The last 2 days looked like the photos above – that’s all we did for hours and hours for days and days. Mark may have set a new record for himself for baking 2000 cookies in 7 hours. We’re pretty much done now with holiday shipping but of course instead of celebrating, the day was fraught with Post Office stress. We were feeling pretty good about ourselves right around 1pm for totally jamming and getting out all our corporate orders the last 2 days. 50 boxes the day before and 70 large boxes were ready to be shipped so Mark decided to reward himself with a scheduled postal pickup.

Now, if you live in our neighborhood and have ever seen a guy pushing a granny cart full of shipping boxes, sometimes even with 2 carts, one in each hand, that would be Mark who makes trips like this about 5-6 times a week (I told you he works hard). 70 large boxes, however, is a different story all together and too big to shlep to the Post Office. Except when the Post Office NEVER COMES. So with 40 minutes left till Post Office closing, Mark takes out both car seats (and if you’ve ever installed a booster seat, you all know how much a pain in the ass this is to reinstall) loaded up the car with as many packages as he could and sped to the Post Office, only to return to do this a second time with the rest of the packages that didn’t fit the first time around with only minutes to spare until closing.

And so, of course the question to ask is, why did this have to happen? Why can’t you expect a service to come through when you sign up for it? Why do we have that unnerving sense of mistrust when dealing with anything Post Office related? I don’t think we are ever going to schedule a Postal pick up again. He missed making a delivery to the Ace Hotel and didn’t get into the kitchen until much much later because of waiting around for something that never happened.

But folks, we are done with the mad shipping portion of the holidays. Now we’re onto the uncharted waters of preparing for 4 consecutive market days in a row next week for the Brooklyn Flea Gifted Market. Getting all our corporate and site orders out was a big relief….but it’s not over yet….

I found these old photos recently. You know how sometimes you pull out an old photo of you at the same age that your kid is, to see how much of a resemblance there is? I actually never did that till now. Obviously Mia is all Mark and there is little resemblance between us (she still is and will remain the whitest half-Asian kid I know, though she identifies herself as Korean specifically because she loves the food so much), but there might be a bit of Claudine in these photos of me.

Anyway, enough of that because I need to point your attention to that piece of furniture in the middle of the room. Yeah, the one with the red velvet speakers on either side of the fake faux marble fireplace (yup, it did have a plastic light up log, duh). SO awesome. Not that I’d ever be caught dead with something like that in my house, but I have fond memories of that thing. It’s an all entertainment/family center/bar in one. Yeah, you heard that right because one of those top doors opened down to reveal a record player and the other housed a bar on a lazy susan that swiveled around to store glasses on one side and liquor on the other. Didn’t I say it was awesome? I also like that black and white photograph of my mom on the wall on the left side. There is so much awesomeness and detail in this photo – a mishmash of Korean objects brought along from the “homeland”, mixed with vintage 70s furnishings and knick knacks.

Oh, but there’s more, come see:

Never mind the pink Little Lord Fauntleroy outfit, look at the New York City skyline!! Maybe this was 1974? There were no tall buildings back then!! The photo on the left is me and my dad at (I think) the Central Park Zoo.

I am so curious about those white boots I’m wearing. Oh, and there’s nothing that saids “family photo” than the thumb mistakenly photographed in the lower corner of the picture. I like my mom’s hair here, because soon after my brother was born…

…she conformed and got herself the KoFro hairdo that most Korean women exiting their 20s got back then. It meant serious business and told the world that you weren’t a kid no more, that you were a mom with a career and that you shouldn’t be messed with.

I look sort of pissed, don’t I? But that car, which I believe was a Lincoln Towncar, is a boat! That was one solid piece of metal – there’s no denting that thing.

These photos remind me of some of the family albums that are archived at the Smithsonian Museums. When I was working on the Smithsonian Photography Initiative website in the mid-2000s, we were taken on a 2 day guided tour by the curators to view some of the photography collections housed throughout the Smithsonian museums. But among some of the first cyanotypes, photos of scientific specimens, portraits of Native American Indians and so forth were albums of American families. These were of great interest to me. There was so much history and story telling in those photos – an anthropological look at how we lived, what we wore, what we drove, how we decorated our homes, how we related to each other. I look at these pictures above and feel the same way. They plot my own personal history growing up in NYC, but they are, in fact, a piece of the larger American story.

Winter’s only barely begun and already we are looking at a long couple of months to entertain ourselves as we are (mostly) stuck indoors. I see a lot of dress-up and performances in our future.

So…we did end up going to see the 40th Anniversary Sesame Street Christmas screening yesterday. It was painful though. First we had to get Mia out of bed, who insisted on coming even though she was lethargically not feeling well all day. Then we had to trudge through the pouring rain and navigate through ridiculous puddles for 5 blocks to the train station to get off 1 stop later near BAM. At least it wasn’t cold. But here comes the worst part. People, if you are buying movie tickets ahead of time with your credit card, please remember to double check, triple check, quadruple check that you have your wallet with that credit card on you when you pick up your tickets or else you’ll end up a jackass and pay $100 dollars to go to the movies with your family of 5. Sure, we could have turned around and gone home, because really, what idiot pays that much money to watch Sesame Street on the big screen? But given how much trouble it took to get there, I knew the only option was to purchase another set of tickets as we all stood around dripping in wet clothes.

