I came home yesterday from a hard morning's work at the horse barn.... let me just say here that I've been supervising a massage department at a very professional historic inn for two and a half years and have yet to get a raise. Yesterday was my third or fourth shift at the horse farm and she's upped my pay by a buck. What's wrong with this situation?
But.... I came home bone tired to discover my kitchen full of good smells. For dinner last night we enjoyed a carrot ginger soup, stuffed mushrooms, roasted beets and fresh spinach tossed with warm spaghetti squash, fresh mozzarella, dried cranberries, walnuts and dressed in a lemon and olive oil and sea salt drizzle.
I stepped up to bat and made us popovers for dessert, filled with strawberries and drizzled with chocolate. What happened to my cleanse?
Monday, April 30, 2007
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Chef Update
Once a year or so, on our farm, a bull lands himself in the freezer. We usually raise a pig or two, as well, although this year I want no part in that god awful mess. They bust out of their pens, dig up our neighbors perrineal beds, and smell like death.
But we have an upright freezer in our mudroom loaded to the gills with beef and pork (and blackberries, currants, cherries, and plums). Our visiting chef friend is, for the most part, a vegetarian chef but he's getting ready to head to Alaska before he heads back down to "the ice". In Alaska, he'll have to prepare meals for carnivores and so he's been dipping into our freezer to gain some practice.
Yesterday he pulled out the top shelf filet, basically filet mignon, and tonight he's making beef stroganoff with mushrooms. I can't get home quickly enough.
But we have an upright freezer in our mudroom loaded to the gills with beef and pork (and blackberries, currants, cherries, and plums). Our visiting chef friend is, for the most part, a vegetarian chef but he's getting ready to head to Alaska before he heads back down to "the ice". In Alaska, he'll have to prepare meals for carnivores and so he's been dipping into our freezer to gain some practice.
Yesterday he pulled out the top shelf filet, basically filet mignon, and tonight he's making beef stroganoff with mushrooms. I can't get home quickly enough.
Land Update
We went to the bank and it was kind of a trainwreck.We currently own thirty two acres just north of the farm we lease and it was there that we built the house a few years back. We rent the house to a few college kids who seem to take good care of it. I'm pretty sure they sit around, smoke weed and play video games. It's better than keg parties. We were hoping that the equity we have in that property would make for some borrowing power to purchase the hill next to us. We didn't want to put our land and rental house on the market until we knew, for sure, that this land next door to us could be ours. It just feels really smart to have a chunk of real estate to fall back on......
But it turns out that it won't go as smoothly as we'd hoped.
It entirely goes against Bill's nature for him to sit still for any serious length of time, so having him in bed with the flu for four whole days was like having an alien shacking up in my bedroom. And since he couldn't do anything productive with his hands, he put his head to work. In between feverish ramblings he came up with the idea that we would tell the owners that we wanted it, offer to pay the full appraised value and let them get back to us. If/When (when, when, when!) they agree to that, we would then ask if we could put down a "good faith deposit" right now and pay them the full price in the fall. Should they agree, we would put the 32 acres and beautiful house on the market right away and pray pray pray that it sells quickly.
That's all we've got.
The owner, a very sweet lady from New York City, called us this week to see where we were with it all. Bill gave her the low down and she told us that her brother was flying into the country (from god knows where) and her husband was returning to the city (from god knows where) this weekend and they would be discussing it.
We're expecting to hear back sometime next week.
And my birthday is Tuesday. I've been asking the universe for some pretty heady presents, I know. A coffee shop and one hundred and seventeen acres of pristine land. I remember the first year I moved to Vermont. I was grateful for a thunderstorm on my birthday. My demands are growing, I guess.
Cup a Joe Update
I'm still in the throws of figuring out if I'm going to buy that coffee shop. It's a sweet little space and I'd love to be working only ten minutes from home, in a place where Ella can hang out on a couch with her Connect Four or walk down to the bookstore or over to the park or the library. Everything about it feels right. The current owner would like an answer by the end of next week.
So far I've attended a workshop on Starting Your Own Small Business, which was a kind of pre-requisite for meeting with a small business advisor. I'm meeting with him this upcoming Thursday to go over the Profit and Loss Statements of the current and previous owners and basically get some honest advice from him about whether or not this an absurd idea.
The coffee shop is located in an old yellow and turquoise Victorian building with a wide wrap around porch right in the center of Main Street in Johnson, Vermont. Johnson is home to a state college, an artist residency studio, and a ton of really good people. The shop includes the entire downstairs....the counter and coffee room, a little room with a few tables and two computers, and a large, bay window room with a non-working fireplace and beautiful, colorful, lush furniture. Upstairs there is a psycho-therapist, massage therapist and web design business run by friends of mine. The owner of the building, from what I'm told, is "a bad to the bone bitch" who does nothing for the building. The upside of her slum-lord approach is that one rarely has to deal with her. So I know, going into it, that that is one strike against what I'm doing. Whatever repairs the building needs, whether electric or structural, are my responsibility. And the upside to that is that Bill does carpentry for a living and has a great head for electric stuff, from his days as a sound man.
The big room was once home to the local health food store but they purchased their own building across the street and now operate out of that. The rent for just that room is almost $600 and while it's an awesome space for customers to hang out in, it's often sparsely populated and a huge expense. So I'm trying to figure out how to make that room make money or find someone who wants to run a little business out of it. Any ideas?
I've noticed, too, that since I've had this in the mix, I've been a total slack ass at work. I've taken sick days, come in late, left early and have already "checked out" mentally. So, cross your fingers. I've never worked anywhere longer than 3 years. I've been here two and a half years. The clock is ticking.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Sweat Lodge
I spent this past Sunday in the woods, beside a wide mountain stream and endless evergreens, preparing for, participating in and then breaking down a traditional Native American sweatlodge.
With that last Noreaster dumping another foot of snow in Vermont and then melting within a week's time, spring came so suddenly I hardly noticed it happening. But walking the long ridge of a trail into the woods toward the lodge, my boots crunching on old, cracking leaves and brand new shoots of grass, I was reminded of a memory from many years ago.
There's a place in Dushore, Pennsylvania called the Haystacks. It's a part of the Appalachian trail where the boulders in the water are so large that at night, under a moonlit sky, they look like bales of hay.... the tall round kind you see mid-summer after the second cut of summer grass. There are little round caverns in those rocks under the water that are carved by thousands of years of current and you can swim into them and look out at the sun's rays streaking down into the river. The fish come and swim around your toes and nibble on your skin. The ferns are long and ancient. It's a holy kind of place.
