Review: Pita Place, Tanana Valley Farmer’s Market

Pita Place, Tanana Valley Farmer’s Market Vendor, 2600 College Road

Sometimes living in Fairbanks is hard. Like those moments when you want good Chinese food and there’s none within four hundred miles. Other times it’s a joy. Like when you discover excellent Middle Eastern food in the middle of Alaska. When the Farmer’s Market opened this spring with Pita Place, a new vendor selling falafel, pita, labane, and hummus, life in Fairbanks got so much better that the price of homes should have risen two percent.

If you’re in Fairbanks and you haven’t gone yet, drop by the Tanana Valley Farmer’s Market (Wednesdays 11-4 and Saturdays 9-4), get in line, and get ordering. You might be intimidated by the line, but the food is worth the wait. You may never have tried Middle Eastern food. It’s authentic and a great introduction.

You can pre-plan you visit by taking a look at their menu online. A huge falafel pita with your choice of tomato, parsley, lettuce, cabbage, and tahini is $7.00. Hummus and labane plates come with pita and you can add falafel for a few dollars more. If you’re looking for something to take home to share they have hummus, labane, and fresh bagged pitas to go. Everything is delicious.

Apparently, if you love Pita Place like we do, you can pre-order online as well. I haven’t tried it yet, but I might. So far they’ve had everything available when we dropped in at the market. We’ve always been on the early end though. I imagine late in they day the carry-out hummus and labane might be all gone.

Now, go out and get a falafel. If you’re out of town, come to Fairbanks and get a falafel. If I can’t convince you, please take Cedar’s smile as a ringing endorsement:

A note on the photos: I planned to take a picture of my delicious looking falafel for this post, but I ate half of it before realizing I had forgotten. In addition, We opened the hummus and got olive oil on the label before we snapped a picture. That’s how good it is.

Tips for Camping With Kids: What Bedtime?

In the fall of 2003 after a loud pop, our 1985 Volkswagen Westfalia Camper stopped going forward. Reverse was the only working gear. We debated fixing it. How much would a new transmission cost? Could we drive it in reverse down to Palmer (where a great Volkswagen mechanic was rumored to be)? After four years of debate, it’s finally back on the road.

We’re happy to have the van back, but it’s new to the girls. Cedar’s whole life the van has been broken, sitting in the woods just off the driveway. She never even sat in it until two days ago. Coral only started sleeping through the night (not consistently) three weeks ago. I wondered what a night in the van would do to our routine.

We decided a trial run in the driveway would be the best way to start. At 7:30, the usual bedtime around here, we headed out to the van, popped the top, snuggled into sleeping bags, and waited to see what would happen.

By 9:30, after three changes of sleeping arrangements, Cedar was playing the “piano” and composing songs:

By 10:00, everyone was in the house trying to go to sleep in their own bed.

Our experiment taught us that we’re going to have to do bedtime differently if we want the girls to get used to Van Living. The first thing we’ve realized is we have to let go of the usual bedtime and let them really wear themselves out.

Here’s the plan for future overnights. Once the girls are bleary-eyed and weak-legged with exhaustion, TJ will read a bedtime story and get Cedar to fall asleep while I take Coral for a walk in the stroller or sling. I will not return to the van until Cedar is asleep. Hopefully, by then Coral will be so tired she will no longer be obsessively trying to climb onto the table. If it works, I’ll have more posts about camping with kids. If you’ve successfully tried to introduce your little ones to sleeping in the wilderness, please comment with advice.

AK Radio Surprise: Baptists Find Poetry

A few weeks ago one of my National Poetry Month commentaries ran on AK, an Alaska Public Radio Network program. I was out of town, so I missed it. I only found out a few days ago that it had been on.

Have a listen. Go to the archive and click on the show for 4/28/2007. The link plays the whole show.

Here’s the text if you’d prefer to read it:

All month we’ll be hearing about poetry, how we should read it, listen to it, buy more of it. OK, it’s true, but I don’t want to take poetry like an egg-sized vitamin, grudgingly, knowing it’s good for me. I want to trip on it and skin my knees; I want poetry to affect me. I want to find a poem hiding somewhere and coax it out–maybe in the odd juxtaposition of phrases in the classified section or on the back of a box of macaroni and cheese. You can help me. This is a poetic call to arms.

