The Barefoot Kitchen Witch

Yellow Window Light

I work mostly early morning shifts.  It’s dark when I drive in, most of the year.  The sky is black, or very very dark blue.  Sometimes there is a moon, or stars.  But mostly there is darkness.  I only have the lights on my dashboard, and the news on the radio as I travel for that half an hour from origin to destination.  And occasionally I pass a house with one yellow-lit window.  Sometimes it’s a bedroom window, probably, since it’s on the second floor.  Sometimes it’s a ground floor window, so maybe the kitchen.  I don’t know.  But I find myself fascinated by these yellow windows.  I would love to photograph them, but it would feel intrusive to me.  So I just look and wonder about the person or people in that house, and why is that light on?  Is someone getting ready for work?  For school?  Is someone just getting home?  Have they been up all night, unable to sleep?  Or did someone just leave a light on in a room and forget to turn it off?

Those are things I wonder about when I see the yellow window lights.

And there’s also a part of me that feels…a longing.  A pull.  The yellow light beckons.  It is welcoming.  I want to go there, into that house, where someone has kept a light on for me.  It’s almost the same feeling I get after my later-in-the-day shift, when I come home at night, in darkness, and I turn down my street and see a light on in one of the windows of my house.  My people are in there.  I can kick off my shoes, get in my jammies, and relax.  I am home.

~~~

My commute to and from work takes me past the nursing home where my mother spent the last month or so of her life in December 2013.  A little over a year ago.  Sometimes it seems more recent, other times it seems like a lot of time has passed.  Time is a strange and misty-formed thing.

My mother spent those last weeks in a private room at the end of a hall.  The window in her room looked out through some trees at Route 4.  The traffic light at the road to this nursing home was roughly the halfway point in my commute.  At some point I realized I could see her room, her window, as I drove to or from work.  If it was after an early shift, or before a later one, I’d stop in.  Sometimes I’d stop in for a quick goodnight after those later shifts.  In the early weeks she might still be awake, and she would smile and we would talk briefly before she sent me home, it’s late, you need to get home.  In later weeks I’d just stop in and peek at her as she slept.  I would watch closely, to make sure she was breathing.

I stopped in sometimes on my way to work my morning shift, but not as often.  It was pretty early, after all.  On the days I didn’t stop in, though, I would turn my head at just the right moment to see the yellow window of her room, and I’d think “Good Morning, Mom” or “Goodnight, Mom,” or just a simple hello.

The tv on the wall was always on.  Always.  Usually tuned to a cooking channel.  Sometimes NBC in the mornings, so she could watch the news and the Today show.  Sometimes, inexplicably, the tv would be on some strange channel that I couldn’t imagine she had chosen, so it might have been one of the nurses trying to find something different for her to listen to.

But always, there was the yellow light of her room, and, through the gauzy curtains, the rectangular, brighter light of the tv.  Always.

Until she died. 

When I got to her room that night, there was silence.  Profound silence, as they say.  No bubbly tv chef, no ragged breathing.  Just silence.  Peace, I suppose.

After that, it was, at first, painful to drive by.  For a time, the light and the tv were off, and that window was dark.  An unnecessary reminder. 

It hurt.  I tried not to look.  But I couldn’t help it.  I had to look.

Almost a month after Mom died, I wrote this in my other grief-related blog:

I drive by the nursing home and look at the window of the room where she was.  For a while it was always dark.  Empty.  Recently I have seen a light on, or the light from the tv.  The first time, there was a weird little feeling like "she's there!" only of course she isn't.

And then I was sad because she's not there...someone else is now.  Part of my mind wants to let myself pretend she's in that room, and I could wave as I drive by on the way to or from work, thinking "hi, Mom!" and wouldn't that be nice?

But it wouldn't, really.  Because I don't want us to go through losing her again.  Those last weeks, days.

So I guess this is better.

Sort of.

I still feel like that.  I still look at that window.  For the past bunch of weeks, the light and the tv were on all the time. 

And then, a few days ago, they weren’t.

I have come to think of that room as the dying room.  I don’t know if I’m correct, but I wonder if that room is for patients who maybe aren’t residents of the nursing home already, but come there toward the end of their lives.  The room is at the end of a hall, so not a lot of traffic, not a lot of strangers peering in to see what the person looks like and how bad off they are.  At the very end of the hall, next to the room, is a lounge/living room sort of area.  There’s a huge tv, some couches and chairs, a couple of tables by windows, and a computer for anyone’s use.  We would go in there to have conversations with nurses and hospice workers.  It never seemed like a busy room, it’s not like people were mobbing in there to watch their afternoon soaps.  And anyway, everyone had tvs in their rooms, so why move if you don’t have to?

Where was I?

Driving.  Driving down the road to work, and checking to see if the yellow light – and the tv – are on for someone new in the dying room.  I think hello to them, whoever they are, and drive on.

Blogs of Auld Lang Syne

When I first started blogging it was February of 2003.  My friend, Sheila, had started blogging some time before that, and I read her posts (in her blog’s original incarnation, and started to think it would be kind of fun to try that myself.  So, after much deliberation, I thought of a name for the blog and started typing. Alex was not even a year old (wow) and I look back on some of my posts I cringe a bit because I was still stumbling around finding some sort of voice for myself.  But oh well, we all sound like idiots now and then.  I stayed with that original site for part of a year, and then I switched over to a different server that seemed, at the time, to give me more options in how to set up the site. 

I was just looking back at the first posts from that old site.  I set up the blog and found out I was pregnant in the same month.  Alex was 8 months old.  I’d lost one pregnancy before Alex, and I would lose this one as well.  Both losses were pretty early on, and while both losses were heartbreaking at the time, I never felt like I’d lost babies. I don’t mourn them the way I mourn the losses of my grandparents, my mother.  I don’t think that those brief lives are hanging out in Heaven or anywhere, waiting to meet their parents and siblings one day.  I think…things just happen some time.  And I have two healthy living children, and that’s plenty to think about.

Anyway, after I found out that I was miscarrying that pregnancy after Alex, I decided to just keep my mouth shut if I ever became pregnant again.  So later, when I became pregnant with Julia, I couldn’t tell anyone, but I had to talk – or write – about it. 

So I started another blog.  It was to be temporary.  A place to talk about the pregnancy without telling anyone too soon.  And it was very temporary.  I ended up blabbing to my sister and my parents…and I don’t remember who else, but it was certainly before the relative “all clear” had sounded, trimester-wise.  So once I’d made that pregnancy general knowledge, I stopped writing there.  But I’m glad I wrote those posts, because they chronicle the beginnings of Julia.  Oh, and the title and subtitle of that blog?  Not meant to be obnoxious.  I was kind of amazed that, at my “advanced” age (for pregnancy, apparently), I could even get pregnant once, never mind a bunch of times.  And I know it’s not something to be taken for granted.  I don’t.  At a point in my life, I figured I’d just never be married, never have kids.  I made my peace with it, too, and started planning a solo life.  Then stuff happened.

I started reading some of those old posts in both blogs a couple days ago, and I’m SO glad I typed that stuff.  Things I’d forgotten – like Alex’s early words and the cute (or annoying at the time) little things he did.  I can hear his little voice.

Sometimes I miss those early years, when the kids were babies and toddlers.  All the newness, the discovery, the hilarity and insanity and sleeplessness of it all.

But then I don’t miss it, because my kids are pretty entertaining right now, too.  And they don’t need diapers.  They can do a lot of things themselves.  I don’t need to carry them, or wrestle them into car seats when they DON’T want to be here.  (I can remember more than once having my knee (gently) on a chest so I could click straps into place while the child was arching his or her back and fighting with such amazing strength for such a small person.

Time has flown. 

I’m glad I was able to capture some of it.

Little Good Things

 

More thoughts of Mom….

We’ve been decorating cookies!  I baked a ton of regular sugar cookies and gingerbread cookies, in assorted shapes, and on Saturday I brought my awesome niece, Natalie up to the house and she and Julia and I (and Alex, but not as much) hung out decorating cookies.  Natalie made the most, and unfortunately I forgot to get a picture of all her mini works of art.  Julia made a lot, ate some, and then yesterday, while I was at work, she decorated some more.

The house above is one of them.

I asked her if we could keep it.  Maybe I can dip it in shellac or something to preserve it. 

Last year I didn’t bake cookies, or if I did, I didn’t bake many of them.  I don’t remember.  Too much going on with Mom.  I didn’t have the energy.  I didn’t have the enthusiasm.  I wanted to.  I felt I should.  But I finally gave myself permission not to.  It’s hard to do what’s best for myself, but I scraped together some sense and did it.

Anyway, the reason I want to keep this house is because it made me smile and it made me think of my mother.

When I was little I loved to draw.  I guess I did pretty well.  My mother told me that, anyway.  I took after my grandmother, Mom’s mother, in the artistic department.  Mom, however, would tell us she couldn’t even draw a straight line.  (Years later I pointed out that drawing a straight line had nothing to do with artistic capabilities, and that she was creative and artistic in plenty of other ways, if not with a paper and crayons.) 

Anyway, to prove her point, Mom told me that when she was little and in school – kindergarten or an early elementary school grade – she was drawing a house and her teacher pointed out that she was doing it wrong.  I know teachers weren’t always as kind as they usually are these days, and I imagine my mother was sensitive to any sort of criticism, which is why this memory stayed with her.

The teacher pointed out that she’d done the bricks in the chimney wrong.  Instead of staggering them like she was “supposed to,” my mother had drawn them in a grid. 

Like Julia’s cookie.

~~~

Here’s another little post from a year ago…

MotherDaughterDaughterMother

December 9, 2013

 

It’s happened before, not just recently, though it’s happening more frequently now.

Sometimes when I look at Julia, color fades and my vision slips backwards time-ways and I am looking through my mother’s eyes at my child self.  I see how she saw me, or at least how I imagine she looked at me.  It doesn’t last for long, it’s almost like a shimmer for a few seconds, and I feel my heart spin back and forth as I am me, then my mother, then me-the-child, then me the adult again.

I am hugging my children harder now.  And I hug Julia hardest of all.  Not because I love her more than my son, but because she is a daughter, as I am a daughter, and when I am holding her I am holding myself from the past, and my mother then, and my mother now.

And maybe myself now as well.

~~~

One of the things my mother, my sister and I have/had in common was our sense of humor.  I don’t know how to describe it, but there was always (and still is, with Mere and me) a love of physical humor.  Falling is funny.

There’s a scene in the movie “What’s Up, Doc?” – well, many scenes, but this one is the one that I think of first – that could get my mother laughing before it even happened.

There’s the scene where Judy and Howard have taken all the bags (and if you don’t know this movie, well, I’m sorry, but you’ve got a big gap in your movie-watching history) and are running from everyone.  They end up in a Chinese dragon, which goes careening through the streets of San Francisco, leaving havoc and chaos in its wake. 

Part of this chaos involves a man walking down the sidewalk.  There is a white fence to his left (our right, as we watch).  Suddenly, large metal trash cans come rolling down the hill behind him.  He glances back at the sound, then looks back again in disbelief and starts running.  The trash cans continue to chase him, and finally, in a desperate attempt to escape them, the man leaps over the fence.  The camera cuts to the other side of the fence, where a peaceful and genteel afternoon luncheon is taking place.  The man flies over the fence and SITS DOWN HARD on a little table, his head flinging back as the table falls over and people are jumping up from their seats in surprise.

Such a little scene, but so perfectly done and so FUNNY in its absurdity…well, Mom would start laughing before we even saw the man walking down the sidewalk.  Real, from the belly, laughing. 

