Shameless Self Promoters

Fun on the Twirly Slide

2012-01-25T23:44:00.002-05:00

Fun and games and elbows and knees. Its all fun until someone gets hurt, right?

Our nanny called out sick yesterday, so I had the rare opportunity to hang out in the city with the twins. It was so fun to see the crazy little people that they are becoming.

In the morning Euge and I went on our first tour of a school, to look at a possible preschool program... It was funny with all the little kids, little chairs, little tables... even their own little toilets!

It reminded me of mom's stories about me singing in the bathroom at our preschool. I'm not sure it was the school for the boys, but the tiling in the bathroom looked promising for good acoustics.

It was lucky for me that one of the other families in our building has a son that is good buddies with the boys - they had a playdate while we were on the school tour. Childcare co-op! So Capitol Hill of us!

After I picked them up, we went to the big neighborhood playgroup at one of the local churches and, for the first time in at least a couple of years, I got to hear the supremely talented Mr. Troy perform for the kids. He's an amazing local parent who performs for all of the kidlets every week, singing and playing his guitar. Its the sort of thing that I can imagine the boys talking about with their friends from the 'hood when they are all growed up.

'Hey, remember Mr. Troy at the church playgroup?'

"Yeah, he was awesome. I always wanted to learn to play the guitar because of him.'

He's like Mr. Rogers. Only younger. And more energetic. And he wasn't wearing a cardigan. At least not this week.

We wandered into the church proper after the playgroup ended and were treated to his rendition of 'Boy Named Sue' while he tested the church's new sound system. Sweet!

I was perhaps overly proud that, as we were leaving, a Mom at the group (with her non-walking singleton baby) commented on how well I seemed to handle the boys and how impressed she was with how I talked to and managed them. Hah! Fooled her!

Afterwards, the boys' friends and their nannies came back to the apartment for a pizza partay. Woohoo!

There were five toddlers, three babies, three nannies, and me. I was a little self-conscious that they might not think I was as capable as the mom at the playgroup did. I think I disappointed them when I suggested (after 2 hours of toddler wound-up mayhem) that we settle down a bit and watch a show about how trucks are built.

TV!!! Bad Mommy!

Egh, whatever.

After everyone left, the boys and I took a little more time in front of the boob toob, played a rousing game of both Chutes & Ladders AND High-Ho Cherry-O, before I decided that it was time for a trip to the playground.

And then the twirly slide child dogpile commenced. The kids (around twenty of them) loaded themselves over and over again into the slide, bundled in so tight that noone could move. Except to laugh. Hysterically.

Then we went home, there was a bath, some food... maybe a little more TV... and sweet sweet bedtime.

No one was harmed in the making of this photo. Proof that the twins aren't total animals?

Word of the Year, 2012

2012-01-21T02:50:00.004-05:00

I never did get on a ferry over winter break. There were a LOT of things I didn't do - paint the kitchen, for example. I didn't read reviews, and while I'm glad I didn't, I also paid for that in terms of the scramble and chaos of the last few weeks at work. Today we approved 12 promotions and all of our merit increases. We are the Lake Wobegon of workplaces - all employees are above average. Monday will be spreadsheets and merged letters, four different versions, multiple spreadsheets and 56 envelopes at least. Then I'm good. Until the hiring for the year gets approved, at least.

I've been making things. Food things. Potato latkes and little meatballs and gougeres and apple sharlotka and cabbage with ham and chocolate chip cookies from scratch and cranberry apple crisp or crumble or whatever it is and fresh wild mushroom toasts and really a lot of lacinato kale. Beyond this, I'm not making much progress, but this IS progress, I keep telling myself. Even though tonight dinner was lasagna from the co-op deli (which I don't feel bad about buying because really, lasagna is a royal pain to make) and I bought beet salad for lunch tomorrow, which I do feel bad about buying, because I suspect it's easy enough even for me, and I forgot to even get the chevre I was going to add to it.

It's alright. This is what I tell myself nightly, in the little journal I've been keeping about the house. I just want to make that white bolognese sauce some time this month, and learn how to write letters again. Progress. That's the word.

Light Again

2011-12-21T03:20:00.001-05:00

Ages ago, I said that all the holiday gifts this year would be handmade, but not many of them are after all. Driving home tonight I started to consider, for the first time this season, breaking down and doing that kind of holiday shopping where you just go, and walk around, looking at every thing there is to look at, trying to figure out if any of it could be something someone I feel I owe a present to would want. I wasn't quite to the mall stage, it would have been walking around the second smallest town nearby, but in the end I think I've decided against even that.

I just want to hang out with my family, and then spend days in my pajamas.

Friday, 2011

2011-12-17T02:53:00.002-05:00

There were things that needed to be made up for but we didn't talk about that. Part of what could have been bad was made into a story, and laughed at. I hoped for the ice to hold. Frog came to the table and showed us all how to make his kind of snowflake. We cut and bent paper, drew the edges together with little ribbons of tape, and all made something together. Jessica was wearing the hat I made for her last year. Two and a half years ago isn't far away, but so much has changed for so many of us.

Last Penpal

2011-12-12T01:52:00.000-05:00

She wasn't the easiest person to get a photo of. I like this one, just candid, taken during dinner out, with the twins sitting at the end of the table she seems to be looking at.

When our other grandmother passed away, suddenly there were all this photos. Black and white, little square prints, people in bathing suits and with dogs I never knew, wearing hats and heels, lanky and younger than I'd ever known them. It was this reveal that never happened in any of the visits or letters that had come in the years she was Grandma. It felt like another way to know her, and I've been glad for it. She's tacked up on the bulletin board in my office, wearing overalls, fishing from a rock. Always.

I hope for some of that with Grandma Ellen, too, now that she's gone. I used to write to her sometimes with questions, things that probably seemed maybe a little rude, about when she was younger. What things were like, what was she interested in, back then? She was never very interested in answering those. But she did always write anyway, just about other things, whatever was recent.

I miss owing her a letter. Last year was the last year of Belle Fourche calendars for Christmas. Glad we were there not too long ago, wish she could have been here more. She was always good to us.

Blue

2011-12-07T00:47:00.001-05:00

The frost on the fields the other day was so thick it looked like snow from a distance. Someone at work was talking about Colorado the other day, how the high had been zero degrees somewhere there, balmy! and I remembered that and missed it. Coming home at night, the back porch hear is all glitter and treachery. Sunday morning was bad news, but later in town, David kept Tweets open late to feed us roast chicken and homemade noodles. It's what my dad would have made, if he were making my favorite thing, and even though he was the one who deserved comforting, it was the right thing.

Dark Enough

2011-11-29T23:56:00.001-05:00

five years ago

I wasn't in a good mood from the start. Not a bad mood, exactly, a little crabby, less generous than I aspire to be, and no good at faking it. I skated by on wordsmithing and filling out forms and a little filing. Dinner was dried tortellini boiled up and covered in leftover sauce, even though I knew it would have made the night so much better to just go pick up Thai food. I was torn between that and just wanting to be home. We left the TV off, and it started to rain, and the wind sounded like rain too, and I couldn't decide what to knit. I had gotten to the part of the book about a character's depression and that seemed too apt no matter how well written it was. There is a night at home tomorrow, then the rest of the week a marathon, two trips to Seattle, and then a weekend that doesn't feel like the bullseye in the center of the target that they sometimes do. I've learned that there might as well be some cleaning that gets done, might as well get to the sleeping part of the day early, and start again tomorrow.

Let's Start Keeping Track Again

2011-11-28T02:12:00.000-05:00

There were a lot of things I didn't manage to get done. This is what I think about on Sundays, it's inevitable. Even if the kitchen is pretty clean, and all the dry laundry is folded, and we've hosted thirteen people for Thanksgiving, had lunch out with Tom's parents the next day, gone to The Daffodils CD release party the next night and the show at the Longhorn tonight. Put like that, it doesn't sound like the week was all that lazy. I'm starting to like the house. Not that I didn't always love it, but liking it has more to do with feeling good about the way I deal with the house on a day to day basis. The spare room is starting to vaguely resemble some sort of order, and it is actually possible to clean up my bedroom in about fifteen minutes, generally.

I still don't know what to get anyone for Christmas, though. Any hints?

Eventually

2011-11-07T00:16:00.000-05:00

Two months is long enough away. Driving home on Farm to Market at night, even with your high beams on, sometimes the speed limit is too fast. Too fast for the coyote flicking through your headlight, the owl exposing the underside of his wings, and worst of all, the skunk ambling his way so much more slowly than you would think possible. The coyote and the owl make it, the skunk, not always.

Summer left quickly, and all of a sudden, it's frost in the morning and heavy coats, no shoulder season at all. Driving home one night, the wind blew the rain so far sideways that it looked like snow coming down in the headlights. In the garage, a small flood seeps into the boxes of files that were there for shredding, but is gone the next day. You can start to see where the puddles will form in the driveway again.

The last year has been so long. This time last year I was just getting the new light fixtures in at the house, an ordeal that involved uncertainty and disagreements and one broken shade that I felt terrible about. The fixtures go unnoticed now, peaceful finally. Things in the house still change little by little, not quickly enough for anyone but Emmy, who just wants to know where the water, food and her people are. Beds she can make anywhere. No matter that I spend the night here every night, it still seems part-time somehow but I've learned at least to make my own coffee, and every day I do.

25a. There Aren't Enough Words For Home

2011-09-05T01:20:00.001-04:00

On the way home from Quiet is the New Loud at the Longhorn tonight, I took what I think of as the back way. East to Chuckanut, then Thomas Road to Allen West. A small dark thing ran across Chuckanut, and then an owl flew from the top of one of the street signs on Thomas Road, out into the fields away from my headlights, wings all sepia the way everything looks in the dark out of the corner of your eye. I wanted to go back and see it again, not miss the moment when it had been sitting there, just before flight. I thought about all the photos I'd like to have but can't, and how I don't have enough, or the right, words for the way a bird flies, and for what those big wings do to you when you see them so close.

5. A Dream

2011-08-16T12:08:00.003-04:00

I don't know where we were. She was visiting, a surprise. When I put my hand on her arm, it was so thin. Anyone could see that, but there was the feel too, warm and dry, the bones right there, unapologetic. I thought I might wake up to hear that she had gone, but that call hadn't come yet.

Cantaloupe always reminds me of her. Small dogs with underbites, and those snake-looking things that are used to clean swimming pools. Kidney shaped swimming pools. Orca whales, Shamu in particular, and those little sailor hats, like the one Gilligan wore on the island that bore his name. Matching skirts with extra twirl, corduroy vests. The desert. Small lizards. Tijuana and its brightest, cleanest souvenirs. Big tissue paper flowers, papier mache marionettes. White hair, fresh curls from the beauty parlor, baby blue slacks. The scar on the heel of my palm. A disdain for what she'd call "nasty neat". Pet rocks. The phrase "Well, that's true," said in a certain tone. My own mother. The Lawrence Welk show, over football. Football too. The Arizona Cardinals and Matt Leinart. The black puffy vest I bought myself at the Gap from her one year, that I still wear at least a decade on. I can't think of her without thinking of her husband. I don't know how to know who is at peace with what, and what will surprise us later. I wonder if there's anything to apologize for, or if it's all okay. The town of Malmo in Sweden. Needles wrapped in a grosgrain pouch, tiny double-pointed sets for socks, single pointed in sizes for baby sweaters. I don't know why that's the thing I am most thankful for, I only know it is.

Blingin'

2011-08-12T14:24:00.004-04:00

My Sparkly Golden Robot Nails

So, this summer I am spending time away from the twins for the first time since they were born. Well, actually, since I got pregnant. Four years of them virtually every day and night. That's a long time time to have two little people dependent on you for their comfort, care and feeding.

And then there's the part where they syphon off the majority of my patience and emotional energy. Though we are not physically tethered, I am convinced that there is an invisible vortex between us, sucking all of the vital emotional components out of me, to them.

I've had my trepidations about leaving them. Will they get fed? Put down for naps on time? Will the potty training continue? Who will wake up with them at 2 AM? Will the sunscreen be applied regularly? Will their teeth get brushed?

The long weekend in Southern California has come and gone and it was well worth the effort. The boys were fed, cared for, entertained and maintained. At least not broken or damaged in any permanent way — though they have now discovered the meaning of spanking.

That might be to my advantage, just as a threat of course.

For me, it was so fun to have a weekend where the only person I needed to be concerned about caring for, feeding and putting to sleep was me. When other wedding guests asked what I planned for the non-wedding activity time, my answer was simple: sleep, sleep, sleep.

And I did.

I also got a manicure, got a pedicure, got my hair done, drank some (a lot of) champagne, wore some new dresses, wore some new shoes, read some seriously trashy novels, perused some super trashy magazines and TOOK A BUBBLE BATH!

Now I have the weekend in Seattle coming up and I am really excited to get to visit without the constant planning around nap schedules (though the Reunion Schedule must be respected), at least not the twins nap schedules.

I may make a nap schedule for myself.

Maybe this time I will get to go to Larry's joint, or this restauran t, where our plans were thwarted by snow and scheduling snafus on the last trip. Maybe I'll get some Tracy Pucci eyebrows, or a glass of wine and some paté at Campagné.

Don't get me wrong, I will miss the boys every little minute.

But for the first time in a long time, I am getting to enjoy being by myself. With you, of course.

