Southbound Train

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.

Five o'clock and Flannel

I can hear rain pinging the gutters and I want to go back to bed. I know there are new soft flannel duvet covers there, warm and fuzzy and far more inviting than my office chair and day packed full of meetings. I feel so smugly seasonal here; even my bed has different clothes for the weather. Summer was a sheet, with a thin blanket folded at the foot of the bed for the odd cool night. Early fall was a switch to individual lightweight duvets and t-shirt sheets. I’ve upgraded to flannel now, and in a month or so we’ll move to the full heavy weight duvet I bought in a fit of shivering last winter, when the one marked “palm tree” in the Company Store catalog clearly wasn’t cutting it anymore. When spring rolls around we’ll step back to individual, lighter weight duvets and then (before I know it, the way our time here is going) we’ll be back to that single sheet. I’m in no rush, though. As much as I want sunlight, I love autumn. I’m a certified broken record on the glories of fall, actually, and I think if I point out one more brilliantly orange tree on the way to the market Mike is going to invest in a muzzle.

I know I’m tedious about it, but I can’t get over how beautiful this season is. I love the golden stubble of cut corn and the burnished gold of a spent field of soybeans. The hillsides (following a brief frosty weekend) have turned all kinds of oranges and yellows, and even if plenty of green remains I couldn’t say that I notice. There are a few stunning trees that seem to emit their own light and I’m obsessed with having a collection on our property; counterpoint to the red buds and dogwoods of spring. I’ve taken to carrying the camera with me, making Mike pull over in awkward spots so I can document the glowing yellows and oranges, and the occasional but so appreciated burst of red.

It was beautiful this weekend, cool air that warmed in the sunny patches, cerulean sky a perfect counterpoint to the fluttering leaves. Sunday was the neighborhood fall festival and chili cook-off, and as a bookend to the spring egg hunt, I dressed as a fortune teller and entertained the kids with promises of good Christmas presents; their parents were more amused, I think, by my three inches of sweeping tinsel eyelash. Mike coordinated an apple biting contest and a costume parade and the chili was tasted and voted upon and the whole event was, I think, a success. We’ve come a long way from last year’s festival, which we mostly skipped, walking up later only to attend the homeowners meeting. This year we knew more people than we didn’t, and I actually felt like part of things rather than a mouse on the edges.  The summer has been full of getting to know the neighbors in more than a wave and it is so nice to have a group of people to talk to who actually talk back. There have been drinks and evenings and casual get-togethers and, honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever been a part of a group so social. I really enjoy it, and Mike now has a potato gun thanks to a July cocktail hour so I think he’s pretty pleased as well.

The downside to the social might be the peer pressure, though, which is taking me away from precious time with the flannel elephant sheets. Throughout the summer a group of us did boot camp workouts here in the neighborhood. Twice a week in the long hot evenings we met at the pool and paid someone to make us tired and sore. I think we enjoyed the complaining as much as the workouts, but I know that I, at least, enjoyed the company, and we all wondered how we could keep it up once the classes were over. I went away for a week and came back to a smaller group who had decided that 5:30 am was the best time for boot camp. Clearly they've gotten to know me well enough to know that was a decision I would have protested... best to make it while I was not present to yelp in horror. I don’t do mornings, especially not mornings that begin before the sun. And yet, here I am, Tuesdays and Thursdays, getting up to an alarm at 5:15 and out the door well before sunrise, meeting my fellow sadists in the dark and working out.

We trade off planning workouts and we all manage to keep getting up, even though I suspect I’m not the only one who finds it hard to leave a warm cocoon of flannel these days.  It makes for a long work day, because even with a shower I’m still in front of the computer by 7 and by the time it gets dark I’m muddling around the kitchen trying to stay awake long enough to cook.  I appreciate the camaraderie, though, the sense of shared suffering as we’re doing planks in the dark – but on a day like today where the rain grows more insistent and the sky isn’t getting any lighter the siren song of the bed is hard to resist.  The flannel is so warm. And soft. And just down the hall….

Eighteen Months

Other people write monthly letters to their children – I, it seems, am going to have to write them to my state because I know that the Piggers can’t read, and the cat just won’t. Tennessee, has it been 18 months already? A year and a half that we’ve known each other in the, hmm, almost biblical sense?

You’re a coy mistress, m’dear, putting out your beautiful finery in those first twelve honeymoon months, filling my days with mild sun and postcard worthy seasons. And then, what happened, my sweet? Did I speak harshly of you? Threaten to leave? Pine for California? No, no, I did not. And yet, you’ve seen fit to punish me with weather that leaves my poor little Los Angeles girl self pruned and a bit moldy.

First there were the spring rains – and these I understood. Spring was a new season for me, arriving late into it last year and then so buried in boxes I missed it entirely. So a rainy spring? Fair enough, I can live with that – and I will say that the storms were a cracking good time to watch. April showers, May flowers – we’re good. But then… what happened? Did spring have to be quite so wet? My garden, you know, was delayed weeks because you saw fit to turn the freshly plowed earth into a swimming pool. The work to get it ready to plant after that was… not worth rehashing. Was it really necessary to rain enough that a spring popped up in that garden? I was being so responsible, planting in the lowest part of the field so as to conserve water, but I didn’t need quite that much gurgling just below the surface. Still spring, showers, rain for the future. I could forgive you this practicality, Tennessee, because I knew the glorious summer was just around the corner.

But what happened? Honestly, dear, summer is meant to be warm, sunny, dry… I’ll even grant you a pass for a modicum of humidity because I know it keeps my views the beautiful green I have come to love. But rain? Real rain, with gray skies and sticky dampness and wet feet splashing across the parking lot? This, Tennessee, was disappointing. I came from a state that regularly greeted my late June birthday with cold fog, and I was counting on you for better. Sure, the day itself was nice, and I don’t mean to be ungrateful, I thank you for that. Not that you had anything to do, really, with my fried chicken lunch at Dotsons or my special menu at Flyte or my wonderful dining companions, here for a summer visit of epic proportions, but I can appreciate the beautiful day I had to do those things in. Still, that weekend held a serious thunderstorm and you know, we can’t go in the swimming pool when there is lightening.

Still, we’re newly in love, you and I, and like any woman in love, I held out hope for you. July, I felt certain, would be glorious. I remembered our blissful summer afternoons together last year, full of flowers and leafy trees ruffled by soft breezes. And then… you tested my love. With the wettest July on record since – when, Tennessee, since the 1870s? And one of the coldest Julys on record, ever. Who angered you then, fickle state? And why are you fixing the same cool and damp eye upon me this year? Do you realize that we had to stop lighting fireworks on the 4^th of July because it was raining too hard to be outside? (yes, I might be raising my voice a little, can you blame me?) We took one set of visitors to the Cumberland Caverns because it looked too gloomy to count on a day of outside activity, and the next day, while canoeing (oh, I do still love you, Harpeth River!) it was beautiful, but too cool to start any water fights. What 7 & 9 year old boys don’t start water fights while canoeing in July, Tennessee? Oh, right – cold ones. I forgot. Then I went to Los Angeles, for a birthday and work, and wow, did you get me back for that little indiscretion – I came home to a monster storm, so big we were drenched just getting into the house, so big that half my corn crop was flattened and my tomatoes were drowned. Yes, drowned. Oh, you didn’t mean to be so harsh, Tennessee? Well, you were… my glorious crop of 20 different heirloom tomato plants, so lush and hearty? They were reduced to sad drooping bits of black stalk, green tomatoes rotting in plenty on every vine. My melons, too, fell victim to your vindictive storm, and the vines rotted, leaving me with a motley collection of half grown, barely ripened melons. The raccoons found the ones with a hint of sweetness that I was leaving out in hopes of some ripening August sun and I got… none of them. The frogs colonized my garden, dear. FROGS. And crawfish. I know I moved to the south, but no one has ever mistaken you for Louisiana, oh new state of mine.

Dare I even speak of the bugs? I suppose now that I’m this far into a love letter gone wrong, nothing is off limits… but the bugs. Oh, really, my dear, did you have to allow so much rain, because the bugs, they flourished. Everyone here pointed to the damp weather and intermittent heat as the culprit, but my skin became a feasting ground. I had so many mosquito bites after an evening of weeding the vegetables that I was sick. The internet told me I had “skeeter syndrome” and you, fickle love, didn’t even send me a get well card. Instead, you sent more bugs, bugs who cared nothing for the Off I used at boot camp in the evenings and bit me anyway. My legs looked like I had measles, so numerous were the red welts, and I Couldn’t.Stop.Scratching. so they looked even worse. I have to grudgingly concede the August was at least warm, but it teetered towards steam room rather than sauna, and call me picky but after the rains in July I would have preferred a bit of dry heat. We even drove to the Smokeys, and it rained there, too. And back to that sad garden of mine? I tried to get fall crops in once it became obvious that the summer ones were, ahem, drowned, but I was foiled again and again – by rain. I know, surprising, isn’t it, that it was too wet to plant in late August and early September! Well, I never.

I really wish I knew what I had done to deserve all of this, Tennessee. I came here in good faith and loved you quickly and truly. I’ve been faithful, even evangelical in my devotion, but you have not repaid me in kind. People keep telling me that this wetness, this plague of rain is so uncommon… but I’m worried. I admit, I did leave you for most of September, but Italy was calling. Of course, you called her first and it rained most of my time there, too. But I missed you terribly when I was in LA for work last month, and I pined for you… still, I returned home to this gloomy rain. Now it is October and lo, it is still raining. We had to exercise inside  this morning, m’dear, because it was thundering and lightening outside, and the rain was falling fast and furious.

I haven’t even mailed this yet, but you must be reading over my shoulder because I see blue sky breaking through out my window, and sucker that I am I can feel my spirits rise, my love for you renewed. Surely the cool, clear incandescent days of fall are just around the corner? October is the dry season here. I know you won’t let me down, Tennessee – this was just a rough patch. You’re so beautiful, and so generally kind, I suppose I can forgive you this bad mood, even if it has lasted going on six months.  I do love you, rain and all. You still love me too, right?

Right?

Being Neighborly

Everything blooms in spring … including neighbors, it seems. People we’ve lived near all winter have suddenly started appearing everywhere – walking dogs and kids, swimming at the newly opened pool, chatting in the intersections. The sun came out and so did all the people, emerging from the cold ground and warm houses like so many happy tulips. We don’t have North East serious winters here, but we have enough cold and inhospitable days that the arrival of warm breezes really feels like a new beginning. I never understood how the change of seasons could make that much difference in how people lived and interacted, but now, suddenly, I do – realization, again, that California really is a one-season state. The sense of blooming here now that it is warm is amazing.

I found myself playing Easter Bunny this year, organizing the neighborhood egg hunt for close to 30 small people armed with baskets and ferocious competition for plastic eggs. This bunny takes donations from parents, so the Friday before the hunt our driveway was a clearing house for people dropping off bags of eggs. The cooler was so full I had to empty it twice and it was fun to see people as they came and went. Having never lived in a neighborhood like this I was enchanted with the whole idea of neighborhood events; needless to say I enjoyed being a part of it. The hunt itself went well, though Mike and I struggled to hide 300+ eggs in time. We had cute prizes for the golden eggs and I wore my very fluffy bunny ears and tried with minimal success to direct the hordes. I didn’t realize how many kids there actually were in the ‘hood, but it was fun to meet them and their parents and marvel at how amazingly polite and well behaved the huge majority were. I’m planning for a Halloween party next, complete with fortune tellers and dry ice punch. I think I may have missed my calling as a Girl Scout mom.

One of our neighbors is expecting twins and has been on bed rest – out came an email asking for help, and a group of us signed up to keep her and her family fed while she stayed off her feet. Coming from a place where I didn’t know my neighbors, and probably couldn’t have even identified by sight 75% of the people who lived within a square block of me, the fact that so many people took on the care and feeding of a neighbor was both shocking and touching. I gladly carried my enchiladas down the street and thought how nice it was to live in a place where people actually look out for each other.

We kicked off summer socializing two weeks ago with a cocktail party on Friday night. Mike made mint juleps and we ended up with a huge group of people who stuck around until well after 10, enjoying the company and the warm evening and the pleasure of being outside with nothing else to do. We’ve been talking about hosting cocktail hour “once it got warm” so it was a pleasure to put it into practice and spend some totally unstructured time enjoying our neighbors. Someone else picked up the torch this week and we were happy to walk down the road and hang out again. I’ve been told that this neighborhood is unique in its desire to socialize but I prefer to think of it as a Tennessee thing. Regardless of whether we “got lucky” with the neighborhood or with the state in general, we’re excited by the social life that is beginning to develop. Often when we drive the back way home or go for a wander in the car, I look at the great houses on many acres of rolling horse pastures and think that we should have bought something like that. In a similar fashion, I daydream about all the great old houses in the long established Nashville neighborhoods whenever we drive into town… but now that we’re getting to know people, having Friday night drinks and casual Tuesday dinners and ‘oh, stop by and chat’ afternoons, I’m so pleased that we chose a neighborhood instead – this neighborhood, in particular. Like the small nose and big family I’ve talked about wanting, I’ve also always wanted a sitcom-style block party neighborhood, and I just might have lucked into one. I’m thrilled!

Time Flies when you’re having Family

That’s the saying, right? It has been a busy sort of spring and now summer is here based on the heat and the thunderstorms and the masses of fireflies hovering above the grass as dusk.  Spring was different this second go ‘round, later and colder and much much wetter than last year. My neighbors assure me that it was “an odd spring” and I’ll take that, because the warmer weather was well overdue in my book when it started showing up in late May. April and May just ran together this year, and we were either away or hosting people more nights than not, the big event being the titular Family Fun that swept into town in honor of my Grandma’s 91^st birthday in late April.

I’ve always yearned for curly hair, a retrousse nose, fine bone structure and a huge family – I imagined I’d marry a man with many siblings and cousins and I would end up with nieces and nephews and a house full of crazy at the holidays. Toss in a perm and a plastic surgeon and I’d be three out of four. Clearly we’ve had epic fail on all counts there, particularly with the nose, but Mike’s small family didn’t really help my case either. When life hands you a paucity of lemons, can you still make lemonade? Our little reunion in April proved that yes, yes you can. It has been a long time since we’ve all been together for more than a few hours, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t more than a few hours nervous about the whole situation. Would we have anything to talk about? Would we argue? Would we be bored? Would they be horrible guests and I a horrid host? Could the house handle sleeping 8? The list of possible pitfalls was tremendous but in the actuality, the worst kerfluffle came simply when Diane tried to hang Grandma’s purse on the back of her chair. That. Simply. Wasn’t. Acceptable.  I’ll challenge any of you to try that little maneuver and keep your hand. A-hem.

Mostly we laughed. A lot. We talked about family history both ancient and recent, set some records straight, recalled Christmases past and considered Christmases future. We drank … well, like fishes. We ate lots of BBQ and lots of Meat & Three and lots of food in general. PK and I reproduced (mostly) the famous Czech Grandmom “buchte” but will live to perfect the recipe. Martha White and her Yeasty Buns featured prominently, as did that most Nashville of events – the Grand Ole Opry.  There was discussion of all living near each other here in this most green of places any of us have ever lived; I think it was our collective European heritage telling us that real people live on fertile farmland, not in the desert.

Maybe the nicest part of the whole weeklong endeavor was that PK and I became friends in a way that was never possible as kids growing up six years and 500 miles apart. We discovered that we share oddities in common that we’ve chalked up entirely to shared genetics, not the least of which being a love of cooking and a sick need to take the scrawniest plant in the nursery home so that it won’t die lonely on the shelf. I’m angling for him to move here and meet some nice Southerner and settle down so that we can look forward to not just a few holidays a year but instead a nice lifetime of Sunday BBQs and bourbon drinking and riotous living, indeed.

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Speaking of riotous living… we celebrated Mother’s Day just a few weeks after the birthday bash by having both our moms here for a road trip to Memphis & Mississippi. We were on the Elvis trail, and we did it up right – a night at the Peabody and front row seats at the Duck Parade, blues on Beale, Lemon Icebox Pie (from Charlie Cavallos Cupboard, natch) and Tupelo to see where the whole Elvis thing began.

In keeping with the wet spring we had plenty of rain that weekend, soaking us thoroughly in Oxford and keeping the car wet all the way to Tupelo. There isn’t much along the side of the road to look at in northern Mississippi but green vines and trees and now at least we know why they are so green. We did stop and look at some great old antebellum homes and learn about the poor Chickasaws who clearly got the short end of the stick. We had a surprisingly good dinner in an extraordinarily funky restaurant, played Hearts, visited a Frank Lloyd Wright house in Alabama and drove home along the Natchez Trace, mile after mile of swooping green parkway and little history and nature stops.  At one point we took the “Old Trace” loop for 3 miles, barely rolling along a barely paved road that took us into a stand of trees so dense that the filtered light was, scouts honor, green. We stopped the car and got out and the silence was amazing, filled with little bits of sound that I’d never notice in a populated place. Rustling leaves and settling gravel, but also tiny breaths of breeze, flowers unfolding, bees pollinating, dust motes settling down on lichen covered rocks and my own inner voice, whispering softly that I was home, home, home.

Somewhere in the last month of visitors and travel and chaos, something about here has become home. I don’t know if it was showing off how pretty it is (Stupidly, like I have something to do with the rolling hills or the cardinals or the dogwoods… geez. All I can take any marginal credit for were the masses of tulips in the front yard) or telling people about it or driving to Memphis twice in the space of one week and feeling how different it is from here. Maybe it was the house guests or the plane rides or the sweet relief of getting off an airplane and being done. Maybe it was surviving, and sleeping, my first two nights alone in the house, but whatever it was, something’s gone to the green side and this feels more like home and less like trying. I’ve got house guests galore in the coming months, so we’ll see how entrenched I feel by then. Maybe some of them will stay. Maybe I’ll manage to recruit the family entirely. One can hope. Home is expansive.

