Firefighter, Cat Herder, Magician

Ever have one of those weeks at work when nothing you planned to do can be addressed because you are so busy putting out fires? When your efforts at being part of a sane approach are trampled by the feet of organizational chaos? When the rules seem to change at whim?

If I wrote a recruitment posting, and included a more accurate (and certainly more colorful) description of the job I do, it would look like this:

Looking for Other Duties as Assigned, in a Small and Driven unit within an Traditional Heirarchy that finds itself transitioning to Corporitization?

Spend, play with, reorganize, spit polish and lament over miniscule resources. Alternately appreciate or get bushwacked by new business practices while managing this little pantry of goodies and those it feeds. Snake charming, firefighting, mind reading, and scrapbooking skills a plus.

Extra Special Other Duties may include (but are not limited to): musical chairs/desks/you name it, preventing a kitchen fire by emptying almost a loaf's worth of bread crumbs from the office toaster, General of the supply closet - sometimes commanding recon missions to local hallways for freebies, knowing the answer to the question "How do We say what We say?" and other pithy inquiries, corralling innumerable moving parts to get one small thing accomplished. Rodeo experience, cat herding, thermodynamics and gourmet cooking skills desired, unlimited patience and naive impression that it can't get worse required.

Join us in a diverse environment of unique and quirky people with individualized working styles. Free yourself from organization and method, savoring your role as a purely reactionary member of the workforce, and become one with the Now, or as we like to call it, the "What Now".

lunch on the porch

Reading: The Wild Places by Robert MacFarlane. Beautifully written.
Eating: Butternut Squash Gnocchi
In the glass: Orange/carrot juice to chase away this cold

* sniffle * hack *

Why are all my comfort foods the same color? Seriously, I ask myself this every time I get sick. I end up craving custard, or rice pudding, teas heavy with milk and honey, toast with butter, soups rich with chicken fat and lemon juice, heated apple juice with honey and a shot of citrus... Is anyone else like this? Why don't I get a hankering for red? Or spicy foods? Why does beige food make me (a person who loves color) feel warm and cosseted?

I've been battling this cold for days, and telling myself that it's just allergies, but it's making itself known in full force today. Maybe you're familiar with that weird euphoria you get when you have a lot to do at work and there are pestilent forces frolicking in your system. Today was not the day to make major decisions, or to use the office shredder. I hope I didn't do either...

I am looking forward to the corn chowder I'll pull out of the freezer tonight. I used homemade chicken stock, so it's rich and fatty. I'll add a bit of cream and some lemon to the broth once it's heated, and I have some leftover rolls to warm in the oven. I'll try to home cook my way to health. It will be a beige meal, but if that's what my germ addled brain decides I want, I'm not going to argue with it!

Photo credit M'soft Clipart

Wanted: Fairy Godmother

Wouldn't it be nice to come home and find that your dirty laundry and dishes, your scuffed and dirty floor, and your stray detritus had magically cleaned themselves and returned to their places? I know it doesn't happen, but honestly, I would be a changed woman if it did.

We've had a long two weeks (well, a year really) of goodbyes. Several friends have moved away. Far away. Spend-a-lot-of-money-to-see-them away. London, Texas, Oregon. Email doesn't quite cut it, and we are not fans of the phone. I realized this week that we've been having send off parties and last-time-to-____ gatherings for a year now.

The most recent rash of festivities was for Ethan, who moved to Portland, Oregon after ten years of being my neighbor and twenty years of being practically another sibling. We are incredibly excited for him - it's a great community to move to and will fuel his artistic life. We're excited for us too - what a cool place to visit. We're also trying to figure out what to do with ourselves now that there are so many spaces that fun people used to occupy... Which means, in all honesty, that we're sitting in our apartment wondering why the dirty leavings of our daily life won't just up and wash themselves, the brats. And we're staring at each other with the glazed look couples use when they're too tired to invest in conversation beyond the words "what?" "nope" and "uh-huh".

Pitiful huh? We have other friends, and they are pretty cool. But they're an hour or more away, and it takes some planning because somehow, when we weren't looking, we all went and became adults with lives. It really gets in the way. I'm still trying to figure out how to make playing the point of my adult life without coming across as some nut with responsibility and commitment issues. If I were say, a river otter, none of this would be a problem. But that's as likely as my dishes and clothes pulling a Disney moment and becoming pleasantly animated and dutiful.

Cookbook find

At a used bookstore I promise I'll take Heather to next time she's here, I found a real treasure. The American Woman's Cook Book with a green frosted vinyl style cover, published in 1940. Eight hundred and fifteen pages of advice and recipes, with labeled thumb indents for each section.

As much as I'd love to, I won't quote from it extensively because you can download it yourself, kitschy pictures and all.


On the sticks: we won't even talk about it, since these sticks haven't clicked in some time.

In the glass: water as an antidote for the Brewer's Fest we were at yesterday. There is a chocolate vanilla beer from Montreal that I am going to hunt down next time we're there. Thick, rich, cold heaven in a glass.

Under the needle: Using up ribbon and scrap fabric for lanyards for our various sets of keys. I feel like I'm at summer camp, but they stitch up quickly and the colors are loud enough it should take real effort to misplace them. Or so I hope.

Pie update: Successfully made my mother's apple sheet pie for a big 4th of July celebration. A little bit of crushed cereal sprinkled on the bottom crust soaks up the juice nicely, and the pieces can be picked up in your hand for easy eating. Pie Fest 2008 planning is in the works! A friend I've known for more than half my life, is moving to Portland, OR at the end of the summer. We'll be having a pieluck dinner in his honor.

