Bad Mothers Unite

This photograph really doesn't do the whole ensemble justice. If I were a better photographer, you'd see that the 'leggings' are blue jeans, and the skirt a cheerleader's rah-rah skirt. No, the skirt's grassy green color does not somehow bring the whole thing together. She bought the skirt in Good Will last Halloween, and believe me, it's world-class scary.

The shocking thing is not the fact that I let my kid wear this outfit to school today. No, the shocking thing is that I hadn't even noticed what she was wearing until she'd already emerged from her shower, had had her breakfast, had gotten into the car, been driven to school, and was stepping out on to the school steps. Then, my eyelids peeled back enough for me to see it, the skirt, the jeans, the matelot with chain-gang stripes. It makes me shudder to think of the day when she might decide that Victoria's Secret is acceptable outerwear. With any luck, she'll have two parents by then and between us we'll make one competent observer.

My kid is the occasion for much startlement these days. I vaguely noticed last summer that she was entering the disillusionment phase, that period of adolescence when a formerly sweet and compliant kid suddenly looks around and wonders how she got stuck with the original 50 Foot Losers. Things seemed to improve in the autumn and a bit in the spring, when I was going through surgery and radiation. She may be a teen, but there is a compassionate soul in there and for a time she definitely eased off on her preferred pose of numb indifference. After all, Mommy and Daddy were on the edge of utterly falling apart. We needed her and she came through.

But now that we may all cling to the hope that my position on the Cancer Bus is well towards the back, at least two of us are returning to our assigned roles. And her role is definitely the classic teen: resentful and sulky and prone to mysterious smiles that when queried are about 'oh, nothing'. My role is the needy and self-doubting mom, who feels like a jilted lover because her kid has grown up and would clearly rather spend ten hours with friends on Facebook than ten minutes in Starbucks with her Joan Crawford of a mother.

I wish us both luck in stepping out of our assigned boxes.

Meanwhile, for comfort, I turn to cycling, dog walking and research into the ideal kitchen range. Cycling has been fun and my recovery continues. Dog maintenance unfortunately involves keeping Jesse's dog, Ziggy, trimmed. He's a Shih-tzu, which means that were I to neglect him, his hair would grow until it reached Tibet, the land where his breed supposedly came from. The trimming has naturally fell on me. After two years of acting as Ziggy's private beautician, I can honestly say that I'm only faster at the job, not better. He frankly looks like hell.

On the appliance consulting, I may fare somewhat better. As you may recall, there was a family feud, gentle but high-stakes, over what house to buy in New York. It was a happy feud, in a way. We were fortunate to be looking at houses that, while they may not achieve Dream Home status, are certainly nice enough, nothing to complain about, not in this era. But a feud there was. And I lost. Oh, I wasn't completely over-ruled. There wasn't a head-butting fight. It was a case of the winning team making good arguments, sufficient for the losing team to concede the field.

Now, a kitchen is not the only thing I look for in a home. But this was to be my dream home, my compensation for leaving Austin, so the precise nature and character of the kitchen figured pretty largely in my mind. And don't I deserve good tools? I'm the sole cook in the family and it's a job I have something of a passion for, so I was looking forward to at long last having a kitchen like the pages in a magazine. Here's the kitchen in the (cheaper) house I wanted us to buy.

The Drool Kitchen:


And this is the kitchen I got (Kitchen X):

Mike, an agreeable fellow, has approved spending whatever it takes to turn Kitchen X into the Drool Kitchen, but I can tell he doesn't really mean that. Because that would mean taking out the offendingly neutral cabinets and replacing them with something, well, cottagey feeling, with old fashioned inset framing and display cases and a plate rack, not to mention knobs that cost more than $2.00 at Home Depot. It's best not to even think about what I'd like to do and just concentrate on what I can do.

The builder, thankfully, hadn't ordered appliances yet so the first job is to decide on a range. You'd think it would be easy because I know I want gas, I know I want a free-standing range and I know what my minimum BTU requirements are. I also know I want something that looks good (thus sadly ruling out everything recommended by Consumer Dowdy Reports).

But knowing what I want hasn't helped much. I've fallen in love and out of love with several different ranges. Just as soon as I would gain some confidence that a particular cooker was sturdy and reliable and performs well, I'd come across a legion of unhappy purchasers, yakking away on the web (when do these people actually cook anything?). Their machines were busted and the service centers were staffed by the Sons of Darkness. After rejecting Thermador, Viking, the Kitchen Aid and Dacor, I started wondering what was so wrong, really, with just a brick oven behind the garage and a propane grill in the driveway? Hell, what's wrong with just a tent in the yard? We could rent out the house and turn a profit!

But fantasies of escape aside, I have to have a range (and I should admit I was never in much danger of shelling out for one of the really pricey brands). After many hours of tracking down rumors and reading reviews, I think I've narrowed the choice of range down to a Bluestar or an American Range.

And let's be honest, I've fallen again. This time for the Bluestar. I use a wok for everything that needs real heat, whether it's the onions you brown for a curry or the roux you blacken for a gumbo. The concentrated heat makes the flour brown more quickly and the curved surface makes it easy --and safe -- to whisk the roux, that lethal stuff known as "Cajun Napalm". The Bluestar's grate cradles a wok beautifully, concentrating the flame right on the pot's surface.

And if it weren't for a few but very noisy unhappy Bluestar customers on the web, I probably wouldn't be considering the American Range. But it has a solid pedigree, has almost no complaints on the web, and is the product of a company that has built commercial ranges in this country for decades. People who say they know something about steel insist that the American Range is built with much higher quality steel, and so will last forever. I'd be wholly suckered into this claim if the AR company offered a five year warranty, but since they don't, I'm suspicious.

So I'm looking forward to the hands-on research. I'll have to find a showroom that will let me cook on both machines. Soon, I hope, I will file my report from the frontlines.