~~~

My grandmother was the artistic one.  And the musical one.  Natural talents, with, I’m assuming, a little instruction at some point in her youth.  The talent skipped down to her granddaughters – my sister got the music and I got the drawing/painting – and my mother got the frustration of not having the same innate abilities as her mother along with having a mother who couldn’t understand why her daughter couldn’t just play the piano easily, by ear.  My mother had to practice and practice.  It must have been so frustrating to have to practice and practice to become not quite as good as her mother, to whom it all came so easily.  It was also frustrating to recognize a piece of music but not to be able to remember the name of it.  My grandfather, while possessing no musical ability that anyone was aware of, loved music with a great passion.  “Emma, play us a tune” was a common request he would make of my grandmother.  And she would sit down at the piano and play all sorts of things.  By ear.  From memory.  He loved classical music.  He loved opera.  He wanted my mom to be able to play the piano like her mother did, but she didn’t have that ability.  I don’t know if he ever realized it, but she was so much more like him than she was like her mother.  She couldn’t just sit down and play a tune, but she could listen with great joy, eyes closed, a dreamy smile on her face.

~~~

Here’s another little post from last year….

Small Mercies

December 12, 2013

 

I woke up at 2:30 this morning and struggled to not struggle to go back to sleep. Please, I need sleep. I finally must have dozed off, only to wake up to my alarm with the detritus of several odd and moody dreams smashing against my eyes.

I stopped at the nursing home on my way to work, about 5:30, and I was afraid I would get to her room and she would be gone. Not gone like in another room. gone gone. It's always there, that fear. It's not going to leave me. And it gets bigger every day. I think it feeds on my nightmares.

She was asleep, and I was relieved, but it's so painful to see her like this: Old. Tired. Frail.

I started this neglected little blog as a place to vent about all the insanity and frustration that comes with having an alcoholic parent. I was probably angry at the time. I've been angry a lot over the years.

And now...now I am heartbroken at what will never be again. I miss the mother I remember from the first half of my life. And, yes, portions of the second half. But alcoholism is greedy. It just takes and takes and takes. And now, there's not much left to take.

But.

When I look in my mother’s eyes now, she is there again. I don't know how long it will last, and it probably won't be very long at all, but for this precious little bit of time, I have my mom back.

Time

This is another post from a year ago.  I just lifted it from the original post – I thought of going through and tidying it up a bit, but no, I’m just going to leave it as-is.

I’ll make sure to let you know when I’m posting about stuff to do with my mother…in case it makes you sad or uncomfortable or anything like that to read it.  I’m not sharing this for reaction as much as I’m looking back at that time a year ago that I barely remember except for a handful of specific episodes.  I may fill in some of the gaps, too, with explanation or other stories.  I just feel like I need to do this – share it, remember it all, think about all that happened, both after her diagnosis and before. 

I’m typing this on a laptop that belonged to my mother.  She wanted it – in addition to the desktop Dell they had – so she could tote it around and write stories from her family. 

But she never did that.  She had the laptop for several years.  I don’t think she ever typed a thing on it.  I found a legal pad with a bit of personal history, but that’s about it.  I have been having moments lately where I try to remember something about my grandparents or some other portion of that side of the family, and for the splittest of seconds I think “I’ll ask Mo-“ and then I’ll stop.  I feel a flare of anger and a flare of sorrow.  Or maybe it’s one flare in two colors.

Anyway, this piece below is exactly a year old, to the day.

 

Time

Mom had an appointment with an oncologist this week.  I worked half the day, then met her, Dad, my sister, and the guys who transported mom from the nursing home to the doctors’ office.

We were crowded into the small exam room – Mom on her industrial gurney (designed for transport in a vehicle), strapped in like Hannibal Lector only without the bite mask, and Mere, Me and Dad on chairs.

I filled out some paperwork that was supposed to have arrived at mom and dads house, contact information mostly, and consent to treat her.

The doctor went over mom’s information…carefully.  Not sure, I think, of how much we knew or what we understood.

She said, a few times, that she didn’t know that chemo would help, that, in fact, it might make mom feel worse.  She had done a bit of an exam, eyes, throat, felt her abdomen, looked at her legs, which were swollen, down at the ankles.

She reiterated that a couple of times.  And it gave me the feeling that there was more she wasn’t saying.  The doctor.  I felt like the prognosis was more bad than good, not that there was a whole lot of good anyway.

She said a biopsy would tell them for sure what type of cancer it is, and that would determine what type of chemo and/or radiation would be best to use.  Radiation was still a possibility because it wouldn’t have the side effects of chemo and it might slow down the tumor growth.

Cholangiocarcinoma is very aggressive.  Who knows how long it’s been growing.

Anyway, it was weird, Mom turned to me a couple times and asked what I thought she should do.  I handed that back to her…it’s her life, her call.  She’s always said she didn’t want heroic measures…and that’s where it stands now.

She’s still scheduled for the stent replacement on the 23rd, and when they do that they can do a biopsy and we can maybe have some radiation done.  Chemo, in addition to possibly not working and making her feel sick, would also involve at least weekly trips to the hospital for the injections, and frequent follow-ups with the doctor.  A lot of travel.

So that was that.  Oh, no it’s not.  She also brought up hospice, and we might want to get that in place as well.

Another little moment – the Dr brought up mom’s alcohol use (or misuse, or abuse, take your pick) and mom said, very confidently, that she hasn’t had any alcohol in ages.  Ages.  Mere and I both called her on that.  We’re the cranky Greek Chorus in Mom’s life of denial.  Anyway, it’s two months, not ages.

So on the way out we shook hands with a woman who’s kind of a liason for patients and the office and families.  Mere talked to her more than I did, only because they spoke the same language – medicare and related stuff.  She – I don’t remember her name – was extremely nice, warm, on top of things.

The whole office was like that.

There are so many good, kind, warm people out there.  There are idiots too – case in point, that annoying doctor from the other office – but a lot of wonderful people as well.  The guys who transported mom – just nice guys.

Anyway.

We all went our separate ways, mom back to the nursing home, dad to his house, mere and I back to work.

And I just kept feeling like there were things unsaid.

So on the way home I called the oncologist’s office and asked for a call back, to discuss the unsaid things, like prognosis.

Dr. P called back a couple hours later, and I went outside to talk because I haven’t told the kids yet.

And she said what I kind of knew, based on what I’d read – that at the outside, with no complications, Mom’s got maybe six months.

But she’s got a lot working against that.  She doesn’t eat much.  She’s anemic.  She doesn’t exercise at all – and this has gone on for YEARS, the fight to get her to walk, to do her PT, to MOVE.  It’s been such a losing battle.  So there’s that.  And the swelling in her legs…the possibility of a blood clot forming and traveling to her heart…the possibility of infection – maybe from bedsores, or from the current stent…the stent could get blocked again, or the next stent could get blocked, which would mean another stent would need to go in.  More procedures – more invasive procedures.  She could fall into a coma.

She could have as little as a month left.

I called her oldest friend – one of her only remaining friends – that night to update her.  It was a hard conversation to have.  She said she’d call me back soon.  She’s thinking of coming up.

I have a few other people to call, I think.  But, sadly, over the years Mom has shut doors on long-standing friendships.  There are only a couple of people who still call the house to say hello and to check on her, on dad.  They get in touch with me if (like recently) there is something wrong with the phone at mom and dad’s house.  Two people.  Interestingly, both were nurses.  That’s not how she knows them – one she’s known since they were five – a lifetime friendship.  The other was married to my dad’s uncle, so she’s sort of a relative that way but not by blood.

But I digress.

One minute I’m fine, the next I’m not.  I have times where I can talk about all this matter-of-factly, without emotions spilling over.  And then other times I can’t even get a word out without my voice cracking.

Last night was the elementary school christmas concert.  alex was in it.  During most of it I was annoyed at this tall kid who showed up late and stood next to his mom and IN FRONT OF ME and a shorter older woman.  I kept glaring at him.  He’s in the eighth grade according to alex, and he is growing a mustache…much like the one his mom has.

Anyway, I fought off my short-person rage, moved to a different spot, and focused on watching Alex and listening to the songs.

And then, out of the blue, during the last song, which was about drinking hot cocoa, I suddenly felt tears welling.  I don’t even know why!  Hot cocoa?  But then, why not?

It’s my mother.  And mothers are everything.  Every little bit and piece of my childhood, just about, connects to my mother.  So why not hot cocoa?

I’ve got today off.  It’s a paid personal day.  I need it.  My boss thought I needed it.  I need time by myself.  Time to be kind to myself and not take care of anyone else.

Time to cry if I need to.

Maybe I’ll go make some hot cocoa.

Indecisions and Time Mismanagement

Okay, first you should know that this is the third or fourth attempt to start this post. 

Second, that admission pretty much sums up the whole intended but unwritten post, as hinted at by the title (which took a mere two attempts).

I have recently admitted to myself – and not for the first time – that I am horrible at managing my time, some of the time.  Not all of the time.  But enough of the time.

I look forward to a day off, or an evening after work, to do something I want to do.  Something creative. 

Problem is, once I have that time, it’s hard for me to settle down or relax and just do that creative thing. 

Even harder is deciding which thing to do.

Because there are too many things I could do.  Too many things I want to do.  Too many things I think I want to learn how to do.  Too many things I think I should do.

How to decide?

I brainstormed a list recently of all the current things that I want to do or should do or whatever – anything that has “do” attached.

It’s a long list.

And it could have been longer if I’d been more specific.  For example, it’s December, it’s cookie-baking time, and so I scribbled “bake cookies” with some arrows pointed at the words because that’s something that needs doing soon.  But I could have, if I wanted to drive myself more crazy, written out each and every KIND of cookie that I need/want to make. 

But I didn’t.

I’m trying to stave off the crazy.

Anyway…it’s a long list.

And though I know I should bake some cookies, I really feel like crocheting something.

But I can’t decide what to crochet.

You see, I have crocheted Julia a couple of elephants, and even though he’s older, I still feel like I should crochet Alex something, like a dinosaur.  So I’ve found a couple of patterns for crocheted dinosaurs, but I’m not sure which one I want to do.

But I also had intended to crochet slippers for both kids.  I traced around their feet and everything!  So maybe I should get going on those first, because it’s winter, or nearly winter.

And then, with Christmas coming, I feel like I should probably crochet gifts for everyone I know.  But I can’t do scarves, because my sister has pretty much crocheted scarves – and hats – for everyone anyway.  So maybe I should crochet…um…something else.  Only I don’t know what.  So maybe I shouldn’t crochet gifts at all. 

I’ll just bake more cookies!

Only I don’t feel like baking…

There’s also rugs.  I’ve crocheted a few tee shirt rugs, and I have been, bit by bit, making more tee shirt yarn and rolling it into balls for future projects.  I’ve got just about all the colored tee shirt yarn balls done, I’m just down to blacks and whites and a few grays.

I also want to make denim yarn from old jeans.  I could crochet rugs out of that, too.

Speaking of making rugs, I saw another way of making rugs that would be cool to do.  I just need the loom for it, but it’s twining, which is kind of weaving and twisting strips of fabric…it looks like something pretty doable.  I asked Bill if he could make the loom for me.  He said sure.  I could probably make it, actually, but I think I have enough hobbies without adding woodworking to the mix.

Speaking of woodworking, sort of, we’ve got this chair that years and years ago my mother reupholstered.  It’s got wooden arms and legs, and the seat and back are fabric (well, with wooden framing and springs inside and soft stuff so you don’t feel the springs when you’re sitting…).  Anyway, the fabric she’d put on was starting to go years ago when I took it with me when I moved out, so I attempted to cover it – with cotton fabric left over from a sewing project – which was rather naïve of me and the succession of cats in my life over the years pretty much destroyed all my attempted hard work.  Anyway, we’re going to redo the chair.  It needs it.  Structurally it’s in great shape, it just needs a makeover.

So I’ve been poking around online everywhere, watching tutorials and reading tips on DIY reupholstery.  I’m feeling pretty good about it, actually.  Kind of excited.  I just need to pick out the fabric from my piles and piles of scraps.

Speaking of all that, we’ve also got this loveseat in the living room that needs attention.  It’s a sort of fold-out affair that we got at Pier 1 a long time ago.  It was very pretty with a large flower pattern that has since become grimy and torn, what with these two children that came along a while back.  A bunch of years ago I got one of those “surefit” slipcovers for it, and frankly, I hate it with a passion.  It sure DOESN’T fit, not really, because the whole apparent point of this line of slipcovers is that they kind of fit, but they’re rather loose, and the website said something like that you just tuck in the looseness of it like you do with your normal slipcovers.  Only, I’ve never tucked in a normal slipcover.  They fit WELL.  I’m tired of the tucking in.  Plus, when the kids sit (sprawl, lie on, roll around on, mangle) on the slipcover, it becomes untucked, and yanked off, and so then half the slipcover is on the floor, and no one else in the house seems bothered by this ugliness except me.  I’m tired of re-tucking.

Oh, and last year at some point, sparks from the fireplace must have landed on part of the sloppy slipcover (probably while half of it was on the floor after one of the kids slithered around on it) so there are burned holes in it.  Very pretty.  I can’t tuck those in or slide them behind the loveseat.

So – I want to make a slipcover for the loveseat.  One that, you know, FITS.  I spent some time recently looking around online looking at tutorials and reading blog posts about making your own slipcovers.  I’m kind of excited to do it.

And then there are the zippered purses.  I made a few of them a couple years ago and I’ve been saving zippers from every worn out pair of pants that I’ve sliced up to salvage the fabric so that I can make more.  I have ton of zippers.  I haven’t made any more zippered purses.  I’ve got several great design ideas, I just, you know, haven’t gotten around to making them yet.  So maybe I should make some.  You know, because of all those zippers….

Then there’s the paper and beads and wire…the pressed paper made of stuff I’ve shredded.  Ornaments and gift tags made from the pressed paper.  And wrapped or decorated with wire and beads.  Or ribbon. 

Oh, and the rosaries.  I make rosaries, in case you didn’t know.  I sell them.  I should make some more to add to that inventory.  But, you know, there are all these other things I want to make, too.

OH!  And then there are the quilts!  I have several quilts that need to be repaired.  I started working on one of them a number of years ago.  And then – ooh look!  A butterfly!

I have some sort of creativity ADD or something. 

But hey, at least I wrote this post!

Some Things I’ve Been Doing

I crocheted this little guy today.

He’s a little tiny elephant wearing a hat.  You can’t tell from the pictures, but I used this sort of sparkly white yarn that I bought last year to make snowflakes.  I’d planned to just leave him all white, but Julia wanted him to have a hat like the one in the pattern I was following (He’s Percy the Elephant, and you can make a female version with a little bow on top instead of a hat, if you want.  If you crochet.)

He took a while to do, mostly because I’m not really all that experienced crochet-wise, but I enjoy it enough to unravel my mistakes and try all over again, so I think that’s a good sign. 

Anyway, yesterday I made this one:

The pattern for Meimei the baby elephant can be found here.  I used a multi-hued purpley chenille for the ears and feet, and a soft heathery gray for the body. 

Julia loves the two new elephants.  I think she has about a thousand stuffed animal elephants.  Maybe not quite that many, but it’s a lot.  And here I am, adding two more to the collection.

Can’t help it.  They’re cute. 

I also crocheted a couple of little baby hats, for practice and for any babies that might be coming along anywhere.  (NO, not me.  I’m all done with that business.)

Speaking of being all done with that business, I’m really enjoying – reveling in, even – my kids at this age.

Sometimes I think back on when they were babies, or toddlers, and I do miss aspects of that.  A lot of aspects.  But you can’t go backwards.

And I don’t miss diapers.  Or having to feed them, and then clean all the excess food out of their hair, off the high chair, off the walls, the table, the floor, and my own entire self.  I don’t miss sleeplessness.

I miss all the little milestones.  The smallness of them.  The little tiny voices. 

But I digress.  And I become nostalgic. 

Right now, there are lots of good things.  They are old enough to be responsible about a lot of things.  They aren’t always, but their average is good. 

They don’t get along all the time, which is fine, and normal, and can be a headache.  But when they do get along, when they are doing stuff together without being aware that I’m gazing at them with a goofy look on my face (sort of like those dreamy expressions you’d see as the opening theme song would play for some old tv shows and they’d show an actress and put her name under the image, and she wouldn’t be doing anything, she’d just be LOOKING somewhere slightly away from the camera pointed right at her.  I remember being able to mimic all the facial expressions of cast members of various favorite shows.  A long time ago.  I don’t do it now.

ANYWAY…so my kids.

Alex, as you know, has played baseball since birth, or five years old, somewhere in there.  Julia played a year of T-ball when she was five, but has been “doing gymnastics” since age three.  I think she loved the physicality of it, but was never interested in the competitive or artistic aspects of it.  Suddenly last spring she announced that she wanted to quit gymnastics and play softball now.  Now and forever. (And I just noticed after typing “now.  Now and forever” that I am still – OH THE HORROR OF IT – pressing the space bar twice after a period.  I know, that is not the way to do it.  But very old habits die hard, and when I learned to type back in the first half of my sophomore year in high school (ON A TYPEWRITER!!!!), we had to put two spaces after a period, or any other end-of-a-sentence piece of punctuation.  And I pride myself on my speedy mad typing skillz.  I swear – no disrespect to any of my other high school teachers – that typing was one of THE most useful classes I ever took.  My husband never learned to type – he does the ever-so-annoying Two Index Fingers In Search of the Next Key form of typing, and if I’m in the same room when he’s typing something I either offer to type for him or I have to leave the room because slow typing is painful to me.

Probably just like too much space after final punctuation is painful to other people.

But I love my husband, so I don’t slap his fingers or push him out of the way.  Because I know he can’t help how he types.

Just like I can’t help but type two spaces after a period.  Or an exclamation point!  Or a question mark?  See?  It’s like breathing for me.  So please don’t slap at my fingers or push me off a chair.

I digressed again, didn’t I?

My kids.  So we let Julia not go back to gymnastics and this fall she started softball.

She’s been part of the picture whenever Bill has taken Alex to a field to practice his hitting or fielding or pitching for the past bunch of years, mainly because I’d be at work and she was too young to stay home alone.  But over the years she’s picked up a few things, and she’s always had a good, aggressive swing.  (I maintain that she mostly just likes to hit things.)  And while softball and baseball have definite differences, like, why use such a huge ball for little girls with little tiny hands, and that crazy underhand pitching, there are plenty of similarities.

So now that Julia’s on a team, Alex is much more likely to ask her if she wants to go play catch or practice hitting – without Bill being involved. 

Over the summer, once Julia had said she wanted to play, yes, really really wanted to play, Bill started working with her.  He bought some softballs, we sent her to a softball camp for a week, and Bill worked with her on fielding.  With his (and Alex’s) coaching and encouragement and, sometimes, frustration, Julia made up her mind one day – and it really was as abrupt as that – to stop being afraid of the ball coming at her.  That was it.  She just stopped.  And that’s huge.  Balls hurt when they hit you!  Softball, baseball – if it’s thrown or hit hard enough and it hits you, it hurts.

But she’s not afraid.

And she’s so much fun to watch at her games and practices.  She is fearless.  She is naturally athletic, and she’s so HAPPY to be playing.  She beams. 

She’s been playing shortstop, and then last weekend she asked her coach if she could try catching.  He let her.  And she looked like a natural. 

I told her after the game that I was so proud of her and she did great, and she told me she was shaking the whole time because she was afraid the bat or a ball would hit her.  But she loved it. 

And she got to catch again today.

Alex was impressed.  He doesn’t get to all of Julia’s games because sometimes his practices or games are at the same time.

I took this picture earlier in the game – Alex was giving Julia advice or feedback on something in between innings.

I love this.

I love their interactions.  I love them sharing a love of a sport (or two very closely related sports).  I love how kind he is.  I love how she is so much more confident and proud of herself. 

They are so different in some ways, but they have so much in common, as siblings do without even trying.  They drive me crazy at times, and they amaze me all the time.  They make me laugh and they make me gaze off, dreamily, like a sap.  They are fascinating.

I love these two people.