One Year, +2

Spring is a fickle, fickle girl. The tulips are blooming and the peas have come up and this morning we had hail and a tornado watch. A year ago today the movers delivered our furniture and I sat on the front steps marking off boxes and getting sunburned, oblivious to the fact that Tennessee was showing us a kindness in weather; today we had patio chairs delivered in a deluge and I didn’t even venture outside to sign for them.  Daffodils were the first calling card spring delivered this year, glowing swaths of gold that appeared out of nowhere. Then came the Bradford Pear trees, giant white hydrangeas floating midair. The redbuds started next, violet vitality in otherwise bare woods. Then, much to my surprise, the cherry trees were covered in pink frosting. Driving into the neighborhood last April, I contracted my first case of keeping up with the neighbors at the sight of a weeping cherry in every front yard. I promptly planted my own and watched it bloom this year – a full week earlier than I expected. Returning from California, I see there are dogwoods coming into their own now, much sooner than last year…. But we are still bare branched in most places, far more so than I remember a year ago, and I’m wondering where the leaves are. Of course, I’m wondering where we are, too, so the leaves might just be a side effect.

We left Altadena early on April 5th last year, pulling out of town in on a dreary morning in a car packed with unhappy animals and no shortage of mixed emotions. We had to drive (flying with Guinea Pigs is not recommended), but it turned out that the drive was the best thing we could have done for ourselves. The abrupt nature of air travel doesn’t lend itself to life transitions, and I don’t know that I would have been as mentally balanced as I was about the move had our first steps in Tennessee as residents had been on the tarmac rather than at the Visitors Welcome Center off I65. The slow transfer of 2000 miles from ahead to behind let us ease into the idea that we were leaving the west “for real.” The landscape felt familiar through Texas, but somewhere in Oklahoma it began to change, and by the time we woke up last April 8th in Missouri, I knew that we had really left home behind. The final day of driving was the hardest and the closer we got the more knotted my stomach became, but under the knot was also a relief that we were almost done, that we’d made it, that we were starting a whole new adventure once we parked. True or not, I managed to transfer my desire to stop moving to a desire to be here; a cheap trick, but it worked.

A year later, we stepped off a plane and onto that tarmac and I felt as disoriented as though I had never driven the lonely road from there to here. I don’t know that my timing of a trip to California (our first real visit) could have been much worse than to coincide with our anniversary of moving; I spent my time there in an odd haze of feeling like I was home, and my week here since being back in an even odder haze of feeling like I am home. I’d like to make like a guinea pig and get in my chube and stay there until the confusion passes. LA felt very big to me, and busy, and dirty, all things I never really noticed until I’d lived somewhere green and small town and hey, y’all, stop in the middle of street and chat. The persistence of the green here means we don’t have dry roadsides and barren strips – our grass covers more sins. On the other hand, I saw the silhouette of palm trees against a darkening sky, the shape of downtown and the presence of the mountains and I could have cried at the LA-beauty of it all, brash and bare and kind of ugly, except that is isn’t at all.

There were moments, no doubt, when I fervently wished for the life I had left behind to be restored to me, right now, click the heels on the ruby slippers, I’m home. I miss fitting in, having friends, knowing where to go and who to call and wow, the sheer variety of choice on one street. I miss my friends terribly, and saying goodbye to them was just as painful as ever – maybe more, because now I know what it is to live without them. It was odd to know that life there has just marched on, steadily, while we’ve been here moving forward in jolts and spurts and sometimes completely sitting still. There were also moments when I thought how lucky we were to be living here, in the midst of all of this green, with the bulbs blooming and my garden planned, the neighborhood we’re beginning to feel a part of and the space to breathe. I find it easier to let life unfold here without as much strain; my feathers are ruffled less than they used to be. I enjoy getting less worked up, but I do worry if it means I’m getting soft, the Aimee equivalent of Mike driving around Pasadena like a Tennessean, slowly and with consideration for others.

I guess the sum of it is that I don’t wish we’d stayed, but I’m not 100% glad we left. A year isn’t really enough to sort through all the permutations of a complete uprooting of life; it is silly of me to have expected the heavens to open with a proclamation one way or another on April 8th, one year later. I’m still enjoying the differences, still missing the familiar. Maybe it will always be that way – I’ll always be from California in some inalterable way, though I am starting to identify with the things that drew me to Tennessee. I’m waiting until summer, I think, to have truly been here a year anyway. This spring is different from what we saw last year, and besides, we spent all of last year’s spring moving boxes and exploring Home Depot. This year I plan to soak it up, spending more time outside building a garden than indoors building a home. When summer rolls around and I can look outside and say, ah, yes, I remember this, then I’ll consider myself one year gone. Besides, isn’t the honeymoon period two years?

A prelude to considering a year

I’m trying my hardest to remember if there were more leaves when we arrived on this day last year, or less. I know there were more cherry blossoms, less dogwood flowers and a significantly larger quantity of boxes and unknowns. Probably a similar amount of emotional upheaval, since I managed to plan our first trip back to California since moving to coincide with a year of living here, making April 8 the day of arrival in Tennessee times two. I have things to say about this, I think, but if I arrived a year ago today overwhelmed and excited, today just finds me exhausted from a red eye and wishing for the soft embrace of the pillow. The internet connection allows for posting, but the mental capacity has nothing more to say than “ohh, look at the pretty tulips in my front yard.”

More tomorrow.

Spring Report #6

Spring Report #5

Spring Report #4

Spring Report #3

Spring Report #2

Northbound, Southbound, whatever...

…. That damn train that runs behind the house needs to be muzzled. We think they are working on the tracks during the day, so the train is running at night. It has an erratic schedule on the best of weeks, and usually I don’t notice it, but all week it has gone by just as I am dropping off to sleep (so somewhere around midnight) and the driver is working hard to make sure he is wide awake. If I hear that damn whistle blow (who came up with that, whistle? It isn’t a whistle, it is a honking horn, loud enough to startle the pigs, make the cat yowl and wake Mike from deep sleep, which is really saying something) ONE MORE TIME at midnight I’m calling the railroad and complaining.

I understand the whistle, or the horn, or whatever we’re going to call it. There are two crossings on either side of our neighborhood that are un-guarded. Each is about a mile from the house, and I do understand that the HORN needs to be sounded to warn the unwary. Both these roads are so lightly travelled during the day, though, that I can’t imagine a steady stream of traffic is tying up the tracks at midnight… A few short honks would do the trick, but I think the driver is hitting the horn at one crossing a mile to the north and leaning on it ALL THE WAY through to the other crossing a mile to the south.

Two miles of earsplitting horn in the middle of the night gets old, train guy. And I guarantee you that the one little dinky farm road in the middle – the one right opposite our house with the rusty gate and lock that has clearly rusted shut? Yeah, no one is crossing the tracks on a tractor right there. Especially not at midnight.  That extra burst of sound you like to lay on for the benefit of that potential farmer? Pretty unnecessary. So lay off the horn, already. It isn’t like it is as cool as the mournful hoooooonk of the Monorail. And until it is, SHUT IT.

Beginnings, Again

We’re in our last month of firsts, the homestretch before we reach the year marker, 12 months, 52 weeks and 365 days of not being in California anymore, Toto. The time has flown; it is hard for me to believe it has been that long since we were consumed with boxes and uncertainty. I’ll miss the firsts, once they pass into seconds and then march onwards to thirds and fourths and who knows how manys – experiencing something for the first time, be it red leaves or snow or the return of the robins is an electric thrill. I’m sure that thrill is part of why I travel:  the pleasure of the unknown and the unexpected make the flights and the tiredness forgettable. Living in a new place has been a sort of travel for me, the sedentary kind for sure, with the pleasures unfolding slowly rather than exploding, but I’ve enjoyed it no less for its pace. The anticipation of the new has made the longing for the old bearable; I’ve been able to concentrate on where I am in a new way.

Waiting for the seasons to change here has been one long lead up to Christmas, the anticipation of the first signs of a new stage of time, signaled by some natural thing that I’ve generally only read about. Maybe those seasons are why it feels this year of firsts has gone so quickly. Just when I was wondering when I could wear jeans again, I woke up one morning to honking geese and a change in the air. About when I thought the riot of color across the hills couldn’t sustain itself much longer, it was gone, faded into gray and brown and frost on the lawn. Then came the anticipation of snow, and it arrived right on time, heralding the beginning of the Christmas season with a flourish. Now, as I tire of apples and root vegetables and cold hands, I see clumps of daffodils along the side of the road. My own bulbs are starting to make an appearance and the trees look a bit lumpy with buds. We’ve had a flock of robins lately, hundreds of them wheeling in the yard and filling the bare branches with spots of rusty red. I’ve seen a few bluebirds, too, and heard the chirping beginnings of spring from every quarter.

I’m having a hard time conceptualizing the changes that I know must be coming in the next month, though – we had a snow over the weekend, and I can still see patches of white stuff from my office window. It is melting, but slowly. The buds on the trees are just that – buds. The nights are still dipping below freezing, and it wasn’t exactly warm yesterday evening when we walked along the tracks. Spring may be scheduled, but it has a lot of work to do before it arrives. What amazes me is that when we arrived last year, spring had clearly beaten us – the redbud trees were riots of purple along the roads, the grass was tall and wild and the cherry trees were in full bloom, prompting my first ‘keep up with the neighbors’ moment. Now I have my own blooming, weeping Japanese cherry in the front yard, clearly visible from my office window, and I have my eye on her – but she’s still keeping secrets. The grass hasn’t grown, the red buds aren’t budding and the Whistle Pigs are only beginning to poke their noses out. But it is March 4^th! We drove into our driveway for the first time on April 8^th last year – Mother Nature has one month and four days to produce a miracle.

I think this was the season change I was most excited about and now that it is almost here, I can’t wait. I’m ready for spring food, spring weather, spring green. I want to enjoy the season this year, sitting outside rather than unpacking boxes, walking in the evening rather than fretting about the closets – this won’t be my first spring, but it will be the first one I am free to experience and take in. We have family coming in mid- April, and I’m really rooting for the dogwoods to be showing themselves. Having lived through a winter (however mild) I’m feeling particularly justified in wanting spring, another fresh start. Last year was still, in many ways, limbo. I don’t think the last box was emptied until fall, and the house didn’t feel settled until Christmas. This coming year, though not our first technically, feels like it will be our first in the realities of living here, of being settled, of being. I know that the year changes over in the darkness of winter, but I always think of it happening now, with the emergence of the bulbs and the return of the leaves and the warmth, all new growth and explosion of possibility. It was a happy coincidence to have moved at this time of year, because it allows me to mark my time here in the same way – out of the darkness of winter, new life and opportunity arrives, singing.

Snowbirds, Seasons, Shadows and Snot

All kinds of lovely “s” words today, the most classy and fascinating of course being the snot. But hey, at least I’m no longer talking about that other “s” word of late, septic … and the other obvious “s” word that goes with it. So really, it is a step up around here. Except for the snot, which has claimed my sinuses  for England and isn’t going to give them up without a fight.  I don’t get very many colds and so when I do I am miserable, and I suspect everyone around me is also miserable because I complain and moan and whine and wonder when I will be passing into the hereafter, because this COLD, it is KILLING me.

It is a particularly bad time to be battling the snot because I am scheduled to join the other, more northerly snowbirds on Sunday for a flight to Orlando. I’ll be attending a conference all week, meaning I’ll be sitting in an arctic conference room all week wondering how warm and sunny it is outside and hoping that my nose will stop running. For myself and those that are going to have to be around me, I really hope the snot is under control by then.  Mike is coming for the weekend and we’re going to revel in the warmth of Florida in February where the forecasted lows for the coming ten days are higher  than the forecasted highs for Nashville. While we frolic at the House of Mouse next Saturday it could be snowing at home. I am really starting to understand why birds and old people go south for the winter.

Actually, I’ve enjoyed winter here thus far. Like many of the things I was worried about before we moved, the cold winter has been a non-issue. When it is really cold and hovers below freezing for a few days I make soup, wear scarves and park close to the entrance to the restaurants. It isn’t bad, and I like the bright sunny days that are skin slapping cold. The unexpectedness of the cold air and the pleasure of a warm building afterwards are fun. I know that we don’t have “real” winter here … the snow, though it has fallen quite a few times, has only stuck once. The sky is generally blue and the clouds and wind come through and leave quite quickly. Unlike those unlucky in Kentucky folks, we’ve had power and heat all winter, and with the exception of the time the dirt rollers colonized our furnace, we’ve been toasty warm in the house. (What are dirt rollers? I haven’t a clue, but the man who fixed the furnace said we had a whole mess of them keeping warm over the burners in the furnace and preventing it from lighting.)

The trees are bare; instead of one hundred shades of green, I’m seeing multiple variations of gray and brown, bracing lines against a clear blue sky. Without the shelter of leaves, the birds are on full display, more muted than in the spring and summer but easier to spot. The large tree-ish bush cluster in our back yard is home to a pair of cardinals that flit around. I can see them from my bedroom window, little bright spots even on the bleakest day. The views are different too – I now know that there are houses on some of the surrounding hills that I’d never been able to see, and visually I can see how roads connect now that every corner and rise isn’t frosted with thick green. This is how it looked when we bought the house so it seems a little more familiar than the flamboyant flush of summer. This we’ve seen before and I don’t mind its spare simplicity, or the contract it provides to the beauty that I know is coming.

Still, I do understand the snowbirds. We went to Honolulu for a long weekend in January and the warm air and smell of flowers was intoxicating. Finally I understand the allure of the tropics, especially in the winter. We flew from here to Chicago to LA to Honolulu on a freezing Saturday that started out snowy and made a westward progression to somewhere more compatible with the kind of clothes we were wearing. The white, wan faces of Midwesterners arriving to the warm caress of Hawaii felt strangely familiar this year – we couldn’t get over the sun! the warm! the smell! the Hawaii! I am hooked. Clearly, every January is going to require a trip to St. Somewhere. Jimmy Buffett has it right. I had no idea how much the warmth could appeal … how could I? I’ve had it year round my entire life. I may no longer have warm January afternoons, but at least now I appreciate their glory.

It has been unseasonably warm here for the past few days. Anna visited and brought California weather with her and failed to take it home. I was hoping she’d get the pleasure of a few bracingly cold days, and frankly, I’m not ready for warm weather yet. My bulbs need a few more weeks of really cold nights, and we’d like our trees to get some more rain before things warm up. The great and honorable Punxsutawney Phil, Seer of Seers, Prognosticator of all Prognosticators saw his shadow, and so six more weeks of winter we shall have. Mike thinks the ground hog is crazy, but I think that winter isn’t done with us yet. Besides, I’m going to Florida next week and Phoenix in three and I want to enjoy that delirious rush of snowbird freedom at least two more times.  Meantime, here’s to winter, that much maligned and misunderstood season (also known merely as February in California).  I’m not moving further north anytime soon, but I like Tennessee winter just fine. Good thing, then, that I believe in the groundhog!

Septic System Facts (learned the hard way)

• They lurk underground
• Nothing, but nothing, should be put in them other than, well, yeah (try explaining that to guests)
• When they start to get backed up, all the pipes in the house make scary gurgling noises
• Pumps are a necessary component in the whole solids/liquids/3 tank system
• All the gentle, non chemical cleaners in the world can’t prevent a blockage if the pump isn’t working
• Pumps that were NEVER CONNECTED TO THE ELECTRICAL SYSTEM by your home builder don’t (go figure) pump
• A septic system that has no pump working on it for an entire year gets backed up
• See above about scary gurgling noises
• Plumbers who say “I have never seen this in my career” when referring to your lack of a powered septic pump are going to leave a bill that you do not want to pay
• Opening the covers to the septic system and peering inside exposes one to a rather unpleasant smell
• The “unpleasant smell” is really worse than unpleasant and leans more toward violently putrid
• Waste inside clogged septic systems forms something referred to as a “raft” but not one you’d like to float on
• The “raft” is probably the source of the putrid smell
• Water escaping from under said “raft” forms a geyser, but not one you want in your vacation photos
• I never knew I would be so happy to see a toilet bowl fill or a sink drain normally
• I prefer city maintained sewers

That is all.

Mile High

Denver is one of those airports I rarely leave – we connect there, in and out in the thin air and then on to somewhere else. I think I’ve only left the airport twice, and once was by force thanks to a combination of weather and airline ineptitude. When we walked out of the terminal Friday night I was struck by the novelty of seeing the Colorado landscape from a constant altitude.

Actually, Denver is a city I haven’t spent any real time in. I lived in Colorado for a summer and went to Denver a grand total of once, for a Rockies game and a wander through a LoDo I wasn’t old enough to drink in. The majority of that summer was spent driving into the mountains and out onto the prairie at all hours of the night, blasting Garth Brooks and singing out the windows. Denver was too much a city to hold our attention those warm months of our last summer of irresponsibility.

