I knew this would happen

I am determined that this blog will not follow in the footsteps of my past blogs. For some reason, I seem to be blog-inhibited. I always admire and marvel at those very-together individuals who manage to hold down a job, a life, AND a daily-updated blog. I tend to start one (with the best of intentions), keep it going for a bit, and then just drop it by the wayside. I almost let it happen to this one. But I am determined I won't.

So here goes. I am so incredibly glad spring...almost summer!...is here. I went through a dead phase in the winter and early spring, and have come to realize more than ever how tied in we are, both physically and emotionally, to the seasons. With the advent of spring, I seem to have pulled out of the dead phase and am absolutely bursting with excitement and new ideas. The book is coming along beautifully, and we are about to start on formatting. It should be only a month or so before we have it ready to go. I am already brainstorming on ideas for a second book and keep coming up with them....some possibly workable, some a bit outlandish. We shall see what happens.

I've also been mentally working on another idea, one that I am going to attempt to implement pretty soon. I'm not sure if it will actually work, though, and am determined to do everything I can as I put it in place to ensure its success. I have always been fascinated with the salon culture of the 18th and 19th centuries, and wished that we had more of these socio-philosophical forums in our day. I would, in an ideal world, love to attempt to create something similar....a weekly gathering of brilliant minds for purposeful and creative conversation. A forum which in and of itself, by its nature, could further in some small way the world of intellect and artistic expression, outside of the university setting. That's not going to happen any time soon, for many reasons. BUT, it could happen in a limited way, online. That is what I am thinking through (albeit primitively so far) and trying to germinate. Who knows what will happen. It may come to be, it may not. It may come to be and then fail. Or it may come to be and then turn into something completely different than what I had intended. Again, we shall see.

Also with the advent of spring has come the opening of the farmer's market!! Anyone who knows me well knows that I LOVE love love farmer's markets, side-of-the-road produce stands, anywhere I can get my food as fresh as possible. So Saturday I took V. to the farmer's market for the first time, and we both had a blast. It is really doing well this year; there were already a lot of vendors and people were walking from blocks around to get there. We got lots of fresh greens and bread, and V. got a muffin from the cupcake lady. He had so much fun. I've also found a local organic beef farmer from whom I've started buying my meat. I had an extensive conversation with him about how the cattle were raised, how they were fed, what happens at slaughtering time, etc., when we met, and I feel satisfied that their raising and treatment are completely humane. Plus, the meat is fabulous. As soon as V. is old enough, I will start teaching him to understand and appreciate where his food comes from....to be very conscious of what he eats and what is cost to produce it, so that he never takes it for granted. That I think is a good deal of the problem with American food culture....the fact that we take everything for granted. But I won't get on my soap box about that right now.

I guess that's it for now, as he is getting a bit demanding and I have a meeting with a nutritionist that I need to get ready for. More soon.

I can see the face of the moon

So for those of you who don't know already, I got new glasses this week. It's been a long time since I have worn glasses, and the last time I did, my eyes weren't very bad and I didn't absolutely have to have them. My eyes have gotten steadily worse over the past several years, but by some weird quirk of my personality, I am terrified of eye exams. So I have put off and put off the necessary evil day, until things got so bad that I was nervous driving at night and could barely see the subtitles on foreign films. I finally took the plunge last week, set up an appointment for this past Thursday, and tried really hard not to think about it.

The day came and I got the glasses....and I can hardly believe I lived without them for so long. Now I remember why I was so enthralled with trees and water when I was seventeen. For the first time in a long time, I can see the individual glints of the moon off the stream behind our apartment, and the separate twigs on the trees across the way. I can see the graininess of the sidewalk. And to my wonder and joy, I walked out with the dogs tonight to find a full moon...the night before Easter. And I can see it. It no longer has fuzzy edges....it is distinct, and perfectly round. Its face is no longer a blur; I can see every spot, every crater. It is amazing. I can not remember the last time I looked directly into the face of the moon and couldn't look away.

I thought I had become visually jaded, but it turns out...I just couldn't see!