1. A Day

2011-08-11T23:47:00.005-04:00

At work, I have a bias for candidates who tell me about what it was like to love a job. In friends, I have a bias for people who make me mix tapes, CD's, whatever. We've talked about this before. There's something else to say about it though, the way it signifies, to me, someone's ability to think about, oh, say, you driving your car to work in the morning, or, even better, about the more unpleasant drive home, that time of day when everything gets all gummed up and NPR drones and the Cedar Grove composting site in Everett goes all foul-smelling in the sun and you are so ready to be home and over it all. If there is a mix CD, or the first draft of the Daffodils new album, none of that is so bad. It's just what lies between you and avocado crab enchiladas from the co-op, and the blooming potato fields that surround the house, and everything the evening holds.

The accident on the way home today was two cars all the way over the guard rail, both right side up, surprisingly, one facing south instead of north. These things happen, maybe an accident this bad about once every three months, and they stick with me. Traumatic to me in some small, corner of the eye way, traumatic to someone else on a much bigger scale. I've been thinking about trauma a lot these days, both the big sudden kind, and the long sustained conditioning that tends to resonate through the years, surprising you with your own reactions to things. Surprising me with my own reaction to things.

Most days, I notice what happens when I walk in the door in one of the places where I am supposed to belong. At work there are two ways to go in, and I alternate depending on my mood. Walk past the exec offices, or stop in the lunchroom for hot water for tea? Those choices start the world in two different ways. In Bow, Emmy predictably barks, but sometimes she also gently nips at my hand as I reach down to pet her on the walk back to the front gate to close it for the night. Sometimes Tom is in the house, doing dishes, but most often he's out in the back these days, watering or piling dirt up around the potato mounds, and sometimes he leaves what he's doing to say hello, and sometimes he doesn't, sometimes he just waves. At the Ballard house, it was the same way, sometimes Kate and Jason on the couch, watching a movie, Kate knitting or playing words with friends or something like that on her iPhone. Sometimes they would stop the movie to talk, sometimes not. Sometimes I was Special Guest Star, and sometimes it was Tuesday. Sometimes it was a house full of guys with beards and stringed instruments, apologizing for being in the way of the door up to my space. Yesterday Jason saw me coming from where he sat on the couch, and got up to open the door and let me in. That was the first time he had ever done that, and probably the last. Moving day is any week night for the next few weeks, and then it's mini-farm forever after.

THE EELS, Showbox, August 9, 2011

2011-08-10T03:22:00.002-04:00

Some of the sounds were like a 6th grader, working on learning the flute. The horns section, two guys in what looked like bellhop suits, turned towards the curtain behind the stage when they weren't working, kids in the naughty corner, only more dignified. There was La Marseillaise gone wrong, and something muppet-like about E's singing, and that potent pause right in the middle of one song, then the start-up again, loosely choreographed and bad-ass, that thing they did with the necks of their guitars, and there were other weird little bits of choreography, all of them getting up close to the drummer as though they were paying homage, and when E turned around to face his band instead of the audience it was like the center of gravity of the whole room had been lifted up and set down amongst the seven of them, and later there was another still part, just the drum going, rattling something so deep in my chest that my collarbone felt like a tuning fork. E didn't let a song end before he had the next guitar on, and in between he'd call out things like "I LIKE HOW THIS IS GOING" and the whole show seemed wild and capable, precise and brutish and tender all at once, and made me almost wish I was a man.

Bare Bones

2011-07-29T15:33:00.002-04:00

It's rare that I make my commute with nothing on the radio, no book on CD playing. For the first half of my commute this morning, I listened to Louise Erdrich read Lorrie Moore's story, Dance In America via the New Yorker fiction podcast and afterwards my mind was too blown to take in anything else. I flipped off the car stereo and drove the rest of the way in silence. I paid attention to the fire truck racing along the frontage road, an ambulance solemnly following. I thought about the difference between He leaves the room and He walks out of the room. I thought about secrets, and the way a story can be told by isolating pieces of information, leaving things out, like in a photograph where what makes it beautiful is the lack of extraneous details.

Tuesday

2011-07-27T01:25:00.001-04:00

With Tom on Orcas recording with the Daffodils, the mini-farm is quiet. No Emmylou, no Mariners on the little radio in the garage. I do things he usually does, bring the garbage bin, the recycling bin back from the curb, cross Allen West Road to our little mailbox for the collection of junk mail and grocery store circulars that go straight into the same recycling bin. Before I go to sleep, I grind espresso for the little stovetop espresso maker, put the cilantro dip and poached shrimp in containers to put in the fridge. Tomorrow I have to remember to heat up the gooey cinnamon bread for breakfast, go out to the greenhouse, water the leggy tomato plants, the prolific pattypan squash, the little strawberry plants. Nothing to pack though, no forgotten cell phone charger, insufficient sock supply or wrong color shoes. Just home, every night for a week.

There isn't really a photo for this one.

2011-07-25T14:01:00.001-04:00

On my way home from Port Townsend via Sea-tac, where I dropped Pam off for her flight back to Denver, then the ranch, I stop for groceries at the co-op. I load a cart with one of those giant packs of toilet paper, a quiche for Monday breakfast, a quarter of a watermelon, a loaf of bread, a gallon of whole milk, and two tall lattes. When I get home, Tom and I sit on the back porch in the sunshine, finally strong enough to make it warm at home in spite of the breeze, drinking the lattes instead of unpacking the groceries. I get to them eventually, but not until after we have wandered around the yard, looking at the kale Emmy has gnawed down to the bare stalk, the little path Tom has cut through the blackberries, the patty pan squash that just keeps coming.

Tom puts up a clothes line and I cut the watermelon into huge slices and think about the essay Pam read at the closing day of the Port Townsend Writers' Conference at Centrum. Take note of the things that grab you in the world. Set them next to each, see what happens. A small part of what she had to say, but I keep thinking about it nonetheless.

In the fenced-in dirt lot behind the state patrol just off our exit in Burlington, there are a dozen or so smashed up cars, totaled far beyond any insurance company definition of the word. Sitting at a big wood table inside on the nicest night of the summer, someone tells me about letting a family member go because of drug use. I don't realize at the time that I'm not hearing it, until it comes back to me the next morning and I do. "When I got involved, it was with my whole heart," she says "so eventually I just couldn't get involved." In some situations, there are no good choices, but hope springs eternal, we don't know what will make a difference, though we are reminded all the time of all the things that did not. For example, being there - for example, not being there. My friend's family member came back later with amends, from what turned out to be an island of sobriety in an ocean of not knowing when the next landfall will come, or when addiction sets sail again. That landscape is the same and different for everyone.

On the ferry to Port Townsend on Saturday, I couldn't decide where I wanted to be. Outside on deck, in sunshine, with the chill of the breeze generated by the boat, or inside, letting myself get lost in a book, sitting next to the window with the scenery only washing past me, unseen. I do both, not remembering later what I've read.

I come home from the co-op Sunday tired, not from anything bad, just the driving all weekend, just waking up early. I say to Tom "It's almost too hot to weed," and he says "It's too hot to weed," so I don't. I don't have the energy to tackle the kitchen myself but when he does, I pick up a towel and dry, something I never do. Usually it seems like a waste of energy, just let them air dry, but this time it's just about standing there, clearing the way, keeping things moving. It's also about not moving. About being home. My mind goes out and back again, but I work on staying. I work on finding some way to tend our place with what energy I have. I break down the boxes that have been waiting in the stairwell, put them in the recycling. I brush off the new fabric panels that James and Jessica have gifted us with, bring them in the house, look for a place to hang the bright one especially, a barn and fields in primarily colors, yellow sunshine, a green crop, a blue sky. Nothing broken, nothing burned.

A summer wedding

2011-07-21T00:56:00.001-04:00

I might be getting okay at this photo stuff. The portraits, I mean. It's hard to manhandle the Bronica, whose name is dinosaur-like, even, into a quick snap while people are milling about waiting for the hors-d'ouevres to be passed, or a drink to be retrieved from the bar for them. I managed it at Carolyn's wedding, a scant 33 shots taken in all and about a third of those I was happy with. I like that average, I don't expect more. I expect a roll of 12 to yield a shot or two that makes me feel like I captured the charm of the person I was looking at through the lens, and I expect 3 rolls of that same person to leave me confused about which shot is the best.

Carolyn's wedding was a good place for looking at people I love to look at. Still shy, I stuck mostly to one of my classic models, Kate, and the people who were orbiting around her. I shot the boys playing lawn games in their dress Wranglers and sunglasses only from a distance, but I'll sneak up on them one of these days too.

Of course I was most sorry I missed a good one of the bride. Carolyn just has one of those faces, large expressive eyes, wide smile, long slender neck, and a cap of shiny dark hair. She looked beautiful on her wedding day, a dress no one else could have worn as well, intricate and flapper-like without being too costumey. As I drove the two hours to North Bend, I thought about how happy I would be to cry about something happy, the cathartic way that works, sorting out a long week where there were plenty less happy sources of tears. Saying her vows, she fought back tears, but I didn't bother to fight.

Full On

2011-07-10T22:35:00.001-04:00

Summer at last, and a weekend of laziness. I had all sorts of things in mind to accomplish, and ended up sprawled on lawns most of the daylight hours anyway. I like to think this accomplished something, however invisible. A recharge, some kind of helpful space, I don't know. I kept trying to talk myself into doing laundry, or packing for the week in Seattle, or doing some weeding. Nope. Lawn time. A trip to the co-op for groceries. That was about all I had in me. At least there will be lunches for the week. The rest I'll figure out as I go.

A Birthday Message from a Biker and a Pirate

2011-07-08T13:58:00.001-04:00

So, anyway...

2011-07-04T01:39:00.003-04:00

Tom wore the vintage red western wear pants with a red and blue plaid summer shirt with pearl snaps, and a white belt and a flag bandanna. I hear Jess sewed something for herself to wear, and if I had known that in advance, it would have been harder to stay home from the 3rd of July party. But we also have a house full of people coming tomorrow, and no one has swept much lately and I wouldn't mind hanging a painting or two and Emmy does not at all at all like fireworks. None of them were close enough to bother her today, so she spent most of the afternoon gnawing on a bone from the meat co-op and I spent plenty of it stretched out on an afghan reading To Each His Home. That book is pretty perfect inspiration for cleaning house.

In the summer, it's easy to ignore the inside of this house. Outside is all birds and sunshine and tall grass today, not enough wind to fly even a small kite. For tomorrow, we have water balloons and box forts and a good spot for a tent mowed into the back field and Jenny said she might bring s'mores. Tom's been saving marshmallow sticks - we probably have more of them than we have drinking glasses and that's a lot. Yesterday Susan and I ran errands across the valley and I bought hamburgers from that lady I like so much at the meat co-op where we get Emmy's bones, and two kinds of hamburger buns from Iris at Breadfarm and both gouda and fresh Ladysmith from Samish Bay Cheese. Jenny's bringing the boys for an overnight, and little Bitty will be here, and mom and Tom's parents. Tonight when Tom gets home, we'll taste test the strawberry ice cream cones. If those are good pretty much everything else will be too, right? We'll eat some in your honor.

Magic

2011-06-14T00:02:00.005-04:00

Max and Thomas at Fort Tryon Park May 2011

The boys are so funny these days. Speaking in full sentences, relating to the world around themselves in ways that constantly have me laughing, shaking my head or trying not to react because whatever they've just said isn't supposed to be funny... but it just is.

They alternately kiss and battle things out. They laugh one minute - usually hysterically giggling - and then they cry the next... equally hysterically. They are quick to cry, but quick to sooth too. No grudges here. Yet.

I think about all of the things from our childhood that seemed so magical - the corner of the backyard where those drippy flowers bloomed and ivy covered the ground, the bushes we climbed in on the corner of 16th and Prospect, the driftwood at Kalaloch, hopping up the hill at River Ranch to serve breakfast, the feeling in your stomach being swung around on the tire swing at Roberta's cabin, Azalea Way at the Arboretum, the little pond in the back yard of Grandma Ellen's house in Novato that always seemed to have turtles in it - random, random things.

And I wonder what the boys will take away.

Will they remember a drizzly Sunday morning with mom, wandering through the park and finding the stone arch? The Intrepid with Papa Gary and climbing inside (and refusing to climb out) of the space capsule? Finding the park in Vermont with the wooden train and galleon with Grandma Beeba? Riding the ski lift for the first time with Daddy? Their first taste of s'mores? Touring the Little Red Lighthouse? Face painting at the Central Park Zoo?

I wonder what they will think was magic.

Weeknights

2011-06-08T00:05:00.002-04:00

Sometimes when I'm in Seattle, I think about that new peony plant that Peggy gave me, which has one large bud and may or may not muster the strength to bloom this year. Or I think about what I keep saying are giant poppies in the circle in the middle of the driveway, or the green strawberries clustered on the plants just outside the greenhouse. I wonder how the raspberry canes are doing in all that wind, and whether Tom remembered to take another meat co-op dog bone out of the freezer and put it into the fridge to defrost for Emmy. Sometimes I remember to ask him about one or two of these things over the phone at night, most times I just wait til I can get home and see for myself.

2011-05-27T02:17:00.002-04:00

Sedona wasn't really a dog who had much interest in letting us near her. She was vigilant, keeping an eye on the goats and slinking around with the grace of a little fox. I never got a good portrait of her, the get down in the dirt, look a dog in the eye kind. It takes a certain kind of dog to make that kind of portrait. Sedona was too elusive.

