pomegranatesandpaper

Happy New Year's Eve from Mrs. Pomegranate

Listening, Hearing, Waiting, Welcoming

2011.

The number does not roll off the tongue. It is unfamiliar and lacking the alliteration of 2010. The twen-tee-ee-lev -in makes the tongue muscle move from the back of the teeth to the back of the throat too quickly. But by February, we will all be saying it without thought.

Writing the new year numerals usually takes me about 4 weeks to adapt to. I will muck up checks, reports, and cards with the old year's numerals and find myself going back into our softward at  work to correct the trial and motion dates I've scheduled for the beginning of last year instead of this one.

Transition periods are important. Many refuse to mark  the 31st with any occasion whatsoever and greet the 1st as yet another day. I don't believe it is necessary to blow horns and wear party hats, stay up late, or brave the cold and crowds, but it is important to recognize the passage of time and most importantly, the beauty of a blank year, all snow-covered freshness, inky black nights, wind-swept days, and bright sunshine bouncing off icicles dripping with promise.

Whatever your circumstances, the new year brings the same opportunity for renewal. I am not one for formal resolutions nor do I pretend that this will be the year that I shed 15 pounds, power walk 5 miles a day, and finally stay on top of all my work (though I hope so). I do not make promises to read one hundred books or or do a painting a day or learn to cook vicchysoise, though wouldn't it be lovely if I did? 

That is what the new year brings: unlimited optimism, hope, opportunity, dreams, fanciful wishes, and ordinary days.

This wonderful blank year, a gift from God. This wonderful blank year, the beginning of a new decade. This wonderful blank year filled with daybreak sun on my eyes through the French doors each morning,  lavender bushes and the pots of rosemary by the front walk, the drive to work with coffee and my thoughts, the unceasing anticipation of happiness in dogs' minds, Italian bread toast with orange marmalade, the smell of cotton freshly ironed, sugar scrubs in the tub, British books,  graphic design books, books on tape, books in the mail, books on shelves, Fabriano paper, my kids' Facebook statuses, art nights with friends, blue and white watercolors overlaid with graphite lines, stitching through taffeta,  Sunday afternoons making gravy, concerts with Mr. Pom, Friday night Ipod selections for dark rides to the Cape,  dragonfly lights on August nights, bonfires in Orleans, shoulder to shoulder breakfasts on Saturday mornings, violets and mermaids, and stories waiting to be told. 

 

Overeating: The Holidaze

Breakfast:

• 3 Italian taralla cookies  (a tradition!)
• chocolate pizzelle and half a vanilla (other half to the dogs)
• gingerbread cake (first taste!)
• coffee with a guilty glurp of the heavy cream that didn't get whipped (waist not/want not)

Mid morning:

• artichoke dip         (didn't get any on Christmas Eve)
• Beemster cheese (protein!)
• leftover ham         (more protein)
• Clementine           (healthy!)

Lunch:

• vegetable soup    (homemade, very healthy, yech, too much spinach)
• 1/2 a cannolli (whilst waiting for soup to heat)
• candy cane         
• 2 more pizzelle (pizelli?)
• crab dip            (throw it out!)
• tea with honey for throat

Mid Afternoon:

• candy cane #2
• provolone cheese with Italian bread
• trifle (just a trifle...)
• raspberries
• ham (all gone, yay!)

Dinner:

• leftover penne with vodka (still delish!)
• two forkfuls of leftover lobster (not so delish)
• biscotti (from neighbor - must taste)

Apres Dinner:

• celery with crab dip (half virtuous)
• Beemster before bed
• more tea

Bedtime: 

• the traditional holiday stomach ache with a big side of gluttonous remorse

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*Brought to you by your friends at Zantac

 

A Year of Books

Here's the thing: I haven't read enough this year. Too tired, too much work, too many dogs, too many other activites, blah, blah, blah,  All legit facts, but here's the  very scary realization that I came to this week: being online so much?not only eats up hours, it has retrained my brain to digest small bits of writing that link to others and so on and so on. Is this why I am throwing down books after a few pages? Why I have so many started and none finished, and why they are piling up faster than I can read them?