Baking therapy

On an average day, I find myself juggling (despite my childless, apartmented existence) a handful of issues that blur the lines between work and not-work. I can't tell anymore what's my baggage, and what's someone else's baggage dumped in my lap. Whether it's family, friends or coworkers, it aaalll adds up. Good jugglers make it seem like their hands just graze objects that are inherently airborne. I am not always a good juggler, sometimes treating issues like they were mosquitos, cream pies, or rotten tomatoes.

Generally, there's some kind of crash, and serious readjustment has to be scheduled. In this rural state where town is two streets, and the weather isn't always conducive to going out to play, I resort to complex kitchen behavior. It wears me out, but if I want to banish annoyances from my mind, AND there's good food when I'm done, it's just fine.

Bless a fresh hot roll from the oven with a pat of butter tucked into it. Bless my grandmother for her bread machine that makes that (and two dozen other rolls) possible with only 10 minutes of actual work on my part. No one cares whether your dough was kneaded by hand or by machine when you pull rolls out of their oven from being rewarmed. They decide to invite you over again very soon, they roll their eyes heavenward, they remember their own grandmothers.

Thanks be for the solid thump of a maple rolling pin as it lands. Picked up at an antique shop for a song by my mother, and oiled and babied by my father before it came to me at Christmas. It's sturdy and can cowboy up to wrangle pie dough like nobody's business. It sets a good example that I try to live up to...

Digital schmigital. I prefer my chicken timer and its little anticipatory ticks, like soft chicken clucks. Its ring sounds very much like the old rotary telephone at my folk's house when I was a kid. I have a digital timer, but it's more bossy than helpful, and gets used during lunch break to let me know when it's time to put my book down and walk back up the hill to work. My chicken sits on my stove top and does her thing in a most comforting manner.

Chicken pot pie... roasted chicken and vegetables, creamy gravy and a sour cream pie crust baked in my big cast iron skillet. The recipe from Cook's Illustrated is the best I've ever tried. When I am feeling pretty darn sorry for myself, this pot pie makes it all okay - both the labor and the eating of it.

I don't know how Steve feels about the general frenzy of flour and potholders in our teeny kitchen. I know he eats the outcomes quite happily. He is kind enough to go back to the store when I do something smart like pour half baked pumpkin pie all over the kitchen floor, and he often cuts butter into flour for pie crust or biscuits. His skills at "disposing of" baked goods that are cosmetically challenged are unparalleled. There is nothing quite like the impromptu (and sympathetic) sous chef.

First Week and a Little Fiber

I made it through my first week of training for the new job. I'd forgotten that learning new things can be so exhausting! After the first two days I was barely able to put coherent sentences together by the end of the day. Part of it is that my entire routine has been tossed out the window and I'm at the mercy of someone else's time schedule. I do like the woman who I will be working for directly, which certainly helps. If someone had told me first that she had a few little OCD issues, I might have been better prepared. Things like not using her pen or touching her things for example. However! Walking to work is still making up for a lot of things, so I will not dwell on that!

By the end of the week I was able to do quite a bit of what I will need to do every day without too much assistance, and I think that as things come along, I will be able to figure stuff out. I will still have at least next week for training, and possibly part of the following week. Of course I'm going on vacation the week after the Fourth of July and I'm hoping that I don't forget all my new responsibilities over that week!

As a reward for being such a good girl during my first week, I got to have a little fiber therapy yesterday. M wanted to go to some Army Supply type store down in Salem (no, really, don't ask), so I was able to go to the Yarn and Fiber Co. in Windham. After touching just about everything they had, I came home with a skein of Cherry Tree Hill Silk & Merino DK that I have been patting ever since.








I also came home with a skein of sock yarn (I know, aren't you surprised?) that I had never seen before. It's by Ivy Brambles and it's so blue I can't stand it. Gorgeous and soft and squishy.









And just in case you were wondering if I ever actually knit with all this yarn, I also have a finished object to show! This is what became of the Malabrigo Silky Wool that I got with Kate -









With all my walking to work this winter, I'm thinking I'm going to need plenty of scarves, mittens and hats. I loved working with this yarn. I may have to look for some more to make a few more things.

I was sent home, but it was just hype

We were sent home today, with a tornado threat looming. I walk to work, and was not relishing an unwilling Mary Poppins routine (we heard that the winds might be 60-80 miles an hour). It's not my typical style to flee at the first hint of weather, but I was the first one out the door, hustling home in rain and thunder. I made it to the apartment just as the rain really started to dump, and packed up anything that might blow around on our porch. Called my better half to let him know where I was, and then sat down to watch the onset of a big whopper storm. Just in time for the sun to peek out. Honestly.

I'm not so excited about tornadoes, but I do like a good crack-boom thunderstorm. It's been so oppressively hot here, I was ready for that nastiness to go out with a bang. Nothin' doin'. I'm disappointed actually, and now rather out of sorts... I don't know what it means that that inspired me to blog, but here I am.

New pies tried: White Russian Pie (w/ bourbon and coffee brandy), White Chocolate Pie with raspberry sauce, Peaches and Cream Pie. Also a Derby Pie made by someone else, that was like liquid chocolate chip cookie - all sugar, very good.

Books I have open: Shogun (again), The New Good Cake Book, Green Housekeeping

Projects on the sticks: a felted carrot and that darn mohair wrap I just can't seem to finish

How I'm trying not to freak out about the economy: Growing a few of our own herbs and veg, making our own laundry detergent (from the Simple Dollar blog, great stuff!), stocking up on the basics when I can afford them (flour, rice), trying not to lose sight of the forest for all the green marketed trees

After-work beverage of choice: Otter Creek's Otter San - Japanese style beer brewed with sake yeast