pomegranatesandpaper

Here's A Story

It's been a tough few weeks, my internets. When I stop, I drop. But tonight, I am fortified by cups of tea and Pim's orange and chocolate cookies. Mr. Pom and I are snuggled in for a rainy night on the Cape. I thought I would bake Christmas cookies, but when I realized I had to buy a rolling pin, cookie cutters, and a sundry of ingredients - all of which are in my pantry at home - I decided instead to tell you a story. since I finally have a quiet moment to tell you one. I am rather late in my recounting, but better late than never.

Thanksgiving by Mrs. Pom!

Every Thanksgiving that I can remember has started alone in the kitchen, up at dawn when the moon is still in the sky and the house is quiet and cold. I light the oven and wrestle a cold, unwieldy turkey carcass out of the refrigerator, shuddering a bit as I plunge my hands into the clammy, pink interior to pull out the package of giblets. I half slide/half drop it in the sink and run cold water over and through it and then dry it with paper towels. Salt, pepper, fresh thyme, rosemary, sage, and marjoram, butter, and oil are my mise en place. This year, I have no patience to carefully lift the skin and lay out the herbs in a quiltlike pattern. Instead I thrust handfuls of the herbs into the cavity, add an onion and carrot, and slide it into the hot oven.

I'm not really the only one up in the house. Two creatures are underfoot, investigating the rooms, sniffing under and around, checking out the opened table and threading their way through the chair legs. When they have finished their morning rounds to make certain there are no crumbs left from late night snacking, they take up their kitchen positions: Bella Sera by the back door, paws crossed in front of her like the lady she is. Cucciolo stands front and center, ready to get between my legs and the counter should the 23 pounds of turkey suddenly decided to fly to the floor.

Don't worry: they've been fed, walked, watered, and dog-boned. Still, the ktichen and my feet are more interesting than the hundred dog toys that lie like doggie bombs for the unsuspecting visitor in the dark.  I have no time, though, for pets and licks and sitting with large dogs in my lap. It is Thanksgiving, doggies! I lecture them. Cucciolo, you were too little last year to remember the smell of roasting turkey filling the house and causing you to whine in hunger  all day. Bella Sera, you still lived on the farm last Thanksgiving. Were you given a leg to gnaw on after dinner? Did they dress you all as pilgrims and indians for the feast?

  My questions are ignored in lieu of cornbread.  Note to self: build higher table for kitchen.

 

Well, if you're not going to pay attention, I have no time for stories. There are carrots to peel.

Rosemary needs to be picked from the pot in the front. If only dogs had hands, you guys could go out there and spare the neighbors the sight of me in my slippers and crazy bedhair.  Will I have time for a shower before the guests arrive? Not if I stand here telling stories!

Cucciolo! I told you that you wouldn't like cranberries. So skittering across the floor after that rolling berry as if it were Adam's rib and sliding into the wall in pursuit must make you feel pretty silly after you spit it out. Don't give me the evil eye. Your crate's right in the dining room should you choose to be impertinent. These jewels came all the way from the Cape, you know. You might even like them once I simmer them with lemon peel and orange and brown sugar and apricot jam.

 

Mom's talking to the dogs again, comes the cry from the dining room. The Princess is shuffling round the dining room table, laying the plates, polishing the silver, folding the napkins and announcing my senseless chatter with the dogs. Hmmpf, at least someone is in here wanting to talk to mother, I mutter to myself. And they can't talk back. 

 

Oops, The Princess heard that. She's glaring at me accusingly and pointing to the pie she made yesterday, a most beautiful, succulent, and sweet apple pie that looks like a fairy tale pie made by a princess with birds twittering and little squirrels helping to crimp the pie edges....The Princess opens the back door. I think the gas oven is getting to you, Mom.

Ack! It's twelve o'clock! The flowers are on the table, the turkey is almost done, the cranberries have simmered, the stuffing is golden, the cornbread is warm, and I am scurrying up the stairs, ready to pound on the bathroom door to hurry up whatever child is taking a half hour shower with a line for access as long as the day right outside the door.

In no time,  the house is full of hungry people.  The dishes are carried to the table, serving spoons are found, folding chairs are hauled out and the champagne is poured.

Wait, take a picture of the table, then another from this end, and everybody on the other side smile now, okay, okay, I'll stop.

 NO, wait! There's grace, a toast, and what we are thankful - ok, ok, at least get in grace and clink the glasses in honor of all who are here and all who we remember in our hearts.

Don't worry, mommy didn't forget about you. There are two huge bones for you guys. No, no turkey bones! Just the kind from the pet store. Settle down and don't jump on The Empress or she'll have to wash her hands - again.  I'll pet you as soon as I finish my mashed potatoes, clear the table, wash the pots and pans, cut the pies, whip the cream, and perk the coffee.