To get to the campsites down by the water, you have to walk nearly two miles on a dug up old railroad bed through the woods. Walking that trail a long time ago in early spring with a good friend, lover at the time, I remember thinking and saying that "this is the way the world smells". Remove the emmissions of deisel, population and plain old crap that lingers around us in the atmosphere and we're left with the smell of those composting leaves and thawing earth. The smell of bark and pine needles being warmed again by the sun. The smell of water running and the sweetness of the dirt it permeates at it's banks. The smell of animals coming out of hibernation.
The lodge was led by a shaman who came down from Canada with a firekeeper. Louise, the shaman, led us through each stage of the lodge, physically, emotionally and spiritually, while the firekeeper was resonsible for heating and delivering the stones. We each came with two pouches of tobacco, one of which was given to the firekeeper and one which was given to the shaman. When someone within was struggling and needed support, the shaman, Louise, would call out to the firekeeper, in French.... "TABAC!"..... and he would sprinkle some onto the fire, onto the stones, which were called Grandmothers.
The frame for the lodge was built when we arrived but it was our responsibilty, the eight women I was sharing this with, to line the floor of the inner circle with hemlock and cedar, to dig the pit in which the rocks would be placed and to create, with the dug up earth, a mound shaped like a turtle that would face the water and the heating rocks. We then laid blankets, tarps and skins on top of the lodge, leaving a doorway facing East through which to enter and exit, always in the same direction.
This was my first time participating in a sweat lodge. I had no idea what to expect. Before we started I kept sneaking off to pee behind an uprooted tree, afraid that my bladder would interupt the experience. Little did I know that whatever fluid my body contained would come pouring through my skin. My bladder would be left wondering what the hell happened!
With that last Noreaster dumping another foot of snow in Vermont and then melting within a week's time, spring came so suddenly I hardly noticed it happening. But walking the long ridge of a trail into the woods toward the lodge, my boots crunching on old, cracking leaves and brand new shoots of grass, I was reminded of a memory from many years ago.
There's a place in Dushore, Pennsylvania called the Haystacks. It's a part of the Appalachian trail where the boulders in the water are so large that at night, under a moonlit sky, they look like bales of hay.... the tall round kind you see mid-summer after the second cut of summer grass. There are little round caverns in those rocks under the water that are carved by thousands of years of current and you can swim into them and look out at the sun's rays streaking down into the river. The fish come and swim around your toes and nibble on your skin. The ferns are long and ancient. It's a holy kind of place.
To get to the campsites down by the water, you have to walk nearly two miles on a dug up old railroad bed through the woods. Walking that trail a long time ago in early spring with a good friend, lover at the time, I remember thinking and saying that "this is the way the world smells". Remove the emmissions of deisel, population and plain old crap that lingers around us in the atmosphere and we're left with the smell of those composting leaves and thawing earth. The smell of bark and pine needles being warmed again by the sun. The smell of water running and the sweetness of the dirt it permeates at it's banks. The smell of animals coming out of hibernation.
The lodge was led by a shaman who came down from Canada with a firekeeper. Louise, the shaman, led us through each stage of the lodge, physically, emotionally and spiritually, while the firekeeper was resonsible for heating and delivering the stones. We each came with two pouches of tobacco, one of which was given to the firekeeper and one which was given to the shaman. When someone within was struggling and needed support, the shaman, Louise, would call out to the firekeeper, in French.... "TABAC!"..... and he would sprinkle some onto the fire, onto the stones, which were called Grandmothers.
The frame for the lodge was built when we arrived but it was our responsibilty, the eight women I was sharing this with, to line the floor of the inner circle with hemlock and cedar, to dig the pit in which the rocks would be placed and to create, with the dug up earth, a mound shaped like a turtle that would face the water and the heating rocks. We then laid blankets, tarps and skins on top of the lodge, leaving a doorway facing East through which to enter and exit, always in the same direction.
This was my first time participating in a sweat lodge. I had no idea what to expect. Before we started I kept sneaking off to pee behind an uprooted tree, afraid that my bladder would interupt the experience. Little did I know that whatever fluid my body contained would come pouring through my skin. My bladder would be left wondering what the hell happened!
The ritual is performed in four parts, one for each direction. After the first round we filed out of the lodge to breathe cooler air, splash off in the stream and just be. I took my breath by the bank of the stream where I watched the water roll over the rocks, the light collecting in it's folds and I knew that once I re-entered that lodge, things would change. And they did.
After the second round, we crawled, practically on all fours, needing a hand out of the lodge. In the lodge, between drooling and sweating and generally existing as t.v. fuzz for the better part of an hour, I hardly knew who I was... which, in light of how heavy life can be sometimes, was surprisingly refreshing. I cried, I shook, I felt at times like a wet dishcloth. I tapped into things long forgotten, soaked up the scent of resins and sage and cedar igniting in little bursts of red, dancing light off of the rocks. I rode the crescendo of Louise's singing over landscapes that came into full view for being in such a confined space. The lodge did indeed become a womb and the heat and the steam and the pulse became the very heartbeat of the experience. Louise was our trustworthy umbilical cord, rooting us to the Earth and to our hearts and to our flight.
Between the third and fourth rounds we remained inside the lodge, with the wool blanket door flapped open. Most of us, at this point, were lying on our backs, knees in the air, skirts falling around our hips, soaking wet, wondering how we could possibly stand one more round. But we did... and with grace. That last round, surprisingly, was the easiest. I don't know if it was because I had already come so far or because I knew it was drawing to a close. At this point, my liver was cramping and my body still shaking but I was able to draw my body closer to the rocks, instead of wanting to shimmy away from their heat. I was finally able to perceive them as guardians, as grandmothers, and to understand that all of these epiphanies, all of this shedding of old skin and old perception was a direct result of the rocks' hard work. Like any dirty job, whether it's hanging sheetrock or conquering our worst monsters, it's only when we move closer into it, put ourselves into the task, press our noses right up to those ruby red stones, that we start to see the results of our labour.
There was an old, toothless Abanaki man there named Burton Spotted Eagle and he joined us in the lodge with the firekeeper after the sweat was over and led a pipe ceremony. It was quiet, reverant work as we filed out and started unrobing the lodge and dismantling it, scattering the small saplings through the woods. Two fly fisherman arrived downstream and their casual voices carried loudly on the water. They weren't there for long. I'm sure our meditative scene tucked into the spring woods might have scared them away.... what with about a dozen soaking wet people working silently around a fire with elk and deer skins piled high by the waterside. Not something you stumble across every day in the Vermont woods.
What I came away with from that day will be in my heart forever. There are little pockets of it I've recalled in the days since and I have a feeling that they'll continue to resurface as time progresses.... in perfect timing....like little offerings.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
The Thinking Blog Award.......
I've been awarded the thinking blogger award by SelfTaughtArtist. Thank you! It's nice to know that someone enjoys reading me!
In turn, I need to pass the baton to five other bloggers that I enjoy reading. Shouldn't be too hard. Make sure to check out the instructions on the bottom of the post to see what comes next.
Misplaced in the Midwest ~ I understand this is not your first thinking blogger award this week. Take a bow! I have to say that it's been amazing reading about the huge change you're about to embark on. Your writings about the coffee shop buddies takes me right back to my hometown roots. I plug in every day to see what new gemsword entrees your plating up.
Self Taught Artist ~ Yes. I'm giving it right back. You introduced me to blogs and you keep me on my toes about keeping the posts coming and you make me feel wonderful about writing. AND you give me an insight into what the life of an artist entails. Something I'd never have considered, considering that bird and dog drawing thing...........(see your comments page re: art trauma at a very young age!)
Penelope Twist ~ I only wish I could have been so in touch and so eloquent when I was a teenager. I can't say enough about what a gift you have with words. Keep the words flowing and your heart open...........
BoobsInjuriesandDr.Pepper ~ Well, for thinking, yes, but mostly just for making me laugh with each new post.
Sharala ~You are definately the most dedicated blogger I've come across. Since I've been tuning in, I've enjoyed your photography more and more. I've enjoyed seeing the world, especially the world of Chicago, through your lens.
Congratulations, you won a Thinking Blog Award. Should you choose to participate, please make sure you pass this list of rules to the blogs you are tagging. The participation rules are simple:1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think. 2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme. 3. Optional: Proudly display the 'Thinking Blogger Award' with a link to the post that you wrote.
Friday, April 20, 2007
I have a secret..........
The bug is traveling through my house like a freight train. If I go according to the timing of it hitting Bill and then hitting Ella, by all rights I should be strapped across the tracks tomorrow, around mid-morning, with a raging headache, body aches, possible barfing and high fevers.
Ella came home early from school on Wednesday with all of the above. When I came home from work later in the day, she was nested in our big bed with the tv and dvd player in the corner, a buffet of cough syrups, tinctures, kid's Motrin and Vitamin Waters on the bedside stand.... and dad, cuddled beside her, just barely having gotten his strength back from his bout with the bug.
While I would never wish ill upon my child, I secretly enjoy when she's bedridden with the bug. Not only because it slows her down and quiets the volume level in the house, but because in that quiet there is a nurturing and stillness that rarely happens otherwise. Ella isn't the kind of kid to sit on the couch and read a book. She's not the kind of kid to come randomly and curl herself into your lap. She's far too active, far too physical and busy for that kind of immobility. She climbs trees, swings from grapevines, climbs the haybales in the barn, builds forts in every corner of the house with every blanket we own, and is just generally, as I've called her before here on this blog, our jungle house pygmy.
When Bill gets sick, I tend to his needs, make him soup, draw his bath, make him toast and I'm kind. But I don't crawl into bed with him. I sleep in another room and refuse kisses and cuddles. I'll run my fingers through his hair when his head hurts but then I immediately wash them when I'm done.
With Ella it's different. We lay on that big bed for long periods of time just staring into eachother's eyes because, for her, there's really nothing else to do. She coughs in my face and I burrow my nose into her sweaty fevered hair. I savor it.
I don't necessarily enjoy catching her puke in the palms of my hands at three oclock in the morning, or changing the sheets because the puke just dripped through my fingers anyway.... I could pass on that end of it. And it is always so painful to not be able to take away their aches and pains but there's something magical in keeping her comfortable, to spraying the room with peppermint and eucalyptus to freshen it up, to keeping a cold compress on her fevered forehead. I remember when she was much smaller, her remedy to any ailment was a cold washcloth. If I stubbed my toe, turned my ankle or suffered heartache....all of it could be remedied with a cold washcloth. She'll be ten this summer and sometimes I pine for that simplicity. It will never be that easy again.
Yesterday the temperatures almost reached seventy and we opened the windows beside the bed and listened to all of the new birds who have arrived on the farm. We noticed the first purple bunch of tiny crocuses and I went outside with the clippers and cut some for her bedside table while she watched longingly from the screened window. Mid-day, when the fever was low and her energy level relatively good, she sat at that window and sang her little heart out.
Today we made it outside, gathered branches that had broken with winter storms, mended one of the fences that the cows kept breaking through and played connect four in the sunshine. We walked back to her "secret garden" and hung out by the stream and laid on our backs with the sun in our faces. Woody, our Border Collie and Trixie, the best kittie in the entire universe, accompanied us on our travels like mascots. She was moving slow and pacing herself, eating light and staying low-key.
Tomorrow she'll rise with a vengence, like Hades when he comes to claim Persephone in autumn. She'll rise with pounding feet, operatic singing and maniacal laughter. I know it. But hopefully, if the freight train flu comes to claim me, hopefully hopefully, she'll comfort me with a cold washcloth. Just this one last time maybe.
Ella came home early from school on Wednesday with all of the above. When I came home from work later in the day, she was nested in our big bed with the tv and dvd player in the corner, a buffet of cough syrups, tinctures, kid's Motrin and Vitamin Waters on the bedside stand.... and dad, cuddled beside her, just barely having gotten his strength back from his bout with the bug.
While I would never wish ill upon my child, I secretly enjoy when she's bedridden with the bug. Not only because it slows her down and quiets the volume level in the house, but because in that quiet there is a nurturing and stillness that rarely happens otherwise. Ella isn't the kind of kid to sit on the couch and read a book. She's not the kind of kid to come randomly and curl herself into your lap. She's far too active, far too physical and busy for that kind of immobility. She climbs trees, swings from grapevines, climbs the haybales in the barn, builds forts in every corner of the house with every blanket we own, and is just generally, as I've called her before here on this blog, our jungle house pygmy.
When Bill gets sick, I tend to his needs, make him soup, draw his bath, make him toast and I'm kind. But I don't crawl into bed with him. I sleep in another room and refuse kisses and cuddles. I'll run my fingers through his hair when his head hurts but then I immediately wash them when I'm done.
With Ella it's different. We lay on that big bed for long periods of time just staring into eachother's eyes because, for her, there's really nothing else to do. She coughs in my face and I burrow my nose into her sweaty fevered hair. I savor it.
I don't necessarily enjoy catching her puke in the palms of my hands at three oclock in the morning, or changing the sheets because the puke just dripped through my fingers anyway.... I could pass on that end of it. And it is always so painful to not be able to take away their aches and pains but there's something magical in keeping her comfortable, to spraying the room with peppermint and eucalyptus to freshen it up, to keeping a cold compress on her fevered forehead. I remember when she was much smaller, her remedy to any ailment was a cold washcloth. If I stubbed my toe, turned my ankle or suffered heartache....all of it could be remedied with a cold washcloth. She'll be ten this summer and sometimes I pine for that simplicity. It will never be that easy again.
