Last night, Shirley and I hosted a "Hungry for Obama" dinner. Think "grassroots fundraising meets communal dinner" and you have the basic idea of the HfO dinners. A host invites people over and feeds them. The guests donate to the Obama campaign, then pledge to host their own dinner, sort of a viral fundraising concept.

Shirley came over around 5, and we started: Shirley as the lead chef and I as her sous.

Now, I know my kitchen is small. Someday soon, I'd like to fix that by opening up the wall between the kitchen and the livingroom and pushing out the front door to the front of the house where it belongs and not the porch cave that it's in now. That someday comes closer every time something else fails in that room. The lights burnt out a month ago, prompting a livingroom light to be moved into the kitchen. The dishwasher started making horrible noises a week ago. The broiler on the oven failed years ago. A few other problems keep growing. At some point, I'm just going to insist that the kitchen be fixed and be fixed NOW. I warned Kris that it would happen, so he's a least somewhat prepared for it.

Somewhat.

Unfortunately, that kitchen remodel hasn't happened yet, and Shirley and I did the small kitchen dance. The small kitchen dance with lots of countertop rearranging.

Shirley had planned on eight tapas dishes. She was quite organized with the whole dinner, bringing over food items (three bags and a box) and some bowls and the like. She didn't bring much equipment ("I know your kitchen is well stocked," she commented), but the spices she had covered.

Shirley had written down the recipes, by hand, which means you know she reviewed each and every line of the recipe.

The food was amazing. Shirley made a potato and egg Spanish omelette (yum!), a lentil stew, hot hot hot salsa to go with some pita breads, amazing shrimp, croistinis, meatballs, cucumber yogurt dip, and an orange and onion fruit salad. The food was, of course, fabulous.

Well, except the croisitinis. They didn't exactly turn out well. As Shirley said, "What's a dinner party without a disaster?"

Chris was helping out in the kitchen, because, you know, two chefs in a small kitchen isn't enough, you need THREE chefs in a small kitchen to do the small-kitchen ballet. I think he was cooking meatballs, but it might have been the omelette, when we all started smelling a burning smell. We checked the burners, as one had been turned on incorrectly earlier in the cooking process, and we wondered if that was it. No, wasn't it, what was it?

Oh.

That.

Whoops.

Of course, that whole "what's a dinner party without a disaster?" question wasn't quite done with us yet. While everyone was happily eating, I stepped into the kitchen to do a little clean up.

And walked straight into a puddle that reached to the fridge.

What the?

Six beach towels, four hand towels and a lot of sponge wringing later, I discovered the source of the leak. A pipe under the sink had burst.

I turned off all of the water generating sources, which included the dishwasher which was running, and the faucet which wasn't. I mopped up the mess as best I could, and was about to leave the kitchen with everything from under the sink sitting on the countertops when Chris walked into the kitchen. After I told him what happened, he asked me for duct tape. Several pieces later and I didn't have to immediately worry about the kitchen flooding.

Yay Chris!

Of course, that's one more disaster in the kitchen, which leads Kris and I just one more step on our way to a desperately needing a new kitchen.

Megan needed a little help this morning, with the handful known as Meter. When she asked me to help out, I jumped at the chance, er, gracefully accepted. Megan needed about an hour, so she helped me fit Meter into a front sling and off the two of us went.

We wandered down the main street of Los Gatos, looking into windows, wandering into various stores. The first store we went into was the one I was looking for: Williams Sonoma. We went in, wandered through the baking items, the various fancy glasses (which I dashed away from quickly when I realized that Meter's reach was greater than I thought), the mixes and sauces, the knives, and the cooking implements. I was looking for some small pie dishes, similar to the ones I received from Max and Rosa at our wedding: a set of four 5" pie plates for mini pies.

Alas, Williams Sonoma didn't have them, but they did have a set of four towels that match Andy's kitchen and a spatula that doubled nicely as a Meter chew toy.

Fifteen minutes down, another 45 minutes to go.

We managed to find a health food store which carried rice protein powder. I was momentarily discouraged when I first looked at their selection, as it was about 90% whey protein, 6% soy protein and 2% "tastes like crap" egg protein. Fortunately, I found the rice protein and was all set.

We wandered down to the end of Main Street, before turning around and wandering back to the other end of town. That trip included a detour into the Apple store. Meter was fascinated with all the colors and buttons. Not that I blame her. Have to start these kids early, so that they know quality.

Eventually, Megan was done, and the three of us wandered to a cafe to pick up lunch and, the best part, dessert. I ate mine before lunch, as all good dessert should be eaten first.

We then walked back to Mirabelle's day care, and waited for her class to end so that all of us could have lunch together.

While we were waiting, Megan had to head into the office for a permission slip, so I continued to wait for Mirabelle's class to be over. Megan was still gone when the classroom door flew open and a rush of little people came pouring out of the room into waiting arms of crouching parents.

Mirabelle, however, stood just inside of the room, as everyone else ran around. She stood there, looking down, looking so sad. I had intended on waiting for Megan, but seeing Mirabelle standing there, all by herself, the tiny little girl looking so sad, I just had to go and say hello.