~~~

And I guess I’ll stop here.  I’ve rambled all over the place, and while I’ve probably got more to write about, I figure this is plenty for one evening.

Good night.  Sleep tight.  Don’t let the bedbugs bite.  (My mom used to say that when she put us to bed.  Glad I never really thought that there were such things as bedbugs, and that they really might bite me.  I’d have slept in a chair.)

Growing

After one of the usual clamming trips this summer, I asked the kids what they’d like me to make with the clams for dinner that night.  With so many clam dishes in our collective repertoire, I asked the kids to tell me their favorites.

Julia’s – clamcakes.

Alex’s – chowder AND clamcakes.

I think I’d picked Alex up after a baseball practice or something when I asked him.  I seem to remember having this conversation in the car.  Anyway, he thought about it some more and said it was too bad I couldn’t put chowder inside a clamcake.

And with that, the Chowdercake was born.

I thought that by combining the flavor components of our basic clam chowder with our clamcake batter, I’d get something pretty tasty.

I took some bacon trimmings out of the freezer, diced them up and rendered the fat.

I took the crispy bacon bits out of the fat and added some diced onion.

While the onions softened, I mixed flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl. To that I added chopped fresh dill and thyme.

The kitchen smelled delicious, in case you were curious.

I took our freshly dug, freshly steamed clams…

and tossed them into the food processor along with the sautéed-in-bacon-fat onions, the onion fat, and a few of the crisped bacon bits.  I pulsed everything together until the clams were chopped. 

Scratchy summoned me from the living room.

He indicated that I hadn’t taken a picture of him lately and the world might be wondering if he was okay. 

Here’s Scratchy being okay:

Back to the kitchen….

Time to put the chowder in the clamcakes!

I added eggs, the clam mixture, and clam stock to the flour mixture and started heating the oil.

I used a small ice cream scoop to drop blobs of batter into the 360F oil…

And I fried them until they were brown.  I don’t have a time – it’ll depend on the size of your clamcakes, how many you’re cooking at a time, how hot your oil stays while cooking, and how light or dark on the outside you like them.  I usually take out the biggest one in the first batch and split it open when I think it’s done.  If it’s cooked through, I take the rest out, let the oil come back up to temp if it’s dropped, and then I use a combination of The Force and Intuition and Educated Guessing to judge the frying time of subsequent batches.

Success!

Everyone liked them.  Loved them.  Ate too many of them. 

We could taste the bacon fat, of course, along with the clams, and with every bite we’d taste fresh dill or thyme or both. 

Chowder inside the clamcake.

Thanks, Alex!

~~~~

The school year has begun.  Bill went back to school a couple days before the kids did, and I had to work, so the kids were on their own.

No big deal.  They’ve been home alone before.  They have keys, they have cell phones, and, most importantly, they have good heads on their shoulders.

I checked in with them through the day via text, and I’d given them a list of stuff to do.  It’s nice having kids who can do laundry and empty the dishwasher.

Somewhere around lunch time they asked if they could go play.  The only thing left undone was a load of laundry in the dryer, and one in the washer waiting for the dryer load to get out of the way. 

I asked if they’d had lunch and one of them texted back “Yes – we made nachos.”

I stared at the phone screen for a moment. 

I’d shown them how to make nachos the night before. 

Now, just so you know, we don’t have a microwave any more.  Our old one died and I was campaigning for us NOT to replace it, but I was outvoted initially.  We got a new one – smaller, though, because the other one took up way too much space on the counter – and it didn’t work right so we brought it back and decided to do a bit more research to find a better one.

And time went by and went by and went by…and we still don’t have one and Bill has said we don’t need one after all, so – yay!

But I digress.

So – nachos.  When we used to have a microwave, Julia learned to melt cheese on tortilla chips in the microwave all by herself.  Alex preferred to let me do the cheese melting. 

The other night after Open House at the junior high (JUNIOR HIGH!!!) Alex was hungry and asked if I’d make him some fake nachos.  We didn’t have tortilla chips, so he suggested saltines.  Okay.  Why not?

And it worked – the crackers stayed crispy.  I used a mix of shredded cheddar and mozzarella.  And when he wanted more, I brought him upstairs and showed him how to make them.  In the oven.

So that following day, my kids made themselves a hot lunch in the oven.

And they remembered to turn the oven off when they were done.

I felt this wave of emotion wash over me.  I was proud of them…and kind of proud of me, too. 

I am – like, I suspect, many parents – often wondering if I’m “doing it right.”  Am I teaching them what they need to know, am I raising good kids, hardworking kids, kids who will become good adults who can take care of themselves out there in the big wide world?  Will they be okay?

And at the same time there’s a part of me that likes being needed.  Mommy?  Can you – tie my shoe, pour the cereal, make my sandwich, bring me to the playground, get me some water, give me a hug, kiss me goodnight? 

I like being Mommy. But I know that it’s my job to raise them up so they don’t need me so much.  The only time they were mine-all-mine was when they were in the womb.  From the day they were born, it has been my job to hold them tightly and, finger by finger, hug by hug, to let them go.

Fortunately, it’s kind of a one step forward, two steps back kind of process.  Much easier on me – and them.

So.  The nachos.

I was proud of us.  I taught them.  They learned.  They did.

I told them they could go play.

~~~

Another first day of school.

My boy is now a seventh grader.  My daughter is a fifth grader.

They don’t need me to linger with them.  They don’t need me, really, to walk with them, but I still walked part of the way with Alex and all the way with Julia. 

I confess – it was unexpectedly hard to let Alex go off on his own.  But I did it.  I felt my eyes prickling, but I also felt good.  He’s a capable kid.  He’ll be fine.  Or at least that’s what I told the other Mommy in my head who kind of wanted to drive him to the bus stop and wait there until the bus carried him away.  I shut her off.  She wasn’t helping.

I walked with Julia, we found out which teacher she had, and pretty soon she and her classmates marched into the building and I stood there in the school courtyard, surrounded by countless other parents and children, and I felt…alone.

So I walked home.

And I typed all this.

Deciphering my Map

I think I’m taking a break.  I could be wrong – it seems as soon as I decide I’m not going to write any more for a while a floodgate of sorts opens and I start posting twice a day.

But anyway.

I think I’m taking a break.

I’ve been feeling a greater and greater disconnect from this website for a while now.  At first I thought it was – a year and a half ago – that I’d begun working as a cook and suddenly felt that I really had no right blogging about cooking because there is so much I DON’T know…I felt like a pretender to something I wasn’t.

I know, I think about the stupidest things for way too long.

Anyway, there was that.

But once I got a bit over feeling like a fake, I decided I’d just post about food sometimes, but without any authoritative tone in my writing voice.

But still…that fire is so much smaller now.

I think I just don’t feel like I’m her any more.  The barefootkitchenwitch. 

Things are changing in my life…well, of course, things are always changing in all our lives, right?…but in conjunction with those changes, I feel like

Oh hell I don’t even know how to say what I’m saying, because I’m keeping some stuff private, only I don’t want to – my urge is to write it all out, but frankly, I don’t feel like sharing with the universe just yet. 

And putting that restriction on my own writing seems to have rendered me unable to write about anything except the occasional Scratchy post. 

So I guess what I’m saying is I’m not sure what I’m doing just yet, but if I figure it out, I’ll let you know.

Practice Makes Pretty Darn Good

Have you heard of those looms?  The ones that use little rubber bands to make bracelets or even necklaces or rings?  Julia wanted one SO BAD after some of her friends started making the bracelets and giving them to each other.  She’d been the recipient, but she wanted to be the maker and the giver, too.  So we got her some of the rubber bands (the store was out of the loom), and she learned to do a simple “fishtail” bracelet just using her fingers to weave the bands together.  But there’s only so much you can do with that pattern.

She really really wanted the loom.

So we got her one. 

And the day I brought it home, she sat down with it DETERMINED to make one of the harder bracelet patterns on the website.

Naturally her ebullience gave way to tears of frustration because it wasn’t as easy as she’d expected it to be.

I tried to reason (ha!) with her.  She’d only JUST GOT the loom.  Hadn’t even had it for two hours yet – maybe she should try an easier pattern to start with.  It’s like playing guitar…you have to start with the simpler pieces before you can play the more complex ones.

She started over.  And got a bit farther this time, but still hit some sort of snag and again she was in tears because she just couldn’t do it.

Well, no bracelets were made on the loom that night.  And she didn’t use it for the next several days, just sticking to the ones she could make using her fingers.   I’d occasionally mention the loom, mainly because I’d gone and bought the thing and thought she really should give it another try, but I didn’t push too hard. 

She tried again one day when I was at work.  Bill told me about it – oh, the tears.  I believed he used the term “meltdown” when describing her emotional state.

But eventually…finally…she got the hang of it.  And now she’s making bracelets for everyone.  Cranking them out in no time, and very proud of her color choices and patterns.

It’s hard watching that period of frustration.  I wanted to help her, but I’ve never used one of those things AND I had only ever used a crochet hook to crochet a really, really long chain – just never got the hang of it, so what help would I be with her and her rubber bands and loom?  None.

But that’s the thing – it’s not my job to make it easier for her.  It’s my job to give her sympathetic hugs and words of encouragement and attempt to put it in perspective for her with my maternal wisdom….and then give her even bigger hugs when she finally gets it, when the whole thing clicks in her mind and in her hands, and she’s off and running (or weaving or whatever you call it on those looms).

~~~

Maybe because I had never learned to crochet, this whole loom thing got me somehow wanting to crochet something.  My sister crochets.  My maternal grandmother used to crochet up a storm.  But it was never my thing.  I learned to knit, and made everyone scarves one year for Christmas.  But my interest in it lapsed at some point.  I tended to gravitate toward fabric…quilts, pillows, wall hangings….

But still.  With Julia’s mastery of the rubber band loom, my lack of crochet skills started to bother me.

So maybe a week ago I treated myself to a couple of crochet hooks – really pretty wooden ones – some yarn, and a pair of bamboo knitting needles because they were inexpensive and lightweight and I knew if I failed with the crochet needles, I could always knit something with whatever I unraveled during my meltdown. 

I found a picture tutorial online – well, zillions of them – and one night I sat myself down and started to learn.  I knew how to make a chain, so that saved me a nanosecond of time.  Next it was time to learn to single crochet.  That involved poking my crochet hook under that stitch and yarning over and making sure to count my stitches and not to have too much tension in the yarn because the stitches would be too tight and just get tighter with every subsequent row and eventually I wouldn’t be able to wrestle my crochet hook out of the yarn.  Or something like that.  And you don’t want to have to little tension, either, because then whatever it is you’re making will be all loose and loopy and probably get caught on heavy machinery and strangle you.  Or something like that.

But I was determined.

I made my crappy stitches and unraveled them because they were too tight or some were tight and some were loopy so it wasn’t consistent…and I tried again.  And it was frustrating.

But…again..I was determined.

So much so that by the time I was ready for bed that night – long after everyone else – I had a little odd-looking piece of something like crocheting to show for my efforts:

I took this picture the next morning with my phone so I could send it to my sister.  I think I was in need of encouragement. 

Oh, and ignore all the loops of yarn around the hook – that was just so it didn’t unravel on its own.

Now, rah rah, I crocheted (or something like it) several little rows – each successively tighter than the one before it.  But I just didn’t feel like I was doing it right.  It seemed too hard to do, and at first I blamed my own too-tight stitches and excess tension in my hands for the difficulty, but…..I still had the nagging feeling that I was really just doing it wrong.

So I unraveled the piece above and put it and my crochet hook aside for a little while.  Not forgotten.  Just put aside until I could find some time to find another tutorial that might help me figure out what was off.

~~~

I had today off from work.  Bill was at work, the kids were at school, and I’d decided it would really be a day OFF – no dishes, no laundry, no doing anything like that. 