Yesterday the temperatures almost reached seventy and we opened the windows beside the bed and listened to all of the new birds who have arrived on the farm. We noticed the first purple bunch of tiny crocuses and I went outside with the clippers and cut some for her bedside table while she watched longingly from the screened window. Mid-day, when the fever was low and her energy level relatively good, she sat at that window and sang her little heart out.
Today we made it outside, gathered branches that had broken with winter storms, mended one of the fences that the cows kept breaking through and played connect four in the sunshine. We walked back to her "secret garden" and hung out by the stream and laid on our backs with the sun in our faces. Woody, our Border Collie and Trixie, the best kittie in the entire universe, accompanied us on our travels like mascots. She was moving slow and pacing herself, eating light and staying low-key.
Tomorrow she'll rise with a vengence, like Hades when he comes to claim Persephone in autumn. She'll rise with pounding feet, operatic singing and maniacal laughter. I know it. But hopefully, if the freight train flu comes to claim me, hopefully hopefully, she'll comfort me with a cold washcloth. Just this one last time maybe.
Monday, April 16, 2007
Spring Slush
My head cold morphed into Bill's flu. I seem to have escaped the vicious throws, barely dodging a more serious spat with the funk, but Bill has been in bed for twenty fours now rotating between sweaty fever and teeth chattering body chills. There's no school today due to the hurricane force winds out there so Ella is home playing nursemaid to her dad in between her movies and dress up play while I work. She's all full of empathy and pity and sympathetic eyebrows. Me..... I'm trying to do the same. I'm trying to be a good little caretaker, cold washclothes at the ready and drawing a bath with Epsom salts..... but it's only because, in the event that I follow in his footsteps later this week, I'd like to have the same doting attention. Really, though, I secretly think he's a big baby. He usually is when he gets sick.
But this morning I woke up at six a.m. to do chores and it was wicked outside. Winds, slush and freezing rain. All the cows were curled up like puppies, cozy in eachother's warmth. I shoveled out the mounds of shit and realized we were short on hay so I found myself driving to the Farm and Garden before seven am for three bales, coming back and feeding out several more flakes to all of them and then finally kicking off my shitty boots in the mudroom at eight oclock.
We're right at that time of year when the firewood and the haybales are either gone or almost gone. Most parts of the country are enjoying spring bulbs and new grasses, blossoms and birdsong. But here we are in the midst of one more fucking noreaster and with two logs left to burn. Here's to hoping that by Friday the sun will be out and the temps will be in the high fifties and all the creeks will be swollen to their banks with melted snow. Here's to hoping I don't get the flu, too.
But this morning I woke up at six a.m. to do chores and it was wicked outside. Winds, slush and freezing rain. All the cows were curled up like puppies, cozy in eachother's warmth. I shoveled out the mounds of shit and realized we were short on hay so I found myself driving to the Farm and Garden before seven am for three bales, coming back and feeding out several more flakes to all of them and then finally kicking off my shitty boots in the mudroom at eight oclock.
We're right at that time of year when the firewood and the haybales are either gone or almost gone. Most parts of the country are enjoying spring bulbs and new grasses, blossoms and birdsong. But here we are in the midst of one more fucking noreaster and with two logs left to burn. Here's to hoping that by Friday the sun will be out and the temps will be in the high fifties and all the creeks will be swollen to their banks with melted snow. Here's to hoping I don't get the flu, too.
Friday, April 13, 2007
oh my golly day
My head is full of head cold and my back is aching from yesterday's deep tissue massage. I'm on a mission to restore my body to health. It's a slow, slow mission. I'm also in the midst of a spring cleanse, which basically means I'm cleaning out random body parts by various techniques I won't divulge just now. But the past week or so it's been no meat, no wheat, no dairy. I did cheat today with pita chips in my soup.
Why the dollar signs?
We went to see our "bank lady" today and I just had to include all the affore mentioned body stuff to drive home how very hard it is to wrap my head around numbers when my body is in a clouded state of detox and ache. I lost most of my comprehension for math in the fourth grade when we got into long division and it's been all downhill since then, really, which is why I'm so manic right now about Ella understanding and memorizing her multiplication facts.
We went to see our bank lady about the land next door that has come up for sale. We wanted to sit with her and our bank file and figure out if it's going to be at all possible for us to buy this land..... without having to sell the property we own, anyway. Our goal would be to purchase this land, sell off the road frontage peice, put that money toward building our own place and then selling the property we own right now and lay all we get from that down on the new mortgage.... which would almost, if not totally, pay it off. Sounds dreamy.
But the numbers aren't all there. Not yet anyway.
On top of that, our local coffee shop, the heart of our little village town, has just been offered to me for a really reasonable rate. I considered purchasing it the last time it came up for sale but they were asking far too much and so I wrote if without much hesitation. Now, though, it seems like a good deal. It would mean leaving my secure but totally unsatisfying job that is forty five minutes from home in an incredibly elite and obnoxious tourist town to work only ten minutes from home in the company of my familiars.
But do I want to be a business owner?
The truth is.............
The truth is.............
I'm really kind of lazy. I like the fact that I come into work here and have so little to do. I have time to blog and read and visit with friends and go to the this town's coffee shop and slack off. I love feeling like I can get away with something. Anything. It's the really juvenille part of me that sneaks out in weird little ways. If I ran this coffee shop, I'd have to learn how to work a Profit and Loss statement, how to do inventory and ordering. I do that at this current job but at a much smaller rate. I take care of payroll and hiring (and firing) here but it doesn't belong to me. I can walk away. I have no real financial investment.
I love picturing myself behind the counter at the coffee shop. I love thinking of how I'd redo the counter and repaint some of the walls. There's a whole back room that is 3/4 converted into a kitchen space. I'd open for breakfast and serve crepes.
So, there's alot in the mix right now. And in twenty minutes I have to meet a client for a massage and hope that I can make it through the whole hour without dripping boogers on his backside.
One thing at a time.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Breath
The ability to let go is like a muscle. If left unused, it will need to be toned, brought back to life, given attention. When that ability to let go is cramping, resisting, and refusing, breath and nurturing is often the best tool. Our bodies, like our hearts, so badly want to cling to the familiar, want to remain in the comfort zone, no matter how knarly the comfort zone might be, but it's the plunging forward and into the sticky mess of discomfort that gets us through to some other side.
We store so much old shit in our bodies. Old sadness, old anger, old insecurity. It turns to rot in there and the aches and pains we start to feel in the middle of our lives are just the first resonances of that old shit. All the words we wish we had said, all the times our hearts were broken or betrayed, our bodies respond with tension, stress hormones or just plain heartaching, and those responses, those stress hormones, if left untended, if left alone.... they ferment in our bodies like sour milk. They become those little knots of lactic acid inbetween the shoulder blades.