After I said hello, Mirabelle looked up at me, very confused. Recognition danced across her face after a few seconds, and she smiled, launching into an excited tale of kittens on a pillow, kittens on a PILLOW, KITTENS ON A PILLOW!

Megan, Meter and I sat down to eat lunch, but Mirabelle kept running around excited about the map of the complex, and the KITTEN on a PILLOW, and the acorns, and oh, oh, oh! The DRINKING FOUNTAIN! How exciting was the drinking fountain? She kept running to us, then running back to the drinking fountain to take a drink, then back to us, then back to the drinking fountain. Every once in a while, she would also return to us and announce she used the DRINKING FOUNTAIN!

So much fun.

Eventually, Meter ate Mirabelle's quiche, minus the hot pepper parts, thereby earning both Mirabelle and Meter their just desserts.

Gingerbread men were never so tasty.

Kris asked me recently if I had ever friended up. The term originally took me by surprise, but I figured out what he meant fairly quickly.

When two people are in a relationship, for the relationship to work both people need to be on relatively the same level. The "same level" doesn't need to be financial (but could be for some people, I guess), but is usually the same level in terms of looks, personality, and intelligence. I guess education could be in that list, too, but I suspect being able to converse at the same level is more important than highest education level achieved.

Most people gravitate to their level. The couples where one person is higher than the other (or, sure, lower than the other), you have the situation where you think, "What is he doing with HER?" (or maybe, "What is she doing with HER?" or "What is he doing with HIM?" those could (do) happen, too). Of course, the next sentence in the conversation is usually, "Wow, is s/he dating up!" or trading up, or marrying up, or whatever.

I think what makes Kris' and my relationship work is that we both think, "Heh, sucker, I'm totally marrying up." I'm not sure why he thinks he's marrying up (must be my wit, charm and brilliantly brilliant brilliance), but I know that I'm marrying up. He's a good person, in ways that I can't even imagine being, as much as I strive to be. I want him to be proud of me, much the way I want my parents to be proud of me. I want to impress him, make him laugh, have him say, "That's MY wife!" with joy.

This makes him happy, because everyone knows, when the girl is happy, the boy is happy.

So, yeah, I married up. Had I ever friended up?

Kris continued his question when I didn't answer immediately. "You know, been friends with people that you have no idea why they are friends with you?" He went on to tell me about Weasel, a friend from college whom I had met a couple times, and how Weasel as a senior had befriended Kris who was a freshman, and spent a lot of time throwing at the beginning of his ultimate career. Weasel was Kris' first friending up.

I thought about Kris' question for a bit, and said I didn't think so. He thought for a moment or so, then asked, "How about Andy?"

Oh.

Yeah.

Andy.

Yeah, Andy is definitely a friending up. Sometimes I wonder why he's friends with me (us?). He's smart. He's accomplished. He smells good (have to put that in there). He's good at ultimate (such an understatement). He intimidates the hell out of me. He's attractive. He's active. Did I mention that he smells good? He tinkers. He's incredibly curious and willing to put forth the effort to figure things out.

Intimidates. Me.

So, yeah, totally friending up on Andy. No idea why he's friends with me.

I thought about how I felt with Andy, and realized that I felt the same way when Kris and I first started spending time with Lisa and Ben. There's an ease we have with Ben and Lisa that came with time. When we first started hanging out, I totally thought Lisa didn't like me. Kris thought I was nuts (clearly, I was). In retrospect, I totally friended up on them, too.

That's four people I friended up with. I'd have to say that makes me pretty lucky.

I'm reminded of a conversation I once had with Bridget, one New Year's Eve at Heidi and John's. They were talking about how, given a hypothetical proposal where the rich would be taxed at a hire rate to provide benefits for the poor, in Canada people would vote in favor of the proposal, thinking "The poor receive benefits, I might be poor some day. If I am, I'd want this help." In the U.S., the same thought process would be, "The rich are taxed more heavily. I could be rich some day. If I am, I wouldn't want this new tax burden," and vote against the proposal.

The irony is that most of those Americans won't end up being the "rich" affected by the "burden."

In the United States, the official poverty rate last year was 12.5%. This means that 1 in 8 people in the United States (assuming even distribution of people of different socio-economic levels, which is clearly not the case) earn or live with less than $10,787 a year. That $10k number isn't quite true, as the actual amount varies based on the number of people in a household, increasing if you have more people. And that "household" part assumes you have a "house" to hold.

In gross numbers, in the United States, 37.3 million people were in poverty last year. That number is close to the number of people without health care, but that's a different post.

So, what's the greatest tragedy of poverty?

I would argue loss of opportunity.

The loss of opportunity to better oneself.

The loss of opportunity to contribute to society.

The loss of opportunity to learn.

The loss of opportunity to succeed.

The loss of opportunity to good health care.

The loss of opportunity for good health.

The loss of opportunity to achieve one's potential.

It's impossible to better oneself if one lacks opportunities, even the small ones like being given a chance. How does one go to school to better oneself when one can't feed oneself? How does one learn that drugs aren't the answer when one is surrounded by them (though a causal connection between poverty and drug use, or the inverse, seems unproven at the moment, the two are both related some way). How does one send a child to trade or vocational school or college, if the child lacks the nutrition to develop? Or if the parent never knows of the opportunities just outside his reach?