55

just a few of the highlights of the weekend, in pictorial & gerundial form:

ferrying (across the ohio river to liz's family reunion.  not pictured:  blowing bubbles through a hula hoop, coaxing a toothy smile from a baby, building lego structures for audrey monsters to knock down, eating a ton of red velvet cake, seeing liz!)

dogwalking  (not pictured and not a highlight:  cleaning up after hurricane habie, whose casualties this weekend included another pair of work shoes, some face powder, and a lampshade)

eating the first tomato from the tomato plant five seconds after picking it (and then licking the juice off my wrist)





not pictured because it won't happen for another hour and seventeen minutes:  watching mad men!

54

if one--purely hypothetically, mind you--read the new york times weddings & celebrations announcements every week, then one would have seen this announcement last month.  even though the times usually runs announcements of people who have ties to ny, you can see why they made an exception this time.  there is a goat!  in the picture!

in addition to being apple-cheeked and flaxen-haired and posing in front of a hay bale, the bride is getting a masters in folklore AND herding goats at a farm AND working on a documentary about coal mining.  after reading this last month, i may have had a slight existential crisis that went something like MYLIFEISSOBORINGWHYAMINOTONAGOATFARMRIGHTNOWBEINGSUPERQUIRKYANDADORBS.

seriously, it was ugly there for a while.  i usually absentmindedly read the announcements to glean random information about people i'll never think of again, revelling in the brief glimpse behind the curtain of total strangers' lives.  and yet this one stuck in my craw.  the goats!  the masters in a subject i didn't know existed!   the community organizing!  the baby goats baby goats baby goats!  

(this photo may or may not have been saved to my desktop)

eventually, i got on with my own goat-free life, reassured by the fact that this was the first appearance of a goat in the announcements in all the weeks months years that i've been reading them, and so i wouldn't have to deal with this crushing goat-induced life envy for a long time yet.  that time would pass and eventually the dream of having a herd of kids bleating and tottering after me as i did whatever folklorists do while saving the environment on the side would subside.  because although i'm sure the factcheckers verified that this woman actually exists, people don't really have lives like this, right?  right.  i could chalk it up to some sort of fluke and put it out of mind, never to return.


.


.


.


.


.

but the goat gods have said HA!!!  because i just opened up this week's announcements and saw this one.

53

 how it happens:

you wake up late.  you putter.  you take the dog on a walk.  you take a midday nap.  you watch a movie on the computer, content to have a really lazy day after a really long week.  and then the dog starts whining.  and climbing on the coffee table.  and climbing on you.  and you take her outside, but you realize that it's not that she has to pee (although she does).  no no, she needs to be doing this:

and so you load her in the car and drive the half an hour to the nearest off-leash dog park.  on the way it starts to rain a little, but by the time you've gotten there it's stopped.  and at first you two are the only ones there, and so you play tag.  but then other people arrive, confessing that they were at their windows just waiting for the rain to end.  and you watch her play with a maddie, a stella, an aries.  with a bulldog that can't stop rolling in a mud puddle, a great dane puppy that's practically falling over its own legs, a boston terrier that's ruling the whole park.  around and around they run, and they topple, and they knock over all water bowls in sight.  you're running around, and then you're sitting on a rock and one dog comes up for a scratch behind the ears and then another jumps up next to you and by the time you leave two hours later, you are dirtier than the dog:

and you drive home and wash off and feed the dog, who's already plodding to couch.  and then you head to couch too, and watch episodes of arrested development (franklin!) and then you rouse yourself, finally, and head to the kitchen.  you boil some milk and let it cool and stir in a powder from a packet with directions only in french and pour and turn the dial and right now you have this:

but tomorrow morning, after three hours in the fridge to cool, you'll have homemade yogurt.

and it's only after you wipe the counters and load and start the dishwasher that you realize that you've forgotten to eat dinner.  you had a late lunch, but that was hours ago, and you're hungry, but not too hungry.  and you look in the fridge but there's not much there except store-bought yogurt and you can't bear that when you know what's coming tomorrow.  you think about a tomato mozzarella basil sandwich except you never made it to the farmer's market this morning to pick up more tomatoes.  and then you see them, all lined up in one of the drawers in the fridge.  they're a little soft but still good, at least for the night. and so you find the peeler and stand over the trashcan and start peeling.  and peeling.  and peeling.  and then you look for a cutting board but they're in the dishwasher so you cut them directly on the counter.  and you chop and chop some more.  add a little sea salt, and you're done with "dinner":

and that's how you find yourself eating four cucumbers at just shy of eleven o'clock on a saturday night.

52

there are perfect days:  one on hydra in 2002 where i browned in the sun for hours, breaking only to jump off the cement slabs jutting out of the rocky beach into water so blue i couldn't believe it was real even as i was swimming in it;  late septembers, before harvest, with the sun setting as you drive upvalley; not guilty verdicts . . .

and there are incredibly lousy ones too, that i'm not even going to enumerate because can we say bummer?, but chances are they involve some combination of crying clients and awful phone conversations and just plain really bad news. 

oh man, yuck yuck yuck last paragraph.

but so there are these two poles, but lucky we don't live at the poles that often.  when you add eggs to a hot mixture, like boiling chocolate, you have to temper it in order to prevent the eggs from scrambling:  you have to add just a little of the hot liquid to warm the eggs enough.  and then you stir stir stir and slowly add a little more, and so on and so forth.  because if you dump them in together it's just too much of a shock. 

okay, there was a metaphor in here somewhere, but it got lost because now all i can do is think of baking.  of turning on the kitchenaid and throwing things together and putting them in a dark hot oven with a bit of mystery as to what will emerge 45 minutes later. 

but yeah, you need a little of both, slowly, so as not to shock the system.

today wasn't perfect.  there was an overslept alarm, clients who didn't get what they (and i) wanted, a weird smell in my car that i can't trace.  but there was a stretch this afternoon/evening where i couldn't think of anything else i'd want to be doing.  or not doing, since at first i lay on the couch in the dark with the air conditioner on full blast, reading while habie slept on my feet.  and then there was a little putzing around the plants (nasturtiums!  nasturtiums are sprouting!) and a little cooking in the kitchen, and it all sounds mundane now, trying to describe it.  but at the time, it was just lovely.  and the eggs didn't scramble, whatever that runaway metaphor means by now.

also, roasted chickpeas?  100% habie-approved