I was killing time between two different ballet lesson drop-off times for my two ballerina daughters, and I took a drive on a long windy road along the water and into the hills.  This road is very familiar to me, though I haven’t driven it much since my teens.  It used to be the indirect route to the roving high school keg parties, which would flee one scene after another in a sort of unfriendly game of hide and seek with police, except that we never got to be ‘it.’

On some days, my friend and I, in behavior typical of 17-year-old girls, would take the long road to hills to go house hunting.  Yes, we were precocious.  We selected our dream homes, which we were to live in with our dream guys, in our dream world of some dream dimension in existence.  I remember particularly the one with the turrets and the storybook-style stonework.  We agreed that was the one on which we, with our imaginary princes, both wanted to close escrow.  My friend would surely have outbid me because she was much prettier and her dad worked in the stock market, back when the stock market was a cozier place to be.  Ahhh, the innocent 80’s.

She said, “Oh my god, Snow White would live there with her seven dwarfs.”  Perhaps she liked Disney more than I did or she is way kinkier than she came off, but I was content to live with one prince, not seven, hopefully a man of at least an average height.

It was funny to revisit the spot, this time with one five-year-old ballerina and the frustrated almost three-year-old who wears her leotard, tights, and chiffon skirt, in hopes that one day, by some miracle in adult logic and rule-making, she’ll be permitted to attend class.  It was interesting how vividly I remembered my old dream world, years later, alongside my wide-awake world.  And then it occurred to me.

I should have spent LESS TIME DREAMING and more time trying to tackle the misery that is algebra.  That’s right. I could have become, I don’t know, an engineer, and, engineered things.  Or a surgeon and cut things.  And taken things out and put plastic things in.  But I was busy shopping for homes, when I could have been developing the skills that help you buy them.  So now I can’t do math or get a realtor to waste more than four nanoseconds of their Sunday afternoon with me.

I do, however, have a prince, just one, and I must say that he holds his own against the imaginary one, whose traits, now that I look back, were very non-descript.  In fact, the only thing I really remember about him is that we lived in that castle, with the turrets and the stonework.  And, for the record, my husband is a way better dancer than any of Snow White’s or Cinderella’s or Sleeping Beauty’s cheesy, overly white boyfriends.  I only wish that the castle we afforded ourselves weren’t so 1/18 the size of everyone else’s and not so very orange in color.  Though it’s a brave design choice and contrasts with the rolling green hills nicely.  Oh, the missteps of youth!

But then, my revelation had a revelation.  If I were good at algebra, I would actually have to DO algebra.  And that would be bad.  Now, I have the freedom to not do algebra all day long!  No algebra!  No algebra!  None for me, ha!  Can my chemist friends say the same?  Neeeeeooooooo!  As soon as a chemist chooses to befriend me, I will confirm this.

So they have nice houses.  But they have to suck up the tortures of a + b + xy/z = your mother’s maiden name.  Every.  Day.  Of.  Their.  Lives.  Who needs square footage when you’ve got an open floor plan in your brain?  My mind is a cavernous haven of algebra-free nothingness!  You can take your b and shove it up your a.  And I will sit here in 1,086 square feet of living space and think about my favorite adjectives.  Location, location, location!  (I know those were nouns.  That was a real estate joke.)

So I’ll keep my prince and my math ineptitude and appreciate the simple joys of not being well-rounded, a rarity in the academic world these days.  Can the economic principles of supply and demand magically come into play here?  Can my price go up for sucking at math?   In any case, I will reflect on a childhood where I perfected fantasy and delusion, and in retrospect, realize that the time was well spent.

We’re celebrating 14 Days of Love and Food!  Check back tomorrow for another heart-shaped blog.

REPOSTED SHAMELESS PROMOTION AND RED ALERT:  If you like this blog, please vote for Saving Private Mommy on Babble.com.  Enough votes could make Greta go viral.  She’s always wanted to be a virus.  Go to Babble’s website and click ‘alphabetical’ just above the names of the nominated sites.  You’ll find Saving Private Mommy on or around page 9. Greta thanks you for your support!  That link, if you missed the first 2 times, is right here.  Oh thank you, oh thank you!  Here it is again.  And again.  One last time.  Bye!

Just in case you forgot.

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How do you say I’ll never need anything more in my life, like the not-that-attractive Pottery Barn sofa for $3,600 or a luxury cruise on the Baltic Sea or a full-time, live-in, round-the-clock, overworked yet overjoyed, salaried housekeeper?  You say it with tomatoes, basil, garlic and olive oil on French bread.  That’s how you say it.  And now, I’m going to help you make it.