I realized how addicted I've become to reading blogs instead of books when we were last on the Cape and the internet was down. I didn't think a thing of it and went to bed with one of the many books I keep there. I promptly fell asleep. .

By the next night, the internet was back on and after dinner, I pulled out the laptop and as I began to read blogs, I felt a physical relaxation course through me as if  I was a smoker lighting one up.  I'm addicted, I realized. As addicted as a pack a day smoker. And I was just as repulsed. 

I could sermonize here about the downfall of literacy in America, this generation's electronic umbilical cords, tweeting, blogging, FB'ing, but I won't. I'll just take responsiblity for myself and unplug. (Rest assured, it's not my own blogging that takes up all my time, but reading the hundreds I have bookmarked.) Time to get back to reading the old-fashioned way!

I have lined up some of my reading for 2011 and I will share it with you in the next post. I have several nonfiction genres that I am exploring and  a few novels lined up, but generally I like to discovery good novels as the year progresses and pick up whatever strikes me at the moment, so there won't be as much fiction on the list as of now.

Before I look ahead, what did I read this year? I read a lot of art books, and I listened to quite a few books. Here's a few I listened to:

Little Bee - Chris Cleave. (One of the most painful books I've ever listened to. Or read. Do not listen/read this before you have to go somewhere unless you enjoy arriving with a swollen face. It made me very angry in parts as the plot is very emotionally manipulative - seems to be a theme in what I chose this year. Warning: extraordinarily violent scenes that are not suitable for children or carpoolers that you don't know well.)

Great House - Nicole Krauss (I am currently re-listening to parts of this so I can figure out how one whole section relates to the whole. The novel is centered, very loosely, around a desk and the stories nest inside one another like Russian dolls. Unfortunately parts of stray so far from the plot line that I lost the thread of one entire section's relation to the whole. Not light holiday reading and not recommended for listening to in the car in commuter traffic.)

The Help - Katherine Stockett. (The best book of 2010 for me.)

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake - Aimee Bender (I love Aimee Bender. I wanted to love this book. The fantastical plot twists were intriguing, but ultimately unsatisfyingly resolved.)

The Art of Racing in the Rain - Garth Stein (This book drove me crazy. I was alternately sobbing and annoyed that it was so easy to anticipate  one of the plot devices 100 hundred pages before it developed. But the the narrator is a dog,  an omniscient dog and the plot has to twist itself to accomodate his omniscience. But a dog. A dying dog. Need I say more?)

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand - Helen Simonson (Elegant, evocative writing about growing old, race relations, and contemporary life in an English village. As lovely as Pym. Looking forward to reading her next one)

The Summer We Read Gatsby - Danielle Ganek (A fun and light novel set in the Hamptons where two half-sisters come to grips with the next stages in their romantic lives. We should all have such problems that are resolved so neatly.)

My Fair Lazy - Jen Lancaster

Such a Pretty Fat - Jen Lancaster (These are breezy books that I find much more fun to listen to than to read.   It's like having your best friend  riding shotgun. Just watch out when you are at a light and howling and the driver next to you rolls up his window.)

The Spoken Word: The Bloomsbury Group (British Library - Sound Archive)(radio interviews with Virginia Woolf (!), Lytton Strachey, Vanessa Bell, and other Bloomsbury illuminati. Imagine driving to court in the Bronx and being stuck on the Deegan, and listening to the actual voice of Virginia Woolf talking about writing. Worlds colliding.)

Currently listening to:

The Kitchen House - Kathleen Grissom. (Have to put this away until later in the year because it is narrated by an actress who also was a narrator for The Help, so it is too reminiscent for the time being.)

American Bloomsbury - Susan Cheever (Will start this next week when I return to commuting. )

Currently reading the old-fashioned way:

The Morville Hours - Kathleen Swift. (I've mentioned this book before and it has not failed to delight. It is not a book you plow through in one sitting or even a week. It is a book to savor, to dip into with the alignment of the seasons that she writes about in sections accorded to the prayer services of the Benedictines - vespers, lauds, etc. The perfect reading for gray, damp, and dark days between the end of this year and the next. Splendid prose about winter and the skeletons of gardesn, the roots of gardening in medieval England, the corners of her National Trust cottage, and the anticipation, always, of spring and its rebirth)

 

What are you reading on this betwist and between season, and what are your reading plans for the coming year?

