little pitchers

change of address

2010-06-01T21:47:00.000-07:00

I should throw a party, on account of this notable milestone: we have now been in this house longer than we've been in any one place previously. But, no. No party. Just a virtual move to satiate my itchy feet. I don't really want to pack up and move all my stuff again, I don't. I mean, maybe a little. When you move 13 times in 13 years, the momentum of moving is everything. You mark time by the process, by the packing and the unpacking. Life is always transitional, never static. It's a hard way to live. But it's the way I know.

So while I attempt to stay put in real life, I am going to try parking my public words over at wordpress for a while. Come on over. Say hi. I tend to think in strings of words that I read inside of my own head. (Man, that sounds crazy.) So, when I remember to, it's nice to have some way to catch those words. I guess that's all blogging is for me: A place to pin down some of the words that are going to flit around anyhow.

have a banner day!

look, ma, no hands!

2010-04-01T21:59:00.000-07:00

You probably disagree with me about the Hands Free law on the books in my state (and maybe yours, too: if not now then probably soon).

I am opposed.
I fundamentally, wholly disagree.

See, as I figure it: we *already* have road rules with regard to, say, crashing your car into someone else's. Don't Do It. Maybe Joe Blow is distracted by his cell phone. But maybe I'm distracted by puking kids or some fave song on the radio I haven't heard in forever. Let's see those things become outlawed. Seriously. Not long after Oregon's cell phone driving ban took effect at the first of this year, I found myself zipping along the long highway between my house and the big city. My husband was in the passenger seat. We had a thermos of coffee and some empty mugs with us and I asked him to pour me some. He did. And then I asked him to top me off with a splash of unsweetened almond milk (at which point my long-suffering mister asked who brings a box of almond milk along on an errand. i do.) and he declined. He said he couldn't do that while driving. "You're not driving, nutball. I am." But he insisted and so I, being a careful driver with a nearly impeccable record (save for some youthful heedlessness), did the obvious: I grabbed the mug of coffee + the box of almond milk and I fixed myself a hot drink.

Do I recommend this ad hoc fifty miles per hour barista bit? Not really. I admit it's not particularly safe. But you know what? Neither is it safe to go rummaging around the floorboard for some sort of vomit vessel when I see a green kid, hand over mouth, in the backseat about to blow.

(i'm sure i've gone on about this here before, but i can't find the post just now.)

I've been sprucing up some new bloggy digs (wordpress: here I come!) and doing all the rest of regular life stuff (how *you* doin', Spring?) an I don't have the mental wherewithal to compose a well written persuasive argument here. I will admit that the hands free law did, in fact, compel me to start using the earbud/mic that came with my phone. I don't even use it that much while driving (the music in the car is generally too loud for carrying on conversations, ha!), I use it all the time all day long. Phone in my pocket, earbuds in, I can have a chatty phonecall and weed in the garden or fold laundry or whatthefuckever without a cricked up neck or a fried brain. Oh yeah? Legislators? I'm much MUCH more concerned about ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION FRYING MY BRAIN than i am about making sure drivers aren't distracted by phone conversations. Because drivers will always be distracted by something. Drive safe, yo. It's sort of that simple.

A very good friend sent me this link. I laughed so hard I nearly drove off the road.

dig it

2010-03-16T19:12:00.000-07:00

We are not gardeners. (I say "we" and the husband, should he ever read this -does anybody?- will balk, but I insist!) We are Make Do-ers. We do not dip our toes in, first, to see if the temperature is just right, if everything is just right, if there is ample space in our savings account. We just do it. Jump! We find out where we are (where the fuck are we?!) and we do what we can do. Which is to say, we roll with it. Whatever it is.

I admit to feeling small pangs of jealousy when I visit the meandering farms of friends of mine, or when I drive anywhere out of my tiny little town because anywhere takes me right smack through a postcard. So scenic, so pretty, so some Sliding Door I didn't open. I wonder what it would be like to live in a postcard?

I can tell you that I count more pros than cons about living on a city lot in a small town. This is not to say that I don't sometimes wish we'd chosen a rural house instead of this one, because that's pure speculation and irrelevant: we didn't. We picked this house and we love it and we're capital L Lucky to have it, even though we don't have miles of wilderness out our backdoor, even though it's an hour from our favorite city (and not our favorite city, oh, portland! we will always love you best and miss you the most.) it's our home. And it's a good little spot for us. (I hope we can hang on to it.)

So we've established that I envy (a little) those with acreage (just the way they might envy me, perhaps, and my ability to walk so many places) and I admit that I do not identify with the so-called "Urban Homesteading" movement, but my avoidance speaks more about my sense of place and home than it does about my particular support regarding homesteading tenets. I am not convinced that this sweet house (the house that looks dumpy from the exterior -sorry we can't afford to paint you something spiffier, nifty 1958 abode- the house that a friend coined a "willy wonka house" because it has surprising nooks and crannies and whole rooms and such, the house that gave us the longest residence we've ever had, as a family, the house that has been excellent to us for these last two and a half years) is our stopping point. A homestead is a place you stay a long time and I'm not sure this is that place. (how are you ever sure?)

And yet. yet the garden grows and grows. I send my girl out to harvest from the beds under plastic, because she can squeeze underneath much more gracefully than can I. She brings back a handful of rainbow chard, a few small but so delicious leeks.

And yet. yet our chicken yard is good to go. The little hen house painted, a school bus bright yellow (a leftover oops from back when we tried, more than once, to get the kitchen just the right true shade of orange). No chicks yet. Soon.

And yet. yet the herb garden, year two, is thriving. cilantro is sprouting! Unharvested seeds from last year's plants, left to do what seeds do, and we'll see what happens. what happens?

Seeds grow and we grow and nothing ever turns out quite the way we expected it to go, but the process is the important part. (This is me, processing. . .)

opalescent

2010-02-28T21:07:00.000-08:00

Yesterday the clouds were high, thin and the sunlight made everything glow. We spent the whole weekend outside, working. Snipping. Digging. Planting. I don't usually listen to music in my earphones, but the others were elsewhere and it was just me, watching my busy neighborhood, gloved fingers in the mud. I fetched the ipod and this song came on and oh. oh!

I can't possibly replicate the emotion in that moment, the visceral response to something so beyond the tangible. Like dreams. Like sex. Like dreams about sex.

I want to think it was the combination of hard, dirty work plus beautiful music, but it might have been just one, or the other.

chocolate quinoa cookies

2010-02-01T19:35:00.000-08:00

These are the givens: 1. we eat a lot of quinoa 2. I am not a good cook, per se, but I kick some off-the-cuff cooking ass. So it's a little surprising that it took me so dang long to throw something like this together. Cookies! Made from quinoa!

Back up the truck a minute. If you're not eating quinoa, I implore you to eat quinoa. It's been my go to grain of choice for a good decade. I use it in lieu of rice or pasta or other starches in many dinners. I'm probably preaching to the choir here (a funny phrase, that.) and *you* likely know all about this wondergrain, but in case you don't: Quinoa is the only grain that is also a complete protein, containing all 9 amino acids, and is a good source of magnesium, riboflavin, and fiber and is free of gluten! It has a pleasant, nutty taste and is amazingly versatile. And especially if you buy it 25 pounds at a time, like I do, it's an affordable and solid pantry staple.

Quinoa provides the "meat", if you will, to my not quite famous vegetarian chili (hardy har har) and accompanies many, many meals in our house. It was a first favorite food of both of my children. You can almost always find a big vat of cooked up, plain quinoa in my fridge, for fast lunch making or whatever.

And it was that ready made tub of cooked quinoa + a spontaneous cookie making wild hair that made me put two and two together. I'll make cookies! With the quinoa!

I had the foresight to scrawl down the ingredients as I tossed them in the mixing bowl. Sometimes I do this and the creation in question turns out to be a real dud, but sometimes I don't write down what I did at all and I regret it later because I get requests to replicate something or other and, in this house, a lot of things are one of a kind. (Which is either good or not, depending. . .)

They turned out so well, I didn't tweak subsequent batches a bit. They are soft but the quinoa provides bits of pleasant crispness (+ plus all that aforementioned supergrain stuff). Wholesome and everyone in my family agrees: they're delicious!

Chocolate Quinoa Cookies

2 eggs
3/4 C Rapadura
1/2 C coconut oil, melted
1 tsp vanilla
1 C flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
pinch cinnamon
6 TBSP cocoa powder
2 C cooked quinoa

wet. dry. wet + dry. stir in quinoa. bake 350 for, oh, 10 minutes? til they look done! makes 2 dozen.

(my apologies if you saw me post this pic on flickr back in early december with the tease that the recipe was 'coming soon'. my writing brain is fully clogged up with a lot of no good garbage)

with olive oil and salt and pepper

2010-01-05T20:50:00.000-08:00

I'm so A+ thumbs up and all encouraging mumbles about your new year resolutions, if you (dear reader) are the resolving sort. I make vague goals, like fortune cookies, that could apply, or not, to any year.

It has been brought to my attention (by many, no worries it isn't just *you*) that my hair is getting very gray. Yes, I know. Everything is rough *and* I'm old! I know.

Genetics is a fickle bitch. I plucked my first gray hair at 21. It was alarming and I scotch taped it to a book shelf (where it lived until, years later, we sold that bookshelf in a yard sale and someone hefted it away, not knowing of the portentous dna adhered to its side). I don't pluck them anymore. There are too many.

I am younger, but grayer, than many. I am sadder, but funnier, than most. It evens out.

And now here we are. Closing in on the first full week of Two Thousand Ten (tell me you won't say twenty ten. let's be longhanded curmudgeons together, how about it?) and what do I have to show for it? Plans? Peace? Predictions? Nothing.

The new year came and I could pretend, for a couple of days, that life is board games and so many scheming children and bottles and bottles of booze. I'm good at pretending. But now it's any Tuesday and friends are long returned to their regular life and we remain here, in our well worn waiting routine.

We wait. We hope. We roll our eyes at the people who tell us to hope and wait.

Lately, the mister and I have been winding down our evenings with daily doses of The Wire. We've just finished up season 3 and, still, I don't know. I don't know how I feel about being so invested in such bleak lives, such sordid going ons. But three seasons in and such little redemption. Isn't that what we're all looking for, even as we seek to be entertained and removed from the stuff around us?

I want to believe that the good guys will win and that the changing nature of friendships will hold true and that we will all be okay.

And I want every meal to be as simple and satisfying as a dish of baked root vegetables. (a year ago I had never made just roasted beets and turnips and rutabagas and have spent the many following months making up for lost time, so much roasting.)

12 pictures + 1 song

2010-01-03T18:38:00.000-08:00

It was a rotten year. No point in tacking on superlatives, because the funny thing about perspectives is that they're ever shifting (which is a pre-emptive way of saving a little face here. who wants to shriek worst ever or such without beckoning the fates to trot out something more trying, still?).

It was a hard year. But this is it. This is the only year I'll ever be 34 (What? How?) and this is my children's childhoods and this is all we've got. Now. And this year has been, despite the hard and worry and broke and WHAT THE CUSS?! do we do now stuff, as sweet as any year should be. Any year with rain and sun and soil and children and animals and friends and music and love and laughing. And we had all of those things, we did.

I must remember to switch lenses and stop hyperfocusing and pull back and look at the whole thing, every quick snap a tiny pixel making up every memory, every thing that matters. It all matters.

And quick! while I'm all vulnerable and nostalgic and sappy and soft, I will share not any song, but a time traveling song, a song that sounds like going back to when Hope wasn't hope at all, just the naive nature of expecting, assuming, that good things were still to come. Plus, it's kind of hot. (and while this cover is pretty great, the JAMC original is better. but I'm nodding to the out-with-the-old-in-with-the-new theme, on this, the first blog post of the year.)

Two Thousand Ten! I really, really hope it's happy.

rest in peace

2009-12-28T19:58:00.000-08:00

Beneath the magnolia, we clasped hands and sang Amazing Grace. The sun was brilliant, I blinked against the brightness, blinked away the tears.

It's a sorry way to end a sorry year and, yet, so unsurprising. This is not to say that I think a black cloud is unfairly hovering, no, because what is fair? It is what it is and it is so so sad.

Our favorite cat took ill yesterday, the Sunday following Christmas, and did not survive the night. It was swift and has us left us all reeling. Because we all sure loved that little guy.

Oh, Binx. We can't even miss you yet because we can't believe you're gone.

a pedestrian's manifesto

2009-11-17T18:52:00.000-08:00

Some months ago I updated my status on the old facebook to say something like, "april is a bold pedestrian" (third person updates are nigh obsolete now, but my fb pals should understand what i'm referring to, yes?) and what did that even mean, anyhow?

Well, here's the thing. I believe in walking. A lot. I believe that there are too many cars on the road and if every person who, technically, *could* drive didn't. . . as often as possible, that would only be better for everyone. We have lived in very walkable places and in a metropolitan area where the only walking most people (including ourselves) did was from the front door to the car. Which is to say, I am familiar with undue conditions and constraints upon ideals. But I still think most people (including myself) do not walk enough. We are a lazy people. Anybody reading this right now grew up in an era of cheap fossil fuels and so, of course, we default to that machine power to move us. It's fast. It's convenient. I get it.

We picked this house of ours because it was within walking distance of a lot of places we would frequent (library, park, natural foods store, book store, etc.) and we really do walk to those places frequently. Sometimes we just walk to buy a newspaper or sometimes we walk just to walk (and look in houses at dusk, because no one's jumped up and closed curtains yet, wait. is that just me?) but always, we walk. We walk in the rain and the wind and the sun and the snow. Do we ever push the leaving envelope too late and have to take the car instead? Absolutely. Am I ever cold and crabby and don't want to switch my comfy clogs for rain boots and opt, then, to drive? Yes. The car is a safety net and I sure depend on it. But our goal is to walk often and we really, really do.

The problem is, unsurprisingly, drivers. We live in a car culture. In a little automotive bubble, drivers can pretend not to notice that walkers are trying to cross the street. But, see, per Oregon law (what are the rules in your state?) EVERY INTERSECTION IS A CROSS-WALK, marked or not marked. (Go ahead, look it up. I found our driver's manual online.) And you know what pedestrian's have in a cross walk? The fricking right of way. And you know what this pedestrian does with that right? She fucking embraces it. (so much for obsolete third person usage and, also, any attempt to quell any sailor language).

This is one of my hot buttons, can you tell? And I didn't really move here to become some kind of champion for Pedestrian Rights, but every single damn time I walk anywhere, I see such knuckleheaded stuff on the road, it's a role I've taken on, by default.

This is what I believe about walking:

I believe pedestrians should NOT wait for cars to stop. Say what? I am watchful, aware. I step out into the street and, if traffic is approaching, I raise my hand in a STOP! motion. Do I step directly in front of fast moving vehicles? No way. But, keep in mind, all of the streets I frequent have a speed limit of 25. Twenty-five! Any car going 25 should have no trouble stopping for a crossing pedestrian. (do most cars drive 25? nope.) If a car is in the intersection as I approach, I pause, wait. I am not stupid. I don't expect appropriate, rule-following vehicles to have to slam on their brakes for me. I don't move my body fully into the street until any oncoming car has stopped. But I do step out with purpose.

I believe a pedestrian should never, ever apologize for walking. I can't tell you how it pains me to see walkers give cars that little wave of apology as they cross the street. You know that embarrassed little "I'll be out of your way in just a second, hold on, I'm sorry" waving shrug? There's no place for that! I don't care if the Car still reigns supreme. It's NOT SUPREME! See, the law on my side, above. And also, the writing on the walls. I am not advocating a bird flip toward every motorist, no. But, don't apologize! If you're behind the wheel do you wave a thanks for stopping! wave when a car in the opposite lane stops at a four-way? No. If I'm walking and a car stops (correctly, appropriately) for me *without* me having to step first into the street and raise my hand and employ my menacing "i've got my eyes on you" gesture (ok, so maybe more hilarious than menacing, but since i'm not going to marry into the mob anytime soon, i don't have a lot of chances to look like i mean business and mean it), I will give a quick wave of acknowledgment. But this is not an apologetic wave. This is not a thank you wave. Wait. Let's stop here a second. NO THANKS ARE REQUIRED! Pedestrians HAVE the right of way, rememeber? Thanking motorists for stopping is like thanking, when you're behind the wheel, other cars at red lights. So I give a wave of acknowledgment. I see you stopped there, I'm proceeding ahead, ok. I might even make eye contact and smile! (A topic for another day: how I make a lot of eye contact and smile a lot and how, it seems, most people in the world do not.) But I WILL NOT apologize. I will not thank you for pausing (for what? three fucking seconds?!) for me. I will not hasten my step and run across the street. let's make another paragraph for that one, shall we?

I believe pedestrians should never run across the street. I tell this one to my children, often. Not so much the big one anymore, but the little one, yeah. He holds my hand as we walk all over town and our whole erroneous Bigger! Better! Faster! More! society penetrates his self conscious and he understands, despite my indoctrination, that it's all about the car here. He can't help but feel spooked in the middle of the road. And I understand the urge to start running. Don't run! I tell him. Keep walking at your regular pace. Don't stop for pebbles, don't rearrange the bag on your shoulder, don't scratch your ankle, keep walking. But don't, don't, don't run. For one, how long does it take a person to walk across the street? Even crossing 4 lanes, it would be, what? Seven seconds? Trivial. Cars can wait. And for two, the last thing you need to do in the middle of an intersection is trip and fall and running is more likely to result in falling. Don't run. Just keep walking. And don't ever, ever swing your arms and bounce a little in that "look-at-me-hustling-out-of-your-way-so-fast" fake walking run thing. It's your intersection. Walk across it like you're supposed to be there.

So if you're a pedestrian, too (and if you're not, why not? if your destination is within a couple of miles, I encourage you to use your feet before your fossil fuel), you should also be so bold. And if we all were so bold, pretty soon, it wouldn't be bold at all. It would be common and understood, "this is how we share the road." And that would be beautiful.

martinmas and armistice

2009-11-11T21:39:00.000-08:00

Two things to remember: those who served and the light within us all. If legend is true, Martin was a Roman Soldier and surely you have read enough history to know the atrocities committed by Roman soldiers, yes? And yet, his kindness made him a saint. War is horrible. I believe in peace. I have marched for peace and voted for peace and I practice peace toward my children. Blessed are the Peacemakers. But life is complicated. And war is not the reason people join the military. Drafts aside, it's about health care and education and consistency and opportunity. And I recognize the light, the basic human light of Creation and Being and Progress, within all of the service people, past and present, in our country. Our philosophies may differ, but our hopes are probably eerily the same. We're all just people here.

Per the waldorfy tradition, the children and I made Martinmas Lanterns the other day. It had been a while since we've done the old tissue paper scraps on jar technique, so we were due. Our tissue paper supply was paltry, so I dipped into the thin wax paper (like for window stars, you know?) instead. Add some peanut butter jars and some mod podge (plus a few particularly placed fall leaves, for flair) and you've got yourself a sweet little candleholder. We wrapped wire around the rim to make a handle and secured them onto sturdy sticks for carrying.

After a lantern walk at the park (we met up with other folks), we came home and stuck them into the large clay pot that sits on our hearth. The tiny lanterns + the fire were our only living room lights this evening.

the upside to the downside

2009-11-09T22:09:00.000-08:00

We're past the point of grumbling about it, but, yes, if you're wondering, we're still affected by the mister's job loss. When a family loses their only source of income and that family is already pretty broke (by that I mean, zero savings plus a hefty mortgage, to boot) it's grumble-worthy. But it's not just us. Joblessness is widespread and if you don't know someone who is unemployed and struggling, then maybe you should get out more. We're scrabbling.

There is a new business endeavor. Have you heard? Starting a new business when a heap of bills are late and things like Foreclosure have become actual possibilities might be foolish. But what else can you do?

So, while we're in the middle space between jumping off the cliff and either hitting the ground, hard, or, miraculously, somehow, taking flight, I thought I'd mention the flip side to unemployment, the good parts of what is mostly a very, very difficult thing to experience.

Let me back up a bit and set the scene: there was the difficult relocation (a wanted return to oregon, but the circumstances were trying), a painful pregnancy loss with complications and medical bills, and then, interwoven in all that trouble: my husband's job which pretty much sucked donkey balls. (that's the most polite way I can describe it.)

So even with all the extra stress unemployement (like lack of income and losing insurance), I can't deny that there have been some really wonderful perks.

I think my husband's old job was close to destroying my family. I would like to tot up a list of specifics here, but I'm trying to be vague. Trust me when I tell you that the working environment was very much not good. And my husband? He is not a complainer. He does not shirk. And nothing he ever did was good enough for those people. He put in such long days and gave them so much and it was never enough. (it is seriously hard to keep from spilling the details.)

So, for starters, we see my guy a lot more. He often didn't come home until the children, at least the little one anyhow, were asleep. He left before we were up in the morning. And now he is here. He reads the bedtime books to the boy and he watches library Doctor Who dvds with the girl and he eats breakfast with us and dinner, too. He is a part. As he should be. As he always was before, but his previous employment made impossible.

Our garden this year was bigger and better than the year before because he was around so much more.

He has had the time, since this past Spring, to work weekly at our friends' farm. This has been so tremendous, I can't even tell you. We get vegetables in trade for his labor, but we're really getting so much more. When the mister was working a zillion hours a week for micro-managing brickheads (again, severely censored. believe it.), he didn't have the time to get to know people he'd like to know here locally. This farm working arrangement was a step in that direction. He likes our farmer friend so much and also loves working. My guy loves being outside doing hard work. He has learned, a little, about small scale farming and is re-inspired about our convictions about food and supporting a local economy. It's given him a connection to things that matter. This never would have happened if he were still bogged down by his old awful job.

Our house is better off. He is handy and likes fixing and improving things but everything went to the old nasty job and there wasn't a lot left over. He's been able to do some repairs and such that he never had time to think about before.

So, really, what this all comes down to is how good it is to have time, to be the master of our own schedules again. He picks up odd jobs where he can and is trying, trying to get the new business going and will always adhere to any associated obligations without a fuss. And not all jobs suck the life right out of an employee, but man, that one nearly did us in. He gave so much to people who didn't appreciate it, and had very little left to give us, the ones he's working so hard for in the first place.

I don't know how we'll make it work. It's shame that, even in these tenuous economic times, someone so capable and clever and strong (like an ox!) could be jobless. Worry still hangs over us and clogs our plans; I sure hope we again see some kind of financial stability. Who knows what lies ahead of us. But in the meantime, it's all so much more manageable within the context of a healthy, intact family.

everything is golden

2009-11-09T14:33:00.000-08:00

We've been here, in this house, for just over 2 years now. What that means is that we're beginning to cycle through our THIRD holiday season in the same home. I have ~~celebrated~~ observed 3 of my birthdays in this house. We've had 3 Halloweens here. We're approaching our third Thanksgiving, Solstice, Christmas, New Year's, etc in the same place.

We are breaking all previous records.

And yet, my daughter still identifies as someone who moves a lot. Two years are not enough to salve the sores from a disastrous relocation, not when the trouble came fast on the heels of a lot of other hasty moves and stressful temporary situations. Anyone who has had to scramble for housing last minute should know this stress. But doing it again and again and again has left a shadow, a spook, an inability to breathe deeply without worrying when it will happen again.

I have a hard time accepting that this is it. Part of me is so accustomed to the transition, the perpetual packing and unpacking and settling in that we've done (thirteen addresses in as many years!) that I crave change as much as I appreciate and cherish the consistency of staying put.

Actually, I don't want to move again. I want to see all the blueberry bushes we planted last year grow. I want to finally collect enough salvaged bricks to make a patio in the front yard. I want to figure out how to best sneak a little flock of chickens into the backyard. I want to be here. Starting over again requires too much energy, loses too much time.

But I want to stop feeling like we're in the wrong place. Self identified city mice who thought about choosing a rural home and ended up here, in town, instead. I like being in the city. I like walking everywhere and seeing the hum and rush. I like the busyness and the brightness. And we have some of that here. Our town is very sweet, photogenic and charming. But we are far from the city. And we are confined to town restrictions, zoning and space and the squelch of too-near neighbors who are anything but simpatico souls. So in-between. Not the city. Not the land.

We expedited the purchase of this home because our living situation was so bleak. Our family was in the darkest times. And the job that caused us to move here is no more. I feel like I chose the best from what was available, but the rules of the game have changed since then and now I'm stuck trying to make it work.

I tell her that you never know. That anything can change in a blink. And that's the truth. But is no guarantee. She can't be the only 11-ish year old girl right here who likes to climb trees and pretend and whittle spears out of sticks with sharp knives and notice the plant life on walks and make up dramatic hairstyles and draw for hours and play Irish music so loudly. And maybe such a kindred soul will materialize suddenly soon.

This is not the dress rehearsal. This is not practice. This is my children's childhood. And it is so dear and joyful. We share so much gladness and we all of us have so very much for which to be grateful. But it's hard to reconcile that it's all going by so quickly and it's all so different than what I wanted it to be like.

My daughter will not ever have close, in age or proximity, siblings or cousins. She won't ever have close friends she's known her whole life, kids she's grown up with and knows well. The lonesomeness of her days continues to tear me up.

I wish I could give both of my children a steady group, a trusted pack of folks who have always been and will always be there. But I can't.

So I give them countless hours of reading aloud and Sunday night pizza and obnoxious operatic improv songs and muffins. I bake a lot of muffins. It's not enough.

The little traditions and routines I make up out of nothing are the smallest tokens I can offer, paltry talismans to conjure a decent childhood. I am inadequate. I would like to share this burden. Not just with their father (for, of course, he is here, participating every day), but with other people.

I love this time of year. I despise this time of year. The coziness of being inside more, the dread of doing it all again and not being able to hitch a ride, even for a moment, on someone else's momentum. It's the same old dreary story. Which is not to say we're a dreary bunch! But most of our days, regular days and special days, are spent just the four of us. Sweet. But a little sad, frankly.

I don't know how to escape the taunting thoughts that if we lived in the city, we'd have so much more to choose from. If not relevant community, then, certainly more distraction. Or if we were in the country, acreage and animals and all of that, we'd be so busy we wouldn't have time for discontent. I am tired of needing distraction. I want to sit in the middle of everything I have and like what I see.

I must reign in my visibility. Stop thinking about the big picture everyone's always talking about. Focus on the little picture. Everything is golden. The leaves and the light and the Promise I see in my children. We will have our quiet holidays, we will keep our simple days.

I cannot do better than I can do.

passive aggressive kitchen witchery

2009-11-03T21:09:00.000-08:00

It wasn't quite Necessity is the Mother of Invention here this morning, because Coffee isn't exactly a need, is it? And I didn't invent pan roasting beans. And back up the truck here, I'm not even the coffee drinker. Oh, I drink it when it's hot and ready and I'm too impatient to boil water for tea, and maybe I'll admit to the occasional chain soy latte indulgence (sorry, local little guys. your lattes blow) but since I'm not a moderate individual, I can flail right into racing heartbeat and shaky hand and grinding jaw territory and so it's just better if I abstain as much as possible. So it was in deference to the mister's caffeine dependence and my recognition of our sparse pantry that made me pull that ziploc baggy of green beans out of a drawer.

My friend The Tardy Homemaker roasts her own coffee and it is smooth and delicious (I never pass up a cup at someone else's house. reference: the aforementioned Not Moderate confession. if it's offered, i'll drink it, pretty much, yup.) and I must have made grunts about wanting to do the same (because, hello? pennies on the dollar, practically, for organic fair trade) and she gifted me a pound of green beans once when she purchased in bulk. She uses an old air popper for coffee roasting and this was my intent, as well. Surely you know about my thrift store habit. For as often as I'm there, I could be creepily stalking the old volunteer ladies at the St Vincent de Paul, but no, it's ric rac aprons and old school readers and sturdy spatulas I seek. And in all the many, many visits I've made to secondhand establishments since I've had a pound of green coffee beans in my possession, how many old air poppers do you think I have found? Not one. I have an air popper in my kitchen, use it frequently, actually. But it's the newer fangled sort made of thin plastic which will allegedly melt in the time it takes to roast a pound. So I reserve it for popcorn only and keep looking for an older one.

