her able hands

I have a slight fever today, and so am moving slowly, gently, with eyes squinting a bit. I try to keep my attention on what’s before me. The area rug spread out on the sidewalk, the vacuum and then the steamer running back and forth across it, by will of my hand. The larger carpet, rolling up the driveway until it’s a tight tube, ready for the dumpster. The neighborhood cats discovered it while it hung on the porch railing to dry and I say no thank you to the ammonia. Thank you very no. Next switch laundry and pull my thoughts back away from trying to solve problems that I cannot solve. Not now. Not ever.

Drop the two split chicken breasts into a pot with vegetable scraps, water and two bay leaves for stock. Make the dough for a Feta and Chard Tart—a savory dough with olive oil and kosher salt that will sit in the fridge until dusk. And what the heck, a batch of dough for Apple Crostates to make with the local, antique Opalescent apples I got yesterday at the farmers’ market. This a sweet dough of flour, butter, sour cream, salt and egg. Perhaps I’ll slice up a couple of the red pears to mix in with the apples. Pull my thoughts back again. Really, it’s of no use running over it all again and again in my mind, that just makes me feel more feverish. Everything will be okay. We’re all strong people in my family. The curve balls eventually go straight. Sip water. Take another vitamin C. Switch the laundry again. Chop onion, carrots, celery, chard stems and green beans for the soup. Step out onto the deck and turn my face up to the sun and let the breeze lift my hair from my neck. Back in to shred the chicken breasts between my aching fingertips.

Sweep the kitchen floor. Soak a dish towel and drop it and push it around with my foot to scrub up the most offensive stains. That will have to do, as I don’t have enough in me to deal with a mop right now. In the living room, begin to sort the million DVD and VHS cases. Make another pile of papers to sort some other time. Take a shirt of Lila’s that’s headed for the laundry, swipe it around on the exposed surfaces of the book case. Straighten the couch cover and the chair cover, sorry fat cat, you’ll have to find another spot to snore away the afternoon. Must be nice. Just curl up there in a furry comma and wait for your next instructions.

The neighborhood is mostly quiet. Tyler has some friends over—they camped out last night and raised quite a wild-boy ruckus until I told them that mothers would be called out of bed to come pick them up if they didn’t settle down around the campfire to tell stories and let the old folks in the hood get some sleep. Now they’re having another fire and using Tyler’s few blacksmithing tools to make weapons of some sort. Chris and Lila are at the old house. I’m moving from one task to another with measured steps and a bit of a headache, trying to keep the angst at bay. It’s almost time to sit on the front porch rocker with a glass of wine.

We try to hold so much in our hands, in our hearts, in our busy little monkey minds. But don’t you think that all we really hold onto is our ideas of ourselves? It seems so, at least right now.

Bookmark It

This is more of a round-up last weekend and Monday. It’s late because I’ve had something going on every night after work and have slept late every morning because I’m fighting a bit of ick, but keeping it at bay with lots of water, vitamins and herbs. Though I’m less hopeful after last night’s class meeting at the preschool. I walked out of there feeling like about a thousand little germies had hitched a ride home in my head and this morning my throat is all sore and my nose has the onset of viral infection garbage smell when I breathe in. I’m popping cold care and stopping at the pharmacy for some zinc on my way in to work.

I should probably also make a big, spicy pot of garlic and escarole soup with my homemade chili powder.

I dehydrated a bunch of the hot peppers I picked at the farm two weeks ago, a mix of banana peppers that had turned red, chilis and cherry hots. While we waited for Chris to get home from work on Saturday, Lila played on the swingset with her friend Fatou, and I set up at the picnic table with all of my half-finished food preservation projects. The day was hot, but not insufferably so because a light breeze kept the air moving and the shadows are so long that we stayed in partial shade.

I worked the dry pepper bits into flakes and some powder with the mortar and pestle and as I worked I thought about my sister, so when I finished that task, I sat down and wrote her a letter to send along with a little baggie of the pepper.

I miss her more than I could possibly communicate here and hope that one day we’ll be able to live close to each other so we can get our food and garden geek on together on a regular basis.

I started this labor-intensive red pepper relish on Friday night. The recipe for Pugliese Pepper Relish—which I got from the great site, Kitchen Gardeners International—takes three days to complete. What you see here is the vegetables soaking in salt and their own juices.

Shortly after I snapped this shot, I dumped them into a colander and rinsed the heck out of them, let them drain, then dumped them back into the bowl and covered with the vinegar. I didn’t have enough white wine vinegar so I mixed in some cider. I guess it won’t taste quite as refined, but that’s okay, this kind of substitution suits my peasant nature.

I’ve been meaning to take a photo of the twelve half-pints of finished relish, but anytime I’m home it’s dark and my indoors nighttime shots are worthless. You’ll just have to believe me when I tell you that, hott damn, they’re red and purty. I can’t wait to pop open a jar to smother on some fish or chicken or something.

So now we arrive at the question of the pot of cooked plum tomatoes sitting in the fridge. I cleaned off the food mill and while the girls lay back in the grass and chatted, I eavesdropped on their deep conversation, lulled by the turning of the handle.

Lila: But if you die then I will die too. Right?

Fatou: But if I die my mommy will be sad. Right?

Lila: Yeah, but if you die then I will be sad too, right?

Fatou: Uh-huh.

Lila: My Grandpa Ron died. His body stopped working. He’s in the trees and the stars now, right?

Fatou: Uh-huh. My Grandpa lives in Japan, right?