Denver some horrifying number of years later was perfectly capable of keeping us busy for two days, and our winter training in Tennessee thus far meant that we walked to the car thinking it “wasn’t that cold” only to see flakes of snow swirling around the street lights. How things change, when a Californian thinks mid thirties “aren’t that cold.” I guess I’m wearing socks with my loafers permanently these days, though I actually wore my new Christmas cowboy boots which kept my feet warm and qualified me (in my opinion, at least) for the pink and green cowboy shirt I bought from Rockmount Ranchware, a longtime business in Denver and inventor of the snap-front western shirt. The building is from 1908 (old for a western town) and is part of the great old building haven that is LoDo, lots of brick and square architecture, arcades of windows and fancy saloon doors on the fronts and nothing but blank faces with faded advertisements painted on the sides. Further out, Denver sports the sad evidence of a building boom in the 70’s and 80’s, but in downtown someone fought the good fight for the old warehouses; it isn’t hard to imagine the streets filled with ox carts and the wooden sidewalks crammed with prospectors and cowboys lookin’ for a good time.

We spent time in the Colorado History museum, where I lost Mike to a huge room filled with mining equipment and at Hammond’s Candies (well out of downtown) where he lost me to people making lollipops by hand. I’d never seen hard candy being made and I was amazed at how alive the rope of flexible candy was. Four people were making heart shaped suckers – one pulled a stretch of candy and cut it; it slithered across the heated surface to the woman who lifted one end and coiled it, just like a cowboy and a lasso. The next person dimpled the top into the bow of a heart and pinched the point at the bottom, and the last inserted the stick and slid it onwards to harden. That the store at the end of the tour was a wonderland of color and sugar didn’t hurt the experience, nor did the amazing sweet smell of the air inside. No wonder the Oompa Loompas were a little nuts – I was sugar high in just half an hour.

We learned that not living near stores we like makes us unrestrained shoppers, that altitude really does give flatlanders headaches and dry  mouths and that Denverites love to eat breakfast out. A huge percentage of the nice restaurants in downtown serve a breakfast or a brunch and also believe in morning cocktails. I ate a pancake flight the first morning, beignets the second and if we had breakfast spots like that in Nashville I’d stay in for dinner and get out for breakfast far more often.  Leaving Denver behind, we drove to Golden and cruised downtown (where we saw geese skating on a frozen pond) and braved the winds of Lookout Mountain to see Buffalo Bill’s grave. Lonely place, up that high, whistling wind tearing through the pines. I don’t think he was considering January when he wanted to be buried up there; it was colder than cold – but maybe he knew that people would flock to Colorado, and he’d need to be up here, clinging to the rock, just to have some privacy. Looking down and out shows the growth of Denver and its associated communities, spreading across the prairie in a way I don’t remember from college, expanding to fill the open space in every direction. I think people spend so much time looking at the mountains that they sometimes miss the beauty of the flat plain that runs into them, seeing it as nothing more than space to fill with houses and buildings and roads … but I remember the drives across the sweet grass scented prairie evenings with as much fondness as I do the twisty mountain roads. I like that intermediate space where the flat ends, full stop, and starts pushing skyward, and I’m sorry to see it as covered up as it has become. I think Bill would be too.

The associated gift shop sold the most appalling ticky tacky and I wondered why it is that people associate cutesy bears and cartoon trees with the rugged intensity of the Rockies. I’ve seen this same kind of kitsch in every gift store I’ve seen in mountain towns in Colorado, and the sheer disconnect boggles me. I bought the kind of postcard that I remember from my childhood (a faded photo and deckle edges) and then we headed back down and skirted the mountain all the way to Boulder and on to Longmont, to streets that I still know how to navigate and the warm glow of good friends and shared memories and glorious Mexican food. Leaving the restaurant we split into the girls’ car and the boys’ car and if you’d been anywhere within a couple of blocks you would have heard about this thing called wantin’ and havin’ it all blasting from a car taking the long way home, in the dark, just because it could. I guess some things never change, and as much as I liked Denver, that’s the best reason I can think of to leave the airport more often.

Here's the proof: Denver

Post Holiday Blues

Is there anyone out there who doesn’t find the post holiday time more than a little … flat? I can’t get my head around the new year, fresh start, clean slate thing because, honestly, it is still lolling around in the sugarplum dreams of December .(Though I ate a sugarplum this year, and I’m not sure that I want to dream of them any longer. It alternated between stunningly good and tasting like vomit. No joke, pinky swear.) Peppermint dreams, then, maybe, or fudge. Or divinity, that heavenly white concoction of sugar and air and obsessive checking to see if it is ready, not yet, not yet, not yet, oh, now, go go go, time to get it out and top it with a cherry that I made with my moms a couple of days before Christmas. I love the whole Yule season, the rushing and the crowded malls, the odd hours, the baking and wrapping and the decorations, the obsessive replaying of “Santa Baby” on every sound system. I am a certified Christmas junkie, and if I get less sleep in the weeks leading up to the holiday, that’s ok with me because it means I spend more hours lit by tree lights.

The satisfying house-guesty-ness of a Christmas far from family was lovely. I had people other than us for a grand total of ten days, and even the Piggahs thought it was too quiet when finally, we made the last run to the airport. They’ve spent the last eight days wheeking loudly and constantly, making their own shrill dent in the settling silence that has come with departures and the dismantling of decorations. I gave my kitchen its first real workout, cooking to a menu each day – in all that time, we only ate out four meals, two at Waffle House and one at the Cracker Barrel, because it wouldn’t be a visit to the South without a tab at both of those institutions. I loved having my family here when I went to bed and when I woke up, and it stretched the actual holiday into days of subtle pleasure. For the first time in, oh, ever, I didn’t stay up late wrapping gifts alone; our movie room was a blizzard of paper and ribbon and lost scissors and I had my mom, and then later, Mike’s mom, to keep me company. If I missed the social aspects of Christmas this year (the holiday lunch, the dinner with the girls, the holiday concert) and Oh, I did, I at least had the wonderful salve of constant family to rub on the wound. We kept Christmas well this year, and I enjoyed every minute.

Which might be bringing me back to the flat. Because now that it is over, I find the expanse of calendar that stretches ahead to be mightily empty. We’ve been here almost a year, now, and without the rush of unpacking, decorating, preparing for guests and then the lead up to the holiday season, the fact that we don’t really know anyone is looming larger than it has in the past. I think I’ve been in a honeymoon period with moving, and now I’m going to have to face the hard work of a marriage. Finding friends isn’t the easiest endeavor, and with both of us working from home, it is even harder. I suppose we could invite the UPS guy in for coffee, since we see him with more regularity than anyone else, but I don’t think that’s quite going to cut it. I’m sure there are people out there that we would like, but the self pitying part of me thinks that they won’t like us. And the realistic part wonders how we will ever find them anyway. I’ve got this whole house set up and ready for dinner parties, and no one to cook for… when I start sending out photos of my stuffed animals sitting at the table for Ponteuf’s birthday, please come visit and rescue me from myself, mmmkay?

Seasonality – or how I learned to love my coat

It is clearly fall here now, slip sliding into winter, and if I had any doubt that I’d left California behind, it has now been solidly proven that Toto, we’re not in LA anymore. I’ve always listed “fall” as my favorite season, but that’s been for the idea of fall: new school year, new books, Halloween and the promise of more holidays. The few cool and crispy days southern California sees somewhere in the warm lead up to Christmas have always been, for me, the most delicious. Visions of baked apples and squash and soups dance in my head the minute October rolls around, roasts and casseroles and cozy food for a cold night. Never mind that my “cold nights” have been, on average, warmer than my sunny days here for the past week – I thought I needed good warming fall cuisine.

Cold night? It was 30° on my screened porch last night at 10pm. T.H.I.R.T.Y. Our little weather station was flashing its ice warning when I stepped outside to see just how thirty felt. Mike’s bare feet said it wasn’t worth more than about ten seconds, but I was slightly more prepared and a lingered longer, feeling the cold slap against my cheeks, resisting my presence and finding all the weak spots in my clothes. Air here has more personality than I’ve ever experienced. It caresses in the spring, bear hugs in the summer and now here it is slapping me like I’ve done something wrong. I have done something wrong, honestly – I’ve been failing to wear my coat.

It isn’t like I don’t want to be warm. I like my coat(s) – buying them, and resurrecting the few second layers that I do own has been fun. My coat closet in LA was mostly decorative, occasionally called into use when I wanted to wear a really light shirt in February, or knew I’d be by the beach after dark, or when my mom was visiting. This coat closet is twice the size, and thank goodness, because I’m in there every day – or trying to be.  Good grief, if isn’t like I don’t have things to keep me warm. The current tally stands:

• 2x soccer hoodies from Europe (the bright orange Netherlands one winning me approving nods from locals who think the orange is for the Vols)
• 2x ankle length overcoats
• 1x triple lined with hood heavy REI-type raincoat (with decorative Japanese kitsch hanging from every zipper)
• 1x sweater coat
• 1x knee length overcoat (so much easier to walk and get in and out of cars in than the long ones)
• 1x lightly lined trench coat
• 1x lightweight fleece
• 2x denim jackets (haaaaaaaaaaa)
• 1x knit poncho (double haaaaaaaaa)
• 1x Patagonia barn coat from high school
• 1x standard San Francisco during the dot com boom black leather jacket
• 1x rain shell
• 1x mid weight fuzzy jacket for wearing under rain shell
• 4x scarves

… and that doesn’t include anything belonging to Mike. If you’re planning a visit in winter, never fear, I’ve got your outdoor needs covered. The thing is, I consistently leave the house without any of these cleverly designed warmth devices – or with the inappropriate ones. Last month we were driving around enjoying the comfortable early fall with the top down when we spotted a sign for a “Haunted Woods” near Leiper’s Fork. Haunted Woods are not around every bend in LA and I was intrigued so we went that evening. I thought I was so clever, wearing heavy weight cargo pants, a thin sweater and a light fleece. I had a scarf, but no socks. The line to get into the woods was over an hour long – and it was 43°. It had been such a pleasant and mild afternoon (much like California) that it never occurred to me that it might get, oh, COLD once the sun went down. By the time we actually got into the haunted woods (which were quite haunted and a good scare) I could barely feel the ends of my fingers.

We’ve been driving around looking at the fall colored trees – what I thought was fall color a month ago was just a warm up for the real color we’ve had in the last two weeks – and the sun generally shines, tricking me into thinking that I don’t need a coat. I look out the window of the house, see sun, assume sixties and hop into the car. Then we get where we’re going and I open the door to a burst of bracing air and shiver. Inevitably, the days I take a coat I barely need one, and the days I forget I pay the price with shivering and cold that ends with me swearing at the seat heaters to hurry up and get warm faster, damnit.

Our CSA held an end of season party at the farm two Sundays ago, and we were the picture of California incompetence. It had been a chilly day, in the high 40’s and low 50’s and it was cloudy. We drove to the farm wondering if we’d be cold, wearing only two layers. I had a trench coat and a scarf – Mike had what amounted to a flannel hoodie. He pretty quickly took my scarf and when we walked up to the bonfire, roaring away at 5pm and doing only a marginal job at spreading warmth and light in the gathering gloom of a cloudy evening we knew we had been outclassed by the weather yet again. The other party-goers were in heavy coats. Hats. Ear muffs. Gloves. We made it an hour before our feeble excuse for outerwear gave up, suffocated by the smoke and completely defeated by the sub 40° evening. We slunk home with the heater on full blast and lamented that yet again, we had completely underestimated the cold.

The stupid thing is that when we travel in cold places, we’re prepared. Christmas markets in Germany? We’re good. St. Louis in January? We did ok. October in Berlin saw us overdressed for what turned out to be a mild weekend… but our own home? We’re woefully stupid about what we need to stay warm when we leave the house.  Having never lived anywhere with real cold, we both assume that long sleeves are enough, and that the distance between the car and the store can’t  be long enough (or cold enough) to warrant an outer layer. Very funny, these assumptions, and we all know what happens when we assume.  We’re going to have to improve, because I’m pretty sure the temperature is going to continue to drop. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to head out to the garden – I have about 200 bulbs left to plant and the sun is shining – the temp has climbed past 40° and I’d better take advantage of it. My coat? Nah, I don’t need it today, I’m sure…

Ich Liebe Berlin

I have a confession: I was afraid I wouldn’t like Berlin. Worse, I was afraid I would actively dislike Berlin, that the three days we spent there would be cold and gray and tedious, marked by desperate attempts to stay warm and find something we liked enough to brave the cold for. I kept remembering being frozen and sick in Paris, searching to find the magic that so many people told me was there and coming up wanting. I could hear my friend from college who spent her study abroad time in Berlin lamenting the gray, the concrete, the cold and the depressing facts of what had happened there. Friends of the family who lived there similarly named it depressing. Gray. When I told people we were going, they got that glazed over sound to their voices, mumbled “how nice” but didn’t mean it. Worst of all, there was Daniel,  President of the I love Berlin club of America. I didn’t want to disappoint him, I didn’t want to have to come up with nice things to say, be vague, skirt the topic. Disliking Berlin would be horrible. My fear was, I would.

Sometimes being proven absolutely stupidly wrong is wonderful.

I feel like I should write about all the things that we saw – true to form, we crammed in most of the big ticket items. Jewish Museum? Check. Brandenburg Gate? Check. Reichstag? Check, at least from the outside. Impressive streets, impressive churches, impressive shopping, check, check and check. Art, architecture, history, modern, Prussian – we even managed a visit to Knut, the famous and very cheeky polar bear star of the Berlin Zoo. I could talk about all of these places and more in detail, describe the fabulously modern buildings at Potsdamer Platz or the thoughtful Liebskind building housing the Jewish Museum. I could geek out over the DDR museum, complete with a furnished apartment and a sit in Trabi. Checkpoint Charlie and the museum about the wall and the Topography of Terror exhibit displayed on the rubble foundations of the Gestapo HQ – all deserve devoted discussion. The problem is, all I want to do is talk about Berlin.

For a city with immense history, Berlin doesn’t spend much time looking backward. Certainly, it says, I understand why you think you’ve come here. Please, be my guest: consider my past glory, revel in my Prussian beauty, mourn my scars – and when you’re done with all that, come talk to me and I’ll show you what really matters.  Because what matters in Berlin is what it IS, not what it was.

It isn’t that the past isn’t here – it is. Oh, how it is. I was overcome with the immensity of many of the places we walked. I braved the crowds and made Mike take my picture in front of the Brandenburg Gate, and if you could zoom in enough, you’d see that my eyes are suspiciously shiny. I was actually choked up walking down Unter den Linden and I told Mike, voice shaky, that I didn’t realize how geeked out I would be by actually being in Berlin. I marveled at how Prussian it was, and how different that was from the Bavarian Germany that I knew. So much German history has never fit for me with the towns I’ve visited near Munich but here, in the capital of capitals, I finally understood the history I had learned years ago to be true.

History was everywhere I looked – especially recent history. In my lifetime, the streets I was casually strolling have been off limits, the city itself carved in two, amputated. Each side must have been constantly aware of its phantom limb, itching and aching in the middle of the night. Amazingly, today, there is little way to note what was where and belonged to whom unless you carry a pre ’89 map in your head. The wall is mostly gone, preserved in a few places behind protective fences; all that remains is a double line of cobblestones meandering oddly through the streets. Photographs of Potsdamer Platz left me openmouthed, amazed at the transformation of bare no man’s land to modern city in such a short time. I remember when the wall fell: photographs and video of people climbing the it, knocking it down, celebrating its demise. I remember the time before, the fear and apprehension, the us versus them, and then, amazingly, I remember the time after when, for all its momentous import, the fall ceased to be thought of at all, as though the wall had never been there. Walking those streets, seeing people who lived through the change, perhaps on the fabled “other side,” seeing the places in the old West that were developed to replace what was walled off, I felt my feet itch. I was there. It was amazing. I’d never considered that recent history could be as exciting as the far past, and I’m grateful to Berlin for teaching me that lesson.

I feel like I’ve contradicted myself, spending paragraphs talking about history after asserting that is isn’t what makes Berlin. The thing is, it isn’t – but that doesn’t make it any less powerful. Instead, it makes Berlin that much more impressive, because with as much as has happened there, Berlin could, like so many cities, rest on its laurels. People would come just for what happened, and the center could be a tourist area, and no one would be the wiser, but Berlin manages to transcend. More than anywhere else I’ve been in Europe, Berlin far exceeds the sum of its parts. All of those wonderful things we saw – they aren’t Berlin. All the history that I soaked up like a greedy sponge – it isn’t Berlin either. You could visit every museum, see every monument, read every posted sign, and if that’s all you saw, if that’s all you came to see –you’d leave having missed the entire place. That sort of tourism works fine in a city like Rome, where what you are there to see is obvious, or Salzburg where you walk through the mountain and into a theme park, but Berlin is vital now, its spirit and continuing evolution trumping its statues and grand buildings. Seeing it has to become interactive; you have to be open to the idea that drinking outside with a space heater and a lap blanket and a bunch of locals is as important as the Kulturforum, perhaps (blasphemy) more.

I get the sense that people actually live in Berlin, not just at the edges but right in the center, shopping at KaDeWe and seeing movies at Sony Center, feeding the seals at the zoo and drinking by the Spree as it flows past the Dom and the museums. The monuments and major buildings were lit up while we were there for a Festival of Lights, and people, very obviously Berliners, not tourists, were clustered in front of every building we saw, watching the light show and seriously setting up cameras to take photos. I liked the levity it takes to turn historical buildings magenta and neon green; yes, it says, these are historical buildings and they should be appreciated, but we are here, today, now, and we’re going to dress them up twenty-first century style.

