The Toasted Tomato

It was the latest setback in a series of Christmas setbacks that had us, at some points, questioning whether or not there was someone on high who was fighting to keep us together.

My mom, stepdad Peter, stepdaughter Gabrielle, her best friend Emily, my husband William and I stood inside the strangely silent elevator and didn’t say a word. Then, slithering his arm behind my waist and in front of Gabrielle’s eyes, William tentatively hit the glowing Lobby button again. But nothing. He hit it again, this time more firmly, like a parent telling a child in a louder voice it was time to go. But, honey, nothing and then nothing.

“Well, this is interesting,” Peter said in his Australian accent.

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DECEMBER 21

I’m whipped into a frenzy, so excited to see my family I can’t sit still. The house is decorated, the presents are wrapped, the food is cooked and all that’s left is for them to just get here. But then I get a text message from my stepdad Peter: “BIG problems in Chicago. Best case is we arrive LEX at 11:30 tonight. 50/50 that we stay in Chicago and arrive in LEX tomorrow.”

My heart falls as I check the weather and see a monster blizzard sitting primly over the entire northeast.

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Last Saturday, I stood in the aisles of the Goodwill store frantically searching for a skirt that would complete my attire for the ugly Christmas sweater party we had been invited to that night. I had been looking for this outfit for the past week, contacting anyone who I thought might be in possession of a Christmas-themed sweater. I’d asked my mother-in-law if her bowling buddies might have any. I’d asked my husband’s aunt if she knew anyone. I’d asked my friend if she could delicately ask her mother-in-law if I could borrow one of hers (she still wears them). I’d finally gotten good luck with the sweater part (thank you, Aunt Carrie), but the outfit still didn’t pack the punch I was hoping it would.

So I stood flicking through the racks, bemused to discover that some teenagers behind me were likewise looking for sweaters.

“Is this ugly?” one asked her friend.

“Not really,” she answered.

“This one? It’s got gingerbread men.”

“OK yes, now that’s ugly.”

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Amid the booming music, glittery dresses and cocktailed shrimp at a Christmas party last Friday, I ran into my friend Jill, whom I hadn’t seen in several months. We had a quick catch-up and then I realized I had a burning question I needed to ask her. She was in the midst of introducing me to her friend Megan when I interrupted her.

“So anyway, enough small talk. Hi, Megan, nice to meet you. But, Jill, how is Elfie doing?” I asked breathlessly. “Has he been busy?”

She laughed.

“You have no idea.”

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Flipping through a Restoration Hardware catalog can be a dangerous thing for anyone to do, but I find it’s particularly in the spring that I am susceptible to making grand purchases from it during happy hour.

It was on one such gin-infused evening that I sat out on the porch with my husband and decided, if we were really going to get serious about things, it was time we purchased some planters. By planters, I mean pots from which, in my mind at least, flowers would burst out with bacchanalian gusto and colorfully transform the view on our deck.

So, since Restoration Hardware has a 24-hour sales line, I picked up the phone and bought three. Three, as the sales girls called them, Mediterranean jars, one handled Mediterranean storage jar, one ribbed Mediterranean storage jar and one olive jar featuring a lion’s head.

“See?” I told my husband. “This is exactly what we need. A mini Greece in our back yard. Finally, a little culture.”

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I was sitting in the pediatrician’s office yesterday with my stepdaughter Gabrielle and was, literally, surrounded by babies. There was the one in blue that was nearly the size, certainly the shape, of a swaddled peanut. There was the one that, after being pulled out of his car seat to be fed a bottle, lifted his arms and bawled with such vigor I was almost proud of him. And there was the 2-year-old girl, not a baby I guess, but sitting on her mom’s lap, giggling loudly as she leaned back repeatedly, her back as flexible as a switch, until her mom pulled her up against her chest.

As Gabrielle looked around — cooing over every one, asking me to notice, gaining smiles from proud parents — I wondered if our storyline would ever involve one of these little crying, laughing beings. When you’re a couple considered “fertility challenged,” you wonder this. You wonder this, whether you’re at the pediatrician, grocery, library or school Christmas concert, a lot.

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I’ve just come from the girls’ bathroom at Science Hill school where I applied fake eyelashes onto my stepdaughter Gabrielle. I also dusted purple eye shadow on her eyelids and ran red gloss on her lips while she showed me her purple press-on nails. Admittedly, it was a surreal moment when we looked in the mirror and she’d turned 18, but I shook it off and proceeded with teasing her hair.

All this in the name of the most cut throat Halloween costume contest and parade in the county.

I am now sitting in my car in the parking lot waiting for the parade and contest to begin. I have, umm, 58 minutes before this happens.

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I always say the best thing that came out of moving to a small town is it taught me how to cook. The second best thing is it taught me how to be resourceful, especially when it comes to getting ingredients I want but can’t find at our local Kroger.

I thought of this last week when the UPS man rang my doorbell. Though we’ve never done more than wave to each other as he runs back to his truck, the UPS man is one of my favorite people, always dropping off anxiously-awaited packages like treasure. On this day, he dropped off a big box with a sticker that screamed PERISHABLE on the front step. I opened the door immediately and took the box in. Inside was a carefully wrapped 16-pound turkey, the heart of the Canadian Thanksgiving meal that I hosted Saturday. Finding a frozen turkey, never mind an heirloom one, anywhere in October is actually much harder than you might think. Grocery stores don’t start carrying them until November and local, heirloom turkeys are hard to find at any time of the year.

But over the years, I’ve been bothered less and less by ingredients that I can’t find, in large part because there are so many websites selling what you need. If you’re in a similar boat, I thought I’d put together a list of go-to websites I use to source some delicious food.

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This week, I’m spending a few days back in The Sentinel-Echo newsroom as I work on a project Willie assigned me. Looking around at all of the awards and maps on the wall and hearing the chatter of the scanner, I realize just how sweet a time working here was.

This time of year was especially special, with the holiday season starting to gear up. No one could get a jump on the season like the advertising sales girls and, though I haven’t been up to their offices yet, I have a good bet they’re burning some sort of aromatherapy candle scented like pumpkin spice or apple pie to set the holiday mood.

I’m writing on a Tuesday morning, which means deadline is looming. After I got my reporter legs, I came to love deadline and writing right until the very last second. There is nothing like the adrenaline rush of having the words pour right out of your fingers as you type, coming so fast because they have to; time is limited and you have to get the paper out. Sometimes, I think those stories were some of the clearest I ever wrote, in part because I didn’t think too much and muck them up.

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When I was a teenager, weeknights at the Kaprowy household were packed with the constant rotation of homework, piano practice, hockey games and baseball tryouts. But I was lucky enough to have a mom who balked the trudge of routine whenever she could, and one of the ways she did this were the nights she would come home carrying a bag from Pasta & More.

Usually, it was a cold, snowy night and, around 5:30, in would walk my stylish mom wearing her lamb’s wool coat and peacock blue leather gloves. My little brother Matthew and I would be dedicatedly watching TV downstairs, surprisingly alive given all the toxic fumes we’d created after building a fire using squirts of used motor oil in the fireplace (sorry, environment).

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