Previous month:
November 2005
Next month:
January 2006

Happy New Year!

The usual conundrum of what to do for New Year's Eve was solved by my brilliant husband's suggestion that we drive to Cape Cod. I was resistant at first because of all the rain, but today the sun is out and I'm set to take a trip. Cross your fingers that the skies remain clear through Sunday.

We are dragging The Teen with us, and a sister and hopefully The Princess if she can convince The Boyfriend that it's okay to be without her on New Year's Eve. We have promised fireworks in Chatham at midnight, followed by a trip to Nauset Beach to be the first to see the sunrise for 2006. Lobsters and a trip to her favorite sports store ought to clinch the deal. Me, I'm looking forward to Brewster Bookstore and walking the boardwalk from the Audubon Sanctuary out to the bay. Stan just becomes a different person as soon as we cross the bridge, so it's all gravy to him.

I can think of no better place to be on the first day of the year than at the beach, our beach, the beach that has served as respite, adventure, and site of many family reunions. Yes, I'd prefer it was eighty degrees, but I'll take a short walk bundled up and dodge the waves, which I hope will be crashing in celebration. Our rooms have fireplaces, so we can get good and chilled then run home and open a bottle of champagne that we saved from our anniversary.

My wishes to all of you are health and joy in the new year, continued adventures, travel to exotic places from your armchairs, books as dear as friends, shelter, quiet when you need it and celebrations when your mood requires, and most of all, love. Come back often and travel the new year with me.


Embracing Your Inner Sloth

(Note: the digital camera has disappeared. I'm sure it's somewhere in the house. Last time I used it was on the 19th, so it has to be around...but until it resurfaces, no photos are available. Sorry!)

I am continuing with the world's most relaxing vacation. In short, I am doing nothin'. It's hard work to do nothin'. (I'll stop typing it that way now, don't worry.) Seriously, I am breathing a sigh of relief that my cousins are not coming from Albany. Don't get me wrong, I love them and asked them to come. But now that they're not - a rainy day inside in my pjs, instead of running to the grocery store and cooking.

I have lots to occupy my time. I can clean out the studio so I can get at my desk. I can then work on a round robin journal, make something, anything! I can read the new books I bought, including Danny Gregory's Creative License, which I highly recommend; Penelope Lively's Making It Up, a novel about what could have happened but did not happen in the author's life.  Lively describes her book as "anti-memoir" and her response to the question often asked, "How much of what you write comes from your own life."What could be more intriguing to a blogger? And for totally light but satisfying reading, Sabine Durant's, The Great Indoors, which could have been written by myself or any one of my sisters who definitely prefer indoors to out and have been known not to invite certain people over if they have children who like to break keys off in locks.

So that's what I'm up to, if you thrown in a couple loads of wash and thinking of what to make for dinner. (Frozen ravioli.) and I'm eating the last of the cheesecake and Rachel's cookies for breakfast.  Because tomorrow is another day. For eating right and exercising. Really. There's a law that you just can't do it on a rainy Thursday two days before New Year's Eve. And I'm very law-abiding.


Midweek And I'm Not Tearing My Hair Out

Oh, wait! I'm not at work - that's why I'm not tearing my hair out. Ah, vacation. At home. With the chilluns. Really - it's been fabulous. I've reached that incredible stage when my kids are home but are not entirely dependent on me to drive them, feed them, arrange play dates, movie dates, ice rink dates, etc. They do thing On Their Own. They Get Rides. And my sisters' kids are almost at the same stage, or at least at the stage where they do not want to be bound at the hip with their cousins, and while I certainly hope they all remain close to their cousins, it's refreshing to go somewhere without an amoeba of people.

Yes, I know. I am the person who used to cry in her grits when the holidays rolled around and we were stuck in TN and all the family was moving and grooving up here together. I wouldn't trade a minute of spending the holidays with my family for all the beaches in Mexico - but the day after the holidays - I'm am so getting on a plane next year!

Yesterday may go down in history as the best day off I ever had. I got up about 9:00, cleaned up the Christmas detritus from the living room, which consisted of bundling up the gifts to the appropriate bedrooms, picking up stray pieces of wrapping paper, tags, receipts, and shipping invoices along with empty cartons, and throwing out the trash. Then I put away all the big dishes and serving pieces from Christmas Eve, shook out the tablecloth, got some of the folding chairs put away, and straightened up the kitchen.

I used my new gorgeous keeps-the-coffee-hot-Starbucks-coffee-maker, ate some high fat desserts for breakfast (leftover cannolis), and got ready to take my daughter to her friend's house when the parents called to say they'd pick her up. The Princess went to work, Mystery Man is in Florida, and I was ALONE in the house.

Giddy, I couldn't decide what to do first - take a nap, read a book, write, take a bath, go to the movies, Borders....I ended up being good to myself by writing for an hour. Then I took a hot bath and looked at the movie times. Since none were playing at the right time, I caught up with M. at Borders where I found the December issue of the British magazine, Country Living, which fuels my fantasies for Christmas in London or in the Cotswolds, all thatched rooferies and blazing Yule logs, plum pudding, windswept moors and other British babble that regularly circulates in my head when I think of Christmas in Wales.

