AND
WHO
IS
THIS
WILD
AND
CRAZY
WINNER?????
THIS
LOVELY
LADY
Snow and sleet here in the northeast - schools closed even MY office closed? Somehow, I've fallen into a black hole where the court is actually calling ME if my adversaries show up and allowing me to handle the case over the phone! What?? Can I work this out for every day - even once a week? - lawyering in my pj's?
Probably not.
It's 9:30 and I'm wondering what to do with myself. Oh, right. I have my work laptop and about skeetillion emails to research and answer.
Or maybe I'll just keep the fire going, find my espresso maker, start Stephanie Kallos's new book, Sing Them Home.
.
I've only read a few pages and the writing appears to be as wonderful as her other book, Broken For You, one of the best books I read last year. Her new book is about a family whose wife and mother got sucked up into a tornado 30 years ago. As one of the characters says, talk about waiting for the other shoe to drop!
I was happy to remember that Sing Them Home was on my bookcase because last night I finished another great book and was feeling sort of let down and lost as you do when a good book is over and don't know what to read next. I had discovered that book when I was over at Books and Cooks the other day and saw her review of
This novel begins with a young woman whose mother has been traumatized after a tragedy occurs in their lives and retreats into obsessive reading. The daughter is desperate to find a way to break through to her mother and seeks the advice of an older woman. Through her tutelage, she becomes curious as to whether she can "cook" her mother out of her state, and begins experimenting with different dishes until she finds the combination that finally breaks through her mother's emotional reserve and discovers that she has an intuitive ability to satisfy the emptiness in other's lives through her cooking. She grows up to become a chef who operates a cooking school in her restaurant and the book revolves around the classes and the students who attend the school.
The novel is the perfect antidote to the dreariness of this midwinter time. The writing is lush and made me very, very hungry! (While reading this book, I realized that I've been reading a lot of novels this winter that revolve around food and cooking. The heart knows what the mind wants.)
The language in the book is romantic and sensual. This may sound funny, but as I read the book, I found myself anticipating the descriptions and almost filling them in before I turned the page. The writer's use of metaphor and her phrasing is very similar to mind and I just was delighted in some of the passages - and wish I'd written the book myself!
When I was reading the last chapter, Mr. Pom went downstairs and brought up a plate of sharp, imported Provolone cheese and some pieces of baguette and they were the perfect thing to satisfy my mouth's hunger for the spices and flavors that seemed to be filling up the room right from the pages of the book.
I have an extra copy of The School of Essential Ingredients and I think one of you out there will find it the essential ingredient to break you out of your own midwinter doldrums.
Meantime, the Cucch and I will be dozing in front of the fire answering work emails and court calls. (He's been good so far today - only destroyed one magazine, lost the phone behind the sofa, managing to get stuck behind the sofa and when I pulled it away from the wall, he fell with a thud. I have no idea, just no idea.)
There is no escaping the cold facts: we are in the dead of a northeast winter that has been colder and snowier than any since we moved back from Memphis.
The holiday tinsel has tarnished and trees are piled up on the sidewalks like tumbleweeds. The Pomegranates admit that our Christmas decorations are still on the lawn, rather muddy and shopworn, but frozen to the ground. As long as we don't plug them in at night, we believe they are camouflaged by the snow and no eyes but our can detect them.
Yet, for once, or so far, or this week, this minute, I am not sick of winter. Do I jump out of bed at 6:00 a.m. in the gray, cold light of dawn and embrace another morning of shivering as I wait for the hot water to come out of the shower tap? Er, no, but neither I have I succumbed to eating two bars of dark chocolate at night or an entire lemon meringue pie to assuage the darkness of my winter soul.
.
See, this winter, it really is wintertime. I am enjoying the drama of it all: the single digit temperatures, the daily snow showers that lay a clean, white sheet over the dirty slush on the sidewalks, the layering of scarves and sweaters, the need for new boots (Oh yes I did!) and even the sudden bloom of pashminas in the office, their colorful hues like the popping out of the first crocuses.
