What Not To Wear

Cathy LaGrow 22 Comments

Last Friday, I embarked on Operation Reorganization 2.0 and man, did I get a lot done. After several straight years of being pregnant (and feeling awful), nursing babies (and feeling awful) or having the world’s neediest toddler perpetually clinging to my legs and screeching (which I never did get used to) (but I love you more than life, baby!), we are finally to a place where I can get some projects done while my husband entertains the boys. And after several years of neglect, there is a lot to get done.

I used to think things like: “What if something (some vague, spy movie-ish thing) happens, and all the computers in the world go on the fritz, and I have to prove Dan and I have been married for all this time?” So I kept everything. When some friends helped us with Operation Reorganization 1.0, a few months ago, I got rid of stacks of utility bills and phone statements and other papers from the 1990’s.

This time around I was tackling clothing, and I was ruthless. I emptied a large dresser full of our “sports clothes” (including season after season of my husband’s softball gear), and “yard clothes” – stained and holey t-shirts in various sizes, droopy shorts, and those cotton sweatpants with elastic at the ankles that no one should wear outside the confines of their own property (and I know several people who would end that last statement before the prepositional phrase.) Continue reading →

My Year in Books – 2010

Cathy LaGrow 19 Comments

I blatantly stole this idea from my friend Tony Alicea, who posted his own list a couple of days ago. People who like to read like to see what other people read – it’s one of our little things. So, below are the books I finished in 2010.

Actually, these aren’t all the books I read, because I wasn’t keeping track as I went along, and I honestly can’t remember some of them, especially the ones I checked out from the library. (I own most of the books I read – almost all of them were bought on clearance or from my favorite used bookstore, for anywhere from 50 cents to four dollars.)

I was surprised by how many books I managed to finish, given that my reading time has shrunk to the hours when my boys are unconscious or absent – and they’re rarely absent. Or unconscious. Also, writing has cut into my reading time, this year. Also, almost every month, I read the following magazines: Oprah, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Guideposts, and Better Homes and Gardens. Also, I read about 30 back-issues of Architectural Digest this year.

(All of this does explain why my house is not quite as tidy as it could be.) Continue reading →

Dudes Who Can WRITE

Cathy LaGrow 12 Comments

As promised, here is the equal opportunity follow-up to my Chicks Who can WRITE post.

I’m often asked for book recommendations (and giving them is one of my all-time favorite activities, just so you know), so I came up with these lists as a go-to guide for friends who are looking for their next great read.

This list is a bit more eclectic than my chick’s list – whereas those ladies all write literary fiction, my dudes include some biographers, an adventure writer, a scientist, and a couple of memoirists. (There’s a reason for this lopsidedness, which I’ll explain in a future post, but, hint: I generally prefer the way women write fiction.)

The criteria are the same, this time around: the author must be living, and I must have personally read and enjoyed at least two of their books. I have included my personal favorite(s) from each of them.

Here we go, in no particular order. Continue reading →

A Great Chef

Cathy LaGrow 14 Comments

My cashier at the grocery store was a young guy with a freckled complexion and tousled hair, maybe 20 years old, and he was talkative. The minute I reciprocated his greeting, I learned the following: he was fine; he was almost done with work; that fact was sort of good, but sort of not, because he’d only worked 4 hours that day, because he was only part-time. I asked if he was in school. He said he wasn’t, because he couldn’t afford it yet, but he was saving up for cooking school. He scanned and bagged quickly as he talked.

In answer to my question, he told me there were a few good cooking schools around: the Culinary Institute of America, in Portland, and the Cordon Bleu, although that one was too expensive. “Over-priced,” he reiterated. He told me about the cooking shows he watches, on TV.

“See what I do,” he said, “is take regular ingredients and make something of them. We’ve never had a lot of money but…well, the other night…” and then he eagerly rattled off a list of ingredients he’d used to make an ordinary pasta dish sing.

“Well, maybe you’ve got a good palate,” I encouraged. “They say that’s the most important thing.”

He was so hopeful, so sweet. I wanted to speak with him longer, but the next customer was pressing in behind me. The boy continued to talk even as I reluctantly inched away. I wish I could offer to sponsor him, I thought.

I loved the eager light in his eyes, his unusual dreams. I loved that he wasn’t just listlessly jamming groceries in a bag. Of course, I have no idea if he has any real talent; no idea how far he can really go. Maybe he’ll end up cooking dinners for his family, or frying bacon and eggs at the local IHOP.

Or just maybe, he’s the next Thomas Keller. Continue reading →

A Modern Day Magi

Cathy LaGrow 23 Comments

I had a nice little post just about ready to go for today, and you would have liked it, I think – it was informative, with a dash of personal context, and it was about cooking (which, who doesn’t like that) – (okay, I might be overselling it here…it was fine, and you’ll get it next week) – but then something happened which slammed me upside the head, in a wonderful way, so I’m going to tell you about that, instead.

Last Saturday, after a movie date with my oldest boy (using gift cards), we met my husband and baby boy at the mall (for cheap hamburgers.) Then, since we were right there, I casually suggested we stop in at Borders bookstore.

Actually, it wasn’t so much a suggestion as it was my husband saying, “Well, what do you want to do now?” and me standing on the damp sidewalk and vaguely looking around as though I was considering the question; then mumbling and waving my hand towards the left; then him heading to Borders without further ado, because we’ve been married for 21 years now and he is a kind and patient man.

Once inside the store I abandoned him and the rampaging little guys – I really can’t tell you where they went, probably to ride the escalators a dozen times. I was transfixed by the tables and racks near the entrance. All those new releases, those beautiful, colorful covers. There was the new Jonathan Franzen novel that my brother had been pestering me to get. There was a new title by Julia Glass (one of my ten “Chicks Who Can Write”)! And there, my goodness – Edmund Morris had finally finished his spectacular Teddy Roosevelt trilogy – there was Colonel Roosevelt!

I walked around and around the tables, dreaming. More memoirs, more fiction, more history. There was a day, truly, when I would have already owned a great many of the titles I was looking at. Continue reading →