If you haven’t stumbled upon it before, Found poetry is a form in which phrases and lines are taken from another source and rearranged to create a poem. Pulitzer Prizewinner Annie Dillard has published a whole book of poems that she found.

The most recent found poetry sensation is Hart Seely’s book Pieces of Intelligence: The Existential Poetry of Donald Rumsfeld. Seely took Rumsfeld’s comments and trimmed them into lines and stanzas to reveal the poems lurking beneath. Here’s a poem hidden in a Feb. 2003 Department of Defense briefing. Seely calls it “Happenings:”

You’re going to be told lots of things.
You get told things every day that don’t happen.

It doesn’t seem to bother people, they don’t—
It’s printed in the press.
The world thinks all these things happen.
They never happened.

Everyone’s so eager to get the story
Before in fact the story’s there
That the world is constantly being fed
Things that haven’t happened.

All I can tell you is,
It hasn’t happened.
It’s going to happen.

Lately, I’ve been looking around Fairbanks trying to find our town’s hidden poems. It’s hard. I looked to our state legislators, our police blotter, and my mortgage statements. No poems. I looked to our road signs, but the four hundred and thirty five drive through coffee stands had nothing more to offer than: OPEN.

Many of us have to fight every morning not to look at the sign. In an attempt to spare ourselves an uninvited editorial, we train our eyes to look at the radio, the rearview mirror, or the license plate in front of us as we pass by. I say look again, Fairbanks. Poetry may be speaking to you. This morning, in the flashing green messages, I found a poem. I call it, “A Church Alive.”

heaven and hell
worth the drive
call for a ride

7:10 a.m. 33 degrees
unanimous
Sodomy
Free pie and coffee

I spit on your mother
truth

hunting stories
shoot him in the dark

Execute
Mother earth

7:11 am 32 degrees
was always wicked
and always shall be

Yes, it’s no Rumsfeld. Perhaps it lacks the existential angst, but there is a certain surrealist bent to the sign’s poetic voice that is attractive. I think we should give it time to develop as poet and see what its next poem has to offer.

So I challenge you. Pay attention. Re-read those memos at work, take a look at the directions for installing the stove, and keep your eyes open. Maybe one morning you’ll find a poem staring back. When you do, celebrate, keep poetry alive, and e-mail it to everyone you know.

Doctor Google, You’re Fired!

I just spent two hours googling things like this:

“infant does not crawl”

“baby skipped crawling learning disabilities”

“weird crawling infant”

Coral doesn’t really crawl. She scootles. Sometimes on two hands and one bended knee with the other foot flat on the ground, sometimes on her bottom. She’s fast, as fast as any crawler, but she doesn’t do the cross-crawl.

Initially this freaked me out. I had heard that learning disabilities could be associated with skipping crawling, so I did a little home physical therapy. We tried crawling races with big sister in which I held her legs and helped her. Coral thought this was hilarious, but still preferred to scootle.

Then I let it go. People started mentioning everyone they knew who didn’t crawl–a nephew, a friend’s baby, a whole family of smart little girls. I asked our doctor and he wasn’t worried. It seemed like it was all going to be OK.

Then I took the girls to visit work yesterday and let Coral loose on the office floor. “Is that how she crawls?” someone said. Coral smiled and clapped and held up a toy owl she had stolen from the receptionist’s desk. It was wearing a graduation cap and gown as if to symbolize the future academic struggles hinted at by her weird crawling. She shouted, “Da!” Then, holding the owl in an upraised hand like a trophy she scootled away.

“Yes, that’s how she crawls,” I muttered.

When I got home it got worse. A friend who had been reassuring me for weeks over the baby-crawling-weirdly-internet-induced-hypochondria confessed that now she’s worried because her baby is showing signs of skipping crawling too. She’s fueled by her mom who calls every few days and says, “Make her crawl!” My friend replies, “What do you want me to do, mom, push her down?”

I imagine she’s on the internet at this moment, typing in:

“exercises to make baby crawl”

“crawling illiteracy”

“pushing babies down”

She’ll wind up on discussion boards reading illiterate messages like this one:

My cousins baby is 12 months old ans shes not walking and crawling is that normal? she really concern because her first kid staring crawling at 8 months and staring walking by 11 months, shes freaking out because people are telling her theirs something wrong with the baby but the baby is a healty little girl. she really smart I just think shes lazy.