The day ended up with 2 of my sisters dropping by with my mother and we ate left over Christmas hors d'ouevres, After Eight Mints, and watched the A&E version of A Year in Provence. I went to bed completely relaxed and utterly content.

Note to self: more afternoon baths (tho might get a bit dicey with work if I suddenly disappear...). 5 more days off and I'm planning.....absolutely nothing!


I am writing to you from my new laptop, courtesy of Santa. I got the Apple I've been lusting after for the past year and I'm very happy. I can't wait until it's fully loaded and all my files and photos transferred over. Right now the old laptop is defunct until the new AC adaptor arrives, so I can't import anything yet. I was so busy on Christmas Eve that I never had a chance to find the digital camera, either, so photos will have to wait until my sister emails me the ones she took.

Christmas Eve was at our house. Stan and I felt like we were climbing uphill the whole day after a hard work week. I admit to one major meltdown directed at my kids, however, it had the desired effect and they all snapped to it. We even were all ready for church on time and went to the children's Mass at 5:00. The church was lushly decorated with poinsettias and wreaths and the children sang charmingly off key with violins and trumpets accompanying them. It was crowded as always and we were packed like sardines in the pews. At one point, the priest was incensing, the air was hot, my knee was killing me, and I really had to pray that I remain in the moment as I felt myself getting woozy.

I made it to the end of Mass and was rewarded with my favorite part of the service, when all the lights are turned out and just the candles on the altar burn, and we all sing Silent Night. It struck me like thunder that I was sitting in the very pew where I had sat probably forty years ago with my father and mother and sisters and now I was there with my almost-grown children, all beautiful and healthy and strong, and my own dear mother, now 80 and still as independent as ever. What greater gift could I receive for Christmas than this longevity and fervor for family? The continuity of the years encircled me and I had to control myself from sobbing and I was grateful for the dark. One of my other sisters said she had a similar moment at church during the same hymn. I thank the church for making us all stop, just stop the frenzy, and make us sit and stew for awhile untll the miracle of Christmas blooms in our hearts.

After that, we rushed home to get ready for the party. It was everything we always hope for each year. Everyone was happy, the house sparkled, the food was wonderful, and Stan and I found our second winds and sailed through the night. My table sits 14 and we were just that and we gave thanks at the table that we were 14 and that not a person was missing. It was all very dreamlike a la Fanny and Alexander and I think we created some memories that will last with the younger generation. I hope that forty years from now they are still gathering to eat seafood and remembering their Dad outside, boiling lobsters in the turkey fryer and, their mom inside whipping up the linguine. In the last two weeks, both my older children have separately told me that they've come to realize how much family means to them now that they are away from us and my eyes filled (seems to be a holiday condition)

The one sister and her family who didn't come to dinner, came for dessert and then the madness really began. For the first time, we decided to all exchange gifts on Christmas Eve. We were 18 people - from 80 to age 6 and the presents started to fly and it was utter organized chaos for about twenty minutes. Paper flew, ribbons were discarded, faces lit up, kisses were exchanged, shrieks were heard, and all of us had a pile on our laps. We ended the evening with pastries and cheesecake and many exhausted children who needed to go home and wait for Santa.

Yesterday, my sister who came for dessert had us all over for the day with her in-laws and we had a good time as always. The niece of my brother in law was there with her six month old and you can't have a better Christmas than with a baby! We ate and drank and fell asleep and washed dishes and watched movies. The best part - I'm off this week! We drive Mystery Man to the airport today, take The Princess to a doctor's appointment tomorrow, then the rest of the week is mine!!! There are chapters to write, pictures to paint, and movies to watch. And hopefully, some more creative blogging here.


3_3
One more quick post to say Merry Christmas to all! My AC Adaptor is officially dead and I have about five minutes of battery left! I ordered a new one but even with 1 to 2 day delivery, it won't come till after Christmas. I'll miss you all and be anxious to get back online. I will try to post form either of my kid's computers, if they are working, that is. IN the meanwhile, I'm almost done with work; I got the last of the gifts in the house; and I'm enjoying an eggnog latte.

Special wishes to my sister Carol and her husband Randy who are both knocked flat on their backs with the flu! I hope you guys get better quickly and are up and around on Christmas Day. Thinking of you both!