Lila: Well, my other Grandpa isn’t dead and he lives with Pink Grandma Carol in Massatoooshits, right?

Fatou: Uh-huh.

I ended up with a quart of juice that might be nice for Bloody Marys with Sunday brunch, but I’m not seeing an open Sunday for a few weeks, so I need to get it into the freezer. For the sauce, I sautéed a bunch of vegetables (garlic, onion, red and green pepper, mushroom and carrots) to add to the tomato, which I simmered with some of my dried herbs, then fresh basil and parsley at the end. This sauce made a great topping for the pan of stuffed red peppers I made the night before. I missed out on one more photo of red with that meal, too.

At midday, just before we left to head down to the old house to mow and grab another load of crap we have no room for, I took this blown-out shot of the same Dahlia from last week. Totally the wrong time of day to take picture, but goodness, this flower is incredible.

I remember my teacher back in New York, Fiona, telling me to give plenty of attention to the deep and bright colors of autumn, to really take them into my body. The reds and golds and oranges would help sustain my energy through the gray, cold days of winter. I do this with my pantry, as well.

Bookmark It

Reading Jim Kunstler’s Clusterfuck Nation might never be a great way to start the work week, but I clicked on the feed in my google reader anyway.

A graph from this week’s installment of Jim’s wake-up call-bitch-slap for a nation of blind sheep (of which I am often one):

Reality is trying to tell us that we can’t run an economy based on nothing more than investment schemes without directing investment into activities that produce things of value. Reality is telling us to be very worried about living arrangements that can only function with copious imports of oil from people who are disgusted with us. Reality is telling us that we can’t divert our food crops into making motor fuels without people becoming unable to afford either fuel or food. Reality is telling us to redirect our culture more toward things-we-do-with-other-people and less toward things-we-do-with-new-things [emphasis mine]. Reality is telling us to shift from avoidance behavior and denial to engaging with reality in order to lead lives that are consistent with reality.

It’s got me thinking.

Bookmark It

Okay, so I apparently have to learn this lesson yet again.

So, yes, universe…I give. Hands up, white flag a-wavin’. There are only so many hours in the day. There are only so many free hours in the week. I remember. I may have forgotten while making all of those grandiose plans to pick vegetables off-site, and do all of that canning and freezing.

But the fact is, I’m out of room in the freezer and I don’t have time to go buy one this weekend, and I don’t have time to go pick beans this weekend. And I don’t have time to can tomatoes, because the pot of cooked down tomatoes I made earlier in the week is still in the fridge waiting to be run through the food mill. And have I mentioned that I’m out of room in the freezer? And that I don’t have time to do any canning? So we’re going to have to just eat the sauce or give it away.

This weekend we have to finish up at the old house so the rent-to-owners can move in next weekend. Period. No time for much of anything else because this is it, the final push and jeepers am I looking forward to crossing “mow at the old house” off the weekend to-do list. Amen.

Will there be beans next weekend? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Right at this moment I couldn’t care less. But, you know, don’t hold me to it.

Bookmark It

Last night I went straight from work to Lila’s school for the first family connections meeting, then rushed over to pick up my Frankferd Farms Co-Op delivery, then home thinking I would stuff my face with one of the burritos Chris picked up for dinner. But I didn’t feel hungry or tired or like settling in for the night. I felt like moving. So I put on some shorts and a tank and went for a brisk walk/run around the neighborhood.

As I walked, I picked up my pace with each step and felt the muscles in my calves and thighs stretching and working, releasing the tension that gathers in them sitting at a desk all day. My mind wandered from observations about my surroundings to interior things that I’ve been stitching at with mental needle and thread. Words gathered together to become potential lines for posts and for an essay I’m working on, and I wished I had a DAT recorder with me (or owned one). Then berated myself for thinking about buying gadgets to make my routine more productive when it was — hello — my first time out. Don’t get ahead of yourself there, lady Jane.

But it felt so good and I’m sitting here now thinking about the day ahead and seeing where I can fit in another vigorous walk with maybe a few blocks of running. I’ll need to bandage the hell out of my heels, they’re torn and raw because I wore the wrong socks and they scrunched down inside the back of the shoe and rubbed so much I turned around and went home way before I wanted to, and took my shoes off at the bottom of the driveway so I could get rid of the razor blades slicing into my heels. My shoes are old and worn out, not particularly comfortable for running, and so maybe I should get another pair of those before I start spending money on DAT recorders, no?

You see, I’ve been trying to turn over a new leaf with my self-care for several months now, taking random and inconsistent stabs at exercising. Whimpering my way through short sessions then abandoning it all for snacks at the vending machine. I discovered again last night that the result of a solid week of daily trips to that vending machine for snack-sized bags of Doritos and for Baby Ruth bars, followed by a heart-pumping walk/run is feeling as if antifreeze and nuclear waste are being pumped through your body in place of blood. Jeeze-oh-man, the nausea and acid and dizziness.

I am so only eating salad and drinking water today. I don’t care how sleepy I feel at 3:00, I will not get a Mountain Dew and a candy bar from the devil machine. I will not break my stride. And I don’t say that from a place of guilt or of beating myself up. I say that from a place of realization. Of waking up. I couldn’t even eat dinner last night because I felt so toxic, so it’s time.

I hate to sound like such a delicate flower…

…but something has been growing for a while, and is now unfolding.

Technorati Tags: exercise, walking, running, health, wellness, habits

Bookmark It