I wouldn’t send someone to Berlin for their first trip to Europe, or maybe even their fifth. I can imagine that if I had gone there before I’d been to other cities that fit more with what tourists think of as “European” I’ve have been disappointed. There isn’t time travel in Berlin the way there is in Rome – hell, the Nikolaiviertel, a quaint, medieval quarter by the river full of shops and restaurants isn’t old – it was built by the DDR in 1987. My InsideOut guide, printed when the Euro was new, was missing huge chunks of what I saw. Berlin is not static. Instead of waking up in the past, visiting Berlin is waking up in the now, taking part in the daily living of a city that knows how to live well. The city is changing around your ears as you walk, mixing in some new with some old, some east with west, tossing outside influence in for good measure and yet still remaining, somehow, essentially German in a way that I didn’t understand until I was there. I arrived virtually blind, armed with my studies of history and a list from Daniel but a complete lack of understanding about what I would find. I left in love with a city, and I can’t wait to return.

see what I saw ... Berlin

Happy Halloween!

We're headed next door for trick or treating, but the porch is ready. All that spiderweb will glow under a blacklight once it is dark. Bring on the witches!

Spotted in his natural habitat

Pontuef in the Chicago Red Carpet Club, waiting for a flight to Frankfurt and on to Berlin. He'll be home Monday night, all full of curry wurst and doner and the world's best bread.

Six Months Ago

 Six months ago today, we hadn’t even been here a week. Our stuff was still in boxes, and I’m pretty sure that we were still using the travel toiletries we’d crossed the country with. I was working from a tiny space I’d carved out of the boxes in the kitchen – the kitchen itself was more of a storage area than a place where food was prepared . The yard was wild with spring growth and we had nary a blade to cut it, the John Deere being merely a twinkle in Mike’s eye. In a practical sense, I felt that we’d be living out of boxes forever. Emotionally, I wasn’t sure what was happening.

Six months ago today, we were dealing with the loss of Sidney, who predated our marriage by more almost two years. He’d enjoyed the cross country drive, but small dog old age got the better of him before we’d even begun to settle in. In considering the shock of losing him, I had to also consider that he was eleven, and how could we possibly have been living together that long? Weren’t we just out of college, still?

Six months ago today, the reality of just how far we were from friends and family hadn’t really sunk in. As constant travelers, being away wasn’t anything new to us. It certainly didn’t feel permanent, here, and anyway, people were coming. It wouldn’t be until after I’d put a number of people on airplanes and driven home in silent tears that I would realize just how far we were.

Six months ago today, we were explaining to the crazy frozen meat shipper that no, we didn’t have a forklift, and no, we didn’t know anyone we could borrow one from, and in fact, we really didn’t know anyone at all. The immensity of that not knowing was strange. Really, there was no one we could call, save our realtor, who was likely sick of our calls anyway. Having lived in California all of our lives, we just weren’t used to the idea that there was no one in a ‘hop in the car’ distance that we knew, or that knew us. We were invisible, undefined and unknown.

I realize that all this sounds bad in the retelling. Really (with the exception of little Bids) it wasn’t. There was a lot of liberation in being somewhere completely new, of being completely anonymous. We had the space to focus on us, to enjoy each other’s company and explore this new place together. It has been fun to develop the yard, to plant trees and drag the hoses around to keep them watered, to eat pesto from our own garden and enjoy the surprise luxury of hastily planted melons. The box part of the unpacking wasn’t fun, but seeing the house come together has been.  Even better has been getting live in the house, really sitting at the kitchen counter drinking with friends rather than talking about it, having a glass of wine on the screened porch and counting fireflies. We’re nesting, and we’re doing it together in a way that we haven’t in the past.

We know our way around now, but there is still so much to learn. Watching the seasons change is fascinating for Californians – it seems that every week there is some new thing – this week we’ve been seeing huge furry caterpillars inching their way along the drive. We’ve slowed down enough that we notice the caterpillars. Six months ago, I don’t know that we would have. I started this adventure willing myself to pay attention to the small things, and with six months of practice it’s become a habit.
We’re meeting people, too. If we walk in the neighborhood, we run into people to stop and talk to who know our names. Last night we stood on our neighbor’s porch and chatted for a long time, and two nights before that we had people over for dinner, people we knew really not at all but who turned out to be great dinner companions.

Six months ago today, I wouldn’t have had any idea what today would look like. I didn’t know how much I would appreciate the way fallen leaves swirl behind a car on a country road, or how much I enjoy seeing the local whistle pig fattening up for hibernation. I didn’t know that I’d be spending Halloween with my neighbors, who I like very much, and I didn’t know that  I would have met enough people to have a small cocktail party. I didn’t know how much I liked the afternoon light in the living room, or the quiet stillness of the house in the morning. I didn’t know that as much as I miss people in California, I wouldn’t be missing California itself, that six months of time would be enough to feel (most of the time, at least) like I lived here.  A year ago today, all of this was beyond my imagining, so different of a place was I in then. And two years ago today we were camping out in Castellina, plotting how we could move there. Move we’ve done … not there (not yet) but closer, closer, in so many ways. And now we’re here, today, now, making cheese and baking bread and looking forward to sweater weather, learning to live somewhere different, and liking it.

We’ve come a long way.

(photos of the house, then and now, are in the Ponteuf's Burrow album, over on the left side of the blog)

Wide Open Spaces

I’ve never really gotten the Southwest – it shares a shoebox in my head with modern art. I understand its relevance; I know that some people are very moved by it. Objectively, I can see its value, and sometimes I’m even caught unaware and say “oh, now that’s neat” but mostly it seems like something that people like because liking it makes them cultured. Liking that giant white square canvas with the red dot just off center really advertises our evolved aesthetics, doesn’t it?  The heart of passion in an indifferent world, and all. The Southwest is that red dot, a last bastion of lawlessness and rugged open space in an otherwise bland and increasingly Olive Garden-is-authentic culture. Its spare simplicity will turn us all into artists, open minded thinkers, visionaries. Visiting is worship, a deep breath of clean air and clearer thinking, a higher pursuit than mere tourism. People claim to be moved by a visit to the desert, they get (as Mike would say) moony about it. Lacking the proper amount of peyote, I’ve always been left, if not cold, a little chilly.

I’m wondering, now, if I was just lacking perspective.

Living in California (and in Ojai, really) I knew all about places with spiritual connections, pink moments, breathtaking western beauty. And growing up there made me immune to much of what prompts “those LA people” who visit Ojai to sit around drinking coffee and “just being.” Yes, of course it is pretty, and I like it, and if I could have afforded to live there, I would have taken the opportunity without much hesitation. But stunningly beautiful? I suppose. New Mexico and Arizona have always seemed a little too close to home to get very excited about. They’re dry. Flowers appear in small little scrubby clumps. The architecture is Mexican-Adobe influenced. The colors fall into either the brownish gray spectrum, or blue. Have I mentioned the great empty expanses of rocky dryness that probably harbor snakes in great numbers?

None of this is to say that I don’t like visiting – I do. I enjoyed driving through the desert this spring, I like a weekend at an Arizona spa as much as the next girl, and we were really looking forward to going back to Santa Fe this fall, but more for the feel of the town and (let’s be honest here) the food. I got all the green I could handle by moving to Tennessee, but the Mexican food has been a bit of a letdown. I was expecting to go and be thrilled by the chilies and the smell of the air, but I wasn’t expected to be knocked sideways by the beauty of it all. I opened the curtains the first morning and was amazed by the clear brilliance streaming onto my face. I’d forgotten the clarity of western light, harsher than what I see every day here but beautiful in its intensity. The sun in the desert may be illuminating rocks and scrub and green along the side of the highway that comes from a spray gun and not the earth, but it manages to turn all these unlikely things into sculpted bas-relief.

Driving from Albuquerque to Santa Fe takes only an hour, a drive that in the past I’ve written off as unattractive, at best. This trip it was a revelation: flat open land runs away from the interstate and up the sharp edged peaks of the Sandia Mountains, flecked with black.  A pink moment here would turn them into watermelons, a mirage for the thirsty people clustered under cottonwood trees that hug the banks of the Rio Grande as it sneaks through the desert, hoping to escape notice. The haze of green those trees form in the valley is a faint echo of what I see out my window every morning and it points out to all who are paying attention that the lifeline, however shallow, is still here, not yet swallowed by a parched earth. I’m amazed by the tenacity of any life that makes it in this magnificent harshness, the haze of purple flowers along the roadside all the more beautiful for their unlikely presence. Nothing here wastes much energy – leaves are small, vines don’t overextend themselves and the roadrunner we saw in the parking lot was pretty stingy with its feathers. There isn’t a lot of color in the landscape; everything tends to shades of gray and brown, and before I lived in green I couldn’t see the interest in the monochromatic palette.  Now, accustomed to lushness, I find the sparing but intense use of blinding yellow and burning red exhilarating and shocking. Turning the corner and seeing a strand of ristras drying against an adobe wall or a yellow bush alongside a gray shale hill, I see art.

That same adobe wall against a depthless blue sky is beyond my words. I want to take a thousand photos of the same thing, rounded warm edge against hard, luminous blue. For the first time, I communed with Georiga O’Keeffe. I too, could move here and paint that same image every day, never tiring of the perfect simplicity and infinite complexity contained in one window. I saw a quote over and over while we were in Santa Fe, O’Keffee on New Mexico “no one told me it would be like this.” How could they? O’Keeffe grew up in Wisconsin; nothing could have prepared her for the elemental force of the desert. Until I moved to my own Wisconsin, I certainly couldn’t have told her. Now I understand why she returned, again and again, until finally she never left. I understand the draw of the basic forms that build everything there, the shocking color and the clear air, the dry nose and the relentless sun.

Living in the west, I never really bought the things it stood for. It wasn’t a metaphor for rawness or lawlessness, not a place to test my inner strength or to take the measure of a man. It wasn’t full of promise or ruin, a do or die proposition – it was just home. Having left that home and set up elsewhere, I can see why it has been framed as all those things and more by those who come from the east and the green. It shocked me to step out of the hotel into that bracing, incandescent air, to see the expanse of heaven and earth and nothing else and to feel my smallness within it, less relevant than the strings of chiles and the turquoise doors that echo the sky. Even more shocking was that I liked it. Pass the peyote.

Photos: Santa Fe & Taos, September 2008

Life is but a Dream

Ca.noe [kuh-noo]: a narrow, often human powered boat; a town in Kentucky; to float down a river on a sunny Saturday in August; great fun

We had our first visitors under legal drinking age this summer, and they required a bit more planning than we’re used to. Both of them happen to be part of the under 10 set, meaning that while Uncle Maver’s goofy sense of humor came in handy, they couldn’t be adequately entertained by a couple of cocktails and idle conversation. Clearly, we had to come up with something more fun than shopping and plantation houses, and something cool enough to withstand August. Enter the canoe.

There are a couple of companies that rent canoes on the Harpeth not far west of Nashville, canoes and paddles and life vests and really nothing else in the way of instruction, but we figured we were kayak and tubing veterans, and we could handle it. I am not sure that les petites thought we could handle it, as their morning-of-game-faces were less than thrilled when I suggested they change from cute outfits to something more of a bathing suit nature. They eyed my denim cutoffs and pigtails with distrust when I told them their brand new Nashville cowboy hats probably didn’t want to get wet, and they climbed into the car rather silently. We were not off to the most raucous of starts, so I found some singing along music and made them listen to Boy George. Mike rolled his eyes but the back seat was into it by the time we turned onto the glorious green of the Natchez Trace and headed north for our date with the river.

After the arrival flurry of payment, life vest and paddle picking and ice chest lugging we packed into a slightly damp van that drove us up (down? along?) the river to the designated drop off point where were clambered over the edge of a walkway and dropped down onto a rocky beach lined with brightly colored canoes. The girls were interested in picking colors, which was good, because I was most interested in the fact that we were pointed to the canoes and left with no instruction other than “see you at the other end.”  Blue for Jessica and Aqua for Natalie, and we were off, Mike taking the work seat in the red boat and Anna and I signing up for the comedy of errors paddling the blue. After a few false starts we got ourselves straightened out and headed downriver facing forwards, Jessica sitting on a pile of life vests between us.

It was beautiful. The river stretched in front of us, silvery blue and still, a mirror for the towering trees on either side. I don’t know if the trees are really as tall as they seemed, or if they sit higher on cliffs above the river or if it was some trick of the eye, but I felt Jessica’s size as I looked up at them, so impossibly high were the rounded tops. It was silent save for our splashes and the far off laughter of other canoes, and I felt perfectly languidly warm. We glided down the river and it was easy to get lost in the picturesqueness of it all. Someone spotted a turtle and we all paddled over to the log to get a better look. Birds called and swooped above us, small fish flitted past our boat and we sang, in fits and starts, the ten words or so that we all knew of ‘row row row your boat.’

I’m not naming names, but someone shattered our peaceful existence by initiating a water fight that would continue for the rest of the day and leave all of us as wet as though we’d gone swimming. Mike’s paddle was tops for scooping water and he was ruthless, even dousing his own canoe partner. Jessica mostly shrunk down to try and avoid the waves, but Natalie was as viscous as Mike, squealing and slapping her paddle with abandon. We stopped twice for picnicking and drying out, kids more interested in looking for shells and adults realizing how good simple food tastes after hot sun, cool water and extensive water fights. The watermelon slices I had iced down were better than the soda and the chocolate chip cookies the petites and I had made the night before were even better and I think we all secretly thought that damn the torpedoes and fancy restaurants, food had never tasted so good.

We switched up the paddling groups a few times and I got to hear all about Natalie’s “college of paddling” classes from Uncle Maver, and Jessica’s thoughts on the rapids that we almost tipped in, and how fast we (read I) should paddle to beat the other boat to the end. We found a deep spot and held the canoes together and let the girls swim, pulling them out by the back of their life vests when they were done, dripping and spluttering a little but not cold until the very end, when tiredness and the damp van beat back excitement. The air was so warm and still that even soaking wet denim wasn’t uncomfortable, but it was never so hot that I felt oppressed – it was just right heat. Still, it was wonderful to change into the clean dry clothes we’d had the (are we this grown up?) forethought to pack, warm from their hours in the trunk.

The air is cool here now, and I’m pretty sure the good folks at Foggy Bottom have locked the canoes up for the season. I don’t think the green would reach all the way to the water the way it did two months ago, and I’m sure that no one is languidly hot along the rock banks today. In my pictures, though, it is still summer on that stretch of the Harpeth, and when I look at them I see proof that we were having as much fun as I remember. Mike is dreaming up a new attack, Natalie right there with him. Anna and Jessica are admiring the view, Jessica more relaxed now that she’s on the river rather than just thinking about it. I can feel that warm air and the welcome shock of cool water dripping down my neck, and I know just how pleased I was to be there, thinking this, this is why we live here. I can’t wait for next summer.

Photos of all the canoeing fun (and more)

Autumn Journal

I have a bad habit of missing September. The end of summer flurry always slides into anniversary related travel; the time before and the time after a trip seem to blur into undefined space. This year we left early enough to spend our actual anniversary in Italy, then came home only to turn around and celebrate a birthday in Santa Fe. Suddenly, I find myself two days into October with no idea how I got here.

I like the travel, but I resent the abduction of one of my favorite months. September, beginning of the school year, was always a private celebration. I miss the back to school days, filled with squeaky new white tennies and pristine supplies, the promise of blank notebooks and new text books to collect, filled with all kinds of things I didn’t know and the doodles of people I might. I loved the smell of the grocery bags used to cover the books, clean slates for personal design. Fall to me has always been about anticipation: what I might learn, what comes ahead, the waited for coziness of a warm house after a cold evening. I never liked football for itself, but I loved brisk nights in the bleachers, walking around in a jacket and drinking hot chocolate, wondering who I might see and who might be looking for me. September meant fall, and fall meant school and Halloween and Thanksgiving and decorations and Christmas, sweaters and hot chocolate and pumpkins and apples and rainy afternoons that legitimized hours of reading in sweatpants and slippers.

I often tell people that California has two seasons: February and the rest of the year. Add in a little bit of gloom in June (why my birthday month?!?) and you’ve pretty much got it. It isn’t that summers are cold, or that winters are hot, but the weather is so uniformly pleasant that the highs and lows get forgotten in the retelling. I’m excited to live somewhere with greater definition between seasons, and as summer lounged into early September, I was starting to get antsy about when fall might kick her out. One of the final mornings before we left for Italy (where we clearly caught summer’s last hurrah) I was on the white road behind the house and the air felt – different. A little thinner, a little cooler. The smell was different, too, but I couldn’t then (and can’t now) quite put my finger on how. The breeze tugged a few leaves loose from the trees and overhead I heard a classic V formation of honking headed south. Fall, I told Mike, is thinking about arriving.

Now, a month later, it is here. Crisp, cool, slide between ironed sheets air greets me all day, even as the sun manages to warm up the afternoon. The trees aren’t so much shedding as they are shrinking; the voluminous green of the roadside is retreating just a little, a slowly deflating balloon. There are a few trees with yellow and red at the crown, spreading warmth downward, and the rolling hills that are fast becoming my mental image of ‘home’ look freckled with color. I can wear the lightest weight sweater of the collection I bought in August when only the anticipation of wearing them let me survive the heat of trying them on. I bought a pair of corduroys. My jeans might be coming out of semi-retirement, and I am thinking (vaguely) of soup, and of trying my hand at a loaf of bread. I want to do things, but I’m not sure what – I have a sense of contained energy: fall fervor instead of spring fever?

I don’t know what else fall has to show me here, and I like not knowing. I may not be entitled, any longer, to freshly sharpened pencils and unread textbooks, but this year, I’m enjoying the anticipation of not knowing what is to come with the same excitement that I read the table of contents in my old history books. Will I wake up one morning to a brilliantly yellow tree in the back? Will it rain, patchworking the pavement with scarlet and burnt orange leaves, or will it be dry and windy, perfect weather for flying witches and black cats? What will the fields look like once they are all reduced to  golden stubble and the bushes have gone?