Winter can actually be enjoyed when there's a snap in the air but the sun is shining. The golf courses are criss-crossed with sled tracks and the lakes are frozen, something these virtual reality-fed kids find as amazing as the Easter Bunny. The Teen reports on the incredulity of her
high school classmates at the sight of a snowplow on the lakes clearing the ice. Won't they fall in? Will it melt now that the sun is out? What if it goes to 33 degrees?? Ah, youth. Dumb, dumb youth.
I won't pretend that I wasn't surfing travel sites a few nights ago, jonesing for some sand and water. Seems that despite the failing economy, you still have to float a mortgage (just not a sub-prime one) to take a week in the sun. But even if it was in the budget this year, there's a small matter of that puppy that needs walks on the icy snow and romps where his breath freezes in the air. Truth is, we wouldn't turn down a free trip to Puerto Rico, but the Cucch does tip the balance when we dither about taking a week. Put him in a kennel?? No way! we all decide and we already know there isn't a relative around that would watch him for a week. (The Pom In Laws are not pet friendly).
So here is my prescription for a winter that does not involve anti-depressants or full spectrum lights: get a dog, preferably an active, young dog. Start each weekend morning standing in the snowy woods, listening to the crunch of snow under paws and the honk of geese echoing off the hills. Drink in the pale morning sunlight and observe the spareness of the trees against the pearly sky. Throw some balls, fling some Frisbees, and watch the pack come over the hills, laughing when the regulars head straight for the right pocket of your parka, noses in search of dog treats. Try not to be overprotective parents when a big guy has your little one on its back, but learn to carry a stick or a plastic ball flinger in case squealing erupts.
When your fingers are so cold that you can't feel the latch on the leash, then it's time to go and head for a breakfast that involves steaming cups of coffee and much reading of the New York Times. By the time afternoon rolls around, head out again, this time to the water's edge, where a leaf skittering across the icy snow holds as much thrall for a 4 month old dog as the soccer ball you're kicking into the wind.
Finish up the day with much red wine, a meal cooked in one pot, supper eaten around the table and not in your lap (those days are over when labs rule the house), and wait for the silliness to erupt. A sit on the floor for a belly rub (yours or the dog) will be short-lived as you begin to nod off over a movie and a last glass of wine. Your kids will call you old farts when you turn the lights off before ten, but it is warm in the bed and the dog is snoring in his crate, and your limbs are weary and your feet hurt, but your head is clear and you know the sooner you go to sleep, the sooner you will be up and out, listening for the wind through the marsh grasses and the gulls screeching across the Sound.
In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air,
any thing can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,
praise song for walking forward in that light.
From "Praise Song For the Day" by Elizabeth Alexander
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The highlight of this beautiful inauguration - besides Sascha Obama taking photos of her Daddy with her little digital camera - was Elizabeth Alexander reading her magnificent poem written for the occasion, "Praise Song for the Day".
I was googling my head off as the inauguration ended trying to get the first link to the text so I could post it for you, but then I realized that despite my enthusiasm, I didn't have permission to do so and it would be wrong.
I had tears in my eyes all through it. I was pinching myself that a middle aged woman, an African American middle aged woman, was the Inaugural poet and that her poem, with its echoes of Whitman, was as extraordinary as I hoped it would be.
Here is a link to the poem from a site that does have permission.
What a remarkable morning!
More than what I anticipated.
I am eagerly awaiting the text of Elizabeth Alexander's poem, Praise Song.
It is a reality and now we must join together to make it continue. It is not one man's burden or ability. It is all of ours.
A new day!
I'm home!
Dog ready for a romp in the very snowy park!
Cappuccinno and artwork ready to go for when I come back!
TV set up in the studio!
I am very lucky to have a job and to have a job where I can take the day and I hope that wherever you are today, that you have the opportunity to pause at some point and see and reflect on this momentous occasion.
Talk to you all later!