I'm starting to feel something palpating. It happens every spring. Every spring some of that old stored up baggage gets shed, like skin, making way for the new. It happens with the first calls of geese overhead in the morning, with the robins sprinkling their song in the bush elm outside the house. It happens when the sun starts to make a wider ring around the day and the snow starts to melt wider rings around the trees.
Exercise isn't such a chore when the days get longer. There's more time for it. Breathing and stretching releases all those old fermenting aches and pains. Clearing out the body seems possible. Almost as possible as clearing out the heart.
We store so much old shit in our bodies. Old sadness, old anger, old insecurity. It turns to rot in there and the aches and pains we start to feel in the middle of our lives are just the first resonances of that old shit. All the words we wish we had said, all the times our hearts were broken or betrayed, our bodies respond with tension, stress hormones or just plain heartaching, and those responses, those stress hormones, if left untended, if left alone.... they ferment in our bodies like sour milk. They become those little knots of lactic acid inbetween the shoulder blades.
I'm starting to feel something palpating. It happens every spring. Every spring some of that old stored up baggage gets shed, like skin, making way for the new. It happens with the first calls of geese overhead in the morning, with the robins sprinkling their song in the bush elm outside the house. It happens when the sun starts to make a wider ring around the day and the snow starts to melt wider rings around the trees.
Exercise isn't such a chore when the days get longer. There's more time for it. Breathing and stretching releases all those old fermenting aches and pains. Clearing out the body seems possible. Almost as possible as clearing out the heart.
Sunday, April 08, 2007
Chocolate Jesus
I've never celebrated Easter with Ella.
We do Christmas only because it simply can't be avoided but there's really no mention of Jesus. She knows the stories of Jesus, she thinks he's a pretty cool prophet, but that's pretty much where the stories end. She knows that Christianity and Paganism are two different religions and that, hundreds and hundreds of years ago, the church began a mission to try and erase the earth religion of the hillspeople and villagers by kind of super-imposing their holidays on top of the Pagan holidays. I mean, how else does the rising of Christ meet up with the rabbit and the egg? Or the evergreen tree and strings of light intercept the birth of him? Somewhere along the line all the symbols just kind of merged together into this weird little medium and everyone stopped asking questions.
But we've never done the Easter thing. We've decorated eggs on the Equinox for years and have celebrated the fact that our days would now be getting longer than the nights but Easter has always come and gone.
This time of year, we're almost always tapping trees and boiling sap into sugar. Three years ago, a friend of hers came over to help and be a part of the experience. She came with her brand new pale pink Easter basket and whatever cool stuffed toy came inside of it. Ella looked like the kid left out of the newest club. Why didn't the Easter bunny bring her anything?
The two years that followed she spent in Pennsylvania with my parents. She went to church with my grandma and spent most of the hour with her jaw hanging in her lap (or just drooling from plain boredom). She received the basket and the chocolate egg and the Barbie or stuffed rabbit or whatever else was lavishly bestowed upon her that day. The Easter Bunny came alive in Pennsylvania. Grandparents are always good for that.
This is the kid who caught me in the act of writing the note from the tooth fairy and still believes anyway. I was just getting in the way of magic, as far as she's concerned... so it's really no big feat for her to take on a whole new fantasy creature to believe in. So, yesterday, as I'm leaving for work, she looks up dreamily and asks " I wonder what the Easter Bunny will bring me tomorrow?"
I automatically start mapping my route to work. First to Big Lots for a basket and some of that weird grass shit, then to the chocolate store for a bunny and little chocolate eggs and jellybeans. Am I really doing this? But yes, I am. And honestly, I enjoyed it.
I found a beautiful green woven basket for $2.50 and the grass was yellow and made of paper, not plastic.... very pretty. I work right next door to an amazing chocolate store and so I loaded up on foil wrapped dark chocolate eggs and "gourmet jellybeans" (what the hell are "gourmet jellybeans, really?). I bought organic, orange spice chocolate squares and "Non Parallels" ~ toasted hemp seeds atop drops of organic belgian chocolate. Pretty groovy Easter basket if I do say so myself.
I felt like I should buy her a present for Easter. I knew she'd be expecting one after two years with her grandparents but I just couldn't bring myself to buy some over packaged Made In China Barbie or some crazy thing like that. I opted for some prettily painted flower pots and six packages of flower seeds. It's a spring holiday, right? If we lived further south, we'd be enjoying crocuses and daffodils instead of a full day of snow!
So, we've spent the better part of our day gorging ourselves on dark chocolate and lying around on the couch. Oh, and we did make eggs.... last night. They were quite lovely. We blew six and boiled six. Dyed them all. If we could find the ground out there, we'd go searching for a pretty stick to make a mobile out of the hollow eggs but that will just have to wait. In the meantime, it'll be egg salad sandwhiches and chocolate in the lunchbox all week.
She left a note on the kitchen table with a bowl of chopped up carrots. It read:
We do Christmas only because it simply can't be avoided but there's really no mention of Jesus. She knows the stories of Jesus, she thinks he's a pretty cool prophet, but that's pretty much where the stories end. She knows that Christianity and Paganism are two different religions and that, hundreds and hundreds of years ago, the church began a mission to try and erase the earth religion of the hillspeople and villagers by kind of super-imposing their holidays on top of the Pagan holidays. I mean, how else does the rising of Christ meet up with the rabbit and the egg? Or the evergreen tree and strings of light intercept the birth of him? Somewhere along the line all the symbols just kind of merged together into this weird little medium and everyone stopped asking questions.
But we've never done the Easter thing. We've decorated eggs on the Equinox for years and have celebrated the fact that our days would now be getting longer than the nights but Easter has always come and gone.
This time of year, we're almost always tapping trees and boiling sap into sugar. Three years ago, a friend of hers came over to help and be a part of the experience. She came with her brand new pale pink Easter basket and whatever cool stuffed toy came inside of it. Ella looked like the kid left out of the newest club. Why didn't the Easter bunny bring her anything?
The two years that followed she spent in Pennsylvania with my parents. She went to church with my grandma and spent most of the hour with her jaw hanging in her lap (or just drooling from plain boredom). She received the basket and the chocolate egg and the Barbie or stuffed rabbit or whatever else was lavishly bestowed upon her that day. The Easter Bunny came alive in Pennsylvania. Grandparents are always good for that.
This is the kid who caught me in the act of writing the note from the tooth fairy and still believes anyway. I was just getting in the way of magic, as far as she's concerned... so it's really no big feat for her to take on a whole new fantasy creature to believe in. So, yesterday, as I'm leaving for work, she looks up dreamily and asks " I wonder what the Easter Bunny will bring me tomorrow?"