Emmylou is just the opposite, and I missed her for that and plenty of other reasons. When I came home from 5 days at farm camp, it was with a digging fork and four-tined hoe for the mini-farm and a stuffed bunny for Emmy. At dinner, she came and put her head in my lap and wagged her tail, looking up at me.

The day after I got home was heaven, waking up on my own land, with what felt like a day stolen from work. In the afternoon, Tom came home and we took a long walk in the tall grass at the duck fields, Tom and I picking our way through the mud, using the tiny islands of grass to make our way through the marshy landscape there, Emmy just trotting along through it all, legs and belly dark with mud. It was too late in the afternoon for sunburn, but bright the whole way, small green frogs hopping out of the grass leaves and everywhere the calls of birds I don't yet know by sound.

A Small Act of Faith

2011-05-13T20:34:00.001-04:00

Rooms Where Writers Sleep

This is a dream about road conditions, this is a dream of

the library. Other people love cowboys, love liberals, love

men who say “I want you to feel safe with me.”

The next morning in the dream, she was wearing

a bathing suit the color of goldfish, saying “He wouldn’t

want to hear something like this”, heading into the basement.

Someone else was there. I can see you leaning back

in your chair, black and white postcards in hand.

If the Denver Art Museum is so upside-down, why

isn’t it closed on Saturdays, open on Mondays?

I wanted bewildering Modern Art, I wanted the way

the mind string words together, writes the poetry for me

like it should in an industrialized nation. Out comes a pun

and we love it for the automated nature of it’s creation.

I love to linger and confess. We spend time together,

someone loves the word “swarm”, someone loves

shimmering, someone loves Sunday, someone loves

the terms of taxidermy. When we go home, we take with us

the overstuffed bodies of the poems we’ve hollowed out

and filled again with what we all love.

Progress

2011-05-11T01:49:00.003-04:00

Writer's studio at Icicle Creek Writer's Retreat

The whole neighborhood seemed to smell like lilacs when I got to the Ballard house tonight. Kate and Jason had the front door open, and it felt like time to look at the garden, so Kate and I wandered out into the back yard to look at her little bed of shallots and greens and climbing pea vines. I thought about our new peony plant at home, a gift from Peggy's lush garden, and how tomorrow I would be home in Bow and could check on it, the first thing I've planted there myself. I want it to live forever and ever, and I don't care what color the flowers turn out to be.

Our writing retreat was good, ultimately. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it. I have a notebook nearly full of scribbles from my new Montblanc pen - thank god for that pen, I'm not sure I would have kept going if it hadn't been such a pleasure to write with. There wasn't much in there that I was tempted to go back and edit or fiddle with, not typically a good sign, but being in those little writing studios was so pleasant, and reading was so pleasant, and the conversations with the other writers there were so worth having. A little writing habit was built up, just somewhere to start from, as though I had taken a long walk every day for a week, on my way to building up to a run. More words, every day, that's all there is to it.

Better

2011-05-07T20:31:00.001-04:00

So much. Yesterday at writing camp was hard. There were no good sentences and I was missing home, wishing I was home with my dirt. That turned out to be the key, ultimately. I had been hoping for fiction this trip, or maybe a few little prose poems, and those things were just not in me. When I gave in to that longing for home, my notebook filled itself up and I didn't mind at all that the writing had nothing to do with anything but me.

Longhand

2011-05-06T17:22:00.003-04:00

All the words until now have been longhand, computer left behind in my cabin with the cell phone, and no photos to write from. The eight of us retreat participants plus Ryan met the first day, at a table in the middle of a recital hall, all wood paneling and one whole wall of windows, a piano on a dais in front of the windows, and I kept thinking things like "naps!" and "manicure!", thoughts of leisure and vacation. But after we left the recital hall, I sat down with my notebook anyway, and just started to use ink. I made a manicure appointment and then cancelled it, and was sorry when I slept in until 9:40 the first day. No naps yet.

My writing so far has been constant but scattered, concerned more with the problem of writing than with any story in particular. This second full day has been tainted with migraine, and at lunch I felt that odd migraine-related grief draining the words out of me. I sat and looked out the window at the shaded picnic tables, the practice rooms converted to writing studios for us for these five days, the small birds in the trees. When at a loss, I do come back to the birds, the house finch with it's rosy crown, the white-headed woodpecker pecking out a lacy pattern in the bark of the evergreen it mines for bugs. It's the simplicity of it that I love, the pleasure in naming something, in noticing it. White head, black body, white arm band, the tree-clinging shape.

Clearing out

2011-05-04T21:47:00.002-04:00

The night before, I kept saying "I'm on vacation!" and Tom and I stayed up later than we should have, and I lingered in bed longer than I meant to and then there was coffee for me, made by Tom, and the walk around the property, and new blossoms on the apple tree and more weeding to be done in the circle of the middle of the driveway, and it was hard to leave. I wanted to stay and eat the good salad from dinner, with leaves from the garden and I wanted to open the watermelon I had brought home from the co-op, and suddenly it seemed like clearing out the spare room upstairs would be possible if I actually had a work day off, and I would have been happy to just move gravel around, for that matter, any of the things that would mean the mini-farm could be a still better version of itself.

But I got in the car anyway, headed off to a five day writing retreat near Leavenworth, with a box of books and a bag of knitting and two camera bags and enough clothes for three times as many days as I'll actually have away. It started before I even got out of Skagit county - little fragments of writing, nothing special, just throat-clearing sorts of things, a few words strung together to articulate the most obvious things. But a certain kind of writing, my mind starting to write itself, is how I tend to think of it.

Where to

2011-04-29T18:08:00.001-04:00

Can't wait to go to the co-op, then home for the last few minutes of daylight. Two days at home, then two days of work, then off to Icicle Creek for a 5 day writing retreat, where who knows what things will happen or show up here!

Some of what's going on.

2011-04-27T03:21:00.004-04:00

Sunday Stop

2011-04-19T15:26:00.001-04:00

Samish Bay Cheese was everything I hoped it would be. One small room with a stool and a cash register, a few chalkboards telling you which cheeses were available that day. Ask about something special and the woman working there will open that little white door inside to search the racks and racks of aging cheese for just the thing you are looking for - 4-year aged Gouda or something with nettles in it, or something spicy. There was a little dog sitting outside waiting for a little cheese snack, patrolling in the most friendly way. I bought fresh Ladysmith and the cheese crackers that Breadfarm makes for them, and some sweet italian sausage for a Bolognese sauce I'd make later. When I got home, Tom and I took a break from the yard renovations currently underway and sat at our little table eating salami and apple slices and the crackers and all our cheeses.

Going Home

2011-04-08T14:40:00.001-04:00

Wednesday felt like a tease this week. One little night at home, dinner with James and Tom as though it were the weekend and movie night. Jessica was missing, off on a field trip to Portland, and so was the day off that I so wished would follow that night.

After James left, Tom and I went outside, the way we do, a single dim flashlight illuminating the parts of the yard that he had worked on since I was home last, the parts of the yard not illuminated by the big floodlight from the back porch. Sweeping it along the fence line, the beam of the flashlight caught something glimmering, like a fishing lure in water, then a quick beat of wings as something dropped off a fencepost, then lifted up to perch on the next post. A little owl, I think, and the reason that the frogs were singing so loudly in the front part of the yard, and not at all in the back. He flew off eventually and the frog song flooded the property entirely.

My life is so much more populated by the feathered and furred creatures of the world these days. I love that about the mini-farm. People always ask me if we have animals there, and I know what they mean so I say, just a dog, though she is so much more than just a dog, and the rest of the creatures we share the land with are so much more as well. I should say yes, harriers and moles and eagles and frogs and there will be swallows again this summer. Herons fly over and so many other birds that I have yet to name, and hopefully more than I will ever be able to.

Sleet

2011-04-04T01:37:00.001-04:00

Technically, there isn't any sleet around here at the moment. But for some part of nearly every day, the cold, rain-slanting wind makes it feel as though there is. Coming home from dinner tonight, Tom and I sat in the car in the driveway for minutes, engine off, just looking at the cold rainy fields, still pond-like with flooding. Yesterday was different, though, the evening around sunset was lovely, warmish and made musical by the frogs, the spring bird songs, and when you stood in the back field, the quiet trickling of the groundwater sinking back into the earth.

Home, Kind of

2011-04-02T00:42:00.002-04:00

we are staying in New York this weekend. It feels like a rare, special thing to be home on Friday night with no particular plans for tomorrow beyond brunch and maybe the playground.

During the winter we are almost always bound for the house in Vermont and every Friday night involves simultaneously packing the laundry, cooking dinner for and feeding the kids, packing groceries, toys, books, movies, etc. etc. forever and ever.

But a night like tonight I get to spend cooking an experimental dinner, watching some crap television, catching up on the FB addiction and generally relaxing. While the twins are sleeping, of course.

We have a lot going on here. Birthdays. Potty training - oh, god the potty training... work and whatnot.

I went to my first ballet class in 25 years today. I spent the entire time trying to not fall over because I was laughing so hard.

Anyways. There's a lot going on. There is also nothing going on. The boys are healthy, cheerful, surprising and delightful. When they aren't being challenging, contrary, pissy and whingey. Ahem.

Next weekend we'll be back to Vermont for our last week of skiing and snowboarding. I can't wait until next Winter, when I am teaching. But I won't wish my time away.

Love you, miss you.
A

Better Late Than Never

2011-04-01T16:55:00.001-04:00

A little peek into the boys third birthday...

How To Have Your Picture Taken, part E

2011-03-25T07:00:00.003-04:00

First, write a book. Write the kind of book that someone unrelated to you, who is not your friend, will want to read more than once. This book could be the kind of book that a perfect stranger will want to peddle and push and champion, and that other strangers will want to bind together, box up and send out into the world and that more people you don't even know will see and touch and carry around, and linger over. Maybe. Time will tell. At that point where you are not sure, but have hopes, hopes that have started to seem concrete and tangible, with details and tasks and dates, then, call someone who has several significant cameras and a love of literature and a fondness for you as well.

Next, think about what you love. Think about your favorite shoes, and what you like about the way you look. Brush your hair, which is gorgeous, and put on lipstick if you feel like it. While you are looking in the mirror to put on your favorite lipstick, notice that your eyelashes really are kinda long and you have that to be glad about. The things on your face that you like are the things that will make it easy to smile. Not a big forced grin, but the right kind of smile for a close-up, just a small thing, just a hint at contentedness. If you are dark brunette, with fair skin and deep brown eyes, it will not hurt to wear green. Or pink, or both together, or really, anything you know is good.

Now, think about outside. Think about the places where you once sat thinking about things you loved, or wearing that small smile, accidentally, without even really noticing it until you realized that someone you might have been in love with was seeing that smile on your face. Think about secret places, places that lend themselves to the extremes of human emotion, places where if you are not wearing the smile of the deeply content, you might be licking your wounds, having a safe cry. These are the places where you are likely to find a great blue heron, trees that have surrendered themselves to the water's edge, plenty of undisturbed moss, and probably teenagers smoking pot. All of that is fine. Pick your place, then stand there.

You do not have to think about smiling, or not smiling. Realize that no one is trying to make you look like anything other than yourself. Think about the things that made you write that book, good and bad, no doubt funny, maybe a little heartbreaking. Let a hint of it all show on your face. That's all anyone will be looking at.

Small things, named.

2011-03-22T15:01:00.001-04:00

When I left for the Seattle week on Monday morning, I brought with me, among other things, my new sturdy glass travel mug, a small baggie of dried mango, a Cara Cara orange from the co-op, half a sandwich that Tom made me for my travels on Sunday, an overnight bag full of socks and underwear, and two rolls of film from the portrait session I had done with Elissa, who just got an agent and needed author photos. Naming things, making lists is comforting these days. At Kate's house and in the spare room at the mini-farm, I am working my way through old boxes, slowly, using little tubs of sugar scrub and travel-size shampoos, making inventories of yarn, dreaming up uses for boxes and boxes of stationary.

On the internet today, I found a video of Pam reading at the Rumpus Room in SF, probably the reading where Kristin's photo was taken for the NY Times, and we texted back and forth with her giving me updates about the reading that I so wished I could be there for. Texts that said things like "Indian Springs" or "Fenton the human and Fenton the dog"or "mini-skirt!!!" A quote that I love from that section is exactly how I'm feeling today, and a lot of days recently.

"I'm thinking about Bob’s reading, thinking about how the older we get the more we’re inclined to simply name the things of the world. A whole valley that smells of grapes fermenting in barrels; the taste of donut holes dipped in cafe anglais; a great blue heron standing on one foot at the rippling edge of a pond."

- Pam Houston, from her forthcoming book "Contents May Have Shifted"

The other way

2011-03-17T20:09:00.003-04:00

Another one from the walk I took with Jessica a few weeks ago. The sky in the water and the rounded shape of the water's edge seems right for a time when we're hearing that the axis of the world has been shifted by the trauma of the recent earthquake in Japan. My own world seems a bit wobbly on its axis these days, not traumatically so, just a lot of change happening, organizations re-organizing, groups re-grouping. At the center of the circles I run in, the mini-farm is there, a piece of ground that we move the furniture around on, little patches of dirt we scrape at, that we gift with seeds and dream over. That's what I wanted, a place to come back to, something mostly still. Still, as in still there, still as in Eliot's still point of the turning world. I'm grateful.

