January 20th

Teary and weary. That's how someone described his feelings today. I like that phrase. It describes one set of emotions. I could, of course, add so many more!

We wake up to happy, snappy cold and glorious sunshine! Good morning, new day!

Somewhere in there we eat breakfast. With the TV on.

It's a perfect day for baking (TV stays on!) and I reach for a recipe that makes use of one of the many squashes I'm keeping in the mudroom, leftover from my CSA deliveries. The recipe comes from pastry chef Nicole Rucker and has the lengthy name of "Kabocha, Olive Oil and Bittersweet Chocolate Cake."

First, you roast the kabocha squash:

Then you puree, sift, stir, mix and bake:

I''ll keep a small end for us and take the rest to the young family. Call it a January 20th cake!

But before I drive over with it, I have my weekly FaceTime meetup with Snowdrop.

Happy girl. I'm sure it's for all the reasons we are happy in life: warm house, caring people, good food, and sunshine pouring into your living space.

(A chance to also catch up with mom...)

Delivery time! I get a thumbs up for the cake. Or is it a sweet bread? A sweet loaf.

Very late in the day, I make myself a little lunch. I mention this because my cake people suggested that if you have extra squash pureed, set it aside for later: it's great spread on a piece of toast. And they are right. It is!

Later, toward evening, Ed and I go out to ski. One must! 

 

 

 

 

And we have the trail to ourselves. This is no surprise: the wind is absolutely fierce. Do I notice? Do I care? No!

When things begin to look hopeful, a cold wind slides into irrelevance. It just doesn't matter -- the day is that good!

(as the sun sets...)

 

 

 

Easy supper of eggs and smoked salmon. I have to admit it -- it's one of my favorite light meals. With asparagus maybe and also lots of sauteed mushrooms. And a salad. So simple, so good for the soul. On a day that also has, despite everything, many elements that are so very good for the soul.

Tuesday - 312th

A huge day, a good day, a day filled with hope and love.

First of all there is the date: my younger girl was born on this day many many years ago! I could tell you all the ways in which I love that girl, but I don't think I need to do that: you will have guessed much of it over many Ocean posts! However, I will allow myself a tiny nostalgic flashback to when she was still young, college age maybe and she was the most perfect traveling companion. Each year she picked the destination and the two of us would set off. One year, she picked Morocco. 

The two of us traveled by train from Casablanca to Marrakech and if she felt any trepidation (on this or any other of our trips), she did not let on. Always calm, collected, rising to the occasion, always with an eye toward all things beautiful, be it the Majorelle Gardens or in our exquisite Riad El Fenn, where we escaped to in the hot afternoon hours of each day. 

On one such quiet siesta period, I dumped all my dirty travel clothes into the sink and proceeded to do a massive handwashing operation. Within the hour our beautiful room was covered with undergarments and dripping sundresses. My daughter looked with horror at the transformed space. 

Are you going to leave the clothes like that? -- she asked.

Surprised, I nodded my head. They're drying.

But mom, look at this beautiful room! It looks... not good.

And that's so like her! To question the inappropriate, the unfair, the pushing and shoving, the pomposity and in your face arrogance, the chaos, the lack of attention to style. That's her, walking the streets of Paris at age seven with carefully tied bows on her black shoes, picked by her for the occasion. That's her with the sensitive heart, always holding me back in crowded streets so that I wouldn't get in someone's way. That's her looking at the beautiful room in Marrakech and letting me know that respect for your surroundings matters.

Happy, happy birthday, little one!

(from our travels to Paris when she was a very young teen...)

 

 

 

 

(from today! three generations in one frame!)

 

 

 

Other reasons to be chipper and cheerful today: the sun peeked out, as promised. Faintly, but with a suggestion that tomorrow it will be on full display.

(morning walk was on the cloudy side, and be afternoon, it began to snow...)

Breakfast was good, too, though I warned Ed that Dance better keep her nose out of my plate or else, she's out!

 

And then, as I once again turned to scrubbing groceries, I hear the news, great news, fantastic for us news: Wisconsin will begin (true, the emphasis is on the word begin) vaccinating my demographic starting next week. 

I cannot wait.

So, good day, sweet day, nice day. Once again, with gratitude and hope.

And love.

Monday - 311th

Let's take a pause from gloomy gray days, please! Not that a warm glow hasn't filled the farmhouse -- it has. A candle burns from breakfast until bedtime. The kitchen table is full of color.