Moving has given me an entire year to experience for the first time, a gift of seeing the world slowly turn and morph in way I’ve never experienced, a chance to relearn the seasons and the passage of time.  I return, again, to the idea that I’ve moved into the setting for one of the many books I spent my rainy afternoons engulfed by, the weather here leaning a bit more towards British than California ever did, even with my most fervent imagining. From one of those books I take, also, one of my favorite poems, one that made me wish I was born in a month with more scarlet. It is, to me, the romance of fall:

September has come, it is hers
Whose vitality leaps in the autumn,
Whose nature prefers
Trees without leaves and a fire in the fireplace.
So I give her this month and the next
Though the whole of my year should be hers who has rendered already
So many of its days intolerable or perplexed
But so many more so happy.
Who has left a scent on my life, and left my walls
Dancing over and over with her shadow
Whose hair is twined in all my waterfalls
And all of London littered with remembered kisses.
-Louis MacNiece, Autumn Journal

Intervention

I think my cat needs an intervention. I accept that I might be to blame for his problems, that perhaps *I* am the one who got him where he is today, but I really thought we had things under control. I foolishly believed that the serious discussions we’ve had about use and abuse since our journey here in April have made a difference, but mere logic cannot make inroads into chemical dependency. My approach, I realize (too late), has failed him, and now… now I’ve sunk to contributing to his delinquency.

The kitty ‘blue pills’ he came to know and love during the move changed him. Stronger than weed and longer lasting than blow, they’ve left him with wicked flashbacks – occasionally I find him hidden under a tent of fabric somewhere, eyes half closed and surrounded by scraps of poetry. Freedom is Fear, they read. Under bed, gloaming. And my favorite - Dry kibble, dry soul.

The cat has been drug free since April 15th. When four cross country days of opium den solitude did not produce the world class poetry I expected ( see above) and it became clear that he was not going to contribute to the mortgage, I did what any sane and vindictive person would do – I took away his drugs. Once he got over the initial shock, he seemed to be adjusting just fine… but looking back I should have seen signs of what was coming.

He’s become vocal. Very vocal. Every injustice, every hunger pang, every whisper of need is broadcast, full volume. Touching him elicits grumbling. Moving him – the same. Tossing him outside in the morning is a symphony of discontent. In LA he was outside all the time, and he was quiet. Generally friendly, easily pleased, mostly silent and, I’m convinced, a cold blooded murderer. Since we’ve moved he has executed a deft cat about face and now cowers in fear at the back door, vocalizes his almost constant demands and spends evenings and overnights in the house.  We’ve got foxes running through the backyard and who knows what else lurking in the bushes, and I’d hate to lose his furry head to a larger animal. The cat I knew in LA could have defended himself, but this one is useless at hunting bugs and needs help getting out of the trees, so he comes in at dusk. 

Once he’s in, he’s hungry, and he wants us to know it, cute and burbly at the beginning, transitioning to sulky yowls and deep rumbles when he thinks we are not attending to him quickly enough. Once he’s sated he comes and lies under my feet as I make dinner, randomly swatting at my ankles if I invade his space by getting too close. The speed and accuracy that he used to apply to killing backyard game is now applied to our ankles and lower legs when we annoy him. A few nights ago Mike was ignoring him when he wanted a belly rub, so he ran up, leapt through the air and gutted Mike’s calf. No warning was issued. He didn’t like some cat-unauthorized dancing the other night, and I got a claw in my toe for disobeying his yowl to cease and desist. He finds the Rock Band version of Orange Crush intolerable and lets us know by throwing his body against the door and howling. Occasionally I’ll wake from a dream where I’m being poked in the foot with needles only to find the cat curled around my extremity, teeth and claws bared.

He looks sweet and innocent, but many a houseguest has made the mistake of rubbing the white belly he exposes so charmingly. He’ll walk up close, burble and drop to the ground, rolling from his side to his back with his little white booted feet flopping in the air. He’ll close his eyes half way and begin to purr. This is a trick, a crocodile tear. Go ahead, rub his stomach. He’s so cute. He’s so friendly. He’s so ATTACHED TO YOUR HAND AND ARM WITH CLAWS. It happens fast.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
I should have seen the vocalization and the aggression for the signs of an addict that they were, I really should have. But I figured we were out of the woods with the drug problem, really, I did, until I walked into the kitchen the other night and saw this:

That cooler is full of the cat’s new drug of choice. Not fish. Not cheese or milk or even chicken. Not chocolate or fruit or bread or pumpkin pie. No, the cat has discovered a deep and abiding love for hazelnut coffee beans. He sniffed from across the room like a hound dog on the scent and was there like a shot. He rubbed his head and climbed inside and purred and burbled and made sweet kitty love to that coffee. The room and all his cares slipped away as he and the coffee shared a deep and meaningful connection that must have brought back the memories and sensations of his cross country opium den. Oblivious to the world, even our hysterical laughter as we caught the whole thing on camera didn’t deter him.

I know that drugs for cats are bad. I know that I should encourage poor little GatoPlex to resist the strength of his urges, that I should help him through this time of temptation. I know that my role should not be that of an enabler, but I just. can’t. help. myself. I’m tired of a crabby attack cat, and I have to wonder if his crusty behavior of late might just be withdrawal? Would steady application of coffee, this new wonder drug, make him into a nicer cat? In for a dime, in for a dollar, we went to Kroger and bought him coffee of his own. Last night we put some beans in a sock and dropped the bundle of love into the cat bed we’re trying to teach him to use.  Kitty ecstasy followed, and I did not wake with needles in my ankle.  Progress? Or spiral into iniquity? Only time will tell.

Lining Up

We arrived home last week to evidence that Tennessee is an odd little island here in the almost middle of America. I’m used to living in an odd place – California is certainly different than the rest of the country, and living there makes one’s brain addled to the point that we all secretly believe that we are normal and the rest of the country is not. When I first started to travel, I’d look around at the everyday bits of life in other places and secretly wonder at how people could get by in such weirdness. Traffic lights on wires? No sidewalks or curbs? Only two ways to get from point A to point B? A red light on a windy day not long ago prompted Mike to comment that he never thought he would live in a place where the stoplights swing so precariously. I didn’t either, but that’s because I never thought I’d live outside of California. I realized many weekends and rental cars ago that we Californians were the weird ones, and that the majority of the country got along just fine with so many things that I saw as different. When I read OpEd pieces about “America” I always secretly added an asterisk attached to a footnote reading “except California.”

To be fair, part of why we picked Tennessee over Kentucky or North Carolina or Texas or any other Southern-ish state was that we felt it was different from the places around it. Not California-different, for sure, but subtly different in ways that we liked (how else do we make decisions but to find the little things that set one choice apart from the other?). The weather is relatively mild, the people relatively open, the food relatively varied. Still, for me, leaving California and moving here was a huge step towards being part of that America in quotation marks that I’ve never really lived in. My overall opinion about that hasn’t changed, but Tennessee took a few steps up the odd ladder when we returned home to learn that while Ike skirted around the edges of Tennessee like she was off limits, people were lining up for gas. Lining Up For Gas. (well, I never!)

Some attention paid to the local news revealed that Tennessee relies quite heavily on oil from the Gulf Coast, and much of it arrives here in pipelines that carry it along at the slovenly pace of 3-5mph. Ike disrupted the flow, and at some 800 miles between here and Houston, catching back up is taking time. Supplies are low to non-existent all over the Nashville area, and it seems that most gas stations we drive past have bags over their pumps and no prices on the signs. The station at our exit off I65 had gas this weekend, and people were lined up all the way down the off ramp hoping to fill up. At every station with gas, the scene was the same, cars jammed together in a full color reenactment of the 70’s, but with fewer sideburns and bell bottoms. In stores and restaurants, casual eavesdropping gets me stories of pushing in line, rude behavior and finger wagging. I’ve been told more than once that the threat of snow here leads to a run on bread and milk – clearly the threat of low gas supply is leading to hoarding and unnecessary fill ups – Nashville area gas stations report demand doubling once shortages were announced. According to CNN, panic may have been its own reward as the run on gas caused a shortage that wasn’t warranted.

So here I sit, in my castle on my island, pleased that we have two full tanks of gas and no need to commute long distances. I have no idea what news makes it off this island to the rest of the country (I fear California news feeds may favor only stories of the “toothless redneck robber calls the police on himself” variety) so I don’t know if anyone else knows that we’re reenacting the 70’s here, but I do think it is a localized phenomenon. If this is the common mentality, I’m thinking that with winter coming on, we’d best get to buying a cow…

Country Bumpkins in the Big City

While it is absolutely still true that we have no friends here in Tennessee, we DO have friends in Atlanta.  Good friends. Smart, funny friends. Friends who like to eat out and drink cocktails and bum around the mall. Friends who had the foresight to move into a great neighborhood with a local gelato place that is probably the best we’ve had in the US. Friends who, I fear, are going to get very sick of us, because Atlanta is only three hours away, and we like car trips.

I had a list of shopping needs for Atlanta, places I’m used to having (the Container Store, Trader Joes, Crate & Barrel, le sigh) and Atlanta, she delivered. Our trunk was full when we headed home, and I was amazed at how excited I was to go in a real mall with stores I hadn’t seen in months.  I felt like such a kid, ohhing and ahhing at the big city with the big buildings and the nice Nordstrom and the busy traffic. And the huge huge houses that we drove past in Buckhead, the kind of huge that makes whatever salary I make every year look like small change.

When we first visited Atlanta in 2005, I liked it well enough, but downtown seemed deserted,  mid-town was a little scruffy and the whole place felt disjointed, like a city without a personality. Now, though, mid-town is a city in its own right, packed with neat little stores, interesting restaurants, places I wanted to stop and poke around. Huge Centennial park seems to spill over its boundaries, making all the streets fanning out from it similarly green and tree shaded. People sit out in cafes and on sidewalks, and we had to stand in a line reaching down the street every time we walked for gelato. Eating well is easy, from scruffy diner breakfast to swanky small plates dinner; I also managed a Chipotle burrito. Oh, Chipotle.

A weekend hanging out in Atlanta was a lot like a weekend hanging out in LA, or in Nashville, except we shared it with people who hang out the same way we do – sleep in a little, go out for breakfast, randomly shop while running errands, cocktail hour dragging long into dinner hour. Silly conversation and maybe a game? It was pretty perfect, and on our drive home we decided that it was kind of like hanging out with ourselves – our smarter, more educated selves. (Nothing like being friends with two PhDs to put my own diploma in perspective.)

I did feel rather small town and provincial, though. It amazed me how quickly I’ve gotten into the habit of living in a small place, and how easy I have it here. Traffic is waiting for two cars to pass so we can pull out of 31 Flavors. Crowded is the line for the Genius Bar at the Apple store (again). I am so clearly spoiled. We’ve given up some convenience, being here (though not much, if I’m pressed for honesty) but what we’ve gotten in return is the easy life. I feel spoiled, and a little simple, that all it takes to make me happy these days is a fox in my backyard but so be it. I’m working on the not revolutionary but difficult idea of being content with what where and who I am, so I’m trying not to judge myself for what makes me smile. Next time I visit Atlanta, though, I’m determined to not drive around with my mouth open and make stupid comments about how busy it all is. I moved to the country but I didn’t grow up in it. Perspective, perspective, perspective. Y’all.

Fair Summer Afternoon

When I was in grade school, the fair was held in the fall. October, maybe? I remember wearing sweaters, and jeans. Hot steaming bowls of fat white noodles, always from the plainest food stand in the fair (just to the left as you turned into the midway of grease) were the best treat. Valdemar and the other kids with 4-H animals got to take a week off of school to go to the fair. Crisp afternoons lit with slanting light giving way to cold evenings, fog rolling in and smelling of sea.

By the time I raised 4-H pigs, that week off of school to hang around the livestock barns, shoveling shavings and making fun of the girls with lambs was long gone. Most of the fairs I remember, and certainly the ones I participated, in happened in August; shorts and icy lemonades supplanted jeans and fry bread. The Japanese noodles never tasted as good when it was hot, but the dipped ice cream bars were better, and the smells of the fair – grease and dust and hot electrical wires and sugar (glorious sugar) were intensified. It could be cold, even in August, by the Ventura beach, but in my memory days at the fair are always hot, intense, a little sticky.

I’ve never been to a fair I like as much as Ventura’s. Somehow it has managed to stay exactly as I remember it, and I like it all: the Fine Art area where I can always spot watercolors from my art teacher, the tacky commercial barns packed with hucksters and their products. The filtered water guy with the seven foot continuously running faucet and the knife salesman and the jewelry cleaning solutions and over against the wall the mini donut machine, little circles of dough bobbing along in golden grease – I don’t think these things ever change. In the Floriculture building, I see the Kelly family dynasty of displays, always desert themed. I probably know a couple of people selling things. The gem and mineral building by the gate has cool stuff under black lights, and fish, and a photography section. The giant kids hall where my stuff was displayed: art and baking and table settings, thank you very much – kids are still entering the same things I did, except the kids belong to the people I competed against.  I’d blame this wistful recitation on age, but I’ve been nostalgic since I was little, so I suspect it will just get worse with time. I love the fair.

Ventura these days is a bit further than it used to be, though, so we went to the Williamson County fair last Saturday. It had been a scorcher of a week but had cooled down nicely in time for us to wander over to the Ag Center Saturday mid-day, hungry for grease and sugar. This fair has only been going for the past few years – it isn’t big. The commercial exhibits are mostly around the indoor arena – chiropractors and local businesses, and a meet and greet with the police department. The 4-H clubs have project exhibits scattered around, and the midway is small. The livestock is done in stages, but we caught part of a sheep show and some poultry judging, and took in the petting zoo, complete with porcupines and camels. There were rabbits and a draft horse and a longhorn steer, a giant pig with piglets and a few alpacas and that unique, sweet odor of a livestock barn, fur and hair and dust and hay and grain and dirt and spilled sodas, wet animal and old French fries, and wow, I’m selling it, but nothing smells quite so sweet as memory.

The Ventura ladies haven’t got a thing on the Tennessee women in the Home Arts rooms; the quilts and hand work and canning here were nicer than I’ve ever seen. There was a 4-H cake auction happening later in the afternoon and we ate curly fries and frozen treats and a corn dog while we listened to a brass band play Beatles songs. Kids rode the same rides that I rode when I fit into a 3 foot glittered race car and a big military transport plane did a fly by, and I was filled with nostalgia, for this fair, for the fair of my childhood. Fairs are transitory – by now the grounds, here and in Ventura, are vacant again. The wind is pushing an empty cotton candy bag across well trampled grass, a forgotten toy lingers against a post, the PA broadcasts nothing but silence. The fair has packed up and moved down the road, but it will be back next year, the same buzz and smell and sound and cheap glitter in the dust, the same good feelings and nostalgia, the same dreamlike quality. And I’ll be there, three with a painted face, seven in a sweater, eleven with Pippi, sixteen with a pig, thirty-four with a smile.

more fair photos

Mixology Monday, Local Style

My kitchen is overflowing with vegetables – specifically vegetables of vine growing origin. I suspect that everyone else in Middle Tennessee has piles of squash and cucumbers right now too, because it is August in this fertile land and squash, in particular, seem to grow like weeds. The squash is good steamed, or in pasta, or on pizza, and I have plans to deal with some excess in the form of bread. Breathe a sigh of relief, all around, because I am not making squash into a drink. The cucumbers, on the other hand, have been clustering around the bar, and it seemed unfair to relegate them to only becoming the stir stick of my Pimms Cup.

I’d been reading about a cucumber soup that called for juicing (rather than grating), saw a recipe for cucumber granita, and then, while looking for space to put more Cucumis sativus into the fridge, I bumped into my home cured gravlax. The random inputs assembled themselves into a cool, pale green and refreshing drink, with the added benefit of not having to put the cucumbers away.

I used two Lemon cucumbers, unpeeled, from our CSA basket, with one Garden Sweet Burpless (partially peeled) thrown in for a little more color. The juicer made quick work of those and a whole lemon, rind and all. I tossed in a knob of ginger with the lemon, so coming out of the juicer I had a pale green pitcher of cool and a frothy yellow pitcher of spicy. These two went into an icy shaker and were joined by the gravlax inspired (and all important alcoholic) element of akavit. Poured into cocktail glasses, the resulting drink looked cool and refreshing and lent itself to the absolutely corny moniker of ‘the cool cucumber’ for which I make no apologies.

Even with the heat of the ginger, this was a thin drink – the watery quality of the cucumber and the briskness of the akavit made it taste a little like spiked spa water. On a hot evening following a blazing day this wasn’t a disappointment, but upon review I’d use a lime or two instead of the lemon, which was what I had when inspiration struck. I made a second batch and added a little simple syrup which, while it rounded out the flavors, also dulled the crispness of the akavit that finished the drink; I wouldn’t do that again. I don’t know how many Tennesseans drink akavit, but that cucumber, grown about 15 miles from my house, sure is local.

“the cool cucumber”

1 oz akavit
2 oz cucumber juice, strained
½ oz lemon/ginger juice, strained

Shake, strain into cold cocktail glasses, garnish with (what else?) a cucumber circle.

