Was There, am now Back Again

Last March, my parents spent a month in Vermont to experience the joys of Mud Season. My sister and I went up for a long weekend: cozy and comfy (filthy floors), piles of dirty snow outside and us snug as baby kangaroos.

So we thought that perhaps a spring trip this year would be good to get The First Visit over with. In July, a big group of us will participate in the Prouty Challenge in honor of my dad and very likely intern a bit of his ashes under the maple tree – we thought perhaps having that also be The First Visit would be too much.

Most of the local family came over with us: loud, laughing dinners and not a few tears. It is strange to think of that house as partly mine.

April 2 is 6 months. Last Friday (as my uncle reminded us when we sat down to dinner) was 2 years since Mimi died. There’s a flinty part of me that says “welcome to getting older,” but that doesn’t make loss any less difficult.

But Innisfree keeps inside it the memory of all the people who have loved it, from Cousin Fonrose and her writing room on stilts to all the folks under the maple tree, to my young cousins who spent Saturday morning rolling and rolling down the hill in the snow. And who all call me by my childhood nickname, thus obliterating a decade of my grumpily demanding to be called Virginia.

Oh well. I probably needed to pull that stick out of my butt anyhow.

Olympics over, back to regularly scheduled life

Alas,  no more ski jumping or biathlon for four more years, unless there is a station like ESPN62: Nerd Sports for Insomniacs.

I’m a little ashamed to admit that a big part of why I like the winter Olympics better is that they’re so dangerous. I mean, I am the person who worries during the first few figure skaters that one of them is going to fall down and slice their own hand off.

What am I supposed to worry about during track and field? That someone might skin a knee?

(Favorite summer events: pole vaulting, platform diving, vault, fencing, archery. It’s a sickness.)

Anyway, the closing ceremony is on, and to distract myself from my misery, this post is about books.

I don’t just read them, oh no. I am a tiny baby bookbinder. I’ve taken a couple of classes at the Museum of Printing History (one of my favorite things about Houston), and it rekindled my interest.

In a class called “Small Books from Everyday Objects,” we made four books in one afternoon. One, a Coptic binding made with fortune-telling cards, I gave to my sister.

This one is just “Mexican bingo cards” (I’m not even sure what that means) and bookbinder’s tape: about 1 minute total (with precut paper) to make a SUPER cute book

This was also fun and easy, using a miniature cereal box for an easy little two-signature book. The side panel of the box is folded in like a W to separate the signatures.

This one was interesting and hilarious: the covers are cut from an AOL marketing CD. I had no idea that heating a CD with a hairdryer would make it soft enough to cut with scissors.

Here’s the origami inside of that one:

It was one of those really beautiful meeting-at-crossroads sort of classes: we all had such a fun time and got along so well that we exchanged email addresses and vowed to meet again. We didn’t – I’ve only known that to happen once – but it was a brilliant afternoon anyway.

Then I went to a meeting of the Houston Book Arts Group and learned long-stitch binding:

That is a lot of hole-punching, let me tell you. I spent the evening hanging out with a man my grandfather’s age who was nonstop charm. Here’s a terrible picture of the front of the book:

(Can you tell I have a hard time caring about photography?)

The Vermeer cover is from a pile of book jackets I scored out of the recycling bin in the Cataloging department of Regenstein Library, University of Chicago, in about 1996. I think it was good to wait, because this came out great. The bead is one my parents bought in Murano. This book is destined to go to my mom, who plans to write her dreams about my dad in it.

Then there was a drought in good classes at the museum, so I pulled out an old book, Cover to Cover, that I bought even earlier than rescuing book jackets from the trash. I hope to go through, beginning to end, just to build my skills.

The first project is a very simple little pamphlet. I used paper from a pad of drawing paper. The cover is a picture from a calendar, and the tie is some crazy silver stretchy stuff that’s been in my wrapper paper box since the middle ages.

More hobbies that keep me from writing! At least I could write IN these.

Skiiers, spiders, sprouts

So much Olympics! My brother-in-law had a barbecue yesterday, and I hope Dingo’s family understands what a gesture of love it was that I left the house (and the Olympics) to spend time with them.