Now, shush, be quiet and don't bark! It's almost midnight and I just snuck down here for a mouthful of chocolate pudding pie. I did good today - you guys, too. Tomorrow you can sleep in on my bed while Daddy goes to work. Then we have to clean up around here and maybe bring out the Christmas decorations. Don't look at me like that - I'll take you to the doggie park. Or at least get The Teen to do it.

Oy! Where are we going to put the Christmas tree so Cucciolo can't get at it!

Oh, it's going to be a long Christmas, a very long Christmas!

Here and There

The two dogs jump on the bed in the morning and vie with each other for as much love and affection as they can possibly receive. This involves much continuous petting until my arms fall asleep and/or they begin fighting wiht each other over who gets petted more and then lose my patience and force them off the bed.

And this is before the lights are even on.

Mr. Po laughs from the shower when he hears my raised voice. It is my just dessert since he gets up with them and does the first morning run and pooper scooping.  I am thinking of getting a giant rubber sheet to put over my bed - a bed condom, perhaps? I can't even look at pretty comforters and use an old blanket on top of the bed for when they are on it. But since they are on it right before we go to sleep and on it right when we wake up, the old blanket has become constant and I have to figure this out because it's not pretty, meaning absolutely yuck.

What else is new here? I am in the midst of a huge end of the year project for my job. If I were to really be able to complete it all, I'd have to work 12 hours a day every day from today until Dec. 31st. I am getting a bit tired. And I'd like to celebrate Christmas.

Next Monday is Mr. Pom's birthday and we are going to the Cape, ostensibly to check on the house painter. He was supposed to be ready to paint all the walls yesterday but he never called me to get the room colors. When I called him a day later, it took three minutes for him to remember who I was.

I don't think that's a good sign that this house will be painted before Christmas.

So, although I should work all weekend, we're going up. I'll bring the laptop and sit in the living room and watch old movies.

Meanwhile, I am absolutely loving the free CD that Starbucks is giving out with a $15 purchase. It is just beautiful and although it only has 4 songs, I listen to it constantly in  the car and at work and it keeps me happy.

And I'm playing my Christmas music as no one can get snarky about it now!

What are you doing to get ready for Christmas in your mind?

Recipe For a Boring Friday Night: Or, A Girl Just Wants to Have Fun

Take 5 lbs of sugar.

An Internet Recipe

Every pot and pan and a bag of tortilla chips.

 

Some arty shots by the art student.

 

A lot of  food coloring.

A dare.

Attempt

Success

It was a rainy, boring night.

But she was still a woman with a plate full of cupcakes and no flour on her hands.

Scrappy

Thank you, Blackbird, for bestowing such a cool award on me, as this is nothing if not a scrappy blog, filled with bits and pieces of floating detritus of the mind.

The rules are 10 random facts about me followed by nominations of 7 bloggers that I hold dear.

A perfect exercise for a rainy Thanksgiving Eve by the fire, my stomach full of lentil soup, and my feet up.

    1.    My mother wanted to name me Lenore after my father's sister but my mother's mother nixed it and I became Loretta.

    2.    I went to a hippie high school  with no grades and unlimited cuts and I almost completely cut the first semester of junior year and stayed home and watched Bewitched every day and the only reason I didn't flunk out was that my French teacher hunted me down and dragged me back to school.

    3.    I am exactly the same number of years older than The Princess that The Empress is older than me. (Is that sentence in English?) [As edited later  by The Empress:  AS  the Empress is older than  " I " ( minus 3points)}
 

    4.    I could never undress in front of anyone when I was a kid. When I was at girl scout camp, we had skinny dipping night and I was such a good Catholic Italian American girl that I hid in my tent. (Can you imagine a camp nowadays having skinny dipping night with girls and counselors???)

    5.    In law school, I was nicknamed "Loretta Beretta" because as an intern at the D.A.'s office I went undercover wearing a wire in a motel room for an interview in order to bust a ring that was hiring teens to sell magazines on the road, then stranding them  out of town after they turned in the subscription money.

    6.   The investigator that "wired me up" was a bully from grade school who  tortured all the Italian American kids by calling us "greasers"  and now pretended he didn't know me as he insert his hand down my bra to insert the wire.

    7.   Every shelter magazine except one (Country Living) that I subscribed to this year went belly up.

  

And now to bestow this award on those whose blogs I just love!

    Jane Brocket - Jane's blog is so focused and beautifully illustrated. It is a breath of domestic calm and when I go there, I feel so renewed and happy. I want to grow up to be just like Jane. Her three books are wonderful, too!

    Amusebouche  - An amuse bouche it literally, to amuse the mouth. Traditionally, it is known as a small bite offered before themeal begins. This lovely blog is filled with small bites of food, photos, folklore, dishes, recipes, stories of her travels in search of local food, and mouthwatering descriptions of meals.   I always come away hungry and inspired to cook more and with fresher, more local ingredients.

Days of a Sampler Lover - This blog is written by a very old friend and former neighbor, Margaret. When I lived upcounty, we were in a quilting group together and she made the most beautiful, hand-stitched quilts. She still quilts, but her real passion is samplers, and I am just amazed and overwhelmed at the gorgeous work she is doing. Go take a peek! She is a stitcher extraordinaire.