And speaking of seeing things in a new way, Hubby and V. and I went Monday to Chez Yasu, a French restaurant in Topeka. The meal was fabulous and eye-opening. Our grilled shrimp appetizer in a balsamic reduction was so fabulous that both of us were entranced, and even V. happily devoured two succulent shrimp. I had a poached fillet of sole in a light seafood mousse...the fish was great, but the mousse was one of the loveliest most subtle things I have ever tasted. Hubby had a seafood crepe with scallops and shrimp in a dijon sauce. I tasted his sauce, and it was perfect. Both of our entrees were served with perfectly cooked marinated carrots and crisp snowpeas. V. had the quiche....well, he had part of it and Hubby and I couldn't keep our forks away from the rest. It was literally the best quiche I have ever had and has motivated me to start a quiche-trial marathon after Easter. It was incredibly fluffy, yet supported its small chunks of Gruyere with surprising ease. The pastry was so thin as to be phyllo-like.

And dessert....well, shall we say you have not had cheesecake until you have had the gateau au fromage avec Grand Marnier at Chez Yasu. Every bite was a revelation, down to the super-thin layer of surprisingly light sponge cake which served as the crust.

And to top everything off, the kind elderly lady at the neighboring table came over at the end of the meal and said she was so impressed by the fact that we brought V. and that he behaved so well, that she wanted to give him a chocolate chickadee. Which she did. And which he thoroughly enjoyed. And which I did not regret quite as much as I thought I did, since he conveniently crashed from his sugar high an hour and a half later as we drove home in the rain.

Rosebud tea

So I'm sitting here with a cup of steaming rosebud tea, one of my gifts from B. on her recent visit. If there's one word that comes to mind as I sip it, it is subtlety, a quality that makes me stop and think and let it linger on my tongue in an attempt to catch the flavor before it disappears. I have always loved the flavors of good black tea (I have long since exhausted the Marco Polo that C. gave me and desperately need to buy some more), and have enjoyed the more delicate aroma of scented greens. But the rosebud tea surpasses even those in its slight but full fragrance.

I was flipping through a book tonight that I checked out from the library. Most of you know my ongoing fascination with Virginia Woolf. It started years ago. I have read her biographies, many of her letters, her journals, and all of her novels. But until now, I had not yet read her correspondence with Vita Sackville-West, the well-known author and socialite of the time with whom Virginia carried on a long and nebulous affair of the emotions. Looking through the book tonight and reading bits and pieces of their letters to each other, I am reminded of the rosebud tea. There are hints and descriptions of elusive emotions everywhere, but rarely a full-blown expression of passion. The minds of two of the most brilliant women of the day dance around each other in a brilliant intellectual courtship that may or may not have ever been fully consummated. And yet, reading the letters, you get the distinct impression that the consummation was not really the point. The point was in the dance...in the ever-circling, entrancing game that they played with each other, sometimes drawing closer, sometimes pulling back. They hurt each other, and forgave. They spent their evenings thinking one of the other, and reveled in their loneliness. They bolstered each other's creative genius, tore down confidence, and built it back up. They let words of angry jealousy fly, despite the complete absence of any commitment or profession of love between them. But in the end, they loved each other without fail until Virginia's self-inflicted death in 1941.

So I am reminded again, as I take the last sip of my tea and prepare to shut down the house for the night, that it is the elusive in life that often is the most valuable, because the hardest to capture. The flash of a smile on a baby's face. The lingering aroma of a perfume, the name of which you forget. The maybe-love that flutters for years and never dies, yet never quite fully lives. The glimpses, swiftly seen, of something that makes us hang on to life for just another minute. These are the slight intensities I cherish.

Why?

I read a message concerning two of our Presidential candidates this morning, that angered me very much. It saddens me beyond belief that people who call themselves spiritual or Christian actually have the nerve to pass judgment on other people, not only without knowing any of the correct facts, but without giving the person a chance or bothering to find out a single thing about him.

What principle gives ANYONE the right to call another person a whore or an anti-Christ?

At the risk of sounding dogmatic myself in my anger I am trying to control my reaction and not use trite and overused phrases like....judge not lest you be judged. Somehow these phrases come out anyway.

Some people will laugh at my horror and say that I should be hardened and inured to this type of attitude by now, because of its prevalence. That is probably true. I should be. But I'm not. Perhaps I am still naive, to a certain extent, to hold on to such an idealistic view of humanity...a view that expects something other than close-mindedness and judgmentalism. But I don't want to let go of this naivete. I am still horrified every time I read a claim like the one I read this morning. And I still feel vindicated when I see or hear of someone with an unusual sense of generosity or goodwill towards others.

