since she's 9 and has the attention span of a very happy puppy, is not appropriately a source of support. (The hugs are great, though. In fact, even when neither of us is upset, Betty and I sound pretty much like if the person who wrote the "I love you to the moon and back" book had scored a contract to write a thousand sequels.) So, I've become pretty good at being my own support.

At any rate, as I've learned to accept myself, I've gotten more comfortable with feelings: having them, other people having them, talking about them, and <gasp> even factoring them into decisions without feeling guilty about it. And I've found that I've got at least one traveling companion to join me on a fun, irreverent, and, yes, emotional, tour of the Land of the Rational.