Rohling Studios - Another artist friend, Claudia has a beautiful blog filled with marvelous photos. She is always cheerful and excited to show her latest finds, whether in fabric or farmer's market finds.

Dispatch from LA  - Mary Ann Moss is a wonder woman. She teaches grade school full time and makes the most incredible visual journals I've ever seen. She sprays, stencils, and stitches through fabric, junk mail, scrapbook paper, and anything else that takes her fancy. And she brings all her talent and supplies to school where she shows her kids how to make fabulous art journals. I don't think you could find a more generous, talented, and enthusiastic teacher.  And now she is offering online classes. I've already preregistered!

Little Miss Sunshine State - I think Jeanne and I became friends because I love Cape Cod and she is from Cape Cod. Now she lives in Florida with her hubby and entertains us with tales of her Pottery Barn job, fixing up her new home, and visits from Sorority Girl and Cape Cod Boy. Always a fun read.

Indigo Pears - Lila is the most talented watercolor artist.  Funny, vibrant, and caring, her blog showcases her gorgeous paintings, her thrift store finds, her beautiful family, and life in general down south.

I am now going to go eat more stuffing and turkey with gravy. It's like the loaves and the fishes around here - we haven't made a dent in it! If you're in the area, come on by with a knife and fork!

Abundance

 

This is the season of harvest; the time to reap the hard-earned fruits of the earth. The sun is low in the sky and the days are very short. As much as I revel in the long, porch and coffee evenings of summer, I also delight in early lamplit evenings that call for bowls of warm stew shared round the table by candlelight. The dark evenings make home beckon and nothing is more delightful than a cup of Earl Grey on my nightstand, a new book, and two warm dogs on either side.

We are about to begin Advent and when I come home each night and turn on the porch light and flick on all the lamps, I am reminded of the Christmas Mass when the church is darkened at the end of Mass and the nave swells with the sound of Silent Night and then thunderous applause when the lights are switched back on.

It is the time to count the heads at the table and be grateful for the upturned faces at mealtime, still our children, still the parents, despite the age differences from when they were in diapers or had mimeographed sheets for homework to complete and now have college applications to fill out, jobs far from home, and careers to launch. 

 

Each Thanksgiving calls for a recounting of the year, a tolling of each act of gratitude like the ringing of a bell in my mind. As I wrote a few posts ago, I am truly joyous within this year. I welcome Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year's with all their pomp and circumstance. At the same time, I am relaxed and mellow, appreciative more than ever not so much for the things that I have, but for the things I have not: no death or illness in our family this year; no estranged friends or family; no extreme financial worries. How many years can we count on to be notable for the lack of worry as we age in our lives?

So let the table be set with paper napkins, the everyday silver, and the dishes that go in the dishwasher. The fancy Christmas dishes that have to be handwashed will be used for a quiet dinner just for the 5 of us. So what if the 16 members of the family will barely be able to breathe at the table. What is more lovely, a giant dining room, or a family whose main goal is to eat at table together?

We are not the type of family who goes around the table and names what we are thankful for. I could tell you that we were, but it has never been part of our family tradition. I don't think I could force it, either, not without a lot of uncomfortable people who generally keep their emotions to themselves. We have all been through enough sadness and sorrow together in our lives to recognize on our faces that the heart of our gratitude is for those that sit around us and the proximity we have to each other.

I will tell you what I am grateful for this year, and most years:

    For the silver-haired head of The Empress that has graced Thanksgivings for her 84 years. I am grateful for her corn pudding and green gelatin-sour cream mold, for the wedding rings she still wears every day  19 years after my father's death, and her sensibility and mah jong-playing friends who are the last remnants of my childhood.

I am grateful for my four  sisters and their presence in our lives. We are all such different women but overwhelmingly sisters none the same.  I am grateful for my brothers in law that tolerate with good humor being the only males at our overwhelmingly female gatherings. I am grateful that we all except one live with a mile of each other and that our children are a close as siblings and will bind the families together when all the sisters are long gone.

I am grateful for my three children who are growing so fast that I am breathless at times over who they are becoming and how quickly they are maturing into life. They are also three wholly dissimilar individuals who are so meltingly the same when it comes to their fierce protection of family, demanding the traditions of our lifetime long after they are of the age to be on their own. Each one of them is a pleasure to be with and a joy to contemplate. 

I am grateful for my job. It is hard, long, tedious, and not anything I imagined myself doing in the practice of law when I become a lawyer. But it is close by, a comfortable place to work, it has nice people, caring bosses, lots of laughs over the insanity that is our daily lives, and so far, not too badly touched by the recession.

This year I am calling The Year of The Marriage.  It is the year that we recouped from Granny Pom's death and the stress that Mr. Pom endured. It is the year when we came to terms with our nest emptying and filling over and over. It is the year when we made a commitment to each other to continue our marriage into a new phase, to return to an adult relationship that is about us more than about the children. It was a hard year, but it is ending on a note of excitement and pleasure that has not been felt since we were young marrieds buying our first house and expecting our first child.