Things stay the same, even while they change

2011-03-15T03:39:00.003-04:00

The world is too big to save, too small to treat carelessly. I'm not sure what to say beyond that, but I realize I have to get back to saying it, eventually.

Across the field

2011-03-04T15:47:00.004-05:00

I can't wait to go home for the weekend. It's been a long three days in Seattle, nice and productive but the days are always so long when I've got meetings after work and errands to run. Luckily there are always my two sweet (plus one furry) roommates at the Ballard house to greet me, with pie and chatting and clean towels and tea and movies. It's pretty good for a double life.

Back at the mini-farm, the lap blanket I'm knitting is almost done, and tomorrow I might spend the whole day in my pajamas. I can always pull my boots and parka on over it all for the ritual fence walk. Even the Friday grocery trip sounds fine, knowing that there are still a lot of staples left over from last week, and chocolate and coffee eclairs waiting in a little box from Honore. We just need some veggies and maybe a steak or two, though no one ever turned down a new pint of ice cream in my house.

Last weekend Lindsey and Kate braved the blizzardy conditions to come up for Kate's pie reading at the Winter Commission in Bellingham, and afterwards Kate told me that the farmhouse inspired her to make a few changes in the little Ballard bungalow. I guess that energy just perpetuates itself because I feel the same way right back at her. Ready to tackle a little more, to be nice to my space and keep sprucing it up a bit at a time. Every week feels like progress.

Adrift

2011-03-01T23:47:00.002-05:00

After the reading was over and Katherine and Peggy and Patricia had all gone, I went to the Honey Bear Bakery at Third Place books and ordered a chicken pot pie. Looking at their menu, I had the same feeling I have when we go to Adrift in Anacortes, that anything I could get would be good and comforting and contain no danger. I don't know whether that's true of Honey Bear or not, but it felt that way.

I suppose it was inevitable that the migraines would eventually lead me to some food-related phobia, and now I'm here and only looking at that fact glancingly, dealing with it through avoidance and a certain care that I've tried to make rote so as not to have to think too much about what has happened. $144 spent at the co-op will ward off a lot. Lunches from home, dinner somewhere expensive and ingredient-proud, dried mango (no sulfites), a lip-numbing love of kumquats, too many pistachios on the drive home, those habits will all ward off a lot.

The reading was Summer Wood, who came to Creede the summers I went there for writing group. She read to us from Wrecker, which was just in progress then, and now is bound and sold and sitting on the table in front of me. I haven't read the whole thing, and while I have heard enough to know that it's a beautifully written thing, I can't really pretend, even to myself, that it was just her reading that choked me up as I listened tonight, or made me blush when she looked up from signing my book and inquired, "Your writing?"

I know that I miss writing even when I don't feel it. It's like the food thing, something I don't really check on the status of, there is just a warding off of that knowledge. There is photography and work and one acre and a farmhouse and long drives and so much else. It's funny, though, how many Seattle things I avoid doing in order to get home to Bow every night I can, and yet I wasn't tempted at all to skip the reading tonight, and seeing my old writing group friends. Summer's voice, the way she read, her particular way with language - it was like seeing a wolfhound on the street. I know a few of you will know just what I mean by that. Something rare and familiar and so deeply evocative of the things and people and animals I want close to me.

Not So Bad

2011-02-25T19:05:00.000-05:00

The ferry photos didn't turn out so bad after all. Neither did the predicted snow storms this week. Even when it was bad, so bad that you couldn't see lane markers on 405, so bad that sitting at a stop light meant that the side windows on my car, which a co-worker had JUST cleared off for me, were covered in snow by the time the light turned green again, even then it wasn't that bad. I rolled the windows down and back up again to try to shake some of it loose, and that worked but resulted in snow in the back seat. Oh well! I made it home fine and Kate had a slice of pie saved for me, cherry cranberry, which I recommend, and I've been remembering to bring my gloves everywhere more so even my hands were warm when I got there.

Field Trip

2011-02-18T20:03:00.004-05:00

Yet another photo from our great weekend at Festival of Family Farms back in October. This was the farm where we got a free jug of the most delicious apple cider I had ever had up to that point. Since then, we've become ardent cider fans at the mini-farm and often have a fresh half gallon from the co-op in our fridge.

There are more photos, finally - one lonely roll waiting to be picked up at Kenmore Camera. I confess that I don't have high hopes for that roll, having taken many of the first photos without regard to a little thing called shutter speed. The good (?) news is that the shutter speed setting I had it on was way too slow, so there will be something on the roll, something blurry and overexposed, but There, nonetheless. We'll see. The photos were from a disorienting weekend a few weeks ago, when I was supposed to be at both a 40th birthday celebration and a memorial service in the same weekend, and instead found myself curled up in bed in a little cabin at Doe Bay, completely sick with a migraine. Who wouldn't get the shutter speed wrong on a weekend like that?

This morning I woke to a car that had been turned into a giant metal popsicle by the clear frosty Ballard morning. How I made it through this particular winter with nothing to scrape my windows other than a plastic co-op membership card, I can't say. It was too pretty for me to mind this morning, and maybe that's how the other mornings of car scraping have been this year too. Too happy to care about the wrong tool - maybe my thought each morning has been "Got the job done, didn't I?" I was on my way to pastries and cafe bon bon from Honore, and a day full of pretty fruitful meetings at work. I guess that's how you survive without an ice scraper. Some things only need to be Good Enough.

Daily

2011-02-16T13:57:00.001-05:00

Habits. Coffee for the long drive in the morning, Bird Note at 9AM. Fresh Air or a novel for the drive home. The co-op on Friday nights for the weekend's food. Lately I've been reading Antonia Fraser's Must You Go? a few nights a week just before bed. It's an account of her life with Harold Pinter, told mostly through the vehicle of what I assume are snippets from the diary she kept for years. Some days are just a few lines, but it makes me think how precious those little written lines must have seemed years later, after his death especially. It made me miss my own journal-writing, but only mildly, having just the other night had Tom pluck a little green book off our new bookshelf, my mortifying journal from 1989.

Bookshelves! We bought three over the weekend, from Midway House Antiques, the little place on Chuckanut drive that I sometimes wander into on a Saturday or Sunday, looking for new additions to the stacks of sweet smelling handknit sweaters that the woman there cleans and repairs so beautifully. It was so windy on Saturday that it felt like the tallest bookcase was going to take flight as we lifted it into the van, and every time we opened a car door, some little piece of tissue or receipt got away from us and had to be chased across the lot. The bookshelves are safe at home now, plants on top of the two biggest, making them look like they've always been there. Last night I remarked to Tom that in four and a half months we will have been there a year. It's hard to believe that the seasons will have come all the way around then, but I'm happy with all the little things we've done, the good way Tom finds places for things, the cozy yellow couch, the blanket I've been knitting for it, almost done.

Usefulness

2011-02-09T15:21:00.002-05:00

I don't know (yet) what that title or this photo has to do with anything. I've been slow with the photos lately, having misplaced the cord that connects my external hard drive and blah blah blah a lot of boring technical stuff that keeps me from using my digital SLR. I'm still picking up the Bronica from time to time, but am slower than usual getting those little rolls of film into the shop for developing. I've got a good roll in my bag that has been there for over a week! Maybe that will change soon, maybe it won't. So yesterday I was clearing out the jumbled drawers of my desk and going through old CDs of scanned photos, labeling them and matching them up with their cases (I'm so guilty of CD abuse) and looking for little unpublished photos that might inspire a bit of writing.

I took this one last fall when Tom and I went on the Festival of Family Farms tour. That is still, for me, one of the highlights of having lived at the mini-farm these past seven months. I loved being out on a field trip with him, visiting farms that I now think of as neighbors, thinking about all the possible things. This little corner of an outbuilding was so interesting to me as a record of what people were up to there, the business of the place. All the ugly plugs and weird little tools and rusted metal panels remind me now of our basement, the garage, the hard parts of the house, and the things that make things go. Having a house is a constant act of care, a practice in patience and in both vigilance and a certain blindness, the kind of blindness that keeps you from being overwhelmed by the piles of things to be taken to the dump, the pails of old paint left by former owners, the light fixtures in the bathroom that have to fall to the bottom of the to-do list, being functional and harmless, if unpleasant to look at. I keep thinking about, longing for, a way to keep track of it all without overwhelming myself. I keep longing for better systems, more routine, and being grateful for what we have established.

One thing I love is the weekly yard walk we do. Most every weekend, I pull on wellies and a warm coat and follow Tom around the property as he points out things he's been working on or thinking about. I almost always forget to take the camera and have to run back to the house to get it. Same thing with mittens. Once I'm outside, I'm loathe to go back in until I'm well and truly frozen, because that's when the convocation of eagles shows up, or the vine around the bench swing begs to be pruned, or the frogs start chirping, or some other thing presents itself for my attention. There's nothing more satisfying in that moment than giving it. There is a use to all that beauty - it's the way it woos me into wanting to keep working at it, to tend and trim and take great care with that little patch of land and the house on it that serves us so well.

Upside Down Moustache Time

2011-02-03T19:31:00.001-05:00

Kate and I went to Sambar the other night, the first time I had been there in a long time. We knew Michael the bartender (of course), and the exceedingly pretty waitress, and the sommelier is an old friend of Clay's from their Campagne days. At one of the six tables, there was a couple I know, eating frites and drinking champagne and looking happy and talking about moving in together. One of the women sitting at the bar was someone Kate had met at one of her many pie events, and who I swear I've met before. That's one of many things I love about that place. I've been away from Seattle enough lately that Ballard is full of new restaurants and shops I've never been in, but Sambar stays both familiar and shiny new.

I have two days of my alternate universe this week. Sushi and salons and coffee shops and french food and sleeping in my loaned bed at Kate's house. Maybe I shouldn't be taking a break from shopping for 25x15x1 inch furnace filters, but I am. The distance from the mini-farm might be good for now, I find myself rambling to Kate about how I need to get my act together, prioritize, organize, quit feeling like I'm wasting time. I realize I need a dose of humor and comfort, some way to forgive my own shortcomings, which include failure to unpack, poor spacial organization skills, procrastination and a tendency to wear sweaters one time too many before washing them.

Winter Madness

2011-01-24T19:34:00.002-05:00

Little Mechanics

Max Guns It

Thomas Loves Speed

We have more snow in Vermont than I think I've ever seen there. The banks are taller than the boys, which is useful when they are snowmobiling.

Kind of like giant bumpers.

I am reposting these, so that you can appreciate anew just how crazy these boys are. Not even three and I think they drive a snowmobile better than I could - except for the braking part, of course. And also so that Papa Gary can see just how crazy the twins are on the snowmobile.

How To Visit The Mini-Farm: Part m, Part t

2011-01-24T19:11:00.004-05:00

Start by being two, and a twin. Wear the biggest pom-pom you can find. Don't bring directions, you don't need them. You're two. Let this be one of those places so familiar to you that you don't even know where it is, just what it's like. Be curious. Find out. Look in the barn, open cabinets, flush the toilet, see what happens. Look for animals, find only the dog. Be curious about her, but shy. Fall in love with the riding lawn mower. Point to things. Eat as many tangerines as your mom will let you. Hop on pop. Hug your aunt, she sounds like mom. Sleep in a tent (indoors) with a tiger (stuffed). Be adored. Wake before everyone else, open doors, peek inside. No one really minds. Wave goodbye when you leave, buckled into your carseat again. Forget your sippy cup. Make dad drive back. Drive away again. Grow up a little, not too much.

Come back. Come back soon. You are missed.

Eagle Fest

2011-01-23T17:34:00.002-05:00

The weekend has been too short. I haven't put together the new wardrobe I bought for the same room upstairs, the one that will allow me to move beyond boxes, get clothes off the floor, make weekday mornings easier, or set up the little bench with the baskets underneath it. I didn't make gougeres or fish tacos, or finish all the promotion and merit increase letters for work, and now I'm leaving sick Tom with nothing easy to make himself to eat (except frozen pizzas) while I go to Dad's for dinner, a trip that will be 5 hours at least because of the drive. I have to admit, I feel a little discouraged and behind.

Which makes this the right time to remind myself that I did get to the grocery store and to think again about how yesterday afternoon, six bald eagles sailed and swooped over our back field while we stood there, amazed. They were so close, you could almost feel the weight in their bodies as their huge wings labored to lift them higher, then extended to stillness, coasting. I got a few rows done on our couch blanket, and made fresh-squeezed orange juice, and most everything else will have to wait.

Blue

2011-01-19T02:53:00.001-05:00

Creede was the first place I ever really felt the weather intensely. I had to think about that a bit, before I typed it here. Growing up in Seattle, you do feel the weather. We have seasons, vivid memories of the occasional snow in the winter, streets closed, sledding, or summer t-shirt weather, the way there was still a chill in the morning when I went outside to ride my bike, probably the last days of me rising early on purpose, and of course there was always rain. We did feel the rain intensely, but in such a different way, and maybe the difference has something to do with the fact that it was more of a mood than a force.

In the city, rain was something that, in a matter of minutes, you could get away from. Even if you get caught in a downpour on the way home from the bus, there are dry things at home, you can take your wet shoes off, towel off your hair and put your PJs on.

The rain is back, and my whole house has wet shoes it can't take off. There is a constant trickle through the basement and the sump pump goes off periodically all through the night. Thomas Road is closed again, and so is Allen West just past Chuckanut. The water in the fields reflects the moon at night, and it ripples in the wind, almost as though it had a tide, and maybe it does.