And so was the $100 dollar Sesame Street Christmas special worth it? Yeah, kind of. Claudine didn’t freak out like she did on our first trip to the movie theater and she squealed with delight when she saw the Swedish Chef. Mia would periodically look over at me with a cheesy smile and squeeze my arm during schmaltzy feel good musical numbers. And me? I got to relive my childhood in the 70s moment all over again, something I seem to be doing a lot of this year.

Unlike the girls who actually didn’t watch a lot of Sesame Street, I totally grew up on that show, and watching it for the first time in a long time cemented the fact that Bert might totally be the best Muppet character of all time: neurotic, sarcastic, grumpy, ambiguous in so many ways (are Bert and Ernie “adults”?) and a total drama queen. Watching the main feature, “Christmas Eve on Sesame Street” may also have answered the age-old question “just where the hell is Sesame Street anyway?”. People, you know what? The gang got on a subway after their ice skating party and got off at 86th street. Say what? It wasn’t clear from the signs if it was East or West, but I always thought Sesame Street was downtown or in Brooklyn. So another thing about the old, original Sesame Street? It was a gritty place. Garbage can be seen on the subway platforms, the brownstones and buildings looked a little run down, trash cans, random oil barrels and crates littered the street, laundry was hanging out the windows. Awesome!! It wasn’t a sterile place. It felt kinda real and like what I remember living in high rise apartments in NY in the 70s to be like, but it didn’t erase any of the magic that was Sesame Street.

For me, childhood in the 70s consisted of these things: rollerskating, Sesame Street, Electric Company, the Donny & Marie Show, Michael and the Jacksons, Soul Train, the Bay City Rollers (anyone remember them? no one does…), What’s Happening (seriously might be my favorite nostalgic sitcom of all time), Wonderama and the Magic Garden. When we got home it just so happened that Spike Lee’s Crooklyn was on BET which continued the nostalgia train. I know I’m totally dating myself by now, but from my naive memories as a young child in the 70s, I don’t so much remember the crime, the Great Blackout of 1977, the Son of Sam, or the gas shortage crises. I just remember that the 70s were awesome. So I’ll continue to look back at that decade with rose colored glasses and hopefully catch some old episodes of What’s Happening somewhere. It was fun to time trip yesterday. Just wish it didn’t cost me 100 bucks.

It’s dreary. Wet. Gray. Guess there’s nothing to do but fall asleep on the floor. Mia’s napping too. It’s 12:30pm. What the hell is going on? In an attempt to do something, you know, fun, I got tickets to the Sesame Street 40th Anniversary Film Festival at BAM for 4:30. Hope everyone is motivated to go.

We have the best neighbors. We have a real community here in our little corner of the city and it reminds me a bit of how I grew up playing kickball in the street with all the neighbor kids on the block. You know you have great neighbors when they offer to bring you a Christmas tree, come over and help package, and throw parties where all the kids go up “on stage” and perform dance routines for the evening’s entertainment. It feels a bit old fashioned that way. The kids in our building are all growing up together since the time they were babies and toddlers and there is nothing like that experience to build early childhood memories from. I hope all of you have a special network of friends and neighbors. It makes all the difference.

Looks like Fall has officially passed and winter is comfortably settling in. We’ve had a mild Fall but we can now see our breaths when we walk outside and the ritual of bundling up with scarves, hats and gloves have begun in earnest.

We have 2 more weeks to go in the holiday season. There’s still a lot to be done and I think next week will be the killer week we need to get through, but Mark and I are hanging in there. I ain’t gonna lie though, we’re tired. The thing that is killing us is that the girls continue to wake up early every morning at about 6am and Claudine has been getting into this new habit some nights of waking up crying right when we are getting ready to crawl into bed ourselves. I think the worst thing you can hear at 2:45am when you’re literally pining for sleep is to hear your kid cry as soon as you hit your head on the pillow. They don’t understand that you’re only getting 4 hours of sleep a night before their early morning wakeup call – they just want you to come over and console them. And so we do. Most nights all she wants is to “rest a little bit” on our bed for three minutes, then she’ll willingly go back to bed. I don’t really know what that’s about. All I know is that I’m grateful that the girls have each other to entertain themselves in the morning while we steal another hour or so of sleep.

These are local. Like really local, off of the tree that grows in my parents’ front yard. Don’t ask me how and where the tree came from, but my dad did grow it from a plant and it started bearing fruit maybe 4 years ago. There may even be another young persimmon tree growing on the side of the house that is still maturing, but I haven’t seen it. That’s the rumor anyway.

So have you ever had these? They are different than the smaller, more squat varieties that can be peeled and eaten like an apple. These have to be super ripe in order for it to be consumed and if you didn’t know that and tried to eat it, you may have been turned off persimmons forever because it leaves you with a fuzzy tongue and an unpleasant texture if it’s hard and unripe. But when it is soft, squishy and ripe, it’s the sweetest, most delicate tasting fruit ever. Just like eating jam.