I automatically start mapping my route to work. First to Big Lots for a basket and some of that weird grass shit, then to the chocolate store for a bunny and little chocolate eggs and jellybeans. Am I really doing this? But yes, I am. And honestly, I enjoyed it.
I found a beautiful green woven basket for $2.50 and the grass was yellow and made of paper, not plastic.... very pretty. I work right next door to an amazing chocolate store and so I loaded up on foil wrapped dark chocolate eggs and "gourmet jellybeans" (what the hell are "gourmet jellybeans, really?). I bought organic, orange spice chocolate squares and "Non Parallels" ~ toasted hemp seeds atop drops of organic belgian chocolate. Pretty groovy Easter basket if I do say so myself.
I felt like I should buy her a present for Easter. I knew she'd be expecting one after two years with her grandparents but I just couldn't bring myself to buy some over packaged Made In China Barbie or some crazy thing like that. I opted for some prettily painted flower pots and six packages of flower seeds. It's a spring holiday, right? If we lived further south, we'd be enjoying crocuses and daffodils instead of a full day of snow!
So, we've spent the better part of our day gorging ourselves on dark chocolate and lying around on the couch. Oh, and we did make eggs.... last night. They were quite lovely. We blew six and boiled six. Dyed them all. If we could find the ground out there, we'd go searching for a pretty stick to make a mobile out of the hollow eggs but that will just have to wait. In the meantime, it'll be egg salad sandwhiches and chocolate in the lunchbox all week.
She left a note on the kitchen table with a bowl of chopped up carrots. It read:
your the best.
Love Ella
gust
for
you.
can you
sine your name writ here
name_________________
And when her friend called this morning she said, "Yeah! He came! And now I know his real name. It's Mr. E Bunny!"
And there is one advantage to having snow on Easter. She was able to see his tracks outside the window making a path all the way to the neighbors house.
What a Flake Am I?
So much for one post a day. Does it help that I think about it every day? That I comprise paragraphs of my daily life while I drive or do my grocery shopping? That I hear conversations in quotation marks and visualize sentences with paranthesis and exclamation marks?
It's been a crazy week.... and I'm writing now from the new desk that Bill built in his office. Having almost the entire month of March off, being between jobs, he took that time to gut his office and build a new desk along the back wall. The desk is very nice but it's abnormally tall and in order to sit comfortably at the laptop, I have to prop two pillows under my behind and I'm left feeling like Gilda Radner in that Saturday Night Live skit where her feet don't reach the ground. What was the name of that character? I feel like I'm four and a half years old right now and I should have pigtails and an ice cream cone. But I can type exceptionally well for a four and a half year old.
Moving on.....
I don't talk much about my job (probably because most of the posting I do is from my desk there and I don't want to push my luck) but I manage a small massage department at an old historic inn and practice massage there five days a week. It's not an ideal situation for me... a bit too beauracratic and too far from home..... but it's served me well for almost three years now and I hope I have served them well, too.
This week we had our "manager's outing". It usually consists of a day on the mountain, a hike to some lookout, dinner and drinks and a night at our sister inn waaaaay up north. This year, however, it was closer to home and we skied, hiked, and ate on our own turf and then had the option of getting a room at the inn where we work....one of the "luxury rooms. Mmmmmmmmm.
I'm so glad that we checked in early, that I took a bath in the huge jet tub and then laid on a blanket in front of the fireplace and read my book. I'm so glad we enjoyed that four poster canopy bed before dinner because I drank too fucking much at the dinner party. Yes, I think I may have been one of those. I made a committment to myself to only drink two glasses of wine but somewhere between those first two glasses and throwing up before twitching myself to sleep, I somehow managed to take down an additional two glasses of red wine, two dirty martinis and a shot of something or other at the bar before we left. I then woke up at five oclock in the morning and lay there wondering how the hell it happend and fretting about the events of the night. Was I at least subtly wasted? Did I stumble or slur? Was I totally obnoxious with that water-gun? What was that I was saying about the witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts? Please tell me I didn't go so far as to tell my boss how much I sometimes hate my fucking job? Fuck fuck fuck fuck. If I hadn't felt so badly about Bill having to nurse me the night before, having to hold my hair back and walk me to bed, I might have woken him up just for reassurance.
I'm not one of these people who can enjoy a night of wild drinking and rowdiness. It happens so rarely anymore, and I'm so much more of a control freak than I used to be, that now it just sends me right over the edge. I wake up not only hung over but extremely anxious. The whole thing just sucks!
I spent every single night of my late teens and early twenties drinking to excess. Throw all of the other excesses into the mix and it made for a very colorful youth. But I've worked soooo hard on learning to manage all of the addictive tendencies and, for the most part, I do pretty well. These days, the only active addictions I have to wrestle on a daily basis are coffee and chocolate. So on nights like this, when that little button in my DNA that is supposed to switch to OFF or STOP CONSUMING.... when that little button defaults, I get pretty down on myself. I wake up before the sun and then spend all of dawn panicking about the events of the night before, cringing over and over again as it all comes back in waves.
Turns out, it wasn't as bad as I thought. Well, it probably was but no one noticed because everyone else was just as rosey cheeked as I. But regardless, note made:
It's been a crazy week.... and I'm writing now from the new desk that Bill built in his office. Having almost the entire month of March off, being between jobs, he took that time to gut his office and build a new desk along the back wall. The desk is very nice but it's abnormally tall and in order to sit comfortably at the laptop, I have to prop two pillows under my behind and I'm left feeling like Gilda Radner in that Saturday Night Live skit where her feet don't reach the ground. What was the name of that character? I feel like I'm four and a half years old right now and I should have pigtails and an ice cream cone. But I can type exceptionally well for a four and a half year old.
Moving on.....
I don't talk much about my job (probably because most of the posting I do is from my desk there and I don't want to push my luck) but I manage a small massage department at an old historic inn and practice massage there five days a week. It's not an ideal situation for me... a bit too beauracratic and too far from home..... but it's served me well for almost three years now and I hope I have served them well, too.
This week we had our "manager's outing". It usually consists of a day on the mountain, a hike to some lookout, dinner and drinks and a night at our sister inn waaaaay up north. This year, however, it was closer to home and we skied, hiked, and ate on our own turf and then had the option of getting a room at the inn where we work....one of the "luxury rooms. Mmmmmmmmm.