Three Years Ago

2011-01-17T01:13:00.002-05:00

I didn't have a good camera. I didn't even know what a good camera was. I liked taking pictures, though, and when I look back now, there are still photos I like from back then. Like this one, frost on a few little tufts of grass next to the hot springs in Colorado where I spent a night with some of my favorite friends three years ago this January. The hot springs in the freezing night air, steam rising from them - heaven. Those friends, also heaven.

We picked words for the year while we were there in Colorado. What did I chose then... bravery, I think? It worked. It was a year when I needed it, and it came, just enough. I haven't picked a word for this year yet, I'm at a bit of a loss. Two weeks in and it's a mixed bag so far.

When Tom and I walked outside this afternoon, there were frogs croaking everywhere, and a bald eagle in the tree, and I spent a roll of film on him and Emmy and it was almost 50 degrees, I think, but more importantly, it was not raining. What do you call the pool of flood water that lives behind our field for these wet winter weeks? There is some word between pond and puddle for it. Sometimes, I just struggle for the words. Today I tried to write an email that felt important, and finally, after writing and deleting and cutting and pasting, going away from it, coming back, I just gave up. It might be one of those situations where saying little is best, and at this point in my life, I can live with that. I'm better at that than I used to be. That was how I ended up outside with Tom and Emmy - I had been drafting that email, until all the rewrites made me realize I should go outside and walk around, and then see how I feel.

When I came back inside, I felt the same as I had before, at least about the original email to which I was trying to respond. Wounded, incredulous, disappointed. A little scornful. Still, calmer. Resigned. Tom made bread and I watched the Golden Globes and ate tamales for dinner and drank some fresh apple cider and did the dishes, a few at a time, never quite finishing the whole sinkful.

What's Gone

2011-01-12T13:33:00.000-05:00

Sunday there was snow all day. Kate and I had a trip planned, me heading south down the island to meet her in one of my favorite little towns anywhere, meeting up for coffee and lamb chops and yarn and books and girl talk. I was going to take the big camera and a million layers, including fingerless gloves for my hands which more and more turn white at the fingertips in the winter cold. But once the snow starts like it does, things get unpredictable, and venturing over a sky-high bridge at a place called Deception Pass starts to seem more stupid than adventurous. So we called it off, and when it warmed up, I took a field trip over to Anacortes, up the snowy hill and off to the yarn store for supplies for a blanket for our new couch. I bought groceries, filled up the car with gas, felt all stocked up for more winter. On the way home, a huge fog bank had rolled in, and the sun was setting, and I kicked myself for having left all the cameras at home. I do that, all the time. Then I vow to never leave the camera at home, then I vow to be okay with letting things go. That day, it was just me, frozen fog, sunset, the whole valley spread out, fields and trumpeter swans and red-tailed hawks and the long roads that take us where we want to go, and on every one something to see.

Resolve

2011-01-09T03:12:00.003-05:00

Everyone has been fed crescent rolls and coffee, Emmy is napping on her blanket on the couch and Tom is fooling around on a guitar. Some of my time over the weekend needs to be just this. Calm. I have resolutions too, though, a need to get things done. Those sweaters in the messy spare bedroom aren't going to fold and organize themselves, and at some point we need to put up the hardware for the new curtains in the living room, and take down the Christmas tree. For Christmas, I gave away some things handknit by me, a hat for Dad, one for Tom's sister Jenny, then a few weeks later I finished Jessica's Lighter Lights Darker Darks hat, which turned out to be the red-tail hawk hat in the end. She wore it to the Longhorn for taco Tuesday and I loved looking at that hat on her so much that I vowed to knit more, and give away more. Time to learn honeycomb stitch for a navy alpaca scarf that will eventually makes it way to Maine.

Something New

2011-01-06T15:44:00.001-05:00

The back porch finally defrosted the night before last. The last day of Jessica's visit, little snowy hailstones had fallen, covering it and sticking there, cemented by the cold nights. Inside, I wear a rotating selection of handknit hats, two layers of sweaters and there are two comforters on every bed. Every single day home over the holiday break was beautiful, rain, sleet or snow. We watched a redtail hawk catch something on the mole-infested croquet lawn (if only it had been the mole!) and the binoculars we got for Christmas were kept on a top shelf for easy access in case that bird which may or may not be an immature bald came back. Tom cooked good food and when I got really cold, I did dishes to warm up. The dining table is too close to the pellet stove to use it for heat, and anyway that funny noise it made last time we used it has made us wary. I know, time to go to the woodstove store and finally learn how to maintain the thing. In the mean time, I've been liking the bundling up, the fake suffering (oh no! it's a mere 64 degrees in the house!) and how nice it all makes a cup of hot tea seem.

Sun Today

2010-12-20T01:49:00.001-05:00

kitchen at Tweets

There was a little. And we were aware all day of the solstice coming. I felt terrible mostly, headache from something or other, but at least there had been a good night's sleep, and things accomplished on Saturday. The holidays feel like homework I can never catch up on, then an obstacle race, then a long wait in the waiting room for next year. I don't know anyone who doesn't have some mixed feelings about the holidays, but opting out doesn't really happen either. I don't even want to opt out, but every year I do think about what will be most comfortable, and every year I take a guess, never sure.

Still, there are only three more work days left, and then a few days of chaos, and then... time at home. For a little while there, I was cooking some, doing dishes, knew where things were in the kitchen, had clean laundry. But then there was the sinus infection and portrait class finals and clothes all over the spare room upstairs and the little room off the living room neglected, card table from Thanksgiving still up, and I have not even come close to doing my share of housework. I'm ready to look for curtains and replace the refrigerator, and at least sort clothes into piles. I'd like it if there was a day when I did all the cooking, washed all the dishes. Sometimes that feels good. The mini-farm taught me that.

Everything's fine once you get your crossover back

2010-12-13T04:18:00.001-05:00

Outtake from final project for color portrait class

At some point this weekend, someone, Susan maybe, asked me what I needed to do when I got home on Sunday. I was thinking about the all-county Western Washington flood watch. The basement, the sump pump, the puddle that forms in our circular drive, the one that sits just on the other side of the fence from the greenhouse. Not to mention the photos on the wall at the coffee shop on the corner, the intersection of our road and Chuckanut Drive, completely submerged, the marquee changed to read "No wake zone." Not that there's anything I could do about it, but that's what I was thinking about.

I had gone to Seattle completely unprepared. I wore a long underwear shirt with dragonflies on it to the roller skating rink, a fur cape to dinner in the rain, suede boots all day both days and didn't have socks to wear roller skating (Jenn saved me with a pair she had in her car). I did have my knitting with me, and I worked on a hat while Jenn and I sat at her kitchen table, the night I stayed over at her place. We ate cereal and drank tea and talked about handwarmers and reading and which one of us had time for it and who did not, and it felt like a present to hear that she still wears the handwarmers I knit for her I don't even remember when. In the morning Freddy's little 4-year-old voice woke me up and I stayed in bed a little while listening to him and trying to commit the little things he said to memory. All that's with me now is the way he said he had gotten "soakin" the day before in the rain, and how he tricked me with the plastic poo he and his dad left in the room with his paintings for me to find. Tricky kid! Apparently he and Chris had been scheming all evening.

It didn't matter, my unpreparedness. I went from one thing to the next, friend to friend, totally delighted to see every single one. I didn't care about my dirty hair or wet feet or anything else. The feeling of seeing everyone was the best thing.

Even so, I wanted to get back to the valley. The Samish River, closest to our house, has gone up to 11 feet from 6, and is 7 feet from flood stage. Our road is closed just past Chuckanut, but it's not the way I need to go anyway. From inside the house you could hear the water streaming off the gutters after our movie ended. When I came home, though, the rain was gentle, and Tom and I went out in wellies and duck boots, did the usual backyard survey, feeling how soft the saturated ground has gotten, looking at the pond that has formed in the cow pasture, watched the trumpeter swans sail overhead and then glide in to the new water feature out there. If you look over our back fence just the right way, it looks like we have a view of a lake, or the ocean, or something much bigger than a puddle. It's pretty, and there is at least one bald eagle back in the biggest tree on the property, and I'm happy to be here, for however long I am. Sometimes it's obvious just how little that is up to me.

In Case You Were Wondering

2010-12-13T00:18:00.002-05:00

The twins are on strike. They've chosen the Bob the Builder theme song as their anthem.

Quiet

2010-12-08T17:59:00.000-05:00

At exit 212 on Monday, a coyote lingered in the median, so small he looked like a cat on first glance. The next day, an eagle tore apart its prey right there on the ball field at the corner of Chuckanut and Allen West. The hawks wait, on fence posts and guard rails, on snags and bare tree limbs, always.

The other night, Tom sat on the edge of the bed playing guitar as I fell asleep. It was so pretty, a sound that equalled quietness by the sheer force of how gentle it was, in perfect harmony with rest.

A friend who I don't see often lost her husband yesterday, out of the blue. He was our age. When I called Karl to tell him, I couldn't help but cry. Who wouldn't? For some things, there is little consolation. He was a good person. Funny, and talented, and smart, the kind of man who looked at his wife with love and nearly always wore a smile.

After

2010-11-28T23:59:00.003-05:00

This morning I couldn't get the pancakes to cook right, hang together or hold blueberries. I browned Tom's egg a bit, and the medium-boiled eggs just weren't appealing. At dinner time I realized I just don't feel like cooking any more. I'm not sure I even feel like reheating. Yesterday evening the turkey sandwiches were so good, the poached salmon a bit tough and not really flavorful. There are two pounds of green beans already prepped, ready to just cook in butter. That might be dinner. We have so much cheese left, but the dip has expired. The little satsumas should have gone away with Allison and the boys, who could have eaten a dozen of them before breakfast, I think. The best part of their visit was going up to my bedroom the morning after Thanksgiving, crawling into bed with Thomas and Allison. He was awake and talking, Allison, barely. It wasn't long before he crept out in his little PJs, to go see what his brother and dad were doing downstairs. Allison put a sweater on over her nightgown and followed after him, but I just stayed in bed for a while. It's cold in that room in the morning, but the comforters and quilt are heavy and the white sheets are cozy.

I haven't figured out what to hang on the wall up there yet, so there's a Karie Jane drawing that belongs to Tom, and that's it. He put it up there when we first moved in, and every once in a while he notices it again and says Hey! That's mine. There are so many Karie Jane pieces. Also four Todd Horton's and four Jessica Bonins, not counting Tom's. We moved the table that was in the little room by the kitchen into the living room by the wood pellet stove, and the little room by the kitchen has a couch now, and a side table, and its own tree. You can sit there and strum on the baritone ukulele when no one else is home, or drink hot chocolate and think about what art you want to hang where, or read the internets, or write a blog post. It's better this way. I made a striped hat that goes with my sparkly wellies, and very little progress on the trashed spare room, but I did wash a lot of kitchen towels, and sheets and the bathroom is still mostly clean and the big vacuum cleaner doesn't work now but you can still get by with the dustbuster on the area rugs if you're patient.

I don't know what's going to happen with the little study off the living room. For Thanksgiving it was the kid's room, sort-of, which wasn't too smart when you consider what a bad idea it is to slam that door that has all the glass in it. It turned out fine in the end, and nothing was broken, and nothing burned. Afterwards, we were tired, but sometimes a nap is another one of the best parts.

This is it

2010-11-21T03:01:00.002-05:00

We were determined to get a portrait of her. She was determined to bark. We both won.

All week there were rumors of snow, and all week I thought to myself, I hate having to cheer against it. Once we've been to the grocery store, and the drafts under the door have been stopped, and there are plenty of wood pellets for the pellet stove and I'm off for the week, then, I cheer for snow. Until then, I hope against it, regretfully.

When I pictured going to the Anacortes farmer's market this weekend, I naively imagined the food vendors all cooking over their hot grills, tamales and pork tacos and vegan stir-fry wraps and maybe something with an egg in it. I was pretty sure there would be a latte. There had to be a latte, right? No. That wasn't the scene at all. In fact, it was so cold that the coffee in the thermos at the coffee stand had gone most of the way cold and the stand itself was practically blowing down in the chilly wind. There were lovely piles of produce at the few produce vendors who were there, but almost everyone seemed to be asking the vendors "What will you do with all the extra?" since the wind seemed to have kept people away. The beets I had my eyes on for roasting were on their way to the co-op, at least that's what I think I heard that vendor say. Ordinarily, a line two deep at a farmer's market is no deterrent for me, but Tom had been right when he declared the cold "unbearable" almost as soon as we got out of the car. It really was, because of the wind, mostly, and neither of us had dressed for it, so the beets stayed there and hopefully I'll catch up to them at the co-op tomorrow. There was no line for rainbow chard or red carrots, and the vendor piled a little tumble of loose carrots in with my bunch, and both big bundles only added up to $4. It was warmer inside, so we went there, where people were selling soaps and cheeses and dog biscuits and felted cell phone covers and snowman soup and beautiful looking puddings and baked things with cranberries.