For the first couple of hours after everyone had left, I did absolutely nothing at all.  Well, okay, I made and ate breakfast.  I sat on the couch.  I watched TV.  I scrolled through Facebook and Pinterest and checked my email.  But that was it.

And then, mid-morning, I got tired of wasting my day.  So I got my yarn and my crochet hook and a book on needlework that my mother gave me for Christmas a long time ago.  I tried to figure out what I seemed to be doing wrong, but I couldn’t really figure out the pictures in the book.  I saw in the little diagrams where my hook was supposed to go, or where it looked like it was supposed to go, and what I was supposed to do next, but I still just didn’t get it.  I knew I wasn’t getting it.  Again, it just seemed too hard.  Like I was forcing something that didn’t really need to be forced.

Anyway, I found a couple of video tutorials online.  Maybe a kind voice explaining the process AND showing it would work better.

First tutorial – nope.  Just like the picture tutorials only with words. 

It was the angle of view that was messing with me.

That, and, frankly, my hands.  I’ve mentioned before that I’ve got carpal tunnel issues with both hands.  Sometimes more than just issues.  Sometimes it really, really sucks.  I wake up with numbness in one or both hands, or parts of them, most mornings.  I drive to work and switch hands holding the steering wheel so the other hand can relax and the weird gravelly, needles-and-pins feeling will subside a bit.  I know I aggravate it at work, and at home, chopping and peeling and whatever else I might be doing in the kitchen.  But at the same time, I usually find that at work, for instance, I’ll start out with pain and those odd feelings in my hands and as the day goes on things start to feel better.  Or bother me less.  It’s a weird thing. 

And, of course, the cause is not solely kitchen-related.  All sorts of things bother my hands.  All things I love to do – things fabric related, wire and bead related, yarn related, sometimes typing, too.

There are days a meltdown really appeals to me.

But there’s a stubborn streak in me, and so I just do the things I want to do anyway.  Maybe I don’t work on projects as long as I’d like to.  Or I alternate between one task an another.  I adjust.

Anyway, this morning, my hands were both rather unpleasant, worsening as I attempted to sort out my crochet stitches, and I was getting frustrated, stopping and starting, unraveling, letting my hands rest flat on the couch at my sides while I glared at the laptop screen.

I finally found a video tutorial that helped, though.  Maybe it was filmed at just the right angle, or maybe the woman’s voice was particularly soothing and encouraging – I don’t know, but whatever it was, something clicked and I suddenly understood how to do what I needed to be doing.  Yay!

The only issue left was how to hold the tension in the yarn.  You typically do that with your left hand (if you’re crocheting right-handed), looping the yarn through a couple fingers, leading it off from your index finger as you grab it with the crochet hook and pull it through existing stitches.

I couldn’t keep the yarn looped properly over a finger.  I couldn’t keep tension in it, couldn’t keep the yarn on my hand even.  And it didn’t help that the more I tried, the tighter my hands got, and the tension made them ache and feel all gravelly and needles-and-pins.

It was stop and start for a good hour or so, and I could feel myself just getting SO FRUSTRATED, and part of me wanted to cry, and part of me just wanted to throw the crochet hook at the poised and elegant hands of the woman in the video tutorial, and part of me was wondering why the hell I felt I had to crochet anyway, since I’ve got plenty of other hand-aggravating hobbies to keep me busy.

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!

That’s how I felt.

But the stubborn streak wouldn’t let me stop. 

And bit by bit, it sort of got…easier.  I still had to really focus on what I was doing, but I was getting the hang of it (except for the keeping the yarn where it was supposed to be on my left hand).  And eventually, finally, I had this:

(I took this with my phone – the rectangular piece is on my lap.  You can see two of my toes on the floor up there.)(Which makes it sound like they fell off my feet and rolled into the picture.  They didn’t.  But if they had, this would have been a very different post.)

Anyway, I clearly had screwed up in my counting in a bunch of the rows, which you can tell by the bumps and dents along both sides. 

But still.  I had the hang of it.  I could do better.

So I did.  Here it is:

Still not perfect, but way better than my first saved effort.

I’ll take it.

Family Movie Night: Les Miserables

Yeah, you read that right.

Last night after dinner, I made popcorn and Bill and the kids and I settled in for a couple hours of song and death.

Let me back up a bit.

Cat of Leisure

So we’re a one cat household now. 

After Softie passed away I firmly said I don’t want any more pets.  Ever.  I realize that’s a pretty normal emotional response after a pet dies.  I’ve gone through it enough times, also, to know that the feeling subsides and pet people tend to stay pet people despite the periods of heartache.

Right now we’re focusing on bringing Scratchy’s weight down.  It’s easier to regulate how much he eats when he’s the only one we have to feed.  We only feed him twice a day now, and have learned to tell him no when he tries to beg for snacks.  The kids encourage him to exercise with a flashlight – he chases the beam around the floor, and especially up and down stairs.  So far he doesn’t suspect that this is for his own good.

He also has occasional weigh-ins on the Wii board.  These are usually rather dangerous affairs for whichever kid (usually Alex) has to hold Scratchy, because while he’s very affectionate, he doesn’t like to be picked up. 

Anyway, like all people trying to shed some pounds, he has had his ups and downs.  We were pretty pleased when he lost a pound – only the kids wanted to reward him with a couple of cat treats, which kind of defeats the whole purpose of rationing his food…

Most recently he’s put some weight back on, so either someone’s been slipping him some extra kibble or the flashlight batteries have died and no one’s replaced them. 

Scratchy has become a bit more sociable recently.  Before, he would race out of the room and hide if anyone came to visit.  Even family and friends who are here on a relatively regular basis would send him hissing and running up the stairs to hid under a bed.  But we’ve noticed a change.  He isn’t as quick to run away, and he doesn’t hiss so much.  He even lets people – OTHER people – pet him. 

I’m wondering if he misses his sister. 

If, maybe, he needs some sort of interaction with other living creatures, and with Softie gone, he is gravitating toward these tall, non-feline beings that visit.

Or maybe she’d been telling him people were out to get him and he’s realizing that she was just messing with his head.  Sisters do that.

Anyway, when he’s not begging for food or chasing balls of light, Scratchy does his best to cover all the chairs with white hair. 

It’s one of his best things.

That, and being sweet. 

New Toy

I’ve got a laptop again.

My original laptop finally quit on me a while back, but I haven’t been able to do anything to replace it.  So I told myself in a stern voice that once upon a time I didn’t even have a laptop, I used the desktop computer and that was just fine, and there was no reason I couldn’t do that again, so stop feeling sorry for your laptopless self right now, missy.

So I used the computer in our music/computer room and of course that worked fine.

Except.

Except for when the kids needed to practice.  I’d be in the way.  Or on the stool they needed to sit on.  Or it was Alex practicing violin and it kind of hurt my ears to be so close to all that…………music.

So I started trying to figure out how to fix that.

(I know, I know, such a problem to complain about when there are so many other bigger issues in the world.  But this is not a heavy website, it’s a light one.  So my laptop issues are pretty much as heavy as things get.)

Anyway, it occurred to me that my mother bought a laptop years ago that she very, very, very, rarely (or never) used.  Periodically she would call me or my sister for help getting it started again because it would sit dormant for so long it wouldn’t get updated and just ran sloooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwly at best.  Plus it’s got a semron processor, which, I discovered, was the kind dinosaurs used on their laptops.  Not the fast-paced dinosaurs, but the slow, lumbering kind. 

I offered to buy the laptop from my mother, and she refused that, saying she’d like to give it to me and in return I could help her choose a new one when she decided to do that.  So I said okay. 

And I brought it home and plugged it in, and twenty five millennia later, I was able to get past the “Welcome” screen and attempt to explore things.  I’ll fast forward through the agony and just say that for a birthday gift Bill asked his computer guy coworker to get all the stuff off my death-bed laptop and get this “new” one to run better/faster. 

So here I am.  And it’s even better than I expected, because Awesome Computer Guy added RAM and memory and cleaned it all up and tricked it into running faster with some sort of Computer Guy magic.

I am SO grateful.

And now I’m just getting used to having the laptop again.  I got out of my writing habits (which, I know, were sometimes pretty sporadic), and for a while I didn’t even know where to set it up.  But now I’m here in the living room, by the big front window, which is one of the two places I used to like to sit and type.  The other place was downstairs on the same work table as my sewing machine, but since I rearranged everything down in the sewing area, that might not work out now.

And that’s okay. 

I like my spot here by the window.

Random Stuff

So the other day at dinner Julia said, out of the blue, “I don’t like eating raisins because it’s like eating tiny old people.”

I have no explanation. 

~~~

The baby quilt I’ve been working on has conjured up memories of other baby quilts I’ve made, especially one of the first ones.  Not sure if I’ve told this story before, but here goes…

This was back when ALLLLLL my quilting was hand-sewn.  Piecing AND quilting.  Everything.  I loved it.  And I still do, though too much of it bothers my hands.  But this was a while ago.

Anyway, one of my sister’s friends, Betsy, was having a baby – I believe she was the first of their group to do so, and I was invited to the baby shower, and so I decided to make a quilt.  I kind of blended aspects of the styles of Monet and Seurat, with colors from Monet’s Water Lilies.  So I used soft greens and pinks and blues, and all the pieces were hexagons.  I can’t describe it better, and I don’t have pictures, but I remember loving the creation of it…the artists, their styles, the colors…and yay – a baby!

Anyway, because I was a card-carrying member of Procrastinators Anonymous (still am, but not as bad), soon it was the night before the shower and I still hadn’t finished the quilt.

But I DO finish things.  And the shower was at something like eleven o’clock the following morning (a Saturday, I assume), so, hey, I’d just stay up kind of late and get it done.

I was up all night.  All.  Night.  I had the tv on, I was in the living room with my quilt on a table, and I was stitching my fingers off.

And yes, dammit, I finished that quilt.

I don’t remember if I took any sort of nap that morning, before the shower.  I kind of don’t think I did.

Anyway, to make it even better, I had to drive, because my mom, who was also invited, had had surgery on the bottom of her foot and it was still in a cast or boot or something. 

The shower was half an hour or so from where we were both living (and my sister wasn’t even able to come to the shower for some reason…she was living up in Boston at the time, so maybe it was because of work or something?) (and, as yet another side note, I now live just minutes from the church basement where that baby shower took place) …where was I?  Oh yeah, half hour drive.  So here we go, my limping mother and me with most of my brain wrapped in fuzz.

We put our gifts with the others and found seats sort of near the back.  I propped my eyes open with paper clips.  And the shower was under way.

While other gifts are being opened in the story, I’ll take a moment to explain the weirdness going on in my head during the shower.

I was big.

I felt, as I willed myself to remain upright on that folding chair in that church basement, with all the many sweet church member ladies and family members and friends, like I was twice the size – at least – of my usual self.  Not fat.  Big.  A giant.  That’s how sleep deprivation was distorting my world.  I tried not to move so I wouldn’t frighten anyone with my big-ness.

And eventually Betsy got to the baby quilt.  She pulled it from the bag (or unwrapped it – I don’t remember) and held it up for all to see, (as I tried to shrink down so I was normal-sized) and said, loudly, “JAYNE W MADE THIS!”

And the word loudly doesn’t do it justice.  Her voice THUNDERED the words, and as she said them I seemed to grow bigger and all the little old ladies and moms and cousins and friends turned, as one, to look at me as I was contorting into something that might pass for normal-sized in my metal folding chair.

I hope I smiled politely.

No one ran away screaming, so I guess I looked harmless.

And the shower proceeded normally, with the rest of the gifts opened, lots of oohs and aaahs and smiles at all the adorable baby things…lots of thank-yous from Betsy, and then, of course, food.

That is my best baby quilt story.

I made baby quilts for my sister’s two kids, both of which were late.  Not sure how late my nephew’s quilt was, but my niece didn’t get hers til she turned two.  Hey, there were a lot of appliquéd flowers on that one.  That sort of detail takes TIME.

Anyway, so that’s the baby quilt stuff.

~~~

Like I said in my previous post, all this quilting has resulted in a resurgence of my love of designing and sewing.  So naturally I had to rearrange my sewing/jewelry-making/other stuff-making area.  (For some reason I can’t stand the term “crafting” or anything “craft-“ related.  I can’t use it.  Ick.)

So that’s what I did yesterday.  I’m still not completely done, but that’s today’s job. 

Both pictures were taken in bad light and with my phone, so please excuse the poor image quality….

Before:

After:

The biggest change I wanted to make was to have that tall work table sticking out from the wall so that I could walk around it and work on big projects.  It’s a bit of a tight fit back there, but I made it work and I’m SO happy about it.  There are still areas that need to be tidied up or reorganized, but that’s the easy part.

The hardest part was moving the rolltop desk.  Now, it does come apart, so that helps, and I remove all the drawers, of course, but still – it’s heavy, even broken down into sections.  But I did it.  I’ve done it so many times over the years, I’m actually pretty good at reassembling it, which is tricky because the center writing part has to slide in between the two drawer portions, so those things have to be just the right distance apart, and that middle writing section is HEA-VY because it’s got a huge piece of some sort of stone inlay as the writing surface.  And, of course, there’s maneuvering the whole roll-top section – which is one enormous unwieldy piece – and fitting it onto the pegs that hold it in place (the pegs jut up from the corners of the two main drawer-holding parts of the desk).  Anyway, putting that together successfully is always cause for high-fiving oneself.  Not that I did, of course, because that would be weird.

And that’s about all the writing I have time for.  I’ve got some laundry to hang outside, and some reorganizing to finish downstairs. 

And, of course, that baby quilt isn’t finished yet….

So what have you been up to lately? 

A Couple of Pictures

I worked on the baby quilt a bunch yesterday, made some cookies, got dinner ready, went with the kids to the book fair at their school, and did some more quilting before I went to bed.

I haven’t hand quilted in a while – my stitches are a clear illustration of that.  Don’t have pictures to show you, but I will at some point.

It took me a while to get going, trying to find a way that felt comfortable now, because my fingers start feeling needles-and-pins-y when I’m doing all sorts of hand work – peeling, chopping, sewing, pinning, writing, tying shoes, braiding my hair – stuff like that.  Sometimes it goes away after a while.  I think my little hand muscles loosen up or something.  I don’t know how it works.  But I know I can compensate, or change the way I’m holding something or doing something, and it’s manageable.

Anyway, I fiddled around a bit and finally got into a good rhythm with the sewing.  And it was so great to be doing that again.  Like harvesting coriander seed, it’s meditative.  Rhythmic.

It makes me happy.