 

Leftovers

The worst part of houseguests is that they leave. I know the saying, sure, that fish and houseguests, after three days, stink. And, I suppose, that can be true (for some guests) (and for some hosts) but not for me. I like having people here to make breakfast for, or leave the coffee on the counter for, to entertain and feed and iron pillowcases in advance of. I feel so domestically accomplished having their favorite treats in the cupboard, sharing new iced tea flavors, baking a welcoming cake. I like taking them out to eat and stopping to read historical markers and pretending I’m on vacation in my own town. Nothing has, as yet, made me appreciate where we’ve moved to as much as showing it to the people I care about. I notice how green the fields are, how lush the trees, how charming the main street. I get to do the visitor things and marvel at how much there is to do and how we don’t have time to do it all. I want them to stay, and stay – prolonging the companionship and the hiatus from life’s petty annoyances. Return tickets are at risk in my house. Ooops – was that your boarding pass? The guinea pigs were hungry, you see.

We’ve done pretty well on the visitor front since we moved here – my mom has even been twice – but it is always hard to drop off the people I love at the airport. My eyes leak and I sigh a lot and Mike wonders what he is going to do to amuse me while I feel terribly sorry for myself. If I could, I suppose I would move everyone I care about here (and really, you’d like it, I promise) but the next best thing would be to know when they were coming back. Like a purchased plane ticket, an impending visit is a way to mark time, to count the passing of the days when I work in my messy office and don’t talk to anyone but Mike and wonder why I’m feeling prickly or tired. I don’t, honestly, expect anyone to come all the time, or give up other things to come here just to keep me from drinking alone, but I wouldn’t feel badly if everyone decided to come back sooner rather than later, either. (In case y’all missed it, by the way, that was an open invitation.)

Liking guests fits into my larger desire to take care of people, I suppose. I’m afflicted with a deep need to “fix” things for people in my life; to make things better, solve a problem, right a wrong. I want to supply the magic answer that just makes the trouble go away. Clearly if reincarnation is the way of things, I was a man in my last life. Having people here, in my home, I feel I’m responsible for their happiness – and that I can shield them from the rest of the world. In my bubble, I’m in charge, and everyone will be happy … and if not deeply happy, at least content, well fed and well watered (I do know my limitations.) Breakfast out – with pie. A four person game of rock band. Drinks on the screened porch. Oysters, freshly shucked, at the kitchen counter. An illicit dip in the pool. A road trip, maybe, or dancing barefoot with the fireflies. I can do these things, and while they might not be solving the problems of the world, I like to think that for a fleeting moment, at least, we’re all happy in the doing of them.

For our most recent guests, I made angel food cake. When they left, the remainder of it sat forlornly on the cake stand for a few days. I didn’t really have the heart to throw it out, I didn’t want to eat it alone, and together, the cake and I grew a little stale and rough around the edges. Having looked forward to the D&D visit ever since we moved, I was wallowing in a real post-Christmas-nothing-left-to-look-forward-to funk; the cake (lacking the emotion needed for a self pitying crisis) was drying out. After a couple of days I came to terms with the fact that we are here and they are there and there isn’t anything I can do about that but get on with things. Letting the house get messy and myself grumpy wasn’t bringing anyone back to visit, and the cake needed to be dealt with. Rather than tossing it, though, I cut up some peaches and bought some milk and turned the whole sad mess into bread pudding, a dessert quite improved, I think, by the use of angel food cake and liberal dollops of brown sugar bourbon hard sauce.

I don’t miss you all any less, but I’m learning (slowly) to lessen the ache.

Tastes Like Summer

Summer has fully and wholeheartedly arrived. It has been hot, and sticky, and hot. And have I mentioned hot? I don’t mind, really – it is late July and I’d be disappointed if it wasn’t sultry. Our first summer in Redwood Shores was beautiful, sunny and warm and we sat on our patio and looked at the water and generally gloated at our good fortune. We paid for that gloating every consecutive summer when it would be windy and foggy and so unpleasant that we wore sweatshirts to eat outside. So summer heat is just fine with me, but it does lead to cravings for the pool, ice cream cones and food that tastes fresh and clean and just assembled.

I think that “thrown together” look of summer dishes in magazines is about as real as the “inner glow” look of makeup. It looks simple but always takes more effort than I think it should to execute, and the results (at least in food) often seem to me to remain disparate, if beautiful, parts. Imagine my surprise this week, then, when an abundance of yellow squash led to this:

Ribbons of yellow squash, cooked no more than having the hot pasta thrown over them. Bocconcini . Basil and oregano from my planter boxes, olive oil, salt, pepper. This tasted like summer. It was warm but not hot, bright in flavor from all the herbs and sunny from the squash and thrown together with little effort. I don’t rightly know how it happened, but as far as I’m concerned, it can happen again. And again. And a few more times, until the heat leaves the air and we’re taking sweatshirts to the patio, which I don’t think will be for quite some time.

Sweet Home (photos)

We walked into the grocery store two nights ago, and the sound system was playing Sweet Home Alabama, turned up just a little louder than you’d normally expect for a Publix. I heard it last week at Lowes while looking for hose coupling. We heard it, live and loud, in Rum Boogie on Beale last weekend. If I go out right now and turn on the car, there’s a substantial chance it will be on the radio. At only 50-odd miles from the border of the state everyone’s singing about, Sweet Home Alabama is the local anthem.

To be fair, we think the local radio station plays a set list heavy on Tennessee references … I’ve heard Graceland, and Walking in Memphis, and other Nashville/Tennessee/non-country referencing songs plenty, but Skynyrd seems to be king here. I’ve gone and read the history (thanks, Wikipedia) and I seem to have absorbed the lyrics now, and I keep catching myself singing along. Is this my inner southerner coming to the surface?

For illustrative purposes, I’ve loaded all the Alabama photos to Flickr, as well as photos of people’s visits. If you’ve been here since May, well, you can reminisce. D&D, I might specifically be looking at you. ;-)

Save Franklin

I don’t know if I’ve been here long enough for local activism, but I’m going to start plastering my cars with “save Franklin” stickers, and if they don’t exist, well, I’m going to start making them.

Reading the local paper last week, I found an article about some debacle called Berry Farm that is supposedly approved and being built soon … at my exit off the interstate. I like my exit fine the way it is, thank you very much, and the thought of it becoming a planned community filled with houses, condos, shopping and offices is enough to have induced a fit of angry tears. Now, when we get off the interstate, we see the Ag Center across the road, host to rodeos and garden expos and this coming week the county fair. On our side there’s a gas station, a decrepit motel and a quick stop. After that – nothing. Fields. Corn. Trees. Not much traffic, not much building, not much modernity. And I like it that way.

One of my big reasons for choosing Franklin over Nashville in the final analysis was the small town country feel. I like driving home through empty fields. I like seeing the farms, and the amazing fast growing corn, the cows sleeping in the shade and the guy out on his tractor. We chose this house for the extra space around it and around the neighborhood, south of town where there was less going on. Cool Springs has everything we need ten minutes north, and we didn’t want to be on the modern, more built up end of town. We moved out here for a reason, and as far as I can tell, so did many of the people I’ve met. Now it appears that the very sprawl I left California to get away from is coming to me.

Practically, I don’t understand how this development can be a good idea. Cool Springs is only six miles away. The planned community going in on the west side of town isn’t full, and has more houses for sale than I can count. The economy isn’t in full boom-town mode, and there is plenty of empty office space surrounded by empty commercial in all the other new developments around Franklin – why we need another is truly beyond me. Why it was approved is beyond me. I understand tax basis as well as the next citizen, but I don’t believe we live in a “build it and they will come economy.” If we build it (and ruin the rural feel that IS why many people come here) have we really improved anything?

Speaking of improving … why not improve what already exists? The main exit for Franklin takes you into town through a particularly wretched alley of huge parking lot eighties style strip malls. The same blight exists north of town. Both these areas could use to be bulldozed and rebuilt, or at the very least renovated and updated. Half the storefronts stand empty. The parking lots are vast fields of empty paved paradise. Why build new areas so that in twenty years they, too, can look cast off and run down when we can fix up what already exists, and beautify the main route into our charming, tourist attraction town?

Franklin itself is charming – and it is thriving. That’s part of why we picked it. As we’ve explored more, we’ve seen plenty of small town centers that quite honestly would put Franklin to shame if they were vital: town squares with a courthouse smack in the center, lined with brick buildings and an old theatre, big trees and pocket parks. They look like sets for 50’s movies, less the people in poodle skirts. Less any people, honestly, because no one is there. I fear they are all at the new, “convenient” places on the edges of town, big boxes of chain store low prices and generic food. The stores that are hanging on in these small towns never seem to me to be the right ones – with the right hours. Why can’t a small grocery, a hardware, a “general” department store and a few restaurants survive? Why can’t the ice cream store stay open late and combine, like it used to, with a pharmacy? If all the components were there, wouldn’t people use it? I like to think they would, that people would appreciate that they could go about their business with a bit of style, in a charming place, rather than under the fluorescence of modernity.

If, however, developers continue to suck the life from towns (and the charm from their surroundings) by building this conglomerate crap out by the interstate, what will happen? I chose to move away from this kind of development – I’m really upset about it following me. And I am SO going looking for those bumper stickers.

Big Wheels Keep on Turning

We went to Alabama last (last) Saturday, mostly because we could. Tennessee shares a border with eight states, and most of them are within a reasonable drive from us. (It is also the only state other than Mississippi that has three repeating letters its name. Useless trivia, hot July version.) Eight. Coming from southern California, where everything short of Vegas was a serious undertaking, this is a bounty of unexplored territory.

We chose Alabama because it was the closest, honestly, and because we knew nothing about it. Huntsville is only about an hour from here, and from there it takes about the same to get to Muscle Shoals, where I wanted to go solely because Lynyrd Skynyrd sings about it. For a Saturday in July with no agenda, what better reason did we need?

The drive south on I65 took very little time, and we were at the state line picking up brochures for anything and everything inside of an hour. Most of the cars in the parking lot were out of state and filled with kids and sporting equipment and what sounded like pent up frustration. We pulled up in the convertible and got a lot of dumbfounded looks, like who ARE you people and why are you in Alabama and just WHAT do you think you’re doing with that car?

The brochure racks are my downfall – always have been, always will be. Row upon row of shiny paper advertising underground caves and antique shopping and camel rides and and and. Yes, and, in this case, the Scottsboro Unclaimed Baggage Center. This caught both of our attention, Mike’s because he thought he was going to get a deal on someone’s interesting (but lost) souvenirs, and me because it appealed to the snoop in me who is always eavesdropping on the people at the next table. I can look inside people’s suitcases? Cool, let’s go.

Scottsboro is about 40 minutes outside of Huntsville, through rolling hills and fields and otherwise not much else. We did see a mud volleyball tournament en route, prompting us to make snarky comments that really don’t bear repeating. I can’t be unkind about the views, though, which were beautiful and lush and surprisingly different than Franklin, particularly in light of the fact that northern Alabama is technically part of the Tennessee Valley. The green is a little thicker in Alabama (as is the air) and the trees are festooned with kudzu in a way we don’t see around us. Snarkiness was also prompted by the people burning trash in their backyard, not more than a mile from a sign urging “don’t burn, keep Alabama the Beautiful.” Usage of “the” in relation to Alabama state slogans also prompted snark, actually, but none of this deterred the fact that Alabama is legitimately pretty.

The Unclaimed Baggage Center – is not pretty. Scottsboro itself has a charming if clearly dying downtown, but at the outer edge is unclaimed bag row, giant cheaply built warehouse structures bursting at the seams (if you believe the hype) with lost treasures from around the world. Mmm hmmm. The parking lot is packed, so I guess a lot of people DO believe the hype, but the sad fact is that 99.9% of the store was like shopping at Good Will. Used clothing, more expensive than it should be, partially used perfume, overpriced outdated electronics, a pervasive dingy smell and the uncomfortable knowledge that stranger’s skin cells coat every surface. I was a little squicked. Mike says that unclaimed baggage is bought by the pound, contents unseen. He thinks that this place is selling “the good stuff” on eBay and putting the rest of it here, and I’ll concur that what’s here better be “the rest of it” because, well, ew. We were hoping for knick nacks, bits of odd memorabilia, or at the very least good luggage. We got used clothes, a huge selection of Christian literature and a box of Depends. Also baggie upon baggie of partially used toiletries (travel sized) a surprising number of tools and more plastic key chains than I’ve ever seen in one place. I wonder, really, how baggage gets this lost – it has to sit for 90 days before it can be sold off, and airlines really do make the effort to get things back to their owners. How do you lose luggage and then not go looking for it? Of course, based on what I was seeing, maybe you’re better off without the contents of your bags.

If I was disappointed in the UBC, I was pleasantly surprised by the Muscle Shoals area. Technically, we spent most of our time in Florence, birthplace of WC Handy, location of a Frank Lloyd Wright house and possessor of a really beautiful college campus. Tuscumbia, next door, is the birthplace of Helen Keller, and Muscle Shoals itself is famous for the studios where all kinds of musicians have recorded. The towns all sit around the Tennessee River and are connected by a number of bridges, the most interesting being Wilson Dam. Driving across we could see the rocky shoals far below on one side and the high water on the other, with Florence rising up the side of the cliffs ahead of us. The dam is one of nine TVA dams along the Tennessee river, and it cost $47M to build between 1918 and 1924. It is the highest lock lift east of the Rockies, and generates some huge amount of electricity, made obvious by the power lines running away from it in all directions. I good portion, I’m sure, head back towards the huge aerospace buildings that sit on the outskirts of Huntsville, giant things with names that reminded me of cold war defense contracts.

We left Florence in the early evening and drove home in our own car ad along the Natchez Trace. The Trace is a very long and thin National Park running from Nashville to Natchez and we had it mostly to ourselves for more than an hour. The road is swooping and gentle, a well paved ribbon of speed between small meadows edged by dense trees. We took the top down and listened to the Golden Oldies station and enjoyed the simple pleasure of the drive, warm air on our faces and nothing but trees to look at.

I’m not really sure what I expected out of Alabama. Maybe nothing, really – we went on a whim, mostly because we could. I would go back – the brochure rack certainly contained more to see, and I’d like to get as far as Mobile some day – but it isn’t somewhere I felt a connection to. It seemed to me that the South became more rough-around-the-edges-Southern there – the towns a little less prosperous, the people a little more likely to stop in for an ice cream wearing nothing but combat boots and jean cutoffs, the houses a little more rundown. At least now, though, I have some idea of the southland everyone’s singing about on every radio station around here.

Ohhhh, more hurricanes!!!

Oh yes, Memphis Pat O's

New Orleans, Remembered

(Mixology Monday, first try!)

Landing in New Orleans in a steamy darkness, travelling with friends and intent on some sort of excess and disorderly conduct, what is there to do but go directly and without hesitation to the flaming water hedonistic garden pleasure dome of Pat O’s? It isn’t as though anyone expected refinement; the shocking red hurricanes that littered our table and stained our lips were exactly what we were looking for, and the hilarity at the bottom of those glasses suited everyone just fine.

 

I don’t regret any of the countless hurricanes I’ve drunk in the various flaming gardens of Pat O’s – products, completely, of their place and state of mind, I like them for what they are. In the clean, well lit and relatively sober refuge of my own home however, a shockingly crimson glass of syrup isn’t my first choice … ever. We’ve got rum to drink, though – lots of it – and hurricanes are a natural vehicle, so Mike took a stab at something a bit more refined. The idea, he says, was to take the original Hurricane recipe and “class it up” into a “proper” cocktail. And so:

Les Bontemps Roulez

1 oz White Rum
1 oz Angostura 1919 Gold Rum
1/2 oz lime juice
1/2 oz Passion Fruit Syrup
1/4 oz Maraschino Liqueur
1/4 oz Grenadine
2 dashes Peychaud's Bitters

Start by rinsing the 2 dashes of bitters around the glass.  Mix all other ingredients in shaker, strain and serve.

My first sip was a shock of vanilla from the Angostura rum. The Marachino deepens the flavor, and the grenadine lends an echo of that red syrup sweetness. The bitters, Mike says, are a geographic reminder.

I think the Angostura, though good, might be a little aggressive here, and the heathen in me might have liked a touch more of the sweetness, but all told I did enjoy the rum goodness without the sticky floors.

~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~

The Sazerac, on the other hand, starts out grown up. We did drink them on that same sticky trip three summers ago, setting out on a hot trek to the Fairmont. We staggered out of the hot and slightly hung over afternoon into the cool hotel and felt a bit wilted in such clean and carpeted surroundings. Low couches in the Sazerac bar proved difficult to get out of after the consumption of not one, but two Sazeracs in all their intense glory. I’ve never been an anise fan but the Sazerac might be the tipping point in convincing me that the balance of goodness might lie (at least for drinks) on the side of the licorice. I’ve always liked tarragon in my chicken salad, though, so Mike’s revisiting of a Sazerac in a stripped down, culinary way was a huge hit:

Sazerac Redux

1 oz Rye
3/4 oz Cognac (nothing fancy)
Tarragon Leaves
1/4 oz simple syrup (4:3)
2 dashes Peychaud's Bitters

Muddle one stem's worth of tarragon leaves with the simple syrup in a rocks glass.  Add alcohol, bitters and ice to mixture and stir 'til frigid.  Garnish with Tarragon leaf (if you're really good, candy the leaf first!)

Like the fussing with the hurricane, the idea here, per Mike, was to return to the basics of the drink, and add a modern twist. I’d love to paraphrase him, but really, I should quote:

“I find that Absinthe or Pastis lend too strong a flavor, even when rinsed around and dumped out of the glass.  The tarragon brings the Anise taste without overpowering the other ingredients.  The drink was originally made with Cognac, but combining it with the Rye gives the best of both worlds.  Sure, it seems like a real sazerac and a mint julep got into a street fight with the herb vendor, but in the end it drinks like a sazerac.”