Birthing Christmas

6_7

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm dragging here, mid-week.
We are trying to birth Christmas, pushing and dragging it in through
the door, not unlike our Christmas tree. I'm brewing some mystery
illness, one that started with a swollen eyelid and strange fatigue.
And my laptop's AC adaptor is screwed up and it's possible
I won't be able to recharge it until I go buy a new one. How's
that for a scary possibility, especially if it has to be ordered!
7_2
Everyday is a list of chores that are wrapped around a full work
day. Food, gifts, decorations, cards, more gifts. Whenever I
think I'm done, I remember one more thing to be bought,
wrapped, baked, cooked, and a few dozen things to be
wrapped up at work before I can take my week off. Strange
work week with each day feeling like Friday, with a lot
cookies and candy around, coworkers having meltdowns,
and a very scary first week in January when we have 20
trials that have to be prepped - while we all take the
week off.
8_5
So blogging will be light until we get there, to the finale, the last act,
the celebration, the light, the birth of Christ. Wishing you all
godspeed on your own journeys to Christmas. It's quite a trip
but worth it once you get there. Or at least the day after.
It's quite possible I may not even get dressed for a full week.
At least definitely no make up - sweats and sneakers for the
Starbucks and bookstore runs. And plenty of movies.
Now I'm starting to get excited! I'll show you the finished tree when I remember to get the camera and the tree in the same room!.....Have a merry!!


Happy Birthday to The Teen!

Cc5
The Teen turns 14 today. I'm not sure how that happened, for last I looked, she was in 4th grade and learning to roller blade.  The day before that, she was tumbling down the stairs at 5 and breaking her collarbone and  wearing a sling to her first day of kindergarten, her eyes dark and serious beneath her bangs. Last week, I believe she was a mere one-year old who slept on my shoulder the entire flight from NY to San Francisco, and used to bang on the door when ever anyone took a bath, demanding that she be let in for a soak, too.

We called her the bonus baby because we already had two beautiful, loving children, boy and girl, and anymore had to be a bonus. She's always been our regulator, the child who rolls with the punches, is always cheery, and racks up sports and roller coasters the way other girls collect Barbie dolls. Lately, she's springboarded into her teens with great aplomb. She is a drummer who is flirting with a guitar, has loaded her computer with Guns N' Roses, and wears a baseball hate all the time. All The Time. Except when I grab it off her head to plant a big kiss on her and not have a brim hit me in the eye.

Happy Birthday Bonus Baby!

 


4

Saturday mornings the house stirred to life early with the scramble of claws across  wood floors and a bang of the screen door. Even if the dog would stay in past 7:00, she would be up and out,  with her first cup of tea on the back steps, watching the sun come up over the huge sugar maple that her Dad had planted 40 years when they bought the house. The tree had grown enormously and its limbs threatened the backyard of four houses, but there had been no money for tree pruning for many years, and she held her  breath through a big storm, listening for the crash that had so far not occurred. .

The backyard had evolved into an archaeological dig of her parents' various pursuits over the past 40 years. In the corner was the dusty sand box  where she and her sister had made castles and was now a giant litterbox for the neighborhood cats. The dog run attached to the garage was rusty and it was hard to tell if the garage was holding up the run or it held up the garage.  Her mother's rock garden, constructed stone by stone by her father, digging up the rocks in the woods and placing each into a terraced wall, was  overgrown with crabgrass and bindweed and heavy rains had made the dirt sift through  and she could dislodge whole sections with her foot if she tried. The steps themselves were littered with pots holding  stalks of dead lilies from Easters past and cast-off barbecue equipment laid to rest for a few minutes some years ago.

The above ground pool had sat smack dab in the middle of the yard, an ugly violent turquoise with crudely drawn waves of water on the side. Her father had gotten it second hand from one of his customers and had brought it home on the top of her uncle’s van. He and her uncle had taken the weekend to put it together while she and her sister hopped around in their bathing suits until their father banished them to the house for getting in the way and told them it wouldn’t get filled to next weekend anyway. The rest of the summer was spent finding ways to get in the pool and never come out. If she could, she would spend from morning until nightfall submerged up to her neck letting the cool blue water melt away the gravity that pulled on her limbs,  and floating on her back, with  arms outstretched, ears below the water line, every noise muffled and distant. She preferred to be alone in the pool and never invited anyone over for a swim, unlike her sister who was constantly trying to cram the entire neighborhood into the pool at one time so they could play Marco Polo and she could pretend to give mouth to mouth to Jerry Brown. Ellen hated when they came over and tried to ignore them, floating on her back and looking at the birds overhead, timing how long it took for the clouds to make their way across her line of vision, or just shut her eyes and feel her skin turn to gooseflesh when a cloud blocked the sun.  It never lasted long enough, the solitude of water and self, before her sister either got in the pool with her stupid friends who made fun of her floating and cannonballed onto her from the sides or ignored her and ruined her reverie by shouting Marco Polo for hours until she gave up and went inside.

After her father died, there was no more money for pool chemicals and her mother, who had a frantic fear of a neighborhood kid drowning in it, had the pool drained. In the winter, the sides collapsed under the weight of snow and it remained imploded and abandoned for years until Ellen got up one spring morning and couldn't bear to look at the squashed and yellowed plastic walls and the grime and leaves of the years and took a crowbar and chainsaw to it and left it out in dribs and drabs all summer on the curb for the garbagemen to cart away. As she ran the power saw through each section of the filthy plastic and gathered up the shreds of liner, she felt as though she was ripping up  what little memories she had left of what her father looked like and how he smelled. Although the crabgrass had invaded the dead circle left by the pool, the shadow of it was still there and she could trace its perimeter when she mowed the lawn.