Get this: I love to watch ski jumping, but I don’t care about aerial skiing. I don’t get it either. And how fun does ski cross look? (very)

I went to Vancouver about 2 years ago for work (I started “The Wolf I Want” on the plane out). I just loved it – I spent 5 days in a Ramada Inn with a breakfast bar in the basement in which the toaster only toasted the bread on one side, making proper Commonwealth toast. The conference (Council of Science Editors) was excellent, the city wildly interesting (but oh! the meth addicts everywhere!), the sushi enormous. I went to the Fluevog store and alarmed my boss with my love of strange shoes.

My sister-in-law has the most enormous black widow spider EVER in a terrarium on her back porch. They’ve been feeding her bugs they find in the yard. She is perfect glossy black and lipstick red. It must be the spider high life to live in a safe house with regular meal deliveries.

A less cushy life is that of our golden orb weaver – it’s also enormous, and it wants very much to build a large web outside our dining room. We are alerted to this by Jinx jumping repeatedly at the window and driving us to distraction. I would love to take a picture for you, but the spider keeps building webs that are either blown or rained away by morning. Poor thing. I love to watch it building, strand by strand.

I cooked up a bunch of chopped Brussels sprouts in the same pan that had been used to cook bacon – high heat, garlic, lemon juice, white wine, oregano. The sprouts are just a touch caramelized, with the acid of the lemon and wine to temper the funky cabbage-ness. That is some tasty nutrition, for sure. My friend Sleuth S. says that it doesn’t count as a treat if it’s a vegetable.

Oh, S. You are so wrong.

Biennial crazies

DANG I love the Olympics.

Love them! Weird sports, weepy medal ceremonies. I especially love the winter games. I swear, I could watch biathlon and cross-country skiing all day long.

And today, I am. Thanks be to George Washington for allowing me to sit under a blanket and cheer for Scandinavians all day.

Adventures at altitude

While I was off playing in Colorado, my mean little flash fiction, “Knight of the Mother,” went up at Everyday Weirdness.

I like it, but it is not friendly.

What is friendly is a weekend up in the mountains. Dear friends recently moved to Denver from Austin, and though I hate that they’re far away now, I do love me some Denver. Back in 2000, I thought about moving there. It was cool to go back and realize how much I still like it. I don’t think I’d be like my friends there – living on steep properties in canyons where 4-wheel drive is necessary. I’d like to live in the flats, where the buses and restaurants are, and drive up into the mountains to barbecue.

My friend Meg nagged me to drink water all weekend, so I avoided feeling altitudinous until the last day. And I made up for several months of not eating. On Sunday and Monday it snowed 4+ inches.

On Sunday, on a long walk, holding hands with my Dingo, with mountains in the distance and snow-kisses on my face, I felt better than I had in months. Sorrow moved to the side, and there was room in my chest to breathe.

Mostly we just hung out and bummed around. That’s a nice thing about going to stay with friends – there’s no need to plan every second. I like a nice sedentary vacation with a few walks thrown in. Though I will say there are plans for indoor skydiving next time we’re there.

I predict screaming.

ANYhow, meal sources:

Mona’s: This is across the street from the cute apartment where our friends have been living in LoDo (lower downtown) – a neighborhood that just screams V-Appropriate! Mona’s is full of people with unnatural-colored hair eating eggs (I fit right in).

There was a place I swear is called the Wayside Grill (in Golden) that has no web site, mainly because it is a DIVE. I had a half a buffalo burger there. And lo, it was good. (Update: Wondervu Cafe.)

I rather put my foot down about the Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse, because I figured Dingo should know what the teahouse in my mind looks like. I could just sit in that place all day long. Unfortunately, so could everyone else in Boulder. Also, why don’t they sell bags of their proprietary Celestial Seasonings blend? Still, I got me some yummy tea and food.

Paris Cafe: In which we learned all about our server’s tattoos, showed off our own, drank strange alcohols, and I ate a roast-beef and bleu cheese sandwich. Then, strangely, there was dessert. Again, I could spend some heavy duty time there.

House of Commons tea shop: I wish my tummy had not been full when we stopped in for Something Warm, because everything on the menu looks brilliant.

Sam’s No. 3 Diner: Rude, inattentive waitstaff, cold, filthy, revolting chai.

Snooze: Seriously, now. That is some BREAKFAST. Like breakfast in tights with a CAPE.

And the Saints won the Superbowl.

Grade for the weekend: A+

That’s what it is, for sure

About two weeks after I first moved to Chicago (did you know I used to live in Chicago? I loved it.), at the grand age of 21, I was walking home from the busy train stop at Belmont.