Which is all well and good until we wake up one cold frosty morning (frost two days in a row. hey, november, you mean business.) and I'm up and starting breakfast and feeling mightily disgruntled at the mister who is still in bed. For the record, if you are married to me and I send your grumpy ass to bed at 8:30, what that really means is that I am looking forward to you being the first one up in the morning, so that the house is awake and cheerful and the blinds are open and all of that when I get out of bed. And when that doesn't happen, when I am the last one to bed, by several hours, and then, by default, have to be the first parent up and about, I will probably growl at you and stomp down the hallway, sleepy and mad-like. But, for all the grumbling and cursing, I knew the longer he stayed in bed the madder I'd get and the best way to get him up is to get the coffee started. So.

I've heard that it can be done like this and I have roasted my share of nuts in a cast iron pan, so how about coffee? Three cheers for trying, anyway, and I have a canister full of Irish Breakfast so it's not like I'd be missing anything.

Here are what the beans looked like when I put then in the pan:

(one of these days I'll buckle down for real and figure out how to take a decent picture in a dim kitchen at 7 something in the morning)

I started them at 350 but they hadn't made much progress at all in ten, fifteen minutes, so I notched it up to 400ish. I think I left them in about 20 minutes after that. By that time the husband was up and dressed and bewildered about the smokey coffee scented haze in the house. It wasn't hot coffee that enticed him upright, but I think I smoked him out of bed. It would be easier to leave a tablespoon of olive oil in a pan on a hot burner next time. I'll remember. I did reach in and give the beans a stir a few times. I think, really, I took them out too soon. But, at that point, it had already taken longer than I thought it should have and I was done and the kettle was on and the press was clean and I just called it good enough.

They looked like this when I took them out:

(notice that I yawned and turned the camera to auto, flash and all. photography, what?)

We might not agree on bedtimes or wake up times or the most acceptable dispositions to share with the people in your household, but we both like our coffee beans dark and oily. These were on the light side and still rather dry-ish. The oils were just starting to come out when I blew the whistle on the whole experiment. However, maybe because the beans were so freshly roasted, who knows, the resulting coffee was excellent.

I drank more than my share (he hates it when I drink coffee in the a.m. because there's none remaining to pour into his thermos when he leaves and he knows it's not like I'm so discriminating, anyway, I'll still load up on tea all day) and he complimented the brew more than once, which is a lot more than usual.

Is this going to be a thing around here now? I don't think I'm ready to promote it to Regular from In A Pinch, but at least I know now it's easy enough.

(but not as easy as tea.)

take a hottie to bed

2009-11-02T20:59:00.000-08:00

A little middle of the night motherly nursing last night prompted me to dig out and fill up the old hot water bottle. It was the best idea I had to help soothe my girl's very bad stomachache. She was hurting enough to wake me, which, for her, means quite a lot. She is the buck up and tell me about it later sort, and not usually so much for getting out of bed at 4 in the morning to tell her mama that she's sick.

I always forget about the hot water bottle until we have some sort of acute sickness. Although, regrettably, I forgot about it completely when I had my recent bout with illness. But since the weather shifted and there's often a cold snap to the air in our house (I'd rather bundle up a little, anyhow, than be too warm and it sure costs less to keep the heaters all off as much as possible) I have been thinking that I should invest in hot water bottles for the whole family. I rely pretty regularly on my husband's hot bloodedness to warm my cold sleepy toes, but he isn't always amenable and, well, I cannot reciprocate (I'm always cold!) and, also, think of the children!

I actually have a hot water bottle on the running gift idea list (because the proverbial corner is approaching and you know what's just around it) for my girl, but since she requested a fill up tonight, she might usurp the bathroom cabinet old stand-by before I acquire a new one just for her. She said it kept her warm all morning.

Googling just now revealed to me that the hot water bottle we have, what I thought was just a regular old modern day drugstore specimen, is really a vintage 50s jobbie. I bought it for $0.50 at a Phoenix Goodwill about 4 years ago. So we haven't even had it all that long. I always thought I imagined the faint whiff of roses and old man inside of it, but if it's really sixty years old, such a combination is probably possible. I wanted to get a few others just like it, it's so thick-walled and sturdy and the spout screws on tightly (it's called a Kantleek, by Rexall, and that sure seems to be true) and it keeps water hot for hours, but I don't think they make them quite like this one anymore.

More googling pulled up this article now I think I'll start calling ours a Hottie, too.

Energy efficiency + personal comfort were the reasons I wanted to get more anyway. Having a radiating ball of warm in your bed just makes sense. I toss ours into an extra pillowcase and wrap it up a few times, but a wooly cover would be better, perhaps, for heat retention and softness. But, still, it didn't really occur to me until I read that article that hot water bottles should be a standard. Like re-usable grocery bags and recycling! Has there been a hot water bottle resurgence when I wasn't looking? Because while I find lots of bottle and covers and cozies for sale (etsy and ebay and various and sundry other sellers), it certainly doesn't seem like a movement or anything. Not yet, anyway!

Do you take a hottie to bed?

too much candy

2009-11-01T16:41:00.000-08:00

Even though I am, legendarily, earnestly, a bonafide Halloween Grinch (candy! kids! bah!), I admit to having had a really great time this year. Wait, didn't I say the same thing *last* year, too? I believe I did. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em or some such like that. Almost anything is a good time with friends and a few nips of strong hooch. Yes?

The thing is: we don't eat candy. So there's a tin of suckers on my fridge, sure. The health food store sort with regular sugar and no artificial crap and that's just the way we roll around here. And unless they're the best full time always on actors ever in the whole world, my children don't feel left out or less than or different. They enjoyed the thrill of tromping around town after dark, ringing doorbells and that whole schtick, but the candy thing isn't really the thing at all. I don't have to cajole them not to eat too much or sneak it away or let them gorge and crash and burn and hope it's all over soon. Because it is a non-issue. One or two pieces, maybe, but that's it. And that's why my first reaction is to shrug and then avoid an event that's really all about junky candy. But for what other reason would I be compelled to pull a zebra print skirt and bright orange high heels out of my closet? Dressing up is just good fun. It's a shame we do it so infrequently, really.

Even without the damage of post-sugar high here at our house, tonight was rough. Time change, I guess. Never a cuter orange lego has ever existed than my boy in his last minute costume last night. But for all his adorableness (where did so much cute come from? I don't even know!), he was up so late, for an early-to-bed sort of boy. And we jollied him along on a very far afternoon walk today; such a long way for tired little legs. My girl was the intense one, exploding with feelings (happy! mad! all the feelings!) and we had many (many many many many) meltdowns and fall aparts and screaming-til-hoarse episodes when she was little, but with my boy, it's rare and I am rusty. I remind myself how scary it must feel to be a little person totally losing control and I hold firm and strong and kind and I repeat the mama mantras and I keep a respectable distance and when the facade cracks I swoop in to wipe tears and slice an orange and put on pajamas and give kisses and everything is smooth again before bed.

I couldn't have asked for a more beautiful day for the first day of November. The house was chilly, kids and pets and the husband in and out, the doors opening and closing so much, and I wore a scarf all day. But it was bright (I grumbled about not having sunglasses on our walk) the leaves were crunchy and the sky was blue and I could not (ask the mister, go ahead) stop dancing. It felt like a dancing sort of day, just that clear and brilliant. And so we played a lot of dancing music around here today.

This is a perfect song for a dancing day on the day after Halloween. I like the Schoolhouse Rock-ish animation style and the theatrical sound and the frisky rabbits and Mama told me what I should know too much candy gonna rot your soul.

the season of my miscontent

2009-10-25T19:51:00.000-07:00

Well, there wasn't so much celebrating. But there wasn't any moping either. I call that good enough. But, still, being that it's the time of year that I reset my own personal little ticker tape, the early autumn is still a fine time to think about stuff I didn't do, stuff I want to do, and stuff I'd rather not.

I'm waist high in my 30s now (not quite halfway, I'm short waisted, you know) and while it's unreasonable to expect, or even entertain the notion of, like a secret for myself, that I might have a real whoop-de-doo affair next year, I can think of a lot of things I would like to accomplish between now (two days into it) and then (35, holy moly).

A list, for all the people who like lists (me? not so much. even my grocery lists peter out after just a few things and I chase random ideas around like falling leaves):

1. finish Couch to 5k. totally reasonable goal, yes? being down sick for several days + a general unwellness in the house lately put a wrench in what had been a very impressive effort. even i was proud of myself, and you know that's something. i can get back to it. looking forward to it, actually. every little breath and conversation isn't making me cough anymore.

2. sing karaoke. easy. easy enough, anyway. i cannot sing well but i enjoy it and if i said i didn't have a wee bit of a rock star in me, i'd be lying. don't we all? who knows, i might hate it after all, but it's something i must try. you don't have to ask me for an encore but you can clap all the same.

3. visit phoenix. oh, phoenix. i left on such hasty terms and i spoke so often, so openly, of all the things about you i despise. well. it's been two and a half years now. and if absence makes the heart grow fonder. . . i could never live with you again, but i think we can still be friends. not to mention that our time living there was tremendously important for my girl and i would like to take her back, visit old haunts, see old pals, keep from forgetting everything.

4. road trip. not necessarily related to the previous item. we did visit family last year during the week of thanksgiving, but nothing's on the docket this year. and it should be. car travel is the best way to travel and all the people who hate it don't know a thing. my kids are super travelers and we all get cross and fidgety, sure, but we talk, we watch clouds, we try on what it must be like to live in so many random little places. it's the best thing and i don't do it often enough.

5. make some money. red light jokes aside, this will be the most difficult to do. i'm smart and quick and funny and so capable but the only thing that matters is that i haven't worked for pay in a long time and people who hire people find that, i discovered this last year, the unforgivable sin. i wouldn't change this path i'm on. because unless you've got a time machine in your pocket, here i am. if it weren't for all the gray hair and wrinkles, i'd make like i just graduated high school (ha!) and then it would be, wow. isn't she great?! but even when we're talking bottom rung positions, mere cents beyond minimum wage, life experience, gut instinct, rapport, none of those things matter as much as blanks filled in on an application. it's demeaning and discouraging and i'm really better off working for myself. so who knows. income, somehow. that's what.

6. get curtains up on all the windows in the house to mask the goldanged ugly creamy colored mini-blinds, loathed atrocities that they are.

7. order many, many prints of pictures. my photo albums stopped the very day i got my first digital camera (mother's day, 2003) and i rarely, almost never, order prints and, come on, grandkids, gather around the hard drive. no. that will not do. also, i love taking pictures and sometimes, not often, i get some excellent shots and those should be, i'm serious this time, printed up and framed and on the wall.

8. make more stuff. i do not need to elaborate here, right?

9. let go of the stuff that needs to be let go of, which is a roundabout way of saying i have an awful time with change. i want to keep everything i love right in my pocket where i can have it close by for all the things, the good things, the hard things (and my, have there been hard things, 2.5 yrs of so much hard) but life doesn't work that way, apparently. and i can't keep getting offended, broken hearted, every time i'm reminded that it's just never going to be that way again. but do you empty your pockets and start over fresh? or set your things on a little shelf somewhere so you can still see them and think about them now and again? this is what i don't know about.

10. say Yes more often.

11. join a club. remember when marsha tried everything? just to see what she'd like? there should be such opportunity for witty middle-aged(ish) mothers. because i'm not involved enough!

12. get some ink on my upper arm. right side? sure. all these push-ups i do now shouldn't be for naught. what i need is a focal point for all that pre-shower bathroom flexing, don't you think?

13. see more live music. i saw more this last year than the year before. the babies are older (don't let the older one catch me saying baby, either!) and there's really no reason to sit around here so often. i'm such a content homebody, almost all of the time, it's true. but i like the night life.

14. finally install the sign board, poetry board, art and public notice board, whatever you want to call it, in my front yard that i've been aiming to do since i moved into this corner house. we get a lot of foot traffic. i have a pretty big (for a downtown house) front yard. these things should be working together!

Well, that's a good start. I reckon once I click Publish Post I'll remember other ideas because if I'm good at anything, it's coming up with ideas. All day long with the flashes of brilliance. Too bad I let things flash and then they fizzle and, more often than not, I forget.

me + larry david + a siamese kitten

2009-10-18T20:50:00.000-07:00

It's not that I'm anti-napping. It's just that sleeping during daylight hours feels so gross to me. Clammy and groggy and pinching waistbands and vanished time. No thanks. It's just me. But because it's just me and if we're on good terms, you and I, and if you're the napping sort, then I've probably ribbed you about it. Don't sleep your life away! and what not. I'm not the touchy feely sort, so much, so such things are like little quick squeezes to your shoulder. Only teases the ones she loves, or something like that.

So what it comes down to is this: if I'm in bed during the day, something ain't right. I barely left my bed for the past 2 days! So while I'm breaking one rule, on account of swine flu or who knows what, I pretended that it's not verboten for the cats to jump up, clamber around, lay right down on my chest and purr. The No Cats In Bed rule seems superfluous when I'm languishing in wrinkly sheets with lip balm smeared all over my nose. And, anyway, 2 of them didn't realize I fell down on the job and one of them saves his affections for the mister, so it was really just the little one keeping me company. We watched the whole sixth season of Curb Your Enthusiasm together yesterday.

Sick sheets in the wash, fresh sheets on the bed. I wore a supportive undergarment and pants with a zipper today. Improvement! Which, then, must have been just a doozy of a cold, right? Or maybe, as I'm convincing myself, it really was a more serious illness that I kicked into submission with my tireless barrage of oils and vitamins and teas and nasal irrigating and, yeah, napping.

I'm still not completely normal, the children are vaguely unwell (the big girl tucked herself into bed long before her little brother was even in pajamas -so tired.) and I hear talk of cold and flu all around me, it seems. Still in the woods. Not out yet.

So, in case the remedies and treatments and hours of librivox recordings didn't kill it all off, this song will help. It's a start your day off right song, a dancing song, a thrill me like Erasure and I'm fourteen and explode frequently from so much secret love song, a simple, happy, smiling song.

ten shopping days left!

2009-10-13T21:52:00.000-07:00

I've spent too many years doing the whole pathetic woe is me birthday introspection. So I'm due a turn-around, a departure from the doldrums, some unabashed celebrating. And since it's unlikely that the celebrating will involve much more than the cake I remind my daughter to bake me (much as I'd prefer pie, that might be still a bit beyond her almost-eleven yr old kitchen prowess) I am taking this opportunity to engage in a little wish listing. For your entertainment and should, perchance, an anonymous benefactor, or my husband, be reading.

Most of the things I want aren't accessible. Steady income! Health insurance! A singing voice like an angel! And generally I'm accustomed to picking from quirky used treasures in secondhand stores for all my gimme-gimme needs, so it's not often I even think in this direction. But can I compile a list of new things I want? You bet I can!

Here goes. In no particular order.

1. ukulele
2. sport headphones, non-earbud type.
2. stripey socks and tights
3. treadmill
4. unicycle
5. lenses for my rebel
6. sanita clogs, brown oiled leather w/ tan soles
7. curtains for the living room. and dining room. and my bedroom. or just curtain rods. if i had the hardware i would make the curtains myself. hm. or not. stick with curtains.
8. THIS nifty camera, which consoles me the littlest bit over the loss of polaroid film.
9. tall kitchen chair w/ pull-out stool
10. mid-century sectional
11. ink. on my body. bicep tattoo! rawr!
12. submersible blender
13.

Gah, apparently that's the extent to which I can stretch my brain for this silly activity. It's not like I don't ogle the pages of every garnet hill catalog that comes in my mail slot. Because I surely do! So, see, I have plenty of covetous moments, it's that, most of the time, I guess I'm satisfied enough. At least concerning the stuff that can be purchased. I am balls of regret and discontent with regard to all the ephemeral junk of being a person in her (cough) MID thirties.

Next time (not now because if I don't get into the kitchen to clean it up, I'll never get to watch a couple of Curb Your Enthusiasm episodes, which will be shameful what since Season 5 was due back at the library today and I am pushing it already) I will share a list of things I aim to accomplish before my next birthday, not this one. I already blew this year and I'm coming into land with my eyes closed, more or less, already thinking about the take-off and next chance. See? the woeful If Onlys are so much more instinctual than the glad hurrahs. This trying to celebrate idea will be tricky!

i just want to sparkle for a moment

2009-10-11T20:52:00.000-07:00

We soaked it all in and now we're moving on. There was one quick coastal camping trip over the last weekend of September; likely the last tent adventure until next Spring. There was a much anticipated and deeply appreciated visit by a dear friend from far away (Arizona isn't the other side of the world, no. But it's sure not across town and I had not seen my friend in over two years). Greens have faded into golds and reds and, yes, browns and tonight we lit the first fire in the house. Hello, Fall. Guess you're here for real now.

Until it really gets cold-cold, I find the crisp air exhilarating. And on sunny fall days, like today, I like to keep the doors open. Please come inside, though you might not want to remove your sweater. And I was feeling so cozy in my scarf all day, sweeping and baking and doing housewifey things around the house, music blasting, the children, pink-cheeked, in and out and in and out. The cool air in the house, the good things in the oven, the asters blooming on the porch, so sunday afternoon mid-october just right. But sunny/crisp days turn quickly into cold nights when the sun goes down and my lungs were unhappy with the evening activity.

I gasped and wheezed through my intervals, dreaming of treadmills and indoor gyms. I'm so not a gym person. Like I know some people say that. But I really mean it! The whole idea of paying to exercise, in public, with other people, seems wrong. Plus, I genuinely enjoy being outdoors and this newish endeavor has been particularly doable and pleasant, I believe, because I've been outside. So who knows. I cried uncle several times and walked out the rest of the runs, not because the running was so difficult, but because it's hard to run with the squeezing sensation of one's esophagus closing shut and filling with needles. I've noticed remarkable improvement in my breathing stamina since I started running, but if cold air running is always so painful, I'm not sure I will be able to hack it. I definitely don't want to lose my momentum here, so I am hoping the next run renews my confidence.

This song here was on one of my first running podcasts. And I hum it a lot and have since been listening to the band (the boy least likely to) quite a lot lately. If you're able to pull up files online, I especially like the song called Stringing Up Conkers (such a fallish title), but it's not on youtube, sorry, so you get this one instead.

autumnal

2009-09-22T22:24:00.000-07:00

A first day of fall that finds me bearing my freckly shoulders is all right with me (only it wasn't so much when I lived in the land of Endless Summer. I craved sleeves and sweaters, then, the way I will surely jones for sunshine late next winter). I really do love the mix of seasons here. I'm looking forward to the cool coziness approaching, but this last hurrah of skin and ice cubes is pretty great.

The boy and I talked about the end of summer, about less sunlight, about Fall. We went into the backyard to look for signs of autumn (why not the front yard? because the front yard has different signs, red flashing obnoxious signs that say Unkempt Garden! Weeds! Unruly! but gradual seasonal changes are less noticeable there still).

Clockwise from top left: hazelnuts (our tiny tiny backyard has 3 old pretty big hazelnut trees and, boy! do we have a lot of nuts), grape stem (concords eaten by the boy who eats the most fruit), dogwood leaves (the first bud in spring, the first to change color in fall), deciduous redwood needles (kinda cute, when it's just one, but when we have several foot high drifts of 'em along the side of the house, less cute).

The boy so kindly made hazelnut muffins for me, but I could only manage one. I am *still* full from all of the crackers I ate today. Crackers + Feta + Roasted Tomatoes. Oh man. So good. How good? Like a letter from home with a dollar in it (as my dad would say). Ten dollars. I've been slow roasting a lot of tomatoes lately, and while I aim to keep them them through the winter, I was particularly lazy with one batch. I started them late in the day and at bedtime, they weren't near dry yet and but I stopped them anyway. Because they're so gooey and soft, I am not so sure they'll keep as long as their more dehydrated compatriots, so what else can I do? Eat those puppies up. A boon on good crackers at the grocery outlet inspired me to do them up like this:

My children, who enjoy tomatoes otherwise, thought these soft oozey clumps looked disgusting. I goaded them for a moment and then stuffed my mouth with another one. More for me, suckers. These crackers are so good. If I didn't eat all the feta up or if I don't wake up with raw sores in my mouth, I'll probably repeat this tomorrow for lunch. And dinner.

In other related equinox news, I made up a batch of mix CDs today. I haven't done this in a while, the mixmaster hausfrau thing. I am not a hip music cat and I always feel a little sheepish sharing the stuff that's doing it for me right now. Here's my fall oh nine playlist:

The last track is my current obsession. You should listen to it straight away so we can drawl out, "alabama, arkansas. . ." together. You'll see.

I kept myself busy in a glue + scissors way for a while. I love being busy that way, but I don't indulge very often because, oh! what a mess. I can barely keep up with the creative pursuits of my daughter. Throw my silly little projects into the mix and we might never see the dining room table again.

I confess to pushing everything to the side so we could eat dinner. I needed it to remain handy so I can bust out some more CD sleeves tomorrow. There's a reason I keep every old calendar, scrap of paper, everything around forever. You never know when you'll need to make an envelope:

That's a lot of stuff to make a fine first day of Fall.

listen to me! there is something i must do.

2009-09-21T22:12:00.000-07:00

The very best thing about the facebook + youtube timesuckerpunch is being privy to every amusing thing my friends find. I love that. The internet is mostly boring me lately. I am slow to email, I 'mark read' huge swaths of entries from my blog roll, I can't remember the last time I poked into my local craigslist. Snore. But every single day, somebody shares something on the old facebook that makes me laugh. Laughing = good.

I wasn't going to share this anywhere, it was amusing to me yesterday and then I moved on. Until I went to bed last night. The mister was already back there, asleep, and what had he fallen asleep to? The soundtrack to Les Miserables. That sort of synchronicity is so weird. How long since I last even thought about Jean Valjean? Years!! Even though, yes, seeing the touring production was a pivotal point in our relationship and, sure, my daughter liked to startle people at age 3 by belting out Master of the House, I lost track of the CDs and never imported them into itunes and hey! who listens to CDs anymore, anyway? Apparently the husband had just undertaken a big old-CDs-into-mp3s project for his new ipod.

It's not every day I randomly hear Confrontation twice.

Hey do you remember when I sang the praises of Freaks & Geeks? Probably not. It's been a while. Anyway, Jason Segal's character is the drummer I referenced in that linked post and while I couldn't say he's my favorite F&G character (perfect ensemble cast!), I am quite endeared to him. This clip almost makes me want to check out their current sitcom.

I am trying something new, which is not the ukulele (not yet). I am feeling the pressing weight of, well, I want to say my years and doesn't that sound pensive and wistful, but really, it's the pressing weight of my ass. Totally different. I have to reconcile the space between pounds to spare and a closet full of pants that won't fit. For my next trick, I will attempt to bridge this gap by running. Or something like running, but slower. I will say this: it's going better than I thought it would. And there aren't a lot of things these days I can say *that* about, so. . .

parting is such

2009-09-20T21:21:00.000-07:00

There is this voice that has been haunting me (no not that. haunting is too spooky of a word, too invasive and serious, how about compelling?), compelling me to listen. and last night I listened to it live and wasn't that a good time? The September of my adulthood is like the October, November of my youth: a brilliant string of clear days, and nights when windchimes clang and sleepy hands shut windows, grab for blankets.

So this voice. When he talks I think of Matthew McConaughey's character in Dazed and Confused. Oh, you know. Tell me know you. What, you don't know?!

And so when I say that the front for Deer Tick gives me an I Love Those Redheads vibe, then you should know, surely, what I'm talking about, yes?

The last day of official summer upon us. A celebration and a regret. The rough smoothness of a raspy voice. The looking ahead and looking behind. The wish to pause the best seconds -the ones with the most laughter, with children running in circles and tomatoes piled in heaps and insecurities almost too small to see- is strong.

There is a certain seventies good ol' bad boy sleazy rock and roll feel about Deer Tick. I am sorry I'm still talking about them. I can talk about one thing for a long time. I can eat the same thing every meal for weeks before I tire of it. I am insatiable until the inexplicable moment when, without warning, I've had too much.

I haven't had too much yet. Not of this song or bare legs or open doors or nectarines. Not yet.

ride me, mama

2009-09-13T20:52:00.000-07:00

There are some things you don't even want to whisper, not even in an empty room, because once said these things might be heard and remembered by someone. I tend toward the quiet, and have been mistaken for shy. But the truth is this: I am an extrovert with very quick moving thoughts and a tendency to blab too much about anything. Keeping quiet keeps me out of trouble. You don't want to know what I'm thinking, believe me on that one.

Today I've been regretting something I said last night, at a very fun and comfortable gathering with friends. Because just like I don't care to promise things to my children until I know they are for sure, I don't like that I announced (hm, a rather grand word, it was more like a casual mention) that I'm going to learn to play the ukulele. It's a fine idea, sure, but if I don't do it? Of if I try and fail? Well, then folks will know about it. I would rather keep that to myself, I suppose.

My birthday's coming up and I'm another year closer to OLD and another year further from being able to make music. Oh, sure I took piano lessons when I was a kid. And there are those nearly forgotten years of being in the school band (you will never guess what instrument I played and I won't tell you!) and there are the countless hours I inflict my singing voice on my helpless family members. But making music in a relevant, participatory way? No. And clearly this is a troubling thing because it troubles me.

I do not have any aspirations of being good. I would be content to just plunk along and not be too terrible. That's a doable goal, yes? For an old lady?

And now my pride's on the line. I've said it out loud. Ay!

So being that it's sunday (remember I was trying to share a song on sundays?) and I'm kinda talking music already, I will include a song that I have been enjoying recently. A friend of mine shared it on facebook and it was new to me and I liked it right away. Wagon Wheel by Old Crow Medicine Show (apparently an old Bob Dylan song previously unrecorded by the old songster himself). I'd actually forgotten all about it, but on the drive home from Eugene today (we drove the two hours south on an errand and tooled around that awesome city; every time I find myself there I think it would sure be a great place to live), I was reading their local weekly alternative paper and noticed a concert ad upcoming for these guys. (Local music alert: they'll be in Eugene October 6th and in Portland on the 7th.)

Here's a good example of why I should continue to practice silence: I think this song is top notch, catchy and hummable, but I liked it better when I was mishearing the lyrics. The husband and I actually had a small debate about this, when I first played it for him. I was sure that Ride was the key chorus word and he corrected me with a much more prudent Rock. And after I listened for rock I couldn't hear ride anymore, and I conceded the point. But something was lost. Rocking is sweet and all; I have spent countless dear hours rocking babies and, well. Um. I think there's a time and a place for something a lot less sweet. Or something. Nevermind. You might be surprised that I really like this video quite a bit. I won't spill so much and tell you my favorite part, though. mmm. See? Must! Shut! Up!

Also! One more thing! I am pretty over the moon in love with looking up ukulele covers of songs on youtube. Did you know that was such a thing? Uke covers? Maybe you did but I did not. I barraged my effbee pals with a string of ukulele songs the other night but I'll only put one here (but choosing just one is hard! there are SO MANY). Seriously, if you have a favorite song, somebody probably played it on their uke and put it online. I don't think I've loved anything in a long time as much as I love all the people who love making music and putting it up on youtube to share it, for no other reason than because it clearly makes them happy. May I one day be good (and brave!) enough.

they're here

2009-09-07T20:39:00.000-07:00

I am seriously sitting here trying to find a way to cleverly tie in a tacky Poltergeist reference to the surprising, bright light that fills my basement staircase on sunny days, in the late afternoon, at this time of the year. But, one, I'm a lot less clever on cue than I used to be, and, two, maybe Carol Anne isn't pop culture blog fodder in two thousand and nine. Maybe you didn't watch the movie when you were quite young (what was I? nine? and why? on who's watch was this approved?) and maybe you didn't have years of nightmares and creepy feelings about it and maybe you wouldn't have any idea what I'm talking about anyway.

But if you were in the habit of walking up and down my basement steps so many times a day, as I am, you would also know how really remarkable it is to have such light fill the space. It's not an area that natural light typically reaches and the presence of sunshine is really an amazing thing. It is blinding and ridiculous.