And I point to my husband as the person who has plunged ahead into the future while I am stuck in  looking behind and trying to gather up the loose threads that I keep finding unraveled and trailing behind us.

So now he plunges me into the car, the highway, the darkness, a cold house, early morning rises, windswept beaches, dog hair all over my clothes, and a time and place and purpose just for us. He had recaptured the best moments of our lives: the starting out years, the years of planning, the years of anticipation. He has created a new life for us, a place to explore, a new world for us to find our way in.

I am grateful for my art and writing. As I get older, the drive to write and create becomes stronger every day. It is frustrating at times as I still have responsibilities that require me to work full time elsewhere. But all of it has been the most magical, positive experience - this blog, my readers, the magazine, the emails I get from magazine readers, my incredibly indulgent editors who give me free reign, my fits and starts at novel writing.

All of it is just sheer pleasure, and yet also, the passion of my life, which is to fashion my world by words, to write my life as I live it, to tell myself the story of who I am.

Thank you for sharing this all with me. I can't always promise exciting posts, rewarding posts, posts filled with photographs or adventures. I can't always deliver timely posts, regular posts or even thoughtfully written posts. But know that I am thinking about you all the time, that I am writing my life in my head every day with the purpose of sharing it with you all, and know that it is one of the great pleasure and rewards of my life.

Being here.

Reader's Choice

I picked up a tiny reading light no bigger than a business card. It has a halogen bulb and is perfect for reading on our weekend trips up the coast. The unfortunate part of getting away on a Friday in the fall and winter is the early darkness. Yesterday, it was too dark to read by 4:54 (I looked at the dashboard) and I opted to drive the first half of the trip so I could look forward to reading on the second half with my new little light.

I purchased this book on my last trip to the Cape. I had not heard of it nor knew a thing about it, but a novel about Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West's infamous White Garden sounded marvelous.

The narrator, Jo Bellamy, is a young garden designer, who has just received a major assignment. At the behest of a wealthy male client, she is to design a replica of Vita Sackville West's White Garden on his Long Island estate. He send her to England visit the estate and meet with the garden staff that tends the estate so she can make a list of the plants, or "poach" as the estate gardeners disparingly term these professional visitors.  

Jo is anxious to share her news with her grandfather, who also was a gardener, but the day after she tells him, he commits suicide.  Her grandmother discovers a suicide note, but it was written some 50 years ago, when the grandfather had just enlisted in the army during World War II. In it he speaks of some intrigue concerning the death of a "Lady" that occurred, she later finds out, when he was working as a gardener on the Sackville estate.

The story grows with as many twists and turns as the twining leaves that that wind through the Sissinghurst Castle Garden in the village of Kent.  The discovery of her grandfather's diary in a storage room on the estate sends her on a rollicking trip all over London and rural England as she finds herself in a web of preent day intrigue and romance that is bisected by a tale of love and corruption from the past.

The story is suspenseful and wildly  intriguing as it posits a tale of treason and murder involving the mystery of what exactly happened to Virginia Woolf during the three weeks from when she supposedly drowned in the River Ouse  to when her body was ultimately discovered.

I read it straight through, albeit with a couple of interruptions when I went online to research some of the plot lines and uncover whether any of these were true or even rumored.  It is a wonderful literary mystery that will fully fascinate anyone who loves English gardens, lists of plants, Virginia Woolf, England in the war years, Oxford universities, eccentric English characters, and romance. 

I also just finished Howards End Is On the Landing: A Year of Reading At Home by Susan Hill,

Susan Hill is the well-known and prolific English author who wrote, among many other novels, The Woman In Black.  This book is her account of her long journey in reading only the books she had on her bookshelves, which appears to have been no real sacrifice in selection based upon the number of bookshelves she has all over her home.

Early one autumn afternoon in pursuit of an elusive book on my shelves, I encountered dozens of others that I had never read, or forgotten I owned, or wanted to read for a second time. The discovery inspired me to embark on a year-long voyage through my books, forsaking new purchases in order to get to know my own collection again. A book which is left on a shelf for a decade is a dead thing, but it is also a chrysalis, packed with the potential to burst into new life. Wandering through her house that day, my eyes were opened to how much of that life was stored in my home, neglected for years.

The book is not a dry list of "books I have read", but a sentimental and loving account of her years and years of reading books that delight the heart and mind. My only criticism of the book is that instead of inspiring me to stop buying books and read some of the many that I have on my own shelves, I found myself dog-earing pages, scribbling note in the margin (which she writes about), and surfing Amazon for the books she discusses.

If you are a Reader, you will find this book to be like a long conversation over tea and scones in front of the fire with your reading group. And if you don't have a reading group, you will have this book to share in your reading obsession.

And if you are like me and discover that you own not one, not two, but three copies of Kitchen Essays by Agnes Jekyll, you will be nodding your head along with the author as you read this literary memoir.