But it was quiet now on Saturday mornings. Her mother was already at Mass and would be walking back up the hill in a few minutes with the bag of white powdered donuts she bought every Saturday.  She would take a newspaper out of the recycle box and place it on the steps, complaining that Ellen should at least have on a robe if she was going to sit out here, and then they'd both reach into the bag and grab a donut and not mind when a puff of sugar fell on the steps. They would share a napkin to dust off their mouths and drink their tea in silence, the one seeing a backyard of failed dreams, the other remembering floating between a  cathedral of sky and water and being sure she could feel the rotation of the earth and her body spinning silently in tune with it.



Visions of Sugarplums

We received the last box of confections from Rachel, The Uber-Cookie Fairy. Sigh. How can I explain the sugar-indulged fantasty of having the postman ring my bell and hand over a large, brown cardboard box with Rachel's distinctive handwriting and address label? You do not know the wonder of dragging your sorry butt home from work on a sleeting night and walking into a cold house just as the front doorbell rings and you and your daughter fight your way through the Christmas cartons and rubble to open the door, and then you snatch it out of your daughter's hands and you both run into the kitchen and fight over who is going to use the scissors to open the box.

Honestly, I have to use that kitchen for more than heating up pizza slices, but I digress.

Most of you are probably shaking your head over my fixation with these deliveries. I know you are Eating Sensibly and In Moderation and only have (ugh) Snackwells and baby carrots in your cupboards. Well good for you, but we - we have this:

9

And this:

10

11_5

12_2

13_2

Can you believe the artistry of this woman? These are not your standard chocolate chip or brownies all crumbly in a cardboard box that your mother sent you in college. (Not my mother, of course, she never sent me anything....and for that matter, I've never baked anything to send to my kids either.) Rachel, you are a true artist and your work needs to be shared with paying customers.

Oh, and see in the top photo, in the upper left, the bowl filled with little waxed paper wrapped thingies, well those thingies are these thingies:

14_6

Homemade Mounds Bars! I think there are some left, hmm, let my check my right cheek where I have about a dozen crammed in, yes, there's one I can share.....And these beautiful cookies, they are not just eye candy! They taste as good as they look. The chocolate star ones are to die for and the snowflake cookies are to die for. But really, the most magnificent part of the gift, is the fact of the gift itself, a gift that humbles the recipient and makes one wonder what they could ever do to pay such kindess and generosity.

And Rachel, who can ask me to do anything in return for this magnaminous gesture, well,  her reply is a simple: "Pass it on."

Thank you, Rachel, from the bottom of my heart.


The Sound of Stones Sitting

Gray, cold, and icy
we already long for spring
before we let the quiet of winter
sink into our bones
and remind us of
ourselves
5_4

The Angel of  Annunciation
has a message for us all
if we listen to the
sound of stones
sitting
and learn to just
be
in the place where
we are

100_1207

We are all waiting
for the light
for the message of
truth and hope and peace
and for the simple act
of learning to
see outside of
ourselves.
7_1

The view from here
is simply
that.


100_1203
The sky is the color of watered silk and the leafless trees throw their stark silhouettes up, looking for snow to cover their bare arms. Temperatures have made ice crackle across the sidewalks and the furnace labors to keep up with our demands. Suddenly, the felt snowflakes in the window seem less cheery than mocking as we know another storm is predicted for a few days hence. But who can complain when December acts like December and a white Christmas is guaranteed for all?

The house is toasty with the aroma of gingerbread: allspice, cloves, ginger, and cinnamon. Sheets of silly stars and hearts and angels and snowmen slide in and out of the oven under the watchful eyes of The Teen, the gingerbread connoisseur and devotee for whom all this fuss is generated. There's some wrapping to do, a crinkle of paper and threads of shiny ribbons to adorn The Princess's gifts before she gets home from school. She is the legendary family snoop and gaily admits to her propensity so we all beware of her return and the safety of packages resting peacefully in their shopping bags.

Nothing is better than sitting under my fleece throw watching the sunset watercolor the sky like wet on wet and eating a plate of Italian  toast with butter. My neighbor's Christmas lights spring on and his yard is now illuminated by fairy lights that compete with the last breaths of dusk.  My raw throat and aching sinuses are quiet as long as I remain in repose - perhaps for the next two weeks? But no, work is piling up while I indulge an afternoon of feeling poorly and I will pay tomorrow but for now, I munch on toast and drink tea and watch The Darling Buds of May.

Everyone needs an afternoon once a year of sick leave, transforming his or herself into a convalescent, knitting by the bed, nightstand full of pill bottles, treating the sweats and shivers with a few Christmas cookies dipped in chocolate. If I manage to ease off this bed before sleep, I have in mind some stars cut from sheet music and the finishing touches on the round robin journal. This month's theme is "frivolity" ~ how best to describe the season?