I'm so glad that we checked in early, that I took a bath in the huge jet tub and then laid on a blanket in front of the fireplace and read my book. I'm so glad we enjoyed that four poster canopy bed before dinner because I drank too fucking much at the dinner party. Yes, I think I may have been one of those. I made a committment to myself to only drink two glasses of wine but somewhere between those first two glasses and throwing up before twitching myself to sleep, I somehow managed to take down an additional two glasses of red wine, two dirty martinis and a shot of something or other at the bar before we left. I then woke up at five oclock in the morning and lay there wondering how the hell it happend and fretting about the events of the night. Was I at least subtly wasted? Did I stumble or slur? Was I totally obnoxious with that water-gun? What was that I was saying about the witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts? Please tell me I didn't go so far as to tell my boss how much I sometimes hate my fucking job? Fuck fuck fuck fuck. If I hadn't felt so badly about Bill having to nurse me the night before, having to hold my hair back and walk me to bed, I might have woken him up just for reassurance.
I'm not one of these people who can enjoy a night of wild drinking and rowdiness. It happens so rarely anymore, and I'm so much more of a control freak than I used to be, that now it just sends me right over the edge. I wake up not only hung over but extremely anxious. The whole thing just sucks!
I spent every single night of my late teens and early twenties drinking to excess. Throw all of the other excesses into the mix and it made for a very colorful youth. But I've worked soooo hard on learning to manage all of the addictive tendencies and, for the most part, I do pretty well. These days, the only active addictions I have to wrestle on a daily basis are coffee and chocolate. So on nights like this, when that little button in my DNA that is supposed to switch to OFF or STOP CONSUMING.... when that little button defaults, I get pretty down on myself. I wake up before the sun and then spend all of dawn panicking about the events of the night before, cringing over and over again as it all comes back in waves.
Turns out, it wasn't as bad as I thought. Well, it probably was but no one noticed because everyone else was just as rosey cheeked as I. But regardless, note made:
Don't party with fellow employees anymore.
Not a good thing.
Not a good thing.
Too dangerous, too risky.
AND
it's a waste of a perfectly good honeymoon room.
Monday, April 02, 2007
Best Way to a Woman's Heart....
is definately through the belly.
I could get used to hosting a chef. Very used to it.
Last night's spread was simple....for lack of time, really. We had a flat bread pizza with fresh plum tomatoes, fresh mozzarella and some basil from last summer's garden. Beside that on the kitchen table was a simple stir-fry with red cabbage, mushrooms, carrots and zucchini. They were all sauteed in a tamari/sherry sauce and then glazed up into a pleasant goop and displayed beautifully over brown rice and surrounded by halved brussel sprouts.
I'm starting to understand why people do food blogs. I could get used to this.
I could get used to hosting a chef. Very used to it.
Last night's spread was simple....for lack of time, really. We had a flat bread pizza with fresh plum tomatoes, fresh mozzarella and some basil from last summer's garden. Beside that on the kitchen table was a simple stir-fry with red cabbage, mushrooms, carrots and zucchini. They were all sauteed in a tamari/sherry sauce and then glazed up into a pleasant goop and displayed beautifully over brown rice and surrounded by halved brussel sprouts.
I'm starting to understand why people do food blogs. I could get used to this.
Sunday, April 01, 2007
Mmmm, Sunday
I spent my morning grooming horses and mucking out stalls. It's something I've dreamed of being able to do for years now.
When I was born, my folks lived in a rural town close to the Poconos. I think it may have actually been in the Poconos somewhere. They had some chickens, a pig or two, and two horses. My mom had your typical seventies mullet haircut and wore a good bit of calico. My dad had lambchop sideburns and learned how to dress roadkill. In the first house they rented there, they woke up and banged on the heaters for two reasons..... to get the heat going and to scare the mice out of the cupboards on the other side of the wall.
They lived there until I was almost three and from there we moved onto that small one way street I've recently mentioned in another post.
I guess I used to ride with my mom in the saddle and I think something happened at that young age that has forever endeared horses to my heart. After petting a horse, I refuse to wash my hands so that I can occasionally lift them to my nose and just inhale. Mmmmmm. It makes me high.
Ella and I decided a year ago that by the year 2008 we would own our own horse. We have the barn, the pasture, the routine of chores already in motion.... we'd just need to make a stall and proper flooring for the horse (and feel confident that we could afford the expense). Since we made that decision, I've been doing a good bit of book learning but one can only learn so much about husbandry by looking at books.
Two weeks ago, I had my first shift at a huge horse barn in the next town over. The woman who owns the farm is the mother of a doula client I've recently taken on. She has 27 horses ~ Morgans, Norweigan Fjords, French ponies, Percherons. Oh, and an indoor riding ring where she gives lessons and does therapeutic work with her horses. It's pretty high end.
Having had zero experience handling horses, I was sure I'd be banished to the pony barn until the owner felt I could handle a larger horse but, somehow, I ended up with the Morgans and Percherons and, in the course of one day, I feel like I learned a lifetime of experience. But still, there's so much more to understand.
Today, my second day, I was able to groom the Percherons. Percherons are similar to Clydesdales but a deep black color. She has Tiffy and Jake and they live together in a seperate barn, just the two of them. Years ago, for whatever reason, the owner was considering selling Tiffy. But one night, after they were put into their pens (with a little opening between them so they could visit), Jake got really sick with some kind of stomach ailment. He was on his side, lying in his own pee and really uncomfortable. Tiffy, somehow, opened her gate with her teeth and then opened the gate to their pen and walked up the hill 150 yards or so to the owners front yard and waited there until she woke up. She led the owner down to Jake's pen and it was all fine from there. Jake got the help he needed and Tiffy was secured her place by her mate for a lifetime. It was a like a story out of Black Beauty.
Going into the pen to groom a horse, I take three things in a bucket. A thick wired brush for brushing their manes and tails, a lighter brush for their coats and a strange little gadget for cleaning out their hooves. On one end of the gadget is a little wire brush and the other end is a metal hook to dig into the nooks and crannies to get out the funk and random pebbles.
So far, the one thing that strikes me the most about being with these creatures, the thing that leaves me just spellbound with a feeling of grace and honour, is cleaning their feet. Leaning over beside a horse (especially a horse whose back is a foot higher than the top of my head), tapping gently behind his knee joint and having him lift his foot gently into my hand. There is such trust to that. Such a relationship. It makes me think of thousands of years ago, in the fertile crescent, when the most hospitable thing you could do for a guest is sit them down and soak and wash their weary, worn traveled feet. Every time I have a hoof in my hand I feel like I'm entrusted with sooo much. And I am.
When I first spoke with owner on the phone about coming to work for her every other Sunday, and that I didn't have any experience, she kind of laughed and made a comment about how this would help me figure out whether or not I really wanted to do this. Whether or not I'd really want a horse for my own self. I'm sitting here now, after my second day working with them, my shoulders and back tired, totally satisfied and I'm realizing that "whether or not I'd want a horse for my own self" was never the question. Never never.