Or: Personal Time Off (PTO's)
The soul-saving feature of my job (and yours maybe also) is that each new year begins a new cookie jar full of days off. In our corporate land, they are known as PTO days. You get a big jarful of them on January 1st and it is up to you to ration yourself because while they seem more than anyone could ever eat in the beginning of the year, by August, you're wishing you hadn't gorged yourself in April and by November, you're wondering how on earth you are going to starve yourself with only two days left to the end of the year and Thanksgiving and Christmas still to get through. You see, even though we get this big bagful of days, they are for your sick days, vacation days, emergency time, and all holidays except New Year's, Christmas, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, and Thanksgiving. The rest, you take as personal days or you go to work as I am tomorrow.
So this year I made a resolution:
Before you know it, you've used up your days or committed them all, and are wallowing in burn out self pity.
Which brings me to this dilemma:
Should I take Tuesday off to watch this historic Inauguration, or should I content myself to watch it as it is repeated ad nauseum on the nightly news shows?
One of the judges told me she wanted to go and couldn't get a place to stay and she is keeping her children home to watch it with her. A few people in my office have already taken the day.
How can I not? And why aren't all inaugural days federal holidays??
If I take the day, then I have to let The Teen stay home, too.
Who else is staying home - or going - to watch this on Tuesday? And am the only one who is almost giddy with anticipation to hear Elizabeth Alexander read her poem?
Dear Bloggettes:
Most of you know that I have been blogging for 5 years. Older and wiser, I do not despair like I did in the old days when my comments fall into the toilet. I assume, rightly so, that people are bored - whether with winter, life, or me, or all 3. I do not beg, panhandle, or threaten to QUIT BLOGGING!
I know that sporadic posts and perhaps too many dog photos will push the readership stats way down. I understand that I am not a Big Blogger who can write "I yawned when I got up today" and get 324 comments.
So I Am Not Saying A Word.
Not An Utter of Worry.
Or Kvetching.
No, I am a happy, prolific, please-as-punch blogger who just happens to be having a real drop in her stats and comments.
So therefore, I see no reason NOT to post yet another Cucciolo photo:
Ma.....
I'm trying to blog.
Ma!
Dog, I told you no one in their right mind would be out in this weather.
Sacha! You came!
You like me! You really like me!
Woooooo
Hoooooo!
Watchmewatchmewatchmewatchmewatchme
Don't go!
What? What did I do?
Alone again. With a stick.
You guys were right. Women!
It's going to snow! It's snowing! It's going to snow all day and into the night! Snow! Snow! Shop! Groceries! Salt! Shovels! Wood! Duraflames!
People: it's January 12th and yes, it will snow. It snowed on our parents, our grandparents, and even our great grandparents, unless they were from Sicily and even then, it may have snowed on them in the mountains.
It snows in winter. This does not mean it will be a blizzardly, nor'easter with gale force winds, two-story drifts, or a whiteout.
So go buy this poster and get on with it.
The Pomegranates did not let the steady snow deter us from our usual weekend routine.
Dogs were exercised:
Breakfast was eaten and papers perused:
Errands upon errands were done until the family returned to Our Little Pomegranate House:
Whereupon, Christmas decorations were admired for One More Day:
And sadly, the last of The Cookie Fairy's treats were eaten:
Finally, to ease the pain that it was The Last Official Day of the Pomegranates Holidays and the Christmas tree now sat at the curb, a Rock Band marathon was held.
I won't go into the particulars, but let's just say that when it comes to Aqualung, Baby Boomers rule.
Gotta go - art and essay due to Cloth, Paper, Scissors this week!
I am in love with the blues and greys
of winter.
I am sliding down slopes
normally covered with sand
And walking over water
now turned to crusty, sea green ice.
The sky is a bowl of infinity
turned upside down onto my head
And for once,
I do not wish to be anywhere
To do anything
To need everything
But this frozen, icelocked
tundra in wish I play.