For a few steps, it is so intense that everything else disappears into a flash of yellow white. There is nowhere else to look.

So at the risk of being overly sappy and incomprehensible, I will say that this light-filled staircase, these pictures, have been burning metaphors in my brain. This is a time of year when I have to buck up and own my resolve. I have to survey the effects of our previous choices and acknowledge that, yes, unconventional and off the main road and lacking infrastructure as they may be, it seems to be working for us.

Taking blind upward steps is tricky, but there is no sense in turning back once you've already gone halfway.

If you think this is about the starting "school year", you think correctly. Among other things. But for so many, September signifies a new start, a new routine, a new excuse to hitch a ride on someone else's program. And as much as this (this "not sending the kids to school") remains the best choice for all involved, when assessing all possible area choices, I admit that I can get a little envious. I have been the IDEA person for a lot of years. There is certainly a lot of awesome to be said about the flexibility of our lifestyle. But flexibility is a two-headed beast. There is also a lot to be said about having marked setpoints to navigate the rest of one's time by. And the determining and the planning and the enforcing of those setpoints is a challenge. For me. This year, especially. Today.

It's intense but quick. The self-doubt will shift and I'll be able to see where I'm going soon enough.

let's do lunch

2009-09-05T22:19:00.001-07:00

When I stayed up reading in bed late last night, the rain was charming. A lulling, nostalgic background noise I missed so much when I lived in the desert, I bought a sound machine to replicate it (digital precipitation: not the same thing). When I woke up this morning, the cool drizzle was cozy. My kitchen always feels extra warm and welcoming when color out the windows is gray. But by mid-morning, I was stuck without a game plan and (it wasn't even raining raining, mind you, just spitting) kids who weren't so keen on going OUT but were getting UNDER my skin and I was done with the wet day. Done with Saturday, done with feeling like a whistle-less, clipboard-less, unpaid activity director. Done with being the nutrition director and chef. Don't you feel like that some days? And while the clouds later gave way to sunshine and although our later afternoon and evening were spent outdoors and active, I was in no mood to make lunch mid-day. "But, mama, I'm huuuuuungry." But, babies, the fixin's are slim. And, also? Mama is busy imagining life as a single chic with a fat wallet. (not really. really. well. what can i say? i was awfully grouchy.)

So what did I do? I bucked up and dug out some leftovers and did a little kitchen magic and made lunch quickly and amused myself by taking pictures. Taking pictures is like an instant attitude adjuster for me. Which is maybe why I take so many pictures. Ahem.

Lentil/Patty Pan Squash/and other stuff Stew from a couple of nights ago. I liked it. The husband liked it. But the children were less enthusiastic. I whizzed some up in the blender and then warmed it up with a little bit of coconut milk. Instant creamy soup!

Okay, so soup. And?? Um. No time to bake anything. No bread. No crackers. No rice cooked up. Nothing. Oh, wait. Is that one tortilla languishing in the back of the fridge, getting crunchy in a left-open bag? Yes! So I sprayed it with a little olive oil and threw it in the toaster oven for a couple of minutes. When it was toasty, I took it out, ground some salt over it, and sliced it up. Chips!

And then I ran out to the yard and dug up some carrots and cut them into sticks.

There you have it! Lunch! Heavy on the wholesome, light on the grump, and apparently thrilling enough that I not only snapped photos of it, but I had to write about it, too. tralala.

i scream, you scream

2009-09-02T22:00:00.000-07:00

Today I finally did something I've been meaning to do for ages: I made ice cream from raw goat milk. Last week I picked up a dandy ice cream machine for a cool three and a half bucks. I'll tell you what, I usually have decent thrifting karma; I picture the thing I want or need or wish for and (roughly) I find it on some secondhand store shelf soon after. But the ice cream maker eluded me for so long! We have a super source for farm fresh and tasty raw milk right now, so early in the summer I envisioned plenty of homemade ice cream in our future. But mid-summer or on autumn's doorstep, a cold frozen treat is welcome any time. I'm just glad I finally found one and the price was so low (cheaper than a store bought pint!), I had nothing to lose.

To be fair, what I really made is probably more of an "ice milk" than ice cream, seeing that I just used whole goat milk and no separated cream. Goat milk does not separate easily like cow milk does and the cream cannot be simply skimmed off the top; goat milk is naturally homogenized and contains a lower fat content, anyway. I read some recipes online, but in the end decided to wing it. I didn't go out on a wild limb or anything, I stuck to the standards, but didn't have any specific goat milk reference.

Here's what I did: in the ice cream bucket, I stirred together 2 C raw goat milk, 1/2 C organic raw sugar, 1 tsp vanilla extract, pinch of salt. In a saucepan, I whisked together 2 C raw goat milk and 2 eggs. I kept whisking until it got hot and bubbly. I don't know. And then I dumped the milk + egg mix into the maker bucket and stirred together and then followed the machine's instructions from there.

Oh, this machine, a compact seventies jobbie called, charmingly, "Ice Cream Parlor", instructed to use straight table salt, contrary to the tempting rock salt of my youth. Wasn't there always something so irresistible about sticking a finger in the cranking machine to sneak out a big lump of salt? I did have to make a special trip to the grocery outlet for regular salt, since I exclusively use sea salt in the kitchen. But that's a tiny expense (salt cylinders, 2 for $1, man, that grocery outlet always comes through for me) and worth the hassle.

It took about 40 minutes, thereabouts, before the mixture was thick and ice-cream-like. I pulled out the paddle and licked a tiny taste and oh! hello unexpected time travel moment! I'm in my grandma's backyard! I'm 7! or 10! or 14! and I have a plastic cup held out, ready for my share. Somebody's complaining that Grandma didn't make butter pecan or something fancy but I'm so glad it's plain old vanilla. So so good.

I let the children have tiny tastes, also, but then I packed it all into a container and tucked it in the back of the freezer. I love the fresh from the maker softness, but I thought a few more hours of hardening (or, in official ice cream making terms, "ripening" but seriously? ripe? ice cream? let's just call it hard, okay?) would make it easier to serve. Besides, we weren't an extended family gathering in the backyard, we were going to be getting crabby if mama didn't make dinner soon. So the timing was perfect to make the ice cream earlier and then start right into dinner prep.

This has been the biggest hit since the first time I made cinnamon rolls, a few years ago, and finished them off with a powdered sugar icing and let the cat out of the bag that, yes, such delectable treats can be made, easily, right here at home. But that doesn't mean we're going to have them all the time! So stop asking! Special things are only special if you don't do them every ding day. But that's so much sugar and this is, still, healthy goat milk and not so much sugar and the unmistakable motor sound of an ice cream machine, the round and round and round whirring. I love that sound.

quit yer bellyachin'

2009-09-01T22:43:00.000-07:00

Of course, of course, so soon as I whisper Cucumbers? What? How? My boy resumes his previous pace of consumption and I remember how right and delicious they are, sliced, alone, and doused with Goddess dressing.

Maybe the No Cooking part throws me off because (this is just between you and me, right?) for vegetarians, we don't eat a lot of raw vegetables here. And by "we" I mean "they" because I'm just one quarter of this gig. And this is funny because if you knew us when we made the leap from meat eating to not, you might remember that we did it with gusto. We were more Raw than not and every morning began with reconstituted barley grass juice.

Maybe tomorrow I'll tell you about why we stopped eating meat and why I still don't. But today I just want you to know one thing: almost everything is more beautiful when held up to the sun.

I miss August already. The light is changing, the evening more illuminated, in that glowy late summer way. I have to remind myself, I have to absolutely say out loud to myself, Be Here Now. Notice the beguiling shimmer of every plant at seven p.m. and do not stop to wonder about the missed sunrise or the passing of another month or how it's all going to possibly work out. Because this golden halo, this preternatural light, is the most important thing.

if you think her typing rambles, you should listen to her talk

2009-08-26T20:32:00.000-07:00

I was just scouring my photo archives for a capture of before and afters of my (albeit puny) backyard. We've made a lot of progress back there. I don't really know why I bought a house with such a tiny backyard, it might have had something to do with the way our family was deteriorating and we were under the house hunting gun. But, in a turn of events that is atypical for me and mine, our quick fast utilitarian emotionless decision evolved into a home we love very much. I love the space, the feel, the floor plan, the openness, the simplicity. Sometimes I wish I could pick it up and plop it down in the city, but that's the stuff of fantasy and the here and now is fine enough. Our backyard was nothing, just an overgrown narrow mess of vines and weeds, when we moved in. And now it's usable. Small, but adequate. Play space and growing space (not the vegetables, those are in the front. but we do have some hefty old grapevines and 3 hazelnut trees) and a wide covered patio and plenty of room for hanging laundry in the sun. What more could I ask for, really? Anyhow, I did not find, in my fast search, the landscape photos I wanted. But I did find that one. A vintage tablecloth thrift score. I saw a hint of the colors and pulled that cloth out of a pile and swooned. Oh. I am such a sucker for bold graphics (of kitchen implements!) and thick, sturdy cotton, and paying four dollars for something so right.

Unrelated but on my mind: my boy's slowing down on his cucumber consumption. This is noteworthy since he and I are the only cucumber eaters in the house. If I put them on their plates, washed and sliced and ready to eat, the other two will swallow them down, begrudgingly. I sowed lots of seeds which have only produced one fruit, so far. But we got several from our ace farmers this week and maybe there will be more next week, and I have one or two leftover from *last* week. I love cucumbers. I really do. But out of hand and sliced in salads is feeling monotonous. I need to help with coming up with creative ways to use them. Suggestions? (um. edible ideas only. yeah.)

don't let this fading summer pass you by

2009-08-25T22:07:00.000-07:00

Since the last time I came around here, the mister and I marked our thirteenth anniversary. Last year, I wrote a little about our whirlwind romance. And I'm proud that we made it through another year. A hard year. I keep thinking it will get easier and it keeps not getting easier and I'm not really sure what It is. But like the brilliant light that descends and casts shadows, marriage changes. I might not have to shade my eyes from the brightness of it so much anymore, but the sky can be so beautiful. And the stars in the dark night, worth waiting around for.

Also, I am still on a Neko Case kick and I am ever grateful for clever youtube users who post their own little videos, with songs I love as the background. So now I can share my favorite song off the the newest Middle Cyclone album with you. Here. I was going to tack it on at the end, but if you've never heard it, you can listen now and can catch up with me.

There is something for me, this year, about saying goodbye to summer that is so sad. Maybe it's a relic of growing up in the sunny southwestern desert. Maybe it's this stupid, nagging feeling that I missed out on the "best" years, those taut-bodied, reckless, careless days everyone seems to remember so fondly. I don't want to go backwards but I'm not ready to be in the winter of my life, either. And as much as I welcome a return to sweaters and endless cups of hot tea and seeing my breath in the outside air, I am thinking it wasn't enough. We're forecasting another warm spell this week, but it's not temperature alone I'm talking about here. It's being in the moment, it's not losing the pleasure in so much concern. It's holy heck! Thirteen years! Is this where we thought we'd be?

for science

2009-08-10T22:30:00.000-07:00

Oh, be still my nerdy little heart. Did you know that They Might Be Giants is releasing (next month!) an album of science songs? TMBG is still our family house band, and even though I usually steer away from things I love once they become really popular (which implies that I'm partial to things that are not. which would be true.) I can't find one snarky thing ever to say about those guys. Maybe they're sell-outs and sing songs up and down the Disney channel (so I've heard, we don't have cable) and provide tunes for all sorts of things. But even a band needs to make a buck and I think they still produce consistently smart and quirky and singable songs. We love them. And I love that the Johns grew up and had kids and now devote a huge portion of their work to making music for children. I firmly believe that children will love all of their stuff (my kids sure do!), so I hope that the kid-centric albums are but an introduction to a band that should really be in everybody's music collection. I wrote a little some while ago about our history with They Might Be Giants, so I won't repeat myself too much. Suffice it to say, I'm looking forward to the new release very much!

And, being that it's about science and all, I couldn't help but be reminded of this link. Seriously, i if you don't already have this very old collection of science songs bookmarked, just click on over and do it right now. If you are already familiar with TMBG, you'll recognize Why Does The Sun Shine. But the whole collection is great. I've had it linked for years (I don't remember who sent it to me. I remember passing it on -to some of you, probably!) and the tunes are so catchy and informative they quickly became part of our life. Scroll down to the "experiment songs" and you can imagine my girl, when she was still a spritely age 6, dancing outside during a desert monsoon with an umbrella singing Who's Afraid of Thunder?. I love these science songs because they sound so much like the sort of hummy little numbers I like to make up myself, but with science accuracy!

your best polenta

2009-08-06T21:40:00.000-07:00

Okay, you got me. This is about my best polenta. I've heard this rumor running around that some people don't like polenta. And since we like it a lot around here and find it quite versatile, I will tell you how I make it. The following might even resemble something like a recipe. With some exact, and some eh-whatever, amounts listed. It might become your best, too. No hard feelings if it doesn't.

I usually make a triple batch at a time, using 3 cups of cornmeal. You can buy coarse cornmeal that is specifically labeled 'polenta' but my regular cornmeal, which I buy 25# at a time from a natural foods bulk distributor, is coarse enough for me. I will just write up the amounts for a regular sized batch, but the pictures are from a triple.

4 C water
1 C cornmeal
3 TBSP olive oil
1 tsp sea salt
a whole buncha chopped up kale (or other greens)

Bring the water, oil, and salt to boil in a good sized pot. Slowly stir in the cornmeal. Keep stirring and turn the heat down so it's just simmering. If you pour the cornmeal in slowly and stir vigorously, there shouldn't be any lumps. Keep stirring while it thickens. I tend to start out with a whisk and then switch to a wooden spoon.

Once it's fairly thick, like pudding, I wash up a lot of kale and chop it. Tip: always put in more kale (or spinach or beet greens or whatever) than you think is right. Once they're cooked up they practically disappear and I like to err on the side of too many greens than not enough.

Then I dump the kale into the pot and stir it in completely.

It should be very thick. Very thick! Es muy importante!

Pour the whole mass into a greased bread loaf pan and let it set up. I put it in the fridge if I have a while or the freezer if I am in a hurry. Which for all my energy saving endeavors is an all around AWESOME idea, sticking just off the burner glop into a 0 degree freezer, I'm sure my freezer hates me. It takes a few hours in the fridge to get good and set up and hard. I think this is the key to making it my best polenta.

Once it's set up, I flip it out onto a cutting board and cut thin slices. If it was cooked slowly and thickly and had enough time in the fridge to set up, it will cut easily and will not fall apart.

I put the slices on a greased baking sheet and bake at 400 until brown and crispyish, about 20 minutes. I took pictures of the process, but you can see that the dinner frenzy, the "Mama! I'm Hungry Wight Now!"s and my "Yes, I know you're hungry, that's why I'm cooking dinner"s getting more frequent and closer together, distracted me and I did not grab the camera for the baking part or the eating part. I like to cook them until they're almost a little crunchy. Use your imagination.

We eat it under stuff, like pasta or vegetables or lentils, or on its own in a snacky way, or as a medium for dipping up hummus. So many ways to love polenta! My girl always requests that I whip up some "polenta sauce", which is her favorite way to eat it. The polenta sauce is one of those crazy things I made up once and was so well received it became a family staple (which is honestly the history of most of my dishes). It's stupidly simple and surprisingly delicious and you should make some and try it. It goes like this: you blend together marinara sauce and ground raw almonds. Es todo, no mas! I keep ground almonds on hand (and throw the stuff into all kinds of random things) but if you do not, you should. Gah, so bossy. No, if you don't, you should grind up your raw almonds first and then add the marinara sauce. I can't tell you amounts. I do it until it's thick and, this sounds weird but you'll just have to try it and see, cheesy. It becomes rich and creamy and is very reminiscent of cheese (I first made this when we were very very vegan and while we do eat -goat- dairy now, and have for some years, I'm still down with no animal product meals and eat a lot of 'em) and spooned on top of, or as a dipping sauce for, my best polenta? it's really good.

Oh, and I should mention that you could make this without the greens, but then you'd be making it without greens, and why would you wanna go and do that for?

the wrong and the right of it

2009-08-05T21:05:00.000-07:00

Today was rotten. This is not my complainy place but I can't be one of those happy all the time, organic cotton and clotted cream bloggers. Oh you know the genre. Not the mommybloggers, but the betterthanyouraveragemommybloggers. I don't really think that everyone who blogs such constant contentment and harmony and unicorns is really like that all of the time. I appreciate presenting a certain public image. I do it myself, to a lesser degree. I'm not blogging with my pants down here, you know. It's me, but a muted me. The one that can say, hey internet! I'm here, too! But will hopefully not get me in trouble anywhere.

So even if I feel like I'm crashing some kind of blogging party by even daring to stick my words someplace and think other people might read them, I like being here. But as I was sitting on a blanket at the park today, at a park day sort of thing that is supposed to be friendly and fun and terrific, for children and parents alike, I was thinking about what a party crasher I always am, about how I really shouldn't bother. I managed, all morning, to be the same old cheerful mama that my children expect of me, the humorous and laughing mama, the engaged and patient one. It was a going through the motions morning, but the motions are such well-worn paths, I can close my eyes and steer without thinking and arrive, effortlessly, at the same gentle and kind (but firm) destination.

But by mid-day, the auto pilot went awry and I struggled to keep on track at all. Everything felt hard and wrong and rotten. So there I was at the park, and it happened that I had to be supportive of my daughter who had just experienced a huge disappointment (she was hoping to run into a kindred spirit she knows, who she has seen only once all summer and fell apart a little when she learned that was not to be). And in trying to comfort her, I just cracked. The plaster facade chipped away I have never been so glad to be wearing large dark sunglasses.

I sat there by myself and let all of my worries and regrets collide in a fiery explosion in my head. I sat there and wondered What The Eff Am I Doing Here?! Here being the park, an obvious outsider. Here being my town, lovely but not enough. Here being my life and situation, here being unknown and unemployable and thirty-three and, let me tell you, if you're going to have an existential crisis, maybe don't do it in a public park. Not that anybody noticed or that there was anything to notice, but it was an awful feeling. Maybe you call that feeling feeling-sorry-for-yourself, whatever. I was sorry and I was feeling and I was all by myself and if the shoe fits. . .

And then my boy fell off the play structure. His foot slipped on one of those big, curvey ladders and he fell, the back of his head bonking on the way down. He screamed, I ran to him, scooped him up, "I just want to go home wight now" he cried. And I couldn't have agreed with him more. We quickly gathered our things and made a beeline for the car. We've had other park day busts before, but this is the first one that felt weightier, more of a symbol of our not belonging, than any other.

I did not intend to write about this. I guess it just fell out and I am too jumbleheaded to erase and think of something else.

But even when so much is wrong, even when I seem to keep setting myself (and my kids) up for disappointment all the time, even when I don't know how to begin to get things right, I have to remember this: there are still books and blackberries, there are aprons and pockets and toast, there are songs and sunflowers, full moons and laundry on the line, and a dear little boy and his cat.

thoughts about purple

2009-08-04T22:23:00.000-07:00

When I was young (my son tells me, "you are wung, mama. you are not old and winkley!" and i think he will probably need glasses like his sister) I really liked purple. This is nothing surprising, what given my age and gender and, oh, the fact that there was a lot of freaking purple in the 1980s. I had many purple things, most of which are memories now. Save for this terrible cotton/poly caftan sort of thing, I don't even know. It was a "bathing suit cover-up" when I was my daughter's age, but I sure tried to pull off wearing it as a dress, cinched in the middle with a silver sequined belt cast-off from my grandma. And once it stopped being the inspiration for failed fashion design attempts, I started sleeping it it. It was a nightgown thing, more ragged every year, for the rest of my childhood. I had it when I got married (nothing says wedding night like the bathing suit cover-up you wore when you were ten, hey baby! not specifically then, just I moved it with me and had in the back of the drawer). I found it and wore it, indeed, when I was in labor with my girl. It sort of went into hiding for a few years and now, I'm not quite sure how it happened, but my daughter found it and sleeps in it. Full circle. It is hideous. I think I like my purple better now when it's not in my closet (full disclosure: I'm wearing a purple stripey t-shirt today, so I'm fickle like that).

quickberry! quackberry! pick me a blackberry!

2009-08-03T21:52:00.000-07:00

Yes, I know that blackberries are the invasive scourge of yards and farms and gardens all over this part of the country. Yes, a vexation, but, oh, so tasty. I don't want to imply that everyone born and raised in this area is across the board callous and hard toward the brambly fruit. But it seems to me that the longer one has lived around these parts, the more blackberries are a nuisance. The more their tart sweetness, their abundance, is taken for granted. Having grown up in the southwestern desert, and having had a recent 3 year stay in Arizona, I cannot help being in awe -still!- that berries grow wild, like, everywhere. You just take a walk and pick them. On the side of the road, wherever! Bring a bowl. Bring several. Because there are just so! many! berries!

We're on the front end of blackberries now. We rode our bikes the other day to a sure picking spot. The bramble was thick and the berries were plenty. The best ones are always just beyond reach, but if you're careful, you can slide a slow arm in among the thorns and get to ripe ones, the juicy ones that just fall off the vine when touched, the ones that drip purple juice down your fingers.

We came home with just a few pounds. Enough for having fresh blackberries on hand for a few days. There will lots more berry picking trips in the weeks to come.

My boy requested a blackberry pie, but I'm no good at pies. I'm a rotten, lousy, grumpy pie maker. This has, I like to think, nothing to do with my skills in the kitchen and is completely about my preference for using whole grain flours. Wholesome and healthy, right on! But I can't make a pie crust for anything. The dough is too thick and falls apart and I've given up (yes, this is the part where a committed pastry chef would scoff at my ingredient choice and wonder why I don't just get the right sort of processed flour. and, well, this where I respond that I guess I'm just not all that committed to pie. love pie, but slopping crunchy crisps and cobblers together is fine enough for me).

No pie, then. That's when I thought about a friend of mine who made and served a blueberry boy bait when she had our family over for dinner recently. It was delicious, light and fluffy and well-received by all. When she first said blueberry boy bait, I heard Blueberry Boy bait. A bait for blueberry boys. Which probably sounds like a ridiculous thing for me to have heard, until you consider how many times in my mothering tenure I've read aloud Peter in Blueberry Land. Many, many many times. The blueberry boys and the cranberry girls are practically my kids' cousins. But no, it's actually like this: blueberry Boy Bait. Like the "boy bait" is the product and it just happens to be blueberry flavored.

I have no business baiting boys. Apparently, the recipe was created by a fifteen year old contestant in the 1954 pillsbury bake-off. And you have to know that the naming is always everything. But it is a fun thing to say. Even if you're 33 and married and only glance up a little when the college track boys run by your house (wait, did I type that out loud?).

So I made a blackberry boy bait, using this recipe. I substituted, um, blackberries for the blueberries, upping the quantity a smidge. I also used (see above) whole wheat flour. I think the extra fruit makes up for the slight heaviness that the whole wheat flour causes. And, in my book, you can't go wrong with cooked up fruit, in just about any form.

My three (a girl and a man and one little boy) all seemed to be quite taken by its charms. I guess it worked? I confess that I haven't had any yet, so I can't proclaim its deliciousness first hand. I'm saving my piece for tomorrow's breakfast.

the words are written in the air

2009-08-02T22:25:00.000-07:00

Someday the herb bed in our front yard will (per the plan) border a reclaimed brick patio. Right now, it's just a big L cut into the middle of our grass. Really, it's the girl's herb garden, she is the current and future healer, the one who sings to plants and stops bleeding with leaves and has an apothecary of sorts underneath her loft bed. And maybe it looks funny, the way all these plants are springing up, surrounded by lawn. But so many of them are flowering now, and mostly they just look beautiful:

I was playing this song (this impromptu-esque live version, particularly, more than the studio version) a lot this past winter. And something made me think of it today. It's glad and hummy and oh, thirtysomethingwithkidsandworriesandbilllsandgrayhair don't you remember dancing?

Lykke Li & Bon Iver doing 'Dance Dance Dance' in L.A from Lykke Li on Vimeo.

one more

2009-08-01T22:13:00.000-07:00

This is true: I can point out, on each of my children, the very first freckle that ever popped up on their fair skin. And this could be an embarrassing thing to admit. What sort of hyperfocused, hovering smothering mother would, could know such a thing?! But when something happens slowly, one little speck at a time, you notice. And since then I've lost count, of course. The way losing track of things happens the more things you have.

If you're here with me now, I guess you're all over other places, too. I don't read so many blogs, but enough that my Reader usually has something interesting for me and plenty, I'm sure, to keep me away from the pile of laundry on the bed (doing laundry? hanging it on the line and all that even? no problem, bring it on! but the putting away is something else entirely). I can keep up with what I've got, is what I'm saying and I don't seek out new folks to follow anymore, even when I read little bits that make me think, oh! yes! that!

Which is all to say, there's always room for maybe one more and I'm really glad that one of my favorite people is writing more and maybe you know and love her, too. Or maybe you don't but you might. Hey, milkstained this one's for you!

Also, those tomatoes were the first that our yard produced. I found and picked four the other day, took them in and washed them, put them on the cutting board, salad greens waiting in a bowl. But I had forgotten to take a picture! So I did stop making dinner and grab my camera and the tomatoes and run back outside. The first tomatoes must be documented! Oh, digital age, you let me be a memory hoarding freak so effortlessly; the obsession isn't just tolerated, it's practically expected, lauded, in some circles. Yes. So, I was holding four tomatoes in one hand, trying to hold and focus with my other and wait? what is that over there? another one! We have a lot of tomato plants (for our small gardening space) and expect many, many more. No worries: I won't take a picture of each one. Promise.

i've said it before and i'll say it again

2009-07-28T22:36:00.001-07:00

Anybody who is lobbying for forbidding the use of cell phones while driving has NEVER DRIVEN WITH CHILDREN. I'm all for safe driving. I think it should be harder to get a driver's license. I'd be supportive of additional requirements to maintain said license, say, bi-annual testing or something. I do believe there are too many people on the road and that, in general, cars are not much respected and are totally overused. We sit behind these giant, heavy potential murder machines and we zip around like it's nothing. I like being a biker and a pedestrian when I can. But I also really, really love driving. Fast. And Far. It's a wonderful feeling. I like to think that I balance my enjoyment of motoring with my conscientiousness of other drivers, the rules of the road, the environment (but I'm not a hypermiler. No. I leave that one to the mister). And as much as I'd like to believe every other driver on the road is similarly mindful, I know that's not true.

I see stupid drivers all the time. Some of them are using cell phones, most of them are not. Studies apparently indicate that driving while using a cell phone is the same as driving while drunk.

And yet, I find myself the most distracted not while talking on a cell phone (our only household phone these days is one cell phone I share with my husband and sometimes, yes, I have it in the car with me) but while attending to the needs of my children. And any parent probably knows what I'm talking about. And any parent of carsick-prone children definitely knows what I'm talking about. Have you ever been hurtling down the freeway when you hear that unmistakable pre-puke chokey cough from the backseat?! Have you ever been the sole adult in a vehicle with two green kids with their hands over their mouths?! No? Because I have. I have scrabbled for some sort of vomit-catching vessel, I have flailed my short arms backwards and tried to dispense bowls and cloth napkins. I have tried desperately to keep my eyes on the road while assessing the damage behind me (did it all get in the bowl? do i need to stop to take the car seat cover off and give it a rinse with the water bottle?).

So I'll tell you what, Hang-Up-And-Drive-ers, I'll get on board with your agenda when you find someone to ride shotgun with me all the time. Or when you ban kids from the car. Because when they're not puking? They could be crying (my babies aren't babies anymore but I did not have little ones who tolerated the car well at all. There was screaming. A lot of screaming) or, maybe, singing, like, I'm Henry the 8th I am Hen-er-eeee THE EIGHT I AM I AM I GOT MARRIED TO THE WIDOW NEXT DOOR SHE'S BEEN MARRIED SEVEN TIMES BEFORE AND EVERY ONE WAS AN 'ENERY ('enery!), WOULDN'T 'AVE A WILLY OR A SAM (no sam!) over and over and over again (SECOND VERSE, SAME AS THE FIRST) until driving into oncoming traffic begins to sound like a sensible alternative.

