Southbound Train

The Lady’s Tennessee Almanac

I’m obsessively listy. Seeing all my “to dos” and “to buys” neatly arranged like dominos is satisfying; seeing those dominos tumble is even better. A list that has been lined through and completed really warms my ocd soul. A good list is a neat list – I’ve been known to compose one with scribbles and arrows and then rewrite it before it goes into actual circulation – but the crossing off can be more freeform. Neat lines, crossing out, tearing – even some violent scribbling is acceptable, depending on the tedious nature of the item completed.  I have a bad habit, too, of adding an item I’ve already finished to the list then instantly crossing it out.  This might be because I’m a show-off, or because I’m a perfectionist with a love of categorical accomplishment, but it is also (and less embarrassingly) because I’m a historian by both education and temper if not by employment, and I like knowing all of what’s been done before. Which is why I’m starting a diary.

I’ve written diaries before, but they never seem to last. I get distracted or busy or, truthfully, embarrassed at the drivel I seem to put in them. Even as a girl I remember thinking that I sounded like an overworked soap opera in my private writings. I remember reading about girls who “poured their hearts out” in diaries and felt that I had a heart to pour out too, but my own seemed to produce less literary flame than that of the fictional girls I knew through books. I wasn’t boy crazy, I didn’t have parental or sibling heartache, and I felt that my simple observations weren’t worth the paper. Somewhere around fourth grade I tried committing more of myself to paper, only to realize that a friend was picking the lock and reading my feeble attempts. My mom suggested I write a note asking her to not read past a certain point – and I knew that was futile even as I wrote it on a blank page and circled it with the little stylized hearts that were our friendship symbol. Needless to say, not much more was written in that diary, banal or otherwise. Later blank books were started with fervor, reread with the same embarrassment (and greater self criticism) and abandoned in disgust. This time, though, it is going to be different, because I think I’ve learned my lesson; I’m not going to write about me.

Living here has done something odd to our brains – awakened some farmer gene long suppressed. We watch the weather. Discuss it. Speculate about it. Wait for it. I feel like it is some game that follows rules I don’t understand, and I think I’m going to require more than just conversation and memory to really get it. Instead of writing about my hopes and dreams, I’m setting out to be my own farmer’s almanac this year. Weather, birds, plants, oddities and anomalies are all worth journaling, so that next year, I’ll have something to reference, a list that I can fall back on when I see something and wonder why. In our first year here we had a ladybug infestation, a week of crazy caterpillars and a few turkey and deer sightings. This past year (I am shocked to call it “year two”) we also had the ladybugs – and a terrible bug summer, caterpillars that ate most of my cherry tree, a possum invasion and a week where it seemed there were dead skunks all over the place. We called it the skunk suicide season – and I can’t remember when it was but I am fairly convinced it is happening again.

Living here has made me more aware that there is a pattern to things that I can’t quite see. I thought that I would care less the longer I was here but I find, perversely, that I care more – I’m over the perfect newness of a lot of things, but I’m more interested, now, in how they work and why. I’m also facing down my second gardening season and I want to be prepared. I don’t just want to know what’s coming – if my garden is going to flourish, I need to know.  I have a feeling those gigantic green moths appear at about the same time every year. Ditto the cardinals and the bluebirds. Does the finch peck on the window starting in April, or May? When will I see the whistle pigs pop up again, glowering at the world and munching greens?

With so much to observe I think I can manage a diary that will last – no room in nature sketches for naval gazing - and anyway, I’ve taken that public with this blog.  I am feeling a bit old – no longer am I driven to immortalize the dark secrets of my heart. No, not me. I’m getting excited about recording the first date this year that I see a tulip peeking from the ground, or the first week that I see the bluebirds nesting. Pot boiler to Victorian sensibility, and I’m still technically in my early 30s. Something seems – wrong. I don’t know that I should be admitting this, and certainly not publically. An intervention could appear any day at the door, or I might be forced to give up my heels and my mascara. Is that a granny apron I see in my immediate future? Still, I might be turning into a Victorian (I have this image of writing outside in the springtime, sketching the flowers – could I be any more shudderingly precious?) but it might turn out to be better reading than teenage angst. And if not, well, at least I’ll know when to open the counseling hotline for the skunks.

Indian Food & Applesauce

Since November, cooking has been feast or famine. A friend asked, recently, if we went out to eat a lot, and honestly, the only answer that made sense to me was that we’re cyclical. When work and travel collide, Viking and All Clad get abandoned in favor of oh let’s just go get something. If I’m overwhelmed, cooking is the easiest thing to abandon and between Halloween and Christmas I can’t say that my kitchen saw much love. Then the crowd of Yuletide Cheer arrived in the form of lots of houseguests and my poor kitchen went from abandoned to abused.

I lived in the kitchen – which was fine, actually, as it seemed to be the only room of the house without a guest sleeping in it - and I learned that feeding 13 people is exponentially harder than feeding 8. I have a big kitchen and I inherited my mother’s love of plates but I was scrambling; there never seemed to be enough plates, enough silverware, enough counter space. The fridge was crammed full and I could keep food for only two dinners at a time; Publix and Kroger and Harris Teeter were constant companions. I think the only thing we had enough of were gluhwein mugs collected from many Christmas markets – finally justification for making Mike rinse them out in hotel sinks and lug them home.