When Wanderers Cease to Roam: A Traveler's Journey of Staying Put by Vivian Swift, is a book that I also bought more than once. However, the mystery of this book is that I hav NEVER found what happened to my first copy. It is a large, hard covered book, not easy to misplace. I have scoured the living room bookcases, the dining room bookcases, the bedroom, hall, linen nook, and art room bookshelves and nada, nothing! I have interrogated all my sisters, torn apart my closet, emptied all my tote bags, and I have never found the original copy. Must have gone out with the newspapers.

So of course, I had to buy another. It is a beautifully illustrated and whimsically written account of a year in the life of a Vivian Swift, a former world traveler who decided to stay put for a year and write about her neighborhood and surrounding area. The special interest for me is that she lives about a mile from me in the next village and writes about places I have been like local parks and Long Island Sound. What fun to open the book and go, "Hey! I've been to that deli!" Her artwork is charming and the layout of her pages is just gorgeous and I refer back to it often for inspiration in my own artwork and journaling.

What am I reading in the preholiday weeks? Well, I am currently carrying around,

but it got bumped to the bottom of the bookbag when I found The White Garden. It is now in first place on the night table, but I brought up to the Cape The Best Food Writing 2009 since I am thinking about my Thanksgiving menu and upcoming Christmas baking, and have little time to read, I am also in the mood to read and write about food. I promise to continue My Dream of You shortly.  I loved the author's other books and her easy, elegant style that has the lilt of the Irish brogue that I hear in my mind when I read her.

What do you read when you have no time to read? This is what I want to know today.

It's Beginning

I am here to confess to you that I did something today that I never dreamed I would ever do.

On Thursday, November 19th, exactly one week before Thanksgiving,

I, Mrs. Pomegranate, walked across my office, flipped up the lid to my CD player

and played Christmas music.

I wouldn't have thought of it, really I wouldn't have, except it was so dark and raining and I was so, so tired.

And I'd bought a Christmas CD at Starbucks this morning. I was so moved by their festive holiday decorating. I loved the white snow and fir branch decals that trimmed all the upper windows. I loved the red and white oversized ornaments hanging in the window.

(In fact, it caused me to realize that as much as I am all about blue and white in the summer, I am all about red and white in the winter and now I have red curtains in all my windows. Really.)

I really was enjoying it. At least until someone walked into my office and said, "Are you playing Christmas music?"

And then I was totally embarrassed. I felt like I had turned Christmas on its head.

But then I thought, "who is to say when Christmas begins? Who makes the rules about such things? Is it wrong to indulge in a taste of Dean Martin or begin drinking egg nog out of the carton? Why wait for December to be merry and bright when this day is as dreary and dark as midnight?

So I sprang to my feet and opened my office door, and made  such a clatter that all the worker elves looked up from their pc's to see what was the matter.

And what to their wondering eyes should they see but a Christmas hungry lawyer, that would be me. I raised up a candy cane and proclaimed,

"Thanksgiving's next week, so I'll take off the CD, but once it's over, they'll be no stopping me.

" I am ready for reindeer, for snow, and cookies, for cinnamon hearts, dragees, red velvet, and flocking. I crave sugar and dumplings and frosting and ginger, ice skating, bells ringing, wrapping, and tinsel.

"I will forebear from any more Christmas cajoling until all the turkey is roasted and golden. But once all the gobbling is over, I will be decking the halls and fa la la la la-ing my ardor.

Let the games begin!

 

Taste of the Grape

To celebrate the abundance of fall, Mr. Pom and I took a ride up to Truro Vineyards. Their slogan is, "Great Beaches and Great Wine".

I don't think you can improve on that.

It is a small vineyard with a lovely old farmhouse and a modern open air pavilion in the back with a bar and tables and chairs for wine tasting. The house dates back to the early 1800's and is nestled in a crook of the old Route 6A.  The day we were there was cold and drizzly and some wine tasting would have warmed us up considerably, but it was only noon on Sunday and even Mr. Pom knows his boundaries.  We did, however, buy some bottles, which proved luscious and topped off our weekend.

We bought a bottle of the Cranberry Red which comes in these pretty "Lighthouse Series" bottles. The notes describe it as, "Fresh and bold, red Beaujolais character blended with delicate Cape Cod cranberries. Super with roast turkey, duck, or pheasant. It comes in a beautiful clear lighthouse bottle".  We are opening ours on Thanksgiving, unless we decide not to wait as it is quite possible that it may demand to be sampled before then.

Mr. Pom was quite the connoisseur in his youth and we had many books on wine on our shelves.  We decided that we needed to refresh our wine knowledge and signed up for a wine tasting at the local cheese shop where The Teen works.

The focus of the tasting were the wines from the principal regions of the world. We tasted reds and whites from France, Italy, Spain, the United States, and Australia. They were all interesting and I especially liked a Sancerre from France, whic is an appellation d'origine contrôlée (AOC) for wine. (See what we learned!)