Tom was sure that they only picked him for the door prize (every 20th person wins! the woman told him) because he was the grouchiest looking person there, and I liked that idea. Wouldn't it be brilliant if it were true? We bought a salt and pepper shaker and tasted a wheel of cheese that had been covered in cocoa powder and chile and black pepper, and Tom tried on hats but didn't find the right one. Afterwards, we had breakfast at Adrift, my favorite place in Anacortes. My mom took me there the first time I went, and it was crowded then and has been 20-minute-wait-crowded a few other times I've been there too. I've always been happy to wait, though, like the time Tom and I went to Todd's art opening and then afterwards had a late dinner where I got the last of whatever it was I wanted, and we sat at the counter, watching everything come out of the oven and off the stovetops on to the table in the middle of the kitchen where everything gets plated and arranged before it is promptly transferred to you where you wait. All the past waiting only served to make me feel lucky when we walked in at two and never slowed our stride from the time we walked into the restaurant until we sat down at our table in the room with all the books and the sails overhead and that painting of the gulls and sky, framed by what looks like driftwood that's been nibbled at artfully. Everything I ordered tasted like the right thing, and it was turning out to be the kind of day where even what looks like a boring old red apple sliced in a fan on your plate turns out to be a perfect crisp pear instead.

After errands we went home to Emmy, and I put the delicata squash in the oven right away, then for a little while watched Tom fiddle around with the sorts of things that you fiddle around with in the cold when you are trying to take care of a house, and then the squash was ready to come out, so I started cooking up the chard with onions and bacon and Tom put a pot of water on to boil for the tortellini and soon enough dinner was ready. It was a good food day.

On Friday the Molly Moon ice cream truck came to work and everyone came outside, whether they had warm coats or not. The rain started 30 minutes into their visit, but that only meant that we congregated in the lobby, comparing pumpkin clove to scout mint, hot fudge to vanilla caramel sauce. Some people had cones that their dishes of ice cream wore like hats, and I had whipped cream, jimmies and a cherry on top. The only thing I skipped was the walnuts. Never was a big walnuts fan. Walnut fan or not, though, both days were days where there was very little to complain about.

First rule of cooking

2010-11-17T17:32:00.003-05:00

Kate, who is skilled enough to leave the kitchen when she cooks, in our Ballard kitchen.

(the kitchen I never use & in which I do not have one single possession or item of food)

Stay in the kitchen while you are cooking. This is something I am not good at. I'd rather have something else going at the same time, why is that? It leads to disaster, though, things stuck to the bottom of pans, burning, or failing to realize that I've got the wrong burner on, or accidentally turned the oven off after I preheated it to 450 for the steaks. I'm getting a little better, though, now I'll stay in the kitchen mostly, doing dishes if there is a little down time. Mostly, though, I'm still cooking too many things at a time. Pasta boiling and fresh cherry tomato sauce cooking and steaks being pan-seared before their trip into the oven, and a butter sauce on the stovetop, missing most of the ingredients that would make it qualify as a sauce rather than just melted butter.

Last weekend that meant that I made the nice fresh cherry tomato sauce but ruined it with too much salt, until Tom came in to try and rescue it, and I opened the fridge to look for some miracle rescue ingredient that we were talking about when I saw the ricotta cheese that was supposed to be part of the sauce. Whoops. Forgot! Luckily, the ricotta did in fact rescue the sauce and it was delicious, though at that point there seemed to be about a gallon of it, owing to the fact that I had added every single tomato I could find and various other things before discovering the ricotta.

Oh well.

If anyone thinks that Thanksgiving dinner will be anything less than chaotic, well, then they are an intruder who doesn't know me and should be promptly invited to vacate the premises. Or they are related to Tom and should be settled in on the couch with a nice pumpkin cracker and some crab dip and possibly a hot cider. I don't know why I think that Thanksgiving will be lovely, but I do. Between the turkey, ham and salmon, one of those things has to turn out edible, right?

In which things get better

2010-11-12T18:45:00.000-05:00

Around mile 21, there was a heron like a hitchhiker, standing right by the side of the road. At mile 18, there had been a bald eagle in a tree, same milepost where I saw an eagle drift over all the lanes of I-5, last time I made the morning drive from the mini-farm. The dessicated corn stalks that I had hoped to photograph in front of one of the abandoned houses on our street had already been cut down by the time I got back from California, but there are red blueberry bushes now, brighter than flame, and I know now how many things there are to photograph on Bow Hill Road.

Bow Hill Road is the route we took to the Bow Little Market the last time Kate was in town. They've got their holiday fair going this weekend, so tomorrow I'll be up before noon, eggs for breakfast, then on my way to see what our Bow neighbors have to offer. There are errands to run as always too, a trip to Lowe's for a space heater for the upstairs bedroom, which won't get warm unless you've thoroughly roasted the downstairs rooms. Cozy is good, roasting is bad. Hopefully we'll pick up the last of our new light fixtures, and run some errands in preparation for Thanksgiving dinner, which is going to be the biggest gathering we've ever hosted at the mini-farm, double the size of the infamous bachelorette party.

There's a frog in there somewhere

2010-11-11T15:30:00.001-05:00

I did it again. Made what seemed like all the mistakes possible. But I'm getting better at recovery. I had the enlarger set to white, which was a problem since it turns everything red - Emma looked like she was playing guitar in a moodily lit nightclub rather than the northern California fall sunshine. Then the kickstand on the lens was wide open so duh everything was overexposed at first. But by the end of the night I had some beautiful 10 1/2 inch prints, if I do say so myself. I love seeing the images that big, even on the toy camera shots that I was printing, the color was pretty good. The Bronica shots are just downright gorgeous, so crisp, with rich bright color. If I could have gone out and spent more film that moment, at 10PM, I totally would have.

The photo above, just a snapshot. Tom and I were in the yard and he spotted one of the sweet bright green wee frogs that live there, and I wanted to capture it. So there it is. A frog.

Just showing up

2010-11-10T14:15:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure which writer is was who said to pay attention to the stories you find yourself telling over and over, to find where the meat is. On the radio today, there is another story about the new Cleopatra biography and two about sonar affecting marine mammals and what is being done to fix that. I'm thinking about hot chocolate and seasonal ice cream flavors and color correction. The photo above is the one that came out right in the color darkroom the other night, so I have finally dragged out my box of 11x14 paper and will see how that goes tonight, with the help of my portrait class teacher. I have to give a talk on a photographer whose work speaks to me, so I'll introduce the class to Mary Randlett, even though I can't find a single color portrait she's done. I feel so clueless when it comes to fine art photographers, especially photographers who work in color. If you anyone out there has ideas about who I should be looking at, speak up!

On the phone at night, Tom and I talk about Thanksgiving, what we need to do, what we want to make, me in my bed in Ballard and him wandering around the back field at the mini-farm, investigating Emmy's hunt near the greenhouse. I imagine him wearing the grey wool cardigan he fished out of Jessica's basket at the LaConner thrift store and tell him to give Emmy a pet for me. I've got another night in Ballard before I can join them and our new light fixtures for hot tea and knitting on the couch before bed.

Pretty Much Everyone Was Smiling

2010-11-08T17:21:00.000-05:00

It was a big deal for me to ask the other writers in my workshop to pose for portraits for me. The fact that part of the piece I wrote for the workshop and then read in class talked about what a terrible student I was for my first photo class only added to the angst. But in the end, people volunteered and were patient with my fiddly focusing and even Ron C agreed to a photo, all Ray-Banned, silver-haired, well-seasoned cool, but not before specifying that the portrait should be for my own use only, of course. It was a good week, just enough clothes packed, all the signed books I came home with fitting into my luggage, but just barely. The week felt economical, well-used, not a moment wasted or to spare. There was the trip to coffee in town every morning, then the rush off to workshop til noon, panel discussions after lunch, readings at night, and then a few nights crammed into Sarah and Emma's room, with bananagrams and chocolate and gossip about ourselves and bad song lyrics. Always bad song lyrics.

I came home with a notebook full of scribbles, a few word documents and some thoughts about form. I've never really thought about form before, how to map out a piece of writing, in my case, just how to put a frame around the space I'll make for sitting down, writing out what I've got.

This is about as close as we got to Happy Birthday

2010-11-03T21:13:00.001-04:00

It's harder than you might think to get two toddlers to sing or say happy birthday and simultaneously film yourself and them doing it. I'm just sayin'.

So Close

2010-10-29T16:49:00.000-04:00

The lattes at Toby's have changed a bit since this photo was taken, that year when the lattes were rich and caramely one day, and bubbly and bitter the next. Kae, Pam, Greg and I have driven in both mornings, both mornings the large lattes in their nubbly brown sleeves have been the right temperature, velvety foam, and the flavor - deep coffee coffee coffee. The treats have changed too, the first day we ordered three Love Bites and a Thumbprint. The love bites were little mounds of buttery nuts held together by something just the right amount of sweet. Today it was some kind of apple pastry, SO. MUCH. BUTTER! I love egg breakfasts, but right now, coffee and sleep take precedence so I haven't made it to the cafeteria for eggs once. Maybe tomorrow, after our slumber party in Pam's room, and a late night of Bananagrams?

Both workshop days have involved multiple writing exercise as well as some gentle homework at night, so there is writing being done here. On the airplane, one of the books that Mark Doty had assigned us to read for workshop, Maggie Nelson's Bluets, turned out to be a catalyst for a little piece of writing that flew onto the page so quickly that I literally don't even remember what it's about. I've been too busy with other words, other paragraphs to even go back and see. Later. As I was writing that, I thought I'd just share whatever I was working on in class on the blog. That was before I found out what I was working on. Now all I can say is, I'm not ready. I'm thinking about it, but not quite ready.

Remedies

2010-10-27T02:41:00.002-04:00

I was going to try to get to the darkroom tonight, but I never made it. It took me until 8 to finish up all the work I needed to do before leaving for a 3 (work) day vacation, and even then I ended up sending texts to my email address to remind myself to replenish employee bus passes and ask my volunteer Halloween party helpers to dig through the bags and bags of candy and bouncing eyeballs and candy and spider rings and plastic pumpkins and candy and monster napkins and candy and coloring things and candy to try and find the receipt I'll need to get reimbursed for all that candy. If they don't find it, I want my candy back.

Some people around these rainy, windy parts are a bit jealous that I'm headed to California, sunshine, universal remedy. Of course, on the coast where I'll be, we're as likely to be fogged in as anything. The other day when I looked at the Tomales Bay webcam, it was like looking at a grey card. See what I did there? Cool photography reference. I'm traveling with the Big Camera for the first time tomorrow, and I feel dorky, excited and apprehensive. When I use it, I feel like people Expect something, and I avoid having anyone Expect anything of my creative endeavors. The nice thing is, it's so funny-looking that people are all distracted by the What-IS-it?! factor. I'm bringing three lenses and a reflector thingy and a couple boxes of film, and I am sacrificing shoes to do so.

Home game

2010-10-23T21:02:00.001-04:00

The Bow Little Market was just what I was hoping for. Small, with funny things you don't see everywhere. Little mini-lop rabbits, handmade soakers in bright colors with little organic cotton velour nappies to go underneath, four kinds of blueberry trees, white raspberry bushes, handknit dish cloths, penants with the names of all the neighboring towns out here, a stand making fresh tortillas, a band with an accordion and acoustic guitars and a woman with a feather in her hat spinning the most beautifully colored yarn. She was wearing a long handknit skirt, caramelly patchwork, and a dark tweed one hanging on a hanger on a peg, little lacey edging at the bottom. There were no prices or labels on any of her yarns, except one dusky lace-weight skein, 945 yards of handspun wool, cashmere, mohair, angora. That skein just had a little torn handwritten note, with the yardage and ingredients. When I asked her if she sold her yarn, she said she never had before. I wanted everything, the grassy greens, the orange skeins with a little blue twisted in to brighten it up, sunset colors, dark fall browns that changed color unpredictably. So pretty. The woman who had spun the yarn open her eyes real wide when I told her the price that I thought would be a good deal and talked me down by ten dollars and I left with 945 fine delicate yards of handspun yarn and her contact information, even though I have no right to bring another ounce of wool into this house.

Kate's visiting, and the Bow Little Market was our field trip with Jessica. All the colors are changing, and Bow Hill Road is a pretty drive from the Lucky Dumpster and back. I could have stopped twenty times for photos but water from the blueberry trees in the back seat was seaping into the floor mats and we needed a coffee from Tweets and there was the store for Jess to tend to and, in theory, Kate and I needed to get to the co-op for dinner supplies, which we have still not procured. Kate got cookies from the Breadfarm and ate them sitting on the couch with a cup of tea and a blanket on her lap and Tom and I watched a hawk devour a rodent in the big tree where the ropes from an old tree swing still hang. Dad's cataract surgery went well, so now he can get around without putting glasses on first thing, and my headache eventually went away. Kate fell asleep for a while but now she's waking up and it's time to hit the road for Mt Vernon to get crab and artichoke dip and something to put in the oven that will be warm and filling later.

Waiting

2010-10-22T18:39:00.001-04:00

So happy I get to go home and see this girl tonight.

And the man who belongs with her.

I didn't tell you much about it before now

2010-10-19T20:29:00.001-04:00

At the annual Hugo House auction, a group of us chipped in to buy a yacht tour of the Duwamish River, with Frances McCue, (one of the Hugo House co-founders and author of a recent book, The Car That Brought You Here Still Runs, about the Northwest towns that are the settings for many of Richard Hugo's poems) as our tour guide. I love Richard Hugo's book about writing, The Triggering Town, and the book Frances' has written is gorgeous, with photos by Mary Randlett, a really wonderful photographer who is one of my new heroes.