You’ll see Amarillo, Gallup, New Mexico

(months ago, now, to be sure, but better late than never)

Arizona wasn’t done with us yet. As Route 66 sites go, it seems to be the gold-mine state. With the exception of the Flagstaff area, it is desert-y  --- but nowhere near as bleak as the Mojave, and I found it to be pretty. The cliffs in the distance are often spectacular, and the color spectrum veers into the red and orange there, reliving the tedium of brown and green mud.

When last we visited our heroic cross country driving selves, complete with animal contingent of doom, we were bedding down for a much interrupted spring nap in Winslow, AZ. The next morning dawned brighter and earlier than I would have hoped, given the chaos of sleeping with four animals in an unfamiliar hotel room, but the beauty of the morning took my breath away. The air was a crystalline desert clear and oddly crisp, though the sun had enough power that the difference between the shadows and the middle of the street was noticeable. I know how the middle of the street felt because I walked out there and took pictures in both directions without any real fear of being run down. It wasn’t that we were so early, or so off the beaten track, but the 66 bypass through downtown Winslow isn’t exactly hopping on a Sunday morning.

Before we left town I insisted on a photo “on the corner” and made Mike backtrack a couple of blocks to the center of Winslow where my nagging was rewarded with an actual “Standin’ on the Corner” park, complete with a mural of a girl (my lord) in a flatbed Ford, slowing down to take a look at … a statue of Glenn Frey. And, for a brief shining moment, Ponteuf.

We weren’t on the road long before detouring to the Jack Rabbit Trading Post, sadly closed (permanently or just that morning, we weren’t sure) and then looking for breakfast in Holbrook, which was also closed up tight. We did cruise the Wigwam Motel and the town square, and saw lots filled with more large dinosaurs and rocks, but the town was either at church or sleeping off Saturday night, and there was no food to be had. I’m not sure what it is about the dino and the desert and route 66, but they seem to be inseparable, and Holbrook had more than its fair share.

I thought that since we were here we should see the Petrified Forest – it used to be the reason for train hotels in this area, after all - and we took the long way through and back to I40. I don’t know what I expected, really, but I think it might have been upright petrified trees, if not full height at least like the one at Disneyland, short and humbled by time, but still unmistakably a tree. Not so. We saw short bits of log. Lying on the ground, randomly scattered across a few ridges. Up close they were beautiful, shot through with unexpected purples and pinks, but from the edge of the hot and dusty trail they were – unremarkable? I feel badly typing this, but it was true – I was underwhelmed by the petrified forest. It takes some serious imagination to picture the sere expanse of this national park as a fertile and lush prehistoric jungle; I blame my lack of breakfast for this shortfall. The landscape did more for me than the trees, and the “teepees,” an area of cone shaped formations with layered color, were enough for a couple of “wows” and “no really, can you pull overs,” as was the abandoned pueblo, complete with ancient graffiti and signs warning of snakes.

Closer to I40 and significantly shorter in driving distance, The Painted Desert section of the park proves that someone at the National Parks Service knows the strength of their offerings. I had no idea that the sand could be as vibrant as it is, or as many colors of orange and pink and yellow. Standing on an overlook, I was looking at one of those do it yourself sand art bottles, made by a young giantess with a fondness for the high wavelength end of the color spectrum. Fish-eye lens or not, I know that photos didn’t/couldn’t/won’t ever do this view justice, and I understand now why cross country travelers have been stopping to see this view for as long as there have been cross country travelers. Petrified wood be damned, this was the desert in full bloom.

On a much less culturally valuable note, I also insisted that we stop at the place that allowed (nay, encouraged) the hand feeding of ostriches. This required, much to Mike’s chagrin, a ten mile backtrack west and monies spent on red cups of ostrich feed. Posted clearly in front of the pen was a block lettered sign: “Warning – Ostrich Bite.” Anyone with a sense of humor can tell where this is going, and my thumb would like to thank you all for your concern. Duly wound up and giggly, I climbed back into the car and got a grim look from Mike, along with the assertion that we needed to get some driving done. It was noon, and we were all of thirty miles into our 549 mile trek for the day.

New Mexico is 374 miles across. Straight across, more or less, and although there is a fair amount of elevation change, the scenery itself stays pretty constant. Once the road points itself towards Albuquerque it seems like a very long, never-ending runway to getting there. This was about the point we got punchy and started emailing people photos of the view from the windshield with the caption “wish you were here.” Looking at those photos objectively, I’m not shocked that we had no takers. We got a much needed stretch and meal in Albuquerque, though, at a 50’s diner with disgustingly good chile cheeseburgers (that’s southwest chile, not campfire) and even more disgustingly good milkshakes. Then it was up and out of the city, climbing thorough ever more desert and past ever fewer towns with a stop at Cline’s Corner for drinks, beef jerky and a dust bath for the cat. I’d wanted to see the neon strip at Tucumcari, but New Mexico dealt us the cruel blow of two time changes in one day; we were seriously behind schedule and perilously close to missing dinner at the Big Texan, so we pushed on.

This was my driving day and Mike napped on an off while I pushed the speed limit with a steak in mind. The Big Texan in Amarillo is a veritable theme park of overeating, roadside attraction, restaurant and bad idea all rolled into one, and Mike wanted to go, so I was doing my damnedest to get us there in time. For those inclined to gluttony and exhibitionism, the restaurant offers a free 72oz steak dinner, complete with salad, shrimp cocktail, bread, potato, etc etc – the catch being that one has to eat said dinner on a dais in the middle of the room, and within an hour. We knew we weren’t in for that sort of torture, but we did want to eat so we were relived to pull in and see the neon Texan still waving folks inside, past the limo with longhorns mounted on the front, past the porch filled with rockers, past the saloon doors and into a movie set of Texan kitsch. We shared a rather pedestrian sized steak, and I can’t say it was the best I’ve ever had, but it was one of the most satisfying; I’d driven hard to get it, and it signaled the end of one of the more boring stretches of road we’d encountered yet. Texas hosts the midpoint of Route 66, just west of Amarillo itself, and Amarillo and the night we’d spend there marked more than half way in our journey as well.

The Old Man is Snoring

The windows are rattling in their frames, and a white flash of lightening just illuminated my otherwise darkened office. I can hear the cat complaining from the screened porch, where we’ve imprisoned him to dry off. It looks like I need a coat to get the vegetables (but I know I don’t) and I keep thinking that the train is going by, or a large delivery truck is stalled in our drive, but the sheets of gray outside the window remind me that it is just a summer storm.

Summer and storm aren’t really words that go together in the experience of a girl from California. Here, I think summer thunderstorms are as common as politeness and as necessary as sweet tea on a hot summer day. The beautiful green that blankets every inch of our property requires rain – no one has sprinklers – and the word around town is that last summer was miserable, for both the heat and the weeks without a single drop of rain. We’ve been snickering a little when people tell us this, because weeks without rain can easily describe Southern California any time of any year, and the El Nino winter that prompted me to always carry an umbrella in my trunk was an anomaly that hasn’t returned since. The nurseries here are advertising “drought-tolerant” plants, and while I know, really, that this was a serious drought for here, I have a hard time accepting that the green paradise we saw last July when we first came to look at houses was actually experiencing drought.

As new Tennesseans and new tree parents, we’re learning to say things like “we could use a little rain” and while I still feel conspicuous saying those words in the face of all this green, I know it is true. Last week we had a laundry list of trees planted: a magnolia whose placement caused a serious disturbance in the force that is our internet/phone/cable connection, a trio of redbuds, a brace of dogwoods, a solitary (but already very tall) Tennessee Tulip and a veritable orchard of fruit. We’ve been dragging hoses around and awaiting the UPS delivery of “tree gators” for a week now, babying the Japanese contingent of weeping cherry in front and fiery red maple in back, so it was a relief to see the storm clouds gathering last night. “Is that lightening?” quickly turned into “I think we might get some rain” and from there it wasn’t long until we reached “We’re going to get wet.”

Get wet we did, as we were driving back from a dinner at the bar of Flyte, making good on our promise to be regulars there in a way we never had the time or space (or good candidate restaurant) for in Pasadena. We’d come down 31 all the way from Nashville with the top down on my car when the dots on the windshield turned into plops and very quickly thereafter into rivulets. As long as we slouched we stayed mostly dry, the wind of fifty stretching the rain into silver streaks above our heads. The air was sultry but not sticky, the fresh patter and whiff of water hitting pavement and leaf swirled around the car and mixed with the radio I turned up as if in defense against the water. “If we stop, we’ll be drenched” I yell, laughing, as an 80’s dance song wails from the speakers. Slowing down is certain shower time, so we push on to the house as fast as possible, Mike running stop signs, me holding my hair in a twist to keep it from knotting and singing along. I hit the garage door button as we turn into the drive and it is up by the time we get there, spilling dry yellow into the night like landing lights. In we go, gasping, and as we stop the tiny streams held back by speed fall suddenly onto our laps and shoulders. A few errant drops bead the dash and the air vent has an odd square of condensation, from blowing cold into a warm evening, whistling in the wind. Breathless from the daring of three miles in a rainstorm with no roof, I decide that summer storms might be the most fun.

Clearing the Decks

((I've been documenting what I cook, mostly for my own edification but perhaps to get people to ask to visit, or ask to come to dinner (really! please ask!) here, but every so often I like to spend a few more words on the subject...))

We pick up our weekly CSA vegetables on Wednesdays, and that means that somewhere around Monday I have to critically examine what lurks in the vegetable drawer and find a way to use it. It isn’t that I’m not liking what we get, but it is still leaning a little towards the greens, and those aren’t the easiest to get my cooking head around, at least creatively. This Monday found a particularly large offering; I’m pretty sure I haven’t cooked enough in the face of Arugula’s Star bounty.

A trip to Publix on Sunday evening had turned up Sockeye salmon, fresh and wild and impossibly red. We bought it, remembering a summer in Redwood Shores where the local Nob Hill had it on sale for a week and we ate it exclusively, somehow not tiring of it even after the cat progressed from begging for scraps to refusing bits of actual flesh. It was as good as I remembered, broiled with a little bit of tarragon mustard and local honey, and I missed Martini weaving furrily around my ankles, asking for just a little bit.

I sliced yellow summer squash thinly and put them in a foil packet with a lemony herb so fresh that it bled into spicy, olive oil and a healthy sprinkle of the German herb salad mix I’ve been keeping on the counter. Those went in with the salmon while I tackled three bunches of young fennel, feathery tops and all, in a chef’s pan with olive oil. I wanted to add lemon but Mike had co-opted them for Pisco Sours, so I sliced the rind finely and tossed it into the pan with a spoonful of sugar and kept stirring until the whole mess was wilted together and sporting brownish black edges.

The peaches we’d bought for flavoring vodka demanded attention, too, so I picked out the most ripe candidates, peeled and sliced them and dumped them into a baking dish, topped with a little sweet short dough. I’ve always read that you should make sweet pastry dough by mushing the butter into the flour with your fingers, and this has always seemed a hassle to me that I have avoided with melting butter and stirring and using a mechanical device, but I didn’t want to dirty anything else so I used my fingers. Surprise, surprise, it was easy, quick and resulted in really light short crust dropped over of the peaches.

I made a salad, too, with (what else) CSA greens and radishes, a few dried black currants thrown in for sweetness, but the lettuce was too bitter even for me, and I ended up picking the currants and radishes out and ignoring the lettuce. I’ve been reading about grilled romaine salads recently, and maybe this lettuce has a date with the new grill, but it might be finding its way to the Piggers. They’re certainly asking noisily for fresh greens, and they aren’t picky.

I’m not quite used to cooking in this kitchen yet. I have so much space, but it seems like once I start cooking I’m out of space quickly. I miss being able to chop right on the counter, and I’m never sure if I should be using the island the way I am (facing out) or the other way, making it convenient to the sink. The expanse of counter baffles me, and I feel like things get marooned out on it and make it crowded, so I’m always shoved into little bits and corners. Having worked in a small space for years, I’m still learning how to best make use of this big one. I’ll have plenty of materials to practice with soon enough – CSA pickup is in two hours…

Here’s what we drank – Mike is calling it a Pisco Inferno, and I’m pretty pleased that I spotted the powdered egg whites on the shelf that made it possible!

1 1/2 oz Pisco
1/2 egg white
1 oz lemon juice
1 oz 4:3 Simple Syrup - 1 oz = 1 tsp sugar at this ratio

Combine all ingredients in a shaker and shake more than you think you need to - you are working up a heady foam. Pour into rocks glasses filled with ice.  Garnish with Angostura Bitters. ((He’s just taken delivery of a Misto he plans to load with bitters and flame onto the surface of the drink, per instructions from Jeffrey Morganthaler’s blog, a place I can see is going to lead us to all sorts of fun and trouble. If he (and the house) remain unexploded, it should be fun.))

Taking My Birthday Resolution Seriously

I’m starting to think that we can’t do anything in reasonable measures. We didn’t just take a trip – we travelled for three months. We didn’t just get a new house – we moved to Tennessee. We don’t just buy cars – we pick them up in Europe. I’m sensing a theme … and I fear it begun to color our drinking. It isn’t just the new wine fridge, filled past capacity. Or the hours we spent on Saturday cruising the Nashville wine and liquor shops. Oh, no, it is worse than that. Take a look at my counter:

That’s evolution there, my friends: of Rain into “Georgia peach vodka” and Bombay into “basis of a Bramble blackberry gin.” We already have a bottle of “would you like a stronger tiki drink” (also known as Pineapple Vodka) in the fridge, and I think Mike wants to hurry these two along so he can start on something new.

The LA bar scene has shifted (on the high end, anyway) to classic cocktails done right, and after a few rounds at places like Providence, Gordon Ramsay, Cut and others, we (along with D-squared) have clearly come to embrace the old school cocktail. I went on an odd liquor shopping spree last fall, coming home with a trunk full of esoterica like Heering, Applejack and Parfait Amour. Mike completed my collection at Christmas with a much coveted bottle of Crème de Violette. The volition and the ingredients were there, but the time seemed lacking. Now, with a huge kitchen, spare time a plenty and social engagements looming weeks and months on the horizon rather than days, we’re indulging in this expanded and improved hobby. Inspired by a (I suspect rather expensive, in many ways) night at Absinthe with Daniel, Mike has taken to the shaker with a vengeance. A stop at the Farmer’s Market for peaches also netted us the alluded to blackberries, so Mike set out to make a bramble. Most of the recipes call for crème de mure, but we wanted to go with the fresh. He ended up with the following:

The Blackberry Bramble
Muddle two (large) blackberries with ¾ oz of simple syrup and ¾ oz fresh squeezed lemon juice. It forms a really dark mush at the bottom of the tall glass, to which you add 1 ½ oz Hendricks gin. Fill the glass with crushed ice, then top off with club soda and stir (a step which reminded Mike that we need a cocktail stirrer) so as not to bruise the club soda (?). Garnish with a blackberry.

The nice part about drinking this at home was that when I got to the end I could go to the sink, scoop out the ice and get to the muddled berries at the bottom ... without looking like a five year old digging for the cherry in my Shirley Temple in public.

Franklin, the Beautiful

I’ve always been distrustful of the way summer is portrayed in magazines. Who actually changes their behavior in the summer to the extent that is purported? When you’re working, can “lazy summer days” and “hot evening meals” really mean anything? Who goes to summer festivals? Who has neighborhood parties?

Um, I stand corrected.

I guess the problem wasn’t the magazines, or summer: it was me. Living in 11 months of summer. And maybe Los Angeles itself. Pasadena never went all out for the Fourth – I think most of Southern California is just too cool to celebrate America, or, honestly, too disconnected from the idea to care. I expected things to be different here, in the same way that I expected corn to taste better (it does) and people to be friendlier (they are) but I didn’t have a concrete idea of how. I didn’t expect to stumble into a full color July issue magazine spread – but I have.

Thursday evening we went to the neighborhood Fourth of July party, up by the pool. I didn’t know that many people lived in our neighborhood, to be honest, and there were more kids running around in dripping bathing suits, screeching and playing with sparklers and generally looking like a promotion for All-American-Good-Clean-Summer-Fun than I thought possible. We sat with our neighbors and met other neighbors and acted neighborly, and if I’m overusing the “neighbor” word here, it’s just that the whole thing is such a novelty. We’ve had neighbors, sure, but never of the group-socializing kind. When we lived in an apartment, I didn’t know (by sight or name) the people we shared a wall with. In Redwood Shores, we had friends living a few feet away, but the overall neighborhood was not a community. It would have made sense, there, to have street parties and BBQs and gatherings at the pool, but people didn’t mix. In Altadena, the extent of “over the fence” conversation was our uphill neighbor complaining about the smoke from our BBQ. I didn’t grow up in a neighborhood either, so the whole idea of people sitting outside and talking to the people they live near is foreign, and oh so enticing. I wanted a neighborhood out of this move, and it looks like I’ve gotten one.

The BBQ dinner was catered by the association, and everyone was asked to bring “a dessert to share.” There were plates of watermelon, and a few packages of store-bought cookies and cupcakes, but the majority of the sweets were homemade, and they were good. Really good. Mike says we’ve moved to dessert land, and I have to agree – people here eat dessert, and they know how to make it. A groaning table at this party proved the point – we had all kinds of baked squares, Watergate salad and homemade banana pudding, and between that and the pulled pork sandwiches, I was pretty much in eat outside heaven. We used our portable chairs and our mini cooler and our wine sticks, and overall I felt clever to be outfitted with the requisite conveniences even though we’ve never had such an event to attend before. I think I always bought items for the idea of parties like this, much in the same spirit of “if you build it, they will come.” Maybe it worked?

