Alberty's Blah Blah Blog

So, I eat a lot of meat. If you count morning bacon and lunchmeat, there are days I eat meat for three meals. That is simply too much.

So for the last few months I’ve been trying to remove meat from most of our meals — you know, trying to do only one or two dinners with meat. And that has actually been a bit refreshing.

So I’m working the lentils and garbanzos and beans, but also the soy and even the tempeh. The tempeh was not so yummy.

But last night I tried some seitan, which is essentially flour made into a meat-like substance. That’s never a phrase that makes me comfortable: meat-like substance. But, I have to tell you, this stuff was good.

I was pretty sure that I would file it away with tempeh in the tried-it-once file. But I could instantly see the possibilities of this stuff. It really has the mouth feel of meat. It’s totally shapeable. As you make the actual seitan you can add all kinds of flavor like liquid smoke, to give a meaty taste. You can marinade it. It was really, really good.

And I think it caused my kid a serious allergic reaction.

I haven’t seen anything like it for some time. He began scratching his arm, then began complaining about itching. Within a minute his face was flushed, his arm was red and welts started popping up.

My wife rushed to get some Benadryl and I got some topical stuff. He ended up being okay, but the only thing we could point to was the seitan.

This really surprised me because the kid eats bread with great abandon. Seitan is just essentially boiled bread on steroids.

We might try it again later. It’s so easy to make at home and cheap, cheap, cheap. I guess that makes it good to give it another shot. But it sure did scare us.

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Well, I don‘t have much to say today. Mostly because the tired just keeps getting tiredy-er.

I just wanted to mention a couple of things about my oldest kid. I don’t know much about what two-and-a-half year-olds are supposed to be like. But I’m pretty certain my kid doesn’t either.

Today at breakfast he began telling our six month-old, “Don’t look at me. Stop looking at me!”

Honestly, I don’t know where he gets it.

The other night it snowed. It’s the latest in the season that I’ve ever seen it. Remember that he’s two-and a half. He looked out of the window that next morning, put his hands on the window and said, “It looks like Christmas.”

Again, no idea where he gets it.

Tonight even, as my wife was putting him down for his night-night, she finished reading to him and turned the lights off. She sat down next to his bed to stroke his hair and looked up at her said, “Tonight you be quiet. You don’t cough. You don’t snore. I need quiet.”

On several occasions, as we are on the freeway, he’ll point to semi and say, “I drive that truck. That’s my truck.” Which I kind of get because “everything” is his right now.

But here’s a strange thing: sometimes, usually when things are pretty quiet, he’ll look at me and say sadly, “I’m sorry about the train. I’m sorry about the train, Daddy.”

I have no idea.

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Took my kid to his first “tumbling” class on Saturday. It was an absolute free-for-all.

I’m guessing there were about eight kids and twelve parents. All with our shoes off, walking on spongy mats, dodging happily rabid, joy-blind toddlers.

It was perhaps the most prolonged spate of fun I have ever had with my kid.

He jumped and ran and rolled and cartwheeled. I jumped and ran and rolled and…rolled.

And then they pulled out the gigantic inflatable caterpillar. It was awesome. It was twenty feet long. Big enough for two dads to stand up in. It was awesome. And it terrified my kid. He would not go into the horrific maw of the caterpillar. But he was concerned enough when I crawled through to move around it to meet me when I came out of the tail.

Then we ran again. It was hard not to push him to go in, but I didn’t and that felt good.

I went tumbling with great trepidation. “Hey, look at how quickly the fat guy broke the children’s trampoline.”

But, I am happy to say, I did not break the trampoline. And we both had the time of his life.

Tumble on!

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Now, this little post may come off as snarky, but please know that it is not.

I love my family, and the topic of this post is one of the great reasons for that love.

My family, myself included, is perhaps the worst gift giving family in the world. And we don’t do it on purpose, which is what makes it so endearing to me.

I know that on several occasions I have sweated the choice of gift for my lovely bride and it has ended up something she has hated. Let me also say that we have a relationship where we can say, “Honey, I really kind of hate that gift that you sweated and cogitated over. I love you very much, but I hate that gift.” And, generally, we are okay with that.

So this year was another stellar what-were-you-thinking Christmas. Naturally, we don’t ask my family what they were thinking, we just sort of discuss it spousally.

I received from my father a “leather concealment vest.” First off, it’s a leather vest.  Second … it’s me. I put it on and my wife asked me if she could accompany me to the gay bar. Nice one. The word “concealment” in the name of the vest means that it can easily carry my 9mm Glock with up to three full magazines. Again…it’s me. I do not own a 9mm Glock, nor do I have up to three magazines, full or empty.

I’m pretty sure he purchased it off some infomercial on Fox News. He bought three: one for me, one for my legally blind brother, and one for legally blind and autistic nephew. Go Neocons! Fuck yeah!

My grandmother —Banana Grandma if you’re paying attention— gave me roll-on antiperspirant. I shit you not. It’s Avon, so I guess that’s … something. And it’s a roll-on. I didn’t even think they made that anymore. So there’s that, too.

But the best gift was for my patient and forgiving wife. My father gave her a Keurig Rotating 30 cup Storage Carousel for one of those awesome Keurig Single shot coffee makers. She looked up at me with a gleam in her eye and said, “Omen of things to come?” I looked at the boxes under the tree, turned back to her and said, “I don’t think so.”

The beauty of this is that we don’t have a Keurig single shot coffee maker. And we did not receive one for Christmas. My father thought it was a spice rack, which is also funny because my wife does not like spices, nor does she cook.

Even funnier is that he got it off her Amazon wish list…except it’s not on her Amazon wish list. Some other woman out there with the same name as my wife was oh so very close to receiving the Keurig Rotating 30 cup Storage Carousel that dancing through her Christmas Eve dreams.

Just one of the many reasons that I love my family.

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