This is how it goes, little breaks here and there. On one hand I feel saddened by the fact that December no longer affords the time to really take advantage of all the festive holiday stuff around the city. I feel like the kids are missing out on going to see all the cool train displays, the holiday windows, the tree, a visit to Santa, the Christmas shows – there’s simply no time. We didn’t even get our tree ourselves this year, but instead accepted a generous offer from our neighbor who made a trip and delivered it yesterday afternoon. How lame is that? But yes, the days are that packed.

But tonight we took an hour to make some hot chocolate and get down the ornaments from the closet. We put on some Jackson 5 and other Motown Christmas music and the girls tore into the boxes. I had forgotten just how many ornaments we had collected over the years! Such nice vintage glass balls and little mini snow-capped Christmas trees that I bought last year too.

Mark put up the lights and stuck the star on top, but we ladies did the rest. Guess that’s what happens when there are 3 girls in the house. Claudine is finally old enough to really get into it this year. The pair of them are such busy bodies, directing and being all bossy about where things should go on the tree. Meanwhile, I would sometimes sneakily move an ornament that they had precariously balanced on the tip of a branch when they weren’t looking. I also moved things if it just didn’t look right and needed better spacing. I am neurotic that way.

Thanks to those of you who came down to the Bust Craftacular today! It was our best fair to date (and the first one across the river in Manhattan) with lines 40 minutes long to get in during the morning crush. Mark said there were quite a few blog readers who came and said hello. Wish I could be at the table at more of these events to meet some of you, but at least this time he had a bit of help from a twitter friend, Mike, who helped set up and run some errands in the morning before doors opened.

Setup started around 8am and with 2 big containers of hot chocolate still to make (which sold out in about 4 hours), Mark got up extra early at 5am and didn’t get home till nearly 9pm. he finally got to sleep a bit after midnight. Long day.

We still have 3 more weeks of holiday madness still to go, but it’s a bit of a relief to have this event over. Oh, and did I say that we weren’t going to be taking on corporate gift orders this year? Bwahaha. We couldn’t turn everybody down, so we took on a few inquiries and have some big orders to push out the in next 2 weeks. But…we’ve had some help! Along with Mike helping out this morning, my parents came over on Saturday while Mark was in the kitchen and cut some bags and ribbon and folded laundry. We will also have some neighbors come over and volunteer some packaging time this week, and tomorrow, for the first time ever, Mark will have a day of help in the kitchen. With the restaurant closed on Mondays, Mark will be able to take up more space in the kitchen with one of his trusted assistants from the Pastry staff at the Central Park Boathouse who he’s worked with for 7 years. With someone who’s just about as fast a baker and cookie cutter as he is, between the 2 of them, who knows how many cookies they’ll be able to push out in a day?

I know it’s not Father’s Day. It’s not even Mark’s birthday yet, but can we talk about him for a minute? As we make our push the next 3 weeks into what is our busiest time of the year, it just can’t be said enough how hard the guy works. I mean we’re both working an insane amount of hours right now, but most of my time is spent staring in front of this machine pushing pixels, emailing customers, talking to clients on the phone and packaging things when I can. Mark, on the other hand, has been running all over the city making deliveries, going to the post office, picking up supplies (sometimes even with a kid in tow), and doing his fair share of dropping off and picking up the girls, making dinner and putting the kids to bed all in a single day. And when he’s not doing that, he’s in the kitchen for 5-9 hours a day baking up to 2000 cookies a day and single-handedly filling orders by himself most of the time, which includes packaging cookies, organizing orders and packing it all up for postal drop off.

Essentially, Mark can and is doing the work of 2-3 people. How does he do it? I think perhaps all his years working in hectic restaurant kitchens has prepared him to be extremely fast and efficient. It’s certainly the best training for this business that he could have had and no matter how slammed we get, he manages to get everything done somehow. But did you know that he also has 2 other consulting jobs? When he left his position as Pastry Chef at the Central Park Boathouse 2 years ago, the restaurant never replaced him. They tried and one chef quit after a month, so Mark’s been going in one day a week most weeks working on their dessert menus. He also now makes the desserts for Bussaco, the restaurant where he does his baking, a decision that came after new chef and co-owner, the much celebrated Katy Sparks, stepped in about a month ago. That’s just a lot of work for one person and he rarely has a day off anymore.

So in the spirit of trying to keep upbeat while plowing through another holiday season – a month that should be spent going to holiday parties, doing a little Christmas shopping and taking the kids to holiday events around the city, but which now represents sleepless nights, hectic work days and no time off till it’s done for us and ALL small business owners out there who are working hard to meet holiday orders (kudos and good luck to everyone in the same situation as us) – I just want to take a moment and celebrate a guy who is the hardest working guy I know, a guy who remains good natured and never complains no matter how crazy it gets, and who still has time to be a great dad. Here are a few of my favorite pictures of Mark and the girls.