Sketchcrawl/Gabcrawl

1_5
Sketchcrawl at The Museum of Natural History on Sunday morning. Here I am pictured with my old friend, Wendy Chaiken, and another sketchcrawler in the Hall of North American Mammals. See those bison butts over our shoulder? The hall was dark and filled with people sitting in the shadows with sketchbooks on their laps. When I first walked in, I struggled to find a familiar face and saw Danny Gregory's familiar smile talking to two women. I was looking for Wendy but, fact is, though we've known each other online for about 7 years, we've never met and I didn't have any idea of what she looked like. I walked over to Danny and extended my hand and said, "Hi, I'm Loretta" and before he could speak, this lovely blonde woman jumped off the bench and said "I'm Wendy!" Well, from there it was all shrieking and girlfriends and high school giggling.

Wendy flew from Michigan for sketchcrawl! Yes, it's true she and her patient husband also took in MOMA, The Met, and other NY sites, but the impetus for the travel (besides needing the mileage before the end of the year) was going to sketchcrawl - and meeting me! We fell together like twins separated at birth, and talked about our work, our kids, and husbands. I was privileged to see contacts of Wendy's photography portfolio where she pairs photos of disparate objects with similar shapes with an insightful quote about art.

After spending a long time just sitting and talking, we felt a little guilty that we weren't sketching, so we sauntered around to find a better spot and ended up at the origami Christmas tree.
2_10
The tree is decorated only with origami and as you can see from the photo, it draws people in to stare at the intricately folded paper ornaments. We thought we'd sketch some but, no, we ...talked some more. We stood in one spot and just gabbed, there's no other way to describe it, until it was time for Wendy and her husband to go see the Darwin exhibit. I felt as though I'd received my Christmas gift early by meeting Wendy, an artist whose work I'd admired and a person who was always there with a cheer, a contribution to my zine, and interesting posts about her art. She promises to use her frequent flyer miles to come east more often and I will hold her to it.

After they left, I tried to get into sketch mode, but I was too jazzed to sit still. I managed a few close-ups shots of the tree, but unfortunately thsoe floating stars wreaked havoc with my autofocus, so pretend they are just dreamy, not out of focus.

3_2

I also was thrilled to meet Amanda from Craftmonkeys and see the beautiful artwork she does in her Moleskine. (I think it was a Moleskine.) We agreed that the museum was just a little too crowded with strollers and kids and pretty dark for sketching. After a quick buzz through the Oceanic Hall to say hello to the giant blue whale, I took off and headed toward a place that fit the grey, Advent mood of the day, The Cloisters. But you'll have to wait until tomorrow to hear about that. 


Making Journal Make the Times

Journal3_1Check out this article in the Sunday Style section of today's New York Times. John Berendt, the author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, couldn't find a day planner that he liked. Over the years he tried them all and nothing fitted the bill. Mr. Berendt, we learn, is a neat freak who has color-coded binders of all his research notes and has spent a life fighting against his inclination towards clutter. [Somehow I think that Mr. Berendt's definition of clutter and mine is the difference between east and west.]

Mr. Berendt decided to forgo forking over $5000 for a custom made agenda book and decided to make his own. He sent the font for the months, days, of the weeks, and numerals he would need to a company that makes rubber stamps.  He bought a readymade Claire Fontaine notebook, an assortment of inks, ruler, and spends a day a year making his bespoke journal. Check out the article if for nothing else than to see the gorgeous stamps he  made- no unmounted stamps stored in vinyl sheet protectors for him. His stamps are wooden-mounted, with red librarian handles, and I am drooling over them. I wonder where he got them, and how expensive they were...

Berendt is concerned that some may think him dotty for spending an entire day creating what could be bought in any corner store or upscale stationer. He loses himself, he says, in the art of stamping, ruling lines, and turning white pages into calendar days. .I doubt that anyone reading here would  give a second thought to the worthiness of such a project. Many of us have shelves lined with blank books waiting for such creative endeavors and  I admit I've trifled with the conceit a few times myself,  though not with such precision or planning as Mr. Berendt. Mine generally go over-the-top with collage elements, photo transfers, and hand-bound, beaded bindings. And they generally never get finished. One wonders if he ever makes a mistake in oh, June - a day forgotten, a date transposed - and if he carefully razors out the page or seeing it glare at him after the work is done, quietly  buries it in the bottom of the trash, and goes out to buy a new blank book to start again.

Not that I would know anything about that.

Really.


New Feature

I've added a subscribe link to the blog, over in the left hand column. Just enter your email and you will be notified when I post. Let me know if it's working and how it's working as I just decided to do this and haven't researched it very well. What can I say. It's Friday night. Not a high brain power time for me.

It's been a long day, starting at about 5:30 when we got up to check the snow and then dragging on through the morning as I found out my office was closed, but court was open, then one boss said don't go, then another said, well go if it's open, then a flurry of calls back and forth among colleagues, and then a half hour to clean the car, blast out of my unplowed street, hit the parkway, which was not plowed well at all, and ending when I spent about 45 minutes going two miles, got off and went home. This was followed by several frantic phone calls from the attorney who managed to get to court and several split second decisions on what to do before my case was held in default.