 

 

 

 

 

Boxing Day

 

 

I think that Christmas should always be on either a Friday or Saturday. We need Boxing Day off. And since we all know that the 25th of December=e was arbitrarily selected by the church, couldn't we petition the world to change it?

 

 




 

I suppose not.  As a child, the day after Christmas THE most depressing day of the year. As an adult, as long as it falls on a weekend, I think it is a day to luxuriate in nothingness, to roll around in pajamas and tea, to sample the ham and cookies, cannoli and cheese, to watch old movies and new, and walk in the woods.  Fires are lit here, the snow is billowing down, and everyone has a book and cell phone, laptop and game. I've copied all my  new CDs, synced my Ipod, transferred all the photos from my phone, and hope to find the lenscap for my camea at some point today. 

 

 

 

 

A big storm is blowing here, so before it began, I ran to Starbucks for my quiet hour. The dogs waited in the car and since it was cold, I cut my hour short and drove them to the water. I wanted a little while out and about that wasn't tied up with buying gifts, groceries, court, or errands. I drove aimlessly around a quiet city, the skies very dark and low, the heated seats turned on, the dogs content to look out the windows, and music playing.

 

 

 

 

 

I ended up at the city beach, trying to convince myself that looking at Long Island Sound from the parking lot, my view a narrow slice between metal railings, was as good as Cape Cod Bay. Perhaps not. Though a woman came and threw a load of bread out her window and the resulting cacaphony of gulls wheeling above made the dogs crazy, which is always good on a snowy day cause it burns off energy.

 

I drove over to a park on the water and being the only ones there, I let them out to run. They took off down the hill, with me in fast pursuit, until I noticed that there was no grass, just a layer of goose guano from parking lot to shoreline. Cucciolo started gobbling it up, so back in the car they went, lured by pieces of Christmas cookies I threw at them, a reverse Hansel and Gretel device. At home, they rolled in the snow, attacked their toys with the ferocity of hunters, and came in white as Frosty the Snowman.

 

 

So now we sit cozily cheek to cheek on the couch, watching The Jets, eating leftover penne a la vodka and cannoli, wearing my infinity scarf that Micalangela gave me Christmas, about to read her new book, Fingerprint: The Art of Using Handmade Elements in Graphic Design, and hopefuly take a wee nap. It will be a week at home, going for cappuccinos, picking up the art studio, dreaming of the winter sea, flashing eyes of mermaids, snowy landscapes punctuated by black dogs, stacks of books teetering on ottomans, the Christmas tree rustling with a certain dog underneath, candles lit on the mantle at an early hour, and boots and socks and pajama pants for walking in the woods.

 

 

Come back, I'll be here.

With Merry Love from All the Pomegranates!!

We Interrupt Regular Christmas Programming

Because this cool dude

 

 

Who used to be this little  soccer boy

 

But is now all grown up (have no idea who the other dudes are)

 

 

But is still basically

 

That same little soccer boy

 

 

No matter how many cool FB profiles he posts

 

Well, that dude,  after one year at his job as a mechanical engineer,

 

VOTED EMPLOYEE OF THE YEAR!~

 

GO MYSTERY MAN!!!

 

I'm all faklempt - talk amongst yourselves.

 

Where Was I?

Oh yes, holiday season.

Take the end of the year work crunch, add a bowlful of present buying, a soupcon of baking, a dash of the tree,  a pinch of The Empress with a bad cold,a side of Micangela finishing up her first semester in college, and a few freshly grated art projects, and you get  Why. I. Haven't. Been. Posting. Soup.

(And I made soup. Two, in fact)

 

But never mind y'all!  I got a lot done and I think I can just have the usual merry hairiness of cookie baking, wrapping, buying the last  few gifts, putting up the tree, going to the city when Micangela gets home - you know, y'all are doing it too!

 

What's the big Christma gift that you are all hunting for this year? My kids are out of that What I Have to Have age and I no longer have to find Tickle Me Elmos or THE video game.  This year, they want stuff like snow tires and laptops. So not any less expensive, just more prosaic.