You will win friends and influence eaters with this recipe.  No one will look at you the same again.  They will love you.  Not for you, but for your bruschetta.  They will want to see you more often.  They will associate you with magic of good food.  That’s almost as good as owning a speed boat that they want to use.  It’s a close second or third, for sure.  And that might be good enough.

Make this for appetizer for your Valentine, either before the romantic feast you prepared at home or before you go out to eat.  Pre-gaming isn’t just for sports anymore.  Open a bottle of sparkling wine and sit and talk about what breed of dog you’d be if you were a dog.

• Chop some ROMA TOMATOES.  Remove the seeds and pulp or it will be very mushy.  It’s important that you respect your bruschetta.

• Chop up a few BASIL leaves.  Inhale the righteous vapors, Bra.

• Chop a clove of GARLIC, drop it in, and make the tomatoes and basil deal with it.

• Dump in a lug or glug of OLIVE OIL.

• Season with ROCK SALT to taste.

• Mix.  Taste.  Chill.  Oh, and put it in the fridge.

• Slice some SOURDOUGH or FRENCH or ITALIAN BREAD.  Toast it.  Then rub a clove of GARLIC on both sides.  Prepare to levitate.

• Place bread slices around a bowl of the tomato mixture.  Drizzle with OLIVE OIL.  Let them eat bruschetta.

Make this and prove to the world that simplicity is culinary gold, the universe is in a grain of sand, and I have never seen an episode of Dallas.  It’s true.  Not one episode.  My parents didn’t watch it and neither did I.  Yes, the impossible is possible here at SavingPrivateMommy.com.  Right here.  Make that recipe, and see how I missed an important piece of television history.  And Happy Valentine’s Day!

We’re celebrating 14 Days of Love and Food!  Check back tomorrow for another heart-shaped blog.

REPOSTED SHAMELESS PROMOTION AND RED ALERT:  If you like this blog, please vote for Saving Private Mommy on Babble.com.  Enough votes could make Greta go viral.  She’s always wanted to be a virus.  Go to Babble’s website and click ‘alphabetical’ just above the names of the nominated sites.  You’ll find Saving Private Mommy on or around page 9. Greta thanks you for your support!  That link, if you missed the first 2 times, is right here.  Oh thank you, oh thank you!  Here it is again.  And again.  One last time.  Bye!

Just in case you forgot.

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CNN International reported today that Ashton Kutcher, Twitter’s A+K, does not like Valentine’s Day.  Apparently the loving groom of the world’s premier Cougar, the lovely and 47-year-old Demi Moore, thinks one day of “lovey-dovey” is stupid since every day should be lovey-dovey.  Now that’s easy to say when your wife works out 4-hours a day, but what about the rest of us who have jiggly butts?  We actually look forward to doing things up since our everyday existence is not already done up for us by a full-time staff of 8.  Those of us whose homes don’t look like this actually need to escape the piles of laundry and the overstuffed closets and seek refuge in some haven that serves, say, sushi.  The only organizational worry the Kutcher-Moores have is tripping over the butler on the way out.

Perhaps he does have a point that holidays are so once-a-year, so planned and contrived, and so…not every day.  I wonder if he has the same prejudice against the other biggies.  Christmas:  we should overeat and spoil our kids every day.  Halloween:  what do you mean you don’t costume the family and disturb the neighbors for free food every night?  Could you imagine a 365-day Lent?  People would either be really thin or they would change their sacrifices to things like pencils.  Or hand sanitizer.  Or using the word ‘bitchen’ to describe cool things.

I suppose Valentine’s Day is another one of those holidays that makes people evaluate where they are in life, though I don’t really think it’s any worse than Labor Day.  When your husband works retail and no one invites you to a barbeque where you can prance around in your bikini, laugh with a silent scream of WHITE teeth, and drink Coors Light while floating on an inner tube.  Labor Day media pressure is far worse than any Zales commercial could ever hope to be.

Of course, I have not been single on a Valentine’s Day since 1991.  Now I’m not bragging, nor will I tell you that I have had a charmed dating life.  On the contrary, my twenties were full of drama, losers, and adrenaline.  But even if I wasn’t dating someone, there was always someone very specific that I wasn’t dating.  It was like having a significant no one.  A very specific no one with whom I would pass the time, sometimes pleasantly.

Now if you’re single, this evening is a perfect opportunity to get together with your trillions of other single friends and complain about exes.  Or, even better, talk about how lame the relationships of your married friends are.  You know you want to.  And you should.  And it’s a good excuse to drink champagne.  And to eat things.