So you know what I think? I think current road rules need to be enforced. I think driving has become a right and not a privilege (and really, rights vs. privileges is a subject that crosses many topics and deserves its own post). I think making rules against cell phone use will not make the roads safer. I think it should be much more difficult to become a driver in the first place.

And for the record, I'm not serious about banning kids from the car. Even if I relish solo drives by cranking up the speakers louder than growing ears should hear, I am in the car with my children more often than not and I like it that way. But let's call a spade a spade, ok? Distraction comes in many forms and good drivers need to be prepared to handle most of them.

it's friday i'm in love

2009-07-24T13:47:00.000-07:00

When life gives you lemons, watch youtube clips of somebody else's peaches! Or pick your own blueberries! Or um, amuse yourself with silly words you write and share with other people. I do all three! And by 'peaches' I mean 'music videos' and not, well, I'm not looking to shake any trees, ok?

So, instead of totting up a pile of troubles, I present a few things that are glad things which I am loving right this moment:

Blueberries. Maybe my favorite fruit. They're so easy and snackable and versatile. I like other berries, too, but blueberries aren't messy and seedy and thorny. We have a place right local that picks on shares: pick and leave half and take the other half for free. And you know around here we've got more time than money these days, so it's a great trade.

Most of our berries go in the freezer for post-summer snacking and such, but I have been banging out a batch of muffins about every week (I'd make them more often but then we'd just eat more). I make some delicious muffins. If I do say so myself. And I do. I use this recipe as a guide, but I sub and fiddle as I go. Following recipes exactly makes me itchy.

And while we're in the kitchen, let's give a shout-out to the newly installed and fabulous DISHWASHER. A fanflippingtastic electric machine that washes dishes WHILE I AM IN THE OTHER ROOM like magic. Beautiful. It's been a long time coming, in the idea and the design and the securing of salvaged and secondhand materials and building and the putting in and everything. Because, oh? My handy husband constructed an island to house said dishwasher and then had to finagle electric and plumbing to the middle of the kitchen. He is an ace. And now I have more very useful counter space. I had a lot of counter space already, but having an island in the middle, accessible from all sides, is extra great. The island has an outlet, also, so I can operate my stand mixer from it, which is more convenient than hefting it across the kitchen, where it doesn't work so well anyway because the above cupboards are too low for it to slide underneath. So, dishwasher island? All around Win!!

Eventually, we'd like to procure a fat butcher block, the island top is currently a scrap of old varnished and trimmed plywood we found in the garage. It has faint perforated cutting marks all over it, so I think it was Mrs. Duerst's pattern cutting board for sewing. That's my guess anyway. I'm sure she'd be glad to see it getting new life in the kitchen, instead of gathering dust up in the dusty rafters.

OH! Bonus! I almost forgot: check out the dishwasher picture again. Notice anything else? Anything wonderful and yellow and smooth and clean? That's right, chickens, somebody got a new kitchen floor! We've been living with it for a few months now and I never got around to posting about it here. Having a floor that actually is clean-able and is not the texture of sandpaper is pretty terrific. The before and after contrast is astounding and, trust me, every bit of complaining I did about the old floor was justified. Really, the old floor was so awful it deserved more grousing about and public humiliation. I've lived in a lot of different homes and I've had as many different kitchen floors and I've never felt so defeated as with that nasty surface. Really, if your floor gets dirty and cleaning it is a trial, remember: it could be worse! It could be so rough and pitted and scratchy nothing will clean it! Floor cleaning was sure put into perspective for me.

Okay, and this is sort of kitchen related, too, because if you were in my kitchen now you'd hear Neko Case's newest, Middle Cyclone. I've been listening to it all this past week and I'm not done yet. She has, so says me, maybe one of the best singing voices in the history of voices and singing. She sounds like a huge sky and deep blue and perfect clouds and I love her. I could listen to her singing all day. Oh wait, I have! I'm nothing if not repetitive! Anyhow, this song I'm sharing isn't my favorite off the album, but the video is tops. You'll like it.

oh, southern new mexico.

2009-07-22T16:25:00.000-07:00

I am from goatheads in bicycle tires, from Sunny Delight and sunburns.

I am from a single story ranch with stucco exterior, so dry, the sand in windstorms attacking legs like a thousand tiny knives.

I am from yucca pods and anthills and hundreds of acres of green grass in the middle of the desert.

I am from restaurants with salad bars and not talking about it, from Johnnie and Dave and Ruth.

I am from funny and acting like everything is fine.

From too big for your britches and ENOUGH!

I am from a southern baptist deacon and the church secretary and vacation bible school and being there every time the doors were open (of being the ones who opened the doors).

I'm from The Land of Enchantment and Hatch Chile and pizza delivery.

From a large man with a larger personality who broke his back in the rodeo, lived loud and wild and then settled down with a small town girl. They eloped three months after meeting.

I am the school pictures in frames on shelves in my grandma's house, alongside so many jars of marbles. Faces stuck in contrived smiles, bad haircuts, dated styles holding little bits that I thought I wanted to forget, but as it turns out, I do not.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I snagged the bones of that poem whilst booking some face yesterday. (Also, and only precariously related to the subject at hand, hence the overused parentheses: how much do I simultaneously love and hate the facebook? A Lot. On one hand, I am tempted to get all Tyler Durden-ish and flip the whole insane concept the bird. Knowing where we come from is one thing, but keeping tedious record of every step along the way is something completely different. We are so much more than status updates, than folders of photos, than lines of basic info on profile pages. . . We are thoughts and words and relationships. We are not things to be collected. But, then, I do like having a list of folks handy, like a loaded, useful Rolodex. And I do play some mean Scrabble. So. . . I stick around).

You can make one, too. A 'Where You're From' poem. Let me know if you do. I had my girl write one, and asked her if I could post it here and she declined. Maybe later, she said. She had some tweaking still to do.

For your creative writing enjoyment (the following copied and pasted from a friend's facebook post, which I will assume she lifted from elsewhere and so on):

"If you don't know where you're from, you'll have a hard time saying where you're going." Wendell Berry, among others, has voiced this idea that we need to understand our roots to know our place in the world. A poem by George Ella Lyons is called "Where I'm From." The poem lends itself to imitation and makes a wonderful exercise of exploration in belonging.

I'd like to suggest that you give it a try. The prompts have a way of drawing out memories of the smells of attics and bottom-drawer keepsakes; the faces of long-departed kin, the sound of their voices you still hold some deep place in memory. You'll be surprised that, when you're done, you will have said things about the sources of your unique you-ness that you'd never considered before. What's more, you will have created something of yourself to share--with your children, spouse, siblings--that will be very unique, very personal and a very special gift.

The template is below. Give it a try, and post your own "Where I'm From" poem. Then tag a few friends, and see where they are from...

I am from _______ (specific ordinary item), from _______ (product name) and _______.

I am from the _______ (home description... adjective, adjective, sensory detail).

I am from the _______ (plant, flower, natural item), the _______ (plant, flower, natural detail)

I am from _______ (family tradition) and _______ (family trait), from _______ (name of family member) and _______ (another family name) and _______ (family name).

I am from the _______ (description of family tendency) and _______ (another one).

From _______ (something you were told as a child) and _______ (another).

I am from (representation of religion, or lack of it). Further description.

I'm from _______ (place of birth and family ancestry), _______ (two food items representing your family).

From the _______ (specific family story about a specific person and detail), the _______ (another detail, and the _______ (another detail about another family member).

I am from _______ (location of family pictures, mementos, archives and several more lines indicating their worth).

home bittersweet home

2009-07-21T12:16:00.000-07:00

Having 13 different addresses in 13 years has blurred my concept of Home. I am more attached to things than place. I am always one foot out the door. I am tired of starting over (with people, routines, what's familiar). I am envious of those who can Stay.

Almost every time I listen to a To The Best Of Our Knowledge podcast, I hear some little piece (or sometimes, the whole thing) that I want to talk, to someone, about. A friend of mine said it's a little too "baby boomer"-ish and, well, it's true. The intended audience might be a few decades ahead of me. But when I was in the 5th grade, I honestly wrote, for an autobiographic school report, that my favorite television show was 20/20. Which is to say: I've always been a little old for my years (what's quirky at ten is maybe less so come thirtysomething).

The other night I listened, riveted, to an episode about Home. The segments were not so compelling, but the subject is just so confounding to me.

Confession: I always feel like an interloper.

The last 13 years of my life have provided very little continuity, the setting keeps changing and the supporting cast revolves and I stand on the periphery, out of place. I don't know what it's like to be an integral part of anything beyond my own little family of four.

I was so attached to the place I grew up, I bolted at first chance. This is not uncommon (but neither is a grown-up desire to move back, which I don't have and would not consider). My story is not unique. We've changed homes a lot. So what?

So I'm done. I don't want to pack up and move again. I don't want to cram my stuff into the back of a U-Haul one more time. I don't want my furniture to get more bangs and scrapes from smashing through doorways, up staircases.

But I don't know if I can call this place Home. We just ended up here. I said I wouldn't move to this town and then, so quickly, here we were. Here I am.

Who knows how much longer we can keep the bank happy. As it turns out, joblessness is not so compatible with paying one's bills. Which means the shuffle shimmy balancing act will topple one of these days and our house will be on the chopping block. And we'll be. . . ?

Home is rest. Of not thinking about where you might be living down the road, of the question not even entering the equation. Because it's always in the back of my mind. I'm always wondering, anticipating the shift in the wind that will cause circumstances to change and have us scrambling for a new place. My how we've scrambled.

So it might happen that I'm not done. That there's more moving in store for us. It's a worry. And not such a great lurking shadow to have around if becoming more invested in this place is the goal (is it?).

Yeah, I don't know.

don't be afraid of what you've learned

2009-07-14T21:56:00.000-07:00

Some while ago, NPR All Songs Considered shared for free download a collection of songs from the SXSW music festival in Austin. (It is endlessly amusing to me that my number one source for new music is national public radio.) I listen to it often and this is probably my favorite of the bunch.

I had this great idea that I'd share a song I'm currently enjoying on Sunday nights here, and that has worked out some, but I'm so sporadic with my posting, it's better to just put stuff up as it occurs to me.

Tonight we loaded up the bicycles (3 plus a trailer for the boy) and zipped down to an outdoor concert. We sat on a blanket, near friends, and listened to fun music (not music I'd share here, or want on my ipod, say, but just right for hanging out with a picnic dinner in an oak grove) and basked in the perfect loveliness of a summer evening in this part of my green state. I am not musical. I sing in the shower. I think about singing karaoke (but have never done it!), and wish I could *play* something. I can't. The radio. That's it. Yet, even so, music is such a force. Such a perfect background. Like the right color paint on the walls. And I'm glad for it. That's all.

the freshy fresh

2009-07-09T19:43:00.000-07:00

(plus bonus proof that my kids are all kinds of awesome)

I never ate a fresh pea, right off the vine, until I was an adult. I grew up with a peripheral, suspicious, disdainful relationship with vegetables. There were salad vegetables (assumed mostly for my dad, who can build and eat a salad the size of a breadbox) and there were side dish vegetables, which arrived to the table via their interim life in a Del Monte can. Globs of slimy spinach, Flaccid asparagus (which, it's true, I still sometimes get a craving for, though I haven't indulged in well past a decade), and Mushy peas, too limp to bother rolling off the plate.

It's a stark contrast, then, how my two run outside. How the little one asks me, before he plucks a pod, "is this one fat enough, mama?". How they sit on the front steps, together, dropping the shelled peas into a bowl. How they eat them up by the handful, how they always want more.

So, it's like a triple whammy of wonderfulness here to me. Fresh, delicious veggies in my own yard. My children being sweet and cooperative, a little pea-picking team. Knowing that fond memories, of food and family alike, are being created every day.

the garden post

2009-07-03T12:58:00.000-07:00

Earlier this spring, a lady drove by my house, screeched to a stop, threw her car into a fast reverse and pulled over by our curb, "I love what you're doing here."

We love what we're doing, too, even if I have a hard time seeing past all the Undone stuff to appreciate the accomplishments we've made in our 20 months of living here. Of course any outdoor improvements are for our own sake, but a little compliment goes a long way. It was nice to hear something positive, even from a stranger.

And then she asked, "Were you inspired by the First Lady?"

Ok. I admit that my first reaction to that question was something like, really? Results from all those pushups I've been doing are that noticeable? Dang.

Oh wait. Random friendly stranger lady was not talking about my biceps. Michelle Obama's upper arms have sure had a lot of media attention in the month's following her husband's inauguration. But let's just say that I wouldn't want to arm wrestle her. Yet.

She was talking about our raised beds. She motioned toward the the first baby kale leaves coming out of the ground, "She's planting vegetables in the White House lawn, you know."

I do know. I think it's wonderful.

But the presidential garden was not an inspiration for our decision to use a chunk of front lawn for food. No, I told the lady, we were doing it already.

Our garden is in our front yard because our backyard, while giving us grapes and plenty of hazelnuts, is too small and shady for much of anything to grow. The orientation of our house on our lot is such that we have more open space in the front than we do in the back. As in, the exact opposite of the way most city houses are situated.

If we wanted to grow anything -and we did!- we had to depend on our front yard space. Last year we put in one raised bed in a funny unused strip along the front side. And this spring we added two more, and beds around the perimeter.

Certainly front yard gardens are not so unusual. I notice them here and there. But it's much, much more common to have vegetables in the back.

We did what worked for us. And it's working, still. What I didn't expect, though, was how people would react. Not just the I Brake For Gardens lady driving by, but others. They ask us what we're growing. They nod their heads and say, oh, my back yard is shady, too. They smile.

I like having food growing in a place that is so visible to the street. I like owning our decision to have a garden in a way that makes our gardening part of the landscape of my neighborhood. I can't grumble about my neighborhood if I'm not doing anything to make it better. The more we're out in it (and we spend so much time out front these days), the less I grumble.

My front garden isn't going to wow anybody. It's humble and weedy and cobbled together. But it might encourage somebody else to use some of their front sunshiney lawn for something a little more useful (I'm not a lawn hater! Everything I ever had as child was a direct result of lawns! My dad was/is a sod farmer!). And it will certainly give us some food (which is important!), and a shared activity, more pleasure in our own space.

Here are our front beds 3 months ago:

And a picture from today:

warts and all

2009-06-19T22:16:00.000-07:00

I'm sure you love me just the way I am. I, however, have been less than fond of the pesky lump on my wrist for some time. Now it's small, nothing anyone would probably notice. But it would itch sometimes and I'd see it and feel chagrined. Stupid wart, killing my chances as a wristwatch model. What to do? (this is so simple and unbelievable and effective and simple it's going to blow your mind a little).

Don't worry, while this is a home remedy anyone can do, this is not the wart removal technique I heard growing up. My great-grandmother legendarily instructed the afflicted individual to take a kernel of corn, rub it on the wart, look out into the yard and mentally choose a chicken, toss the corn into the yard, and if the chosen chicken ate the corn - voila! Bob's your uncle, the wart is gone!

But say you're low on chickens or superstitions? Then what?

You pluck a dandelion. Squeeze the stem. Spread the milky juice on your wart. Okay, wait. Back up. It helps to have a cute little fella in overalls and rainboots pick your dandelion.

This is what my wrist looked like before I smeared any dandelion milk on it at all. It's a little red and, though the picture isn't wonderfully clear, definitely raised.

My intent was to take a picture every day, but I forgot and that's kind of boring anyway. A picture of my wrist every day? hah-shoo, hah-shoo. Also, I neglected to apply the dandelion milk again for a few days. After the first application, the wart skin got dark and scabby. I really should have taken a picture of that, but it's probably for the better that I didn't. For your sake, anyway. And then the scabby came off in a shower and the area was no longer raised. I have only bothered to put the dandelion milk on one more time.

And now it looks like this:

There's a shiny dot of fresh, happy skin now! Could anything be cheaper, easier, less invasive?!

I can't remember where I picked this up, but I do remember it's something we did to effectively remove a wart on the husband's hand years ago and I remember taking family walks and the girl would pluck dandelions and rub them on her hand, too, just like her dad. She was about 2 then, so I guess this has been in our home remedy arsenal since then, 8 years or so. We've used it numerous times.

Not that we're a particularly warty bunch.

it is what it is

2009-06-15T18:06:00.000-07:00

Monday night at my house = soup, stew or chili night. More or less. My menu ideas are always so broad, the esoteric details not typically revealed until right at prep time. If I know, vaguely, what sort of thing to make, I work from that point and use what I've got. Am I doing a casserole? A stir-fry? Pasta? Each category gives me a good beginning direction and I take what's in my pantry, my fridge, and go from there. I can follow recipes but it's more comfortable for me to throw things together, some of this. . . a little of that. . . the way my boy does in the backyard. Holly berries, dry leaves and dog water? No problem. I got chili simmering (my old 3 bean + quinoa standard) early enough today -before lunch even!- and had visions of an early dinner and an early bedtime (for the children, anyway; more light means they stay up so late and the husband and i zonk out soon after and lose out on any grown-up teevee watching time) but an unplanned late nap and all the other things that come to a head in the late afternoon happened and here it is now: just after six and I'm my second jam jar into a bottle of cheap pink wine and the cornbread's still in the oven.

just going through the motions

2009-06-07T20:51:00.000-07:00

There was something both complete hilarious and utterly grotesque about listening to a few backlogged episodes of James Howard Kunstler podcasts while painting my half bath yellow. (psst! If you're not listening to JHK's Kunstlercast, I guess I don't know why, maybe because you didn't know about it? Well, hey! Now you do!). It's not that I am a big fan of climate change and the end of cheap oil and drastic transitions. It's that I think they're all inevitable -sooner than we think even!- and I'd rather know what I'm up against than be caught with my head in a vat of air conditioned petroleum when the stuff hits the fan, you know.

So while my head was thinking about this stuff, my hands were so frivolously changing the color of a bathroom that is mostly used by guests (when I remember to tell guests it's there, so hidden it is around the corner where no one notices, and when we have guests at all, not so often, really). And it seemed like a foolish sort of task.

Life in the Bleak House here (really, we could take a number because our plight is not unique, but it's hard to always keep that perspective) has been full up with foolishness. I'd like to stand tall and declare how everything we do is purposeful, useful, good. But our home improvement projects (and there have been many!) are mostly for our own pleasure. I'm indescribably pleased about the new kitchen floor. I'm delighted every time I walk into my cheerfully blue laundry room. I cross my fingers that if, as we suspect, we might have to put this home we love on the ~~chopping block~~ real estate market sooner than later, the improvements will make all the difference.

But we're still totally protected by the comfort of cheap(ish) oil. We still have the luxury of doing fluffy things, frivolous things, things that will matter less when life is leaner and our collective amusement ranks lower.

However, tonight's Sunday and I made pizza, like I do, and now, because I swear I haven't forgotten, I will share a song, and that's amusing.

I find myself humming this song all the time. It's used as the opening song for the kunstlercast and it stuck in my head so much that I had to look it up and download it for my very own. And then! When looking for a decent quality version to embed here, I found this little gem, the only non-live copy on youtube and it made me smile. (I am a responsible adult who does her own dishes! Ha! Yes!)

do you believe in magic?

2009-05-30T21:29:00.000-07:00

We have, right now as I type, several polaroid pictures of my girl, my big ten and a half yr old girl, from her littler days tacked up on the corkboard in my kitchen. I love a polaroid picture. I've had a camera for years, but all the moves (and then, all the moves) have made a lot of non-essentials difficult to pin down and find. We came across it just the last week or so (with a packet of unopened film in the case, even!) and so, when we packed for a cabin camping trip with some local homeschooling friends, I knew I had to bring it along.

I haven't much written about the H word here. Homeschooling. And I don't plan to write much about it. On one hand, it adds such bright gladness to our days, is such a perfect extension of the way we respect and trust and live, that it deserves not one entry, but many, a whole dedicated blog of entries. But there are plenty of homeschooling blogs out there. Just like there are plenty of baby blogs and mommy blogs and vegetarian blogs and sustainable blogs and other such blogs of various passion. And so any curious party could click and find exuberant defense of this alternative-to-the-mainstream lifestyle choice. I don't need to expound on it here. I wouldn't get it right, anyway. So, on the other hand: it's too true and personal, too beyond scrutiny and defense. It's funny, the way some people immediately launch into why they "could/would never. . . " homeschool when they discover that I do. Because truthfully? I don't care. I do what works best for my little family and I trust that you do, too. What Works Best. I think that's the essence. And I can be very rational and serious and ramble on about reading comprehension and self-esteem and understanding of chronological history and long division, and the "working best" might fit under any standardized government expectation. But the best really lives in a place you can't so much measure: in the way we get along, in my kid's resilience in all the change we've thrust upon her, in my children's sweet sibling relationship, despite their 7 year age gap. So many other things. It's not my job to make other people comfortable with my choices and so with this one, especially, when the stakes are so high and egos so fragile, I remain mostly disengaged. My kid doesn't go to school. Never has. Who knows what the future holds? Ask about Socialization at your own risk (I'm pretty far past any teeth-kicking instinct, but eye-rolling is still fair game).

ANYWAY (consider the previous paragraph one giant parenthetical aside, minus the visible parentheses). I don't care if your kids have video games (mine don't.) or cable (nope.) or some kind of crazy, innovative l.e.d. light flashing interactive toilet (uhhhh. . , i was drawing a blank on examples), no modern child is too jaded to be fascinated by the polaroid.

The technology of Polaroid is timeless, in that it's as absolutely fascinating to children now as it was to children in the seventies, the eighties. The surprise when the camera spits out the print -even though it's expected, it's a little wonderful and surprising every time-is the same. The innate urge to grab it and whap it gently around in the air remains. The thrill of watching the picture emerge, shapes like ghosts forming on the film, is just as thrilling!

It was such fun to break it out with a bunch of children around. (also, camping with a bunch of children = a good time. we almost always camp with just our little family and it was a special sort of lovely to have kids romping around together in the woods like that). The polaroid is the magic pipe and the children follow. I was disappointed to find out that the film was expired and while it still worked somewhat, the colors were wavy and yellowed. I need to get some more film soon.

Any photograph snaps a moment, the seen and unseen of one quick second, but a polaroid maybe captures something more. You push the button and *just like that* you go from looking at the moment, being in the moment, to holding the moment. And sure, I use a digital camera almost exclusively. Digital photography gratifies instantly, as well. But it's not the same. I love my little Canon Rebel, and I'm quite fond of a lot of pictures I take, but digital photos are a little, to me, like looking at a picture of a picture of a picture. Even when the quality is brilliant and the colors vibrant and beautiful, the emotion feels less authentic to me. Polaroids produce a poorer quality print, but capture emotion like no other camera can. So says me.

I'm thinking of a polaroid art project that would be fun to execute. Actually, I'm thinking of dental emergencies and joblessness and unpaid bills and this house of cards we all live in, but I'd like to be thinking of taking instant pictures and leaving them around town. I'd like forget my worries for a moment and maybe help other people forget theirs, too. Something like that.

nobody gives a damn

2009-05-24T20:09:00.001-07:00

So. Maybe you noticed I missed last Sunday. I missed all last week, actually. A week ago the kids and I took a 5-hr drive up to visit friends. Upon our return home, we had one crazy busy day sandwiched in-between that trip and a two day camping trip with our local homeschool group. All the while our major appliances were living in the living room while the husband replaced our troublesome kitchen floor. We finally, yesterday, moved the washer and dryer back into the laundry room -the clean clothes situation was at red alert- even though the laundry room floor is only primed and not at all finished. You do what you have to do and I can't do a week plus without doing laundry.

The ten day forecast expects sun, sun, sun. While the end of May, the beginning of June, can be unpredictable, a curious weather crapshoot, we seem to have reached that "all danger of frost has passed" point. Lows in the high thirties, the forties, the fifties, ahead. I spent the day beefing up our herb garden (really, my daughter's little plot of land, but I jump in and plant a little there, too), with seeds that have been waiting, waiting. Maybe I'm too much of a worrywart and I've missed maximizing our growing season by waiting so long to sow seeds outside. We'll see. The vegetable beds are filling in nicely. My kale! I want to pluck the leaves, big as my thumb now, and eat them up, but I will hold off, and hope they keep growing.

With such bright skies, and laundry on the line, and iced pink wine in my tumbler, it feels like the start of summer. It feels like the beginning of bare shoulders and bare feet and grass stains. And when I'm feeling particularly summery, I want summery music and I'll tell you that there's something about Wolf Parade's 05 Apologies to the Queen Mary album that makes me want to crank up the volume and open the windows and throw a garden party or something. (not that I've ever thrown a garden party, I just feel like it. I'm not really the party throwing type, if I don't throw parties I don't have to worry that no one will come!)

Youtube usually delivers, but tonight I couldn't find a good quality recording of my first choice, so I'm sharing my number two. I really love this one, as well, though. But I urge you to splurge on the .99 (if you don't have it already!) it will cost to get You Are A Runner And I Am My Father's Son and then you'll really know what it sounds like in my head today.

lalalala library

2009-05-15T18:22:00.001-07:00

I had such love for my library the other night, I wanted to kiss everybody there. (do you know me? I'm not the kissy sort). First of all, I noticed that one of the summer selections for the library book club is none other than The Grapes of Wrath. (and in my head I'm adding in an enthusiastic, well-placed 'mother-effing' and some serious air fist-pumps: excited!). Surely I've blabbed about my trite but true love of Steinbeck's rambly california prose. Surely you know that I consider TGOW my favorite favorite novel of all (making a rare exception to the 'if it's popular, i don't like it' tendency I brazenly exhibit). Surely you can imagine how glad I am that, maybe, other people who might have read it in high school (the cliff notes?), can probably catch the some of the related references (the Joad's loaded down hoopty) could be digging into it afresh. I would like to know who, at the library, was responsible for choosing it (midst a lot of contemporary books), because I would love to say Thanks and give a little positive feedback. But I'm such a book nerd that my 'thanks' might be something more of a verbal full-on running start piggyback. They wouldn't know what hit them. Better I keep quiet. Maybe I'll even write down the book club date and attend!

So I was all floating happy about that and then I checked out not one but *TWO* children's books illustrated by Jen Corace: Hansel & Gretel and Little Hoot. You might not know who Corace is, but if you do, then you know why that would please me so. My library is small but I am constantly surprised by how much it offers (I am also, to be fair and honest, often frustrated at the lack of certain materials, what with me being a city mouse and accustomed to big city libraries and all, but today it's all good). I brought home, for my boy (for me), the new Cynthia Rylant/Jen Corace Hansel and Gretel. I'd read this one at bookstores, thought of buying it, really really wanted to buy it, held off. I will still buy this one, but full-price new books are not in the budget right now but I can always afford a trip to the library! (Well, usually. I'm in the habit of going so often these days, three times a week at least, that I have kept my fines down, but I have racked up some doozies in the past). I did a little happy happy dance and told the children's librarian how delighted I was that they had that book. She looked at me oddly. Maybe because I really did say Delighted and maybe because I was not accompanied by any children. Fruitcake. Yes. Cynthia Rylant is one of my favorite current children's writers (oh! did I ever tell you that my friend Laurie challenged me to come up with 85 recent children's books that I love, because I tend to be something of an old book snob? I could easily fill up half the list with Rylant books. I haven't actually made the list yet. My ardor for old books is a wee bit subdued as the insane cpsia -consumer product safety improvement act- bullcrap that had a lot of secondhand stores pulling and destroying pre-1985 printed kid books from the shelves hasn't yet affected my local stores and, I confess, I've been lazy and complacent about it). This book is worth doing a happy dance about. Beautiful writing, beautiful pictures, beautiful.

And then, as the girl and I headed to the check-out, our arms at max capacity, I was so surprised when the clerk had, waiting for me, the second flipping season of Dexter!! Yahoo! I had just been telling the husband, literally the very last thing I said to him before I walked to the library, that when I got back one of us should run to the movie store for the first disc of Dexter season 2, because I was jonesing bad. (okay, I did actually say all of that, except that last part. I might really air fist-pump -and air quotes, too, but that's another story- all the real life time, but I don't really say 'jonesing' and if it ever fell out of my mouth accidentally and you had to hear it, I'm sorry, because I bet it sounded ridiculous). I had put a hold on it the week prior and estimated that it would be weeks or longer before it came in. The hold was so newly returned and ready for me that I hadn't gotten the email notification yet and I wasn't even expecting it. I didn't jump up on the counter and I didn't do somersaults but that's what I was feeling: happy! I love being in the honeymoon stage of a new show and right now, I'm all about Dexter. I was willing to go to the movie rental place (not a problem, really, because we have, in our little town, the best little movie store I've ever been to anywhere) but the thing with renting television shows is that you just get a disc at a time. At the library? They lend the whole season! Yes! So while I really have a lot of other more pressing things I ought to be doing tonight, I'm going to tuck my kids in and dig into that whole world of blood splatter and Miami murders. Even the library clerk and I had a little chat about how great the show is, even though, we both admitted to each other, we're not typically the serial killer show watching types.

(psst. . . really, this post should have been written three days ago, but I wanted to take a picture of our library haul, or maybe our library shelf -actually, two shelves, dedicated, for library books in the living room, not counting the ones at bedsides, in bags, on the floor of the car- but i kept procrastinating and then not writing because i didn't have any pictures, not even one, to accompany the words, and i've let myself grow this very silly Why Bother? attitude when it comes to posting without a picture -i think they call that 'perfectionism'- and i have to try very hard to just do it anyway, picture or no. so hi. this is me. who even fails at perfectionism!)

mild synaesthetic thinks too much

2009-05-11T20:12:00.000-07:00

I'm thinking of the way so many things sneak up on you, the way every moment is your first moment, your last moment, and how the weight of the importance and the insignificance of everything teeters: important, not important, important, not important. And we never really know which was which was which until we look back, remember. Even then, how can we know? Maybe something that looks so innocuous, so simple and forgettable, was the most significant action yet.

I'm thinking of the way camping sounds like zippers. Tent, sleeping bag, backpack. The way the whole house smells a little like campfire even days after we come home. The way home sounds like overall buckles clanging in the dryer.

I'm thinking of the way I am better at burning bridges than building them, waiting for the mud to dry out instead of trudging my way through. Being good at waiting is like being good at bending your own thumb backwards to touch your own wrist, just because you can do it, doesn't mean it feels good. And overextending those joints when you're young makes for problems later and then nothing feels so painful as being patient. Wait and see.

I'm thinking of the way loud sounds flash colors when I'm tired. The dog barks Blue and the crack of our cheap ikea bed frame is White. I'm thinking of the way I know too much about everyone, the way people don't know their words drip with color and shape, the way I collect every tiny piece and clue, without meaning to, and they knit a brilliant map, so revealing I can't always make eye contact, it feels too raw and personal.

I'm thinking of the way I'm still wondering what I'll be when I grow up. And realizing that this might be it. I'm thinking how watching Dexter makes me wish I'd gone into Forensics. Imagine getting paid to think about things and put them together!

I'm thinking of the way I want to be right here as much as I want to go back to simpler days as much as I want to skip ahead to stability. But solid ground can be misleading, soil shifts and feet slip and -just like that- perspective changes and we see the whole world differently.

treat her right

2009-05-10T20:03:00.000-07:00

I did not, I don't know how, realize that today is the day for Mothers until, I'm pretty sure, my girl woke me up, sometime in the 8 hour (sleeping in!), bearing a little bouquet of flowers from our own yard and, also, a lovely picture she drew (first thing! waking up early, even!) just for me. Happy Mother's Day!

Remember when radio stations and roller skating rinks took dedications? Maybe they still do that, what do I know? Anyway, this one's going out from me (Sunday Song Share! I've been spearheading the sunday night pizza gig for long enough, who knows what new tradition I can get going?!) to you, because if you're not a mama, then you have one. And who doesn't like a good excuse to see Mister T rockin' the camo short shorts? Ha!

a good sport

2009-05-09T21:07:00.000-07:00

I don't know why I hesitated. Now that I have a fat old school canvas and flannel sleeping bag (no more of this light-as-air slicky slippy nylon nonsense I've been enduring all these years), camping is cake. And it shouldn't have given me pause when the husband and daughter declared that the next camping trip would be off grid. I grew up wilderness camping with my grandparents. So why have I done so little of it with my own little family? Maybe it's just the spooky What Ifs and such. Because, really, if you don't mind some sap on your pants and flippy morning hair that sticks around all day, it's a sweet way to spend a couple of days.

I was inexplicably reluctant (it had been so wet and muddy here last week, maybe that's it, or maybe I've just been something of a stick-in-the, rain or no.) but I'm not too prideful to turn around and admit that we had a really great time.

Even as I talked up my self-appointed A.F.T.R. (along. for. the. ride.) position (as opposed to, say, the husband's P.I.C. -person in charge- role, which, conveniently, let me off the hook for decisions like what to eat and gave me ample sit-and-read time) I was really, truthfully (shh! maybe this is better kept secret!) there for my own self and had fun. I know my way around a squat, though I prefer, and always look for, a private tree. So that's no problem there. (and, we all know what a lot of campground bathrooms are like, it's usually an in and out affair as it is, no loss there). I spend most of my time in campgrounds snarking about the other people in campgrounds. So not only did we not see *anyone* else (or hear anyone, save for a few distant vehicle drones) for two days, but no one had to hear us either. No quieting the children. Which is such a grumble of mine anyway. Camping kids should be loud kids, if ever ther was a reason for kids to be loud. And, yet, when we've had camping "neighbors" twenty feet away, I find myself shushing the children and reminding them that we're not alone. But, my friends, we were alone. The dog could bark. Though, she didn't. She can be barky at campgrounds, but no wonder, what with the leash and all the other dogs and all. But off leash in the mountains for two days? My old dog didn't bark once. She ran herself into the ground, though, and kept up on all of our hikes and now, I suspect, won't move again for three days.

I admit to having a hard time getting to sleep: all that quiet. I found myself on the first night restlessly tossing in the tent, midst three snoring Timmy Willys, the lone Johnny Town Mouse in the bunch. We were camped next to what is called a Creek but runs like a small river, deep and swift. During the day, with our busyness as distraction, the stream was faint background noise -is that water rushing? can you hear? But sometime between the last birdsongs and the rising moon, those very dark and bottomless hours, the water sound amplified and, I swear, became mechanical and supernaturally spooky. Maybe that's just me. Good thing I brought along my ipod. No joke.

Not any of us would have wanted to, not really, meet up with a bear, but we did find fresh bear scat not fifty yards from our pillows. And non-campground camping insists, says the ten year old resident Tom Brown, that words like "poop" stay home. She takes her words and her knives very seriously.

My girl (the P.I.C.I.T., she's not in charge yet, but she'll get there) whittled the bark off of a thick birch branch for me, a staff in waiting for our next trip. She's already growing handier with a blade than her mama is, and can ID more plants than most people I know. It was just the sort of little trip a girl like mine can dig into and adore and, well, that sort of thrill and gladness spreads around.

We finished up on the way home with a hike to a hidden waterfall. We parked our car down in a mucky gully off the side of the road, hopefully unnoticed while we hiked. It was obvious, as we walked, that the trails had been usurped by off-road trucks. We said we hoped some halfwit mudboggers wouldn't charge around the corner and mow us all down. The trail to the falls sharply declines and narrows, it's hard for single file people to traverse it, let alone 4x4s. We made our way down and sat in the waterfall spray and under the haze of this sweet family time. We climbed (and I mean climb, hand over hand with a rope someone smartly, generously, left behind) up and out and started back down the muddy hill to our car. And we were nearly ran over! By halfwit mudboggers! Plowing around the corner! It seems while we were having our lovely waterfall experience, the mountain above had been overtaken with so many trucks. We walked down the road (the only way to walk down) and they had to stop their mud splashing and nature destroying for us. I heard someone mumble, "where did *they* come from?" and I noticed others, watching, incredulously, at our little family scene, dad, mama, daughter, son, dog. But not incredulously, no. That conjures up a certain righteous tsk-tsking and I mean to paint something more pissed-off punk in a pick-up truck. So maybe a synonym a little more on the slackjawed side. Anyway, we walked right down through the middle of them, a whole lot of them ten or so mudcaked trucks and a slew of muddy young men, and down into our little gully, down to where we'd parked way out of the way, out of site. And can you picture how funny it was to me (but not to them, surely.) when we roared up out of that gully and onto the road in our growly, old Range Rover?! Rawr! I laughed and laughed.

the clouds'll clear the sky

2009-05-03T19:38:00.000-07:00

If I do something twice, it might stick and become tradition. Last week I shared a song and since I'm low on anything worthwhile to write about (or at least, low on motivation in pulling the worthy out of my brain and tamping it down in a pattern that makes sense to anyone else), let's call this Song Sunday and do it again, why don't we?

A few years ago, a friend gave me this song on a mix-cd. It was a peppy mix anyhow, but when the first notes of this one came through my speakers, I stopped. And listened. And then I danced. I couldn't help it.

Life felt bleak, then. We had to, due to circumstances much bigger than ourselves, move from one temporary place to another, shortly after our huge relocation to Arizona. Our transient existence elbowed a dark and painful infertility situation for the number one biggest problem position. I felt put on pause in so many ways.

I'm not so glib that a snappy tune can lift all fog, but this was like an instant aural anti-depressant. Just a sweet gladness that came from nowhere else. And while I'm not all for helping out big businesses, it's beyond me why pharmaceutical companies haven't gotten permission to use this song in a television spot. You hear that, Eli Lilly? My freelance marketing consultant fees are chump change, email me and we'll get it all straightened out.

I've been pulling this one out again recently. Maybe you need it, too.

lentils & rice

2009-04-30T21:37:00.000-07:00

With our economy in the crapper, and so many feeling the crunch, some for the first time ever, of course we are all interested in saving some bucks. My own household has zero income (save for the husband's unemployment benefits) currently and so one might think that we're making drastic changes to our lifestyle. Only, well, no, we're not. The changes are small, things you wouldn't notice, and mostly reside in the realm of psychological distress (the insomnia and wrenched guts of wondering how long we can stave off foreclosure, you know, gripping subjects like that). I'm doing less thrift store therapy, our bills are not as cut and dried and tidy anymore, and we have to say No to the children more often. But other things, like what we eat, remain exactly the same (uh, cross fingers, knock on wood, say your prayers, because who knows how long we'll tread water like this??).

According to so many stories I've heard on the radio (before potential pandemic usurped economic downturn, anyhow) eating for less is the new five star restaurant. I heard some silly chef challenge on All Things Considered recently that had famous names (not so famous that I knew who they were, but whatever.) in food attempting to make a tasty meal for a family of four on a budget of ten dollars. And I nearly switched the station because, seriously? This is news?

But then I had to step back and remind myself that not every person responsible for feeding a family has the same good fortune I have to both a) not ever had much money to start with and b) a formative young adult introduction to being healthy and being cheap.

Actually, I'm pretty sure that it was the cheap that beget the healthy, even if, over the years, the subjects morphed into a symbiotic jumble of mindful living. But I might not ever have made it to where I am now had I not read The Tightwad Gazette in the first year of my marriage.

I didn't catch on to Amy Dacyzyn's compendium of frugal living tips in its newsletter days, no, I checked out the books from the library (but years afterward, the three volumes were published together in one fat edition). And I ate them up entirely. It's been a long time since I've read them, I bet the references are dated and maybe a little hokey, but the suggestions, I'm sure, are still sound.

Suddenly I'm doubting the veracity of one of my family's longstanding menu staples, ye olde Lentils and Rice, and whether it's a Tightwad inspired dish or not. It doesn't matter. It's cheap. It's easy. It's delicious. It's good for you. We eat it every week.

We've also been a vegetarian family for over ten years now, so it's not a lightbulb moment at this point to realize that meatless meals cost less. In fact, though I'm really saving this subject for a post all its own, I must briefly mention that if you're eating meat at every meal, you're probably contributing to all manner of societal ills and atrocities because there's no way in heck this planet can support animal consumption at the rate our country has expected it for so long. Okay.

And if you're not a vegetarian (really, I have no problem with omnivores, it's the factory farming and culture of excess and draining resources and animal cruelty, among other things, that irks me) you should still be eating a lot of bean based meals. I'm glad that pinched pocketbooks are finally compelling some people to make this a priority, better now than never I guess. Though I admit that it truly does surprise me that something as simple as Beans (or Lentils) and rice can be regarded as revolutionary.

So this is a favorite meal of mine because, first of all, everybody eats it. It cooks up long and slow so unless I'm running late, I get it going early and dinner happens smoothly, without any of that last minute Witching Hour Hungry Kids rush. So, all that PLUS it's the perfect dish for using up whatever's languishing in the not-so-crisper drawer in your fridge.

Here's the gist (per my transcribed scrawl in the little spiral notebook that's lived in the silverware drawer of every house I've ever lived in as a married lady): in a 9 x 13 casserole, dump together 3/4 C rice, 1/2 C lentils, chopped veggies, 2 1/2 C water or stock. salt/spices/seasonings to taste. Cover. Bake 325 for 90 min.

That's the basic idea, but I usually double it and make the rice to lentil ratio heavier on the lentil side. I use brown basmati and, also, some sort of tomato, canned diced or tomato sauce. The picture above is prior to adding the (self-picked and canned w/ a friend last late summer) tomatoes, but after I grated in a few stringy carrots and chopped up some salad greens that were starting to head south. I had just picked up our first CSA share of the season and needed to out-with-the-old in our refrigerator to make room-for-the-new.

We have eaten this in so many (many many!) configurations, but last week I served it alongside a carmelized leek and rapini frittata. The leeks and rapini were also part of our CSA share from of our favorite local farmers (who also happen to be friends, making the whole 'do you know where your food comes from?' question so much more personal and true). Leftovers are great to throw into a tortilla for a fast lunch. At our house we always say "lentilsnrice" all smashed together in one fast word like that. Lentilsnrice. Not just for tightwads!

before i met you

2009-04-26T20:43:00.000-07:00

This is the time of day when it's harder to finish the things I wanted to finish but easier not to think about it. This is the time of day after the boy has gone to sleep, so the house is quieter (missing his clatter and, also, that somebody-in-the-house-is-sleeping hush that softens our activity just a bit, an invisible sustaining pedal), but still busy. In a few minutes, the husband will read to the girl (because in our house you're never too old for a read aloud; they finished Watership Down -oh! rabbits!- yesterday and will jump into something new/old tonight) and I will have to finish the last chores of the day so that I can sit, later, and watch something (we have Dexter on borrow from the library. I'm not sure about it yet.) without guilt, without *too much* guilt. Which is why I'm here, ostensibly, refreshing my stale ipod so I can push through by listening to something interesting. But I'm not doing that at all. No I'm listening to this song on repeat. Again, again. Thanks to a friend who mailed me a copy, I have it in my itunes now, but a couple of weeks ago, when I first discovered this song, I listened to it over and over again on youtube (and shared it with you on facebook, depending). I'm sure there are more compelling topics for a barely read blog, but my current favorite song seems as fit as anything else. Okay, one more time. And then, I mean it. Dishes. Laundry. Sweep. And see if you don't play it a few times in a row yourself. So sweet and infectious, simple and profound. We all of us, don't we, have these other people, whether romantic involvements or not, maybe past versions of our own selves, or even, dreams and plans and hopes, that we lug around with us, haunting our present.

the company you keep

2009-04-22T18:43:00.000-07:00

My son is playing on the floor with his dump truck, his recycling truck, and a pile of blocks. I walk by and say, just for passing by conversation-sake, "hey, did ever notice that there's an armadillo on your shirt today?"

boy: (looks down, sighs) Yes, I did.

mama: You sound glum about it. Don't you like armadillos?

boy: No. I do not.

mama: Why is that?

boy: They play with bears.

mama: I'm not sure about that. But if it is actually true, why would that be a problem for you?

boy: (sighs, annoyed, that mother of his, always asking dumb questions) They might eat me.

mama: Armadillos don't eat people!

boy: No. Bears. Bears eat people.

mama: But I don't even think bears and armadillos have anything to do with each other anyway.

boy: (getting exasperated) They do! And if bears get really, really hungry, they could eat little boys. So that's why I don't like armadillos. See?!

impermanence

2009-04-19T19:12:00.000-07:00

It's been quiet here. And by here I don't mean my blog. That's a given. Or my neighborhood. WHAT? SPEAK UP! I can't hear a word you're saying over the incessant whine of a stupid 2 stroke dirt bike motor, that keeps circling my block. I'm pretty sure boys my daughter's age, without helmets, stacked 2 deep, should not be riding a dirt bike around the hood. Oh, wait, dirt bikes aren't even street legal. I'm all for city noise (in fact, I miss the hum of a more populated place, for sure) but keep your stinkin dirt bikes far away from me. Like in a museum of stupid things people invented that kill people and ruin delicate ecosystems.

It's been quiet at old blogger. Seems like so many people are leaving (have left), for greener self hosted pastures or wordpress or some other better platform. I don't know. I guess I'm feeling the urge to move, too.

You know what happens when you move 13 times in 13 years? (keep in mind, I've lived in a few places for several years at a time. . .) You get accustomed to change. You might not like change. You might dread change and transition slowly to change. But you expect it and when it's not happening, you feel jumpy, because, judging from history, it should. And you just want to get it over with already.

I don't know that I could do the one two switcheroo trick with whatever ill-favored Fate seems to have been hanging over me for so long by simply moving blogs instead of abodes, but it's tempting to try it.

On the other hand, I grew up in the desert and I find tumbleweeds blowing by incredibly nostalgic. (No, really. When I was about five I had a tumbleweed "collection". I was partial to the ones taller than myself). What's it to me if everybody else is packing up and heading out? I barely visit this space, so it should not actually matter if it's passe, played out, sub-par.

But, still. Change. I itch.

You know what's funny? We can think we have a good thing going anyway, we can intend to stay the course indefinitely, to plug straight along with no thought of veering, and -wham!- life can up and have a different idea.

So I guess we take what we've got. When we've got it. We hold the things that bring us comfort and gladness and belonging, and when they change, we hold their stories.

who stole the cookies from the cookie jar?

2009-04-03T20:23:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I made chocolate chip cookies: a right gesture of love for the family, considering that I'm fairly much take-em-or-leave-em. Chocolate isn't my thing. I know, I know, I risk betraying some stereotypical code of my gender by daring to admit such deviance. I mean, it's okay, sometimes. I eat it if it's there, if offered. But let's say Life had 2 doors and I had to choose Chocolate Cake or Peach Cobbler, I'd run through the fruit pie portal. No question. Of course, I don't know what I'd find on the other side. Life is a series of choices (and happenstance and, maybe, I waver, a divine sort of Plan) but so often we see the choices in hindsight. But what if they were more obvious? Arches clearly labeled? Pie or Cake? I'd live the pie life.

And I didn't mean to be punny (I groan at wordplay, but maybe, secretly, I kind of love it), just like I didn't mean to eat so many cookies and like I don't mean to grind my teeth every night while I'm sleeping. Regarding the first point, I can't help it and wouldn't if I could because words hang out and do fun things in my head. On the second point, it's easy, another weekend, another batch of cookies, even if it means springing for another bag of choco chips. I tell myself it's not quite pie season yet. (I'm not going through the door, I'm just sticking my head in through the window. what?) But that third item's pure trouble.

I fell asleep listening to the most recent This American Life the other night, I only heard the first intro story. Did you hear it, too? Business sucks for everybody right now but there's a surprising upswing in dentistry. Repair dentistry. Because guess what? Stressed out people break teeth (let's see. . . stress? check! broken teeth? check!) and grind their teeth (check plus!) and apparently there are enough of them walking the line between stressed out enough to have dental problems but not so stressed out to be so broke they can't afford repairs that dentists are seeing increasing numbers.

I have no future toothpaste commercial aspirations, oh no quite the opposite. Let's say I'm totally down with normal wear and tear. What I'm NOT down with is jaw pain and a mouthful of nubbins. But since I won't be contributing to any dental boon, and shoving the bedsheet into my mouth isn't cutting it (cloth in the mouth is right up there with very high buildings on my list of things I don't like to experience) I am going to see if a diy mouth guard will help.

If the habit persists, though, and chewing anything becomes a chore, I won't be eating any sort of cookies at all. Cake would be difficult. But I think I could still manage pie. It's really the cooked fruit I'm after, anyhow, and that should be easy enough to swallow.

haphazard

2009-03-15T18:11:00.000-07:00

Everything is topsy-turvy right now. A sudden jostle could knock the whole thing flat. The husband's several weeks now into full fledged unemployment and we have less structure to our lives than ever. I'm all for free spirit flexibility, but we've become so fluid we spill all over everywhere. It's a weird time. I've never craved stability so much.

It's still Sunday. And I'm still making pizza. And our days are anchored by little things, weak ties attached to small silly routines I make up out of nothing. Something more, some sort of bigger picture involvement with expectations and obligations beyond my own brain, would be nice. But this is what we've got right now. We're just trying to hold it steady.

enough is enough (or often too much)

2009-02-28T20:06:00.000-08:00

I've been reading The Long Emergency and several other titles concerning societal collapse, peak oil, global warming, and other such doomy gloomy topics. And while so much that lies ahead of us is unclear, this much I'm fairly sure: a lot of things are going to change, dramatically.

I was thinking these things over the other day as I stuck the quinoa under the faucet to rinse. I'm always thinking of these things and every little thing is a reminder. Because almost every little thing is a direct relic of our infatuation on fossil fuels. Yank them out of any equation and you've got less trade, less consumption, less of so much that has become this modern culture.

We have a lot of space to traverse before we get from here (relative pacification, granted with increasing agitation) to there (a complete collapse and turnaround) and any number of things could happen in the meantime. But in the few moments I stood there with my hand on the strainer, shaking it around while the water ran, I wondered if I'd have quinoa for the rest of my lifetime. Will my children have access to it for the duration of theirs? I mean, it's just a grain (arguably the most nutrient dense of them all), and while I do depend on it a lot now, would I miss it should it become unavailable to me? How much would I miss it?

We have so much. So much. My life has always been caked in excess. I think about the "voluntary simplicity" trend that was, well, trendy a few years ago. The precursor to the ecogreen movement that's so omnipresent now. And it seems, on one hand, sage wisdom, tread lightly, be mindful, take care. But on the other: sort of steeped in a flagrant privilege. I mean, the only reason any of us can choose simplicity is because we have, collectively, taken more than our share for so long. For much of the world, simplicity is not a choice. It simply is.

Maybe it's in the branding. Maybe I just disdain movements of all kinds, steering clear of the crowd. Even when I meet all the criteria for a trend, the accompanying label makes me wince. I do make simple choices and I do intend mindfulness. But I cannot shake the guilt of privilege, the happenstance that stuck me in the middle of the land of Too Much and others - without anything.

The impending changes scare me. I won't deny it. I hate changes. When the sort of underwear I bought for ten years suddenly stopped being manufactured, I stopped buying underwear. This was nearly a decade ago. I won't divulge further details on that one. When our telephone died and required replacement, it took a good six months before I could use it without cringing at the way it felt in my hand. I like things the way I like them and I like them to stay just like that. I think that's not uncommon. But! despite the fear of what lies on our unknown horizon, and my insufficient resilience, I think we're all good for a little shake up.

(and I'm smack dab in the midst of a personal shake up, which I aim to write more about later. I'm trying empty out the backlog of halfwritten entries in my tiny brain first)

And, frankly, I think the more we start giving up now ("voluntarily", if you will), the less will have to pulled from us, from the fingers of a kicking and screaming indignant mass holding so tight to the last vestiges of a convenient plastic life.

I enjoy, take advantage of, take for granted, abuse PLENTY of plastic conveniences. I am a 33 year old American. Right time, right place. As I type this right now, on a 17 inch laptop, next to my nifty undercabinet ipod docking station, my husband and daughter watch a film on a handy little portable dvd player; we consume. We have a lot of things we don't even need.

But I also don't have some things that a lot of other people do think I need (and by 'other people' I mean, mostly, corporations who seem incessantly irked at my lack of contributions to their bottom lines). Like a microwave. I know only a couple of other people who don't have a microwave.

It was initially a health-based decision (seriously, do you want to eat food that's been in a microwave??) but it's been so long now (coming up on ten years without, minus a couple houses we lived in that had one built-in) that I don't even know what people use them for. I typically reheat leftovers in the toaster oven.

And in what is becoming a ridiculous blog post of irony (you didn't know that by 'too much' I meant: words I will write here), there's one more thing I want to cram in here (because who knows when I'll come back, I'm so inconsistent).

I had an epiphany last month, something of a Too Much realization. There has been too much of me to fit in my own pants for a while. Wait, that's not the epiphany, I'm just setting the scene. We have too much food. We expect too much. I can do something different. I can.

I had the privilege to cope with some stressful situations in the last almost 2 years (hmm, maybe you weren't around when I was beating these dead horses: an interstate relocation, an unexpected pregnancy, a very difficult temporary 6-month living situation, a 2nd trimester miscarriage, traumatic complications from said miscarriage involving a hospital bill we're *still* paying off, a fall down the stairs resulting in a fractured foot, a spouse with a very stressful job that prevented me from talking to/seeing him much, related marital strain, uh, i think that about covers it) by getting lazy. Lazy by not moving enough and lazy by eating too much.

So what am I doing about it? I stopped eating dinner. Anything in the evening, actually. I eat breakfast (usually what remains on the kids' plates, mothers can be such industrious scavengers), a hefty, healthy lunch, and then. . . I wait until breakfast again.

Do I get hungry? Do I even know what it's like to *be* hungry? How can I have grown up with grocery stores and spoiled food in my fridge and restaurants on every corner and really ever been hungry? My stomach might growl and when I go to bed I look forward to breakfast (though by the time I wake up, it's much less pressing) but I don't think that's real hunger. This has been my routine for the last month or so and it's not growing tiresome.

My choice is a flaunting of abundance. I can choose to abstain because I have so much. I hope that my awareness softens the blow of advantage.

I fill my evenings with glasses of kombucha and cups of tea and I am not missing anything. I have eaten lots of dinners. I will eat so many more. But right now, I'm deciding to avoid what is considered necessary, customary, required. I'm not gestating or nursing, I'm not convalescing or competing.

I am feeling better than I have in a long while.

I do not want to belabor body issue quirks or imply my sell-out to media dictated ideals. I have lots of the former but firmly avoid the latter (if that's possible). Outgrowing my own clothes, serviceable garments with much life left, is not mindful or simple or treading lightly at all. And nobody feels good wearing clothes that don't fit. And not feeling good is no good for me or for my family.

I sit with my family while they eat (and by 'sit with my family' I mean: sit for a second and hop up for the salt, or another fork, or napkins, or the boy's soup that was cooling in the freezer, you know.) and have not yet, in over a month, felt even the tiniest bit deprived. It's just dinner. I look around and I see all these things, pounds of flour and beans, shelves of books, cupboards full of useful things and pretty things I keep just to look at and hold, and it's all SO MUCH. More than anybody needs, really.

It is a poignant thing, to step out of one's routines and into a new thoughtfulness. What started out as a willful attempt at combating a growing malaise has become surprisingly meditative. Recognizing my abundance in everything, the food on my plate, the hot water in my pipes, the solutions to my problems, is such a gift of gratefulness. Who knows what will happen in a few weeks, months, years. But for now, I have enough.

a round tuit

2009-02-23T16:31:00.001-08:00

My grandparents have one of those rubber grippy circles, like the sort passed out in AARP advertising blitzes, that was printed with the explanation that it was for people who are always waiting to do something until they get a round tuit. Ta-da! Problem solved.

I have one of those grippy circles, too, a spare direct from my grandmother's kitchen. And it is, in fact, emblazoned with an AARP logo and slogan: for independent living! But it doesn't say anything about getting stuff done. It's round and good for opening sticky jars, but it's not a tuit at all.

It takes me a long old while to get around to it, whatever it is. I am quick-witted and keen on ideas. I am good on the front side of any task, but get mucked up in the middle. And sometimes never see the end. Starting is no trouble, it's the doing and finishing that give me grief.

When we moved in here I hastily tacked a red checkered beach towel over the bathroom window. This remained until we recently upgraded to a blue twin sheet. The window has that mottled bathroom glass -supposed privacy glass- but I can't bring myself to do bathroom things at night in front of an undressed window, no matter what.

It took me a year and a half, but we finally have a curtain in the bathroom. Maybe my tuit is square?

same old, same old

2009-02-19T21:03:00.000-08:00

I'd say I blog the way I do laundry, but you might think we're stepping around piles here for half a month before I get a mind to toss in a load. I could compare my slowness in coming around to this little spot to the way I dawdle and delay and guiltily, sheepishly, never get around to mailing things. But while I'm a better laundress than I am a blogger, I'm a much worse mail correspondent. Much, much worse. So, if you bother to click on over here, wondering if I have anything to say (and I'm sorry for all the wasted click-on-overs, praise be to the google reader), take comfort in knowing at least you're not one of the sad souls to whom I owe a package. Unless you are, indeed, waiting for some promised parcel. In which case, I apologize. Actually, let me just be sorry all around. For everything. I'm feeling a little sorry this evening and I might as well toss some contrition in the direction of any passersby to my public presence on this, the spaceship interweb.

I said goodbye to 2 dear friends the other day. I had known them for such a short time, but we spent most evenings together for the last month or so and I grew accustomed to the routine. Oh, Pullo and Vorenus, how I'll miss you. Yeah, yeah, we finished Rome. It might be a little like nutritional yeast: an acquired taste. It is gruesome and violent and a lot sexier and steamier than, well, network television and I nearly dismissed it after the first episode. But we kept it up and got sucked right in, right back two thousand plus years, and now I want to sprinkle that stuff on everything. It was good. It is over. Sigh. Moving on.

It's easy to be in the moment when you're surrounded by clocks that don't keep time. I have several. This is not an oversight, a belated purge of broken housewares; it is intentional. I like the random-ness of hands pointing to disparate, inconsistent numbers (i feel a little disparate and inconsistent myself, so much of the time). I like the ability to enjoy something -the aesthetic of shape, the recognition of age, the space taken up on a shelf- despite its purposed function having stopped some while ago.

See? No time has passed. The hands haven't moved at all. I might have had secret intentions of blogging here *every day for the whole, short month of February* and then, clearly, failed so completely. But such an endeavor would have accomplished. . . a whole bunch of nothing. I am giving myself the space to write when I feel like it and the time to come here when I remember to and the permission to be as sporadic and vague as is reflexive. I'm so tempted to close up shop, put the useless in a drawer and focus more on that which is productive, but pleasure is important. And this place does please me, even if it's quiet and I can't be so transparent and I have more ideas of things to write about than I ever get around to writing. . .

Because I am a broken record, a bulldog, a dead horse kicker (I didn't have any nicknames when I was a kid but these things I was called frequently, and really: some things never change) I will remind you that Rome truly is worth watching and, then, when you've finished the series (but two short seasons, boo melodramatic hoo) tell me all about it.

tick. . . tick. . . tick, I won't mention it again, I swear.

leave yer thermarests and rainfly at home

2009-02-02T20:52:00.001-08:00

I can be so obtuse. For years, we've mused about yurt camping. But because there's a "no pets in yurt" rule and we always have the dang dog with us, I just sighed and pretended that I don't really need a shelter I can stand up in.

It was just a few weeks ago that I lightbulbed the following: our tent is so small and our dog is so smelly, she always sleeps in the car *anyway*. We can sleep in a yurt and she can sleep in the car and what the heck has taken us so long?

The girl's birthday last week was the perfect opportunity to give this whole fancy camping a try. I really did think our tent was sufficient, before. But now? I'm not sure I can go back.

Because the yurt was awesome.

I got a full size sleeping area all to myself. And because I don't like to sleep all mummied-up in a sleeping bag, I took a big fat comforter and stretched right out and had more space than I usually have at home. Nice.

We had a table inside for setting stuff and plenty of hooks for hanging stuff and a little covered deck outside for cooking. It was so much quicker and easier than tenting it.

And warmer. It was definitely warmer. I'm not sure we're hardcore enough to tent camp in the winter anyhow, so the yurt gave us a chance to visit the off-season of a beach campground. It was so different, so much more empty and quiet. Our yurt was the only occupied yurt in our loop of the campground. So quiet.

We had the beach all to ourselves, too. A few times, I could sort of squint and see people, very far away, but mostly it was just us.

Oh yeah, and the weather was brilliant: 50ish degrees, blue skies, no wind. It was a quick trip, but it was a good one.

a perfect ten

2009-02-01T21:55:00.000-08:00

It humbles me, confounds me, astounds me that my daughter is a whole decade old. The girl who made me a mama and taught me how to be patient and gentle and kind. Her difficult nature as a baby, her demanding intelligence as a toddler, her inexhaustible wisdom and wonder as a small child, her busy plans and schemes as a big kid all required of me something that I surely did not have before she came along.

Even though I chose her name, in part, because it's not nicknameable and even though I think her given name suits her absolutely, in that sweet singsongy way parents can have with their babes, when she was still very new and young I started calling her Fifi. And then, because I'm so fond of alliteration, I tacked on Fantastic. The Fifi faded, over time, but the Fantastic has remained because she is, indeed. Fantastic.

The most surprising, blessed, Fantastic thing that has happened to me, becoming her mama. Such a gift. I'm not an overly lovey dovey soft focus person, but I am still pretty much in awe of this wonderful girl creature I get to watch grow and learn and be. I feel a little bit lucky every day, just for knowing her.

And can you believe I'm still hanging construction paper numbers?? I wrote before about our little family tradition. One of those funny spur of the moment ideas that unwittingly becomes *the thing we do* year after year after year. It's important. But I thought she'd outgrown it, and also? I thought it was a one digit phenomenon. But as we eked into the last week of January, she asked me, sweetly, if the nines would be replaced with tens. What else could I do?

I admit that the double digits stumped me for a bit until I decided to work with negative space and voila! The cutting was a snap.

She was up so early on her birthday and she said she opened her eyes and saw the numbers twirling, the larger 10 shadows cast all about, and knew it was really true: she was Ten.

I had tacked a note on her bed, a happy birthday good morning, we love you, sort of note, which she read upon waking and which set her off on a whole house scavenger hunt for her gift. I attempted to make obscure clues, leaning on her love of literature and language and history (for example: one clue was 'ovum' -where to? the egg carton, of course. another clue? 'dogeared achilles' she ran directly to our most worn mythological reference) and it was fun. She enjoyed it and I was glad I bothered to stay up the extra hour it took to arrange it.

These are little things: construction paper numbers and quickly written clues hidden about the house. But it's my hope that all these little things I do will together make a picture of a happy childhood, someday when she looks back.

Because I'm already looking back, as much as I look forward, and feeling so overwhelmed by the goodness, the sweetness, the joy of spending my days with this girl.

enchiladas cha cha cha

2009-01-25T20:16:00.000-08:00

I might be stretching terminology a smidge to call these enchiladas. They're not exactly traditional Mexican enchiladas; I grew up on the border, I know Mexican food and this ain't it. But it is traditional April toss-together-see-what-happens-hey!-that's-good-let's-see-if-I-can-do-that-again fare, which is the birth of most dishes in my standard cooking repertoire. So maybe enchilada casserole. Dang, but I love a good casserole. Enchilada-esque, anyhow.

I took pictures of the whole process. Well, no. I took pictures from the sauce on but I forgot to grab the camera when I whizzed up the sauce. And, you know, when you're talking enchiladas, it's all about the sauce.

So this is what I do. I blend up tomato sauce, chili powder, cumin, garlic, and refried beans. Yes, refried beans. A whole can. I have never made refried beans that taste they way I think refried beans should taste. So canned it is. I favor the organic spicy pinto ones from Trader Joe's, if I can get them. My trips there are infrequent these days and half the time, they're out anyway. Now, for a lot of years, the sauce was just that. But because my husband really loves the squash enchiladas with peanut mole sauce at Chez Jose in Portland, I recently attempted to replicate what they've got going with that. So in the sauce you'll see in the following pictures, it's all the stuff I just mentioned, plus peanut butter and cocoa powder. It's really good. Trust me.

I spread some sauce on the bottom of my 9 x 13 casserole dish. I don't grease it otherwise.

I layer some more sauce on a small corn tortilla and spoon on steamed chunks of butternut squash.

Next up: black beans and not-cheese sauce. Oh, let's back up a minute. I suppose you could use some other cheesey creamy something here, but I cook up a pan of the nutritional yeast sauce I use for our Macaroni and Not Cheese (with peas, please). I bet google will direct you to a recipe for it if you're so inclined. It's basically a white sauce with nutritional yeast.

Roll it up and put it in the baking dish, seam side down.

I can fit 10 rolled up corn tortillas in my dish.

No worries if they don't all roll up smoothly. Corn tortillas tend to tear and crack and a lot of loose edges stick up. The rest of sauce will keep everything in place. I pour it all over and spread it out with a spoon.

Cover the whole thing with cheese. The cheese I had on hand was an aged goat cheese.

There might be a little boy in my house who thinks olives should be a part of any meal, but on top of an enchilada casserole? Absolutely. I sliced up some regular black olives, nothing fancy.

And then it goes into the oven and stays there until its brown and bubbly and looks done.

It can be a little too soft when it first comes out, so I try to let it cool for a bit before we cut it up and eat it. It is really super delicious. It sort of all smooshes together in a very creamy spicy filling delicious way. And as good as it is just made, it is even better the next day. Some foods really shine as leftovers, don't you think? Warmed up in the toaster oven and doused with a thick coating of crushed red chile peppers (okay, that part is just me). . . mmm.

nevermore

2009-01-19T09:46:00.000-08:00

If we're the real life chatty sort, and the subject (or any related subject, I make sketchy tangential segues) has ever come up, then you probably already know how I feel about old Mister Heavy Breather himself, Garrison Keillor. Two words for you: Heebie Jeebies.

I can't even stomach his daily 1:30 (on my npr affiliate) Writer's Almanac spot without hearing the crusties stuck in his prominent nose hairs. Of course I don't know if he has sticky-outy nasal hairs and whether anything, crusty or not, is stuck in them, so before I'm accused of malicious slander, I'll say it's all a figment of my imagination and is just some sort of synaesthetic sound association, maybe like the way, when I'm tired, lying in bed waiting for sleep, unexpected cracks of sound flash a brilliant white behind my eyes.

But! I get his Writer's Almanac (be well, do good work, keep in touch) emailed to me and while I don't read every single one, I read and enjoy enough of them that I'll give credit where credit is due. Thanks, Creepy Not-So-Funny Public Radio Guy. I never laugh at your small town Minnesota comedy bits, but if not for you it wouldn't have occurred to me that today is Edgar Allan Poe's birthday.

So sometime today, maybe after the girl comes in from reading on her new corner look-out tower (because the lashed rope tree look-out spot plus the very high tree fort/platform were not enough high watching, noticing places for one wee yard, apparently) but before I clean up another puddle of boy pee from the suddenly-interested-in-using-the-potty little boy in the house, I will read some Poe selections out loud. My daughter and I will pick at least a few stanzas for memorization.

You might think that, at three, my boy is behind the power curve on the potty learning. And so be it. That's not the way we work around here. I shrug. As a lady well into her thirties now, I can't say that it's ever, in any of my memories, been a point of interest to anyone, when I started using the toilet. But every little milestone for little ones can be some kind of tiny tot Pulitzer prize. Because, clearly, it's a sign of future success and happiness that Junior started walking at 9 months. These little details can be so ridiculously weighted. I cheer along for my children as they reach new abilities, absolutely, but I think when you put them into perspective, they just aren't that important. The sum of my child's triumphs, the parameters of our parent/child relationship, exist far beyond such a small thing as peeing in the toilet.

So we are on the brink of saying goodbye soon to diapers and wipes. We traveled through, and look over our shoulder now, to remember Nursing. But we're still so close we can almost touch it, and sometimes he asks, but forgets momentarily and moves onto something else. His sister did not wean until she was 3 and a half, which seemed then like a very old age. I didn't have any peers, at that time, who nursed their babies so long. I have lots of them now. I got more than a few raised eyebrows. But I've been doing this gig long enough, I don't know if it's that I have more positive reactions, in general, or if I've grown a callous over the negative rubs. It doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is this: they are babies for such a short time. And when you have a big girl but ten days away from her 10th birthday, you know that 3 is still such a baby.

when in rome

2009-01-18T22:27:00.000-08:00

I am not a bad ass. You could have seen me ripping plants out of my yard yesterday with my bare hands. Ivy tendrils and ferns with needley underbellies making scratches across my palms. My good jeans down on the ground, knees dirty. But for all the mud and splinters, it wasn't by any particular work ethic or determination on my part, no. Quite the opposite. It was pure laziness. I couldn't find my gloves or my snips but there I was, caught outside in brilliant rays so full of mother loving Vitamin D, I was hypnotized: must. do. yard. work. now. I don't have the gumption to argue with that impulse. Also, any forward thinking planner sort would have gone looking for the right tools. Not me, man. I just started thrashing about wildly, like a pidgeon caught in the bracken, and managed to pull down quite a few raggedy growing troublemakers I'd been wanting to get to, eventually, anyway.

Actually, the forward thinker type probably wouldn't even have to look for the tools, she'd know just where she'd left them the last time. But she wouldn't have needed them yesterday. She would have had a schedule of more important things to do. Which is all very well and good, but I'll tell you what: I have some of my most profound and lovely moments by being decidedly anti-carpe diem; I seize the day in sneak attacks, blowing in with the wind.

The husband and I are watching, just discovered, HBO's Rome series. We rented the first disc from the movie store, but after getting hooked (I almost wrote "by the story line" but it's Ancient Rome, people. You know the story.) we lucked out and found the whole first season at the library. We watch it up close, on the tiny little portable dvd player we never use for anything, in the dark, in the bed. And it's fascinating and sordid and terrible and exciting and I get distracted by the backgrounds, the props, the costumes and pipe up, "wait? they're in Greece now? When did they get to Greece?" and sometimes, I don't deny it, cover my eyes because it's too much -too much!- "tell me when it's safe to look again".

on the first monday of the year

2009-01-07T19:43:00.000-08:00

I didn't have time, in the last week or so, to really put to mind the notion of making New Year's Resolutions, so busy I've been making something of a New Life Philosophy. Which is less a new life and more the same old life, now with fifty percent more. More moxie, more honesty, more Say What You Mean and Stick To It. Like that. It's funny how such things can work. You might find yourself in a frustrated, venting moment declaring something serious ,with facetious bravado flare. And then you might find, so ironically, the very thing you spoke of ringing your doorbell, unexpectedly, the very next day, giving you no choice but to sink or swim. Do what you said or wimp out. Oh, it's all very well to set fictional boundaries, but navigating tangible ones is always more difficult than it seems like it should be. The self-loathing fall-out though, from walking away from a situation, wishing you'd only said such-and-such instead, is so much worse than any brief awkwardness, the evanescence of hot cheeks and a raised pulse.

So while I didn't say I'd suddenly start going to the gym every day and then actually do it (as a seasonally recognized example, that. seeing as I've never been to a gym and don't so much plan to), I did make a pact with myself to be true and to speak up when it counts, and a situation presented itself to me right away and I did it, with no regrets. Look at that, a week into the New Year and already a smashing success.

And, additionally, I have made quiet commitments for a number of scattered personal and domestic endeavors. Commitments, not resolutions, because I've already resolved to do them long ago, they're so basic and obvious and necessary. I simply aim to steel myself against the sneaky inundation of resentment, to do the things I need to do and not be a crybaby about it. The laundry, the dishes (haven't I re-adjusted my attitude about handwashing all these dishes before? hm. yes. well. here we go again.), the facilitation of my daughter's education. I am getting back on track with other things, kombucha, push-ups, making stuff. I allowed myself to get a little off-kilter (read: lazy) and the new year is as good of a time as any to jump back on it.

But because I'm slow and prone to distraction, let's just cinch it down even smaller: a Monday is a good time to get with it. Maybe that's why Mondays are so dreaded. The weekly re-start wherein we make up for our shortcomings the week before. And two days ago (what with today being Wednesday, clearly I have not made any such commitment to 'regular blogging'), on the first Monday of the year, I rocked it. The kitchen was clean (maybe you can keep your dishwasher-free kitchen effortlessly spotless, but this always feel like such a huge accomplishment to me), my bed was made, the laundry all where it needed to be.

And my family was happy. And why wouldn't they be? In an effort to be evermore committed to surprising them with sweet, special things: I whipped up some stove top caramel corn.

Sometimes I break out kernels and the air popper for a quick (so quick!) salty snack. But this was the first time I coated the popped corn with some sort of caramel-y sauce. It was such a snap and the mmm wow this-is-so-good reactions were well worth it. I used this recipe as a starting point, but with a wee bit more salt, I think, maple syrup instead of corn syrup, and my usual rapadura as my granulated sweetener of choice. It's a tasty sauce; I think the baking soda is the trick to setting up and coating the corn so nicely. It made more sauce than I needed for 2/3 C popping corn (measured prior to popping), so next time I'll make less sauce or pop more corn. Because eating the extra caramel sauce out of the pan w/ a wooden spoon is one of those things that seems like a good idea at the time, but then later, not so much.

to be fair

2009-01-02T08:03:00.000-08:00

I don't have a sweeping disdain for all high range male singing voices, as I might have alluded to in my previous post. In fact, since right around last February or so, I've been listening to Bon Iver pretty much more than anything else. The husband initially caught me in this apparent inconsistency, and dismissed my new favorite music with a sarcastic sneer. But if Justin Vernon depends on falsetto emotion, there's nothing affected and sappy about it. No, I think it's some of the most beautiful music I've ever heard and something about it just creeps into me and sits there and rattles around in a way that makes me feel absolutely supported and known in my lonesomeness. Now I'm probably not telling you anything you don't already know. But just in case you haven't heard it, and have yet to form an opinion, I'll do here what I did in my living room some weeks ago: listen! you have to really listen to this. It's the best music of the whole previous year; so long 2008. (and my husband came around and almost agrees with me).

goodbye, my lover

2008-12-30T20:40:00.000-08:00

I might be about to insult your musical tastes. I can't apologize, though, because making fun of that James Blunt song is such a running schtick around my house, between my husband and me, that I have chosen to believe it's just as funny to everyone. A couple of years ago, we happened, randomly and accidentally, on both the original airing and the rebroadcast of that song being performed on Saturday Night Live. And I swear there was another airing there, too. It seemed like any time we turned on the television there for a while, there was James Blunt crooning in falsetto. And maybe because it was as a musical guest on a sketch comedy show that I first heard the song, but I really did think it was a joke. It seemed so sappy and put on and really?

I mentioned elsewhere the other day that the recent local strange weather experience was so intense and now it's so *gone* it's a little, perhaps, like a quick, sultry love affair. So all-consuming while it lasts, but it never lasts.

We had 2 feet of snow on the ground, coinciding with Christmas, resulting in a subdued and strange holiday. It was beautiful, it was rare, it was eerie and odd and unsettling. I'm relieved for a return to normal, but I miss it. It's true.

The world sounded like cotton in my ears and everything was a little softer, glittering, hiding the ugly sharp edges. And from inside, watching the flakes fall, admiring the fluff covering every surface, was a wonder. Snow is magic. But we are ill-prepared, in this part of the country, for such a storm. And I worried for those lacking power, for those running out of food. We stayed warm and toasty, a fire, electricity, wool socks. I admit, though, that I am not accustomed to, and do not care for, the process of girding oneself against nature. It's so unusual here. It gets cold here in the Pacific Northwest, but not so cold where you feel this visceral response to the chill, this basic need to cover up to survive. The children suited up and it was such an event, the boots and the mittens and the coats. A hassle we have the luxury of living without, to that degree, almost always.

It was fun, though. There was a snow cave and so much shoveling and snowballs and angels and snow eaten w/ honey and molasses and pants drying by the fire and the amazement of seeing the flakes illuminated at night in the streetlight (that's my favorite thing, to see a tiny snowflake all lit up and then think how many of those tiny flakes it must take to make such drifts and piles everywhere).

It was such a huge part of our days there for a while -it was the only part of our days- so much that I didn't travel beyond our yard for long stretches, that we missed a few days of mail delivery. It was a big deal. And then the rain came back and the temperature rose and all of it melted. We have one last sad lump, the remains of my girl's snow cave, but everything else is gone. Was it really here? Did we really live so differently for a while?

Today I finally removed the Christmas tree from the living room to the driveway. I tasked the ornament packing-away to my daughter, but unwound the lights myself, generally a chore I dislike. But it was pleasant work. The tree, still so soft and supple and fragrant, I almost felt guilty taking it down. Christmas is over. It's time to say good-bye. I'm generally in such a hurry to pack it up and get it over with, but I took my time this year. We lowered the bar this time around and I have to say, it's nice having very low expectations because it's easy to exceed them. I didn't feel so desperate to be done with it, because it wasn't, in spite of all the reasons it ought to have been, a huge disappointment. It was a lovely day, with family and then friends. It was a rare weather experience, it was being warm and having full bellies, it was nothing spectacular, it was spectacularly plain, it was plainly just fine.

I'm ready for the coming of the sun, for the gradual increase to my days. I am grateful for these changing seasons, the better to remember life by, a measure of gauging our own rhythms. We're already moving on, the white was so quickly replaced by the regular green -such green!- and it's hard to be anywhere but right here, right now, taking whatever comes as best as we can.

little tree by e.e. cummings

2008-12-19T21:07:00.000-08:00

little tree

little silent Christmas tree

you are so little

you are more like a flower

who found you in the green forest

and were you very sorry to come away?

see i will comfort you

because you smell so sweetly

i will kiss your cool bark

and hug you safe and tight

just as your mother would,

only don't be afraid

look the spangles

that sleep all the year in a dark box

dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,

the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads,

put up your little arms

and i'll give them all to you to hold

every finger shall have its ring

and there won't a single place dark or unhappy

then when you're quite dressed

you'll stand in the window for everyone to see

and how they'll stare!

oh but you'll be very proud

and my little sister and i will take hands

and looking up at our beautiful tree

we'll dance and sing

"Noel Noel"

(this is my favorite christmas-time poem, i think. and maybe tomorrow. or the next day. or sometime before it's too late, i'll tell you what i think about christmas trees, and what i think about christmas, and what i think this time of year, this year and also, more generally).

to whom it may concern

2008-12-17T11:46:00.000-08:00

If you're the regularly dropping-by here sort, you might have seen the Dark and Dreary I had up for a few days. I pulled it down, though, because in an atypical re-read (which is to say, generally, what I write is off the cuff and I tend to forget about it later), I realized that I was attempting, not so successfully, to explain myself from beneath a cloud Desperation and my point was smudged and lacking.

The point is this: my husband's losing his job. This was to be his last full week at work, but, local weather being what it is (ice and snow and wind, oh my!) his hours are exceedingly numbered.

We are not in a unique situation, obviously. My worry, my uncertainty, my stalwart resolution to still, somehow, make this holiday season as sweet as it can be for my children, is the way it is for so many people this year. Times are rough. Times might get more rough.

I don't know how it's going to work, not any of it.

Not for me, not for you, not for our whole planet on the brink of something so completely unknown.

But, this is what I do know:
I know many hands make light work. I know I'm not alone.

I was feeling so low and slow and isolated, this morning, the whole last week. We suited up, the four of us, and tromped up to the hotel/restaurant/pub up the way for breakfast. For a change of pace, for something to do, for the reliable internet access. We'd been saving an old gift card for a snowy day, I guess. A gift card we got once when the restaurant had a problem with our order and gave us a card to compensate. It seemed like a good morning to break it out. We needed something.

We needed to come home and be reminded that people care. That even though I'm no good at sharing myself, at being available and vulnerable, that people still care.

I am humbled by the kindness of friends who know we're treading our way through rough waters and don't want us to sink under.

My world is a bit less bleak right now.
It's not the coffee in my belly or the fire crackling across the room or the magical white wonderland outside, it's knowing that I have enough stores to tread along for some time. It's trite to say we're all in this together, but it's true. And a little encouragement from friends can be just the boost you need.

I can navigate the space between Now and the New Year and be ready to hit the real work of What To Do Next without being so exhausted. I am humbled and grateful and glad for such kind gestures. Thank you.

many happy returns

2008-11-23T23:06:00.000-08:00

The super-saturation of my online life, the electronic representation of the muck and mystery that is being me (being any of us), means that I sometimes forget that I haven't returned here, to this place, to share or update. I don't want all my thoughts and considerations to be watered down to 140 twitter characters or very quick third-person facebook status updates, but I can't deny I'm attracted, like a bird (fast and shiny), to the ease. It's just so efficient to tap out a line, what's for dinner, how are you feeling, what's going on, so fast, and not worry about cohesiveness and grammar, not get stuck, thinking slowly with my fingers, in front of the laptop, when I really should be doing other things. So that's why I sat down to write this very glad entry last Thursday, but abandoned it to more immediate tasks and dispatched our happy news elsewhere. So, maybe you already know, but maybe you're a steady lurker (do I have even one?) who did not yet hear: Binx is back!!

Now we've all heard stories of little cats caught in moving trucks and missing for months. We all know cats who have gone walkabout for long periods, only to come back again, scrawny and starved for affection. I kept a solid, neutral, hopeful front up for the children, but I didn't really think this story would turn out well. I was speaking in past tense. I was preparing to move on. He's so tiny, so sweet, not at all the sort of scrappy cat who can make it out there. I thought he was a goner.

Our doorbell rang last Thursday morning and it was our across the street neighbor, holding Mister Missing-Six-Days, just like that. We spent hours out looking for our little guy every day, so I can't believe he was always so close. I suspect he wandered far away and was making his way home. At any rate, we were/are thrilled and grateful.

Six days is enough time for a just getting plump and healthy cat to become all bones again. He was weak and sleepy, but happy. Purring like a purr machine, curled up in laps and on pillows.

Now, home for almost four days again, he's less hungry, more playful, but just as sweet and purry. We are being extra vigilant in monitoring cats and open doors, though he doesn't seem (yet) inclined to leave. And if some kind of guilt-driven forbearance has him sleeping at our heads, instead of our feet, I'm sure you can understand why. We sure missed that little kitten and we don't want to lose him again.

And since I'm already here and all, I should mention that it only took me fourteen months of living here to set the clock on my range. It's an analog clock and smaller than is really so functional in the kitchen and I hardly noticed it anyway. But I set it and guess what? It keeps time (which is noteworthy, as every secondhand wall clock I've brought into my timekeeper-less kitchen has not, nor does my undercabinet radio/docking station, which gets faster and faster each day and I never know what time it is when I'm in there, a problem).

I actually set the clock to see if I could use the Time Bake function on the (old and unattractive but I can't complain) oven. The clock ran like clockwork and the Time Bake feature is fine. I remember it vaguely, a vestige of my childhood and Sunday roasts after church with potatoes and carrots. My mother would set the Time Bake and we'd come back home to a hot lunch, ready for us after changing out of white shoes and slicky underslips, Sunday dresses. So it wasn't after church, and it wasn't pot roast, but it was a busy gone-all-day day and coming home to lentils and rice and baked potatoes. I opened the door and smelled dinner and felt a little like someone else had been there all afternoon cooking for me. It's a nice way to come home.

three minus one

2008-11-17T09:53:00.000-08:00

We had something of a scare a few weeks ago: little Binx wandered off and was missing for a night and a day. We found him mewing under a hedge a few blocks away. And then we vowed, all of us, to be ever watchful, extra diligent, keeping tabs on him at all times. But you know. It's hard to keep tabs on a cat. Quiet and quick. Between the dog and the children feet are always in and out, a small cat can slide past easily, unseen, unnoticed, unmissed for hours.

Last night was the third time dinner dishes were cleared and in rounding the corner from the kitchen to table, I did not see a wee but persistent gray and white cat attempting to jump up for crumbs. Last night was the third night I slept through all night without having to toss a purring kitten off my pillow, to a more respectable place near my feet. Last night was the first night my daughter cried herself to sleep, worried and losing hope.

The world is full of homeless cats, unloved cats, feral cats, shelter cats, lost and lonely and destined to die soon cats. So I guess I know what you're thinking: get another one. I grew up with this sort of vague, peripheral notion of cats as dispensable nuisances. We never had a cat. My grandma always had cats, rotating litters of skittery kittens chasing out from under her mobile home. But I didn't know any cats, appreciate their quirks and comfort, until I was grown. Not really until we got our big Cozy lump did I realize not all cats are created equal. The obvious and simple can be so elusive. We don't want another cat.

We want this one back. The one with the story, the one my husband rescued from a hot engine, the one who was so suddenly sick and tenuous the vet shrugged and said "keep him comfortable", the one my girl sang to and stroked and made well again, the one who falls limp when picked up and smiles at belly rubs, the one who lets my boy heft him around in awkward ways, the one who perches on shoulders in front of the television, the one we (I must confess) love the best.

take my word for it

2008-11-14T16:32:00.000-08:00

This post has no pictures, on account of not being enough of a quick draw with the camera regarding the first item I aim to write about and politely declining the temptation to digitally capture an image of the second (you'll thank me for that one). I apologize in advance for the jarring disparity between topics on my mind today.

Butternut Squash Muffins Are Delicious. I love the versatility of a butternut squash, and at this time of year there's always one or two or several sitting around my kitchen. They can be halved and roasted without peeling; peeled, cubed and steamed; eaten as a stand-alone dish or the foundation from which a more complex entree is built. And while they're seen most typically in savories, they can be used, like pumpkin, in sweets (and obviously, the converse is true).

I make a lot of muffins. So quick and just about anything can be tossed in, surreptitiously-like. I'm not at all about sneaking good stuff into my kids' food, no, but I am about overtly cramming in as much good stuff as I can without the resulting product tasting too much like a nugget of healthy health paste. Muffins are muffins, after all, and should be delicious. I generally just mix a lot of whatever together and see how it bakes up, but this time I wrote down ingredients as I was making them. The yield was so yummy, I had to share. Maybe not my number one most nutritious muffin ever, but still pretty dang wholesome.

butternut squash muffins
(copied verbatim from my real-time scrawl, sub and tweak as desired)

1 C whole spelt flour
1/2 C ground almonds
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 eggs
1 C butternut squash puree
1/4 C coconut oil
1 C rapadura

you know the drill. mix dry + wet. bake 350 til done. makes 12.

Switching gears now. Ahem.

Cat Sh*t Is Disgusting. I've still not broken in my relatively new "cat person" identity and the jump from one to three felines has been an adjustment. Every time I turn around, we're out of kibbles. The litter box(es) always need scooping. I have attempted, from the start, to avoid feeling any resentment or drudgery about the cat box, making the chore just part the ritual of being, of living in my space. I have succeeded in pretending that the scooping and sifting and flushing is just a daily visit with my own little toxoplasmosis-laced zen rock garden. So given the effort I've put into *not* getting bogged down by the dirty muck of having all these animals, you can imagine how completely frustrated I am by the cat who has taken to crapping in all the wrong places. I've caught her in the act and sprayed her with water. I've taped aluminum foil down on her preferred spots. I've upped my box maintenance from once a day to a steady two. I'm just about to lose my ever loving mind.

Cat pee in the wrong places can be bad, but the way the smell of uncovered cat crap hangs and hovers, heavily filling our whole downstairs living space, is worse. It's not a sneak attack like errant cat piss can be, it hits you full force, invasive and wretched. I am so over it. Now, this is coming from the cat who likes being outside best of all. Our wild cat, our kitty middle child, who was vaguely tamed by the acquisition of the foundling in the car engine (because, it seems, the best toy for a rambunctious kitten is another kitten), who runs out whenever the door is open. She'd stay out all night if we let her (and a few times, accidentally, she has). My theory is that she's protesting having to do her business indoors at all. So is the solution as simple as installing a cat door?

you can eat crackers in my bed kitchen anytime

2008-11-06T16:58:00.000-08:00

Who knows, maybe if Barbara Mandrell also finds herself with a surplus of just-made hummus and nothing to eat it with, no chips, no pitas, no tortillas, she'll google 'easy cracker recipe' and stumble on this post at 101recipes.com like I did. And because I don't believe for a second that celebrities (even has beens who aren't regular household fodder) are not as vain and curious as we are (okay, as I am), after she bookmarks some recipes, she might google herself and come here.

Well, Barbara, maybe it also took you being devoid of any crackery type foods to consider making them, because, for all the scratch cooking you do (or I do, whatever, I have never drawn parallels between myself and a nineteen eighties country music star, but I'm running with it, my dearth of sequined pantsuits and all), who needs to make crackers? I certainly didn't have any aspirations to do so.

But as it turns out, crackers are quick. Just as quick as cookies and quicker than bread. I don't know if you're auditioning for dancing with the stars or are appearing at some local civic benefit anytime soon, surely your schedule is much busier than mine, but it really only takes a couple of hours.

I followed the recipe pretty much straight across, minus the semolina flour. Who keeps semolina flour on hand? Uh, not me. (Barbara?) I used my same old unbleached wheat for all 3 cups. I didn't add any cheese or infused oil or anything fancy at all. I've made them a few times now, each time simply dusting the baking sheets with coarse corn meal and then giving each cracker, after fork poking and before baking, a quick grind of sea salt.

It's nice having a jar of fresh crackers in the cupboard. I guess it's not really all that much nicer than having a box of store bought crackers, which is pretty standard fare for most cupboards, yes? But, like anything you make yourself, the making makes it better.

Last weekend, I made a batch of these up to take to a potluck. My secret confession is that I don't really like potlucks. Maybe the luck part but not the pot. Sort of how I care not for buffets or other foods behind sneeze guards. And it's not the sneezing part. Its just, I have no idea. It's always very stressful for me to think of something share-worthy. I worry that I eat differently than other folks, that my cooking skills are inadequate, that I oversalt to my own preference, all this silly stuff bouncing around in my head, it's very distracting. So, even though I'm something of a social goofball, I do like the people gathering part very much and I just close my eyes and jump and hope the food part works out. It usually does. Or if it doesn't, don't tell me. I don't want to know.

But you can imagine how leaving a pan of these to cool and crisp for a few minutes around the corner on the dining room table and then returning to find my frickin fracken dog having jumped up and knocked them off and devoured them a mere hour before potluck time would be very stressful to me. Your dog is probably better behaved than mine is, though, Barbara. My dog is aging and actually doesn't have a reputation for stealing food off the table. So maybe this is a testament to their tastiness. To know that my dog would risk being shunned back outside for the crunch of homemade wheat crackers. That's the best review I've got.

Although, wouldn't it just be the way, the batch I made to share weren't even all that crunchy. I must have gotten lazy with my rolling and made them too thick. Still good, perhaps lacking the satisfying crisp but less likely to leave crumbs between the sheets. If you're still into that sort of thing.

(if you're reading this in google reader, it appears as though the strikethrough in the title doesn't come through. sorry about that.)

for the record

2008-11-04T15:48:00.000-08:00

I'm pretty grumpy about living in a Vote by Mail only state. since this change happened (99? I think?) I've grown increasingly disgruntled (minus last major election when I lived in another state). Here's the rub: it's supposed to be easier, use less resources, make voting more accessible. Yes? Maybe. Democracy requires a private vote and the "privacy of one's own home" could be anything but. Without the anonymity of a closed booth in a neutral location, how can we know votes aren't being unduly influenced, or blatantly coerced? We don't. We don't know at all. And, I don't know, somehow the going gives ceremony to an act that is, should be, important. Subtract the polling place and it is, should be, as important but something feels lost. Also, no stickers. Of course, anyone who has ever made it a practice to shop at Trader Joe's with young children knows all about the diluted thrill of so many stickers. But some little signal, some kind of proof, to ourselves, our neighbors, our children, that we participated, that we are part of the same country, that we all, despite varying philosophies and objectives, possess a valid voice, seems beneficial. I don't know why Oregon can't buy the same giant roll of I Voted stickers and pop one in with each ballot. My grandparents are polling place volunteers in their tiny New Mexico town and the last time I talked to my grandma I told her she should snag me a few stickers early and send them to me. I was only joking a little.

whistling in the dark

2008-11-03T22:40:00.000-08:00

We have this little schtick, the boy and I, when we go into public restrooms together: I remind him not to touch anything and he, to keep himself from touching anything, holds his hands up near his chest and sort of twiddles his fingers together. It's not something I told him to do or demonstrated to him, it's just a little motion he came up with on his own. It makes sense, he keeps his hands busy without fiddling around with door locks and toilet paper dispensers, even if the movement looks funny and doesn't really *do* anything.

It's the not really doing anything part that I am thinking about right now.

I hate to admit it. But I kinda feel like this election is fingers twiddling in a public restroom. I don't want to stick my hands where they're especially likely to pick up germs, but I'm compelled to do something, because what else can you do, so I waggle my fingers around and hope maybe I'm, at least, not causing more harm.

Hope. The word has been used so much this electoral season I'm beginning to wonder what we expect from it. And I worry we expect too much.

I've been driving around with that poster in my back window for weeks now, as much as a reminder to random readers as to myself. Not just a public admonishment but a personal insistence that I am not, cannot be, entirely cynical.

A person totally jaded, someone so fed up and disgusted and comfortable comparing politics to the choreographed pomp of a wrestling match, wouldn't, couldn't possibly, scotch tape that sign in her front window. (could she?)

I believe in the democratic process. I believe in the power of the people. I believe voting is important. I believe we have to do something. And I hope that it matters.

photographic evidence

2008-11-01T00:07:00.000-07:00

The picture proves that she was here. A fleeting spirit that, with forces and power unseen and unknown to me, elevated the mood yesterday from something to hide from, endure, up to what might even be considered enjoyable, pleasant. I make no bones about it: I hate halloween. If I made a book of holidays and events and activities I like, it wouldn't make the cut, not even the post-published appendix.

But having, in my house, a girl so excited and full of positive light about something is infectious and, well, it's hard to be a complete grinch (what would the Halloween equivalent be? a real life ghoul?) when she's so happy about participating.

It's wincingly macabre to refer to my daughter as some kind of ethereal mist, and I almost nixed her Ghost Bride costume idea. But, seeing how it lined up nicely underneath my Must Come From Materials We Already Have On Hand stipulation, I let it slide.

In years past, we have hidden in back rooms with the lights out. We have, a few times, begrudgingly supervised her neighborhood trick-or-treating. But I've never been so pleased about it. I think, still, it's awfully contrived these days. And commercial. We're decades past a baseline of homemade costumes and popcorn balls. It's like the seasonal aisle of any big box store is parading down the street, on display on my neighbor's porch. It's not my thing.

But I have this cool kid, see. Who insists her favorite part about the Trick-or-Treating is peeking into other people's houses. I can get behind that. And her thrill in dressing up absolutely depends on thinking up and putting together her own costume. The candy part barely registers. I mean, don't get me wrong, she's a child: she likes sweety treats. But she knows we don't eat that stuff and why. She eats a few pieces, sure, after scrutinizing the ingredients list for any of the big ticket offenders. The rest she'll willingly toss or give away or (shhh! don't tell!) save for next year's dressed-up doorbell ringers.

The little brother made a night before request for a Lion costume. The girl set to work straight away and fashioned up the sweetest little mane and tail from a scrap of old blanket and some pieces of yarn. We could make a costume any day, and some days we *do*, but having a specific *reason*, was, okay, I'll admit it, a lot of fun.

I couldn't have these kids all dressed up and with no place to go, so we met up with friends. Costumed kids and adults (even me, I was an undercover plainclothes halloween grouch) in a big group, outside, in the dark = a good time. But I wouldn't have done such a thing on my own, I wouldn't have invited anybody over here, I wouldn't have been so keen on traipsing around my own (sketchy) hood. Sharing the evening with other people was worthwhile, though.

So the ghost bride dress is abandoned on the living room sofa, her vaguely metallic gray-ish face washed clean. But she was here, yesterday, snipping brown yarn, perfecting her creepy stare into the mirror, running through the night with a friend.

It was a Happy Halloween.

always busy cooking up an angle

2008-10-25T23:44:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the part I dislike most about my job (which is to say, this work I do for no money) is that I'm always here. And in the always being here, there are few absences with anxiously awaited returns, like the hero welcome the husband gets when he comes in at the end of the day. It's not that I don't like being here - I do. But nobody misses me because I'm rarely away and if I don't get the same glad smiles from finally coming back home, I have to find another way. And, generally, that way is called chocolate.

So, just between you and me here, I didn't get a baking bug tonight to satiate my own sweet tooth, no. But some days are grumpy days, and today was fine, but tempers were, for inexplicable reasons, raw and rubbed wrong it was just a little off, as far as Saturdays go.

While dinner was in the oven, I threw together a quick pumpkin pie. Canned pumpkin. I know, I know, but I keep some cans on hand when they're on sale at this time of the year. One of those well appreciated quickie conveniences. I should puree up a bunch of pumpkin and keep it for the same reason, and I have done that before, but I haven't bought a pie pumpkin yet this year. Anway, pumpkin pie filling in the food processor (molasses, pumpkin, rapadura, spices, an egg, you know). Cookie dough-ish batter in the mixer. Pressed the dough (like chocolate chip cookie dough minus the chocolate chips) into the pie plate. bake for ten-ish minutes. Spoon on filing, bake til firm. Sprinkle on chocolate chips, return to oven until melty. Spread melted chips with spatula. Take out pie, let cool for an hour.

The little one went to bed before it was ready, but even as he was walking, so slow and tired, through the kitchen on his way to pajamas, he stopped, "What that Mell? Tumting mell toe good!" and then, peeking in at the oven and turning on the light, "Pie!" And that's why I did it. Because I knew how much they'd like it.

But also, it was good. The melty chocolate chips on top of, well, any sweet baked treat is something I do frequently because this little family of mine loves the stuff. And considers no baked good truly complete without it. I'm ambivalent about the cocoa bean, but don't dislike it outright, so it's no trouble, really.

No trouble at all.

(do you know the lyric this post title is from? )

twist my arm

2008-10-23T23:12:00.000-07:00

Nah, no behind the scenes coercion from my friend Lisa, but she tagged me in a 'six random things' meme and, well, I'm feeling particularly amenable and generous today. So generous that I treated my children to cookies at the bakery and small toys at the toy store. And then said Yes! to pie after dinner. You'd think it was my birthday or something. . .

I almost passed because it feels like I've exhausted every random fact about me, magnifying every pore in frightening proportion, describing my last tic and quirk with the most tedious detail, but then I remembered, wait! That's over there, in my little basement speak easy, with the secret knock and dark windows. This space is less familiar, I'm more guarded, deliberate. It feels a little like I'm talking to myself in the city park here, anyone could be listening, but are they?

1. I do, in fact, talk to myself. So blogging to myself wouldn't be such a stretch. When I make some sort of a clumsy gaffe (hello too much political commentary!), I grumble, "april!" and, I must admit, it's the only time I hear my name and it doesn't take me a couple beats to go, oh! that's me. You'd think after all these ::cough, 33:: years, I'd be right attached to it.

2. I love old polyester old lady shirts best. Not any old polyester shirt. But I can sometimes see one from a distance at a thrift store and know, in the cut and the fabric, that it's the one. I have a number of these favorite shirts. I wore my newest one today:

And, as a bonus: here's a post from last year wherein I wrote about this same thing and there's another picture of me in an old lady shirt in front of my same orange wall. (creature, habit, yeah yeah yeah).

3. I sing Amazing Grace to my son every night. If he's having a hard time falling asleep, he might get the extended lullaby selection, the order of which I developed when my girl was wee and took, in her very spirited child way, a long, long time to zonk out each night. So mostly, it's just the one song, but it might be some traditional churchy songs (Jesus loves me, etc), fading into a patriotic medley, then on to Dream a Little Dream of Me (hey, I'm no Mama Cass, but I try), and finishing it up with either Cat Steven's Moonshadow or The Counting Crows' The Rain King. My repertoire is limited.

4. I abstained from eating any overt cow dairy for nearly a decade. And then, in the last week, I willfully and knowingly ate some. Twice. Pizza. What next? (bacon.)

5. I am a horrible knitter. I learned how years ago, from a combination of looking at a kid's knitting book and seeing one demonstration from my friend, Sarah. I jumped right into my first project and have been knitting along, so slowly ever since. But I never seem to get more than one or two little things made a year and my skills stagnated at very beginner level and I still can't follow a pattern and I know so many superknitters, it's a little embarrassing to be the lone less-than-mediocre knitter working with plastic needles and lion brand yarn on a stockinette scarf. So be it. (oh, okay, so mostly I have wooden ones, but plastic sounds more dramatic).

6. My father was born on the 23rd of November on his mother's 23rd Birthday. Several of his siblings are born on the 23rd (of different months), as well. I was born on the 23rd of October. This same grandmother died on the 23rd of October, 2000. I have a special relationship with the number 23.

(i was always the sort to break chain letters. the golden books pass alongs when i small, the postcard kind when i was older, and definitely the email forwards now. so, on the basis of consistent principles, i respectfully do not tag anyone, but do tell me something about yourself, if you're so inclined).

outside/inside

2008-10-20T22:03:00.000-07:00

I like the idea of a nature table, little bits brought in from out, like a small gallery of objects culled from paths and parks and sidewalks. But for all the nuts and seedpods and scraggly branches we keep on shelves and windowsills, there are all the more under the oven, splayed across the floor, stuck to the bottom of my foot. Carried in by the handful, by the pocketful, and admired, such lovely fleeting things, but also, played with and stacked up and rolled around in the back of tiny toy dumptrucks. So the nature table is a nice idea, but having these pieces around and a part of how we live, in the house or not, is better. Or, at least, a pretty good validation for elevating sweeping/dusting beyond the Sisyphean dread of other chores! ha!

the more i see, the less i know

2008-10-15T23:09:00.000-07:00

station impulsively switched -not another commercial, anything else- and i'm not a mom in morning traffic. i don't have two sleepy car-sicky kids in the backseat. the opening notes of weezer's sweater song and i am behind the wheel of my 2-door white ford escort. i am taken by surprise. i am scott bakula oh boying into the mirror. i am a thousand miles away. i am one thousand four hundred and seventy-seven miles away. i am me, fourteen years ago. i am eighteen. just like that. i believe in time travel. sure i do. isn't it amazing, the way you can be driving along like any day and then, without any preparation or warning or inclination at all, music can pick you up and take you some place else? maybe someplace you don't want be again. or someplace you've never been before but feels familiar anyway.

and so i'm choosing to be here right now. loving, dancing, living. because this would be a pretty sweet place to come and visit again. be with me. (this is say hey by michael franti and spearhead. it's not any song that makes me dance when everybody else in the house is sleeping. also, hooray for music videos with capoeira cameos!)

warm ankles = good

2008-10-10T15:25:00.000-07:00

On dry days, like today, with clear skies and no clouds and sunshine, the air is so cold. Last night we dropped down near freezing. Cold. But I am determined not to turn on heat yet. Our old house has funny (original) electric radiant panel wall heaters, a separate unit in each room. We can efficiently warm up one room without unnecessarily heating the whole house, but I'm still trying to hold out. I've been putting the boy to sleep in two layers of pajamas (a good idea anyway, since he kicks the covers off, cold or not). I wore a sweatshirt to bed last night. And when the husband said it was too cold to sleep, I said, "put on some socks, man."

Our winters are mild here, so when I say it feels like winter out there, it's true. It does. Which means we need to dress accordingly. I wouldn't wear a parka in July. But I'm so glad to have these ankle-warmers around this October:

Say you're not the super-gifted knitty sort, or the very talented crafty kind, but you have all these short pants, and your ankles are always cold and oh! what to do? How about felt up a large wool sweater in the wash, cut off the sleeves, pull them up over your legs. Ta-da! I've done this with several sweaters now. Okay, so the very first one was an accident: I was attempting to make baby pants for the boy, you know, back when he was still a little baby and when I sewed them up, I screwed up the rise and fat babies in big cloth diapers + low rise pants = no worky, so my girl snagged them out of the scrap pile and wore them as her own legwarmers. So I guess what I'm saying is she discovered them and has been utilizing the idea for a few years and I just finally rolled around to it yesterday. It's a very good idea.

just in time for fall

2008-10-05T12:37:00.000-07:00

Oh, we'll have sun breaks and dry spells and blue skies, now and again, but the drizzle and the bluster and the growing drifts of soggy leaves spell Goodbye Summer, in case last week's surprisingly warm temps caused any confusion. And when the cooler weather sets in, when the windows are splattered with rain and we all start thinking about wearing socks again, what's better than a crusty loaf of bread right out of the oven? Freshly baked bread is good in any weather, but the start of Autumn always makes me extra enthusiastic about the simple pleasure of a slice of bread and a bowl of soup.

I saw that No Knead recipe floating around, on the blog of a friend a while ago and on the blogs of some of those top tier popular patty types. And I admit I was dubious. I mean, I'm sure it's fine and tasty and all that, but what's bread making minus the Knead? That's like sewing without the, uh, needle threading. Oh wait, the automatic threader on my machine is pretty nifty. It's like sleeping without the pajamas. I don't know! It's less than, that's all I'm saying, less than the whole experience that I find pleasurable. I have written plenty about how I appreciate the mundane details, because even the dumb work we gotta do amasses into something spectacular (Life! how fantastic is that?!) and I am suspicious of employing too many time saving devices that, at the end of the day, get us to the same dang spot without the exhilaration of having done it all ourselves. That's a good feeling. (so says the woman who is over. done. finished with life without dishwasher. install an automatic, maytag, used, new, whatever and I won't ever, not once, bemoan losing the Little Red Hen-ness of scouring up a sink full of dishes. I swear!).

I like kneading bread dough. I have small appliance envy with regard to dehydrators and a vita mix, but care not to acquire a bread machine. I don't like the uniform bricky shape, for one, and I just dig making bread, for two. And while I seem not to do it as often as I should (save for the Sunday night pizza dough standard) fresh bread happens often enough around here, especially in cold weather, that it's not that unusual.

I have this new (old) Descoware dutch oven, shipped to me by my mom, found in my grandmother's kitchen, unused for decades, inherited from an Aunt, so long ago. And when it came in the mail a few weeks ago, I thought: bread! Okay, first I thought: score! Another piece of cast iron enamelware for my burgeoning secondhand collection.

But then I remembered, oh! Dutch Oven = No Knead bread recipe. Okay, why not? And guess what? It's great! The kneading part isn't missed because the bread dough, in its slow rise over a day, becomes such a part of Kitchen Life, tucked in the corner on the counter in a bowl or plopped down front and center on a cornmeal dusted dishtowel, that I don't feel like I'm missing anything by skipping the kneading. Am I really making references to getting to know my bread dough? And then asserting that, yes, appropriate relationship can be formed without the visceral work of kneading? Yeah, I am.

When it came time to try this recipe out for the first time, I just googled it and pulled up the one published at Mother Earth News, though, it seems like there is little variation between versions. I thought it might be incorrect at first because it calls for but a quarter teaspoon of yeast. And just 3 cups of flour. I think it's a great recipe for maximizing limited ingredients (which is something we might all be doing more of from now on out).

It makes a nice, crusty loaf. Soft on the inside with lots of air pockets. Good chewy texture. (My great grandmother used to say: the middle's for your tummy and the crust is for your teeth). Slight tangy flavor, it only rises a day, so it's no sourdough, but it has a more complex taste than your standard loaf bread, I'd say.

I've made it a few times in the last week and I think it's going to be a regular around here.

with what shall we pay it, dear liza, dear liza?

2008-10-01T22:17:00.000-07:00

Please tell me I'm not the only one who gets an irrepressible urge to start singing There's a Hole in my Bucket every time talk of the bail-out floats by. With the taxes, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry. But the people have no money, dear Liza, dear Liza. And so it goes. The snake eats its tail and so many of us are holding tight to the little scraps by the wayside.

How can someone I've never met, been in the same room with, be so generous and kind? A certain friend did something today that was such a surprise, such a sweet gesture, that I don't even know what to say except Thank You.

Which means I might get back on the writing track, because the picture-ing should return to its regularly uploaded pattern. I am itching to shake up the look of this little blogspot place, but maybe a switch to someplace else all together? Thinking. And revealing, too, my tendency to cut and run. Oh, I'm very loyal and stick around long past a respectable welcome, but just using my living situations over the past several years as an indicator, I should point out that I don't even know how often a person should clean beneath a refrigerator, because I just do it every time I move. Which has been sufficient. So when I'm growing tired of the same title banner (that lovely curly headed baby up there is a whole year older now and couldn't squeeze into that orange stripey pantsuit for anything) why do I start poking around at other platforms? I guess it is the Clean Slate appeal.

And I don't buy for a second that there's any sort of Hope or Fresh Start or Healing coming down the pike any way we slice it come November. I don't think any plan has that much straw to spare and if it's not one bucket, it's another.

But there are, despite all the upheavals and uncertainties and very valid worries, kind people and bread (tomorrow I tell you about No Knead bread and my new/vintage Dutch Oven) and if you've got those two things, you've got community and without community, we're all leaky sieves. I feel extra full right now.

gladness doubled

2008-10-01T09:40:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago we went camping (again). I declared we should attempt a new destination, each time we have the urge to pitch a tent and build a fire. So instead of heading westward, we drove east, and landed at Silver Falls State Park. What's not to be glad about waterfalls and trails and two days of hiking? It was a good time. Even if we forgot a knife. And forks. And the big bowl for dishwashing. And a flashlight. And fleece for the husband. We had everything that mattered.

My son walked over to me, "I have someting in my pocket, mama. You wanna see?" "Yes, I do!" and he reached into his pocket and pulled out a little stone. "I have a wock in my pocket!" And then I said to my boy, "I have something in my pocket, also. Do you want to see?" "I do! What is it?" And I pulled out my own little stone. "I have a rock in my pocket, too." "You do have a wock in your pocket, mama! You do! We both have wocks!" And he smiled like this was the best thing ever. "Here mama, you can have my wock. And now you have two."

bother

2008-09-26T16:39:00.000-07:00

There's a good reason, I guess, that I've always used flickr for image hosting for pics shown here: trying to upload direct to the blog is giving me fits of frustration!! Blogger, my picture is horizontal, quit flipping it on is side, why don't ya?! Gah.

Which picture, you ask? Well, the one that sums up a nice little post I have fading in my head, about our camping trip last week, about my boy (who is a dear and -almost- everything he does charms me wholly), about a moment I want to remember.

So maybe I can figure out the trouble and try again later. I feel thwarted from every direction these days, like the dumbest details are more complicated than they should be and why bother anyway?

psst. . .

2008-09-13T22:26:00.000-07:00

I'm still here. (that old refrain). I let my flickr account expire and while I still have a smidge of storage space available for my demoted-back-to-free account's monthly storage allotment, I must say that the limit is looming over me like the clouds which will, surely, roll in soon enough here. But right now, lately, it's all blue skies and soft breezes and the most perfect last hurrah weather ever before Fall sets in. I like all of the seasons, but the change from Winter to Spring and then the following cusp between Summer and Autumn enchant me, woo me, win me most of all.

And what does an expired pro flickr account (does the 'pro' label make you chuckle down deep like it does me? maybe pro for prolific, but if it's pro for professional, then i guess they've overestimated the effect of pandering to one's hopeful aspirations, because my quick, unpracticed snaps are as amateur as they get) have to do with not posting in this little bloggy space? Nothing, really, just that the pictures are out of synch now and I don't remember what I wanted to write about or punctuate with a photo, anyway.

This weekend has seen (so far, it's only Saturday, after all), so many diced tomatoes and coaxing a kitten back from the brink of death. I might share more, later, about the former but regarding the latter, let it be known that the healing properties of a young, tenderhearted girl can not be discounted and don't believe everything a veterinarian office tells you, anyway. Little Binx took a real bad turn the other day and, after strong antibiotics and zero response, the same little cat we were at somber "keep comfortable" stage with yesterday, is purring happily, bright-eyed, on my husband's lap right now. It's amazing what a difference a day can make.

And, now, instead of doing something necessary and practical like emptying the memory card on the rebel or washing the rest of the dinner dishes or finding a home for all that laundry on the rocking chair in my bedroom, I think it's going to be Season 2 of Big Love on the portable dvd player, in the bed with the lights out, and maybe a cup of bedtime tea. Oh, it's herbal tea and I brush my teeth first.

veritable smorgasbord

2008-09-04T16:52:00.000-07:00

Hold onto your hat, because I'm about to reveal something astonishing. But, in true april-fashion, I'll give the whole languid segue first, the meandering backstory that has you tapping your foot and hoping I hurry up and get to the point already. In this case, it's that I have a nasty habit of comparing everything in terms of Oregon and Arizona. I don't mean to stack such different places against each other in some neverending, unfair battle, but being that I've lived, in my current adult family life set-up, in only those two distinct places, it's hard not to be always making notes, keeping score. But since we only lasted in Arizona for just shy of three years and hightailed it back to the beaver state at first chance (arguably a tad bit too hasty, perhaps), it's easy to guess which state is winning. I love Oregon best and did a shoddy job of hiding my favor while we were in Phoenix, at the expense, I fear, of being something of an Oregon-snob. I didn't mean to curtail every conversation with a haughty, "well, in Oregon. . . " but, it might have gone a little something like that.

So, within that context, you might be surprised to know that I have found something that is unequivocally, without contest, better in Arizona.

The State Fair.

Maybe you're not the fair going type and you don't so much care for any of them. But I'm fond of any place I can wallow around in the sort of base people watching I love best, with canned goods and handicrafts and baby goats, to boot. I love the idea behind the fair, bringing out your best to show off at summer's end. I try not to notice all the airbrushed t-shirts and deep fried on a stick monstrosities, but those have a special place as some kind of modern/retro sociological evidence, too, I suppose.

We went to the Oregon Fair this past Sunday. It showered off an on and we sure did get wet. And despite soggy hair and having to hide the camera away from rain drops (and missing out on the best pics), we had a fine time. Great, even. It was great and enjoyable and all of that. BUT! I couldn't help wishing I was in Arizona. Well, not exactly, since the state fair there doesn't happen until the first week of October (when it's less likely to hit a solid 110 by late afternoon).

The difference between the two events is exactly the reverse of what you'd expect, or at least, the opposite of what fits tidily into my general sweeping judgments these two places I've called Home.

There are more vendors, more stuff for sale, more Super Amazing! products, hands down, at the Oregon fair and remarkably fewer handmade items and canned foods and acrylic yarn afghans on display here. There seems to be, in Oregon, a stronger representation from 4-H groups and not a lot of offerings from independent children. This was disappointing. It was thrilling two years ago to be wandering up and down through the children's art exhibits and see other students from my girl's same art teacher. (as a really random aside: we miss her art classes almost more than we miss anything else. If Larry every stumbles on this humble blog here, I implore him to move within a doable drive of my little house. ha!). Of course, we weren't expecting to find any familiar names among the photographs and textiles, but we also weren't expecting to see such a puny offerering. Like, no collections! In Arizona, there's a whole building dedicated to showing off of individuals' collections: stamps and kewpie dolls and whatever else you think someone might collect and want to show off, in glass display cases, in a dusty fairground building. I totally eat that stuff up.

And there's stuff for sale in Arizona, don't get me wrong, and sleepy toothless carnies heckling to win one for the kiddies, but that ilk pales in contrast to the cake decorating demonstrations and mineral exhibits and hands-on activities for children. It's not even that I'm opposed to a hefty dose of Fair Only! For Sale specials, super absorbent shammy cloths and quick and brite cleaner and, may my Grandmother rest in peace, the Vita Mix mixer. Seriously, about the Vita-Mix: I have in my possession, but not in current use, a stainless steel vintage seventies jobbie that mimics, precisely, the same lovely unit that my father uses every day and which he purchased at the State Fair of New Mexico before I was even born. Since you don't know my dad at all, you'll have to trust me when I tell you that any appliance that withstands his use on a daily basis for three decades is worth whatever exorbitant price it might have cost at the time. Now, my old vita-mix is not functional, it's been a couple years since I used it regularly (the Oster blender from Target I picked up is a sad, sad replacement) and I miss it. So it was with great interest and true enthusiasm that I stood in the crowd and watched the VitaMix guy whiz up cabbage and fruit and ice and whatever else into something "like sorbet" and then wait, impatiently, for my own tiny paper cup sample.

I love the Fair!

But for all my excitement, there was something lacking the other day. The carnival rides were embarrassing. I mean, let me state right now that if I were the CEO of Funtastic Rides in Portland, I'd be embarrassed. The Ferris Wheel, so small! A State Fair begs for one of those Giant Wheels, the ones that goggle eyes and make children second guess their own bravery in line. But the wheel at the Oregon Fair was the same wheel you might see at any neighborhood carnival and was, I am almost certain, the exact wheel that stood over the carnival of my little town's summer festival. Little town carnivals and State Fair carnivals should not be the same and while I know any midway is nothing but many variations on the same spinning theme, a good midway will at least entice a nine year old and I can tell you right now that my nine year old was not enticed at all, but rode along on the roundy roundy dumptruck ride and the upsie downsie firetruck ride on account of pleasing her little brother.

The corn we bought was boiled, not roasted. The nerve! We pack our own snacks, generally, but might be tempted into one or two little things that don't entirely upset our gastronomical sensibilities. We shared a piece of pie but even the kettle corn seemed inferior (we walked by).

Man, who even thinks about one state's fair versus another? And then writes about it? You'd think it was somebody who didn't have anything else to do, and not some person trying to play big money, big money (or at least, higher number, higher number!) with the pedometer and who just printed out a recipe for pita bread and is going to try to make some now, on account of having all that hummus whizzed up in the fridge and nothing to eat it with.

the numbers don't lie

2008-09-03T21:46:00.001-07:00

Didn't fast food restaurants start handing out pedometers instead of french fries a few years ago? I seem to recall a marketing blitz direct from the golden arches down to the hoi polloi about step counting. I'm not much for the company of Grimace and Ronald, though, so I can't be sure. I do think that it's been a while since these little gadgets were everywhere and while I like to pretend I'm ahead of the trends (all day aprons, wait for it!), sometimes I roll into the party seconds before last call (uh, Facebook, anyone?).

I guess I'm just curious about how much I walk every day. I *feel* busy. I fall into bed sometimes and think I haven't sat down much all day. But perception is a tricky beast and it was time for some sort of tangible evidence. The husband picked up this little pedometer for me months ago, but I didn't get around to opening it up and trying it out until yesterday.

I didn't remember to clip it on until after I'd changed out of my pajamas, so I missed the whole fixing breakfast, starting the morning hour. And then I tried to forget about it. It's really tiny so that was easy to do. I wanted to see what a normal day was like. Give or take.

"They" say 10,000 steps is a decent goal, right? I don't know for whom this goal is decent, for your averagely healthy and fit person? For someone with a strict appointment with every judge show on daytime television and the world's largest collection of empty dorito bags? Who? I guess it's just an average person.

I must be pretty average, then. By the time bedtime drew close, I was just topping out over ten thousand. Which means that I'm not sedentary (I think I knew that already) but that I should probably make a higher goal, if I want this to be about improved fitness.

Although if I'm being candid here (which, frankly, uh, this isn't my completely candid place and I'm all about the soft focus lens here, so I might still shoot from the hip, but it's cotton balls I'm shooting, I think.) then I'll admit that I didn't hit the 10K mark today. It was a drive into the city day, though, which eats up an hour each way of my time and gives my wallet, and not my legs, a good run. I sat on a blanket, or stood in the shade, at the park and chatted with other mothers of my persuasion and watched the children play. A nice afternoon, but not much walking. I really did think I'd make it up come dinner making and house tidying and all the other things that happen around here in the evening, but I didn't. Maybe on account of some not-what-we-were-hoping for news today there was a thick, oozy pall cast, stepping through which took considerable effort.

I'll give it a go again tomorrow. Clip the little ticker on my pocket and see what happens. Oddly, even though I haven't really tried yet to amend my normal stepping, wearing the pedometer has already made me more aware, somehow, of walking, how every regular old step can add up. And even if this information doesn't add one iota to my general fitness level, it's an interesting tidbit to throw around during awkward lulls in conversations. I don't suppose I can find a discrete little counter for totting up accidental non-sequiturs. Yeah, probably not.

crazy cat people

2008-09-01T19:40:00.000-07:00

I've got such a backlog of blog entries taking up space in my brain (not paying rent, but I''m not committed enough to evict them) that I never got around to mentioning here (I don't think?) about the kitten I brought home for my girl on the Saturday before Memorial Day. If you know my girl, you know that she loves cats. Our old lumpy, furry feline, Cozy, came into our family (as an already grown and predictable cat) because the girl, when she was still just two years old, couldn't stop talking about getting a cat. But that was seven years ago and within the last several months, my girl started wishing audibly for "a little black kitten with green eyes to call me own" (insert your own fake Irish brogue). I flirted with the idea around the time of her 9th birthday, in January, but decided it wasn't the right time (I wasn't so sold on the idea myself). But once Spring inched into Summer, I knew there wouldn't be a better time, so I responded to a craigslist post and half an hour later (whisper out loud that you might want a kitten and they practically fall from the sky) we had a tiny (so tiny!) little Ozma. Named by the girl as a nod to one of her favorite book series, that little kitten is nearly full grown now. It's true what they say about kittens! They turn into cats, and fast! She was fuzzy when she was little but's so sleek now, like a panther; her green eyes turned yellower and yellower. And with two of them (and a dog, to boot, maybe don't get me started on the dog, we're at odds, and I feel no guilt at all because you know what? we've had her for eleven years and most marriages these days don't last so long) I thought we were at capacity. Full. Finished. The end.

But let's say it's a quarter til six on a Tuesday morning and your phone rings. You answer groggily, waking up from a weird dream about an overful animal shelter (no joke!) and hear, on the other end, your husband. And he doesn't know what to do. About the kitten he's holding. That he just pulled out of the engine compartment of his car. Because when he stopped for a red light, he heard mewing.

You tell him to bring it here. What else? And when he arrives back, at dawn, a few minutes later, you get a towel and some water and set the pitiful little animal up in the garage with the side door open (maybe it will go home?).

But pitiful, bony animals with fleas and weepy eyes, dull hair and lethargy don't have a home.

I posted adds on craigslist and no one answered (surprise!). We asked around and the neighbors didn't know anything. We left, as a overhanging question mark, the option of taking him to a shelter. We didn't need another cat! We just went, after nearly seven years, from one to two. Isn't that enough? But the shelters are so full! And we're such softies. It's true.

It's amazing what a little kindess and good food will do. And in a few days, the pitiful animal perked up and became a very normal little kitten, a sweet gray and white boy about (oh, I'm guessing here) ten weeks old. What we mistook for sickness was probably just hunger and today he's just as playful as any kitten. Just as playful but, oh, so much sweeter. Probably the sweetest little cat I've ever known.

The husband, who feels a particular bond from pulling him out from around a hot engine and burning up his own hand in the process, took to calling the little guy Tom Kitten. But I decided (with really no vote, sometiemes I just pound my gravel and say something is so) to call him Binx. Binx Bolling, but who can be so formal with a cat? The husband feels a special kinship from being the rescuer (no doubt the kitten would have died had he not been pulled out right then) but I felt a bond from first from being the namer (but, then, I'm a namer of all things and enjoy the process quite a lot, be it a kid or a cat or a car) and, later, because he really is sweeter than any cat I've yet to know.

He's in my lap as I type, filled-out and clear-eyed, fur clean and soft, whiskers starting to regrow (they were all singed off in the car), purring contentedly. The love-iest kitty of all lovey cats. It's been two weeks now since he's been here.

I think he's staying.

would i be crazy to get my own goat?

2008-08-26T10:39:00.000-07:00

We got some bad news yesterday, not the bad news we were expecting, not the bad news that's always lurking around the corner and which we rarely talk about, no, this was bad news for which we were completely unprepared.

The goats at the nearby farm where we've been buying raw goat milk for the last several months or so are not producing anymore!! Goat milk season is over!!

Did you know goats produce seasonally? I should read up on the details before I open my trap about it, but I am going to guess that it's more difficult to sustain lactation with goats than it is for, say, cows. If we wanted cow milk, we'd still be up a creek, though, because the same farm has a waiting list for cow milk as long as my arm. But we made a choice to stop consuming cow dairy a decade ago and have no plans to start again. It's hard to compare something you can reference presently with something you barely remember from the past, but I think I like goat milk a lot better, anyway. Less, uh, cow-y. Ha! (You know how people dismiss goat dairy on account of its goatiness? well.)

I have not broken the news to the children yet. My daughter, especially, will take it hard. Sure we can start buying boxes of pasteurized Meyenberg again, but can you believe that inferior product is more expensive than what we were buying fresh, raw, local? I had my suspicions about raw milk when we started, but the taste difference is great. It will be hard to go back.

And, no, diapers on the line have nothing to do with an unexpected dearth of goat dairy, but I've already posted a couple picture-less entries in a row and so I threw that one in, just because. I took it on a day the sun finally came out last week, after bringing in several rain-soaked loads to be tossed, in defeat, into the electric dryer.

vault toilets vs. flush toilets

2008-08-24T14:14:00.000-07:00

This isn't the blog entry I want to be writing, the one peppered with recent pictures and words selected with a moderate bit of care. But I keep getting to the end of the day and I find that I didn't have time, or the clear head, or the organization required to have remembered to pull photos off of the camera first, and it's not working out the way I really want it to, so I don't do anything at all.

What I'm really doing right now is buttoning up plans for September camping. Not one, but two trips in the works. The husband has already requested days off (days! plural! several, even! in a row!!) and now it's just up to me to decide on specific destinations.

We might stay, for our first little trip, at one of the large, sprawling coastal State campgrounds. We like one in particular for its easy beach access. The amenities that seem to draw other families, though, are lost on us, and, if I'm being direct here, maybe a little distracting. Yurt camping sounds fun (and roomy!) and we'd love to give it a go sometime, but as long as we have a dog and no place to leave her, it's the tent for us. And since we're in a tent and not a motor home with satellite and pull-outs, we don't need electricity. Most campgrounds have full hook-ups on some sites, some offer this at every site. We can skip it all together. Here's where the distraction comes in: nothing says camping like hearing your "neighbor's" rig blaring cable television. So while we're willing to overlook those things that obviously work and attract other people but which aren't necessary for us at all, we'd like to make our second September trip (and probably our last of the season) to someplace a little more remote and woodsy and private.

The problem with woodsy and private is that, more often than not, the bathroom situation is a little sketchy. I grew up camping with my grandparents in a little tear drop trailer pulled behind a big boat of a Buick and parked anyplace that looked like a good place to park. So my formative years were well acclimated into the custom of bathroom habits without bathrooms and it's not a problem or a phobia or anything of mine now. I don't need a nice bathroom and I certainly don't need a shower (while camping), but the truth is I'd almost rather have no bathroom than a port-a-potty. I don't have to describe the process to make you understand why it's so distasteful to me; I am going to assume that any reader feels the same way (except, possibly men, who can stand up and avoid touching the seat, if they wish, but would still have to hear that silent quiet falling sound and the terrible flat splashing that follows, but maybe my reaction to those sounds are my own strange quirk and not anything of concern to anyone else, man or no).

We want wooded trails for hiking and to hear the chipmunks and the birds calling for our crumbs and some kind of water nearby and all of those forest sounds muffled by the loamy hush of camping under evergreens, but not, if we can help it, the cartoon network.

When it comes down to it: I'd really prefer plumbing. But a hole in the ground can be good enough. And sometimes good enough really is that. It's not everything, it's not ideal, but it's something, and it's enough.

what do you do with the mad that you feel?

2008-08-19T17:32:00.000-07:00

Well, today I made a phone call, sent an email and wrote a post card. But unless my local pbs affiliate makes a drastic change to the fall scheduling line-up, I'm still going to be mad.

I just learned that PBS will no longer be sending member stations the daily syndicate of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood episodes, but simply one episode a week, for broadcast on Saturday mornings.

Then I discovered that individual stations could choose to get the daily episodes beforehand, or purchase them separately (I'm not completely clear on the protocol) and air them as they were intended: five days a week.

Surely my local station would take this option. Surely, in their commitment to quality programming and "viewers like me", they would choose to continue to dedicate the time, storage, cost and commitment involved to a longstanding gem like Mister Rogers instead of yet another short-lived animated disaster.

It seems like every fall, PBS parades out a few new shows, some of which stick around a while, but none like Mister Rogers.

When I spoke to someone in Member Services at OPB, she asked, "you do know that new episodes haven't been made in over fifteen years, right?"

"But," I countered, "new children are born every day!"

Giving Mr. Rogers the axe (and please, no patronizing reminders about how he'll still be aired on Saturday mornings, we all know that's where they put shows on pbs to die and by next year, he'll disappear completely) is like, well, like telling your Grandma to take her pecan pie and handmade quilts and stick it, you'd rather eat twizzlers with some chippie you met on the myspace. Which is to say, of course Mister Rogers is outdated, and thank goodness!

So you think I'm a sap who hates change, eh? I'm not opposed to all modernization, sometimes they surprise us with a worthwhile new program. And, my great disappointment regarding this terrible development is not steeped in nostalgia alone. Sure, I grew up watching Fred and the gang (did you know I even met Mr. McFeely a few years ago, had my picture taken with him and have a singed photo?), and yes, I recall with enormous fondness the eleven thirty time slot, during which my girl and I would snuggle up on the floor for a sweet half hour before lunch. But I currently value the presence of Mister Rogers in the life of my boy. I recognize the benefit the exposure to such a well-designed, gentle program has on any child who watches.

My personal warm fuzzies don't obscure the truth of Fred Rogers: he provides a safe place for children, where feelings are valid and important, where people are treated with respect, and conflicts are resolved peaceably, where grammar is correct and children are spoken to like they are intelligent and curious and capable (which they are!), and there are never last resorts for attention involving fart jokes and flashing lights. Maybe the fashions are dated. Maybe the guests are less relevant now (Yo Yo Ma instead of, say, Hannah Montana?). Maybe somebody thinks modern children aren't interested in how people make books (or balloons or shoes or toilets).

What will be offered in place of this kind grandfather of children's programming? How can they possibly take something so well loved and expected, so a part of our national public television culture, and kill it off with nary a vote or an apology or a carefully crafted eulogy? Did they think no one would care? I care. And I hope you do, too.

I urge you to call your local station. Send them a letter. Drop a postcard in the mail to PBS headquarters. It might not make a difference. But it's worth it to try.

You've Got To Do It

© 1969 Fred M. Rogers

You can make belive it happens,
Or pretend that something's true.
You can wish or hope or contemplate
A thing you'd like to do.
But until you start to do it,
You will never see it through.
'Cause the make-believe pretending
Just won't do it for you

(Chorus)
You've got to do it.
Every little bit
You've got to do it, do it, do it, do it
And when you're through,
You can know who did,
For you did it, you did it, you did it.

If you want to ride a bicycle
And ride it straight and tall.
You can't simply sit and look at it
"Cause it won't move at all.
But it's you who have to try it.
And it's you who have to fall (sometimes)
If you want to ride a bicycle
And ride it straight and tall.

(Chorus)
You've got to do it.
Every little bit
You've got to do it, do it, do it, do it
And when you're through,
You can know who did,
For you did it, you did it, you did it.

an even dozen

2008-08-16T10:59:00.000-07:00

In six months, that young couple there, visiting White Sands National Monument on a bright and windy Sunday morning in February of 1996, will be married. They'll have an appointment at the Washington County Courthouse for 10 am on a Thursday, the 16th of August. It will be the day after she moved to Oregon. Following a ten month courtship, half of which was long-distance, he will have flown down to West Texas to accompany her on the long Northwestern drive. They rolled into town late, unpacked her crammed little ford escort in the dark.

The civil marriage ceremony was conducted in a drab office. They had no friends and family present; they asked the couple who married earlier to please remain in the room as witnesses. It was a business transaction, say this, sign here, okay. By half past ten they were married. They drove back to their apartment, stopped in at a diner on the way for an early lunch, sandwiches.

They didn't have a party. They didn't have cake. They didn't think to ask anyone to take their picture together. The only picture from that day, just after she got dressed that morning:

She looks happy, doesn't she? Can you feel her nerves, her hesitance? Her brave smile? Can you tell that she won't sleep the following night, from worry? In one day she moved to a new place, got a new name, catapulted into a new life where she knew not one person (she wanted to count him, but did she really know him, really? It all happened so fast).

If you're the happier ever after sort, then I probably don't want to hear about it. It's not a cushy litter ride, the bumps and rough spots buffered by a layer of tufted pillows, peeled grapes in a bowl by our sides. It's hard work. But we're still in it, and I think that counts for something.

Celebratory plans involve garage cleaning and yard maintenance. We'll leave the dinners out and special excursions to the sort of people who are comfortable paying teenaged babysitters or have local grandparents. (maybe when the children are older, she sighs). The day will go by generally unnoticed, much like the first one.

Which, as it turns out, is okay. I've seen some big happy parties that fell apart soon afterward. We carefully step over the broken glass and confetti, plodding along.

one part melancholy two parts mirth

2008-08-12T18:34:00.000-07:00

Feeling a little wayward lately, there's some waiting going on, some worrying, some working with our heads down, biding time. But I'm still here. Wishing I had more to give but glad I have as much as I do. Grateful that, despite the waning summer which wasn't quite what I expected, wanted, summer to be like, there have been sweet moments. There are always sweet moments. And I keep them to myself lately because I can't distill the details just right into the stories anyway and I want to savor every little good bit.

The children walk ahead of me and I lag just far enough behind to take pictures. I keep a canvas bag on my shoulder, stocked with water and keys and wallet, and we head to the park, by way of the store, the library, the book shop. We stop along the way for ripe blackberries, growing wild and invasive, delicious intruders we bake in dishes with oats and almonds and agave nectar.

We eat our dinners on the back patio, with the grapes and the hazelnuts, and the cats chasing through unmown grass. It is very pleasant.

I've been cooking up greens, always the greens. I missed all the kale at the farmer's market a few weeks ago and came home, instead, with chard. And so I have been choosing chard, intentionally, since then. Cooking it up, like usual, with much garlic and salt and just a dash of cider vinegar. More tender, I think, and delicate than the kale; just right for this season.

The other night, the husband asked about a second serving and I admitted, apologetically, that I'd spooned the remaining greens into my own bowl, red chard that, when cooked, infuses its stem's bright red into the garlic, turning the cloves a surprising valentine pink.

And so the boy piped up (my boy so cute, the essence of everything adorable always glinting in his sparkly eyes, his crinkled nose, his smile) and offered to his dad:

"You can have some of my kale"

To which the dad replied, "Thanks!"

And then the boy sang out, "That not kale, that Chard!!!" which was followed by the sort of laughter one could only describe, if one were the adjective using sort or the movie reviewing sort, as uproarious. His laugh is contagious and we shared one hilarious family incident, which, continued, as hilarious incidents involving two year olds often do, with an enthusiastic request to "do it again!"

That might be an Only In Our House kind of story, only in our house is a joking Gotcha! HaHa! moment about a comedic mix-up of two leafy greens.

a most unlucky day

2008-08-08T20:51:00.000-07:00

I veer towards hyperbole, it's true. So maybe not the most but certainly lacking in any semblance of Good Fortune. The laundry list includes: falling, in a seemingly choreographed, slo-mo, comedic way, not once but twice (and having the jarred back and re-injured old-broken-foot to prove it); playing nursemaid to the husband's worst migraine ever (which, if you knew his history of migraine's is saying a lot); losing one of the tiny opal stud earrings I've worn every moment for the last 4 years (almost to the day, purchased at a little roadside trading post in Northern Arizona in early August '04, the day we moved to Phoenix. I noticed, after a shower, that the stud was gone but, oddly, the back was still in place, stuck to my earlobe, weird); and then, in the search for the missing earring (which was, sadly, not located), I broke a mirror. I don't go for that superstitious stuff (not really, I tried being superstitious once but, as it turns out, that didn't really work out for me, and not leaving my purse or wallet on the floor didn't make me any richer) but who wants to break a mirror? All those shards!

The following photo is a recent self-portrait and, perhaps, the last time you'll see me wearing those tiny round opals. I am, boiled down and summarized, dispassionate and cynical but, inexplicably, sentimental about the little things. I found another little set of studs in my jewelry box, some yellow stone cut into a skewed square, and that is what I'm wearing now, but it feels more auspicious and foretelling of New Chapters and mile markers than when, for example, I hack off my hair or move to a new house. Those tiny little earrings lived, in my ears, in six different places with me, so you can see why even homes don't feel all that permanent anymore.

I didn't intend to come here with a list of complaints and an inadequate wad of towels sopping up the discontent oozing out from under my door. But that's the way it goes sometimes. I'd like to tell you about other things (blueberries! painting! watermelon! media reviews!) but the first step is usually pulling pictures off the rebel and onto flickr and then posting one or two here and my picture maintenance is falling short, just a lot of falling short lately, generally speaking.

litmus test

2008-08-06T16:48:00.000-07:00

My daughter startled out of one of her quiet, thinky spells with this question the other night, "If you had to have a magical creature living in your attic, and what you really wanted was a centaur, but you could only choose a hag or a werewolf, which would you pick?"

She said she can tell a lot about a person based on their answer, but when I asked what she can tell, she hmphed. Who am I to know her secrets?

don't let dewey die

2008-07-28T07:18:00.001-07:00

Earlier in the summer, the family and I were at the library, one of our usual evening outings. Owing to a new tiny kitten in our household, I encouraged the girl to check out a few feline specific non-fiction books. And we had a little exchange, something like, Where's the cat section? And I said, Oh! You need a Dewey Decimal Refresher. I said, you can consult the chart on the wall for general categories and I turned around to point, and turned around, and turned around and what? No Dewey Decimal Chart on the wall in the Children's Room at the Public Library?!

So we approached the librarian's desk and I asked if they had a Dewey Decimal wall chart that I didn't see. She gave me a queer look and responded, "oh, I think we used to have one, but we took it down when we put in the new shelves and, oh, it's probably around here somewhere."

Can we see it please?

(surprised expression). Oh, okay. Let me see. (much rifling around, finally finding it slid behind a filing cabinet). and then she looked my girl and said, "future librarian, huh?"

And I didn't say anything because if I'd opened my mouth it would have been, "Future Librarian? Future Librarian?! How about CURRENT LIBRARY USER!" geez.

Now I've since related this scenario to a number of different people and no one else was quite this outraged. I can get a little worked up about this sorta stuff. But the lack of passionate commiseration I've found has led me to worry that DEWEY DECIMAL IS DYING AND NO ONE CARES.

What with your information age and digital catalogs and internet searches, it might not seem like such an important skill set anymore to know the basic call numbers for Ancient Egyptian History (932), because anything you need to find is but a click away. Many public libraries have axed Dewey all together, opting for the academia preferred Library of Congress system. The Library of Congress system is, in my opinion, a better match for our digital world. But nothing beats Dewey if you want to organize and find items quickly without the use of complicated cataloging. We're talking basic categories by subject, time tested and part of our cultural ethos.

I don't think my reaction is purely sentimental. I fondly remember, and sometimes secretly wish my children could experience, the bygone powdery cylindrical Tarn N Tinys candy, instead of the modern, bullet-shaped candy-coated-shell version. That's sentiment.

This is embracing a valuable, traditional skill, an analog methodology useful for bypassing dependence on plugged-in technology. Widespread power outage and energy crisis? No trouble, I can still access the candlemaking section (745.593) by flashlight!

(this 1985 youtube clip is relevant and hilarious and fan-freaking-tastic)