Because I’m, um, me I planned menus, printed them and left them on each guest room door. It helped me organize and shop and most importantly it fed my inner Martha. I put out German breakfasts, cooked Austrian and Thai and Italian and then on Christmas Eve I faced the aisles of Publix less than an hour before it closed and hit the wall. I had to buy the supplies for our Christmas Day feast as well as dinner that night and I realized that I had only half an idea of what I needed, I’d never shopped so against the wire before and I was hungry. I called home, reached Mike and threw up the white flag that he and Jon had so thoughtfully supplied the night before. I give, I said. Call for BBQ.

It was past dusk on Christmas Eve and in any other place I’ve lived there would be no last minute salvation, but the kindness of strangers in the South is not to be underestimated, and BB’s, though officially closed, picked up the phone and graciously agreed to facilitate my little holiday miracle by waiting for us to arrive. Miti and I frantically grabbed our last items and escaped Publix, only to run into police directing early Christmas Eve service traffic at the largest church in town, a car full of people cruising the Christmas lights on 96 at 20mph and every possible red light between the east and west ends of Franklin. We were punchy and hungry and giggly and maybe a bit frantic but it was fun and I thought Oh! So this is why people like movies about Christmas catastrophes that turn out ok in the end. Oddly enough the nice guy who owns the BBQ place is also a California transplant, here because, like us, he wanted to live in a place where people wait for the answer to a polite question. We piled the pork and ribs and slaw and sauce on top of Miti and headed home, with a quick stop at Kroger because HELLO we forgot bread for stuffing. I proceeded to run into friends in the store, bought way more than just bread and then piled these new items, too, on Miti’s lap. By the time we got home her face was barely visible and I had to airlift dinner off her so she could escape.

The BBQ was good. This is Tennessee so that’s a given, really, but it was nice to feed people without the heat of the stove, to have no dishes to clear in order to play games at the table, to have a clean kitchen when, hours later, I made overnight salad and cinnamon rolls for Christmas morning.  Of course the cooking and the mess and the pots and pans were back the next day but the break was good, and a taste of things to come. Boxing Day we escaped with the Morris family for fancy hamburgers and constant refills on iced tea - the next morning there was a Cracker Barrel breakfast. And then, poof, everyone was gone and we were too, off to Berlin and restaurants and leaving behind a house that still looked like Dec 26 when we got home on January 3.

Last week was a constant steady project, a little bit each day, dismantling the holiday, cleaning the floor, doing the laundry, ironing the linens and putting life back into a reasonable schedule. We managed a run to Trader Joe’s and I sat down and planned dinners and then Sunday there was celery soup and parsnips and enough prime rib to feed us dinner and two lunches. Last night was my first attempt at Indian food, and the conversion of a bag of apples into a nicely spiced sauce that I enjoyed with oatmeal this morning. Tonight is tuna casserole, tomorrow leg of lamb, Thursday posole. There are still some spaces that need cleaning and some errands that need running but as I stirred unfamiliar spices into familiar ingredients last night I felt peacefully, satisfyingly, boring - cooking dinner at home on a winter Monday, no catering needs in sight. I thought I would feel recovered from the holiday swirl once the house was clean, the gifts put away, the last pine needle banished to the vacuum but it turns out all I really needed to do was cook. For two. 

Oh the weather outside is frightful

The cat is sitting in the window, transfixed. He’s hunting the tiny white birdlets fluttering in every direction on the other side of the glass; they are landing so softly on the bushes, sitting so still that he’s sure that if could just… get… out… there… he’d catch them. He’s never seen so many little birds – they just keep coming, piling on top of each other as they land. He looks at me, mrrrows questioningly. Can he go out, please?

But the fire is so delightful

His ample rear is parked on top of the heater vent, the warm air ruffles his fur. His whiskers tremble, part heat, part excitement. I’m warm, too, but I wouldn’t mind a change of scenery, from office to fireside, from laptop to book. I have new things to read post Christmas, and I’ve been itching to curl up with a blanket and words that aren’t my own. A leg warming cat would also be welcome, but he’s intent on the little birds. They’re coming faster now, thicker, and they’ve started to flock in swirling circles. A few larger ones are appearing too, and those seem to swoop tantalizingly close to the eager cat face in the window. He strains to see where they land.

And since we’ve no place to go

The neighborhood is quiet. School was cancelled today, and no one is out. I’ve seen one lone delivery truck (still recovering, no doubt, from the crazy schedule of the holidays, it moved slowly - almost without purpose - past our house). The yard looks still, the driveway whiter and whiter. We’ve got food (even bread and milk, purchased before the hordes descended on the grocery store and wiped the shelves bare of such necessities) and drink, work to do and books to read and no essential errands that need to be run.  The cat took a brief snack break, stomach growling in anticipation of all the succulent bird flesh just outside his pounce, but he’s back on the heater vent, intent. He looks at me again; to make sure I, too, see the flock that is settling onto the front yard. The tail twitches once, stops, his focus returns to the activity outside. The air is thick now, darkened just a bit by the feathers in free fall that seem to appear out of nowhere.  A train whistle blows, lonely and cold.

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow.