choices

In the morning, Ed found a top one hundred American songs of the century list on the Internet. You couldn’t call it THE top 100 list, but it was a list put together with input from people contacted by associates from the recording industry.

Let’s listen to (youtubes of) the top 25.

It’s a pleasant way to spend a Sunday morning, Though I would not have guessed "Somewhere over the Rainbow" would come in as number one.

I write this because I want to remember that one of the nicest things about not working on a week-end day or, in my case, this summer, is that nothing needs to happen when I wake up in the morning. Perhaps there is a lot that should happen, and much more that I will have happen, but if you decide that before rising, you want to spend an hour listening to what some Americans think of as the best music of the century, that can be your morning. Remarkable.

Most of the rest of the waking hours were given over to writing and the weather was so perfect that I could write on the porch all day long, breaking once to eat my peach and honey yogurt ice cream...







...then again to a stroll along the road, just to take in a few deep breaths and to admire the great gardens of the farmers across the street...






...and finally, to walk with Ed across the property, including through the waist high prairie grasses. We peeked at the farmers (and their offspring) cultivating their crops just to the north of us.





...and then we chopped down some dead branches on very tall trees. Because on a farmette, work always beckons.

In the evening, my girl, Ed and I sat on the porch and watched the bats do their dance. You can do that when you don’t have three classes to teach the next day. Amazing.

two chapters

At the market, very early

I’m a hanger on to the restaurant community. I have no ties to the restaurant world anymore, not since I left the employ of L’Etoile in... was it the fall of 2004? But I have lasting good huggable people there – a chef or two, a business manager, a bar tender, a waiter. And there is the partner of another restauranteur in town and of course, always the farmers who were once known to me as restaurant suppliers and now are just in my world of fond memories. Worthy of a special pause on a Saturday morning at the market.

My camera died (why???) and so I had only my phone for picture taking, but no matter, I was less inclined to look for good photos today. I spent a good two or three hours just sitting outside Graze with a friend whom I've known for exactly thirty years, talking to combinations of the above and then a bit of time at the market, picking up everything from kale to tomatoes and oh so much more in between.

So, a photo to commemorate a wonderfully leisurely morning outside Graze...





Then, a photo of a vendor who supplied me with a bunch of green stuff today...





...and another to really put things in the right light. It’s August. Hot and red August. No, not peppers. Tomatoes.

At home, much much later

Okay Ed, I’m ready for dinner. No more writing.

In half hour maybe?

Good. I’m cooking kale.

Kale?

With onion and garlic. And eggs. Super healthy.

Kale?

You can put on any of the movies we have left. We’ll watch your choice.

(Later)

What is this movie? Show me the box! (“Eli walks alone in post-Apocalyptic America. He walks west along the Highway of Death...”) You think I want to watch this?

You said anything!

But not this! You say “make anything for dinner," but I don’t serve slaughtered bloody lamb for you!

Okay, okay, I’ll take it out. Five minutes. Just five minutes?

(Later)

This dinner is too healthy. Too much virtue. Tomorrow, I’ll make something not quite so good for us.

We put in another movie, one from my stack – "How the Garcia Girls Spent their Summer."
Man, you have some pick here. This movie is so depressing. And I don’t think there’s any plot.

Should we try another?

We could go back to Eli...
Ed dozes off for a minute. We watch a bit more.
Okay, I'm with you. Enough.

You sure?

No... Yes. I think. Yes!


What’s with us this week?

evening leisure

The trouble with borrowing twelve movies is that you get determined to watch them all. Yesterday it was about the guy liking junk food, today it’s about a guy stuck in his wife’s untimely death. We watched all of that as well. After, Ed played YouTube clips of Buddy Holly songs (one was featured at the end of the movie). It did not erase the terribly sad moments from the movie, particularly since Buddy himself died an untimely death. I begged, instead, for a viewing of yesterday’s Jon Stewart (we don’t have cable and so we watch it a day late), hoping that acerbic humor would make me laugh and laugh, but Ed was lost in his replays of Peggy Sue. Over and over, I love you, Peggy Sue.

See, this is what comes from working too hard all day – in my case on my writing. Editing really.

I do have a photo or two for you – from our bike ride for coffee. Ed is riding circles around me these days. I’m more the distracted Ferdinand, thinking about my book and, I suppose, to an extent, smelling the flowers. Though truthfully, these lovely susans don’t really have a prominent fragrance.






The clouds rolled in, the prairie flowers swayed. It was a lovely ride, even if it had to be followed by a night of terrible movie watching and many replays of Peggy Sue.

summer talks

I work at my writing on the porch. Isis sleeps on the wrought iron table. It’s okay – it’s an outdoor table. Like a place where you would have a picnic, with raccoons and squirrels jumping on and off.

Afternoon. Ed and I bike to the Oasis for coffee and stay there until closing. Paul, the proprietor gives us a leftover loaf of bread.

We go across the street to check out more DVDs from the library. A huge new supply has just come in. We leave with about a dozen. Probably two will be good.

At the Fitchburg farmers market, I’m thinking we should pick up another loaf of bread at La Baguette. We can use it tomorrow. They’re closing for a vacation and it seems criminal not to have a final chunk of bread from them now. But we come too late – they’re out of baguettes.





How about if we get a raisin brioche? Ed asks.

Sure.

I admire the market heirloom tomatoes. They look beautiful because of their irregularities.






At home, I make frozen yogurt. Peach and honey.


 


I ask Ed – you like it?
Yes, sure.
He doesn’t mean it.

Isis comes in and jumps up on the refrigerator, then the cupboard. Get the hell down from there!
He wont hurt anything. Truly. I’ll replace whatever he damages.
The vase is from the Dordogne, the plate – from the Amalfi coast. Are you going to travel there?
You can get them at Walmart’s.
No, you cannot.





I make a chicken stew and a salad. Ed leaves the peas behind in the salad.

Since when don’t you like peas? 

I do like peas.

You didn't eat them.

I like cooked peas.






We watch a DVD: "I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With." Not a whole lot happens in it, but we can’t turn it off either. When it’s over, Ed says – what was that about?

It's subtle. Not much real adventure.  Just like my book.

Not much happens in your book?

That’s right.

That’s not good.

But that’s life.

That’s why we like to escape into something else.

Do you want to watch another movie?

Summer is such a wonderful season.

technology

Like most people, I under-use what machines I have. By far the most shameful is my thus far nonuse of the ipad. I thought it would be the perfect and not merely occasional traveling companion. But, I never learned its tricks and traits enough to take it anywhere at all.

Until today. With Ed’s help I tackled the skinny thing, determined to learn it well enough so that on our next trip (mid-August), I can use this newer, younger, and most importantly – lighter baby.

And I have to say, I feel as if I’ve leapt into a different world of tools and tricks. For instance, there is the photo stuff. An app for $1.99 gives me superhuman powers – to do magical, wonderful things and then, with a click of a button – send the whole crazy mess to flickr.

Need an illustration? Okay. Take the first (and actually the only thus far) photo snapped by the ipad. No, the machine can’t make Ed smile, so here we are, grimacing, or hiding, or some combination of the two. Click, tamper, send.





Of course, what I really want to do is to download photos from my camera and I needed a trip to the Apple store for that – to get a USB port. (The must be a reason not to have put one into the sleek body of the ipad. There must be.) It’s always a learning experience to go to the Apple store and so I don’t think of it as a wasted hour at the mall. More like a time to allow some of that incredible geek brain power to rub off a tiny bit, so that I can finally learn, for example, what happens when I push the on-off button on the iphone not once, but twice when I’m turning it on. Bet you didn’t know either!

So, I remain glued to my various machines today – a shame, considering the weather. Life is about compromises and deferred gratification. Tonight. I’ll go outdoors tonight. To listen to music and later still, to count fireflies and watch the stars come out. Yeah.

returning home

Leaving Chicago. During morning rush hour.

Does anyone ever just sit there and take in the world? Or are we all hell bent on reading the latest text, twitter or email the minute it gets posted?





We are engaged in our own bubble. I say this as I put those pods in my own ears and spend the next three hours listening to songs that have nothing to do with where I am and where I’m going.


So now I am home. Hi, Wisconsin.

In the late afternoon, I meet my good good friend (and for a fleeting second, her daughter) at a new place in town (or at least new for me). I can absorbe the joy of living in a small(er) town. The décor is homey.





They still take the time to decorate the lattes.





And the news crew is on the premises, collecting opinions as to whether we should have a study done on whether to make a one way street into a two way street.





I think about my two great friends from student law school days. We all have daughters. Who are in many ways so different. Yet, they, all four of them, have this in common – a passion for superb, fresh and honest food.

Odd, in a sweet, sweet sort of way.

8-1-11

Happy 30th birthday, little one.

A sizzling, muggy day in the city. What I can’t understand is why my daughters chose such extremes for their birth days: one picking the coldest day of the century for coming into this world, the other – an intense heat wave.

It’s a good thing that I get a kick out of extremes. [Yes, Ed, that means I am also amused by your dedication to the idea that an old ripped t-shirt constitutes suitable apparel, and I find a car – my own – with a masking tape for a fender to be kind of cool.]

The kind of day where half the city likes to head for the beach. If there is a beach. Chicago has a beach and a bus that’ll take you there. It's one crowded bus today, picking up half scantly clad young bodies at it rolls east.










My younger girl has a full work day and my older girl is spending the morning hours with her dad. This gives me a good bit of time to write and I do this in an old coffee shop and bakery with a proprietor whose name is Elzbieta. The Polish language in Chicago is still ever present.

In the early afternoon, I make my way to the south of the Loop.





Since it is my older girl's day,  I tell her she can pick and choose our afternoon and evening itinerary.

She chooses whales.





She’s an avid museum goer, especially if there’s an educational exhibit, preferably about history or about animals.

And so we cool off by studying skeletal structures and annotated photographs of whales.

It is a very refreshing way to spend a day that sizzles.

We do challenge ourselves to a hike across town and we make our way from the south of Chicago to the north, way north, past the Loop, the Golden Mile, all the way to the Rush Street area. It’s warm enough that I do not even mind a cooling moment (with a blueberry smoothie -- gotta love those blueberries!) at a mall.

I look up and see my girl coming down the escalator and I think -- life is so good when your kids are happy.





And now, onto the Purple Pig where the two of us wait for the little one to join us for delicious small nibbles accompanied by a cooling Prossecco.

Finally, a birthday hug.





Evening’s young. Time to join the rest of family and friends, up in Andersonville at the Italian favorite, Anteprima.







One more photo. It's her day and so I pepper the post with her photos. But it's my day too, and so the last is of the two of us.





After, riding the bus back to my littler one’s apartment, I listen to ipod music and I lean on the shoulder of my daughter and I think how deliciously wonderful it is to have these interesting kids, adult kids, good and kind souls who don’t mind having a mom occasionally lean on them, with white ipod wires dangling from her ears.

Sunday steps

Last night, after a family-plus-Ed evening meal at Graze (when does an occasional traveling companion and permanent landlord become “family”?) my daughters ambled toward the lake and Ed and I motorbiked to the farmhouse, As if wanting more of a summer night, Ed reached for the “best Dutch movie ever” (borrowed from the library) and slipped it just before midnight into the DVD player.

And even though it was Dutch and with subtitles and on a tiny TV, we were riveted.  And surprised at how long the movie was. By 2:30 it came to a climatic ending, but we hadn’t had enough and so we watched a good portion all over again, with a voice-over of the director’s comments.

And so it would have been wonderful to sleep in beyond the usual early farmhouse hours the next morning, except we couldn't do it – not with the sunlight pouring in through the eastern skylight. We need a shade – Ed tells me.

We motorbike over to Shopko for a pair of tension rods, past fields of market crops and meadows of prairie flowers.





There is a sale of very sad looking end-of-season plants at Shopko and we rescue them, as many as we can fit for the ride back to the farmhouse. Curtain rods, white pines, black eyed Susans, shrubs without names – some now on my lap, others snugly tucked in the crate in back of the motorbike.

And so we have a busy morning.

My daughters came for a porch brunch – oyster mushroom and corn frittata – and you could say it is a celebratory brunch, or at least a pre-celebratory brunch because tomorrow, my older girl turns thirty. We believe in dragging out  celebrations for as long as we can.










She had tossed around a number of ways to migrate jubilantly into life's fourth decade and in the end decided to go down for the big day itself to Chicago, where she has both family and friends. We eat our eggs and yesterday's ice cream too and then we all pile into the bus that takes us down to the city that is just a short three hours south of the farmette.


And so now  it is Sunday evening and we are in Chicago – an urban break for me...


 


...one that feels good, so good, eating dinner in the golden light of a perfect summer evening...


 



...a perfect city summer evening, all the more perfect because I know that in a day or so, I'll be returning to the quiet of the fields and meadows that I have surrounding me back home at the farmette.

returning

A friend said – don’t go downtown if you want apricots. The restaurants will have snapped them up. Come back to the West Side Community Farmers Market.

And so we did. It was like visiting old friends.





But there weren't any apricots. "Linda" there told us – come earlier next week. Much earlier.






So we continue today:  on to the downtown market. Not to buy necessarily. We’d done that, at the Westside market.


 



But there are vendor friends to see downtown...





... foods, too, to admire.






...and  daughters love the downtown market, and I have both of them in Madison on this day.







In the late afternoon. I unpack the new ice cream maker and we make strawberry Greek yogurt ice-cream.





Summer continues.

summer, continued

It is remarkable how you can pick up life where you left it. Summer bliss, sunny days, bike rides and flower photos, continued. As if for a while, I had taken an unfamiliar path and was told to go back and resume on the main road.





And it is one heck of a nice main road.

I had mostly stopped work on my book during the last two weeks. When I tried to pick it up, it felt like I was pushing it forward to beat some dreadful deadline: hurry up, or you’ll be one of those cases where it goes to a publishing house posthumously. And then they’ll reject it and your kids will suffer terribly because they had hoped, they had really hoped that you had the talent and they could take pride in seeing your belated success.

So I didn’t write at all.

But today was easy. On the porch. Sometimes with Isis there, though he had momentarily fallen out of favor with me as he chose, sometime this morning, to regurgitate his food up on the table, on my pretty little cloth from the Basque region of Southern France. Ed said he would clean it up, but there are reasons why I never trust him to such tasks. He does a very incomplete job.

Still, the day proceeds beautifully. Writing is a breeze, a bike ride is delightful...





...a café moment – peaceful and satisfying.

Biking to the café, I paused to admire the truck farmers across the road. One was snipping flowers and she was so delightfully ensconced in the flower bed...





...that I got off the bike to get a closer shot.





She said – for you, I give these for you.

I haven’t money with me. Maybe later?

Go home later.

Tomorrow?

Oshkosh tomorrow. Market in Oshkosh. Here, for you, these for you.

I can’t take them!

Here. I add some here, too. And she adds beautiful fragrant trumpet lilies and it’s all so gorgeous!


 

Thank you.

Ed and I pedal back home and I come back to her out in the field, with a cold drink and a $5 bill.
She likes the water but is offended by the cash.
You know man there? She points to the house just across from where she is standing. I give him some too. He has cancer. Maybe be happy.

People are so generous. Really, at their core, people are so generous and so often, the less they have, the more they want to give.

I put the flowers on the table. It is a day of flowers. And good people. And not having to cook dinner because friends are doing it for me tonight. Too lucky. Just too lucky.

this day

A night of storms

It flashed and rumbled all night long. Some time early in the night the power went off and my bedside clock went into perpetual flashing midnight mode. Too sleepy to fix it, I left it alone and so I had a "Groundhog Day" night of waking up to thunder again and again, as the clock flashed midnight.

Eventually daylight made the midnight reading completely absurd and I reached over to set the thing straight.

Oddly, it felt very still after the storms. And muggy. Isn’t it supposed to work exactly in the other direction? Where is the whiff of cleansed air, the fresh smell of pine and clover and phlox? It smelled more like mushrooms – not unpleasant and not unusual, given the truckloads of woodchips we have down here, at the farmette, but I was looking for something more... sweet and crisp.

Equanimity

I need to get off the couch and get going... I tell Ed. We are both with our laptops, Isis is curled between us. You have never seen such a contented look on an animal’s face.
No, no. Relax. This is why people with pets live longer – they don’t rush. They settle in with their animal and let go. Equanimity.

People who sit all day on a couch do not live longer, cat or no cat.

For an hour. Just let it go.

Things are not what they seem

Let go? Yes, it’s easy now.

The week had been so challenging and one’s inclination is to feel bummed during such times, especially after the doctor tells you you probably have cancer. Even if everyone reassures you that 'most likely' it wont kill you. Still, you shift perspectives. For example, I stopped making plans for the month before me. Or beyond.

But this morning, I got the message that blew me away. I mean, I was adjusting to the 'one day at a time' routine and then I get the words: you’re clean. Things are not what they appeared to be. Like, you’re looking at flowers, they look like lavender fields, they should be lavender fields and then they turn out to not be lavender fields at all.





So, it appears I’m not a lavender field.

I didn’t think I’d get off lightly this time. There are reasons why I could be sick. If you were playing Clue, you’d figure it out: it was the dentist, with a machine, in his Fifth Avenue office that did it. When I came to the States as a kid I had Eastern European post-war teeth. Someone recommended a dentist on Fifth, off of Washington Square. I went to him twice a week my entire first year in New York. He x-rayed everything, every time. Before and after. Like a horrific photo display of his talents. I must have had that machine pointing at my head and neck fifty times that year.

But, right now, I’m clean.

I do have to join a club of irradiated children with thyroids that tick loudly and glow in rage,  and there are decisions to be made in the years ahead, but so far, so good. I tell Ed: it was the blueberries. He grunts. You can’t make an antioxidant believer out of a guy who still extols the virtues of ramen noodles. (Cheap.)

You didn’t use raspberries for breakfast this morning, Ed chides me.

Well sorry, I was concentrating on other stuff.

Like what?

Arranging my affairs, so to speak.

People said I didn't look worried. Yep, I’m excellent at ignoring the negatives. Sometimes that’s a good thing.
I had to pick my own raspberries.

Poor you! Oh fine, I’m going out to harvest the rest. It may rain later.

I’ll help.

Great antioxidants...

The Show

Neither of us is hungry. The coffee break, with a pb&j quickly slapped together, came rather late in the day. But, the cloudy skies notwithstanding, it’s such a pleasant evening! A summer evening, of warm winds and warm feelings.
Let me grill, I say to Ed. We can eat on the porch and watch the bats over our chicken brats with sauerkraut. And corn. It is the time for corn. And peapods and tomatoes. A good time.

waiting

...for the skies to clear. My sympathies go out to the people of Oregon and Washington. I understand you have many days that are like ours today: gray.

And I’d like to remind everyone that I was not the one complaining about the warm weather. So if we can have some of that back as well, I’d be grateful.

The day is on hold. The week is on hold. The month is on hold.

But, there were at least four good moments:

First, the girl that was in the ER room yesterday after a car ran into her, came by today. Despite a bruised shoulder and an immobilized elbow, she was as smiling and bouncy as ever.





Secondly: I cleaned the farmhouse. Top to bottom. Ed would find that a curious reason to feel accomplished and yet I do.

Thirdly: Ed said today – I didn’t think it would be this much fun having you live at the farmhouse. Emphasis on the word “this.” You have to know him to understand that it was a very sweet comment.

Fourthly (but not lastly): I sure have had a lot of nice emails, phone calls and comments. Thanks for those! The world doesn’t feel that upside down.





I’m just waiting for that streak of sunshine.

it could have been so much worse

Honestly, you just have to laugh at some days HA HA HA! Okay? Now can I complain?

I wasn’t going to. I was saving it for the day when I really had a bad run of it. Something awful and heart wrenching that had no silver lining, none whatsoever. But, I’m up for a bit of tension release. So bear with me. (There is no bad ending, in fact, there is no ending at all, so sit back and laugh with me.)

I had a procedure scheduled for this morning. Savvy people know what that’s all about. You get a test, the test reveals something. In my case, a suspected cancer. I can go on about the months where I struggled with the age old question – is it in my mind, or am I feeling a bit ... odd?

So when the test said suspected bla bla bla, I read the stats and thought – well now, either I’ll be cured or the gig is up. No more travel to Sorede. I mean, how piggish of you to want a third time.

I have to insert something here: I have had, in my life, at least three catastrophic life threatening diseases. So bracing for another isn’t so... well, strange for me.

I went in for the biopsy today. I thought to myself – if nothing good comes of it, I will have at least trained a new young doctor on how to do this well: guide that needle flawlessly, scoop the crap out and retreat. She tried, under the supervision of a senior presiding bla bla. Sometimes she did okay. Other times? Well, it was an education. I support our teaching institutions, including the UW Hospitals and Clinics. I give up my body for the pedagogical mission.

So now I need to wait for a great number of days. Fair enough. If I have a good outcome, I will surely let you know. If not – well then, maybe. Depends.

My daughter, the one who lives in Madison, had taken me to the hospital. I told her that she needn’t do that. That this is why older people date and eventually have traveling companions – to spare their children of visits to the doctor with their aging parent. But, she insisted and so we went. I think she got a lot of work done at the hospital as 1. They botched the paperwork and so it took forever to straighten out what procedure was to be done and 2. There is really nothing else that’s amusing in the hospital and so you do what you can – your work, if that’s all you have with you.

After, we went to the grocery store and then she went her way and I went mine. Meaning, I called my companion who came to the store and motorbike me home. Question: if I am too sedated to be released from the hospital to drive myself home, is it okay to release me to the back seat of a motorbike? I mean, arguably, I could swing right out of that seat, because the world seems so wobbly and uncomplicated when you’re on drugs.


I am at the farmhouse. I am unpacking the groceries. I am on the last item in the grocery bag when the phone rings. Strange number. I pick it up anyway.
Mommy... I got hit by a car while biking... please come.

The nightmare call. What, what the strange number? What happened? Is she bleeding? Is it that kind of message?

I take Ed’s car (because in crises, I am superb. I think straight and I do what needs to be done: take the car with the bike rack; you know that at the end of the day, you’ll have to take the wrecked bike home...). I speed. Or, I try. The cell phone rings again.
Mommy, they want to know if you’re coming... there’s an ambulance waiting.

Fucking shit. There. I can curse.

I speed, hoping for a police escort. No escort. Near the Capitol Square, I see the police, the commotion. I put my fist to the horn (mind you, it is a weak horn: we’re talking about Ed’s Geo ’93) and pull up to where she is.

She’s on her feet. That’s good. She had sent the ambulance away. Another good sing. She is bruised and shaking and there are bones that need to be xrayed and wounds that need cleaning and if we were super nice people we’d appease the guy who ran her down – he is terribly sad that this had happened and indeed he offers to buy us a drink to compensate. We say no thank you.


I had spent the morning at UW hospitals and the afternoon at Meriter ER room and all in all, I arrived back at the farmhouse this evening rather... depleted.

But, I look in on the purchased groceries and see that I have enough for a salad, a Sorede type salad of potatoes and eggs and tomatoes and beans and oh so many other wonderful summer things.





So I make that and Ed and I eat, as my daughter recoups at her home; and now we’re finishing cleaning the stained windows and soon we’ll watch the bat show and really, I can’t worry about anything else, because it’s just such a beautiful evening right now.