Really, it would have been easier just to leave at 6:00 a.m. and make it there on time. Instead of having that job well done on a Friday night feeling, I feel like I did something wrong and will spend the weekend feeling vaguely uncomfortable and worried about Monday 'splaining to do.

But enough of that crap! I'm going to sketchcrawl at the Museum of Natural History on Sunday morning with the Everyday Matters groupies, led by Danny Gregory. I hope to score a copy of his new book, Creative License, tomorrow so he can autograph it for me. And my friend, Wendy Chaiken from Michigan, with whom I've been on artist lists for years but never meant, is flying in for it!

The Teen has three girls over for a sleepover. The bass on the stereo is shaking my bed, I smell popcorn, and there's much shrieking going on. Off to watch What Not to Wear.......


Show and Tell

Good grief, I have a snow day!

Therefore, I have time for the first time in ages to participate in Show n' Tell Fridays. We are to  a show a decoration:

6_6

This lovely arrangement is at my sister's, M. I have right to show it, though, because the sled, ornaments, and book ends were from our parents' house and we had them growing up. She bought the big mercury ball on Cape Cod and if I'd seen it first, I would've bought it. She has lovely taste and whatever she does it looks great.

Now if she'd just give me back those book ends.....


Cookies Cookies Cookies

100_1189
A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I wish I had time to bake a variety of cookies for the holidays, like I remember my mother doing every year. She'd get all of us to help and we'd spend a weekend making tins and tins of assorted cookies that she served when entertaining the various aunts and cousins who made the rounds at Christmastime. A lovely reader, Rachel, with whom I'd struck up an off-blog correspondence during Hurricane Katrina because her husband worked in Baton Rouge, made an amazing offer to me. She emailed me a few days after my post and offered to send me a variety of cookies that she baked through the season. She explained that she bakes all the time and doesn't want it in the house because her husband watches his weight.

It was such an over-the-top offer to a relative stranger, that I didn't know how to respond. Of course we want cookies! We are veritable cookie monsters in our house! Rachel hastened to assure me that she gets so much fun out of doing this that I'd depriving her of a good time, so what else was there to say but yes!

I expected a shoebox full of cookies. I never expect 3 large cartons of cookies sent over the next three weeks, each filled with ziplock bags of varieties of cookies. She sent us oatmeal raisins, chocolate, spritz cookies complete with chocolate to melt to dip them in and powdered sugar to sprinkle in. Pistachio, buttercream, apricot, and cinnamon; sandwich cookies, rum-filled, rugelach, and nut bars.

Why do I have no photos?? Because they eat them faster than I can whip the camera out! And the rest are frozen to ensure that there are some left when the college kids get home. I can throw some flour on my face and pretend I was up all night baking for them. Thank you, Rachel, for your extraordinary gift and for all the joy it brings us!

Just when we thought we had enough cookies, my sister held a cookie swap last night at her house pictured above. The deal was to bring a few dozen cookies, a dozen to swap out with everyone else, a dozen  to send to the Hope Food Pantry, and a dozen to eat right then. Here she is, eating a carrot of all things when there's so many goodies that she made:

100_1190_1

(Notice the quilt - I made it for their wedding many years ago.)

She made meringues, rugelach, pignoli cookies, a beautiful chicken and broccoli "braid" in pastry, and our mother's recipe for a horseradish cheddar ball which we had every holiday . She almost made these little dough balls fried and served with honey that every relative of my mother's and grandmother's generation made. You'd go from house to house and come home with a little bowl covered with foil and filled with these. We liked to eat them for breakfast and would sample and compare whether Aunt Lena's or Aunt Gussie's were better. I made them last year and they a long time to fry them all. She had help from her ten year old, Frannie, who did a great job rolling out the pencils of dough and snipping them into pieces.

4_3

And now I shall go and use The Gazelle and eat only fresh vegetables today and drink only spring water.

Yeah right.

We already had the swapped cookies for breakfast.

Thank God I buried the frozen ones int he dark recesses of the freezer!


Mr. Pomegranatesandpaper's Birthday

100_1027
Today is Stan's birthday! We are doing our best to have mid-week festivities, which in our household consist of food, wine, and what's on TV. What can I say about my guy that I didn't say on our anniversary (see why this is a crunch time for me - I have to wax eloquent, buy gifts, do dinner, and then do it all over again two weeks later!)

Here's why my husband should get everything he wants for his birthday and more:

  • He has gorgeous blue eyes.
  • He kills cooks the lobsters whenever we have them because we're all to squeamish
  • He emails lines of his favorite Raffi Christmas song to his kids in college and they email back to him the next line.
  • He makes us meals on the gas grill, electric smoker, drum smoker, and now, turkey deep fryer
  • He does the laundry every week
  • He never makes me get the bagels annd papers
  • He likes anchovy pizzas but because the kids complain about the taste even if we only get a half anchovy, he keeps a tin of them and puts them only on his slices
  • He is the most loyal person I know
  • He believes I can do anything and then makes me do it, even when I am kicking and screaming not to
  • On our first year of dating, he took me to The Empire State Building, The Statute of Liberty, and the UN because my parents never took me though we only lived a half hour train ride away

I could write more but I can feel you all gagging as you still haven't gotten over the whole anniversary post and comment thing.

So to show him our love, we are grilling lamb chops, opening the Beajoulais Nouveau, and having lemon coconut cake. How could you not love a guy who wants a sub-woofer for his car so his son can use it when he's home.

Now we have to hope he doesn't read this before he gets home or his gift will not be a surprise. And I have to find the top of the dining room table, which is covered with more mail, packages,
Christmas decorations, and junk than you probably have in your whole house.

Or maybe we'll eat in front of the fire!



It's Beginning to Get Hyped Up for Christmas

16_1
So far, I'm successfully resisting a full-scale "holiday" freak-out. You know, the kind that erupts when unrealistic expectations coincide with lack of time and a full moon of work. I've already shrunk the whole holiday snowglobe of dreams down to a sprinkle of water and a flake of snow, but some things I cannot change. Santa still has to come to our house, we have to eat something, and the children insist on a tree. (Don't bother to email me with comments about how we should donate all our gift money to the Katrina victims or some other equally deserving group because it's not gonna happen).

The Teen decorated the outside of the house. You should have seen her little self up on a ladder in the dark hanging lights. We were waiting for CPS to show up but, in fairness, it must be disclosed that she insisted on doing it and I had to drag her inside at 8:00 to do her homework.  I assembled the mantel decorations, then lost interest as my husband and I argued over his unplugging the crockpot to check some Christmas lights. We must have 70 plugs in this house, but the man decided to unplug the crock pot. Oh, did I mention that he forgot to plug it back in and discovered it several hours later? Good pork roast, hello can o' soup for dinner.

All the rest of the sisters were busy baking, spurred on by sister M's cookie swap party on Thursday. I resisted the urge, since I have no ingredients, and was exhausted from the trip to the big city. However, I have managed to score a recipe that requires four ingredients mixed in a bowl, poured into a pan, and baked. How cool is that since I'll be doing it tonight after work? I can't do it tomorrow night cause that's DH's birthday and we will have a nice dinner, if we can stay awake long enough to do so.

Tomorrow I will tell you about our cookie fairy. Really, I have one. But we're keeping those for ourselves. No sharing. We're just not that generous. At least not with sugar and white flour.


blovel

My new word - my "blovel"  a/k/a my blog novel. Thank you all for your great feedback regarding the short pieces of fiction that I've been playing with here on the blog. It's part of a larger project that I'm working on and I will continue to share snippets of it if readers are enjoying it. Writers always need feedback and it's sustaining to share parts of a large project and not be working in my little garret*
alone.

_____________
*on the bed in front of the TV


A Trip in Free Verse (Almost)

1_4

Spur of the moment we are on the train and into the city for some Christmas cheer. The trains are packed even though it is Satuday morning.

5_3

The day is glorious though frigid and we are greeted by New York with outstretched arms.

2_9

We haven't even left Grand Central before we see one of those funky street scenes that make you know you are in New York.

7

The Teen isn't too much of a teen that she doesn't insist we first go to the world's biggest and finest toy store, FAO Schwarz. When we got there, there was a line by the side entrance. We didn't think too much of it, but as we approached the side entrance, we discovered that it was being used an exit only, and the line actually snaked around the building like this:

8_4

But once inside, we rediscovered the magic of the place and it was worth the wait. Wouldn't you like that giraffe to snuggle up to you?

11_4

From there, it was all downhill. Lines for the escalators, lines for the ice cream shoppe, lines for the bathroom, and lines to try any cool toy there, and there were some incredibly cool ones, like this hovercraft that could be yours for only $198:

12_1

Stan and I ended up half sitting/half leaning against a counter full of baby clothes while The Teen went nuts by the skateboards and model cars. With three incredible and packed floors to choose from, what did she chose (with a $10 limit)? 3 paper airplanes that return to you when you throw them....

From there, we made our way down 5th to see The Tree. There was a line to see The Tree, The Skating Rink, and anything else of interest. But we waited it out and managed to snag a free piece of railing and take the vital picture of the trip:

13_1

Suddenly, there arose such a clatter we had to see what was the matter on the ice rink. And what to our wondering eyes did appear but a man proposing marriage to a woman he found dear:

14_5

Can't tell which ones are hugging in glee? I'll blow it up for thee:

15_1

(I'll stop with the verse, it's too gloomy today and my brain feels fried with Monday not too far away).

6_5

Is it me, or shouldn't the Chrysler building be wearing some red and green?