I wish I could tell you all the interesting things Frances told us about the Duwamish, but I don't remember it with enough accuracy to do it justice. It's a Superfund site and so plenty of the history is tragic, as you can imagine, but also fascinating since it's so integral to the history of the city and floating down the river made Frances' stories just that much more evocative and vivid. The best part was when she read part of a Hugo poem. She asked us if she could, as though any of us would have done anything other than beg her to go on. It was a rare sunny day in late September, what could be better than to be read to?

Gena and Jennifer were the perfect company on this trip, both whip-smart women who are always up for an adventure. They also both have that particular kind of wonderfully curious minds that make certain people so much fun to talk to. At dinner afterwards, I kept wishing I could be part of all the conversations happening simultaneously, since Frances, Rose, Jim and Dan are exactly the same way.

Rose is on the Hugo House board with me, and was generous enough to donate the trip on her boat, the Celestine. She and her husband spend a few months a year living on the Celestine, most recently up in the San Juans and Gulf Islands. Speaking of women always up for an adventure... in her former life she was a litigator and she also fits in the category of whip-smart.

Totally underexposed, taken as we left the boat at sunset, but I love this one of Gena. I feel like I've known her and Jennifer for several lifetimes and I love that too.

Impossibilities of light

2010-10-15T17:23:00.000-04:00

I love this one of Tom. His look, that little feather. This version of it is from a scan of a medium-format negative, but in the darkroom the other night, I was trying to print on paper from the negative. I guess you can sort-of see the problems with the photo even here, though my print photos didn't turn out as good as this. It was so bright out, and I had his face in shadow and after 4 or 5 versions we decided that this print was best for illustrating why I might want to use fill flash outside on bright days. The right exposure for his face is the wrong exposure for the background and never the twain shall meet. That's what it all boils down to.

My day job felt a little like that this week. The impossibility of it all had been baked in from the start, or something. I've noticed that I think about all that differently these days, now that I have the mini-farm and mortgage to look after. This is both good and bad, a sense of greater purpose as well as a little fear at the heaviness of it all. Heading into the weekend, the overall feeling is that my own life needs me, and that hour drive home is a good time to shed whatever work energy might be clinging to me when I walk out the door in the evenings. Once I turn on to Cook Road, it's time to be ready to pet the dog, and survey all the little changes that take place over a week on an acre of land, to look out for the bald eagles that have come back to our trees and to pay enough attention to notice and fall even more in love with everything that's there.

I didn't know how to choose

2010-10-11T17:17:00.000-04:00

Photo class this quarter is portraits. I already have so many of Jessica that I could print up, but I'm sure I'll still be after more as the quarter proceeds. This weekend we sat in my car talking, in the parking lot at the school, looking out at the rain, the wet fields where she and James walk Champ, the old barn that's falling down on that side of Edison. As always, she just looked so pretty. She's one of those people who, for me, seems to have a face that is perpetually full of good intent.

These Ones From Amber

2010-10-05T16:39:00.000-04:00

I buy capes but don't always wear them. Still I want to buy more. I covet and cherish vegetables from my friends' gardens. I have a nervous habit that I won't tell you about. I'm trying to take more vitamins, drink more water and avoid MSG. I hate that they show ads for horror movies during Sunday morning football games. I like to bring my lunch to work, and I love rice in soups.

Look Carefully

2010-10-01T18:53:00.001-04:00

All I can say about this week is, it is over. It was seriously slugs on slugs around here. Click to make that photo larger, if you dare.

Mini Birthday

2010-09-29T22:49:00.002-04:00

You had a mini tour, I had a mini birthday! It was the tenth anniversary of 27 or the seventh anniversary of 30. Whatever it was, it was sweet.

And thanks Mom, for having me.

So, Okay.

2010-09-26T21:42:00.003-04:00

Mini-tour did not proceed as pictured. It started with rain and Krusty Pups and the jumbotron and metal folding chairs and cheap clear plastic ponchos at the Puyallup fair. We never did get to see the draft horses and Jess didn't get her soft serve, which in my opinion means I owe her one and I do look forward to making good on that one. But the three of us had a good drive out to Puyallup, just happy to be with some of my best ladies and then Dakota was added once we got there. The rain let up a bit and Willie's new haircut was cute and even though it was odd trying to choose between looking at him way up there on the stage with my naked eyes or up close in jumbotron detail on the big screen, I was just happy to see him. Jessica and I stayed up late talking to Kate and then even later once Jessica and I got all settled in upstairs, me in the new bed Kate set up for me and Jess on the air mattress that, inflated, fills up the whole rest of that top floor. The next morning Jessica and I had quiche at Honore and then I ran around town collecting what is starting to feel like all the little bits and pieces of myself before driving off to Portland in the rain.

This morning at the mini-farm I woke up talking about the anxiety dream I had last night. I was in Santa Fe for the weekend, time run out on my dorm room and overdue back in Seattle, with nothing packed to go at all. "Sounds like your life right now," Tom said, and he was right. That trip to Portland was so good and so disconnected at the same time. I spent 30 hours at the Edgefield, the last part of Friday in Ruby's soaking pool late into the evening, in the warm dark rain, then reading magazines in my room while my toenails dried. The next day I talked on the phone in a little shelter in the garden while the rain kept coming down around me, soaking the lawn where we would sit to see Willie later. I sat in the cozy bar at the Black Rabbit for breakfast and thought about Nell Thorn and then went back later for chowder and a salad for dinner. The big covered porch with its adirondack chairs was perfect for reading too, even though the novel I brought to read completely turned me off after the first ten pages. It turned out to be a good thing that I had indulged in both Vogue and Vanity Fair before I left Seattle.

Even all that relaxing felt unsettling, though. The best part was seeing Amber and Charla and Candice, and having Michael standing in front of me at Willie, turning around for no reason other than to smile to me. I fell in love with Amber's kids and Candice's girls all over again, and filled rolls of film that haven't even been dropped off for developing yet.

And that's a whole other story. How I came home Sunday feeling strange, not knowing if it was too much car time, or what. A cold, was what it turned out to be. Two days at home feeling like someone had punched me in the sinuses. Luckily there was Tom with glasses of fresh-squeezed juice from the organic valencia oranges that we buy from the co-op by the big paper sackful, and a real breakfast every morning, perfectly fried eggs and potatoes with cheese and kale. I don't need to tell you that it was a little hard to go back to work on that third day, but reminding myself that work is what makes all this possible helps. The life I'm living out of bags and boxes right now may feel unfinished and hectic, disorganized and junked up and always running late, but I want it, for sure.

Mini-tour!

2010-09-16T18:58:00.001-04:00

I'm off on my mini-tour with Willie Nelson! I couldn't be more excited. Last night Farmer Tom and I watched The Real Dirt on Farmer John, which I loved and was totally choked up over. I adored his mom and all those wonderful color films of his childhood on the farm. What an awesome lady she was. Of course the movie highlighted the challenges to family farms, and only made me appreciate Willie's Farm Aid work more. I'm so happy to live in the Skagit Valley and shop from local farms at our wonderful co-op in Mount Vernon, and all the honor stands within close driving distance of our place. Next year we'll have crops of our own, I'm sure!

First stop is the Puyallup fair with the ladies, Lisa, Jess and Dakota. I'm hoping we get there in time for some fair fun, but even if we just see Willie, I'll be a happy girl. I made all the ladies little party favors, CDs with podcasts from Fresh Air's country week, interviews with Willie, Dolly and others.

Friday I drive away from Ballard for my annual pilgrimage to the Edgefield. This time I get to stay there a night, not the night of the concert, but I'm still excited about it. Willie plays in Bend Friday night so he won't be there, but we'll see him Saturday night, when Amber and Seth and Charla and Michael and his whole birthday gang join me on a lawn that is hopefully not too terribly damp. Either way, I'll be there with my knitting, waiting for round two.

Hope your weekend is just as fun!

Meanwhile

2010-09-15T18:00:00.043-04:00

The farmhouse looked so good when I came back to it last Friday. Some of it was just how happy I was to be there, to have a weekend, to be off the road for at least a bit. But most of it was everything that Tom had done since I was there last. The living room looked warm and cozy and the table where we eat made me want to sit down with a bowl of something hot, and everything had been cleaned, even our never-ending seemingly self-refilling dish sink. Everything.

I haven't been so good, myself, at the nesting. Terrible, in fact. I've done some laundry. I put two little bird figurines in a place I liked on the window sill in the living room. Other than that, I just try to do some dishes when I can, and move things out of Tom's way, but I still leave my knitting around and my mail is also everywhere and my bedroom is an absolute mess. It's been hard to find pants. That kind of mess.

When I came home to Kate and Jason's house the other day, they were nesting too. I could see through the big picture window that Kate was putting something on a shelf, standing back to look at it, gesturing to Jason. They both looked out and saw my car and looked surprised but smiled, waved. That was nice. It's been good to go there. Good to see all the little changes they've made since last time I was there. Was that painting of the frigate there in the bathroom before? Where was that bookshelf before? Have I ever seen that poster for Two-Lane Blacktop? You can tell they're happy doing all of it, and that makes home nice.

Farm Birds

2010-09-13T19:54:00.002-04:00

Neither one of us was sure how the bird got in the house, but there it was, perched on top of the refrigerator. It was what dad would call an LBB, or Little Brown Bird. Officially, you know. Tom and I had been out on the front porch, just looking at the night, the wisteria growing up over the roof, lovely and needing a trim. We didn't know there were birds sleeping in the wisteria, and couldn't see them, that's how thick it is there. As we looked at all the little parts of the house, we kept flushing them out of their night-time hiding places, rustle of leaves, rustle of wings. It wasn't until after I had gone inside to finish an email. and closed the door, that Tom discovered the indoor bird. Maybe it came in when I was taking photos of Tom and Emmy like the one above, too dark, blurry, but to my liking anyway. Maybe Tom let it in when he came in, though I doubt it. All we had to do to get it out was walk towards it - it let out one sharp sweet little chirp, tart like small candy, and flew directly through the entire length of the house and out the front door.

I'm starting to see photos again. My film cameras are still mostly in their bags, but I've started to make a move for the digital camera more frequently. It's just expedient, and good in low light, in a way. I went running for the first time in ages today, and kept looking at the red barn with the fish sculptures on the side of it, the buildings half-hidden by the height of corn stalks, the way the yellow flowers looked by that metal gate that led to the corn fields near the dike. The farmhouse and life there is presenting itself to me in different ways too, now, the way Pam's ranch did when I stayed there and took photo after photo, every day, little variations on all the corners of the land I liked to look at.

So many things made it a good weekend, but one of the nicest things was just looking, and seeing.

Or Not

2010-09-08T20:16:00.001-04:00

I didn't take a single photo this weekend. It was kind of a nice change. I did finish knitting a shawl, the first thing I've knit in months and months, and it only took me a week. My hands were sore at the end of it, but it was worth it. Mostly I just petted Emmy, walked around the property, made food, ate food, did dishes, drove to Anacortes (three times!), bought groceries (also three times), watched movies from the 80s about country singers (three of them), and slept.

This week I'm staying at my Ballard room. In some ways, the simplicity is nice, and I can't tell you how much I LOVE having a functional closet, getting dressed in the morning is so easy, but I do miss the mini-farm. Time with Susan, Lisa and Stumptown consoles me.

Lament

2010-09-07T19:12:00.005-04:00

For our former blog format. Oh old blog! How I miss you!

Jess is not grossed out by slugs

2010-09-04T22:37:00.004-04:00

Oops.

2010-09-03T23:55:00.003-04:00

photo by Lisa Robbins

Um. I think I kinda screwed up the blog. Sorry!

We'll get it worked out soon, I promise...

Having Time

2010-09-02T15:36:00.002-04:00

from Seamus' birthday party last Sunday

The drive home was lovely last night. It shouldn't have been. All day I debated whether to go home or back to Ballard, and at the very last minute I decided to head north, only to find all lanes of I-5 closed, in both directions. I didn't mean to head all the way out to Mukilteo, but that was where I ended up, in my search for a detour, and if there hadn't been a line for the ferry I would have been sorely tempted to hop on the Whidbey Island ferry and go home that way. It was getting late, and the light was low and warm-looking, and Whidbey and the San Juans have been so tempting lately. Instead, I drove along the water for a ways before heading back east, just north of where the freeway was closed. I lucked out and hit it right at the first open onramp.

There was a Willie Nelson interview on Fresh Air, and then the baseball game was on and the light was not fall light, it was late summer, and when I got to the Skagit Valley Food Co-op, there were no lines and the peaches weren't soft, they were just hard enough to ripen in time for the long weekend, and the first crop of Washington apples was there and I thought I'd just do a little shopping, but I kept thinking about chips and salsa to watch the Seahawks game with tonight, peanut butter ice cream for Tom, meals for the long weekend, my favorite tortillas, a box of black licorice, and stuffed manicotti for dinner and pretty soon three bags were full and I was driving home through twilight, still content, not feeling late at all.

We have the nicest sunsets at the mini-farm

2010-08-30T19:19:00.002-04:00

We also have nice pancakes, a nice dog who puts her head in my lap when we drive to Seattle for nephew birthday parties, good knitting, and clean gutters.