I know because I have been there. Somehow I’m taking advice from people who can’t use punctuation. Thanks for the anxiety disorder Dr. Google; please bill my insurance.

This isn’t the only time this has happened. Pre-colonoscopy I was online learning that I had all the symptoms of stage four colon cancer. While I was pregnant with Cedar, Dr. Google interpreted unusual ultrasound measurements as an indication of Down Syndrome. Looking up “lump in roof of mouth” I found a whole community of people afraid they had mouth or brain cancer, one of whom started his post with, “The internet is a very bad doctor. I am troubled with mouth ulcers – especially at times of stress,” and then went on to detail his saga of inconclusive tests.

It’s not just me. Dr. Google convinced one friend she had a tumor in her spine and told another that her two-year-old had oppositional defiant disorder. With Dr. Google the prognosis is always bad.

I’m firing Dr. Google. Coral scootle all you want, girl. Please hit me over the head with that owl. Maybe you’ll knock some sense into me.

Worst Mother’s Day Ever

I’ve been surfing around the blogosphere reading about the cute macaroni necklaces, potted flowers, and breakfasts in bed other mommy bloggers received last week. I am happy for all of you.

I do have a little advice for everyone. If your doctor recommends a colonoscopy because of a few disturbing symptoms and a very worrisome family history, do not schedule it for the Monday after Mother’s Day. I spent all of Sunday on a clear liquid diet with 64 ounces of laxative-laced Gatorade for dessert. My family was thoughtful. My present was a bunch of magazines to read in the bathroom.

The day was especially difficult because I share our one bathroom home with a recently potty trained two-and-a-half year old who categorizes each trip to the toilet as either “a little emergency” or “a big emergency.”

Fortunately, the results are in and everything turned out to be just fine. I can wait until I turn fifty for another pre-colonoscopy Mother’s Day like the one I had last week.

Review: Fairbanks North Star Borough Animal Control

Animal Control, 2408 Davis Road, Fairbanks, Alaska, 459-1451

Who would write a review slamming the Animal Shelter? The same kind of person who would cut all of NPR’s funding? Someone who would complain about the public library?

Or a woman still traumatized by the death of her fourteen-year-old dog. A woman feeding her  twelve-year-old dog anti-depressants. A woman who hopes he won’t do another six hundred dollars damage to the interior of her car. A woman who has come to believe that getting him a new friend would actually solve the problem.

In this review she would mention that every time she goes to the Animal Shelter none of the dogs she saw online are actually available. Three trips to the pound. No friend for the grieving dog. Not Daisy, Ayla, or Odessa. She looked at Odessa. Talked to two employees about her for about 10 miutes and then learned, “Oh, she’s already adopted.”

Apparently the petfinder website isn’t very accurate. A necessary part of getting a new dog must be going to the shelter every day and checking out the new arrivals. Hopefully, another good with other dogs, cats, and kids youngish female dog will show up soon.

I’m not really mad, just squished from the emotional ringer. Both Cashew and Woody came from the pound in Fairbanks and they were and are great dogs.

New Dogs and Old Tricks

Woody is losing his mind. He’s had a difficult fall and winter. In September his longtime companion, Cashew, died. She was fourteen. He had lived with her since he was eight weeks old. In his grief he’s destroyed doghouses, kennels, and the back of my car. After months of dealing with his obsessive drooling and panting, buying him toys and dog treats, and shoving anti-depressants down his throat twice a day, I think I’m losing my mind too.

I’m planning to go look at a dog at the pound tomorrow. Everyone tells us having a new friend might help him. We went a week ago to visit a dog who had notes saying, “good with other dogs, cats, and kids.” She had been adopted by the time we got there.

I’m not sure how I feel about a new dog. Cashew was the dog of our youth, the idyllic days of grad school, and our new relationship. I got her two months after TJ and I started seeing each other. She was yellow and crazy and rippled with bulging muscles. When she picked up her ears, her scalp flexed. She barked at cars that drove by, wouldn’t let people come onto the porch, and was terrified of rolled up newspapers. The notes on her at the pound said, “jumps fences and runs away.” But I looked at her once and she was my dog. She quickly turned into the perfect dog. She was mellow, loyal, and gentle with kids.

