chas­ing your devils

We all have them, don’t we? Fam­ily trou­bles too far away to help, can’t-find-a-house trou­bles, no-job trou­bles, what­ever they may be, we have dev­ils. My dev­ils fol­low me around dur­ing days when on the sur­face all is well: nobody I love in jail or in the hos­pi­tal, which my Scan­di­na­vian father only some­what jok­ingly claims are his cri­te­ria for a good day. Avery’s thriv­ing in school, at least we have a nice flat to live in while we search for the right house, and my unem­ployed hus­band seems per­fectly happy with his state. But rum­bling under the sur­face are my dev­ils. So what is a girl to do?

Well, I have a num­ber of tried and true meth­ods (I have to con­fess that today my new method is writ­ing them all down, since actu­ally using the other meth­ods hasn’t helped yet). First, I take a pic­ture of Avery at her rid­ing les­son to remind myself that it is a cosy and good place for her to be. Just look at these faces. One would never dream, look­ing at Alexa in this mood, that she actu­ally spends most of her time scream­ing at the lit­tle angels to cor­rect some (to me) incom­pre­hen­si­ble trav­esty of eques­tri­an­ism that they have per­pe­trated at that moment. Here she looks quite jolly! She’ll be super­vis­ing Avery’s Pony Camp in Sur­rey this week­end, and I quizzed her mer­ci­lessly yes­ter­day about safety stan­dards (yes, that has been added to my list of dev­ils: one’s child at the mercy of instruc­tors and ponies 60 miles away in the Eng­lish coun­try­side. I have to remind myself that the one time Avery had a seri­ous fall at Ross Nye Sta­bles, far from being vig­i­lant as I always intend, I had my nose buried in Peo­ple mag­a­zine and didn’t even see what hap­pened. A fat lot of help I would be on the scene in Sur­rey, for sure.)

So OK, we’ve tried appre­ci­at­ing our child’s men­tor. Black mood pre­vails. How about an unde­served extrav­a­gant din­ner out with friends? Now, dear read­ers, you know how I love to cook. I have even been known to count cook­ing din­ner as one of my devil-chasing meth­ods. But some­times, after weeks and weeks on end of load­ing the dish­washer every sin­gle night with the used dishes of one’s labours, it’s time for a night off. So my pal Amy and I met up at… wait for it… Nobu. Wild, rank extrav­a­gance, since the prices are fully dou­ble the already-outrageous New York costs. But every once in awhile? Yes. I arrived some­what early for our reser­va­tions, and sat nurs­ing a Mat­suhisu mar­tini, so deli­cious with its under­tones of sake, and float­ing tiny cucum­ber slices. Amy appeared and opted for a Cos­mopoli­tan, which are pret­tier than mar­ti­nis, but too sweet for me. The snobby bald wait­ress in black did her best to ruin our fun, but we were hav­ing none of it. “Are you ready to order, ladies?” she purred, com­mit­ting one of the few wait-staff sins I notice: if I am still hold­ing my menu open and my eyes are still glued to the del­i­ca­cies on offer in print, I’m NOT READY to order. She began cir­cling us like a shark, and then finally said in exas­per­a­tion, “You know that this book­ing has an end time.” End time? What’s that? “When you booked, you got the table just for a cer­tain period of time; they should have told you at recep­tion.” “Well, they didn’t, so per­haps you could tell us what the ‘cer­tain period of time’ is?” I asked patiently. “You must vacate the table at 8:30,” she said with sat­is­fac­tion, since we had faffed our way to seven o’clock already. “She thinks we will,” Amy said, and when it comes to Amy get­ting her way ver­sus a mean wait­ress get­ting her way, my money’s on Amy.

Did we ever eat. I shall detail the dishes for you so you know how much I appre­ci­ated my treat: yel­low­tail with jalapeno and cilantro in a ponzu sauce, soft shell crab roll, spicy tuna roll, wagyu beef in some spicy sauce I couldn’t break down (and I for­got to ask for a menu as I left) with a sate-like dip on the side, and pick­led gin­ger. Then lob­ster ceviche on lit­tle curls of but­ter let­tuce, DIVINE. Then large prawns in a spicy sour sauce, THEN rock shrimp tem­pura with a creamy spicy sauce, with lots of tiny chive snip­pings on top. So rich and deli­cious. Finally just when we were about to admit defeat, along came a slab of sea bass in a sticky mari­nade, a bit over­grilled on top but lus­cious enough to make us try to make our way through it. Then unac­count­ably, at the dot of 8:30, the wait­ress asked if we wanted cof­fee. Mixed mes­sages! Every par­ent knows that mixed mes­sages are the kiss of death for dis­ci­plin­ing your depen­dent. She saw the error of her ways, but it was too late. Every­one ordered tea, and when she said, “Can I bring you the cheque?” I said, “Cer­tainly,” and as she departed Amy said, “We just won’t give it back, but yes, you can bring it.”

Ah well, it was a lovely evening of friend chat­ter. I just don’t know what one would do with­out girl­friends. And guess who was there? Kyle MacLach­lan, once one of my absolute favorite crush actors, although I haven’t seen him lately because I refuse on prin­ci­ple to watch “Des­per­ate Housewives.”

But the gloomy thoughts were back this morn­ing, so I tried another old favorite: good Eng­lish tele­vi­sion drama. This time we were onto “The State Within,” a BBC pro­gramme quite mind-bendingly com­plex, so that we have to pause it every so often to ask each other, “What just hap­pened there? Was that the sen­a­tor who is brib­ing the chem­i­cal plant CEO…” We inter­rupted it so I could go fetch Avery and Anna from school, and I have to admit, a ride top-down in a Mini Cooper is a pretty good way to chase the blues, espe­cially with two girls chat­ter­ing in the back about com­ing up with 75 words to describe the achieve­ments of the Earl of Sandwich.

Well, Avery’s asked for chicken in her favorite sauce, fea­tur­ing paprika, sour cream and mush­rooms (I know, I can’t explain it either, but hey, it works for me too). I will take refuge with my chop­ping board, prob­lems that can be eas­ily solved in under an hour (like minc­ing gar­lic and keep­ing a sauce from cur­dling), and if it turns out well, I’ll post the recipe. Then I’ll count my bless­ings, and the dark dev­ils will be ban­ished for another day.