And speaking of things that make me happy, here are the couple of pictures promised by the post title:

Julia, of course, mid-cartwheel.  We were at the ball field the other day.  Alex’s game was over and the coaches were talking to the team in the dugout.  Julia and I were waiting, and Julia, who does not do “patiently” or “sitting still” all that well, was turning endless cartwheels and practicing round-offs.  The sun was going down, and I was catching some great shadows of her against the back of the dugout wall.  No shadow of her in this picture, but it was the best of the cartwheel shots (taken on my phone), so I thought I’d share.

And this…

This is Alex running through his music before the elementary school band and orchestra concert last week.  The five local elementary schools come together for this concert – so five different groups of 4th grade violin, five groups of 5th grade violin, and 5 groups of band kids, all playing together.  It’s pretty remarkable, and I love their music teacher. 

You’ll notice that Alex isn’t playing his violin in that picture (though he is in the violin group and played that instrument as well).  He does fine on violin.  But he doesn’t love it.  He plays it because, as Bill has pointed out, it gives him an in, an opportunity to play his guitar.  So Alex was one of the kids who had a solo that night.  The others were all from the band.  Bill had arranged the second of movement of a Vivaldi concerto for Alex to play on guitar, and Alex’s violin teacher played the orchestra part on keyboard.

We went early so Alex and his teacher could run through the piece.  That’s when I took the above picture.  I like it – Alex with all the music stands and empty chairs behind him.

I only took one picture during the performance – first of all my hands had broken out in a cold sweat just before it was Alex’s turn to play, and because I didn’t want the click of the camera to be a distraction.  And it also occurred to me that I should just sit there and listen, and delight in the moment.

Which I did.

Today Off

I think I will be baking some cookies today.  Nothing new – I’m making these, I think, since I have a lot of limes and a bag of shredded coconut.  Not sure if there will be nuts in them or not. 

I was at Alex’s baseball game last night, sitting on the bleachers, when Julia came running up to tell me someone was here to see me.  (Julia spends Alex’s games playing with whichever younger sisters of other baseball players are around.  There’s a good supply of them.  Most are girls she knows either from school or from the season last year, and when she spots them and they see her, it’s like a tenth year reunion of best friends who haven’t seen each other since graduation.  Very cute.)

Anyway, the someone was the mom of one of Julia’s former classmates.  Her son is playing baseball, too, and he had a practice that night.

She asked me how my writing was going, and for a minute I had no idea what she meant.

Oh, yeah, this blog.  Um, I haven’t been doing much writing over the past year.

I’ve been thinking about that a lot, on and off.  I even thought, recently, that maybe this website had run its course.  Maybe I should just say thank you and goodnight.

But…nah. 

Still, I keep finding that I just don’t feel like writing about food.  I think, maybe, that I don’t need to write about food like I used to, because cooking is now “what I do for a living.”  I just don’t feel like photographing what I make for dinner and talking all about it.  Unless it’s something very different or really interesting.  I don’t know.  It’s weird, but that fire has burned out.

And I came to the conclusion (yesterday, after mulling things over), that that’s fine.  I’m not required to write about food.  I can write about whatever I want to.  Or not. 

I see my stats dip way down when it’s not pre-Easter (when those posts about coloring eggs are all over the place), and at first I felt this panic – Oh no!  I have to get those numbers up! – but…why?  I am not dependent on the ad revenue.  It’s nice, but not crucial.  So…I can relax about that.

I have today off.  My days off are so precious to me.  At first I’d use days off to catch up on all the household things – do tons of laundry, dishes, shopping, cooking, baking, etc.  But now, I don’t want to use up my time – MY time – doing all that.  So I try to get as much of that stuff done on work days, or have the kids do some of it, so that I can spend my days off doing what I WANT to do do.

Lately it’s been all about the fabric.  I’m working on a quilt but I can’t show you because it’s a baby quilt and a gift and no one gets to see it (out there in internet land) until after the baby arrives.  Which should be soon.  SO excited!!

I love fabric.  I love designing quilts or little wall hangings or pillows… and I haven’t really done a lot of that in a LONG time.  But now, I think now that I’m cooking for a living, it’s like THAT hobby or passion or whatever it is has been sated, and now I have room for other creative pursuits.

And isn’t that a great thing? 

I still need to get back to repairing other quilts we have – a project I started a while back and then dropped.  But it can wait til after this baby quilt.  And it’s Spring – we don’t need as many quilts.

I’ve also been sucked into the black hole of Pinterest, and that’s actually been a great motivator for me.  I see all these amazing creative projects (including quilts), and I just want to make them all.  Or not – but make my own things.  Because why not?

So that’s what I’m working on today.  Hoping to finish the baby quilt.  And then a couple other little projects…and then….? 

I have no idea!

And that’s sort of the best part.

Ghosts

When I first started working at my job (I wanted to write “my new job” but after over a year now, I suppose it’s not so new), I was, frankly, a nervous wreck.  I know I wrote about that, so I don’t think I’ll go into it again, but the short version is that I am way overly critical of myself about oh…everything I do…and so much of my time at the job (and before it every day) was spent in my head alternately criticizing myself, berating myself for not being better/faster/more efficient and for not already knowing how to do everything there, and imagining all sorts of disparaging things my new coworkers must be thinking of me.

I know. 

I know.

Anyway, as a result of that nervous wreckness, I could barely eat for six weeks and I lost some weight, which was nice, but not in a manner I would recommend to anyone.

So.

In addition to all the self-flagellation and not eating, I was also back in my home town, where many people from all my pre-college years still resided.

And post-college, because I moved back to that same town for a while some years ago when I returned from out of state.

Anyway.  In my overly emotional and jagged mental state during those first weeks, I didn’t want to see anyone I knew.  I was afraid I’d cry.  So many swirling emotions were that close to the surface, I didn’t think I could dam them in if the level got any higher.

So, naturally, I saw ghosts.

For one thing, every older man of a certain age – and dressed in a certain way – was my father. 

Oh, my father’s still alive.  And still living in town.  And I did see him (and still do) periodically when he’s shopping there.  But at first, I didn’t.  I just thought I did.

Every older gentleman in jeans and a lightweight jacket and some sort of baseball-style hat – my dad.  I can’t count the number of total strangers I almost spoke to before realizing that no, they only looked like my dad because they were rows of produce away with their backs to me and my father doesn’t even have a jacket that color.

Or a beard.

Sigh.

They weren’t him.  But for a moment, they were.

And then when he really came in, I had all sorts of other emotions swirling around that bubbled to the surface…but that’s another post, maybe, some day.

Anyway, besides my dad ghosts, there were others. 

People who looked familiar.  My brain – already overtaxed – would rush around (in my head, where it couldn’t scare anyone) looking through every classroom I’d ever been in, trying to bring a name to that face.  Was he…?  Was she…?

And along with the facial recognition thing came the quick back-in-time feeling.  If it was (or looked like) someone from elementary school, then BANG, besides being an incompetent fake cook at my new job, I was also EIGHT YEARS OLD.  Or, worse, ELEVEN.  Or, even worse, ANY AND ALL OF MY AGES IN HIGH SCHOOL.

Not only was I an incompetent fake cook, but I was also legally too young to be working there, plus awkward and shy, plus I had braces again!  And pimples!  And hair that wouldn’t hold a curl!

Agonizing.

AND, (yes, there’s more) – some of the people I saw were (or looked like) friends of my parents.  Couples or halves of couples who used to come to dinner parties, or belonged to the Rotary club, or the Garden club, or something.  They had more wrinkles, yes, but they were out and about, shopping, chatting with friends and neighbors “Oh, fancy seeing you here!”  Smiling.

My mom should have been there, too.

I’d see women of her age, vital and…doing.  Participating.  Living.

Mom was at home. 

Opting out.

It’s a long story. 

But anyway, many ghosts.

Ghosts of people. 

Ghosts of emotions.

Ghosts of what ifs.

Ghosts of whys.

Too much.

~~~

Those first six weeks were exhausting.  Most of that – okay, all of that – was my own doing.  My own letting go of the reins and letting every anxiety and insecurity I’ve ever had race wildly through the streets, past the strengths and mental defenses I’d built up over time (who were currently feebly trying to wave the out-of-control stampede into a corral).

What kept me going was, simply, that I really liked my job.  I was getting to do something I loved to do.

Wow.

So I survived.  And people I worked with were encouraging and critical but never mean (like the cartoon versions in my head), and I managed to battle my own WRONG thoughts and get to where I could eat a bit more often.

And here I am.

I’m happy to go to work.  I get to cook stuff!

I still have bad moments, but I learn from them and I can laugh them off. 

It’s good.

But I still see ghosts.

I suppose I always will.

Cluttery

Two weeks since my last post.  Didn’t realize it was so long.

Winter break was last week, so everyone was home and the week sped past.  My neck hurts from watching it, it moved that quickly.

I had a weird moment a few days ago…maybe not a moment…more like a drawn-out look through a different looking-glass.  I was watching some cooking show – I think it was one of those international kinds of things where the host travels to various cities in a given country and samples the local food, in this case, lots of (yummy looking) street foods.

But it wasn’t about the host, or even the food.  No, there were other people standing there during various segments, and a couple of them were speaking about the local food, and on the screen the person’s name would appear, and beneath it, the descriptive “Food Blogger.”

And I thought “hunh.”

Profound, I know.

I think I used to consider myself a food blogger, not that I like labels really, but if you had to describe what point on the blogging map I lived nearest to, I guess “food” was it.  Closely followed by family.  And aimless babbling.

Lately, however, say, within the past year, I feel myself parting with the “food blogger” affiliation.  I still cook, of course, and bake.  We must eat, after all.  But I feel less like writing about it now.  That could be because cooking is now my job, not just a useful hobby.  I love my job, and I’m so happy – and even still a bit startled – to be doing what I’m doing.  But…now that I am surrounded by people who have been cooking professionally far longer than I, I am – and I’ve written this before – feeling a bit humbled.  Less…peacock-like about the things I cook.  Not always, but a lot.  So I just don’t photograph my cooking so much now.  And on my days off…I tend to drift toward other hobbies instead.  Those window quilts.  The denim potholders.  Stuff like that.

Or, very very occasionally, I spend part of my day off relaxing.  It’s a strange endeavor.  I always feel a little uncomfortable, a little guilty, doing NOTHING.  This morning I had breakfast on the couch, watched old stuff on tv, and, at some point, actually dozed off.  Yes.  I took a nap.  I woke up a little before noon feeling puzzled and too warm and more clear-headed than I’d felt earlier but still kind of sluggish.  I figured since I’d slept the morning away I should GET UP AND DO SOMETHING, in order to make the most of my precious DAY ALL TO MYSELF.  But.  I had too many possible things to do and no idea which one to choose.

So I skipped them all and worked on trying to organize a few things for the household – paperwork, bills, finances, shopping…that sort of thing.  Soon, very soon, I want to tackle our filing cabinet.  Four drawers of the past, crammed in and mostly forgotten.  It needs cleaning out and reorganizing. 

So do other sections of this house.  I went upstairs and put laundry away, and then reorganized the drawers in my bureau and rearranged the furniture a bit.  I wanted to rearrange Alex’s room but he wouldn’t let me.  I had Julia clean off the desk in her bedroom, and we added a lamp so she could do her homework there, and I was satisfied.  For now.

Still so many projects to tackle.  I scribbled a lot of them down on some lined paper I snitched from the kids’ supply, and I felt better just getting that on paper.

And that’s about it.  Made excellent macaroni and cheese for dinner, fried some hotdogs to go with it, and that was that.

Now?  I think I’ll go stare at my fabric for a while and see what it wants me to do.

Over Coffee

Sometimes I just feel like I don’t have anything GREAT to write about so I just skip posting.  I think I shouldn’t just sit here and ramble on and on about nothing, because it’s not good reading for anyone.

But sometimes it’s all I’ve got – the rambling on and on.  It’s like talking to my sister – we just ramble on and on.  Sometimes we have a purpose to our conversation, but mostly it’s just…like sitting at the kitchen table and chatting over coffee.

Well, I’ve got my morning coffee.  Do you need yours topped off?

Irrigation

I went back to work yesterday after a few days off (see previous post for all the fun), and was so happy to be back there, not just because I love my job, but because of the people I work with.  I love being surrounded by people who are good at what they do and are passionate about it.  And the fact that they’re all so much better cooks than I am gives me something to work toward.

But it’s not just that, either.

It’s this….

Dizzy

There was a very old merry-go-round at the playground in town when I was a kid.  Wooden floor to it, with iron rails that curved out from the center and down to the edge of the floor…like a big, tough spider holding the whole thing together.  Kids would stand on this, hanging on to the spider legs, while one or two other kids held the outer leg part and ran, around and around, making the whole thing spin faster and faster until the running kids couldn’t keep up and jumped on board to spin along with everyone else.

I didn’t like that ride.  I don’t like spinning around and around, seeing the rest of the world blur and zip past….

New Year

I built this fire this morning, starting around twenty past five.  I’m off today, so I can keep the fire going all day long as I work on various projects.

Unwavering Peaks

I did a lot of baking yesterday, plus other baking-related stuff.  Haven’t done that in a long time – a full day’s worth of just playing in the kitchen.

I’m hoping to post about some of it later today, but in the meantime, just wanted to share this little bit with you.

Things

I have mixed feelings about this time of year.

Some call it the season of giving, but if you think about all the advertising, it’s more like the season of getting.  Of gimme, gimme gimme.

Even the commercials urging you to shop here to buy “the perfect gift” aren’t really interested in you and your gift-giving.  They just want your money.  Gimme.

And things.  It’s all about things. 

We’ve got lots of things in this house.

Things that we use, and things that decorate. 

Things that bring us joy, and things that gather dust underneath the beds or lie buried beneath other things.  Things the children were overjoyed to unwrap last year or the year before, which are now clogging shelves or access to the closet.

~~~

We have too much stuff.  Too many things.

I’m working on getting rid of the excess. 

It’s not easy.

I blame genetics.  Or the Great Depression.  Or my grandparents growing up poor in the East End of London.

They didn’t have much when they got married.  But over time, with a lot of hard work, they did well for themselves.  And they acquired things.  Lots of books.  Mementos.  Serving ware.  Things.

They lived into their eighties after living good lives and providing the world with one child – my mother.  When they died, my mother was left without her parents, but with a lot of things to sort through.  To keep, to give away, to throw away…

And before all that, my mother continued the tradition of collecting and keeping things. 

Our house – a full four stories high – was full of things.  There was a closet in the dining room, for instance, that was floor-to-ceiling dishes and glassware and salt and pepper shakers and odds and ends of serving ware.  The walls were adorned with platters…teacups and saucers…interesting plates.

I thought it was pretty cool (except when I had to wash them). 

We got lots of things for Christmas.  My mother, a depression-era baby, wanted to give us magical Christmases with lots to unwrap.  She did a great job.  I grew up thinking that was the whole point and quest of Christmas.  To give The Best Gifts Ever.  I overspent.  I drove myself crazy.  I gave people lots of things.

And I have lots of things now.

The other part of all this, is the Saving of Things. 

That spoon was given to your grandmother by her great-aunt-in-law’s cousin Matilda on her deathbed. 

That sort of thing.  The sort of thing that, while yes, it’s just a spoon, is also That Spoon, and it is this capitalized identity that gives the spoon a weight far heavier than the few ounces you see on a scale.

It becomes more than a spoon.  It is a spoon with meaning.  With history.  With great-aunt-in-law’s cousin Matilda’s very blood and soul forged into the metal.

It must be kept.

This makes it really hard to clean out the attic or to hold a yard sale. 

All those possessed things refusing to budge.

~~~

About 8 years ago lots of events took place.  (Like they do every year, I suppose.)  The ones I’m thinking of include these – my parents sold the house they’d lived in since the year before I was born.  Part of it was also my father’s business, and as a retired couple whose daughters were out of the house, it was too big.  For my father. 

My mother never wanted to move.  The house was such a possessed thing.

And I understand that.  I grew up in that house.  So many memories in those rooms.  It was my home.

But.  It was too much.  Too big and old (and drafty) to heat efficiently, too much to maintain, too many things that would need attention eventually, which would cost more than they wanted to spend.

So, with great gut-wrenching reluctance on my mother’s part (and my mother is a WHOLE ‘nother story that would need a separate blog), the house was sold, and they moved into a smaller place about 3 miles away.

And attempted to cram 40 years or more of things into a much smaller house.  It wasn’t easy.  And it’s still not really done.  The basement?  Full of boxes and boxes of things.  There are two full-sized hutches in the dining room, each filled and covered with all those dishes and glasses and things from the closet and walls of the former dining room. 

My mother won’t let go of these things.  This came from so-and-so.  That was given to me by this person who died twenty years ago.  These were the sugar decorations from your first birthday cake.  Yes, they are crumbly, but still. 

That same year, my daughter was born.  A gorgeous, healthy baby girl.  A baby sister for our son.  A girl cousin for the lone girl niece on either side of the family.  A happy occasion.

And, at the very end of that year – this was 2004 – a tsunami struck a lot of the Asian coastal countries, destroying homes and families, drowning lives and memories and dragging them out to sea.

My mother did not look on 2004 fondly.  She was focused on the sale of her home, and oh, yeah, she also broke her hip.  That, at the end of the year, was all she could focus on.

I pointed out that a granddaughter was also born that year.  Oh, yeah.

That didn’t sit well with me.  But again – I need a separate blog for all that.

Anyway, those three events – house, daughter, tsunami – have become intertwined in my mind.  I think about them like this: 

I love my home, I love my stuff in my home. 

I love my daughter.

What if a tsunami came and dragged it all out to sea?

I wouldn’t care about the home or the stuff.

I can’t imagine losing my daughter.  Or, rather, I can, but I choose not to because it is too painful to even contemplate.

But it has changed something in me. 

My feeling about things.

I care less about them.  Instead, I feel as though they are looming over me sometimes, crowding me with all their history and meaning.

Yes, some things are meaningful to me.  Some things I cannot part with.  Or, rather, I could, but choose not to, at least for now.  Some things – habits are hard to break – I will keep for my kids.  Pieces of furniture.  Sets of dishes.  These are functional things.  They will be used.

I think I’m tired of things that just sit there.  That aren’t used.  That, okay, I can look at them and feel time shift and remember something significant, or a certain person…but…I don’t find it quite as hard to let go any more.

I don’t want to be crowded. 

I don’t want to be haunted by these things, or by the…the familial obligation to keep things because great-aunt-somebody-or-other left them behind after she died and now I’ve got to dust it.

Yes, I have items that mean a lot to me; that have some kind of significance.  But how many of these special things do I need or want to keep?  Do I need to keep EVERYTHING I’ve ever been given?  EVERYTHING passed down from a passed-away relative?  I feel things clutching at my arms and legs, and clinging to me with whispers that trigger all my guilt reflexes.  I don’t want that.  I don’t need that. 

They are things.  Sure, they bring me a smile or a memory.

But if a tsunami were to strike?

They are just things.

~~~

I know – this has been long and rambling.  And unedited.  And not thought out entirely.  I just sat down and started typing, with a vague idea of what I wanted to say, and this is what came out.

Years ago I would definitely have disagreed with these words.

Tomorrow I might disagree with myself.

But somehow, I don’t think so.

Just Because

I’ll be voting in tomorrow’s election, of course. 

I believe it’s my responsibility, not just my right, to place my vote.

I feel that if you choose not to vote, you don’t have any right to complain about the way the government is run, since you didn’t bother to put your own two cents in at least once every four years.

But that’s just me.

And about voting tomorrow?

I don’t feel all that passionate about it.

I don’t have a whole lot of faith in the idea that ONE person will bring about major positive changes in four years. 

Regardless of political affiliation. 

I think any president – Democrat or Republican – can just come in and magically clean up whatever mess the previous president left behind.

Or change course so that whatever party the newest president belongs to will be all happy and satisfied.

Because this isn’t a dictatorship.  There are lots and lots of voices and opinions.  The president can’t just announce that this is the new way we’re going to do things around here.  Which is good.  Except that it makes it harder to get things done.

It’s like if we’re going to pick a movie to watch.  My daughter will want one movie, and maybe my son will want a different movie.  And they each want the movie THEY picked.  Sometimes because they really and truly want those different movies, but sometimes just because. 

Just because Alex picked the movie, then Julia will not want to watch it.  Not that she has no interest in that movie – maybe secretly she’d really like to watch it.  But.  Just because Alex picked it, Julia doesn’t want to watch it.

And of course it works the same way in reverse.  Julia will make her choice, and Alex, just because, will absolutely no way in heck want to watch that.

That’s what politics looks like to me.  I know it’s probably more complicated and nuanced and lofty, and it’s also more ugly and money-driven and selfish. 

So it’s election day tomorrow.

Maybe we’ll have the same president, maybe we’ll have a new one.  The thing is, whichever president we have, things will be slow to improve or change or whatever, because there will be plenty of people from the opposing party who don’t want to work with the president and his party. 

Just because.

That’s how it all feels to me.  Like lots of squabbling.  Roadblocks everywhere.  Regardless of party. 

It makes me weary.

As I Brush Damp Tendrils of Blond Hair from My Weary Brow

Okay, a bit dramatic.

I’ve been busy – work-busy and home-busy.  But it’s all good busy.  I love my job, so I’m perfectly happy when I’m there, and at home I’ve been canning up a storm, which isn’t always fun, but it’s satisfying and rewarding to look at the jars and jars of food on my pantry shelves.

And Then I Went Back to Bed

Found this in my drafts folder.  I’d written it on August 10th, but never posted it.  Don’t know why.  Anyway, figured I’d share….

I haven’t been sleeping well. 

There’s a lot on my mind, and it gets kind of hushed during the day when I’m busy with other, more immediate things, but then at night it senses the silence, the lack of motion, and, like a baby in my belly, it starts kicking.  Hard.

So I woke up sometime after three this morning.  Couldn’t get back to sleep, so I got up in a feeble attempt to flee the babble in my brain.

I didn’t escape them, of course.  They came along for the ride.

I went downstairs and switched on the tv more as an aural distraction than because there was anything to watch…and I puttered.  I folded laundry, started another load, wished my cousin a happy birthday on facebook, read stuff online, added a rosary posting to my etsy store, and tried to feel like I was accomplishing something good.  Something to make getting up worth it.  Not sure if I accomplished that or not.

I did get drowsy again, though, and at about quarter to six, when I couldn’t form intelligent sentences for another etsy upload, I figured I could go back to sleep for an hour or so.

So up I went.  I fell asleep, wrapped in a blanket (the fan was on in the room because Bill and I have different air temperature requirements to sleep well, at least in the summer), and dropped deeply into a dream.

Bill and I had gone…somewhere.  To something festive, it seemed…a wedding, a party…somewhere away.  And during the course of the festivities, whatever they were, Bill ended up hanging out with a bunch of guys that were there and I ended up heading back to whatever room we were staying in that night.  The next morning, I texted him because I didn’t know where he was, and then somehow I was home, in the basement, and I found his cell phone there, plugged into the charger.

So he didn’t even have it with him.  And I didn’t know how to get in touch with him, or where he was, or anything.  I worry all the time.  Even in dreams, apparently.

And then, I heard his voice.

It was saying “Jayne!  Jayne!  It’s trash day!”

I swam up, up, up through my unconsciousness and emerged, still wrapped in a blanket, still foggy-brained.  I opened an eye and looked at him.

“I heard the trucks,” he said urgently.

So my body rolled out of bed, dragging my sluggish brain with it, and we hurried downstairs to get our trash and recycle bins to the curb so we wouldn’t be stuck with smelly garbage fermenting in the sun for the next week. 

I tilted the gray garbage bin back on its wheels and started rolling it toward the street.  Bill was behind me, hopefully planning to carry the lawn bags, which were still wet from recent rain.  I hate carrying wet lawn bags – I’m always expecting them to break, and I really don’t want to have to deal with that.

Anyway, I’m also thinking, which week is it, green or blue?  Green is paper recyclables, blue is bottles and cans and metal things.  I’m pretty sure last week was green, but I scan the street to see what the other, more organized, neighbors have done.

Hmmm.

I see one gray bin over there.  But nothing else anywhere. 

It crosses my mind that everyone else on our street is SO efficient that not only did they put their bins out the night before, but they also ran outside IMMEDIATELY after the trucks ZIPPED THROUGH and returned the bins to wherever they keep them the rest of the week.

But that made no sense.  More foggy thinking…it IS Wednesday, right?

And then just as the dim bulb in my brain was starting to glow a bit, Bill said “Monday holiday!”

Rhode Island is the only state still observing “Victory Day.”  It used to be VJ day – Victory over Japan – but then a lot of states stopped celebrating it and then I guess the name got changed to sound more PC. 

Anyway.  Aha.  Monday holiday.  That meant our trash pickup would be…tomorrow.

I just looked at Bill, who kind of smiled and said “Sorry.”

I wanted to glare, but I laughed instead and headed back inside, up the stairs, and back into my blanket cocoon. 

I figured it might make for a good story later.

Scratchy Update and Other Catching Up Stuff

Look at that face.

Granted, it’s not a good picture – lighting is bad because of where he was when I took it a few minutes ago, but I didn’t want to force him out just to take a better-lit image.

Anyway. 

The feeding tube.

Stealth Mama

Remember our corn with the pink hair?  Part of the 3 Sisters gardens?  Yeah.

Well, we picked a couple of ears a little while ago and though they looked fully matured on the outside, the kernels were still small and flavorless.

Ah well, lesson learned.

So we waited a bit longer, and watched, happily, as more ears grew to full size.

Earlier this week, on one of our morning meanderings through the yard, Bill decided to check an ear to see if the kernels were mature enough (you know, they cleaned their rooms without being asked, didn’t roll their eyes when we said stuff, made sound financial decisions) to be harvested.  He peeled back the husk and pressed against one of the kernels with his thumb nail.  It was not milky yet – the innards of the kernel – so the corn wasn’t ready.  Oh well, what’s another day or two?

And then he noticed this:

Becoming a Man

Alex and Bill went skipjack fishing the other day.  They brought home 12 nice-sized fish. 

Alex has become a good little fisherman.  Bill said he waded out up to his chest (Alex did) to be able to cast into the school of fish as they moved farther away from shore. 

When they returned home, Bill gave Alex a lesson in filleting a fish.

Just before the lesson, Alex said, with a bit of a swagger, “Yep, I’m a man now.”

When he says things like that, I have to chase him around the house for a bit.  Man or no, he’s a very ticklish little boy.  Reminding him of that is my job.

Anyway, I was going to share all the pictures I took during the fillet lesson…but I like the one above the best, and I think it says everything that needs saying.

Julia Child

It’s Julia Child’s birthday today.  She’d have been 100.

I wanted to write…something…marking this date…but I don’t have anything really eye-opening or profound to say.

Her voice was, at times, the background music of my childhood. 

I have a memory of standing in my parents’ bedroom, my mother ironing, and the little black and white portable tv tuned to channel 2, WGBH in Boston.  I can hear the jaunty theme music play, I can see a miniature Julia on that tiny screen, and I can hear her unmistakable voice.

“Welcome to The French Chef.  I’m Julia Child.”

I’ve mentioned before that in some little corner of my mind I thought my mother and Julia Child were sisters.  Or at least cousins.  They just hadn’t met yet.  My mother was, like Julia, fearless in the kitchen.  Adventurous.  At home.

Julia showed American women (and men) that good cooking is not difficult.  That you didn’t have to be born in Paris to cook well.  All you needed, as she said in her famous omelet episode, was the courage of your convictions.

That’s how my mother always seemed to me when I was growing up.  In the kitchen she had that courage.  She baked bread.  Made pie dough.  Canned and preserved.  Made soups from scratch.  Tried out recipes from different countries.  Made us eat salads.  Well, okay, that only stands out in my mind because we hated salads when we were kids, my sister and me.  I think it’s because Mom put chopped fresh herbs in them, and she dressed the salad before serving it and I didn’t like whatever that dressing was that she used most of the time.  Or made, perhaps.  I don’t know.  My taste buds were immature.  I didn’t like the salads.

But she cooked.  And she hung out with small black-and-white Julia when she could.

Julia was confident and human and humorous.  She made her audience feel (I am guessing) that if she could do it, they could, too.  It wasn’t really that hard or mysterious, that cooking thing.  So pick up a knife and a pan and get to work.

I think that’s how my mother made me feel in the kitchen when I was young.  That there were no big secrets, no big mysteries.  And no reason not to try something out just because you’d never made it before.  And that mistakes didn’t mean you had to throw it all in the trash.

I remember one busy evening around dinner time…my mother was roasting chicken wings, I think, and making a sauce for them on top of the stove – something dark, I know it had soy sauce in it, but I don’t remember what else. 

At the same time, my sister (if I remember this correctly) was making chocolate pudding on top of the stove as well.