She lived in the VW van with us, flew in small planes to the village, and stunned the throngs of tourists when she visited Niagra Falls. As she sat calmly at the fence looking out at the roaring water a man asked me, “Does she like the Canadian or American side better?” She was there when we got engaged on a ski trip out at a BLM cabin. She dragged us out into the woods in winter to show us a sleeping moose, found a tusk of a prehistoric bison and brought it back to the cabin to chew on the deck, and carried a live rabbit so gently in her mouth that when I told her to drop it it ran away.

She died two weeks after Cedar’s second birthday, so in addition to being sad, we had to explain death to a toddler. It was a dramatic death. Cashew staggered to the door, vomited, then tripped and fell and didn’t get up. TJ carried her to the car and Cedar and I went to say goodbye to her. She didn’t come back.

We answered plenty of questions and corrected misconceptions. “When Cashew turned into Woody,” Cedar began. “Cashew didn’t turn into Woody,” I said. “When Cashew comes back from the vet,” She tried. “She’s not coming back. She died. We have her in memories and pictures now,” I explained. “Pictures of her dying?” Cedar asked. When the vet mailed us a footprint they had made in clay, Cedar told me, “I want to break it into pieces.” Although she showed it differently, she was as sad and confused as we were.

As Buddhists, dog heaven wasn’t our style. We just wanted to be honest. So we decided on, “Cashew left this life and we won’t see her again.” That made sense enough to Cedar. She dealt with it well. She remembers Cashew and sometimes tells people who are visiting, “Cashew died” just in case they had the urge to look around for her.

The episode also left Cedar with some questions about vomiting. She made us repeat a story about a time we both had food poisoning when she was little again and again. After the tenth time I realized she was trying to figure out why no one died.

After fourteen years, we thought we were ready to be a no dog family. After Cashew died a grad school friend wrote, “Such a large hole to replace; it would be a miracle if any dog could ever occupy the space the furry “kids” did before we actually had human ones. I worry that if we got a dog now, that it would be just a dog—not a Tug or Tallulah, or Cashew or Woody.” I wonder that too. Maybe, for Woody’s sake, we’ll try to find out.

If you have never read the poem “The House Dog’s Grave” by Robinson Jeffers please take a look. It’s a fantastic poem and a great tribute. I’m posting the link here in memory of my old yellow dog, Cashew.

Why I Do What I Do

Shauna at Pass the Chocolate and Jenny at Absolutely Bananas tagged me with two versions of a meme about why I blog. I’ve created a hybrid answer.

Five reasons I blog:

1. December. That’s when I started. Four hours of daylight. Two girls in diapers. Mama desperation.

2. To make myself write more often. 10 years ago I finished an MFA in poetry. I write both poetry and essays and have published a little of each, but it’s easy to let kids and work and life get in the way. Blogging breaks the inertia and keeps me writing. It’s working. I have work in the mail to anthologies for the first time in a long time. In addition, since starting the blog, I managed to get a grant to work on a new book of poems. By next May that manuscript should be in the mail too.

3. Years ago I wanted to write a zine reviewing public bathrooms all around the state of Alaska. We lived in a VW Westfalia Vanagon and a good public bathroom could make my day. This blog is a belated extension of that idea.

4. I like writing reviews. Writing reviews of places around interior Alaska gives me an impetus to get out and about with the girls.

5. To remember. It’s so easy to forget all the little things. I would not remember the lyrics to “Chicken Salad of the Mother of God” had I not recorded them in the blog.

And two more answers to Jenny’s questions:

What do I think of the blog popularity issue? Well, I’m generally an anti-corporate nutcase, so allowing advertising on my blog would be problematic for me. I do wish everyone in Alaska (and on the planet) would read it though.

What blog did I first follow regularly? Scribbit, a great Alaskan blogger.

I tag Peggy.

Are You a Good Mom or Bad Mom: Take This Quiz to Find Out

With all the conflicting parenting advice out there, it’s difficult to know whether you’re a good mom or a bad mom. Take this handy quiz to find out once and for all.

Keep track of your answers on a post-it and total your score at the end. Won’t it be a relief to know whether or not you’re a bad mom?

1. How many hours per week does your child spend in daycare?

• A. None. I’m a stay-at-home mom.
• B. 40 or more. I work full-time.
• C. About 20. I work half-time.