Bookstory

Hubby and I were out birthday shopping for V. last night and decided to stop by The Dusty Bookshelf, our neighborhood vintage bookstore. I have always loved the nooks and crannies of used bookshops, and the treasures you can find there. One of my hopes for V. is that he will end up loving books and bookshops as much as I do. They have given me so many wonderful memories.

There was the one I went to in Columbus from the time I was 11 or 12. It was a great little shop with a great owner...a true collector. He had a passion for fine books. Some of the first books in my antique book collection came from this shop. My daddy would take me for a special occasion, usually my birthday, and we would walk in the door to the jingle of a bell. There was a fish tank and a pot of stale coffee always sitting in the middle of the store, and sometimes another collector sitting in one of the armchairs talking to the owner about books he had for sale. I would wander through the tightly wedged shelves and debate for an hour whether I wanted this book or that, and end up handing over my precious birthday money for a 19th century edition of Tennyson, perhaps, or an ancient textbook.

A few years ago I decided to go back to visit the shop. I walked in, alone, to the familiar tinkle of the bell and stood in the middle of the shop. Something felt wrong; a chill ran down my spine. A very young man came out of the back room of the shop and asked if he could help me. I walked towards him, the uncomfortable feeling still lingering in my spine, and asked where the owner was. "Oh," he said, and stopped. "He died two weeks ago, of a heart attack. I came in to work the next morning and found him lying there." He pointed to the spot I had been standing when I walked in, in the middle of the bookshelves. I started to cry, for some reason. I had not been in for so long, and had come in that day wanting to tell the quirky old man how much I had always loved his shop and looked forward to coming there as a child. And I had missed him by two weeks.

He had died suddenly, in the middle of the things he loved most. It was fitting somehow.

The young man asked if I had known him. I couldn't say I really had known him, in the true sense of the word. But I felt as though I had. Every book in the room had been hand-selected, by him. I asked what would happen to the shop....and discovered that the books were being sold off for pennies and the owner's widow was selling the shop. I asked him to convey my condolences to the widow, and walked out. I felt sick. I went to my car and drove away, bewildered by the abrupt slam-shut of a treasured memory.

I had missed him by only two weeks, forever.

Ode to a deceased Sebring

You served us well, in your own style.

In you, I put on my engagement ring for the first time, and six months later, drove away from a church.

In return, you begged us for a head gasket. We gladly obliged.

In you, I drove myself and my dear husband loyally back and forth to our jobs every day, until we finally got a second car.

In return, you determined you really needed that oil problem fixed, to the tune of $800.

But you were loyal. So we showered you with gifts. We bought you a new top, a new coat of paint, new leather to dress you up. We even got you new chrome trim.

And were you satisfied? No, you were not.

In you I drove in terror to the hospital to be induced with my first child.

In return, you started burning oil yet again, and when we went to repair you, you locked up just for the grins of it and drove the bill up to over $900.

In you we made the ten hour trip with our seven-week-old baby to start a new life in the wilderness of Kansas.

And this time, you had had enough. You burned oil. You clanked. You refused to start. You blew a hose.

We gave you a new fuel system. It cost $700.

But was that enough? No. You had had it. You considered staying with us for a couple more weeks, and then sat down and never started again.

Poor Sebring. You traveled with us in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Virginia, Washington DC, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Ohio, and Kansas. We came to love each other.

And in the end, we left you sitting alone in the snow like an abandoned child.

And for what?

A miserable $300.

Goodbye, my lovely Sebring.

Muffins and money (grateful)

So of course we are in a rough spot so far as the car goes. It looks like we're finally faced with a decision that may involve getting rid of it, despite all of the money for both cosmetics and repairs that we've put into it. (For anyone reading this...don't EVER buy a Chrysler Sebring! Let our experience warn you!) But yesterday after doing our taxes we realized that the amount that we are getting back on our return is going to make the decision either way much, much easier. So my mood instantly lightened from depressed to only mildly anxious....

And as a result of this state of extreme levity, I randomly decided at 10:00 last night to make jelly-filled muffins (actually they were apricot-preserve-filled muffins.) They turned out lovely and I enjoyed a nice cup of tea as I sat down with Chekhov again...

American muffins.
British tea.
Russian author.
It was truly a lovely combination.

I am rather anxious to get back to "An Anonymous Story." It is fascinating and I am falling more in love with Chekhov by the minute.

And by the way, I made a dozen muffins. I have had two, but there are only five left. Do the math and figure out how many muffins went in Hubby's tummy...