But I feel for all who live their waking hours outdoors. It can't be fun.

So again -- please, may we have some sunshine tomorrow? I mean, it's my younger girl's birthday -- she more than deserves it. A tiny bit? Okay, I'll settle for a tiny bit. If you promise you'll deliver a blast of the real deal the day after that, because you know, we're entering a new era. So, with sunshine, okay? Thank you.

Now back to the gray skies and the cold, sunless skies of today. A perfect day for writing and I do write, or not really write, but edit poorly written sentences. Which is like digging out the rotten spots on a piece of squash before you cut it up and put it in the oven.

(My mind is on squash because I'm roasting some for tonight's dinner.)

Near evening, Ed and I take a walk. Very reluctantly. Remember, we are in a gray and cold world right now. He suggests the Nature Conservancy trail, just for a change. A short drive and we are there.

Perhaps the nicest thing about it is that it is completely empty. And the sky has a fleeting moment of great beauty -- a rip in the clouds...

But it's icy and when we walk down to the wetlands it's well, even more icy. And as Ed put it -- surely devoid of any photographable landscape. Unless you're an Ansel Adams or some such talent.

On the drive back, we pause to watch the cattle huddle by the hay bales.

 

 

Are the cattle cold? They seem not too happy with the weather... Sunshine, my dears! This week you'll get sunshine! For sure.

Sunday - 310th

 To get real sensual pleasure out of a meal, an evening, a moment in time, don't you think it's important to create in your mind an image of something beautiful, exceeding perhaps the reality that you have before you? I mean, that's what I do, after all, when I burn a candle with a delicate (and it must be very delicate) fragrance of pine: a kind of magic is triggered by it, where suddenly you can feel yourself to be transported. It's only a candle, but it feels like you've just stepped out of a warm log cabin, after a fitting, breakfast into the forest of tall pines.

Or how about this: I picked up (yesterday, at the curbside farmers market) a container of honey from B's Honeys. I've liked her honeys (and corn!) for years. But I don't really go out of my way to purchase a special honey these days. There are a lot of good ones made locally and this year alone I've bought honey from both Matt (Blue Valley) and Bill (Snug Haven). Both were excellent. Still, I saw that the beekeeper was listing a Pumpkin Honey, and she described it thus: pumpkin honey has a clean fresh taste with a fruity finish. Tremendous with berries and apples. Pairs well with blue cheese... and so on. Into the shopping cart it went!

Matt and Bill laughed at my excitement. We all know that the bees were not confined to a pumpkin patch for the production of the honey. But, there must have been a moment when they buzzed their way through blooming pumpkin flowers and the image is so profoundly satisfying that today, at breakfast...

... I have a contentedness about me that surely can be attributed to that honey on the table and the evocative, sensual idea of a bee in a field of blooming pumpkins. And yes, in fact, it is singularly delicious.

Of course, it is Sunday and so the morning meal is late. Today's walk to feed the animals was normal enough...

(Once again, cloudy skies, with an occasional insignificant sprinkle of snow. And cold.)

But then there was a grocery delivery and once you're sifting and sorting through stuff, well, the morning sort of runs away from you.

 

It's Sunday and so inevitably I will spend a big chunk of the day in the kitchen. I had asked the young family what I should bake for them and the first to answer was Snowdrop: chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting! 

I have just the recipe for this! When my girls were young, they, too picked cupcakes more often that I can county and because it's 2021 it's easy to track down (via the internet) just about anything you did way back when and so I find our old favorite recipe (Maida Heatter -- the dessert genius of yore). I used it a lot because it would satisfy an adult palate as well: dark chocolate, with an intense chocolate ganache on top.

Today, I add a child's decoration, just because I want to do everything I can to make these kids smile.

In between the baking and the cooking, Ed and I do a loop on skis in the county park. It's not easy to be out now: everything is icy and slick! Still, we ski.

And in the evening, I get to see the kids for just a few secs as I deliver the foods for them. It's greatly satisfying to see the little one jump for joy. I'm sure it's on account of the sprinkles.

Evening quiet. There's still a lot of uncertainty out there in the real world of real facts and unknown variables. But maybe slowly we'll come to a point where it's all manageable and fine again. We live with hope.

And love.

