foggy birthday to you

When I told my girl many weeks ago that I would be in Portland soon, she piped up right away  -- oh, you should have dinner where we ate -- Fore Street. Who says kids don't remember?

We'd been to Portland. It was the bonus I thought up during a college tour. So long as we're on the east coast, let's go to Maine! My girls were used to such impulses.

In those days, I always, too, paid attention to food. These were my restaurant years: my money from moonlighting at L'Etoile went right back into food. Prepared by others.

And now, since today is no ordinary day, I decide to go with my girl's impulse (especially since Ed and I are splitting the tab; thank you, honey pot!). Still, I hadn't reserved a table. I wanted to show up and make my case for a spot at the bar.


I'm eating at the bar as I write this.


The fog rolled in sometime at night and when I finally left the big comfy bend (without a cat in it!) in the morning, I knew at a glance that the damp clouds weren't going to give up their hold without a good fight. That kind of fog doesn't lift easily.

Breakfast at the Inn on Carleton is a big deal. Most people love this about b&b stays. For me, it's a worry. I'll not easily forget a breakfast  Ed and I had at a northern Wisconsin b&b: there were enough calories on our plates to sustain a family of ten for a week. Since then, I ask ahead for a gentler approach to the morning meal.





Toward the end of it, I see that the two couples there besides me are lingering, itching for a quick exchange. It's our anniversary -- one of them tells us. Ours too! -- the other responds. Me too -- I add. Only my sweetie's back home!  I can almost feel the question marks start to form, along with the polite silence that cautions - don't ask.

And still, I explain: I like to travel more that he does.

[Right now I just finished as exquisite half dozen of oysters -- in honor of Ed and I. We love oysters. Dear one -- you would have loved these! I am about to start in on the Hudson valley duck, with Henn of the Woods mushrooms and hard cider braised cabbage...


 


... For the foodies among you -- Portland is worth a special detour,  just for this restaurant.]


Breakfast done. I'm out now. And excited! This is the part that I love so much -- the 'let's get going, there's a whole world to explore' -- moment of travel.


 


So I get going. And I don't mind the fog. Because it's Maine, not the Mediterranean, for Pete's sake. Tough weather out here. It's to be expected.





My first stop is actually (surprisingly?) at the Portland Museum of Art.  To pay homage. You should know that the reason I first thought of coming to Portland was because I'd read in the NY Times that the Winslow Homer studio -- the place where he painted in his last years - would be open to the public (for the first time) this October. But though I called within minutes of reading this -- I was too late.  I could not get tickets to the Studio. but I can, now, buy a ticket to see the special exhibit at the Museum -- of Homer's painting and the title of the exhibit is "Weatherbeaten." Canvas upon canvas of Homer's art depicting the rough seas along Maine's coast.

Since it's a special exhibit, I cannot take photos, but I did take some in other parts of the Museum. And it is a spectacular place! A fragment of it:


















this is the only Winslow Homer painting in the entire museum that hasn't a bar on photos


Okay, by noon, I'm again on the drizzly damp streets, heading toward the ferry.


 












From Internet notes, from my host, Buddy, from so many others, I am told -- go take the ferry to Peaks Island. And so I do that.





I love this about island ferry rides: you can eavesdrop on another way of life. Yes, there'll be the tourists (though rare at this time of the year), but you'll also have the baker taking cupcakes over to an island wedding, the guy with the cable repair services, the couple back from a food shopping trip on the mainland.

But what I love most is the view out onto the foggy foggy sea.










It's a short ride. Twenty minutes maybe and we're there. My first port of call is actually the small cafe just by the landing. A cup of chamomile tea to keep me nimble. And I set out.

Within a few minutes, I pass a place with a bunch of bicycles in the courtyard -- one tumbling over the next. A couple is there, trying to right some decent bikes. I pause and ask about this: are they for hire?  It seems that you pick your bike and pay when you come back. An honor system. No one is there. They trust you to do the right thing. Okay, why not.

Here's why not: the bikes are rusty, the ride is not easy and in any case, biking keeps you to the main road, even as some of the side paths beckon. I ride for a half hour, then give back the bike (yes, I pay, even thought no one would know if I did not).
 





And so then I walk, for hours, really...
















... and I get properly lost, but hey, who could mind -- I am on a foggy day (it rolls in, it rolls out, it rolls right back in) on an island with a pounding Atlantic surf to the east. It's a heady experience.







I catch the late afternoon ferry back, in time to take a brief stroll through Portland's downtown. And here I have to be impressed. Portland is in a way like Madison. Same size, same leanings, only here they have the ocean and there, back home, we have the lakes. But Portland sells itself well. Peaks Island was lovely, but our lake shores are lovelier still. And how is it that Maine, especially southern Maine, manages to successfully promote itself as the place to buy anything form anywhere and at a discount? I walk into one gallery... nice. Funky Maine. Good folk art. Okay.





I walk into a potter's shop. Lovely ceramics. Fine. I understand. The next -- oh, what's this? Ceramics form around the world, including Italy and Poland? Poland?? In Wisconsin, we seem to stay with the cheese motif. We're so local that, so far as I know, no one comes to Madison to shop unless you live in the hinterlands and you make the trip to pick up what you need from Target. I admire Portland for looking beyond the Target shoppers.


Finally, it's approaching 5 -- the time when Fore Street opens its doors for the populace without a reservation. The line forms, I'm toward the front of it. And now I'm inside, with a coveted spot at the bar!

So again, happy anniversary, Ed! Thank you for understanding that I love being places. Even as I love, too, coming home to the farmhouse. And, happy birthday. There, I said it!

The moon shines brightly on us, yes, it surely does...

lobster dreams

Breakfast. Rain outside, not heavy, but coming down from dark clouds. Skip the sunroom -- we'll eat in the kitchen.






Then, a few hours later, I am on a plane, heading east. Toward more rain, though there, I almost expect it. Every once in a while, there'll be the occasional cloud break. For instance, passing over the Finger Lakes in New York.





But for the most part, there is a heavy layer of cloud separating us, flying in that little plane I've come to accept as a means of getting in and out of my home town, from the world below.


Evening. Dark already. I land in Portland Maine.

If you don't mind the occasional rain and a pouty season that cannot make up its mind, then there's a lot to love about Maine.

I'm here alone. Part of the compromise -- some trips will always, for me, be solo trips. I pack good books, old and new New Yorkers, a little bit of work, too (but just for the journey) and my writing stuff. And good walking shoes should the rain take a pause.


In the cab to the b&b (Inn on Carleton), I cannot convince the driver that there is a "hotel" on the block I direct him to.  
Big hotel? He asks.  
No, just six rooms. Run by a guy who, in his day job is a flight attendant. A lovely old place that looks good even in the rain.









Food time.
I miss seafood. When you live in the Midwest you idealize coastal living, just because each coast is so far away. Greener pastures. There, by the salty ocean waters.  People there surely must eat freshly caught something or other every day. You don't want to know that probably most everyone serves shrimp caught in Thailand. 

And so I pick my eating places carefully on this wee solo trip: tonight it's Maine bistro food. Petite Jacqueline. I eat at the bar. (Ed would have liked that.)

Lobster, or at least a fraction of one: mixed into a salad and stuck back into the tail shell. Sort of like a lobster roll without the roll.





Then, catch of the day (they claim it was flounder), pan fried over haricots verts (skinny beans).


 


Delicious.

As I hear the chef shout out from the kitchen "87 lobster tails!" I ask the wait staff -- truly 87 lobster tails?
Yes…
So many? He laughs. In restaurant lingo it means we're out of lobster tails. I want to say -- I worked in a restaurant and have never heard that! But I keep quiet. It's been almost a dozen years since I put myself out there on the line, not the Internet line but a kitchen line. Things change. Surely I have come to know that much about life.

The rain comes, crazily, pounding, then the rain goes, then comes back again. I wonder if it is the same back at the farmette.

fall chickens

If I move my legs just so, then I will avoid bumping Isis. Wait: Isis has room! Ed isn't here! Isis, move over!
But where's Ed? Downstairs studying. When Ed gets curious about something, he don't let go just because the clock says it's nighttime. So he's reading, Isis is snoring and I'm trying so very hard to get enough sleep to get me through the long and hard Thursday.

A wet and deeply autumnal Thursday.




Early in the morning, I lose myself in my work and before I know it, the clock strikes nine and I'm about to be late for class. So that for the first time this year I need a bailout: Ed, can you give me a ride to work, please?

And I need another boost: there's no hot water, meaning we really did not solve the problem with the water heater by replacing the gas distributor.

Ed works on the water heater and he pulls on some ragged pair of jeans and we're off to my office.

But we get nowhere. His car has a flat tire.

I am reminded of our drive into Barcelona this June when I willed the car with the flat to just roll that  last mile to the rental place (it did not oblige). This time, it struggled and groaned an eventually made it back home, where we switched cars and I got a lift in the old doneky, whose only problem at the moment is that the brake pads need to be replaced.
 


But all this is insignificant. After work, Ed picks me up at work and we go out to dinner. This Saturday he turns 62 and we'll also mark the seventh year of being together. Since I'll be out of town on Saturday, we have this day to stare each other in the eye and remind ourselves how important it is to find the common thread, even though to the casual observer it may appear that there is none.

We head for Brasserie V - a place just a tad outside of downtown. We ate here a number of times in the days when I still lived in Madison. You could say that if ever there was a place that was as familiar to us as the back of my own tea kettle -- this was it.





We sit at the bar -- we like that best -- and we pretend to study the menu, but it's silly, because we're almost always here for the moulles frites (mussels and fries) and we have that tonight as well, along with a shared salad and with those familiar flavors, I sink back in my thoughts to the earlier years, when we weren't quite on board with each others peculiarly different habits. Hey, I was a mere 52 and he was a fresh 55 and if that seems ancient to you, believe me, it's spring chicken stuff if you're now on the up side of 59.

I'm not with Ed this weekend and still, this weekend is in honor of all that we are. Funny how that works sometimes.

travel

As my two kids grew up and became independent, it dawned on me that I could now redirect all saved dollars and cents onto the support of my third child -- travel. A demanding kid, that one. Could suck the last penny from my wallet if I let it. But I was willing. Ever since I was young, I've been restless. Someone who needs to head out and discover new places. I haven't changed.

It's been quiet here, at the farmette this year. Summer came and went, Fall is ticking along and Ed hasn't even had the inclination to head to the north woods, let alone to the coastal states, or anywhere in between or beyond.

We struck a deal. Twice a year we'll take planes, we'll go far. Other times? Probably not. Or at least not with him in tow.


And so those two trips, with a more or less willing traveling companion have become very precious to me. Not surprisingly, therefore, you'll find us at odd hours, including today, before dawn, trying to once again come up with a winter trip that will please us both. In travel, Ed is drawn to adventure in much the same way as I am drawn to a mattress with clean sheets. But where?

In a significant turn of events today, the airfares finally plummeted, but to only one isolated destination in Europe. If we leave at the end of December (it has to be then: early December is set aside for me to visit my father in the 'old country'), we can fly roundtrip to a remote corner of that continent for $550. That's a steal. And so we do it! We purchase the tickets and now it's back to the same old conversation. Can you be a little more adventurous? Can we stay at places with clean sheets? Can I book ahead? Can we be flexible?


In other news -- well, it was a long day of work again and one that unfortunately began swimmingly and ended in a more wet and cold manner. In a burst of optimism, in the morning, I rode Rosie…



(that's the farmette -- in the woody clump behind the fields)


In the course of my time at work, things changed.





And by the time I make my way home, I know only that there isn't a chance in hell that I am going to escape this cloudburst. The rain pounds against my helmet and against my very wet everything else and I can only count the minutes until I am finally...


 


...finally...  home.

Tuesday

Warm, blustery, Rosie weather...


 


... then a rain burst -- oh dear, not so much Rosie weather! -- then a mixed up day of work, lots of that -- it is a full full day, so that I can only appreciate the lovely (and brief) flashes of sunlight from within, looking out on Bascom Mall…






After work, I head for Paul's cafe -- it's been so long! -- but briefly, only briefly, because my daughter and her husband are coming for dinner in place of the Sunday dinners that could not be this month…




And in the midst of all this, Ed finds some good airfares for our winter break, but it's too sudden, too quick so it only excites us, without fulfilling any promises.


After, Ed heads out to play pickup volleyball (but it's the debate! but it's the day I play volleyball!) even as his college bud(s) came over to the farmhouse for the debate and so I set us up for the political theater that is before us this year.


In the midst of all this confusion (and I admit it - it was a confusing day) there is the more predictable: the peaceful moment on Rosie, as I leave the farm in the morning and set out along the familiar and quiet route to town…





And the quick glance toward the back of the farmette where farmer Lee and/or her sister (I can't see their faces from here) are planting garlic...





And all the rest of the lovely little tidbits that didn't quite make it into the camera or into the blog but they surely made it into my day, making it so very very fine, despite the mishmash of this and that and all things in-between.

warmth

After a night of hiding deep under the quilt (reminder: our gas was not flowing adequately and so we were without heat), we spent the morning following the sun around the house. In the early hours, we could not get enough of it here:





Isis joined us (of course). We almost couldn't get ourselves to leave.





But we did leave. Isis reminded us that we have a day to get on with.


 


Ed located a heating and plumbing supply store that actually had the part (the malfunctioning regulator) he needed for the gas pipes. Which relieved me because although the "deregulated" gas was weak and inadequate, I imagined that it could also be out of control too strong at some point. Basically, deregulation scares me.

So we split up the noon hour nicely: I went to yoga (it's always such a beautiful stretch between here and there)...





...and Ed worked on the gas pipes. I was so overheated by the strain of the Vinyasa routines that I almost didn't notice that, when I returned home, the farmhouse was warm again. The fix was successful: the gas is flowing in a controlled manner once more.

I thought about which essential service I'd miss most (should it malfunction) -- gas, electricity, water. Since I've moved to the farmhouse (a year and half ago), we've lost water at Thanksgiving (that included toilet water) and we've had rare, sporadic, tiny outages of power and now, of course, we were, for these two days, without gas. I have to say that had an outage happened in the coldest months, every one of those would feel like a major event. But this morning, as I woke to that cold air just on the other side of the bedcovers, I thought -- not that different from when we camped in October. Cold. But nothing a good quilt can't ward off.


The house is quiet again. As if in repose. And we're quiet too, along with it. Sleepy, Ed tells me. Even though it's barely 8.

Dishes from dinner are long washed, put away. Not a complicated meal. Chickpea tomato stew. With a fried egg on top. Had I the spinach for it, I could have said -- Spanish.  (I'm missing travel just a tiny bit.)

looking out

You folded my laundry? I hear both the gratitude and the accusation in those words.
Yes…
Ed takes pride in looking after his own stuff. Especially laundry, realizing perhaps that, if I lay my hands on it, I may never deliver upstairs some of the most ancient shirts that go through the (equally ancient) machines.

I go back to grading papers, he reads, Isis sleeps. It's not an unusual pattern and you would think that I would feel burdened by it, but it's raining again today, really raining. We have a hard time kicking Isis outdoors to do his stuff.





So it feels rather comfortable and warm to be in the farmhouse in this threesome, with the various agendas before us.
Or, it seemed warm and comfortable (past tense). I pull on a sweatshirt and glance at the thermostat. Hmm. Must be getting ready to click on. I go to the kitchen to finish up a few dishes… Oh oh.
Ed, two things: no warm water and now another issue: no furnace.
This shakes him up and out rather quickly.
Turn on the stove burners. 
Oh, they're really low!
He's on the phone for this one. Low gas pressure. Dwindling pilot lights. A major problem and perhaps (one can hope) not one that belongs to the farmhouse.

The Madison Gas & Electric guy is over and within an hour we think we have a diagnosis (for the curious, it's a failed regulator). Do you carry spare ones? -- Ed asks.
No. And it's not as if they're readily available. At least not the ones that would work here at the farmette.





We call the usual suspects: Menards, Home Depot. Forget it.

So… no heat in the interim?
No heat. Basically, erase anything that requires gas.

It is our good fortune that we've been invited to dinner on this Sunday (by Ed friends, college and thereabouts) -- out at Lake Mills (for non locals -- that's 30 miles east of us: a pleasant drive, especially since the car is warm, even as the scenery today is so... well, brown and gray).


 


Our hosts grill salmon brought down from the state of Washington.






It's perfectly delicious, as is the apple cobbler and for a while I feel that farmhouse issues are nothing more than a good story to laugh over at dinnertime.

But eventually we have to go home. Cold home. With cold showers and cold pots standing on a cold stove.

On the upside, it isn't the coldest outside (upper thirties tonight). And maybe we have finally identified the issue behind our sporadically malfunctioning water heater.  And maybe the furnace will magically fire up again.. tomorrow. Or soon after.

I am always amazed how many things can and do come apart inside a house. Or within a car. Or a scooter, or a bicycle and I am once more grateful that Ed has the time and the ability to work through most any problem that emerges, usually out of the blue, usually when we aren't looking.

soupy wet

Wet, soupy wet. We knew it was coming and we need the rain, but most anyone would prefer that it would come on, say, Monday. Or Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday or Friday.

You get spoiled when the rain is a rarity. Ah yes, another day of partly cloudy skies. So when the clouds hang low, when the hours bring in the drizzle, the wetness, the rain, you almost don't know how to treat this interloper, this storm cloud, this moisture laden weather.

I have four photos for you:

The first -- from early morning. I step outside and look around. It's wet alright. And still, I'm a little curious about a day without sunshine. Walking the farmette I think -- it surely has charm, this Denmark-like weather, no?




The color code is different now. The flowers are insignificant, the leaves are drying out. And still, that old farmhouse glows! Washed by the day's rain, ready for a photo! So, number two:






We spend most of the day indoors. Playing with Isis (that would be Ed; I had work to do). Number three:





There are, too, the exceptional moments: like the hour out on the local tennis court. Ed takes the wrong tennis balls -- the leaden ones that have about as much bounce as I can expect to have at age 100. Still, we volley and he tells me more than once that finally, finally I am improving! I'll take the compliment and ignore the wondrous shake of the head.

The tennis court is wet and Ed throws his shoes to the side and goes barefoot, thinking that this would be an improvement. (Number four.)





To me, it's just a game, a lovely game, in the same way that to Ed it's just a life and to another this would be just a week-end, a wet weekend, one of many.


When the cloud layer gets too heavy and wet to send balls across a tennis net, he and I motorbike home... to an exciting (for me it is that!) evening of roasted brussels sprouts and scrambled eggs. After which, I can hardly stay awake, but I do and we watch somber movies because our stack is short and we haven't picked up newer, lighter fare from the library.