At the Les Schwab in Ballard, there's probably always someone on an iPad. Up here in the valley, I'm the only one with technology more sophisticated than a pair of suspenders or a hearing aid. A couple of guys sit at a table chewing the fat, nothing but a coffee cup between them. I eavesdrop, of course, because they're talking about farming, who has standing water in their fields all winter and what that means. Who's trying to plant corn, but doesn't really grow corn that good. Another guy in the lobby is in the market for a new mower, needs the 500 series, something about the differential, so the guy at the counter introduces him to an old timer who turns out to be the owner of a shop. The owner cracks a joke about Oh well they got em down there to the Lowe's and all the guys in the lobby chuckle. There's something ok about going to the place where the farmers and farm equipment guys take their cars. 

Four Months In

Things are a lot more green now than they were in January. The garden is different here than it was this time last year, too. This weekend something shifted and I started to feel like things are progressing more than they are decaying, or going wild or reverting back to some unmanageable state. 

I still have no idea what I'm doing. YouTube videos will tell you how important soil preparation is in putting together an asparagus bed, but I bought my crowns late in the season, planted them even later, and just scratched a little compost into the bottom of the bed by way of prep. We'll see. That's how everything is now, we'll just see. Horseradish is supposed to grow with the ferocity of dandelions, so I just dug a hole and dropped it in, pretty much. Putting in three rhubarb plants might be overkill. I don't care. What's the worst thing that happens? Dig one up, send it to someone else's yard. 

I'm counting on things being forgiving, to a certain extent, and trying not to get too attached to anything. In the garden, I don't have a problem falling in love with what's easy, or seems so - kale, raspberries, potatoes, nettles, sorrel. It's just too bad that I don't like the taste of dandelions, because we're awfully good at growing those here.

Things I'm Afraid To Tell You

Weeks and weeks ago, over a month now, Tami sent me a piece of writing. It's a good piece of writing, with lots to talk about, especially since it's in early stages and written sort of in chunks, all of which relate to each other in really interesting ways, while still leaving me with the feeling that the piece as a whole is not totally sure what exactly it wants to be yet, which is, in my opinion, exactly where a work at that stage should be. The alternative is for it to be smug and knowing, dictatorial rather than provocative. Even in this early stage it is a piece that lures me in, one that I've thought about a lot since I received it. 

I haven't written back to her yet. I haven't even written to apologize for not writing back, and I hate that, but it just seems too meager to write and say sorry, I've been really busy, and at heart, that excuse doesn't even feel true.

In the grab-bag of neglected things in my life right now, this is the one that bothers me most. Part of the reason my tire resigned from my wheel a few weeks ago was that it was tired of bearing up under the pressure of my misaligned car, a strip of it overburdened and neglected until it just gave up and let itself shred under the weight of all those trips back and forth, between Skagit and Seattle, Seattle and Skagit, Bothell, etc. All of the tires have been replaced now, a forced march down my neglected to-do list, but the car hasn't been realigned yet. This weekend, for real. Speaking of tires, there's at least one flat on the riding lawnmower, plus something else wrong with it that I can't fix, which means that the acre we live on is being maintained by a push mower bought at a yard sale for $15. I'm not afraid to tell you that, exactly, but there is some low level dread to my days as a result of it, which is similar to the way I feel about things I'm afraid to tell you. I'm not afraid to tell you how messy my car is, but that doesn't mean I would want you to ride in it. I think about who I park next to in the lot at work more than a grown woman with her act together should, if you ask me. 

I'm not really afraid to tell you that I'm a grown woman who doesn't exactly have her act together. I think I have an overdue water bill in a bag somewhere at home, and last month I had to pay two months of another bill at the same time. I'm not really afraid to tell you that while I think, in many ways, that I work for a great company, I couldn't say that this is the most successful I've ever been at a job. I have other failures that I am afraid enough to tell you about that I just won't. I think that's okay. Some of them are about other people, and not everyone needs their business shared here.

When I think about why I haven't written back about the piece of writing from Tami, the one thing I know is that it's not about her piece, or her. It is, of course, one hundred percent me and my own relation to writing. Not only to writing, but to the act of reflection, and creation. 

In therapy, we've talked a bit about how I feel these days when someone asks me what I've been up to. My life has changed a lot in the last two years, and sometimes it's hard for me to know how to talk about this. I feel like the answer to what I've been up to is "Nothing." Driving. Making dinner. Vacuuming. Going to acupuncture. The things that used to count as something were places I had traveled to, classes I had taken, stories I was working on, photos made. 

There is something much more introverted about my life now, but without the mental space for introspection. I haven't been writing because I can't imagine having that much space in a day - it would require pushing aside certain things that it just makes me too anxious to push aside at the moment.

That used to be one of my secrets- that in order to do what little writing I did, I pushed things aside. I would let the dishes rot in the sink, or shove everything into a box and close it up, or overspend or go without sleep or eat every meal out. When people ask what I've been up to these days, there must be some way to say that what I'm doing now is letting those things catch up to me, and working my way through them. I'm trying to develop the habit of housecleaning, of cooking my own meals, of opening boxes and going through them and saving or letting go, and catching up on sleep and trying to save money by spending time, and by the way there is this new animal to care for and maintain, this big, one-acre animal called the mini-farm. In Pam's new book, there's a point where Mackenzie (on the Boeing tour) says "It's like building a whale." That's what it feels like these days, building a whale. Something you can't quite get your arms around.

My life is a small whale, relatively. No kids. Enough of most things, except time. But all of these things are relative, and there's no getting around that. Even now, I'm stealing time that's not mine. I'm writing my own selfish things, but maybe sometimes that's the most helpful thing you can do for someone else. That's what I'm hoping for, anyway. 

This isn't South Dakota. In South Dakota, there were only four photos. One of Allison with the Thomas Jefferson statue in Rapid City, one of her with the Calvin Coolidge statue, and two of me with Jimmy Carter. Maybe a few more, but really, those four were it. I carried the big digital SLR, carried my running gear, a bathing suit, but none of that got used. we bought snacks at the health food store in Rapid City that we never got to, mugs at the thrift store so we could make tea in our hotel room, but we never made tea. We did get to the Corn Exchange, and ate butter burgers from Culvers and had sandwiches and lattes from the Green Bean in Belle Fourche, but those were the only luxuries. We had a day to prepare for the estate sale, organizing and sorting and squirreling things away that needed to be sent on later to one of the corners of the country where the four of us live now. Then there were two days of sale, and it was time for Allison and I to set out for the Rapid City airport again. 

At dinner the last night at Lyle and Shorty's, I noticed how tidy and organized everything seemed after the chaos of the last three days. I confess I also thought about everything as though it were in a yard sale - the cross stitch Velkommen sign that matched the one in the garage on that side table with the fake tiles, still unpriced. Putting the Velkommen sign out for sale, of course it hadn't occurred to me that Shorty had probably made it as a gift for Ellen. I wondered what else she saw at the sale, thought about how she had paid $20 for a walker thinking she might be able to convince Lyle to use it, how later I had run out to catch her before she drove away, stood there in the rain on the curb pressing a $20 bill into her hand. She tried to refuse but there was no way I was going to let her pay, and when I told her Ellen would have killed me if I let her pay for it, she couldn't do anything but take the money. 

The plates at the dinner table were the same cheap unbreakable ones Ellen had, Corelle I think, still for sale on the third day. I imagine Shorty had nicer china too, and found myself hoping that she let herself find excuses to use them, but then again, after dinner the cheap dishes just got tossed into the dishwasher. There was fruit salad with dinner and Shorty told us about how she keeps it in the fridge for Lyle, a little pineapple juice in there to keep the apples from going brown. She had a system.

Back home now, I'm thinking about systems too. We didn't eat dinner tonight until 9:30, just more evidence that I do not have the systems down around here. Workin on it. 

Note for April, 2013

Today was the first harvest of the year - nettles and sorrel for soup. By the time we got around to it, our visitors had already packed up and headed home, leaving me with this fantasy about a nettle soup party next year, timed to coincide with the fresh halibut available at the co-op, and the tulips blooming in the fields. 

We chip away at the yard - Tom moving strawberries, me picking weeds here and there, or buying sweet onion starts at the co-op or bare-root trees from Territorial Seed. I still want artichoke starts, and we are out of parsley seed, the blueberry bushes need sawdust and to be moved to a permanent home. They could use a few friends too. The rule of thumb seems to be two per person, and we have two total. Last year the pattypan squash were one of our biggest crops, and they were so delicious, the start of my newfound love of roasting, really, and yet they somehow slipped my mind completely when I was making my mental inventory of things to plant this year. We'll have to fix that.

The swans in their whiteness are gone now, and so is most of the seasonal pond that took over the potato fields to the north of us during the flooding season. There's a robin that seems to have fallen in love with it's own reflection on my driver's side wing mirror and an owl that I sometimes hear as I'm brushing my teeth at night, and on Sunday a congress of ravens chased each other from the tall trees on the east side of our property to the neighbors farther west, one of them with something small and rodent-shaped in its beak. There are still eagles, though not the convocation that was there in early March.

Tacos for dinner, the kind of Sunday evening meal that lends itself to Monday afternoon leftovers. Deconstructed, spooned into tupperware with rice and kale, it's just some weird bowl of nutrients to heat up in the microwave and eat at your desk with tea. It's actually a habit that I really like, those totally functional lunches. Easy.

Sunday evening

On Sundays, there's some time in the early evening I have the house to myself for a change. Tom is off setting up for the singer/songwriter night he books at the Longhorn every Sunday, and Emmy usually curls up for a nap in her little nest of blankets. I used to just make tea and watch TV (Downton Abbey night!) but lately I've been using the time to get things done, prep for the week, be productive in whatever way pleases me instead of whatever way it seems the house needs most. Conveniently, these things sometimes coincide, maybe because giving yourself permission to do whichever piece of work you'd like first, makes the whole thing easier. I turn my New Yorker short story podcast, or an episode of Fresh Air or This American Life, up loud enough to be heard over the dishes, and slowly and sloppily make my way through them, wiping the counters at the end, gathering up all the dishtowels for a load of laundry to be finished later. Sometimes I'll roast a cauliflower, or some baby broccoli, or cook a little pot of rice to pack up for lunch for the week. It's just nice, that's all.

Four is the new...

I can't believe that the twins are four.

I mean, I can, and every day they have some funny new behavior or expression that confirms that they are evolving. Last night, for instance, when they were opening their gifts, Thomas kept saying 'Oh my!!!' or 'Oh my goodness!!!' with such frequency and enthusiasm that Eugene and I were looking at each other wondering - where did that come from? Max, meanwhile, displays a lot of the tendencies that I had at that age. Singing, dancing around, making up elaborate stories. I wouldn't be surprised if he announced his desire to be a singing dentist soon.

We've had them in nursery school/ski school this winter, while I am teaching snowboarding at Mount Snow, and they have been such little troopers about it. I feel some mom guilt that not only am I working during the week, but on weekends as well, but for the most part the time at the mountain is great for us as a family.

I see the boys learning how to socialize and behave in a school setting. I get to do something that I love, whether it is teaching, taking a clinic or just free riding. Eugene gets to get out and see friends, have some fun and even hang out with me, sans twins. And then there are the sunny days, when we pick the boys up early from Cub Camp and take them over to the learning area.

I will sit at the bottom with one of the boys, a container of popcorn and some juice, and we cheer Euge and the other twin on as they take the chair lift and ski down together. It is such a perfect moment of happiness for me, I find myself thinking - here we are, this is the point of everything else that I do.

Thankfully, it is not the only moment that I feel that way. In fact, the twins inspire a lot of that thinking.

Pulling onto Mactaggart after Quiet is the New Loud at the Longhorn, I caught a couple in my headlights, leaned up against a car, someone persuading someone else, and I'm not saying who. At the bar, Harley and Susan and I had talked about winter electricity bills, insulation, farm interns, what kind of savory sauce you can make with blueberries. Tom and James were talking about the berry farm down the street from us, how they were dealing with this late cold snap we've got, and on the way to work the next day I drove past blueberry bushes with their roots stuck in frozen puddles, both cold and flood was the misfortune this week. 

I've switched to tea in the morning, try to get most of the dishes done at night, make notes on what to do next, and put off the ironing. 

Wet Feet

The snow is long gone, but it's still work keeping feet warm around here. My acupuncturist told me my last bad migraine came in with the wind, that I must wear a hat whenever I go outside on windy days. Sure enough, the wind came back today, and a migraine with it. They aren't as frequent these days, we've got something worked out with the yin energy, a good night's sleep, and winter warmth. 

The fields are filling up with puddles today, and the drainage ditches run like rivers. Tonight is Bingo at the elementary school, the annual fundraiser that keeps the lights on in our town. Last time, everyone won, and we all filed into the hall to eat little sandwiches the Ladies Club brought, potluck-style. Peanut butter and banana on white bread, tuna fish on wheat, egg salad. Lemonade made from powder. We sat on the folding tables and benches in the gym and a real auctioneer called out the bingo numbers.  This year Lisa is coming up, and I'll put on a dress, but tights too since it's cold, and of course, a hat. 

I keep getting rid of things. I need to keep doing that. How many sweaters do you think a girl needs? Can I keep twenty? I'm determined this weekend to drag them out, toss them all on my bed, and weed ruthlessly.

Fun on the Twirly Slide

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.