When I was born, my folks lived in a rural town close to the Poconos. I think it may have actually been in the Poconos somewhere. They had some chickens, a pig or two, and two horses. My mom had your typical seventies mullet haircut and wore a good bit of calico. My dad had lambchop sideburns and learned how to dress roadkill. In the first house they rented there, they woke up and banged on the heaters for two reasons..... to get the heat going and to scare the mice out of the cupboards on the other side of the wall.
They lived there until I was almost three and from there we moved onto that small one way street I've recently mentioned in another post.
I guess I used to ride with my mom in the saddle and I think something happened at that young age that has forever endeared horses to my heart. After petting a horse, I refuse to wash my hands so that I can occasionally lift them to my nose and just inhale. Mmmmmm. It makes me high.
Ella and I decided a year ago that by the year 2008 we would own our own horse. We have the barn, the pasture, the routine of chores already in motion.... we'd just need to make a stall and proper flooring for the horse (and feel confident that we could afford the expense). Since we made that decision, I've been doing a good bit of book learning but one can only learn so much about husbandry by looking at books.
Two weeks ago, I had my first shift at a huge horse barn in the next town over. The woman who owns the farm is the mother of a doula client I've recently taken on. She has 27 horses ~ Morgans, Norweigan Fjords, French ponies, Percherons. Oh, and an indoor riding ring where she gives lessons and does therapeutic work with her horses. It's pretty high end.
Having had zero experience handling horses, I was sure I'd be banished to the pony barn until the owner felt I could handle a larger horse but, somehow, I ended up with the Morgans and Percherons and, in the course of one day, I feel like I learned a lifetime of experience. But still, there's so much more to understand.
Today, my second day, I was able to groom the Percherons. Percherons are similar to Clydesdales but a deep black color. She has Tiffy and Jake and they live together in a seperate barn, just the two of them. Years ago, for whatever reason, the owner was considering selling Tiffy. But one night, after they were put into their pens (with a little opening between them so they could visit), Jake got really sick with some kind of stomach ailment. He was on his side, lying in his own pee and really uncomfortable. Tiffy, somehow, opened her gate with her teeth and then opened the gate to their pen and walked up the hill 150 yards or so to the owners front yard and waited there until she woke up. She led the owner down to Jake's pen and it was all fine from there. Jake got the help he needed and Tiffy was secured her place by her mate for a lifetime. It was a like a story out of Black Beauty.
Going into the pen to groom a horse, I take three things in a bucket. A thick wired brush for brushing their manes and tails, a lighter brush for their coats and a strange little gadget for cleaning out their hooves. On one end of the gadget is a little wire brush and the other end is a metal hook to dig into the nooks and crannies to get out the funk and random pebbles.
So far, the one thing that strikes me the most about being with these creatures, the thing that leaves me just spellbound with a feeling of grace and honour, is cleaning their feet. Leaning over beside a horse (especially a horse whose back is a foot higher than the top of my head), tapping gently behind his knee joint and having him lift his foot gently into my hand. There is such trust to that. Such a relationship. It makes me think of thousands of years ago, in the fertile crescent, when the most hospitable thing you could do for a guest is sit them down and soak and wash their weary, worn traveled feet. Every time I have a hoof in my hand I feel like I'm entrusted with sooo much. And I am.
When I first spoke with owner on the phone about coming to work for her every other Sunday, and that I didn't have any experience, she kind of laughed and made a comment about how this would help me figure out whether or not I really wanted to do this. Whether or not I'd really want a horse for my own self. I'm sitting here now, after my second day working with them, my shoulders and back tired, totally satisfied and I'm realizing that "whether or not I'd want a horse for my own self" was never the question. Never never.
It's What's For Dinner
Looks like I missed my Saturday post....and after all that fuss I made about one post a day.
My excuses are valid, though. I spent Friday night at the airport until nearly 1:30am and then drove an hour home from there. Saturday afternoon was spent doing morning chores, overlooking (kind of) a playdate for Ella and then off to work for four and a half massages.
A hometown friend of mine, whose home base has been Vermont as long as it's been mine, flew in from New Zealand on Friday night. He would have been here Thursday evening but the plane he was due to leave New Zealand on was struck by lightning while waiting for take off on the runway. A bit of a setback, yes. All the connecting flights from there were long gone when he arrived in LA and then New York. Poor guy was just an entire day off from his familiar calendar by the time he arrived on this other side of the world.
Now, the upside of having this friend stay with us, aside from the fact that we love his company of course, is that he's an incredible chef. He spends most of his year, for the past three or four years, anyway, down on the South Pole at a scientist colony. He's the vegetarian chef at the base. He's even been featured in Vegetarian Times. If I had the energy, I'd link. I'm sorry, I just don't this morning. He told us, though, that if we host him while he's in town, he'll cook four days a week.
So, after my long afternoon doing massage, I came home to an absolute spread on my kitchen table. Lightly breaded chicken with apples and fresh red currants and in a Frangelica glaze, roasted beets, a simple egg noodle pasta with greens and mushrooms, a chopped green salad with tomatoes and tahini yogurt dressing and, for dessert, baked apples. Oh, and this morning I woke up to blackberry muffins for dessert. Can he stay forever? (dejavu)
My excuses are valid, though. I spent Friday night at the airport until nearly 1:30am and then drove an hour home from there. Saturday afternoon was spent doing morning chores, overlooking (kind of) a playdate for Ella and then off to work for four and a half massages.
A hometown friend of mine, whose home base has been Vermont as long as it's been mine, flew in from New Zealand on Friday night. He would have been here Thursday evening but the plane he was due to leave New Zealand on was struck by lightning while waiting for take off on the runway. A bit of a setback, yes. All the connecting flights from there were long gone when he arrived in LA and then New York. Poor guy was just an entire day off from his familiar calendar by the time he arrived on this other side of the world.
Now, the upside of having this friend stay with us, aside from the fact that we love his company of course, is that he's an incredible chef. He spends most of his year, for the past three or four years, anyway, down on the South Pole at a scientist colony. He's the vegetarian chef at the base. He's even been featured in Vegetarian Times. If I had the energy, I'd link. I'm sorry, I just don't this morning. He told us, though, that if we host him while he's in town, he'll cook four days a week.
So, after my long afternoon doing massage, I came home to an absolute spread on my kitchen table. Lightly breaded chicken with apples and fresh red currants and in a Frangelica glaze, roasted beets, a simple egg noodle pasta with greens and mushrooms, a chopped green salad with tomatoes and tahini yogurt dressing and, for dessert, baked apples. Oh, and this morning I woke up to blackberry muffins for dessert. Can he stay forever? (dejavu)
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