The 9th of January and I have a few hours to kill between appointments. I head over to Borders to see if there's a magazine I might need to get me through the long weekend with snow storm predicted. Very few people were in the store but the staff was very busy stocking shelves with books. I tried to find a corner to sit in and leaf through some shelter mags but I feel uncomfortable leafing through House Beautiful and deciding what new color to paint my front door while a weary Borders employee wearing gloves is hustling back and forth from the stock room with flats of books that he is flat out racing to shelves.
That's when I looked around and realized that all the holiday decorations were gone. The piles of gourmet dark chocolates and the gift boxes of bath soaps and scented candles, the tables full of expensive games and puzzles and the shelves lined with tooled leather journals had all been removed.
Gone were the expensive, five inch thick specialty cookbooks graced with the covers of celebrity faces. The glossy coffee table art and photography books had been stuffed back onto the art shelves. The stands of Christmas CD's and DVDs, the gift-boxed sets of Twilight books, the shrink-wrapped collection of Planet Earth series, and the oversized sports memorabilia collections were all gone.
The Baroque medieval season of over-indulgence, wantoness, and sensuousness had been stripped bare by the January puritans, the vanguard of morality and repression and packed into dusty cardboard boxes stored under the absestos covered pipes in the corner of the basement.
In its place was the Calvinist America plying us with salvation through yoga tapes, fiscal austerity, and piles of pilates equipment. Just take a look at the magazine headlines and the featured book displays:
Damn, I need some dark chocolate. If I ate it anymore. I came home depressed and had to park across the street because my neighbor's discarded tree was taking up the curb. The light up snowman on the front lawn was falling over the lights in the tree were tangled up. The Christmas tree was sagging and all the cookies and leftover bags of Christmas candy are empty. No matter how hard I shake the ziplock bag holding the remnants of the 5lb bagof M & M's, there isn't a one left to fall out onto my palm. The Christmas cards are scrambled in a bowl and the tablecloth needs a good washing.
But tomorrow a storm is predicted and we will be enclosed in a snowglobe world and the red and greens will look fresh again and there finally be time to bake the gingerbread cookies. I could clean out my closets - or I could pull out my fabric and make some pillows. i could pack away the Christmas decorations or I could lay on the sofa and read with a large latte in my hand and Dean Martin crooning Baby, It's Cold Outside.
Who's to tell us when it's time to make mulled cider and when it's time to buy a treadmill? It's cold and frozen and dark and there's no reason not to make stew, light the fire, and watch the snowfall . So I'll push aside the Christmas wrapping paper one more time, allow the bag of ribbons to fall onto the floor from the desk once again, and maybe even dust the Santa figurines.
It'll all get put away - eventually, I suppose. Maybe the Easter Bunny will help. For now, I am curling up inside the snowflakes of the season and watching some more hokey movies like Hancock and pretnding that I am already physically and fascially fit and resting on my laurels.
Won't you??
I began the weekend reading The Book of Unholy Mischief. I wish I hadn' t read it so quickly, and I may have to read it again. It's a lyrical book, fresh and quickly paced, with beautiful writing and evocative imagery of cooking in medieval Venice. If you like mystery and spices and descriptions of mouth-watering dishes and magic and love, it will fill you up and satisfy all your senses as only a banquet of words can.
I had planned to segue right into A Stopover in Venice by Kathryn Walker, (sensing a theme here, folks?), but in between, I bought two four other books and decided to read them as a diversion.
I had to buy both of them because the first I picked up had a photo of duck boots, Wellies, and a pair of Manolo Blahniks on the cover. It was about a woman who gives up her job at a big woman's magazine and moves to the rural South with her husband and two boys. Then I turned around and saw the cover of another book, which had on it a photo of a pair of Wellies and a pair of red stilettos, and was about a woman who gives up her job as a big time journalist and moves to rural northern England with her husband and two boys . . .
Who could resist?
I am not going to give the name of the first book about the South. I do not believe in trashing authors. However, I do not really have anything nice to say about this memoir, written by the former marketing director for Family Circle magazine. . The author is obviously gifted at marketing and the entire book is all CAPITAL LETTERS and exclamation points!!!!!