 

Mr. Pom and I are forgoing presents for another trip to Our Hotel in Manhattan for New Year's Eve. WE are SO psyched. I do hope I get the same waiter...sigh..maybe he'll wear a tux since it's New Year's Eve? Ack - what will I wear?? I already wore my one dressy dress and jacket for our anniversary. Guess I'll have to go buy something slinky in the after Christmas sales.

Right now I am painting a Christmas tree for a contest at work. Or as Mr, Pom said, I am spending a day off painting a picture so I win a contest where the prize is a day off. Something like that.

I had a splendid weekend despite the running around. Friday night I had a great dinner with The Art Girls, and then Sunday, a birthday luncheon for Elizabeth, who turned a milestone age! What a delightful afternoon: champagne, gifts, party favors galore, wonderful food, art-filled conversations, Kathi, the most gracious hostess, and the warm feeling of finding myself part of a new group of friends with whom I share so much  in common.

 

I have photos to post of lunch, especially of our beautiful hostess, but they are on my phone, which is in my car (bad girl!)

In fact, when I look back over this wonderful year and all the amazing events that have come true for the Pomegranates, what with the engagement, The Cottage, our anniversary, MM's job, Micangela's first year of college, I have to add the beautiful new friendships with The Art Girls, who have brought me so much love, encouragement, and plain old fun that you only get with women friends!

 

The Pearly Grey of Twilight

 

We went to The Cottage this weekend, to check on the house, put away the outdoor furniture, pull down the storm windows, and have the last quiet weekend before the Christmas rush kicks into high gear.

I hadn't been there in over two months. During this time, we got a lot of things done around the house that we'd been putting off. We rediscovered the city and friends and the joy of long weekends with nowhere to rush to. Life got back in balance.

When we realized this was the last weekend, however, that we could get up there for at least another month, we both felt the familiar thrill of escape and the anticipation of being by the water.

I'd forgotten the joys of late fall on the Cape. The leaves are down, the crowds are gone, and there is a silence over the land that is only punctuated by the ducks and gulls and waves.

Our days always start at the water, despite the weather. It was cold but sunny and at high tide, our beach was almost gone under the waves, which were the typical large winter breakers. We drove up 6A and checked on all the ocean beaches and watched the surfers in their wet suits acting as though it was midsummer.

With the leaves down, we could see stretches of coastline that are hidden in summer. We could see the mansions up on the hills,  the little windbeaten cottages nestled into the shoreline, and the long expanse of breakers against the beach. The wind was blowing directly onto the water and blowing the tops backwards off the waves, causing them to look like they were moving backwards and forwards. We were mesmerized by watching it, and amused that even on the first weekend in December, we had to wait for a good parking space in order to see the water.

By 3:30, I was taking a nap on the sofa in our living room and for an hour, I  watched the light seep from the sky and night begin to spread like an ink blog bleeding onto a page. We are perched on a little knoll and when we look out the picture window, we see the tops of the trees and the sky to the southwest. If our house was a little higher, we might even see Pleasant Bay.The sky turned a pearly grey tinged with red. Bands of darker clouds came in and then sky was striated with dusk and night and the last rays of weak sun.I can't think of another time when I spent an hour on a Saturday watching the light ebb from the sky. It was the most relazing part of the day.

I'd forgotten how short the days are right now and how cozy our house is. If we hadn't made dinner reservations later in the evening, I'm afraid we would have been in bed by 6:00. Luckily, The Princess and The Fiance were with us and they made sure we ate a grown up time.

Sunday  morning, we were up early and went out to breakfast at a place we'd never been. It's hard to find simple places to eat breakfast and lunch nt he winter as most of the small restaurants and the large tourist traps close by December. We were astonished to find a place we'd overlooked for 25 years. They had eggnog pancakes, people. Think cake that happened to be made in a pan, thus pan cakes. No syrup necessary, either.

I was just about as cozy and relaxed as I could be. I am reading The Morville Hours and I could not have picked a better book while I drank my coffee and ate my pancakes at the counter. I had on my fleece lined clogs and big wrap around sweater and I just could have sat there all day and gotten coffee refills and sat leaning up against Mr. Pom and read.

But it was only a weekend trip. We had to get thing settled at the house and take off. I think if Mr. Pom hadn't been there, I would have shut off my cell and just stayed put for the week.