2. Where does your baby sleep

• A. In a crib.
• B. In my bed.
• C. In a co-sleeper.

3. Do you allow your child to watch television?

• A. Yes.
• B. No.

4. Has your child been vaccinated?

• A. Yes.
• B. No.

5. How many scheduled activities (storytimes, lessons, classes or playgroups) does your child attend each week?

• A. None
• B. One or more.

ANSWERS:

1. Day Care.

• A: Stay at home mom. You are a bad mom. Your child will be poorly socialized, will lack verbal skills, and will become horribly ill during kindergarten because he or she has never been exposed to germs.
• B: Full-time working mom. You are a bad mom. Your child will have an attachment disorder. You are missing the best years of his or her life.
• C: Part-time working mom. You are the worst mom. Your child will suffer attachment issues, be poorly socialized, lack verbal skills and will be sick as a dog forever.

2. Sleeping arrangements.

• A: Baby sleeps in a crib. You are a bad mom. How could you put your child in a cage to sleep? What’s wrong with you?
• B: Baby sleeps in your bed. You are a bad mom. How could you risk rolling onto your child and killing her? What’s wrong with you?
• C: Baby sleeps in a co-sleeper. You are a bad mom. How could you waste so much money on that ridiculous co-sleeper? Is it because you read about it in Dr. Sears? You won’t be able to afford to send your child to college.

3. Television

• Yes. You are a bad mom. Your child will be violent, mouthy, and unpleasant. He or she will whine for every candy and toy they see the next time you go to the store.
• No. You are a bad mom. Your child will lack reading skills and will have nothing to talk with other children about. You are raising a freak.

4. Vaccinations.

• A: Yes. You are a bad mom. How could you do that to a helpless baby who cannot consent to being experimented on by the public health system?
• B: No. You are a bad mom. How could you do that to a helpless baby whose immune system can’t fight off all those germs?

5. Activities.

• A: None. You are a bad mom. Your child will fall behind his or her peers and never catch up if you don’t head over to the children’s theatre production of “Apocalypse Now” this weekend.
• B: One or more. You are a bad mom. Your child is overscheduled and will suffer a breakdown due to the stress you’re putting on him or her. You’re probably doing Suzuki, aren’t you.

Brought to you by the folks at Parenting, Mothering, Time, Newsweek, The Today Show, Babycenter.com, Wonder Time, What to Expect When You’re Expecting, Your Pregnancy Week by Week, your pediatrician, your obstetrition, your mother, your mother-in-law, and that awful bitch in the elevator who knows better than you how you should be raising your kids.

Now I Know My ABC. . .

Rory tagged me with an alphabet meme. Here goes:

A – Attached or Single? Attached.

B – Best Friend: Several that I’m very grateful for this week in particular.

C – Cake or Pie: Cake. Corner pieces with lots of frosting.

D – Drink of Choice: Water. Sad but true.

E – Essential Item: Mechanical pencil

F – Favorite Color: Used to be purple. Now it’s green

G – Gummi Bears or Worms? Bears. Really neither. Chocolate please.

H – Hometown: Sweet Home Chicago.

I – Indulgence: Deadwood and Lost.

J – January or February: Both are the same—cold and dark.

K – Kids: Two. Yes, we went with the nature names. No, we didn’t mean for them both to start with C.

L – Life is incomplete without: A Volkswagen Vanagon Westfalia.

M – Marriage Date: July 4, 1998. Interdependence day.

N – Number of Siblings: One younger brother.

O – Oranges or Apples? Braeburn apples.

P – Phobias/Fears: Corporate World Domination.

Q – Favorite Quote: “the thing perhaps is to eat flowers and not to be afraid” e. e. cummings.

R – Reasons to smile: Good aurora, meteor showers, and Beatrix Potter’s story, “Two Bad Mice.”

S – Season: Fall. September in Fairbanks—blue sky, perfect temperatures, yellow leaves, lots of cranberries.

T – Tag: Marita

U – Unknown Fact About Me: I was once a carney.

V – Vegetarian or Oppressor of Animals? I was a vegan for two years, vegetarian for five years, and then my husband shot a moose. Now I’m an omnivore.

W – Worst Habit: Getting in car accidents.

X – X-rays or Ultrasounds? No thanks. I’ve had enough of both.

Y – Your Favorite Food: Green olives.

Z – Zodiac: Pisces.