The chapters, if you could call them that, revolve around the STUPIDITY of Southern contractors, movers, and decorators; her wealthy brother - and sister-in-law and their POSSESSIONS, for which she gives copious brand names, and chapters in which she chatters about everything from her son smearing SNOTBALLS on the bedroom wall (!!!!!!), her husband and son's farting abilities, her inability to find a redneck who can give her a good hair blowout , and MOST INCREDULOUSLY, her list of WHAT TO DO AT YOUR SIX FIGURE JOB WHEN YOU DON'T FEEL LIKE WORKING - OMG! Fer sure - don't we all have access to personal trainers, huge budgets and petty cash to spend our days organizing parties and shopping to pick out expensive gifts to woo clients. Don't you leave your office at lunch and spend the afternoon buying $600 skirts AND THEN DON'T YOU COMPLAIN ABOUT IT AND HAVE TO LEAVE BECAUSE THE JOB IS GIVING YOU MIGRAINES????t
But even her profligate use of capital letters and punctuation marks, plus bullet list pages this would be forgiveable if she hadn't also thrown in that AWFUL, TRENDY, OVERUSED, AND COMPLETELY IDIOTIC TRENDY writing device of populating her book with CUTESY, MEANINGLESS FOOTNOTES.1 I had a headache looking up and down the page after the first chapter and refused to read any of them after that.
I killed an afternoon with the former book, but it only made the next book even sweeter:
So this book is about a wife who gives up her career as a journalist to satisfy her husband's dream to move to rural northern England to raise her 3 kids . . .sound familiar? Really, the only similarities are the circumstances and the clever art director covers, but the difference is that this book is beautifully written with humor and pathos. There are lovely passages, the best of which are when she writes about her relationshp with her mother and the bullying of one of her children at school. In one chapter, she describes watching her legally blind, ailing mother walking down the lane with her large, dark glasses and white cane, holding in the other hand the hand of her two-year old granddaughter, and hopes that the memory will be engraved onto her daughter's heart to stay with her forever. Judith O'Reilly also has a blog of the same name as the book and you can catch up with her comings and goings there.
Last night I started A Stopover in Venice and it begins along the same narrative path as the movie, Bread and Tulips, where a husband and wife are traveling through Italy and the wife separates from the family and the husband doesn't notice she is gone. The difference is that the protagnoist in Walker's book does so purposely and the story unfolds with a discovery that weaves her, as she says, into the "inside of Venice".
The next two on the January reading list are:
Kallos wrote one of the best books I read in 2008: Broken for You. This is her second novel and I'm looking forward to it.
I also was looking forward to reading The Condition, a novel by Jennifer Haigh, and in fact had picked it up earlier in the fall but waited to buy it. It is about the effects on a family when the daughter is diagnosed with Turner's Syndrome, a rare genetic disease that prevents a young woman from reaching puberty and developing physically. I put it down after getting through three-quarters of the book. The author's style is to introduce each character, involve some limited present day interaction, then delve back into their history to bring them up to the story line.
Unfortunately, I didn't find the characters particularly novel; there's the patrician, frigid, wife; the emotionally distant father; the in-the-closet gay son, his father's pride and joy; the screw up youngest, overlooked kid; and finally the daughter who has the truncated stature of a 10 year old, some Asperger tendencies which are symptoms of the disease, and a very strained relationship with her mother. I was skimming it halfway through, a tell that I am bored, and decided to put it down as I felt like I had read it all before - tedious stereotypes of the New England WASP family - and frankly, it has been better told.
Before I get too deep into anything else, I am following up on a Cornflower recommendation, (and thanks for the shout-out in your blog!) and have gotten ahold of a copy of Counting My Chickens by Deborah Devonshire.
Isn't she adorable? The flyleaf describes the book as, "Entertaining, instructive, thought-provoking and hilarious by turns, this wildly assorted collection of articles could be by absolutely no one but the Duchess of Devonshire." With an introduction by Tom Stoppard, it is too deliciously Brit to pass up, though Mr. Pom should note that I did NOT buy it on Amazon UK. At least I don't think I did.