Saturday - 309th

Well that was painful! In moving ahead with the rewrite (of my manuscript), I got stumped on a page that described one important period in my early high school years. I felt that the writing on this page was lackluster and I couldn't quite put my finger on what felt incomplete. I went down to the basement and dug out diaries I had written in the time.

I'd kept a journal, with pauses, but pretty consistently for nearly forty years, beginning at age 11. The last three decades of writing were the most detailed and intense, but I also found them to be the most insufferably nauseating and so I threw the batch of them out into a trash bin. Right by Bagels Forever on University Avenue. But I did keep the ones from the first decade, and to help myself get out of the stall on this unfortunate page, I decided to read a little from this period.

Painful, I tell you! I just kept thinking -- that girl needs help! 

None of the details came as a surprise. I have a pretty good memory of those years and my journal writing, such as it was, confirmed what I already had in my storehouse of recollections. But the angst! Oh, the angst! The inability to step outside myself, to reach beyond those adolescent emotions! When you are a teen, and out and about, you walk and talk like a fully formed person, but don't let it fool you! That's just the veneer. Dig a little and you'll find a jumble of crazy thoughts and outsized feelings. Really awful stuff. Once again I'm thinking I should dump the whole bunch of books out. No one should read this stuff ever again. But then I remember that I have grandkids and that sometimes it's very hard to put yourself inside the mind and heart of a little one and maybe it's good to keep some of this raw stuff, horrible as it is, as a peek into the soul of a young person who is still trying, with a lot of desperation, to figure things out in life.

Not to say you ever figure things out in life, but surely you get closer to a reasonable perspective once you jump out of those early, formative years.

It's a gray day once more and the only good thing I can say about that is that we are owed some sunshine big time! And when it comes back to brighten the landscape, there shall be rejoicing in this household!

In the meantime, I spend my morning outdoor time helping chickens cross the road. Or path, really,

Once again, they are undecided as to where they should hang out and what they should do with their time.

Breakfast.

I lose myself so much in my writing/editing, that I do not pay attention to the passage of time until the phone rings and a very patient farmer reminds me that I need to pick-up my order at the farmers market between 10:30 and 12:30 and we are now at 12:25.

Let me explain: Bill and Judy, the farmers who have for years supplied us with winter hoop grown spinach (through their Sung Haven CSA), inserted into their last delivery a bunch of carrots that were honestly the best I'd ever eaten. Young, sweet, delicious. I gave some to Snowdrop and her family and they got devoured very quickly. So quickly that my daughter never even saw them. So I asked if I could buy more and Bill reminded me that some of the farmers continue to sell their stuff over at MadisonFarmersUnite.com. You put in your online order by Thursday, pay by card, and pick it up at one of the local businesses that hosts the deliveries on Saturday. Curbside carrots, here we come!

Except then Saturday came and I was writing and I forgot. But never mind -- the call comes and I run to the car and drive (way too fast) to Lakeside Street Cafe, the place of my pick-up. As I get out of the car, Bill and Matt (another favorite farmer, from Blue Valley Gardens) come out with my bag of stuff (I added garlic and pumpkin honey to the order) and suddenly things feel so social: there I am, by (if not inside) the coffee shop where Snowdrop and I have munched on a million scones and cookies, and there are Bill and Matt, friends really, chatting, catching up on the last months, laughing too and I think -- wow! This is what we've been missing all these months! Real people contact!

Suddenly, the day does not seem so gray anymore. Even though it really is gray and just a degree too warm, so that the snow base is getting smaller and smaller...

Ed and I coax ourselves out for a walk. We must. It's 2021 after all! Hail the new ye! ...falalalala lalalala. 

We walk just in the development next to us and there's hail alright -- of the icy kind. Sleet, really. But we persevere. And are rewarded with that feeling of accomplishment: it was awful out there, but we survived!

We end the day with a real burst of color: I text my daughter, asking how Primrose is faring. I get a FaceTime  response. Here, the picture says it all. (Photo credit: dad)

 

Gloomy weather outside? Oh really? Didn't notice!

Friday - 308th

Win a little, lose a little. We gain two inches of snow, but a light warming trend (just a step above freezing) means we lose some snow too. I'd call this an undecided, unsettled kind of day. Ask the cheepers!

Breakfast is good, peaceful, lovely in fact...

Then I thought I might as well go out on the roof again and shovel away those two extra snow inches. I know, I wasn't going to do that any more (so slippery!), but the idea of more light in the kitchen is so appealing...