A filthy-looking  man in a khaki suit jacket (sleeves rolled up), dress shirt, flowered shorts, and bare feet was standing in the doorway of a building, peeing into a transparent plastic cup.

I did what any sheltered young thang would do in such a situation: I stopped dead in my tracks and stared with my mouth hanging open.

When the cup was so full that it was about to spill, the man glanced up at me.

He yelled, “Ma’am, don’t look! That’s my penis.”

Boy howdy.

Take-home lesson: if you must pee in a cup while standing in a doorway, try to ensure that the cup is opaque. Or, you know, don’t face the street.

Another sale

I sold my story “The Unkindness of Raven” to the anthology <i>Cover of Darkness</i> by Sam’s Dot Publishing.

Hooray!

That story was years in the making and took a very long time to find a home. Fly free, little tale! May you cause many readers to flinch and stare nervously at the sky.

(x-post)

SOS (Save our sweaters)

Last weekend was warm, so it was sweater-washing time.

Those labels in your sweaters that say “dry clean only”? They LIE.  Dry cleaning hurts the Urfs, yo, and it’s terrible for your sweaters.

Cotton and linen sweaters should be washed and dried in the dryer: the dryer’s heat will pull the sweater back into shape.

Silk sweaters will stink to high heaven when they’re wet: wash them in the sink in cold water and a little lingerie wash, then rinse really well.

Wool and cashmere are hair – the best way to wash them is in a sink of cold water with a little gentle shampoo. Cold water will prevent felting. What you want to avoid is agitation: stick them in the sink and squeeze to get them really wet, then leave alone for at least 20 minutes (they won’t be hurt if you forget and leave them). Rinse well.

Take your wool or silk sweater out of the sink, squeeze out some water, then roll it up in a towel. At this point I stand on the towel a little to squeeze out more water.

Stick it on a dry towel and lay flat to dry. On a sunny day, I lay mine outside (inside out, so the sun won’t fade them), and at the end they smell lovely.

The process is more of a pain than flinging a sweater at the dry cleaner, but your sweaters will smell better, last longer, and pill less.

Adventures in the kitchen

(Please note: this is not a very adventuresome adventure.)

There is a teeny-tiny piece of a plastic bag that has been floating around my kitchen for about 2 years, because it has a recipe printed on it for barley-apple pudding. I thought this sounded like (a) a virtuous breakfast food and (b) a good way to use up some of the 9 metric tons of barley I bought. Even I cannot eat Scotch broth that often.

I finally got around to making the recipe last weekend. My usual rule is to follow the recipe the first time I make it, but this called for raisins, which I dislike, and the whole thing had half a teaspoon of cinnamon in it. For a heap o’ barley cooked in a 2-qt casserole dish, that is just not enough spice.

So I sauteed the apples with plenty of cinnamon, added a bunch more, substituted currants for the raisins, and just to be saucy added chopped crystallized ginger too.

BORING.

It smells divine, but the best thing about eating it is really the apples (of which I used twice the amount called for [the apples were about to go]). It’s virtuous all right – to the point of narcolepsy. It’s as if the barley sucked the flavor right out of everything and won’t give it back.

I’m still deciding whether to keep it for tinkering or finally throw that little scrap of plastic away.

I really do have a LOT of barley.

More knittin’

The more I write, the less I have to talk about, because all the interesting stuff is going on inside.

We’re off to Denver in a couple of weeks, so I keep knitting things to give out as gifts to our friends there. Add to that several skeins of a yarn that I thought would be lovely but turned out to be Troublesome in person, and one gets the following:

Cute, right? I love how the ends came out in the same colors.

Same pattern, the “Virginia is opposed to color” version:

Whew, I tell you. After two scarves in a row, I might need a little break from knitting. They do go on and on.

In other news, I made muhammara last night – Mom, Lissa, and I have been talking about it ever since our Thanksgiving trip. Mine is not as good (the garlic is too sharp), but that hasn’t stopped me from eating it like crazy ever since. I figure – it’s vegetables, right? So it’s nutritious. (But I probably need some protein at some point today.)

Next time I make it, I’ll roast the garlic first. That will double the work of the recipe, but I think it’ll be worth it. Next food assignment: find more uses for pomegranate molasses. You know, besides eating it with a spoon.