 

Along with the wine, we sampled various cheeses that were selected to pair with a particular wine. Now, children, let's all guess which part of the evening was Mrs. Pom's favorite? Yes, you are right. The cheese. As the extremely thin French woman was asking us to taste the wine before we ate the cheese, Mrs. Pom's mouth was already stuffed with fromage. I noticed that the extremely thin elegant French sommelier did not have one bite, not even a moue` of cheese.

Our favorite was the triangular yellow slice on the lower right. It is a Pecorino puddled with chestnut honey.  Tasted like chestnut cheese which sounds odd but is divine. Next to it was a triple creme that was astounding and that as soon as I swallowed it, produced a triangular lump of cellulite right on my thigh.

A delightful way to spend a Thursday evening. If you look closely, you can see a little glimpse of The Teen in her Breton waitress garb.  We are looking forward to December when we are tasting champagnes. Champagnes, cheese, and Christmas = what a fete!

Sunday On the Porch in November

It's 65 degrees! On November 15th!  Mr. Pom and I are eating a late lunch of  molasses and balsamic vinegar slow-cooked pork roast on the porch as if it were September. What a glorious day!

We decided to stay home this weekend as I was having a severe case of fall nesting syndrome. This is a mildly contagious disease that appears in my family, erupting more virulently as the holidays approach. I can't rest or feel at ease until I have the house in order and ready to host Thanksgiving. 

Yes, I know it is the week after next, but as you may recall from years past, we are 16 at a minimum and it is quite a production. This year, I know I need the extra time so I can keep to my new mantra, which is "Serenity Now".

Seriously, I am just really enjoying the holiday preparations this year. It is quiet this year, knock on wood, spit in the wind, salt over the shoulder, whatever you do, but I am looking forward to a simple year's end of enjoying being with my family and gathering to celebrate the abundance of our lives and the birth of Christ.  I am making a promise to myself and to my family to not get crazy about anything and to keep the holidays as simple as I can.

So naturally, I had to take down the drapes in the dining room, which I have decided are going to be shortened to window length drapes for the big living room window in Cape Cod. I just know that their raspberry lanterns will glow in the afternoon sun and look smashing against the blue walls (once we paint).

So down they came, and up went our old dining room drapes from Memphis. I wish I had a photo of  Memphis dining room uploaded, but I'll have to find one and scan it in. They are deep rose ground scattered with bosomy, flowsy flowers in glazed chintz.  My dining room there was enormous!

Here, eh, I took them down again this morning. Too much fabric, too much pattern in a crowded room.

However, I realized they'd look great in the apple green living room, so up they went there and the copper silk drapes came down for the winter. 

In between all these drapery shiftings, I moved furniture around and opened the dining room table to make sure I can sit 16 around it, since last year's holiday with a separate kids table in the living room was highly contested by the younger set. We just make it with not a breath to spare and if my sisters bring their own folding chairs since my dining room chairs would take up too much room, as you can see in the photo above from Christmas several years ago. 

After I rearranged the dining room, I was too tired to serve the pork roast, so we had Chinese and saved the pork roast for lunch. Today, we had a leisurely breakfast at Le Pain and I asked for a soft boiled egg and was served an egg that had passed by a stove when it was turned on, so I had to make due with the "hazelnut flute" which essentially is a small baguette studded with raising and hazelnuts and it was damn good.

I was inclined to watch The World's Stricted Parents with The Teen, with a stack of magazines and the chair next to the fire, but Mr. Pom was being SO industrious with leaf clean up outside that I decided to do some laundry.

One thing lead to another and I ended up filling ten large garbage bags with basement detritus and cleaning out a major area of the mess. The Teen helped drag them out to the curb and did not protest when I threw out The EZ Bake Oven, Baskin Robbins Ice Cream Maker, and Chucky Cheese Pizza Oven. The boxes were ruined from being in the basement and I told her that when she felt nostalgic about them with her own children, to just buy them on Ebay.

Having been an industrious helpmate, and having served the pork roast, and having cooked lentil and split pea soup, I am now sitting with my favorite Ugg slippers, a gift from The Princess a few years ago, and those same magazines that I have carried with me all weekend but haven't managed to open. It's getting a little chilly for the porch and I am thinking of heading out for a latte.  A story is clamoring in my head and I could take my laptop to Starbucks and try to bang it out.

Or I could bring those magazines with me and daydream about making something with felt and ribbons and beads....

Care to come?

Cottage Tales

Little by little, Mr. Pom and I are bringing up to the cottage the things we will need. It's a slow process since the cargo area of the car is always full of dogs.  25 years ago, we bought a Sears cartop carrier, affectionately called "The Bubble" and though we have lost all the original straps, a set of bungee cords work well. It's not the sleekest or most fashionable cartop carrier anymore, but very serviceable.

