Nourish The Inner Aspect

You would think that after 5 months of very aggressive chemotherapy and "all that it has to offer," we would be accustomed to Sylvie throwing up. Not the case. So tonight, I tried to give Sylvie her last dose of the 10-day supply of tooty-fruity-flavored Vancomycin and she looked a little off. Then I noticed the hiccuping. Then she said, "I can't open my mouth!" Then I said, "Michael, get a bowl!" And he was too late. Sylvie was most upset about getting her butterfly dress dirty. I contemplated giving her Zofran (anti-nausea medicine) but the likelihood of Sylvie opening her mouth to ingest anything for the rest of the night was slim and none.

Sylvie's TPN pump malfunctioned around 3 am last night which had all of us up for nearly an hour. I fell back asleep in Sylvie's bed and she woke me up at 5:40 am and demanded to go downstairs. Michael "slept in" while I played with Sylvie. My consolation prize was prize was going to yoga at 8:30. We spent the rest of the day trying to avoid having to bring Sylvie anywhere public since she's neutropenic. We did attempt meeting my brother & niece at the Duck Pond but after two licks of a Dora ice pop, Sylvie was finito. Granny Annie came over to spend time with Sylvie so Michael and I snuck out for a run. We were running down Crest and right in front of our faces, a magnificent white and gray hawk hovered less than three feat away dangling a bloodied dead chipmunk. It was an awesome powerful sight. So while dear Pablo's friends and family on the West Coast have been seeing doves and butterflies, we are being tailed by hawks.

Since we don't see the delivery guy from Home Solutions, the medical supply company, nearly enough, he came by with a new pump. It's the third time they've come this week. Linda, the nutritionist who I've written about many times before, told us that plants love TPN so hopefully our garden will be even more fruitful with the leftover custom blend of minerals, glucose and lipids.

I've been wanting to bake something for our new neighbors who recently moved from Park Slope (SCORE: Park Slope- ZERO, Ridgewood-FOUR!). They have a princess-loving daughter Sylvie's age, too. In a neighborhood filled with over 14 little boys under the age of 6, we need a little more girl power. In addition, I'd rather be known for my mad skillz in the kitchen than the unspoken new neighbor with sick child.

Since Michael and I get to spend so much time at night together, he's becoming a fan of my favorite gossip, online sample sale websites, the Real Wives of New Jersey and Organic Gardening magazine (real men garden :-). That being said, I was following a recipe for Tate's chocolate chip cookies from Goop which became fodder for this evening. Goop is Gwenyth Paltrow's pretentious zen lifestyle website whose moniker is "Nourish The Inner Aspect" (what exactly does that mean?). It got trashed in The New York Times in February which she later defended to The Huffington Post that she launched the site "because I felt like I had a lot of really useful information that I was privileged enough to get, because I have this amazing, super, fortunate life." I mean, at least she's not lying.

So getting back to the cookies. I love Tate's Cookies. I could eat the whole bag. Whenever I'm in Whole Foods, I fondle the bag, look at the $5.49 price, imagine myself eating the entire bag on the way home, replace the bag and leave. So when my friend Cindy told me the recipe was on Goop, I was pretty excited. So while I was making cookies, Michael was busy studying Goop, alternating laughing out loud and then saying that Gwenyth likes all the same restaurants in New York City as us fro the fancy to the neighborhoody to the vegan and what does that say about us? I told Michael to nourish his inner aspect. Michael then laughed at her recommendation of taking kids to River Cafe in London where Michael said he had one of the most expensive meals of his entire life. Paraphrasing Michael's guffaws... "Gwenyth says 'They're so nice to kids at River Cafe'. Michael retorts, 'They're so nice to GWENYTH PALTROW and CHRIS MARTIN'S KIDS at the River Cafe!' Our new neighbors are British so I hope they understand the humor in cookies whose recipe I procured indirectly from fake-Briton Gwenyth Paltrow. And that they forget, even for a moment, that we're the family a few houses away with the sick kid.

To conclude, I totally made fun of my BFF Polina for liking Goop back in February but I totally concede. I am guilty. And the chocolate chip cookies are the best "grown up" chocolate chip cookies ever.

Hopefully Sylvie will start eating tomorrow. If all goes well, we're going to Ft. Greene to Sydney's first birthday party in the park. I always call him Seymour :-).