Someone stopped by – a friend of my mom’s – and with all the talking going on – you can see where this is going, or maybe I’ve told this story before – the chocolate mixture was poured over the chicken wings.

Chicken wings in mole sauce!  It tasted a little different, but we laughed about the mix-up and enjoyed dinner anyway.

There was no soy sauce pudding, however.

I know – I keep sliding back and forth from Julia to my mother.  I can’t help it.  They are woven together somehow in my mind.

I own several of Julia’s cookbooks; my mom owns some of the same ones and some different ones.  I don’t use them all the time, but they are there.

I think what I  use, which I absorbed from those first cooking shows and Julia’s boundless enthusiasm and from watching my mother in the kitchen for many years, is the attitude.  The sense of adventure in the kitchen.  The care about freshness and quality ingredients, good tools, and technique.  The fun of creating.  The joy of sharing that creation with family and friends, even if it’s something simple like a roasted chicken.  And that mistakes aren’t the end of the world, or the meal.

Sometimes I get away from that last lesson.  I have a hard time with my own mistakes, and I inflate them so much in my own mind that they truly seem to be one step away from the end of the world and any future meals and everything else. 

I’m working on fixing that.

I’m working on lots of things lately.  Things I learned or absorbed over the years that haven’t done me any good.  I’ve been learning that things I’ve thought for years aren’t really thoughts at all any more – they’re just habits.  Bad habits.  Bad thoughts in response to situations that are new or stressful.  Bad thoughts with no basis in reality.  They just show up.  Bad old inaccurate thoughts.  I’m so tired of all this old stuff in my head.  Time to replace bad habits and bad thoughts with better ones.  While I still can.  Before they get what’s left of the best of me.

What’s that got to do with Julia Child or my mom or cooking or anything?

Nothing, and everything.

Recent Pictures

This is from one night when I was flying around in my space ship….

The Goings on ‘Round Here

Well, there’s been cleaning.  Rearranging.  Cleaning out.  Deciding what to put in a yard sale in August (postponed from the one we never got around to having LAST summer), what to recycle in some way, and what to throw out.

Julia and I spent one morning – the hottest day of the year at that point – cleaning out and rearranging her room.  It looks pretty good now, most of the time.  But then, it’s only been a week or two….

Three Sisters Update

No, this slightly crooked picture has nothing to do with the garden.  I’ll show you those pictures in a moment.  I couldn’t decide if I wanted to put the most recent “Three Sisters” picture up first, or the one from the week prior.  So, since trying to decide would have taken forever, I put up this picture instead.  It’s part of the view from one corner of my kitchen after I’d rearranged those three pieces of furniture there – the pie safe (you can only see the back; the pegboard is the back of the pie safe), and two work table/island things.  Before, the pie safe would have been facing you (if you are the one looking through the lens in the image above).  The other day I rearranged them.

Layering

We were at Alex’s last regular season ball game last night.  It was a 7:30 game, which is a bit late (in my opinion) for elementary school kids to be playing ball, since the games are two hours long and that means a much later bedtime than the usual around here.

It feels even later when the rain starts falling about halfway through…but I digress.

Bill and I sat at a little picnic table just behind first base, where Alex was at the start of the game.  A chain link fence surrounds the field, of course, so we were safe from anything he might not catch.

Two other games had just ended, so the whole area near the snack bar and between the two fields was filled with kids in uniforms, parents, grandparents, coaches, and the players’ siblings, both younger and older.  Everyone milling around, talking, eating hotdogs, rehashing the games, making plans for play dates, and so on.

There was this one little boy, a round-faced, blond-haired, giggly little toddler of maybe two.  He was running across the blacktop, laughing, while his two older sisters and his father or uncle or someone chased after him.  One of them would catch the little boy, swing him up in the air and bring him back to where the rest of the family was, and then he’d take off again, on his sturdy little toddler legs, laughing with glee. 

Bill and I watched that little boy…and we watched Alex at first base.  Alex who is tall, long-limbed, slender, and runs like the wind.  He was constantly in motion, a few steps this way or that, glove ready, eyes on the pitcher, the batter, the shortstop, the coaches, the ball. 

You can see where I’m going.

I said to Bill “I’m having a Sunrise/Sunset moment.”

Our boy is ten now.  Our boy who, years ago, was very much like that blond-headed little running, laughing boy.  Only blonder.  But similar.  Rounder face, pudgy toddler body, with that…deliberate, determined way of walking and running and doing pretty much everything, because it’s still kind of new, kind of awkward. 

At ten, Alex is stretched out and fluid.  He is focused, his body does what he wants it to do automatically.  There is grace.  Not always – he’s still a kid, still has his awkward moments – but a lot of the time.

At one point a kid on the other team hit a dribbling grounder toward the pitcher, who scooped it up and threw it to Alex a bit high.  Alex had to jump to make the catch, and as he landed he was off the base, so he did this little hopping foot-to-foot thing and had his foot on the bag before the runner could make it.  I heard one of the coaches yell “Nice dancing, Alex!” 

And that’s what it is.  A dance.  You have to learn the steps.  And then practice, practice, practice until you no longer have to think “one, two, kick, ball change” or “watch, jump, catch, get back on the base.”  I see other kids, newer to the game, who are still learning the steps.  They do one thing (hopefully it’s catch the ball) and then they hesitate and look while they’re trying to remember the next step.  Meanwhile, of course, a coach or fifty are yelling “THROW TO FIRST!”

It’s not all that long ago that Alex hesitated like that.  In fact, he still has those moments.  They all do.  They’re just kids.

But they’re getting there. 

The top half of the inning ends and Alex is in the dugout with the rest of the kids, waiting for his turn at bat.  While they wait they are restless and loud, yelling out the various baseball chants they have learned along the way.

“We want a single/just a little single

S-I-N-G-L-E/single single SINGLE!

We want a double/just a little double

D-0-U-B-L-E/double double DOUBLE!”

or

“Alex takes the bat/he gives the ball a whack/ if I were you, i’d scoot yer booty back, and back, and back, until you hit the shack!” 

or the one where one kid hollers – drill-seargent-like – the first name of the kid at bat (we’ll call him Joe Baseball) and the rest of the kids have to answer with the last name…

“I say Joe, you say Baseball!  Joe!”

“Baseball!”

“Joe!”

“Baseball!”

“JOE!”

“BASEBALL!”

The boys are loud.  At times it seems like it’s more about seeing who can be loudest than it is about cheering on their teammate.  I think it’s pent-up energy while they wait their turns.

Anyway, last night I was watching them in the dugout – we had a good view from our picnic table – and I noticed that Alex was one of the loud voices leading some of these cheers/chants.  Loud voice, light in his eyes, little grin, one of the guys.

And in that moment I felt a little ripple of something, a little shimmer, a little double vision.  A layering of all the Alexes through the days and weeks and months and years, from pudgy little laughing toddler to sleek and loud ball player. 

This is who he is now, at this moment in time.  He is still – in my eyes – a newborn, a three-month-old, a crawler, a climber, a toddler, a pre-schooler, a kindergartener, and so on.  And he’s always had little friends to play with through the years.

But this is different.

He has teammates.  And he’s played baseball (or t-ball and baseball) for about half his life now, but this year is different.  This year he fits better in his skin, he is comfortable, he is rarely tentative.  He is not new, he is not shy.  He is observant and thoughtful and smart.  He catches criticism and holds it in his glove, examining it without biting his lip to keep his face a mask and the prickly feeling in his eyes at bay.  He takes what he needs from what the coach has thrown to him, and then he throws that ball back into the game as improved technique, or better focus, or holding his elbow up when he’s at bat. 

All this is a wonder to me.  And so…mature.

I know it sounds more dramatic than necessary, but…so be it.  I just…I didn’t play any sports as a kid.  I was very shy and felt very awkward, even though, like Alex now, I could run fast and I was tall.  I had a baseball glove (still have it), and a football…I could throw and catch and hit.  But I was timid and didn’t want to be on a team.

I’m so glad Alex isn’t me. 

I watch this transformation, this blossoming from little tentative rookie to a (relatively) seasoned minor league player who pitches and plays first and third and shortstop interchangeably.  And I am so proud and thrilled when I watch.

And I watch him laughing and shouting and being a part of that team, so comfortable in his position among them, so secure, so relaxed. 

The ten-year-old me I remember just marvels at this ten-year-old son of mine. 

I’m so happy for him. 