At some point, I am going to do a blog post about all the non-fiction I read in the genre of "I left my job/family/life/and moved with myself/family/husband across the globe/into the country/sailed across the ocean/built a loghouse in the mountains/started a chicken farm/bought a tramp steamer/learned to cook/inherited a house in Umbria/Wales/Provence/Thailand/the Dakotas.... Those are my favorite books and I can't resist buying them when I see them innocently lingering on the shelves of a bookstore.
So please let me know what is on your reading list for this new, raw year. I hope to add to my obsession with your recommendations and I may even activate my library card and learn about online book reserving so as to keep peace in the house since we've sworn onto a "no-buy" rule for the first of the year.
_____________________
1.You know I could name names but it would get me into a lot of trouble with certain bloggers who are friends with these authors and even with these authors who I know have blogs and read blogs. You know, one or two sprinkled here or there can be hilarious but I am not reading your novels, ladies, I do not want to do as much eyeballing up and down a page as I do when reading a Supreme Court decision or proofing a law article. Seriously, it's not funny after the first page. So cut it out! Okay??
Yes, notice how chatty I am when I have a few days off - and enjoy it,
dammit, because it's back to covering court parts and inputting massive
amounts of legal data tomorrow and my retreat into left brain hemisphere.
We had New Year's Day brunch in this cozy pub. It looked quite festive and probably would have been perfect for New Year's Eve, but we only got as far as Mystic due to the weather. We, being quite old, went to bed at 11:00, but enjoyed our intimate supper for two in our room - crab and corn chowder and chicken quesadillas - along with watching two movies that were as different as Venus is from Mars. - Rachel Getting Married and Tropic Thunder. Guess which one of us ordered which? Mr. Pom and I really enjoyed Rachel Getting Married, though it was hardly light fare for a holiday eve. Jane Hathaway was wonderful and Tropic Thunder was just insane enough to not have to bother to follow the plot and be content with looking up from my book long enough to snort when Ben Stiller fell prey to Stockholm Syndrome a la Cabaret.
Crabs Cakes Benedict - what else would you eat for brunch on New Year's Day at the seashore? Mr. Pom had a huge bowl of lobster bisque and despite my entreaties, only managed a bite or two to help me finish mine. I contemplated oysters as a starter, but was glad I took a pass about two hours later when the effects of the Bloody Mary - excellent, just enough horseradish - was still being felt as I wobbled around the bookstore trying to read titles on spines but finding that turning my head sideways was engendering some strange twisting of the innards fueled by alcohol and I had to lay the seat back in the car. (So far Mr. Pom was being very tolerant, but that was before I had The Great Cheese Orgy about 3 hours later.)
What do you do at the seashore when it is snowy and 13 degrees? You read, you drink Bloody Marys, you buy duck boots on sale, you pretend that you are not lying on the sofa in your hotel room reading a book and slowly consuming an entire bag of chocolate covered almonds one at a time. You visit your favorite bookstores- Brewster Bookstore, Main Street Books, and Where the Sidewalk Ends. And you are very happy that you husband not only looks the other way when you leave the bookshops with another armload of books, but drives you right there without even asking if you want to go.
Tomorrow I will tell you about what I read and what I am reading. Sometimes you plod along with your reading, enjoying it, but not really thrilled by anything new. And sometimes, happily, without notice, you fall into a rich vein of new authors and your breath quickens as you try to decide which to open first. It is one of those times and I will just give you these clues and save the rest for Monday - The Book of Unholy Mischief and Wife in the North.
See, now I have to come back tomorrow, despite the full in-office morning, afternoon deposition, after work pick up of The Teen from SAT prep, and a humongous grocery delivery as we can no longer live on Stonehill Fig Preserves and leftover ham. The holidays, they are ovah!
I have learned many important things in the last 4 days, which is to my credit since my resolutions for the new year were to learn more, do more.
Here is what I learned: