AJAX BELL

Author of the Queen City Boys books

Category Archives: homestead


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Where does the time go?

10062I had such high hopes for this year. I had a plan, a schedule, things to do. How is it nearly half way over already? The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men and all that. Nothing to do but gather my (few) accomplishments and push on, gentle, but not into that good night.

Obviously I’ve been reading too much poetry (is there such a thing?) but what else have I been doing? Not finishing books, that’s for sure! All right, that’s not true. I have finished a novella and it’s coming soon to an Amazon screen near you (other venues to follow eventually).

Star Quality, is a smutty little story of falling for your hot friend and his husband. In Canada! With bonus TV show production back drop. Yeah I definitely realize this isn’t everyone’s cuppa, but hey, some of you, somewhere, have been looking for really explicit m/m/m married menage, gfy/ofy fic with made up TV stars, right? If so, watch this space for details forthcoming, just as soon as there’s a cover!).

That’s an accomplishment I’m pretty proud of, but life has mostly just gotten in my way this year. Some family stuff. Some personal stuff. Then I started a new job, which is a great job, but has upheaved my life just enough to cut down writing time. I travelled to Seattle, to New York city, to San Francisco. But I’m home and I’m ready, I’m steady, I’m gonna get back to it. I have the next Queen City Boys novel, Bad Reputation about halfway done (what does that even mean?) and a good start on an as yet untitled sci-fi book. And two short stories in the making. Things are coming!

And hey, new website is happening soon too. And there’s a mailing list to go sign up for fiction updates and extras.

So, my friends, what have you been up too?


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Not Enough Time to Be Lazy

I’ve been writing a book. Or rather, I’ve been writing a series a books, in fits and starts, in the few hours I can grab between doing this and doing that and pretending to be a responsible adult. I’ve got one close to done and many others started.  Right now I should be pouring through my recent edits and making a crap draft into a good working draft.  Instead I’m drinking chai, watching the rain and listening to the dryer.

Despite having not achieved much more than a long, long walk and few household chores yesterday, I am utterly wiped today. I feel like I’ve been beaten with sticks. Like I could sleep for a week. Hopefully the chai will clear my foggy head enough that I can intelligently string words together in some semblance of story of and character development.

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I want nothing more than to lounge in bed all day and read comics.  Okay maybe something more.  Maybe someone could prepare my food and bring it to me and rub my feet too?  I never think I’ve done terribly wrong with my life until I’m forced to confront my lack of houseboys to do my bidding, then suddenly my choices seem sinister and stupid.  I could have done better.  Sigh.


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An open letter to Sherman Alexie

Just read a line in a Sherman Alexie story about standing in line at Bartell’s and suddenly I’m so homesick I’m not sure I can live through the heartbreak of it. In my head I ask Sherman Alexie if he imagines how many of his throw away lines profoundly affect people?  I think of every word I’ve put out there, every bit of fiction I’ve written, and no one has ever come back to me with the important words, with the phrases that I labored over, they only come to tell me about the how they were moved by my fast lines, the ones that drop out, that I don’t consider at all before I put them to paper.

Perhaps the lines I don’t labor over mean the most, come more truly from me?  Perhaps there is no meaning in any of it and will just keeping spilling out words, looking for the turn of phrase that will free my soul and find it someday.  Perhaps Sherman Alexie labored over that line and still will never know will never know how his two sentences made me break my own heart.  I could write him a letter and tell him, but I would labor too hard over the words, I would lose the importance of sharing what he gave me.  I have always been writing this letter to him in my head, through out the years, every time I read his stories and poems.  A letter that never makes it to paper, to computer screen, never achieves more than some small form of therapy for me.

I am talking to Sherman in my head (can I call you, Sherman, I feel we are close enough now) about my homesickness, about how I cannot ever really understand where he is from and he cannot understand how I am from where he is now.  I tell him it is a continuum that no one but me can see, a story that can’t quite be told, but is important all the same.  And the The Butchies pop up on shuffle on the old mp3 player and I start to cry because this is more homesickness than a soul can bear.  But this makes me get up and start to cook dinner: fettuccine alfredo with smoked salmon (real, PNW smoked salmon), peas and caramelized onions.  Because I am homesick and if I lived close enough that I could call my mom and ask if I could come over she would walk to me to a restaurant near her house (one Sherman Alexie has surely been too) and I would order some variation of this dish because you don’t really find it anywhere else in the world, not the way we make it in Seattle.

And while I am chopping onions the mp3 player turns again and gives me Kevin Gordon singing Watching the Sun Go Down, and I remember how I stopped at 6:42 am, on my way to work, to photograph the sunrise over an electrical power station, and got distracted by some horses too.  I think of how the redbuds are surely more beautiful this year than they have ever been before, blooming riotously, everywhere, making the edges of every roadway glow purple.  I think of how  the heat in Tennessee makes me feel warm all the way through to my bones, like I’ve never been warm before.

So I tell Sherman that he is lucky indeed, to be able wait in line at Bartell’s, but he has to go through cold rain to get there and I am saved by the sun  and the green in spring and the sounds, all the sounds, here in the dirty South.  Perhaps I am homesick for a place that no longer exists.  A place I visited, moved through in childhood, that is just a fairytale now, I can not go back.  My adult self does not have the magic to cross back over the boundaries of the places I’ve been before, I can only go to new places or create them myself. And I’m still crying when I sit down to eat my dinner, but not because I miss anything.  I am so lucky to have been so many places, both real and imagined. Lucky to be me and to be still so full of emotions good and bad (love) about all of those places I have been and the people in them.  Even the rude lady in the Bartell’s line that you have to tell to fuck all the way off.  So thanks, Sherman, for reminding of my home, the past one, the new one, the one that is always me and goes everywhere inside my heart.  I’m certain that you never knew that namedropping Bartell’s in a story would make some girl in Tennessee break out the fancy smoked salmon from way back home and cook herself a good dinner on a night when she would otherwise have been too tired, too worn down by work, to do more than make a quesadilla.  Thanks for dinner, Sherman, I really feel like we are close now.

 

(Pictures taken early this morning in Tennessee, when I stopped, before I even had coffee, to remember that there is beauty in the world.  Even when you feel like you break to pieces because of the stress that swirls around you and puts the anxiety inside you, there is still the color purple and leaves that were not that green yesterday and sunrises.  The redbuds really are spectacular this year.)


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Adventures in substitutions

It’s a cold, cold winter night here, so I did the only thing one can do, cooked and baked until the house was warm and smelled good.

Quinoa Red Lentil Soup


I used this recipe (the stove top version which only took about 35 minutes) which came highly recommended from a trusted friend.  I saw it and thought, oh I have all those things, I’ll make that.  HAHAHAH!  Well, I had quinoa and red lentils.  Of the spices I only had fresh ginger, paprika, cumin and thyme.   So I used those and substituted 2 tbl of green curry paste for everything else.  Also I didn’t have any of those vegetables, so I used a yellow onion, diced, a yellow squash (the zucchini like kind), also diced and a can of diced tomatoes and a couple cloves of garlic, finely chopped.  I did follow the directions pretty closely, despite all the substitutions.   At the end of cooking I also put half of it through the blender until it was smooth and added it back in with the rest (a secret that improves 85% of soups).

I think it turned out great.  Would be excellent with a dollop of sour cream but there’s few things that isn’t true about.

Apple cake


2 eggs
1/4 cup canola oil
1/2 cup applesauce
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups flour
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp pumpkin spice
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3 apples, peeled & chopped

Directions:  In large bowl, beat eggs, applesauce and oil until smooth.  Add sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, pumpkin spice, baking soda, salt and mix well.  Add flour, beat until smooth. Fold in apples. Pour into greased and floured 9 by 13 pan. Bake at 350F degrees for 50-55 minutes.

I substituted Bob’s Red Mill all-purpose gluten-free baking flour.  Also I normally would do 3/4 cup applesauce and no oil, but I was unsure about this flour mixture, because I’ve never used it and I figured a little oil might help.

I’ve used previous versions of this recipe (I seem to reinvent it every year, whole wheat flour, less sugar, no oil, now gluten-free) to make muffins for which it is excellent.   The original recipe called for 2c sugar and a cinnamon and sugar glaze, but I really prefer things less sweet.  You should experiment until it tastes how you like.


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Rest my weary head

I have been completely over hauling my tiny bedroom to make it more colorful and more comfortable since winter is inevitable and bed should always be welcoming at the end of a cold day.  I’m 98% done and pictures of the whole thing soon enough. Today I made throw pillows for the bed:

This is made from the curtain that I didn’t end up using the room, deep teal canvas.  I applied the stencil repeating diagonally with fabric paint.  the back is a soft, dark brown stretch twill.

This is made from the piece of cream canvas left over from the curtains I did hang.  I painted the stencil on with fabric paint, did a terrible job of masking it, got paint everywhere and hand embroidered some stitches into the design to cover the paint flubs.  I wanted yellow or brow piping on this, but I didn’t have either in the house and I’m making an effort to use what I have laying around, rather than buying more stuff.  I’m actually really pleased with how the blue looks, though I do think yellow would have been great to highlight the stitching.  The back side of this is piece from the sheets currently on the bed so I can pretend it all ties together.

And here they are on the bed!  YAY!  The pinwheel quilted pillow in the middle was made by my friend Michael Frazier, about a decade ago.  He has since died, but this pillow always makes me smile and think of him.  I think he’d like the pillows I made today too.

Hooray for pillows! And for projects finished.  Now to get back to the 10,000 other things on my weekend to-do list that still aren’t done.


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Things made and unmade

I’d show you pictures of sewing projects this weekend, but alas, there’s nothing to show.  Still working on the same dress I was working on last weekend.  I think so far I’ve ripped out more feet of stitches than I’ve successfully sewed.  Great for a patterned advertised as ‘One Hour.’  I’m about 6 hours into it right now.  As far as I can tell it’s going to look like a sack when I finish.  Still I persevere!  Maybe next weekend I’ll finish.

For your jolt of color, here is my new summer weight bedspread!  I tried to make curtains out of my previous summer weight bedspread, which I messed up so bad it basically became rags,  YAY ME! Luckily that meant getting a bright new one.  This is basically the weight of two sheets together, so total weight on me is an airy, breathable, nothing, but allows me to pull the covers up to my chin (as is my wont) even on hot, Southern summer nights!

My browsing for a new bedspread gave me this, which I now really want for when the weather gets cooler.  And of course I’d need this to hang in the bedroom.  It’s sweltering in Tennessee and I’m fantasizing about an autumnal, Moroccan interior design.  Of course then I’d need all new rugs.  And maybe a new lamp.  It seems unreasonable to think about this now, but I am seriously considering buying these things slowly over the summer and stockpiling them for a dramatic room transformation when fall comes.

I did manage to make a website this weekend for my friends, The Magnificent Others. Their album is going on sale soon and you should totally get it.  It’s rock n’roll for people who like rock n’roll, yeah?

Now it’s on to a week of work with hopefully a few short days that I can sneak something creative into, or maybe a festive fire in which I burn the simple dress that is taking me far too long to create!


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Everything that came before now

I might have way over committed myself in the past couple weeks.  If I owe you something, I promise it’s coming quickly.

Between my new position at work and a a few days out to the PNW to see Crackerjack Sister graduate, I’m wiped out. My capacity for critical thinking is surely at an all time a low, and even that is devoted to work.

I did have a great time in Seattle.  I put the pics up here, though most of them are probably only interesting to you if you’re related to me in some way.  I tagged along on many shopping trips from which I benefited greatly (new Converse, fancy new shirt, excellent new dress).  I got an awesome new laptop which is so light and fast that I feel like I can go everywhere with it, though I probably won’t, since one doesn’t need to be computing all the time.

Back in TN now, where it looks like we got a very brief reprieve from the oppressive heat.  I’m already planning to stay inside all weekend and finish projects of my own and other people’s.  At least the cicadas seem to have all passed while I was out of town!  Plus I missed Bonnaroo and CMAfest crowds, both of which are cicada like in their noisy and mass.

Obviously no sewing going on lately.  I did buy new handbags yesterday as I can’t resist a good deal.  I love Fossil handbags.  All of the ones I’ve owned except the one I’m currently using, which I got used, quite cheap and I just sort of hate it.  So I got this one and this one (in a brownish grey not depicted there) for $101 total for both!  I spent forever standing in the store trying to decide which and then made a last minute choice to get both.  Hurrah!  I should be set for a good long time now.  Both came with an extra detachable strap and I can’t figure out what it’s for.  The extra, removable strap is that same length as the strap on the bag already.  If it was much longer or something, it would make sense to me, but at the same length, it just seems weird.

So, uh, yes, there’s all the news that’s fit to print. I better get to doing something, so I’ll have something good to show off, eh?

I took these pictures with my phone to remind myself of the color of the sky after 9pm, in June in the Pacific Northwest.  One of the things I really miss is the summer light.


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Things and books and other things

I’m in the market for a used dresser or side board or cabinet of sorts to replace the cheap, small emergency shelves set up in my sewing nook.  I’m simply hoping to stumble across the right thing in a thrift store or whatever and paint it (or I figured I’d be happy with something like this).  However I stumbled across this re-do the other day and now suddenly I need something I can refinish with a squid.  Like I will waste away, pining for a squid dresser if I don’t get one.

click for pictures from the books locations, in case you werent already wishing you were in Provence right now

I just finished reading Guy Gavriel Kay’s Ysabel.  The Lions of al-Rassan is one of my favorite books and I really enjoyed The Last Light of the Sun.  If I find I like an author I generally seek out more of their books, but I rarely read anything about those books or the author.  I’ve been burned too many times by finding out the creator is a jerk and I find it’s easier to just read a story in the void and only bring to it my current preconceptions of the world and not any negativity about the author or to be pre-influenced by reviews I’ve read.  So based on my two previous reads it seemed safe to assume that Kay wrote character stories in fictionalized versions of historical events (al-Rassan is essentially El Cid and Moorish Spain and Sun is Alfred the Great defeating the Vikings). Which he does write, right? He just also writes other things, apparently.

Ysabel reads like a YA urban fantasy, you know the ones where you’re just a teenager in the city and suddenly you get caught up in the drama of the fairy world? (See Charles de Lint‘s Newford saga stories or Holly Black‘s Modern Faerie tales.) Kay’s story relied more on the strange possibility of magic and history colliding and less actual fairy tales and the setting, Provence, was as much of a character as person in the book.  It was enjoyable and neatly written, it made me dream and think and still left something lacking.  I just didn’t engage enough with any of the characters.  I was compelled to keep reading by the mystery and strange magic and French Celtic history.  And while the main characters were likeable enough, they were real enough, still they just didn’t make me care enough.  I’d recommend this, but save it for the airplane or the beach.

After reading I tried to sleep, somewhat unsuccessfully, because of a string of late, late night thunderstorms that seemed so threatening that I got up from my bed under the windows and went and curled up on the couch (not under windows and further from big, bad thunder).  But as I drove in to work this morning, the storms had left behind a jumbled mess of crazy clouds rushing out and everything is so very, vibrantly, overwhelmingly green, especially against the grey sky.  And I remember, as I do every year, that I (and surely everyone else) continues to live in Tennessee because spring is so sensational.  It’s really astounding how the trees fill in and the colors.  It’s like God is talking directly to you, just for a little bit, daring you notice every leaf and every change and be grateful for it.  And it will be hot soon enough, spring so fleeting like the first flush of being in love and overwhelmed by it, but it comes back every year.  It’s worth the storms and the heat waves and the grim winter.  The Steve Earle line, “Tennessee is green in spring” is like the understatement of the century but at the same time anyone who lives here understands the depth and meaning of that little statement.


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Why isn’t the weekend longer?

This weekend I finished the second skirt from last week’s pattern.  I cut the pattern down two sizes and used a lighter, slightly stretchier fabric.  The results are certainly improved, though I think I need to use an even lighter fabric, or just something more drapey with a softer hand.  Still, this version is in dark brown and will definitely get summer wear.  I had to go to the fabric store to get elastic, so I got some lighter weight black fabric to revisit that with, and some grey fabric, to cover all my needs for neutral skirts (of which I currently only have denim ones so this will be great).  No skirt pictures today, I’ll save them for when I have some top finished to show it with.

I did take some pictures of the new digs this weekend though.  Not the living room yet, I’m saving that for when it’s fully furnished and not filled with stacks of unpacked boxes (though I am down to mostly books on that front and just need to get a bookshelf and rug or two to finish the room).  But for those who are interested or who asked, here’s shots of the kitchen and bedroom:

click for the full set at Flickr

Yeah, I want to paint that table and chairs.  Yeah, I want to cover those cabinet faces in wall paper or something, but it’s definitely coming along.  Need for rugs and a bookshelf aside, I am mostly comfortable hanging out art home now.  I could maybe use an ottoman and few more baking supplies, but over all it’s great.  Just don’t look in my closets which are jammed with stuff and probably should be actually organized at some point.

This weekend I put away the heavy winter bedding and did get some organizing done as well as few small, nitpicky tasks that needed doing (like hand sewing the corners on the bed skirt so the edges of the box spring would stop peeking out).  Last weekend I packed away my winter clothes and pulled out the summer dresses and lighter weight work slacks.  Bring it on, season change, I am ready!


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the absence of desire is the end of suffering

(You may as well just this skip this incredibly whiny, self-involved venting about furniture shopping.  It even bores me.)

Okay, I’m nearly done being a drama queen about moving and furniture.  Seriously I’ve felt like the swoony scarf lady in the Gorey Mystery! intro or something for the last week.  Oh, whoa is me, couch shopping!  So terrible!  Pity and lament for me.  On the one hand, wah wah wah, my sad first world problems: I can’t find a thing to spend money on.  But on the other, I really do just want a nice, comfortable house and it shouldn’t be that hard.  After much personal torture in furniture stores looking for a couch I gave up all of my criteria except for ‘not ugly’ and ‘comfortable’ which led me back to the very first store and perhaps the second couch I sat on.   Bonus: it was also the least expensive of everything I looked at.  It is now neatly settled in the middle of my living room, just waiting for me to have time to enjoy it.  YAY COUCH!

However, progress isn’t really being made.  I also ordered some other furniture for the bedroom and the office area.  Which is now either dreadfully back ordered or discontinued, leaving me with my possessions still in boxes and a sense of displacement.

–I actually started writing this post a day or so ago, saved it to work on later and then had an exchange in email about furniture shopping with Talks to Owls, which I will just paste here as it sums up how I feel today:

I’m living out of boxes, I’m uncomfortable, I haven’t been in a place I feel comfortable in a long time, shopping makes me feel overwhelmed and like crying and something I HAVE to do instead of calmly regrouping at home and enjoying my life, which I can’t do because I’m living out of boxes. It’s circular and miserable. I just want the stuff to appear there. I don’t even give a s*** where it comes from or if it falls apart in a year and has to be replaced.

Plus the shelves have to be exact dimensions to fit into the spaces I have, so even if I spend hours roaming antique stores and thrifting and what ever, the chances that I’ll stumble on something that will be the thing that will fit seems unlikely.

So no, it isn’t fun, it isn’t a quest, and it isn’t leisurely.

That said, here’s the basic list of pieces I need to be able to unbox, if you stumble across something in your thrifting and antiquing you think would fill one of these gaps, feel free to point me to it: http://www.amazon.com/wishlist/CY3P41H7D6MX/

(In TTO’s defense, he didn’t deserve this email bitchfest, since all he’d done was comment on finding a better chair than the one on my Amazon list, however the chair is just a small piece of my problem, obviously.)

And of course since I’ve sat down and looked back at the list of things I still need to find, I feel overwhelmed again by the scope and cost of the whole thing. And then I’m additionally upset because it feels like the whole world is in turmoil.  North Africa is blowing up and I want to cry for the normal people caught in Libya’s civil war. Our own country seems to have declared war against the average working man and is tricking its citizens into punishing themselves by giving up all their power.  There is so much poverty and suffering in our own borders and so much hate and misdirected anger that it’s painful to turn on the news.  And here I am wound up and miserable because I can’t find easily and affordably find the furniture I want in the country that provides us the most options in shopping ever seen in history?


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Honey, I’m home!

Haha!  I was just looking at that picture of the living room of my new apartment in my last post.  “What a nice room,” I thought.  Is does not look like that now.  Right now it looks like some sort of mad bomber set off a device filled with card board boxes and crafts supplies.  I haven’t even looked in the (surely tidy) closet which Shan so generously unpacked and hung all my clothes in.  Thus this morning I dressed in the only known clean pair of work pants (washed on Friday and left all weekend crushed in the bottom of a laundry basket, luckily I had the foresight to borrow an ironing board from my landlord yesterday to make curtains) and sweater despite the crazy warm temps here, I knew where the sweaters were (it’s a light a weight one as I could find).

A big, giant thank you to the men who hauled all my furniture up the stairs and did not break or damage anything.  Everything is in the place and ready to go, except, well I have only a lone office chair to sit it, which has been moving between the sewing table and the computer desk all weekend.  I think when I finally get around to having a couch it will be the most exciting thing ever.  Or, you know, even a single chair that doesn’t roll.

Here is my Amazon wish list, it is lofty and full of exciting home things I need (psst, my birthday is in 67 days!) or just want (there’s a lot of wanting going on).  I’m hoping to spend the next couple weeks scouring thrift and antique stores to find a drop leaf table for the kitchen and a couple chairs for in there.  And shelves, or something for shelf use. And anything else I see that I might need. It’s weird I feel like I have a relatively minimalist kitchen set up (at least as minimalist as it can be for someone who likes to cook) and yet I’m still surprised by house much stuff one needs even for a small household. I have purchased hundreds and hundreds of dollars of things in the past few weeks and still there’s more (always more).  I can barely comprehend how much stuff it takes to set up a new household for one person.  I totally understand the origin of wedding registries now. It’s just craziness.  Anyway, if you won the lottery this weekend, feel free to get on Amazon and buy me that couch.  In the meantime I’m contemplating how I can build one from the boxes, boxes everywhere (and not a place to sit) and few throw pillows.

Here is the picture I posted on FB yesterday of the kitchen:

I meant to take one this morning of the sea of  unpacking misery, but alas, did not remember too (although I did take out the trash!).  Here’s hoping I can make today a short work day and start making a dent in the mess, yeah?


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There is not enough time to do all the nothing we want to do

So I’m moving in a couple weeks. Trying to keep it as low key and not stressful as possible.  I figured the best way to do that was to embark on a bunch of really ambitious projects right before moving.  Hahahaha!  Sometimes I am dumb.  Still most of these projects revolve around refinishing or painting furniture that I’ve been meaning to update or fix forever and would love to have in its finished form in the new house.  Thus it’s been fun and I need something to keep me busy and out of trouble anyway.

Oh my!  Look at this tiny, pretty indoor pond.   I have been messing with terrariums for a bit now, on and off.  My new apartment has great light and I’m hoping to be more successful with my terrariums this spring.  But look at these amazing water terrariums, which, uh, I guess are aquariums, but just for plants!  So pretty.  There might be one of these in my future once I’m settled and done with everything else.

Also I love this hippo shower curtain, although I’m not buying it because I got clear shower curtains to take advantage of the light from all the windows in the new bathroom.  I’m hoping to get lucky some day and find fabric like this curtain, I love the cute little helpers the hippos have!

Here are some random bits about my new apartment:

My current commute is a marathon round trip: 26.1 miles
New commute: 21 miles
Annual driving miles eliminated: 1300
New apartment currently only has one (1) interior door
Ratio of wall light switches to interior doors: 1:1 (heh, most the lights have pull cords from the ceiling rather than switches)
Number of hobbit sized closets in the new space: 3
Number of hobbit sized people living in the apartment: 1 (me)
Amount of support provided by quite overly generous mother, both emotional and financial, in this move: incalculable (but surely somewhere in the billions)
Number of friends I realized I have while dealing with the things surrounding moving: 129,567 (if we are calculating at a rate that measures each person’s individual emotional worth)
Days until I move: 14
Things needed doing by then: 570,000
Personal excitement level about the new apartment, on a scale of 1-10: 42

Here is a sneak peak at a ‘before’ picture of the apartment:


Looking forward to having many after pictures to show!

(Title quoted from the peerless Bill Watterson.)


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My house, in the middle of my street

I know I’ve been promising pictures of the new house for months.  Well I have them, although I wonder why I took them when the house was so messy (don’t you go saying that it’s always messy).   If you want to see the whole house, endless hallways and all, I’ve put a set up at Flickr. I some how skipped the bed room all together, and the porches, and the laundry room and the bathroom (the tile is cool), but you’ll get some idea from the pics, I guess.

The house has many good points, but for the first time ever I have my own dedicated sewing room!  Look:

Ha!  These pictures didn’t seem so dark originally.  But there it is, in all it’s messy, lavender glory. It has fabric and notions and machines and books and shoes and a little TV for DVD movies to keep me company.  I want to get another table, for cutting, to put where the red tupperware bins are currently.  So yeah, I should get on some sewing projects, huh?


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filling in the cracks

I really need to get some pictures taken of the new house for you all.  Also I need to get some pictures up on the walls in the new house.  In the mean time here’s some before and afters of my minor home improvements.

Here’s my sewing room pre-paint:

It just wasn’t a relaxing blue.  Too much like a plastic cap on a water bottle or something. So I fixed it:

Pretty! And inspiring! Will soon get some pics of it now that it’s all full of furniture.  It lacks a comfy sitting chair, but is otherwise and excellent personal retreat.

The living room is gorgeous with greenish grey walls, a huge fireplace and rich, dark wood floors.  Some creepy clown painted just the wall over the fireplace this hideous, yucky, utterly uncoordinated red:

This picture does not even begin to demonstrate how much this red really, really does not fit in this room.  Painting would have required exactly matching the surrounding paint. Too much trouble.  Instead we upholstered it with some heavy black twill fabric I had laying around:

Now it’s a lovely, theatery media center.  Also we have no fancy cable in favor of internet TV.  I’m so stupidly pleased with Netflix streaming.

—-

It’s not my usual source of content for you but here’s two celebrity photos that have made me really happy this week:

Manly (there’s an alternate universe where I’m married to Matt Damon and Clint Eastwood is my dad and they are besties)

WHEEEEEEEEEE! (look at that face!  Also, wow, I wish I looked as effortlessly cool as Alyson Hannigan when I was just hanging out)


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back to normal blogging: food & shoes & unrelated pictures

I had a fine, mostly relaxing, albeit too short weekend. I capped it with a delicious dinner that I was so pleased with, I have to share it with you.

I started with a small pork tenderloin (about enough for two people with no leftovers) and marinated it for about 5 hours in:

1 cup white wine
3 tblsp. Dijon mustard
5 garlic cloves, minced
fresh Basil, chopped finely
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Preheat oven to 350º. Place meat in small roasting pan, with the remainder of the marinade poured over it.  Cook 45 mins, turning once, until internal temp is 140º.

Then we had a leek gratin.  I was a little leery of this, but it was incredibly delicious

3 leeks, trimmed, split lengthwise, and well rinsed
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 Tblsp. unsalted butter cut into pieces
1/2 cup heavy cream (I used half & half because it’s all I had)
6 Tblsp. grated cheese (I used Edam, the original recipe called for Gruyere, but depending on what you’re going for, most any mild cheese would work)

Preheat oven to 350º. Arrange the leeks cut side up in a single layer in a baking dish. Sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste, dot with butter, and gently pour the cream over the top. Sprinkle with the cheese, cover with a lid or foil and bake for 35 minutes. Carefully uncover and bake 5 – 10 minutes more until the top is golden brown and the leeks are tender.

Even better than they cook for same amount of time at the same temp!

We had it with crusty whole grain bread and white wine.  I used too much butter (I never referred back to the recipe after I first saw it) to no ill effect, but I’ll probably try and do it right next time.  I also would cut the leeks into about 3″ pieces after splitting them, to make it easier to serve (although having a knife that’s actually sharp in my house would have gone a long way toward helping that).

—

I have been looking for a menswear styled woman’s oxford for close to two years now.  18 months ago I could find one pair and those weren’t real leather.  Now they seem to be the ubiquitous shoe for fall.  Although, as ever with something like this, I know exactly what I want and my need for detail often means the thing I want doesn’t exist.  But sometimes, as I did on Friday, I stumble on the exact thing I’d been hoping to find.  This time the bar was even raised: they come in purple.   Alas, I’m going to be saving my pennies for a while.  And I’ll probably get the grey ones for practicality’s sake.  Still in the interim, while the weather is still warm here, I will fantasize about fall outfits, with sweaters and the perfect oxfords.  In purple.

Today’s picture brought to you by my desire to have eaten such a lovely dinner in Catalan France, while wearing a vintage patterned shirtdress and purple oxfords.  Someday I’ll have a castle too.


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perchance to dream

I am so overwhelmed by life right now that the word ‘overwhelmed’ doesn’t even really mean anything anymore.  It’s like ‘awesome,’ so overused that it’s impact has been reduced to uselessness. I wish I could tell you some big sweeping drama that’s tripping me up, but it’s really more like the minute patterns of my days.

About 14 or 15 months ago things started to go all wonky for me.  Since then each month has brought some new and hitherto un-thought of obstacle.  I have for more than a year been waiting for whichever thing it is to pass/complete/recover so that I can get on with every day life and making plans for the future.  And surely the cycle of unexpected things never ends, but it seems I’ve hit a lull.  I’ve weathered the oral surgeries; the long term separation from a loved one; the break up; the 500 year flood; the resulting work over load; the scalding, torturously hot summer; planning, moving and completely and totally rearranging my life, my plans and my future.  And I gotta say, ya’ll, I’m tired.  Like soul tired.  I want to relax and figure out if I even know anymore how to let go of anxiety and worry.  I want to read a book for hours on end, uninterrupted so I can reset myself  to creativity.  I want to remember how to think about designing and forming things with my own hands, simply creating things. I want to plan menus and buy groceries and quietly cook in my own kitchen.  I want to relax in my own personal (physical) space, unencumbered by outside demands on my time, my energy, my love and my mental peace.

At this point, I guess I just need to find a chair.  The right chair.  For the last few months, when I try and imagine this particular part of whatever thing it is now being over (mostly moving etc.), I close my eyes and I see a circle of light from a lamp over a comfortable place to sit and read or think or draw or sew or simply imagine goodness.  Moving has given me and Talk to Owls both space to stretch out and find calm again.  I been working (ugh, working, so over it in any context) to make this space my own, our own, simply someplace that is comfortable and safe and filled only with the things we need to live and create.  Still I lack this imaginary chair.  I can’t quite see it’s dimensions or design, but I know it’s out there. It is the next thing to strive for: completing a space of relaxation and a place in which to gather myself back together and get ready, be stronger for, the many more rounds of unexpectedness that life is sure to bring me.


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Ain’t nothin’ gonna to break my stride

"Raven and the First Men" by Bill Reid at the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver, BC.

I think the less said about moving the better?  I will say that no matter how long you have to complete it (3 weeks or 3 days) it still sucks just as much. Also rumors of my impending move to the West Coast have been greatly exaggerated.  Sorry.  All I can say about that is that in this economy good jobs are better than freedom to move around.  And in any economy it’s nice to keep a good boyfriend close as well.

Of course since I haven’t been thinking about anything but moving, I don’t have anything else to talk about.  I read this old post from Bruce Sterling.  There’s a lot of irrelevant info in there so let me quote the important parts:

What is “sustainability?” Sustainable practices navigate successfully through time and space, while others crack up and vanish. So basically, the sustainable is about time – time and space. You need to re-think your relationship to material possessions in terms of things that occupy your time. The things that are physically closest to you. Time and space.

In earlier, less technically advanced eras, this approach would have been far-fetched. Material goods were inherently difficult to produce, find, and ship. They were rare and precious. They were closely associated with social prestige. Without important material signifiers such as wedding china, family silver, portraits, a coach-house, a trousseau and so forth, you were advertising your lack of substance to your neighbors. If you failed to surround yourself with a thick material barrier, you were inviting social abuse and possible police suspicion. So it made pragmatic sense to cling to heirlooms, renew all major purchases promptly, and visibly keep up with the Joneses.

That era is dying. It’s not only dying, but the assumptions behind that form of material culture are very dangerous. These objects can no longer protect you from want, from humiliation – in fact they are causes of humiliation, as anyone with a McMansion crammed with Chinese-made goods and an unsellable SUV has now learned at great cost.

Furthermore, many of these objects can damage you personally. The hours you waste stumbling over your piled debris, picking, washing, storing, re-storing, those are hours and spaces that you will never get back in a mortal lifetime. Basically, you have to curate these goods: heat them, cool them, protect them from humidity and vermin. Every moment you devote to them is lost to your children, your friends, your society, yourself.

It’s not bad to own fine things that you like. What you need are things that you GENUINELY like. Things that you cherish, that enhance your existence in the world. The rest is dross.

Do not “economize.” Please. That is not the point. The economy is clearly insane. Even its champions are terrified by it now. It’s melting the North Pole. So “economization” is not your friend. Cheapness can be value-less. Voluntary simplicity is, furthermore, boring. Less can become too much work.

The items that you use incessantly, the items you employ every day, the normal, boring goods that don’t seem luxurious or romantic: these are the critical ones. They are truly central. The everyday object is the monarch of all objects. It’s in your time most, it’s in your space most. It is “where it is at,” and it is “what is going on.”

It takes a while to get this through your head, because it’s the opposite of the legendary of shopping. However: the things that you use every day should be the best-designed things you can get. For instance, you cannot possibly spend too much money on a bed – (assuming you have a regular bed, which in point of fact I do not). You’re spending a third of your lifetime in a bed. Your bed might be sagging, ugly, groaning and infested with dust mites, because you are used to that situation and cannot see it. That calamity might escape your conscious notice. See it. Replace it.

Sell – even give away– anything you never use. Fancy ball gowns, tuxedos, beautiful shoes wrapped in bubblepak that you never wear, useless Christmas gifts from well-meaning relatives, junk that you inherited. Sell that stuff. Take the money, get a real bed. Get radically improved everyday things.

Sterling says some other great stuff, but the main thrust here is rethinking your (my) relationship with stuff.  Obviously we all do this every time we move.  That’s the easy part: you look at something and think, “Do I like this enough to pack it, carry it twice, unpack it and put it away?” But I feel like I haven’t been saying “No,” in answer to that enough.  So I’ve been thinking much harder about what value objects have to me.  Are they sentimentally meaningful? Like old pictures of my grandparents? If yes, I’m making them active by doing things like framing those pictures and putting them up in my office where I see them everyday instead of just storing them away.

I think some of it is a factor of age as well.  I can look at knickknacks and trinkets now and think, “Am I using this as a way to express or define myself?”  If the answer is yes, then out it goes.  I guess maybe I know myself better now?  The same is true with books.  Do I have this book so people will see it and think that I am the kind of person who has this book? Yes? Away with you!  Of course, I also have a Kindle now, which has greatly changed my relationship with books.  I still love books.  I still want them.  But now I look at them and keep only the ones that are rare, special, or with strong visual impact. Shelves of paperback novels I might read again someday? Gone!  If it can be acquired from the library or for the Kindle it doesn’t need to take up space.

And it isn’t happening this week, moving or not, but I would like to move toward simply owning less stuff.  Or more stuff, as long as it’s genuinely meaningful or useful.  I have been thinking about this for a long time and I am glad to have a chance to begin to seriously act on this change.

If you’ve read this far and you’re still wondering how the picture on this post relates, it doesn’t really, but it does.  I just really love that sculpture and I found a postcard picture of it while I was packing and discarding unnecessary objects, so I thought I’d share the picture with you, rather than hoard away the post card.


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where were you when the walls came down?

This used to be a road. Photo by Jeff Deason.

I was just reading about Vince Gill’s flood relief telethon and I thought, you know, I’ve always liked that guy.  Really he seems like a good guy.  And then I remembered seeing Keith Urban on TV the other day whining about ruined musical instruments and time out of his recording schedule and I thought, hey, f*** that guy. And it now occurs to me, um, where is everybody?  I mean this is a town FULL of celebrities.  You can’t throw a rock without hitting one. Right now I’m feeling like throwing rocks.  I mean, why isn’t every major teams’ star sports player on the news asking for help down here?  What about Miley Cyrus and Carrie Underwood? Kenny Chesney, I heard your house was damaged, are you now compelled to help others too?  Hey, John Rich, you have about seven life times of bad karma to make up already, maybe start paying back by helping out?

I mean, am I missing something?  I’ve barely heard a peep out of anyone that the world is usually listening too.  I feel like I’ve been glued to local media and combing national media as much as I have time for and I’m not seeing Hank Jr. or Brad Paisley stepping up to ask the world to notice our problems here. What gives? Jon Stewart seems to be more concerned about us than our own residents. I hope all the big country stars are giving generously and anonymously to the relief efforts, otherwise we really will have to re-build this city on rock and roll.  Branson can have country music, doesn’t seem to be doing us much good right now.

ETA: Thanks, Vince Gill, for making everyone come out.  Thanks, Taylor Swift, for giving 50x as much as TVA did. I have love for you and everyone else who donated to help people in my city.


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no news is definitely not good

The corner of Electric Ave & Village St. Near my house. Shot by my friend Jacob Briggs.

A lot of folks in other parts of the country have told me that they aren’t seeing any, or barely any national news coverage of the flooding in Nashville (aside from my constant yammering here).  On the one hand, I get it.  I mean the oil spill, car bomb, truck explosion and Tylenol recall all potentially affect a lot of people.  On the other hand, a lot of people here in Nashville are already affected and many more probably will be.

I went and read through headlines as I haven’t thought about much but Nashville in 5 days.  And I went and read national coverage of our situation here.  And I think what bothers me the most is coverage that says things like, “the Cumberland river spilled over it’s banks,” and “weekend rains raise rivers in Middle Tennessee.” I don’t suppose that every single news story needs to be a violent and realistic depiction of exactly how disasterous things are here. Then again I know we won’t get the help and support we need if it looks like we just got a little wet, you know?

The local news here has done good coverage.  Thankfully, since they need to keep all of us informed.  People interested can follow breaking, local interest stories at the Tennessean, WKRN and WPLN.

Morgan and Christy, who run Nashvillest.com have done an AMAZING job of keeping everyone here informed.  Their blog has been filled with useful helpful and timely information.  But what is the most impressive is their Twitter feed.  For five days they have literally been spreading the best information that they have to anyone listening.  They have been passing on first hand accounts, rallying volunteers, getting news to people and getting people to help.  The work they’ve done is so incredibly above and beyond the call of duty of an average citizen that I feel emotional and teary just writing about it.

The work these two girls have done is an exceptional example of how well technology can work. Take a minute and read back through their blog posts and Twitter updates.  Imagine being in a disaster situation where parts of your city where cut off and maybe you had no access to TV but you had a phone on you and could get regular updates from their feed.  It’s been invaluable to thousands of people in this city.  Nashville is a city of Heroes right now.  Like the college president who rescued a faculty member with his canoe.  Like all of our emergency workers, volunteers and rescue folks.  Like all of our friends and neighbors who helped carry, pump, drain and dry.  Heroes to the last little one.  But those Nashvillest.com girls surely helped more people than they will ever know.  I want to thank them for putting together a web presence that has helped me and pthers in so many ways in Nashville, but that really, REALLY came through for us in this disaster.  If you see either of them around, buy’em a beer, alright? I don’t know what else we can do, but they definitely deserve a cold drink on us.

Most importantly for those of you not directly affected by this, check out Nashvillest’s post on what you can do to help.


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raining in my head like a tragedy

Reading Ann Patchett’s OpEd piece got me thinking about the rain we had here in Tennessee.  It’s storm season for sure, usually an enjoyable time of year, even with the tornado possibilities.  I like thunderstorms. And Tennessee gets so amazingly, unbelievably, gorgeously green in storm season.

Usually I like a morning storm.  There’s something very pleasant about being curled up in bed and hearing the thunder and the rain outside.
This past Saturday I woke up to thunder and a deluge of rain so hard it drowned out all other ambient sounds. I don’t know why I felt different, maybe because the thunder was so loud.  I woke up already feeling panicked.  I felt uneasy all day.  I watched the local news, listened for the tornado sirens over the sound of the rain.  I watched the water rise up a couple inches on the tires of my car, parked outside the kitchen window. The creek by the house (which always seemed safely on high ground) appeared to have risen 12 or so feet. Impossible!  The roof started leaking. The news started showing washed out roads, water in people houses, people being carried away, a BUILDING floating down the interstate and crashing into a semi truck.

I went to work Saturday night and was amazed to find many people who obviously had noticed the heavy rain, but had no idea the damage it was already causing around the city.  Everyone seemed confident that they were safe, or that they lived on high enough ground.  I went home, checked the weather and went to bed with a growing sense of dread.

Sunday morning around 5am I woke up to use the bathroom and was struck by how calm and quiet it seemed outside.  I looked out all the windows, saw no rising water, no rain.  I took a deep breath and went back to bed. 20 minutes later the tornado sirens started again and the thunder rolled back in and I was up for the day.

The rain never stopped coming. The news showed more and more storms backing up behind the ones already dumping on us.  I don’t feel like I ever relaxed on Sunday.  My back is still knotted with tension today.

By mid-day Sunday almost everyone I knew was reporting water in their basements, or worse in their homes.  People were checking in, and others were worrying about those friends we hadn’t heard from. Interstates were closing, local roads, whole neighborhoods. And the rain just kept coming.  The news just kept showing more storms coming up, not the same storm but a run of new storms over and over.

To put in perspective just how much rain fell, over May 1 & 2, we got around 30% of our annual rainfall.  In the city of Nashville around 14″ of water fell in 48 hours.  Nashville averages about 13″ from May through July.  That is to say that three months worth of rain fell inside of 48 hours.

Last night (Tuesday), I was brushing my teeth and car went by, rumbling loud bass that sounded like thunder.  My heart started racing and I automatically walked to the window to look.  The flooding and devastation is terrible.  It’s hard to even wrap my head around the extent of it and I’m here in Nashville to see it.  But it’s the idea of rain that’s making me jumpy now.  I have for a long time fallen asleep to white noise generator of sorts that plays rain sounds.  Last night I couldn’t even bring myself to turn it on, I had to switch to bird and forest noises.  Nothing about rain seems relaxing to me right now. I wonder how long it will be before I can really enjoy a storm again?