I’m so happy that even when he had awful days where he didn’t hit the ball or even swing the bat or catch anything or throw well, and the coach’s words stung, no matter how gently (rookie league, anyway) those constructively critical words were given, and he wouldn’t look at me or Bill because it took all his concentration to be a big boy (because there’s no crying in baseball, as we all know)….I’m so happy that he worked his way through all of that to become the kid he is right now.

~~~

It’s kind of a magical experience, this motherhood thing.

The Week that Flew

Last week is a blur. 

Work

School (the kids)

Baseball games (and cancelled games due to rain that will need to be made up, sigh)

Wednesday:  Bill’s middle school students’ concert Wednesday night – Alex played guitar there, too, as he’s been doing every year for the past…three?  four?  So we all went.  Late night.

Thursday:  Then a wedding rehearsal (late night, lots of rain, plus a glorious double rainbow)

Friday:  And the wedding itself (late night, NO rain, smiles and tears and gorgeous dresses and music and food and love and loveliness)

Saturday:  More work (early in the morning), baseball game, sleepover of Alex’s oldest friend, and going to the movie theatre to see the new Madagascar movie (and it will be a long time before I go to the movies again – it’s more expensive than going out to eat, even ordering the smallest bags of popcorn and smallest beverages.  Four dollars and twenty five cents for BOTTLED WATER?????)

Sunday:  More early morning work, then a birthday cookout and – FINALLY – relaxing.

I’m off today.  And that means catching up on laundry, dishes, the house…plus some canning – pickled beets, and more jam.  And I’m making another birthday cake because the one I made yesterday wasn’t exactly what the birthday boy wanted.

Oh, yeah, and my son?  He’s ten now.  Double digits.  TEN!  A decade. 

Those years flew, too.  Too fast.

So I now have a ten-year-old and an eight-year-old.

How bizarre.

But, you know…this is a great time.  They are at great ages.  I don’t mind that they’re not babies any more, or toddlers.  This time of childhood is just as amazing and fun and annoying and special as all the times that have come before.  No diapers, no bottles…they dress and feed and bathe themselves, brush their own teeth, tie their own shoes.  They ride bikes, play sports, weed the gardens, clean the litterbox (yay!), and do other things around the house when asked (and reminded, and reminded).  They can write and do math and read and play guitars (and Alex, the violin, too).

They argue and fight and try to get out of doing things they don’t want to do.  They don’t want to go to bed when it’s bedtime, they sometimes play too rough, they have highs and lows and in-betweens.

And they are sweet, and they still hug me and want to be tucked in.

And this was a tangent I wasn’t even planning to go off on, but it all just came spilling out of my head and through my fingers, onto this post.

Oh – and also, I found out the problems I’ve been having with my camera are due to the kit lens – the aperture mechanism isn’t firing properly or consistently.  It’s not worth spending the money to fix, so I need to decide what lens I want to replace it with.  I want something similar, but better.  So I’ve got to start saving my pennies.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got laundry to hang outside, and a whole list of other things to do today.

Days off are so relaxing, aren’t they?

Deep Blue

I did a fair amount of cooking on Monday.  Not because it was Memorial Day, really, but because I had the day off from work.  Work, which is spent primarily preparing and cooking food. 

It’s a good thing I like to cook.

Anyway, there were a few things I needed from the store.  I scribbled a short list for Bill, as he was heading out to get a few things for the garden.

My list included a gallon and a half of whole milk (I wanted to make another batch of mozzarella.  I realized the other day that I’ve missed making cheese.  I really need to get back to that.), something else that I don’t remember but it was probably something basic like eggs or butter, and I asked for some cheap blue cheese.

Initially I thought I was going to make a hearty pasta salad, full of things like fresh asparagus, smoked mussels, black beans, shredded chicken, and who knows what else.  I thought little bits of blue cheese would add to the whole hearty, intense mixture.

While Bill was gone I puttered around.  I cooked the black beans that had soaked overnight.  I cooked the garlic scapes I’d picked earlier in olive oil, salt and pepper.  I cleaned out the fridge and did dishes. 

And when Bill returned, he brought in three half gallons of local whole milk, the other thing I’d asked for, whatever it was…and a wedge of Great Hill Blue.

He said something about hoping that was what I’d wanted, what I’d meant by “deep blue” and I looked at him without understanding for a moment.

Then the light bulb switched on.

“I wrote cheap blue cheese!  I just wanted to add it to the pasta salad….”

He thought “deep blue” was my way of asking for a really good blue cheese.  He looked at Stilton, but decided it was too “deep” and opted for the Great Hill – which happens to be a favorite of ours.

It seems there are benefits to bad handwriting.

Stupid

It was bound to happen sooner or later.  I suppose sooner is better.

I suppose.

I was rushing. 

I’d had a tough day, mentally.  I felt like I was too slow.  Not holding up my end of things.  Not pulling my weight.  Incompetent.  Useless.  It just spiraled.  I was frustrated and probably overreacting to my own negative bits of thinking.

Plus, it was Julia’s birthday.  My baby.  I had to work at 6 in the morning, so I wasn’t there for when she woke up.

I left presents.  And a note to Julia.

But it wasn’t the same.

To me.

But – cookout with family planned for later, so I had that to look forward to.

Only I wasn’t looking forward.  I was looking inward through a distorted lens, I suppose.  I stumbled over every frustrating little moment, and made them bigger, probably, than they really were.

Towards the end I was trying to do too many things at once, at least for my level of experience.

There’s a phrase somewhere – I think I read it in relation to learning yoga – not to look to the right or the left, but to keep looking forward.  Not to compare yourself to the (possibly more experienced) people around you (who are probably better/more limber/faster/something than you) and focus on your own game.  Or path.  Or practice.  Or work.  Or whatever. 

I struggle with that.

Anyway, I was doing a lot of chopping (oh yeah, you know where this is going now, don’t you?) – not chopping, actually, I was julienning red peppers and then pea pods.  The pea pods were the last thing I had to get through, and then I could clean up and go. 

I refused to let myself look at the clock.  Just slice, slice, slice.  Don’t look til you’re done.

Finally, finally I was slicing through the very last bunch of pea pods.  Faster faster faster.

And then it happened. 

I sliced my thumb.  It was so fast I barely felt it.  The pain of it.  I felt it more as a crunch, because what I sliced into was most of my thumb nail, almost halfway down the nail.  I figure the nail prevented it from being a bloodier experience.

Anyway, I grabbed paper towel and clamped it on my thumb and just stood there for a second.

I was SO MAD at myself.

SO mad.  What a supid stupid thing to do.

I held my thumb tightly (apply pressure!) and wondered how bad it was.  I wasn’t afraid of fainting or anything like that.  I was mostly annoyed with myself and frustrated by the whole day and now THIS.

And I tried to explain how I’d done it to the chef and started almost crying because unfortunately when I’m angry and not in a position to YELL, I cry.  It’s annoying.  Anyway, I said I’d been rushing, and was about to explain why, but I choked up so I stopped talking, and he just said something kind like “why were you rushing?” or “you shouldn’t be rushing” and of course that made it worse (in my head) because he was being nice and why can’t I be nice to me, too? 

Anyway. 

I finished up (not the julienning) and cleaned up and headed home, and called my sister to vent, which, of course, helped me feel better.

Until I looked at my thumb again.  I hadn’t put a band aid on it at work because it had stopped bleeding when I left.  But holding the phone must have pressured the cut open and there was this weird big bubble of blood at the edge of my nail, where the slice started.  Pretty!

I drove home, showed Bill, put a band aid on it, did a bit of last-minute grocery shopping, and functioned pretty well without the use of one thumb.  And the cookout turned out fine, Julia had a lovely birthday (so lovely she fell asleep on the couch later) and my thumb will heal.

And in the future, I will tuck my thumb under and try not to rush.

The end.

Knife Skills

Of course, the knife needs to be sharp. So make sure of that first.

Dull knives deliver blood.  Trust me on that one.

Other things I’ve learned, and continue to learn:

Scars

I have one on the side of my left index finger.  It’s about…well it’s over twenty years old I guess.  I was trying to slice a day-old bagel with a dull knife.  The knife slipped, and though it wasn’t sharp enough to slice through the bagel crust, it was plenty sharp to slice through the side of my finger.

Debris From My Brain

I haven’t known what to write about these last couple of weeks.  So much is going on right now – good things, mostly, but overwhelming for now.  Not ready to write about it yet.

So…what else is there…?

Stuff.

Sotto Voce

Actually, squawky voce is probably more accurate, when there’s any sort of voce at all.

I’ve had a wandering cold for a few days – started with a brief sore throat, turned north into my head, then reversed direction and spent some time in my chest.  It’s still hanging out there, probably because the weather’s nicer or the cost of living is cheaper – I’m not exactly sure.

Eight Point One Miles of Love on a Windy Evening

It’s been one thing after another.  For a long time.  One of those just when you think things have straightened out, something else comes along. 

I know.  Life’s like that.

So we’ve got a truck and a car.  We use the car for longer trips because it has better gas mileage, and we use the truck for big loads of mulch or big pieces of cut-down trees because it’s a truck and that’s what trucks are for.  It’s an older truck, so the gas mileage isn’t ideal, but it’s our truck and it’s paid for and we love it like family.  Like hard-working family that doesn’t complain.

Til now.

And it’s not like it was even complaining, really.  It just…wasn’t feeling well.  And we asked it to hang in there just a little bit longer and then we’d bring it to the truck doctor and take care of it.

I’m the one who’s been driving it mainly because Bill’s job is farther away and the other car is better on gas.  So I’ve been the one begging the truck to hang in there and just…oh…get me to and from work this one more time, please?…thanks, hard-working-truck-that’s-like-family.

It’s been a hold-your-breath (and-overuse-hypens) kind of month.  Good things on the horizon, but we’re not quite there yet…just a little bit longer…just a little bit farther…just keep going, we’re almost there…oh, and pleasepleaseplease don’t let the truck die.

Well, it didn’t die.  But it went into cardiac (sorry, bad pun) arrest last Friday when it decided, when I asked it to back out of the driveway, that it couldn’t possibly do that any more.  In fact, it kept rolling forward.  Sigh.

So the poor, ailing truck was dragged gently up onto a tilt-bed flatbed and hauled to our mechanic.  I almost took pictures, but I couldn’t.  Too painful.

It’s the transmission.  Of course.  Which we weren’t anticipating until a week or two ago when the worst stuff started going on with the truck.

But it can be fixed, and will be fixed, and we’ll be back to both vehicles again. 

But for now, we’re making do with the one.  Which mostly is okay, but last night I had to work AND Alex had baseball practice that had originally been scheduled for a different day but changed.  Anyway, Bill and the kids dropped me off, then headed to the field for Alex’s practice.  I’d call them when I was ready to be fetched.

But then, a couple hours later, when practice was done, my husband and kids showed up.  They’d brought me the car.  And after a little dinner break, they left – without the car.  They’d left that for me, so I wouldn’t have to call them for a ride later.

And they walked home.  2.7 miles.  At dusk.  In the cold.  And in the crazy, extremely strong winds that were blowing all of yesterday.  No hats.  No gloves.  No whining.  No (major) complaining.  An adventure, of sorts.  It took them about 45 minutes. 

Now, yes, it benefited them, too, because no one would have to come and get me later.

But still.  It was so cold last night – a huge change from the summer-like weather we had last week. 

It was such a nice thing for them to do. 

I am blessed.

Clouds Parting

First off, I want to say thank you to all of you who have given me words of support, advice, and encouragement after my last post.  I feel hugged by the universe.  Thank you.

I’m still not great, but I’m trying to shake this off, and there are things on the horizon that are good things, and I need to focus on them and, as my sister said just this morning, stop giving myself crap about the past.  It’s hard, though.  Still, she’s right. 

So, to focus on the good stuff, and the now…well, food-wise, I’ve got brisket brining (since last week) and tonight I’ll be turning one of them (there are two) into corned beef and the other into pastrami.  They’re basically the same thing – brined brisket – but corned beef is then boiled (or simmered) and pastrami is coated with a mixture of cracked pepper and coriander and then smoked first before slowwwwly cooking it in the oven above simmering water (to keep it moist).  I’ll certainly let you know how all that goes.  We’ll slice up the pastrami and freeze it for sandwiches, and we’ll dine on corned beef tonight and I’ll make corned beef hash for breakfast at some point this weekend.

That’s most of the food stuff.  I’ll be making Irish Soda Bread too, for the next Tuesdays with Dorie post – and because it’s fitting, and because it’s yummy.  And easy.

I worked with Julia last night on her math homework.  They’re working on subtraction.  Double-digit subtraction, where you have to carry the one… Homework the day before had her drawing lines and circles to represent the “tens” and the “ones” and then you cross out a “ten” line and add ten “ones” circles to the other column, and then you cross out “ones” to correspond with the subtraction taking place in that column…somehow it seemed to make it even more complicated than it needed to be.  So for last night’s homework, rather than drawing lines and circles and all that, I gave Julia dimes and pennies and we used them to carry the tens and do the subtraction.  By the end of homework, Julia had nailed the whole thought process and didn’t need the coins any more.  Yay!

I’ve noticed I haven’t felt like making any jewelry or anything lately.  I haven’t had the enthusiasm for it.  But over the last couple of days I’ve found myself thinking of things I want to sew.  Projects I keep picking up and putting down over the years.  And new projects I see completed in my mind.  So I’m thinking maybe now would be a good time, while I have the next 45 minutes or so free, to tidy up this work area so it’s ready for me when I decide to pick up scissors and fabric and a needle and thread.

Breathing

Posting’s been light, and may continue to be so for a bit longer.  I don’t know what to write about.  I’ve got pictures for food posts.  I just don’t have the enthusiasm for the writing.  I haven’t done much of anything creative lately.  I know, loss of interest in hobbies and creative pursuits is a symptom of depression.  Don’t worry, I’m taking my meds.  I think I’m just overloaded, mentally, right now, and I’m not handling it well.  Or I am, but it’s taking a lot out of me in other areas.  Sleeping is erratic, still.  I dozed/slept a couple hours on the couch this morning, once Bill was at work and the kids were at school, with reruns of Frasier on the TV.  I think that helped keep worrisome thoughts at bay.  I still felt sluggish for a while after that. 

But…this weather is helping.  A record high of 72 degrees recorded yesterday, and probably upper 60s today.  So nice.  So much growing.  We’ve got spinach, arugula, herbs, a few carrots, and a lone broccoli rabe plant that must have seeded itself last year.  Bill has planted lots of broccoli rabe everywhere, and the peas are planted in buckets along the driveway.  He planted something else, too, but I can’t remember what.  All that’s outside.  Inside, we’ve got the onions and leeks, the three squash plants, and very lush looking basil, assorted tomatoes, and hot peppers. 

Green is such a cheering color.  At least, the green of vegetables and herbs and flowers is.  To me.

I found myself taking deep, slow gulps of fresh air today.  Maybe that’s what I’ve been needing.

Anyway, that’s where I am.  I toy with the idea of writing about some of what’s going on…maybe in password protected posts…but I don’t know.  I don’t know. 

I don’t know. 

So for now, this is me, slogging through the fog in my brain.

Orange Hair and a Swarming Lawnmower

I woke up – wide awake – early this morning.  Finally got out of bed a little after four and came downstairs to poke around online and watch something soothing on tv so I could go back to bed, or something inspiring so I could be productive.  Actually, the original plan was to come down here and write that bacon and scallion pancake post, but I didn’t get to that til a couple hours ago.

I switched on the laptop and the tv and found a documentary about the Amish.

I checked email and facebook and etsy and whatever else, pausing frequently to listen to the very quiet background music and the softspoken Amish people, and to gaze at the farmland and “plain” clothes drying on mile-long clotheslines.  The farm animals, the hats and bonnets.

Quite a contrast I had going on there.

Moving on….

Night Out

Last Friday night Bill and I went Out.  We don’t get Out very often, and this night Out was much anticipated, not only because it was, as I already indicated, a rare night Out, but because it was to be a night Out at Chez Pascal.

Many thanks to our dear friends John and Phoebe for the gift certificate AND for watching Alex and Julia that night.

That night. 

Truly one of the best dining experiences we’ve ever had. 

Thoughts on Boris, Whitney, Addiction, Fame, and Meanness

Today, after simmering the skull for another bunch of hours yesterday, I will be picking the last of the meat off it and finally making the head cheese and the scrapple.  I’m also cooking the broth down a bit more to concentrate the gelatin. 

I found out a bit more about the pig we are processing.  I thought, when Bill referred to the skull as “Boris” the other day that he’d just come up with a fairly appropriate-sounding name for a large pig with trimmed tusks and slightly rodent-like front teeth.  Turns out the name was more than appropriate, it was the pig’s real name. 

Nothing Says I Love You Like Boiling Up the Head of a Pig

After running a bunch of errands this morning, I’m right this very minute finishing up a bialy and psyching myself up for the next step on the road to headcheese.

Random Stuff

~~~ I’m so glad I’m not a politician or a football player.  I would hate having things I say taken out of context, and I would hate being blamed for losing the Super Bowl.

~~~ I see families that go out to eat in restaurants, and the parents just let their kids totally trash the table, the floor, and then they leave.  Yes, it’s nice to go out to eat and let someone else cook and do the dishes, but it’s hideously rude to create a huge, gross mess for someone else to clean up, just because you can.  Do the people that let their children open all the sugar packets and dump the sugar (or artificial sweeteners) in a pile on the table allow this same behavior at home?  Or do they save that for special occasions?

~~~ Sometimes trying to be vigilant about only buying organic, and only buying meat from animals that were raised humanely and only fed good stuff, and not buying anything genetically modified, or anything with fake stuff in it…sometimes it gets exhausting.  But it’s worth the battle.  And I’m teaching my kids to be vigilant as well.  It’s hard, because sometimes the bad stuff tastes so yummy.  But I am talking to Alex about how to read ingredient labels, and how, if you can’t pronounce it, it probably isn’t something you need to eat.  I’m just glad the kids like most vegetables and fruits.  And that they’re open to trying new things.  And that they know where food comes from.  I think I’m giving them a good start. 

~~~ It’s February (really?) and do you know what that means?  No, not Groundhog Day.  No, not Valentine’s Day.  It’s Time To Plant!!  We’ll be starting onions and leeks this week – perhaps even today!  YAY!!!  It’s SPRING!!!  Well, in my world it is.

~~~ Julia likes to demonstrate her maturity by remembering to put her cereal bowl and spoon in the dishwasher without being asked.  I like it.  I like it a lot.

~~~ Alex is saving his money.  He wants to buy a cell phone.  I’m on the fence about him having one at this age.  He says some of his friends have them.  Anyone out there care to weigh in on this?  Pros and cons?  If I did put him on our plan, it would be very limited.  But do I really need to or want to at this point in time?  I really try (or WE, Bill and I, really try) to limit the amount of “plugged in” time for our kids.  I’d rather they run around outside and rip new holes in their jeans playing football or kickball than get carpel tunnel syndrome before they’re teens because  they play too many DS games.  In fact, my kids don’t own those hand-held games.  The closest they can come is playing Frogger on my husband’s cell phone, which they haven’t done since I don’t remember when.  We have a Wii, and they play with that, but not constantly.  We don’t have any angry birds in our home.  (Just outside, when the squirrels eat all the food.)  Instead, I tell them to read a book.  Or practice guitar.  And, in Alex’s case, violin.  Or draw.  Or play with the zillions of toys they have.  (Zillions may be too high a number, now that we’re planning a yard sale when the warm weather arrives.)  Julia asked for a DS for Christmas, but Santa chose not to grant that request.  And really, Julia wasn’t the least bit upset about it.  She got really cool boots, after all!

~~~ I’m going to make another batch of frozen yogurt today.  Strawberry.  Maybe Alex will like this one – I used 2% milk instead of whole.  So maybe it won’t taste as “yogurty” to him.  Whatever that means.  I’m just bound and determined to create a yogurt or frozen yogurt that he’ll like.  I don’t know why.  I’m just…stubborn.  Or stupid.  Take your pick.

~~~ That’s it for now.  Have a fascinating day!

Hanging On

Some days I feel like I’m drowning.

And as someone who nearly drowned once upon a time, I know what that feels like firsthand. 

The not being able to breathe, the fear, the panic…and the fighting against all of that, through it all, to get back to the surface and gulp air deeply and gratefully…it’s a very familiar feeling.

And on days like that – actually, early, early, dark-of-night mornings like that when I wake up and can’t get back to sleep again – I search for things that might hold me up while I fill my lungs with air and wait for the tight feeling in my chest to subside.

And sometimes those things are as simple and unexpected as little hands with small blue-painted fingernails dotted in white.