What we have learned is that whatever you can buy off Cape is worth the gas the lug it up there because there's not much choice in shopping venues and the on Cape prices are carazzzy!  So each Thursday night, Mr. Pom hoists the heavy Bubble on top of his car and we fill it with stuff like sheets, pillows, dishes, and cups.

Fortunately, we don't have to buy  much in the way of kitchen essentials. Let's just say that I've never been dish-deprived. Someday I shall do a post just about table settings....yes, I will and just in time for the holidays. 

Our first official dinner. Those potatoes look a little sad, no?  The small container is bluefish pate. The bread is has pecans and cranberries in it - we ate it all week! The lobsters were only $7 each at the Farmer's Market - I love going to a Farmer's Market that features seafood!

Look, there's even a Captain. I don't know where Tenille was, though. He sold us the pate.

A lovely young woman ran this truck. I'm thinking I could be a lobsterwoman. I could haul them out of the water and then lure them into a nice pot of boiling salted water......

An actual dinner cooked in our new home was  lovely and a little strange to be there by ourselves and be using things familiar from home.

(It was also Halloween and anyone who rang our doorbell got lots and lots of candy because they were very brave and committed trick or treaters to do Halloween in a neighborhood where there are NO street lights. Funny  thing is that our attorney told us that her kids trick or treat in our neighborhood because she lives out in the sticks. So everything is relative when it comes to the lengths one will go for candy.)

 

  

I hope The Empress will be tickled to see that her old stoneware plates, which were a wedding anniversary gift from us girls (I think) years ago, now reside in Cape Cod. Such a nice touch to have a link to our childhood home way up here years later.  Everytime we eat off of them we think of Claire Ave and my parents. I dare say they are almost vintage thrift worthy seventies, no?

This is the counter next to the stove. The decoupage plate is from my days as a craft fair maven. I was going to be the next John Derrian.... Even the trivets are sentimental: the one on the left was a gift from one of my oldest friends, the Modica-Snows when they went to San Francisco; the one on the right is from our early marriage when we were deeply obsessed with all things...fowl.  

The chimney sweep got the fireplace in working order and then left us a screen, new basket, andirons, and a set of tools. He said we could have it for a very reasonable price and if we didn't  like it, to give him a call and he'd pick it up.  I waited for the catch, but there wasn't any and then I remembered, right! We're not in New York anymore!

The house has 3 bedrooms. When they were showing us the house, they kept referring to one room as the master bedroom. It was a strange, narrow room and I couldn't imagine fitting a queen size bed and two dressers in it without having wall to wall furniture. I realized that they were referring to it as the master because it had a small bathroom with a shower that was shoehorned into one corner, thereby creating the strange space. Someday we'll rip it out and just enlarge the main bath which is on the other side of the wall.

For now, I think it would make a divine writer's retreat, though those pesky kids will want a room to sleep in . . .And it will be  a bedroom for rental purposes, so we bought a trundle bed that can be pushed against the wall once I find a nice, simple desk. This is how it will look when we are renting it or have a full house. 

I wanted sunny, cheerful, bright furnishings. Does it look too juvenile? I was going for Maine Cottage but may have strayed into Hannah Montana land. The room isn't finished, but you get the idea. The funny thing is that I realized after I bought the bed furnishings for this room and the other smaller bedroom that I was subconsciously furnishing a "girls" and "boys" room. What can I say? Once a mom, always a mom.

This is the view from the dining area into the kitchen. Obviously, someone took down a wall between the kitchen and dining area. We intend to move the china cabinet to another place, remove that small wall, and put in a peninsula counter from the sidewall.

The whole configuration over the stove is going, going, gone. You can't see it clearly in the photos, but the wall is fake stone. I can't get it down fast enough. Our first house had fake bricks in the kitchen. What is up with fake stonefacing in kitchens??  I pried off some of the smaller ones last weekend and all I need to get my hands on a chisel and hammer and I am good. That and a crowbar and the whole set of tacky shelves over the stove is gone, to be replaced by a beadboard wall and a long, stainless steel shelf.

I don't think we'll be there this weekend. Mr. Pom has Knick tickets and I have the need to stay home and be exhausted. Time to hunker down for Thanksgiving and kick the real house into shape!

We Have To Stop (Not) Meeting Like This

All right, I know I've been a lurker blogger. (Yes, it is possible to be a lurker blog reader and a lurker blogger). I have definitely been in the latter category lately and frankly, it probably won't dramatically change any time soon.

But you shouldn't worry about it (as if you don't have other things you worry about, it's just me right??) because my absence from the internet means I am reading and writing more, working on some art for the cottage, going to the cottage with Mr Pom for lovely, weekends alone, and hanging out my kids and the dogs.

It's been crazy, these weekends on the Cape. We don't exactly live within weekend driving distance.  Weekend driving distance being measured by increments of two hours, we are about as twice as far as we should be. Of course, we knew this going in, but chose to believe that somehow, we suddenly lived only 3 hours really from the Cape, which of course even on Mr. Pom's best day of driving is unachievable.