It seemed oddly familiar at the time, the sitting outside and chatting and dusk and sparklers, the light buggy-ness and the smell of hot grass and the fireflies through the cordite mist – but I couldn’t place it until now, when I realize it reminded me of a hot Fourth I spent in Carthage South Dakota; I couldn’t have been more than seven. I remember a park by the river, hazy air and exploding fireworks, heat and heavy sleepiness, being slightly dirty, furred by dried sweat coated with fine dust, a lazy feeling of nothing to do and nowhere to go. It doesn’t get much smaller town than Carthage these days, and I’ve not made the connection until now, but there is a bit of that little prairie town mixed into this Southern adaptation of Ojai. Sitting under the trees, I’m not sure if I should be drinking with the adults or running with the kids: I’m new here, but somehow this feels familiar, a tradition I can slip right into, preprogrammed from ancient memory and years of wishing for it.

Franklin was throwing a party on the Fourth (and Fifth), so we headed to town mid-afternoon to wander the streets, look at the booths and listen to the live music. There were three stages, and on the main one we walked into a full-on impassioned performance of Freebird, complete with a guy with a camera phone pressing himself to the stage edge, recording every breathless second. A young guy lunged through the crowd, waving a flag and punching his fist in the air, and a bunch of people swayed and sang along. A little kid with a red white and blue tri-spiked Mohawk bounced through the crowd, grinning. I wanted to make fun of the whole spectacle, in that cynical, I’m so from California where we don’t do things like this way, but I couldn’t bring myself to dismiss it completely. Yes, it was terribly clichéd, but somehow the heart that everyone was putting into it won me over. I wasn’t lifting a lighter, or anything, but I couldn’t help smiling.

I smiled, too, later that evening when the entire neighborhood was awash in color and smoke and popping: I think everyone was setting off some sort of explosive. We could have watched any number of personal shows from the front porch, but nothing exceeds like excess, so we hopped in the car with 10 minutes to spare and raced to the town show with the top down and the radio up. We started seeing the rockets’ red glare once we crested the hill above town, and we watched it all the way to the high school parking lot on the north side of Franklin, where we parked with countless other people also staring up at the sky. Fireworks have always made me get a little teary; nostalgic for something I can’t put my finger on. These were no exception, and as I watched I saw myself like a character in a movie – sitting in a convertible on a warm summer night, watching fireworks with the radio on, in a peaceful spot in a quiet corner of a beautiful country. This was a montage scene, no doubt: girl takes big risk and moves to small town, finds love and contentment and reconnects with the meaning of life. The camera pulls back to show uplifted faces colored by the flashes of firework red and white and music swells and all is right with the world, at least for that moment. And it was.

Happy Birthday to Me

My birthday started out in an odd way. I woke up to see a brilliant sunrise over Chicago, took a photo, and screwed my eyes shut again in defense against the light, the flight attendants and the hideous five am hour. Oh yes, a red eye. No better way to make me feel older than to make me sleep for three hours and change in an airplane seat and call it a night.

I was supposed to get home Monday evening, and as much as I missed everyone in LA, I was ready to sleep in my own bed, use a real sized tube of toothpaste and check in on Mike and Gato-Plex. I left Ojai, drove to LAX, and discovered upon arrival that my flight had gone from 10 to 80 minutes delayed. Delayed enough that I would miss my connection in Denver - my connection which was the last flight to Nashville. According to the 1K desk, my last chance to get to Nashville until 10pm the following day, which just happened to be my birthday, which just happened to make me cry while standing in line and wrestling two suitcases and a large box. Which, because it was LA, didn’t prompt anyone around me to offer condolences, Kleenex or (most annoyingly) help with my box. I’m not sure, really, why I had to be more creative in routing than the United rep, but I suggested she try and get me home via Chicago, which she could… as long as I was willing to sit in LAX for eight and a half hours, before catching a red eye that would deposit me in Chicago at sunrise to catch a 6:30 to Nashville.

There didn’t seem to be anything else to do but take it, so I did, checked my box with much wrangling, made sure I was upgraded and had a really good cry on the phone with my mom while sitting in the lobby. And then I talked on the phone with everyone I could reach to harass, felt really sorry for myself, and watched an “only in LA” vignette of some camera guy harassing a star who just wanted to sit by himself and have a snack before he flew. All this excitement in the lobby of LAX. Hmmm. I used a parking shuttle to get to In n Out and had one last glorious Double Double before leaving town and then waited. And waited. And waited, waited, waited, molasses slow waited, to get on the plane. Which was delayed. A delayed flight after almost nine hours in the airport feels inevitable, really, but gee, cheery fun, they made up time on the way, and we got to Chicago early leaving me plenty of time to trek the marathon between the C gates and the F gates and wait for my flight home.

Do I sound like I’m complaining? Probably because I am, but I’m about to stop, because I did get home on my birthday, and I officially started it with a really nice plate of potato pancakes from the Pancake Pantry in Nashville, a place that we didn’t even recognize without the block and a half line wrapping around the building. Eating out on a Tuesday morning is a lot easier than a Sunday. I worked from the ever faithful kitchen table and had flowers waiting for me and a bunch of nice calls from friends and family, and chalked up the total disorientation to the red eye rather than the three weeks away from home or the new age, which made the oddness of being back here and being that much further from 30 more bearable.

Somewhere in the evening hours I had to pull it together to get to dinner, the only concession to my state being the moving forward of the reservation by thirty minutes. I made it though, showered and dressed, and I was so glad that I did, because this restaurant is a gift. We first went on a whim when Anna was here and closed the place with an impromptu kitchen tour by the chef. I knew then that I wanted to come back for my birthday, and it was worth the wait. Mike ordered an obscure cocktail that the bar staff went to a liquor store to get the ingredients for … and then they comp-ed us the beautifully made drink (an Aviation, for the record). He had emailed them about my birthday, and we had a progression of ‘just for us’ appetizer tidbits that were each better than the last: short rib (with cocoa nibs), scallops, frogs legs… we had a trio of soups (mmm, pea soup with crab) and a trio of salads – really inventive things like pecan pie (with blue cheese ice cream), pigs in a blanket (with fried goat cheese and prosciutto) and muffaletta (yeah, like the sandwich). By the time we got to entrée we were stuffed, but we did manage to share a really nice piece of pork, and the desserts were not neglected in the form of crème brulee and a birthday decorated plate with candle. We drank a good – nay, great – bottle of wine, caught up on the previous three weeks and reveled in the fact that we could be regulars at such an amazing restaurant. Flyte. Reservations now accepted for anyone coming to visit.

I’m not particularly worried about turning 33 – I kind of like the double number – but it seems odd conceptually that I could be this old. I don’t think of myself as having an age, really – it isn’t how I define myself – but if pushed I think I might say I was 27. I’m thinking that’s not so true anymore. I wonder if I’ll always think I’m 27, or if when I’m in my 40s I’ll think I’m 33… either way, I’m intending to make this a stellar year, worthy of the double number. A friend recently suggested that we should make resolutions on our birthday rather than on New Year’s – a more personal fresh start. I like it, and I’m resolving, this year, to slow down, appreciate where I am (wherever that may be) and learn to be a little more content with what’s in front of me, rather than what’s behind or ahead. Oh, and I’m resolving to drink more cocktails on the screened porch. At least that way I can say, next summer, that I did well on at least some of my resolutions. Besides, the second might help the first!

Perhaps I underestimated Nashville…

No, I’m not back to posting photos of the pantry. This is the International Market in Nashville, around the corner from Belmont College and wedged onto a slightly morning after street littered with outdoor bars, crooked student housing and a new-agey tattoo parlor. Also, and more pertinently, about 20 miles from my house, but bearing a striking resemblance to the “thai curry” section of the aforementioned pantry. I guess I should let them know that when they run low on cans of Panang, I can help out in a pinch.

The International Market serves food, too: fresh noodle dishes being at the top of my list of concerns, and has jasmine tea from a dispenser. Iced tea in TN is “sweet” or “un” – here there is also a tea silo sweating under the label “jas.” We shared a pad kee mao, because it was there and it seemed silly to pass it up, and it was … good. Better than good, actually; head and shoulders above any other Thai we’ve found here. The noodles were right: lightly elastic and with that odd patina of rice gluten grease that marks really authentic tasting stir fry. The pork tasted like pork, and the basil was fresh, and they had added Chinese broccoli which worked better than I expected. A dash of hot chili flakes and we were almost in LA. It wasn’t Sanamluang, but what is? If this is my authentic Thai food, I’m really not suffering. I would like to know, though, why they stock straw mushrooms in bulk and every Thai restaurant I’ve been to here serves soup with sliced white buttons? I need to start taking cans with me when I eat out.

Thanks to a tip from a waiter, we’ve also found real Vietnamese food, something I was sure would be out of reach here. Miss Saigon is in one of the many mini malls that make up the megalith of Cool Springs (want to buy something? I think they sell it, whatever it might be, there). It looks, inside, just like a basic Asian restaurant in LA: bare floor, oddly cheap chairs, deep booths in a garish color and “cultural art” on the walls. No matter – the menu is in both Vietnamese and English, and they pull no punches about the flavors or the ingredients. Pho can be had with beef tendon! We started with fresh spring rolls and peanut dipping sauce, and they were right. Just right – clean and cool and crisp and oh, such a relief to know I can get them here without having to make them myself. I had pho for dinner, and Mike had a noodle bowl with pork that was just as good as anything we’ve had in LA, and I think my shoulders dropped about two inches that evening, even with the amount of caffeine that must have been swirling in my syrupy café sua da. Vietnamese is perfect hot weather food, developed and adapted as it is to a land where the humidity makes Southern heat wilt in defeat. I’m looking forward to eating my way through the menu this summer.

Speaking of summer, though, I think we’ve brought California weather back with us. Days are hot, yes, but we’ve had minimal humidity and a light breeze, and even though I don’t want to be doing manual labor in the middle of the yard, I’m not uncomfortable walking. Evenings, though, are just perfect here – warm, soft, full of chirping and calling and sweet smells. I want to live outside at night, sipping some fancy drink and relaxing. It is cool enough to eat outside too, and we did that last night, eating GOOD BURRITOS. Mike found Blue Coast Burrito while I was still on the Blue Coast, and the place was clearly decorated by someone who lived in California. It is Baja-Surf in theme, but it works, as does the food, and most spectacularly, as do the fish tacos. And the guacamole. And the spicy shredded chicken, and the tortillas, which, if they aren’t Reubens-perfect are at least thin enough to taste right wrapped around meat, beans, rice, cheese and a little sour cream. I’ve been home a week and we’ve been there twice and I’m wondering if I can talk Mike into going back. Like, oh, tomorrow? They also carry Las Paletas, gourmet Mexican-style popsicles made by a small company in Nashville. I had the plum, and the best way I can describe it was eating real Italian gelato frozen into popsicle form. It may not be Southern, but it is going to be something I feed people who come here to visit.

I’ve had BBQ since I was back too, twice, and I’m enjoying my CSA vegetables and my Viking and my kitchen, but it is awfully comforting to know that I have options here when it comes to food that hasn’t been boiled with a bit of salt pork. Aside from the people (and let’s not muddy the fact that there is no comparison here in terms of ‘how much’) going back to LA reminded me that one of the things I miss most is the wide availability of different types of food. Not that there aren’t good options here, and some really fabulous food, but I was feeling a bit scratchy that I couldn’t run out for pho here. Now I can. Tennessee is a new boyfriend this week, pulling out all the stops to make me happy. I’m enjoying the attention.

Homesick

This is my third Friday in the office, and I’m homesick – but I don’t really know for where. Driving to work yesterday morning in the fresh California brightness, I looked up towards the mountains and had a physical pang of missing here. I’ve had my share, certainly, of missing people, but sitting in traffic on Fair Oaks (an unlikely place to miss any locale) I suddenly, violently, missed here.

I have a bad habit of being homesick before I leave on a trip. No matter how anticipated the adventure, I spend my pre-departure days moping and missing my home, my guinea pigs, my husband. Simple things like watering the flowers or finishing the peaches before they get mushy become monumentally important. I’m mopey and tired and whiny and for someone who likes to travel so much, I suspect I’m generally just a pain in the ass. Once I leave home, though, it ceases to exist for me and I find that I don’t miss it at all. This also, I’m sure, makes me a pain in the ass.

This trip started true to form: as much as I wanted to see all my California peeps, I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving home. I was just starting to feel settled. I had a garden to deal with, trees to be planted, walls to paint. Although the boxes are all unpacked, the house still isn’t even approaching finished, and I wanted to work on it. There was a home tour in Franklin that I wanted to take. And a horse show I wanted to see. And I was sure that the ONLY good vegetables of the summer would arrive and depart these three weeks that I was suffering in LA. I felt sorry for myself all the way here, through two delayed flights and a lack of dinner and an insufferably long four hour flight from Chicago, and then I got off the plane, saw Dana and was happy. Post-midnight hot dogs at Pinks, LA in the dark, the smell of the night flowers and the dramatic entrance of two fat raccoons – I hadn’t been here but two hours and I was happy. Tennessee was a faint memory. I know. I’m a pain in the ass.

The longer I’ve been here, though, the more I’ve missed my new home. I miss the stillness of the house, the green out the windows and the wild turkey. I miss the pleasantness of the people, the exploration of a new place, the fact that we aren’t the only people who stop to move errant turtles off the road. I miss the slower way of talking and being, and I miss the stillness in myself that I’ve only just begun to discover. I miss the guinea pigs, of course, and the sweet tea, and have I mentioned the green? I miss the green.

At the same time, if that is “newhome” this is still “home.” And I miss home too. I miss the cool overlay of summer mornings, when the birds call and the world seems still and fresh. I miss the rough outlines of the mountains, the abundance of great food of every variety. I miss knowing where I am going without thinking about it. Most of all, I miss people. I’ve started to think of the D-squared house as home, as in “when I get home” and “on my way home” and that comfortable tug of residence I feel when I walk in the door. I miss it already – I miss them already. I miss being a part of people’s daily lives, the easy in and out of conversations that are picked up and put down like magazines. I even walked through the office this week and vaguely (I know!) missed being here. I know, of course, that I’m going “newhome” on Monday, and part of me can’t wait. The other part of me is totally refusing to accept the idea that I’m leaving again, and goes about blithely making mental plans for stopping by so and so’s house, or doing a Disney evening, or eating sushi on Wednesday.

Three weeks seemed impossibly long, and now it feels impossibly short, and I realize now that you can’t, ever, go home again. I’m floating here, part way between what was and what will be, and I find myself a melancholy and not a little bit conflicted. I want, intensely, two different things and I know, inherently, that I can’t have both – my heart aches more than just a little. I can’t figure which place I miss more, the one I’m going back to, or the one I’m in now. All I really know is that a part of me is there, and a part of me is here, and I don’t know how to change that (or even, really, if I want to).

Déjà LA

I’ve been back in LA for a week, and in some ways, it feels like I never left. I walked into the office last Thursday and it was so familiar I wondered if I hadn’t been gone at all. Like a dream, the reality of Tennessee faded to a warm feeling and a faint imprint, and as I stared at the tiles in the bathroom, the patterns of the carpet, the (lack of) light in my cube I wondered where I’d been these two months.

Oddly, I don’t feel any pull to the old house. I haven’t once turned that way or felt a need to drive up the hill. My brain has accepted the idea that I don’t live there anymore -living here it isn’t as sure about. It follows, of course, that everything feels familiar; I lived here for almost six years, and around here for many more. California is a part of who I am, and coming back is slipping into my most comfortable pair of broken in running shoes, blister free. Tennessee, in all its green glory and languid charm, hasn’t yet made it to my bones. These, though, the concrete glare and the gray green of the palms, the brown faces of the mountains and the sun bleached look of the streets, the mix of cars and people and traffic and sound, the low hum of the freeway and the soft morning air scented with the calls of doves – these I claim as mine.

I’m enjoying myself: burning the candle at both ends and cramming as much in as I possibly can. I’m appreciating the multitude of freeways, options galore for going anywhere I want. I’ve seen the beach and the Mouse, eaten from the highest and lowest of tables (and been equally satisfied at both), worked and talked and laughed. I’ve been to the glitter of the west side, the quiet of South Pas, the congestion of the 5 as it winds through the bleak center of LA. I’m not thinking about home – where that might or might not be for me today, tomorrow, and tomorrow’s tomorrow. In the planning this seemed too long, this sojourn with los angeles, but now that it is melting into warm days and bright nights it seems that it could never be long enough. I met friends of a friend this past weekend who wanted to know where I was from – I couldn’t answer. I suspect that I won’t be able to for quite some time.

If only I had a table...

The house came with light fixtures that wavered between nice and, well, not me. The chandelier in the dining room was greatly improved by changing the tiny faux tapestry shades to these larger, far more elegant silk pagoda do-hickies, and I'm much happer. I'd be even happier if my hard won (and for a great deal) Restoration Hardware Parsons Chairs (no relation to Parsons, or Parsons Brinkerhoff, for that matter) in goldenrod were actually sitting around a table, the cherry surface of which will be ever so delicately lit by these shades. Alas, it is not yet to be, and the chairs are waiting under plastic for their prince.

Majestic Yellow

Ah, glorious new Kitchen Aid mixer, how I love you, with your larger bowl, slightly more powerful motor, improved splatter shield and beaming yellow countenance. You coordinate so beautifully with the kitchen and I promise to care for you, in cake batter and in frosting, in mashed potatos and in bread dough, so long as we both shall cook.