1. Mortar and pestle: I don’t use it often. Most of the time, it holds wine corks. (I used to save them for Meg’1, who gave them to a kid who made, er, cork sculptures or something? Now I save them for myself and knit tiny hats and sweaters for them. Yes, that is insane. Insanely CUTE. Better not complain about it, or you’ll get warmly dressed cork people in the mail.) But yesterday, when I needed ground cumin and I only had cumin seeds, my problem was solved in 45 seconds. Now I will never buy ground cumin again.

2. Silicone basting brush: Seriously? That paintbrush thing is NEVER EVER CLEAN. Ever. I feel sick just thinking about it. Because some time in its life, it basted a piece of meat, and here I am trying to brush milk on the top of biscuit dough. Oh, MAN. That is so gross even to think about. My silicone brush goes through the dishwasher and comes out sanitary and dry.

(Look, if you’ve seen my floor and you’re blustering about my using the word “sanitary,” – I don’t EAT off my floor.)

[I apparently have a chip on my shoulder about corks and mopping.]

3. Silpat: Nothing ever, ever sticks to it. Bake stuff on the Silpat, and you don’t have to wash the cookie sheet. Pick up the Silpat from the sheet, transfer the entire batch of baked items to a rack. Roll out dough on it. It’s brilliant!

This post has been brought to you by Puerco Amnesiaco and oat cream scones.

When Dad died, “in lieu of flowers” (seriously, who would ever want that many cut flowers to stink up the place and drop petals on the floor?), people sent donations to the St. Alban’s music fund.

I just wrote the last thank-you note. I’m so passionate about handwritten correspondence that it was natural for me to volunteer for that job, but it was dang hard. Oh, I have cried and cried at my desk. But I’m glad I could spare my mother having to write them all.

And of course I’m so grateful that so many people made donations. Even if everyone gave a teeny tiny amount, the church is going to have to start paying their choir or buy a Baroque pipe organ or something. It’s pretty great.

One of the best things about going anywhere in the car with Dad was the conducting. For a while, I commuted to work with him, and we’d wave our arms the whole way there. My brother would join in when Dad was driving him to school. I would like to think that Dad was “conducting” one-handed, but he may also have been driving with his knees.

Tangent: When I was 14, I announced to my piano teacher that I wanted to be a conductor when I grew up. “No such thing as girl conductors,” he said. (I would like to go back in time to [a] kick him in the junk and [b] kick my young self in the butt.) This is also the person who told me when I was 16, “if you hadn’t got distracted by theatre, you might’ve been a decent musician some day.” I presume that his business card read, “J.D. – piano teacher, DREAM CRUSHER.” (His name was not Jack Daniels, although that is also an effective dream crusher.)

Dang. Wouldn’t it be awesome to make a living as a conductor?

Anyway. Dad didn’t play any instruments and couldn’t hardly carry a tune, but he always had music going. He filled up a succession of ever-bigger iPods with classical music and classic rock. If you’d pinned him down to make him choose between Beethoven and Lynyrd Skynyrd, he might have split in half.

For many years, I’ve read The Secret Garden on the vernal equinox. My summer in Austin, I was reading on the balcony and dropped my copy down into the back yard of the empty downstairs apartment. My roommate (who really should’ve joined the circus at some point in his life) bounded down walls and over fences to retrieve it for me.

I hope I have time this weekend – I will be working. It doesn’t happen often that I have to work over the weekend, so it’s okay.

It’s also time to stop eating winter food.

I don’t love eating, half the time. That’s particularly the case when the weather is hot. I live in Houston, so that’s 8 months out of the year when I would really much prefer to subsist on iced herb tea. Unfortunately, that’s not possible.

My office thermostat is set at “morgue,” so I do tend to want to eat during work days. Shivering uses a lot of calories.

Summer is Legume Time – cold bean salads with corn, red bell pepper, scallions, herbs, and a vinaigrette dressing; chickpeas with onions, tomatoes, and feta; as much hummus as I can get.

Dingo’s summer favorite is a big bowl of spicy Asian noodles with grilled chicken or shrimp.

And it’s time to bust out the quinoa. This is  my Super Number One virtuous lunch: cook up a pot of quinoa (for heaven’s sake rinse it first, I don’t care what the package says). In the morning, put a serving into a container with a small sploosh of olive oil, salt, and pepper. Stir. In a second container, chop up fresh spinach and add feta crumbles. At lunch time, heat the quinoa until it’s hot. Dump the spinach/cheese over top and close it up. By the time I get to my desk, the spinach has steamed and the feta is melty. This is so good and just FULL of protein.

Last summer’s breakfast was almost always homemade yogurt with Woodstock Granola on top (I’m partial to Cherry Ginger Almond flavor). I can’t take that much dairy since my dad died (sad = queasy), so I’ve been mixing the granola with my oatmeal, to good effect.

If my office gets warmer, though, I don’t know what I’ll do for breakfast. Homemade granola bars?

I always wanted to take my Dada to Hopleaf and Hot Doug’s. He would have loved them! If only I’d discovered them when I still lived in Chicago.

Having a house with a lawn seemed like such a good idea at the time: the Wickeds lived 15 minutes up the road, and they would be here every other weekend. The first summer we lived here, we bought a 12-foot blow-up pool that all five of us practically lived in all summer long. Once school started, it became Baby Mosquito Land, and then Dingo had a fit of horror when he saw the giant circle of dead grass.

Then the Wickeds moved to Dallas, and we haven’t used our yard since. It’s too hot, and there’s no shade. See also: mosquitoes. We look forward – aside from giving up our super-cheap mortgage – to selling this house some day and moving down into town, where there are sidewalks.

But in the meantime, we have a yard. Neither of us is a gardener; and a few years ago, our lawnmower dropped dead.

Now we have Carlos. That is, we write a check to “Carlos M.,” but I’d lay down money that none of the group of three men I mean when I say “Carlos” is actually that person. I’d also be surprised if any of them spoke any English.

Our next-door neighbor set us up with them: she directs them when to stop mowing every  week in the fall, and when to start up again in the spring. Our yards are both postage-stamp size.

I admire how Carlos divides and combines for the greatest efficiency: one man on the edger, one on the mower, one on the leaf blower. The truck pulls up, and the edger goes around in a relatively unbroken line: first our yard, then our neighbor’s. The mower does half our front yard, the back, the other half of our front, and then the same to our neighbor’s yard, ending up back in front of the truck. Then the blower blows the sidewalks and driveways clean. Two yards, 15 minutes.

I wish I could be half that efficient at work. I’d have whole afternoons to sit and write.

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.