I suppose I do agree with Mr. Demi Moore that this day is, ultimately, insignificant.  It does not make or break a relationship.  Nor does it reinforce a person’s single status.  It is a nice reminder of the fact that there is an arrow lodged in your butt cheek and that you should acknowledge it, and tend to the wound in whatever way you can:  spend some time with your partner or flirt excessively with that grocery store clerk or eat cookies on the floor of Crabtee & Evelyn after it’s closed like I did with my high school friend on the night of our Junior Prom, to which no kind, 17-year-old males thought to invite us to attend with them.  (We laughed harder than anyone at the dance did, I’m certain.)  So take it or leave it.  Your life is still the same life on February 14th.  You’re just wearing more red and eating conversation hearts, which don’t really taste that good anyway.  But please, don’t pass up on an excellent excuse to get a babysitter and become pregnant with your fourth child.  Just kidding.  I hope.

We’re celebrating 14 Days of Love and Food!  Check back tomorrow for the recipe of a sumptuous appetizer that will cause your Valentine to find you more worthy of being obsessed about than Jennifer Anniston.

SHAMELESS PROMOTION AND RED ALERT:  If you like this blog, please vote for Saving Private Mommy on Babble.com.  Enough votes could make Greta go viral.  She’s always wanted to be a virus.  Go to Babble’s website and click ‘alphabetical’ just above the names of the nominated sites.  You’ll find Saving Private Mommy on or around page 9. Greta thanks you for your support!  That link, if you missed the first 2 times, is right here.  Oh thank you, oh thank you!  Here it is again.  And again.  One last time.  Bye!

Just in case you forgot.

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I was all set to write about alternative gifts for the Valentine-minded human being.  Oh, yes, flowers, fine; chocolates, great; champagne, good.  But I thought there is some uncharted Valentine territory that does not involve THINGS.  (And, no, I don’t mean Horizontal Hula coupons:  This certificate entitles the bearer to one headache-free evening with the wife. Those coupons always get lost or are invalidated upon attempted use because, “We’re having company tomorrow and the kitchen is a mess.”)  I was very excited to explore alternative ways of saying ‘I love you,’ but then I read this blog by Carla Zilbersmith.

If you are on active duty as a reader of Saving Private Mommy, you may be familiar with Carla Zilbersmith of Carla’s Calendars fame.  If not, permit me to give you the crash course:  Incredibly wise, talented, loving and beloved human being is suffering a prolonged, painful, if not torturous, death from ALS, commonly know as Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

I know.  It’s the season of St. Valentine.  I promised you 14 Days of Love and Food and I’m giving you Too Many Minutes of Death and Depression.  But I couldn’t help but see the link to gift-giving on Valentine’s Day.  I hope you’ll permit me to mix a little Grim Reaper in with our naked cherub friend.  If we’re lucky, I’ll throw in a leprechaun by the end.

Back to Carla.  She was diagnosed with ALS after several falls and some loss of mobility in her hand and legs.  That was three years ago.  Now she sits in a wheelchair unable to care for herself in the most basic ways:  eating, going to the bathroom, grooming, walking, even picking up a blanket that has fallen off of her in the night.  Her speech, a longtime accomplice to her razor-sharp mind, is failing.  She is losing the ability to swallow.  She will soon lose the ability to breathe.

This clearly has everything to do with Valentine’s Day.  Diamond commercials, rumors about Brangelina, a sapphire ring from the husband, good-looking people across the globe getting naked and risking pregnancy and Chlamydia.  Average-looking people getting naked and risking embarrassment, especially if they read Cosmo and Maxim.  Now, wait…relevance approaches.

Carla said the following on her blog.

You want people to see how easy it would be for them to wake up one morning and decide to give up their self-inflicted pain and enjoy their wonderful life. How easy it is to have a great day when you can make and eat your own toast, throw on your own clothes, go out into the world and do whatever you damn well feel like.”

Now that is the kind of wisdom that comes from dying.  Yet it’s wisdom for living.  How unfair.  How tardy.  What a waste of wisdom!  George Bernard Shaw said, “Youth is wasted on the young.”  Perhaps life is wasted on the living.  It’s interesting how it is so hard for most of us to think of our mortality, which might knock some good perspective into place.  Perhaps this denial is tragic.  Perhaps it is a crucial part of our survival.