It Used To Be A Mix Tape

2010-08-26T15:41:00.001-04:00

Susan and I have been separated lately. The mini-farm, different sleep/wake hours, my NY trip, etc etc. I've been missing her and our get-togethers, trips to Moshi for sushi, going to Ballard Market for TV watching supplies, hanging out in her TV room, cupcakes, coffee. Finally tonight I'm staying in town to have dinner with her, no idea where we'll go, but it doesn't really matter. She's the only person who can get me to willingly eat at a restaurant with the word Factory in the name and be happy about it.

Susan was one of the first people to make me a mix tape, back in the day when we did those. She's kept at it through the years, though now they're CDs. Yesterday I read this great article about mix tapes, and thought of her. Perfectly timed to remind me I need a new mix for all the driving I'm doing these days. Not quite as good as hanging out, but a whole lot better than nothing.

Something Else We Do

2010-08-25T18:22:00.001-04:00

We have a lot of kites at the mini-farm. Kathleen and Lisa came out last Sunday, and we sat in the grass and Kathleen tried to teach us how to make a blade of grass whistle and mostly Lisa and I just laughed and documented her. Tom brought us fudgesicles and popsicles and everyone got the flavor she or he wanted.

What I Did Instead

2010-08-19T20:44:00.001-04:00

On Saturday it was too hot to ride in the little red truck for long, so the yard sale shopping didn't last too long. I wilted on the couch once we got back to the mini-farm, my arm hanging over the side and Emmy kept bumping my hand with her nose, trying to get me to pet her. I just stayed there, drifting in and out of a nap. I might have eaten a popsicle, and arranged some yarn in the spare bedroom downstairs.

Later, I put on the gingham dress that looks like a picnic tablecloth and we all piled into my air-conditioned car to go to the fair. Even though the cows and kitties and cavies weren't lucky enough to have AC, I loved our night. It was all about the company. And hand-dipped corn-dogs. And soft serve ice cream. And the Skagit Rein Riders. And air-brushed t-shirts and allowances and county fair romances between teenagers and the farmboy who milked his goat with one hand and ate a cone with the other, and the bright colors the rides gave us for photos, and the kid who asked us "Hey, do you wanna know what it feels like in a rain forest?" There was a lot to love, but mostly the company. Definitely that.

Welcome

2010-08-18T17:54:00.003-04:00

I had to ask Jessica's permission before I posted this photo of her sweet kitchen. It just feels so private in there, cozy and secret and warm. She gave me permission and then for two days I let the photo sit, having no idea what the post was about. All I have is the photo.

That's still all I have. The photo itself, the negative, is too faint to really get a good print in the color darkroom. You can tell that by the haze over the digital scan above. I still don't have a light meter other than the ones in my other cameras, so when I use the Bronica, I kind of eyeball it. Some of the negatives are dense and beautiful, others barely color the film enough for me to tell the difference between frames. Next week I have to turn in a final project for my Intro to Color class, and I'm at a loss. Not enough final prints, and the ones I have don't hang together as a set, to me. Some are medium format, some are 35mm. I wish I had done more portraits with the Bronica, wish I had gotten some good shots of the big curtain-like structures that hang over the berry fields on T Loop, can't quite bear to spend time on a print of that broken down old home I got chewed out for photographing.

It hasn't been the best week here, really. It's headache season, and that's leaving me melancholy most days. I finished reading A River Runs Through It the other day, and that was a book that matched my mood, quiet and lovely, somewhat plain. It had a calmness to it that I needed, and a mournfulness that fit. In the car, I've been trying to listen to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and sometimes that's just right, so clever and funny, but more often than not I find my mind wandering a bit, and end up just flipping back to an NPR station. I go through three of them on the ride home, sometimes clinging to the Seattle-based station that broadcasts Selected Shorts and This American Life longer than the reception really merits.

Last Saturday Tom and I found a little bookstore we liked in Burlington, lured in by a copy of The Great International Airplane Book on the sidewalk shelf, marked just $2. I bought it, and a copy of This Is Washington and Tom bought The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The next day he read it to me as we drove through the valley, and then at the dinner table, another paragraph or two, and to the end of the chapter Monday before bed. Huckleberry Finn keeps my full attention with Tom delivering it.

So I guess that's what this post is about. Just, where I am. In the car, in the color darkroom, at the dinner table with Tom, off with Huckleberry Finn, Some of the nicest times lately are in Jessica's and James' kitchen. James makes tea and I drink it whether I want tea just then or not, because I like it so much when he makes it. Jessica and James came home with a whole basket full of sweet blackberries the other night, and Jess and I sat in the store talking while the boys were in the kitchen, dishing up big plates of shortcake from the Bread Farm, berries from the basket, vanilla ice cream from our house. I have no idea where the headache was that night. I wouldn't remember it even if it had been there, that's how nice it was.

Not Going

2010-08-13T20:06:00.001-04:00

All week I struggled over whether or not to go to Doe Bay Fest this weekend. Saturday night campfires, bands we know and love, a long ferry ride, tall trees over the ocean, photo opportunities galore and several sweet friends who wanted very much to make the whole thing easy for me so I'd go. Why not?

NOT, though, that's where I landed. I had to feel my way through it, and clumsily, bumping into things as I went, making a chaotic mess of the last hours of the day yesterday. I guess it's about unpacking, and hanging art on the walls, and knowing where my clothes are, and why there isn't anything to speak of in the laundry pile, but even less in the drawers these days. Where did all my extra pillows go, and do I have fingernail clippers somewhere? Hair clips? Plastic sleeves for 35 mm film, where are those?

Also, it's about sitting on the lawn, or watching our kites lift off from the back field, higher than the trees that surround the farmhouse, all bright colors and optimism. That's the only place the weekend needs to go.

Just One Thing

2010-08-11T14:58:00.002-04:00

Tonight after work, I get to go straight home.

Here's Hoping

2010-08-06T16:50:00.000-04:00

chicken & potatoes by Kate Lebo

These days, I'm always happy to go home. If Tom has some idea when I'll be home, at least roughly, he'll open the gate and keep a closer eye on Emmy so I can sail right in. She goes mad with happy barking and wants to chase my car so my first sight is usually Tom kneeled down, dog-height, two arms around her, grinning. Then there's work to scan the yard for, did he build more on the little rock wall that's going in to protect the septic field from renegade parkers, or mow the area we've started to call the Green Field, or fill the hot tub to check for leaks? Something like that, most days.

There have been a few times when I've come home in the evening with grocery bags, but now that the moving is over, mostly I rush straight from wherever I've come from, empty lunch sack, empty travel mug, no idea what to eat for dinner. Last night we ended up frying up the leftovers from our dinner at the Trumpeter, reuben sandwich for me, smoked chicken pasta for Tom. The night before it was, well, dinner at the Trumpeter. We've had breakfast for dinner a few times, and one night Tom had grilled cheese and I ate cracked pepper potato chips with cottage cheese as dip. It's a good thing there's always fruit in the house. Tom, I've discovered, can't resist ice cream. "Just remind yourself that it's MY ice cream," I tell him, when he complains about the 5 tubs that are in there now. "But I KNOW you don't care!" he says, "You buy it, but you don't eat it!" He's right. But I will request slices of watermelon the minute I come home, and Tom slices them up for me. Also, for the first time since I started at Alder a few years ago, I've actually been bringing my lunch, most days.

Now I'm determined to reform where it comes to dinner. I roasted a chicken for Tom once back in my old apartment, before I knew that he likes all meat well done, chicken included. That didn't go so well, even by my more pink-tolerant standards. I did make him a good salad though, and we have now served each other many many hot beverages. I used to make him tea at my apartment, and at the mini-farm he wakes up every morning and puts the little espresso maker on the stovetop for me. He's got the sugar amount just right, and the coffee is good even when we run out of whole milk and have to use 2%.

I bought burger patties about a week ago, but they've been sitting in the freezer because getting the grill going for just two people seems like a hassle. Tom's little nephews are coming for a visit this weekend, so maybe hot dogs for them, burgers for us, some salmon, some corn? The corn is getting tall in the fields now, but at the Co-op it's all from California still. Maybe Sunday I'll roast a chicken, or maybe we'll just keep eating those good empanadas from the co-op deli? Either way, I'm happy.

Some of this please.

2010-07-30T18:07:00.000-04:00

This morning I was writing to Susan about how much I've been wanting to be at the mini-farm. Most evenings, I drive back to Seattle for one thing or another, acupuncture, Hugo House meetings, camera class, dark room time, but most of all, packing. It seems like I'm always loading boxes into my car right around sunset, sometimes remembering to make one last trip into the apartment for a popsicle to eat on the drive, sometimes not. No matter how much I've done that day, though, I am always happy to do the hour drive back to Bow, where I end up standing in the kitchen, eating slices of watermelon with Tom for the last hour I have of the day before sleep. When I come home, Emmy gets so excited her whole body wags and her teeth chatter. It's nice to have a dog love you.

Tomorrow is the very last day of the Queenview. Five years wrapping up in a whirl of dust bunnies and fragile champagne coupes and old issues of Domino used as packing material. Then it's Lindsey's wedding that evening, and a drive home to the mini-farm afterwards. Sometimes it's very convenient to be someone who never drinks. Then it's Sunday, and for once, there are no plans for anyone to come over, or for us to do any chores. Maybe by the end of the day I'll know the answer to the question, When was the last time I sat down with a book?

Where Was I?

2010-07-28T19:39:00.000-04:00

That's been the question lately. The big living room on Queen Anne, with its views of Elliott Bay and West Seattle, is empty now, there's no soap in the shower, no towel hanging on the towel rack. There is one lonely nightstand, many stacks and bags and boxes of unsorted papers, not to mention the junk drawers in the kitchen and the coats in the closet. I just can't seem to get it all in hand.

Soon though, July 31st is the last day I'll have the keys. The mini-farm shaped up nicely for the bachelorette party this weekend, 13 girls fed and watered and boozed up and barbecued then tucked in on air mattresses and sofas and in sleeping bags on Tom's bed upstairs. We sat around the outdoor (fire marshall approved) fire pit and played Ten Fingers (I won, or is it lost?), danced and sang to my Madonna DVD and hula hooped in the living room. I took a few photos of the girls all sitting up in the mini-barn loft but really the best photos were the ones we all took in our heads when Jen and I looked at each other and said "Cameras?", then "No".

As soon as they walked out the door on Sunday afternoon, boxes seemed to explode from the closets and the kitchen suddenly had more dishes and marshmallows and boxes of tea and plastic utensils than it did cupboards and drawers for them all. We kept finding Emmy curled up on one of the leftover air mattresses in the living room, or totally sacked out on the lawn, and she didn't even wait for any of the humans to go upstairs for bed before she did.

I was in Seattle last night, craving the farm but still happy in a way to have just one small simple room there. A good closet can make all the difference sometimes.

Peregrine

2010-07-20T15:02:00.000-04:00

I don't quite know what to say when people asked me if I'm all moved yet. The weekend before last, the movers took almost all my furniture up north, leaving the old Queen Anne place echoing and lonely, but still cluttered with papers and closets full of clothes. The room in Ballard is entirely empty, though I have a key now at least. I'm getting quite a collection of keys.

Up in Bow, Tom is clearing out the mini-barn, the greenhouse, the weeds in the flower beds. I pile boxes on boxes and still need more boxes for what's left in Seattle. There is finally balsamic vinegar in the kitchen and the rice cooker does work to steam artichokes but there are no water glasses, only mugs. More than anything, I just wanted to be able to sit on the couch and watch a movie, the dog at our feet and a late late dinner on our laps. Someone asked me if I had taken a bath in the new bathtub yet, and I haven't, but that wasn't the thing for me. The thing was the movie.

Sometimes when the boxes in the house get to be too much, I get in the car and head towards the Skagit Co-op for groceries. There is always something more to need. There are infinite routes there, it seems, past little farms, the alpacas on Avon Allen Road, or the strawberry fields on Cook Road. On Saturday night I met this guy there, a peregrine falcon and his falconer. How is it that I never asked his name? He's kept falcons since he was 14 and had lost a new one that day, was getting things arranged so that he could go up in a small plane the next day with tracking gear, see if he could find her that way. Someone else had lost a falcon to a great horned owl the day before, and they have to look out for the many bald eagles that patrol the valley as well, always a threat.

The road I met them on is the one I drive on most, next to my own. It leads right to the highway, which is always in view from there. I like the other roads better, though it's hard to find a place where you can't see where you're going. It's all flat where we are, clear views and late afternoon sun and roads that take you back to where you started from. Even when I try to get lost in the Skagit Valley, it feels like being found.

Mother, Grandmother, Tractor Enabler

2010-07-07T21:41:00.004-04:00

Happy Birthday Mama!

The boys and I wish we were there to give you a big wet smooch!

MWAH!

Thank you for driving out to visit us and for being so willing and helpful while you were here. Spending hours in the car with the boys while we were test driving can't have been that much fun, and we appreciate that you were so gracious about it.

We miss you all the time.

Fire Escape Redux

2010-07-05T01:02:00.000-04:00

I took this photo again today. The cucumber/hearts of palm salad is gone, but the horse graffiti is still there and the summer salad had watermelon and pickled green beans and was impossibly good. I had barbecue chicken and Kate and Shanti split the pork chop with cherries and I did not let their last bite go unfinished. I vowed to make cucumber salad, Bee's Kisses and bananas foster at the mini-farm. Tomorrow, affigato at MoMA.

How To Get There

2010-06-29T18:11:00.002-04:00

Just keep going.