1. A Day

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

So, anyway...

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

 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

 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.

Sunday Stop

 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

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

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

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

A little peek into the boys third birthday...

How To Have Your Picture Taken, part E

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.

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

 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Quiet

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.