Now I’m not suggesting that on Valentine’s Day we should sip champagne and count all the ways we aren’t suffering.  There is a time a place for that, for sure, but an expensive dinner without one’s unruly offspring is not one of them.  “Honey, just think.  We could be skeletons from 79 AD buried under Mt. Vesuvius.”  “I know, sweetheart.  I’m so glad I’m not covered in boils and writhing in pain only to be denied your final kiss before my death because you don’t want this Black Death thing I’ve got.”  “Eating burgers on St. Valentine’s Day sucks, but at least none of our children are hemophiliacs.”  We can, however, perhaps, if we think it’s a good idea, pause and reflect on what we can be thankful for.  And what is wonderful about our Valentines:  ”Ask not what your Valentine can do for you, but what you can do for your Valentine.”  And then go screw Marilyn Monroe.

Rather than pine for my husband to offer me the right gesture or gift, and get mad when he doesn’t offer to reorganize the utilities closet (which has been trying to get his attention for about 2 years; unfortunately, my husband does not speak Closet and doesn’t hear when the out-of-place power drill cries for him in the night.), perhaps I can think about the hundreds of times he’s insisted on making me coffee.  And the multiple hugs per day that he claims I used to demand of him before we had kids.  (He has used this as a bargaining point in a fight:  I gave you so many hugs.)  Or how nice it is to just sit and talk with him and how much I miss him when he’s gone.  The same is true for the little Valentines in my life.  Rather than lament how hard it is to get them in bed, I could possibly choose to focus on their giggles and the multiple hugs times 3 children that have displaced the mandated deluge of hugs from their father.

This is item one on my gift-giving guide.  Perhaps you’ve already mastered this, and I’ve bored you to tears, in which case you’re probably watching YouTube by now or checking your Farmville crops.  But to those who are still here, I would like to HUMBLY suggest, since this is high on my To Do List, too, that you give your Valentine the gift of gratitude.  Preemptively.  Even before the tennis bracelet comes out of the box.  And please don’t wear it in front of me.  I’ll turn green with envy and start to hate my life.

You want people to live all the life you’re going to miss.”

-Carla Zilbersmith

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Some things are bold, odiferous, and take over your entire being.  And despite this, you really like them.  Great warriors come to mind.  They conquer the land, storm the castle, capture the fair maiden, and miraculously, she falls hopelessly in love with him and sits by his side saying, “yes, sire,” while he makes serfs of all her family, friends and neighbors.  The same is true of the salad that comes of the recipe below.  Make it for your Valentine, so that his/her breath and your breath will create a garlic-powered force field and neither of you will perceive the gaseous gourmet vapors emitting from your esophagi.  (I think I am the first person in my family to use the plural form of esophagus.  I hope my mom is beaming in front of her backlit screen.)  And with the salad you will be able to Seize Her or Seize Him into your good graces.  The power of garlic is infinite.

• We have a strict No Measuring rule here at Savingprivatemommy.com.  Have your courage ready.

• In a big bowl, squirt some ANCHOVY PASTE (maybe a couple of tablespoons worth).  Add a clove of minced GARLIC, a few healthy squirts of a LEMON wedge, several dashes of TABASCO or other RED PEPPER SAUCE, a dollop of DIJON MUSTARD, and maybe a third of a cup of OLIVE OIL.  And a pinch of ROCK SALT.

• Whisk it. Taste it.  If it’s too pungent, add more oil.  If it needs more kick, try more Dijon or pepper sauce or lemon, but probably not more garlic and anchovy paste.  Too much garlic can cause enough gas to literally launch your esophagus into orbit.  Actually, I’m kidding.  But you might feel like it will, especially if you smoke pot and eat too much garlic.

• Add 2 to 3 hearts of ROMAINE LETTUCE.  Grate some PARMESAN CHEESE and toss like there’s no tomorrow.  Lettuce without dressing is naked.  Don’t demean your lettuce.  Clothe it as you would your newborn babe in 30-below weather.  Crack some BLACK PEPPER over the top.

• Oh, and don’t forget the croutons!  Break some pieces of FRENCH BREAD and sauté them in a bit of OLIVE OIL.  That’s it, no seasoning necessary.  Believe.

Good luck in not wanting to eat this every night, instead of McDonald’s even.  If you try this recipe, I’d like to ask that you give yourself a hug and a high-five afterward.  You deserve it for having made a Caesar salad WITHOUT RAW EGG IN IT.  If you haven’t decided whether or not you will take on this adventure, click on the photo and behold the tapestry of sumptuous ingredients.

Check back with Greta tomorrow for Day 3 of her 14 Days of Love and Food Fest. Next up are recipes for an appetizer, dessert, and the main dish, along with other musings about Valentine’s Days and the people who love them.