3

When she sewed, she lost herself amidst the folds of the fabric, the whirr of the machine, and the sight of the needle plunging in and out of the grain of the fabric, disappearing for a split second that infinite number of times it needed to connect with the bobbin thread, to produce a strong seam. Her favorite moment was always the plunge of the steel scissors for the first cut, when her hand stood poised above the wholecloth which lay like a sea of color against the pads protecting the dining room table. She always smoothed out the tissue of the pattern pieces one final time, when a fingerwould  inevitably be snagged on a straight pin and she woud  reflexively stick it into her mouth before a drop of blood could mar the surface of the expensive goods.

Then, despite the stinging in her hand, she held the scissors firmly and with all her faith allowed the tip of the scissor to penetrate the cloth with surgical precision until the full length of the blade disappeared under the material and she could slip it around the pattern piece like a knife through butter. The scissors were as sharp as a surgeon's and they were kept in the cloth bag that her grandmother had fashioned from some scraps of heavily quilted fabric. The blades had been sharpened so many times that they were as thin as the edge of a razor strop and she kept them in the bag always, hiding it in various places around her sewing room so that her mother couldn't find it when she needed to open a package or cut a length of clothesline.

Nothing satisfied her more than looking up after an hour and seeing all her pattern pieces cut out and lying like pieces of a jigsaw atop the sewing table. Here hands would be sore from the scissors and her back hurt from bending over the table, but she could not take a rest until she read through the sewing directions one more time and matched up the first two pieces with point A to point B and secured them with a long straight pin and placed the sewing machine needle directly through the center like X marks the spot. Then she could relax and tidy up, clearing the table of all the excess fabric, sweeping the caterpillars of selvage from the floor, and lining up her pattern pieces in order of construction on the table behind the sewing machine.

In the moments between the fininshed cutting out of the pattern and the beginning of the piecing, all was still promise and the dream of the garment was as beautiful as she envisioned, an innocent beauty shorn of lumpy darts and twisted seams and ill-fitting bustlines. For that space of time, the red velvet or the champagne damask or the robin's egg peau de soie was a mystery hidden under the oddly shaped pattern pieces and only she could see the wizardry of the assemblage in her mind.

She always began her projects in the morning when the strong light flooded the dining room and she could pin and tuck and baste and cut and see the faint chalk line that guided her sewing. A morning could flash by counted in beats of the treadle beneath her feet and if the old machine was behaving because  she had properly cleaned the lint from under the feed dogs and oiled the straps, it sewed a beautiful seam unrivaled by any expensive new machine. She could  feel feel the fingerprints of her grandmother's hand beneath her own and sense the rhythmn of her guiding foot as she did the first time she sat at the machine and her grandmother showed her how to use it. Her mother had offered many times to get her a used machine, a later model with and electric foot and buttonhole attachment, but although she lived in fear that a part would break and she couldn't find a replacement,  she had no desire to get rid of the beautiful black machine with its red and gold decorative paint and the sturdy oak table in which it sat.

When she sewed, her heart seemed to beat in unison with the treadle under her feet.  She held the fabric with just enough tension to keep the seam allowance true and as she guided it over the throat place with her right hand, her left hand was flat against the piece to steady it as it came out of the other side. The machine made quite a racket and the noise blocked out the sound of her mother's soaps on the TV and drowned out the interference in her own head that woke her at 4:00 every  morning.  She thought of nothing and everything, her mind skimming from thought to thought until it settled into the clacking of the machine as it worked its way through the lengths and widths of the material, building a garment fold by fold, a construction geometric in its growth.

The problem was in the finishing. As the garment grew  and she walked back and forth countless times  from machine to ironing board to press a seam flat and steam a dart and turn a sleeve, she began to see her mistakes. There was  the slip of shimmery satin which resulted in an uneven seam, and here the bunching of the collar, or the inexpert insertion of the zipper which would never let the waistband lie flat. All of them were mistakes only she could see but would result in her mind's eye in a garment that shouted homemade and her desire was for couture quality, a piece of bespoke from an atelier in Paris, or at least from the dress salon at Bergdorf's.  She began to hate her design, wondering how she ever thought she would pull it off,  and  she ripped open seams and repressed and refaced and soon the sun was down and her mother called her to quit sewing and come eat supper and another day had passed without her accomplishing anything more than a tangle of sweaty material held together with lethal pins.

She left more pieces unfinished in the basket on the floor of her closet than she had clothes hanging on the pole. And that, her mother always told her, was her problem She couldn't finish anything, she'd never seen through anything from start to finish in her life. Which was why she worked all day with heavy headphones on her ears, listening to drone of doctor's voices dictating medical reports and her fingers transcribing it onto a keyboard. It was a steady stream of information that made no sense to her but that she absorbed in  syllables and translated into keystrokes, a job with no beginning or end, just more voices speaking in her ears and an endless loop of transcription. And while she typed, it reminded her of sewing, of the feeling of being disconnected from her body and watching herself perform a task that she wasn't quite sure she understood. But at the end of the day she could walk away from it and it never ended up tangled in her feet on the floor.