Human nature being what it is, going up is always faster than coming home. By the time we arrive back on Sunday, we vow not to return for several weeks. But as the week rolls by in its dreary grind, the fantasy pull grows stronger and by Friday, we are rushing to throw clothes into a bag and grab bags and bags of stuff that we are slowly moving from one house to the next.

Then the long drive, where I am thankful for my Ipod due to the early dark,  where we don't even stop for dinner or bathroom break and try to keep our spirits up when the unexpected nighttime construction strands us for a half hour of frustration. 

And then we arrive to a sky full of stars scattered like glitter across the inky darkness. Mr. Pom hunts and gathers us drinks and a supper and we turn on the heat and take the milk and juice out of the freezer for morning and fall into bed shivering in the cold sheets.

The dogs are up even earlier, as it takes them awhile to settle down to being there and we almost cry at how tired we are when we hear the youngster's whimpering in the predawn darkness.

Mr. Pom gets up with them on Saturday and I do Sundays. They run outside to do their business in the dark, the only visible sign that they are there is the glint of their eyeballs when the front porch lights hit them. They eat their breakfast, get a bone or a kong to play with and if we are lucky, leave us alone maybe hopefully for an hour to read or gasp! go back to bed for a little while.

But by 7:30 we are always at the beach.

The autumn beach is as fickle as the spring's. One weekend we are layered with parkas and scarves, the next it is 65 degrees and we feel the sun on our backs and the air is rich with summer.

Even the beach itself is as changeable as the wind: one weekend it is built up with sand layered on from storms. The next weekend, we walk in wonder across a broad, flat expanse of sand and cringe as we view the dunes scoured by waves and wind to expose their tender layers.  We walk as if on the landscape of the moon, our minds imagining waves mighty enough to flatten the swells of the beach that we thought impermeable to change.

What never changes is the rolling of the waves. Oh, of course, they vary in intensity:  breakers with thunderous roars, gentle rolling surf that tickles our feet, long, sweeping waves that chase us slowly backwards, powerful crashes with dangerous undertow. All  there it seems, for our delight alone for despite the astonishing display of morning, we are always the only ones on the beach until a few surfers arrive. How is it possible that no one else is so amazed at the miracle of the off season beach that they cannot wait to get there?

Somedays, we forgo the drama of the ocean for the shelter of the bay. If it is low tide, we can walk the dogs out onto the flats and let them forage through the tidal pools, dazed and dazzled by the sparkle of the sun on the shallow pools. They can forage through piles of seaweed wrack, noses deep into briny smells of abandoned gull feathers and ocean weeds. We can examine the variegated layers of exposed dunes and marvel at the long threads of dune grass that stitch together the layers of sand like a great basting stitch.  And just when we think we are alone in the world, we look up and see two giant apostrophes floating across the sky and the ploughed surf kicking up beneath kite-surfers flying across the bay.

But the ocean calls us too strongly to resist more than the occasional foray to the bay. Each morning, we walk the path that use all summer, that little boardwalk laid into the north end of the beach, and a we walk through the deep sand that the autumn storms have laid across the boards, I feel a surge of excitement and give a little dance that we are here, we are here, and pinch myself, or Mr. Pom if he is close enough, and we grab hands and run down the few steps and call to the dogs who are doing their own jack rabbit dance of excitement. How can it be that we've actually done this, the thing that we have fantasized about since Mystery Man was learning to walk and used to fall out of bed at night and remain on the floor of the rental cottage, sound asleep until we deposited him back into his bed.

But we have, and it is wondrous and exhausting and scary and relaxing.

The dogs of course find all of this irrelevant. They are happy if there are shells to crunch, waves to cash, gulls to chase, smelly piles of stuff to stick their noses into, and us, always us, right there to reassure them and pet them, and whistle them back before the next wave crashes. 

But in pursuit of full disclosure, I will not pretend that it is all hand walking across the dunes and soft rays of sun on my cheeks.  I grumble as the dogs round me up each morning, refusing to let me stay in bed even when Mr. Pom is up with them. I am in a terrible temper as I put on my shoes and  sweatshirt and  pout on the way cause I'm tired and won't be happy until I have coffee in my mouth. I am achy and sleepy and want to keep on my slippers and finish my novel. I want Mr. Pom to take them to the beach and bring me back a Sparrow Cappuccino. I want to be let alone to write and snuggle under the throw on the couch.  I want to be anywhere but awake and outside and with the dogs.

But I can't. Because we're all in this together and if I don't go, who will remember to bring the biscuits that lure pups back from the dunes that they are not supposed to climb? And who will point out to Mr. Pom that a pooper scoop is needed right this minute? And if I stay a big old morning grouch and bemoan my fate to be tied into this crazy life where 6:00 a.m. is sleeping in, how will I smell the scent of summer in November? How will I have an entire beach to share with only one other person?  How will my spirit be inflated by the ocean wind and baptized by the spray of waves and my feet sink into a million rocks bored down into a bazillion grains of sand that form the bedrock of this planet?

And who will take the photos?