Then and only then do I sit down to write. And as I work through some paragraphs, I think about some of the people who crop up in them. People who, by now, have completely exited from my life. Wouldn't it be totally weird (or maybe interesting!) if I sent them a note?

It seems to me that we have our good friends and our grand family members and these are all so beloved and fine, but then there are people who have passed through your life and for a brief moment they really had a huge impact, before moving on into the sunset. I should think most would not know that you once cared, and maybe some might not even remember you and yet you hold them in such high regard...

But why bother contacting them many decades later? Cindy Hellerstein whom I knew for two months, at age 8, Danuta Lipicka when I was 13 -- long ago episodes of brief intense friendship. Shouldn't they now be left alone?

I vote yes. No need to take them away from their childhood wonderfulness. Let them remain the stars that they once were.

 

Late afternoon ski run, in our local park. Slick, a little wet, empty.

Chili for supper. I'm still using last season's tomatoes! 2019, plucked in the year of great innocence! Weren't we all so much younger then?! 

With love...

Thursday - 307th

Cloudy with a threat of storms. There, does that sound like a day you'd like to spend outside? Oh, I have nothing against snow storms. In fact, since retirement (to say nothing of isolation), I have to admit to liking them. And we need to keep that snow base thick and packed if Ed and I are to continue skiing. But, we are hovering just at freezing, and if I'm reading the weather maps correctly, we're likely to get some drizzle and ice before we get to the snow part. So, yukky weather, at least for the bulk of the day.

Does that mean we are housebound once again?  No it does not. We simply flip the day, giving ourselves an outing early, right after my walk to feed the animals...

(the cheepers are totally confused as to how to treat this day: out of the barn, back to the barn, out again... what's a chicken to do???)

 

... and of course, after breakfast.

And in fact, preparing breakfast gives me an idea: I have all this beautiful fruit right now. Wouldn't it be good to drop some over at my daughter's house? Sure, she has fruits too, but I have these fantastic strawberries (it's rare to have fantastic strawberries in January) and remarkable CSA carrots! I prepare a plate...

... and Ed and I drive it over to their place (the sitter is in charge)...

(I'm not sure Sparrow is thrilled with these seconds-long through the door visits!)

And after, we drive over to the nearby Owen Woods for a short hike. It's a nice change from our usual.

By late morning, we are home again and I retreat to my writing. For a few hours. And then I pause. If a storm is coming, I should at least try to get the last storm's snow load off the porch roof. It can't be too hard, right?

I climb out the bathroom window onto the roof, shovel in hand and immediately I can tell this is not my best idea. The snow is wet and heavy and the glass below is as slick as I've seen it. The only way I can keep from crashing down in a slip and slide is if I balance on the inch-wide strips of wood between the glass panes.Impossible? No, not that, but difficult. After two slips (but no fall!) I almost give up. But, I'm up there, I may as well persevere.

And now that I am safely back on the couch, I can say I'm glad I did it. The kitchen is always that much brighter with the porch roof cleared. Too, if the pileup is too great, it stays there and stays there and stays there, all the way til the end of March. But, the writing mood passed and I am left once more to piddling my way through the rest of the afternoon.

Here's a very welcome interruption!

A sweet and wonderful cap, or almost cap to the evening. It can't be all good news all the time, can it.. I have a message from someone I care deeply about of a COVID exposure, so that's on my mind. But of course, in some way, it's on all our minds as we count the days until all this is behind us.

With love...

Wednesday - 306th

I had decided that one day of the week has to be a grab-bag-of-stuff day. A little of this, a little of that. Throw it in, pile it on. Otherwise, tasks accumulate, the car gas tank empties out, dust gathers. And, importantly, visits with grandkids (over Zoom) are tougher to coordinate. So I set aside Wednesdays for everything that has piled up and also as the day when I can touch base (over Zoom) with Snowdrop.

Initially, I had thought that I would use this time to give her a chance to vent, complain, act out, do whatever it is that she wants to do to let off steam. But, it surely appeared to me that her steam levels are okay! No need to act out. The smile is there, our visit is sweet.

All this came later. In the morning, there was breakfast...

Followed by a lengthy writing session in a coffee shop atmosphere. Meaning there is a low buzz of noise in the background as Ed and I keep an eye on Congressional hearings shown live on our TV screen. It's funny how in general, I cannot write when there are noises and movements in the farmhouse. Ed taps a couch and I look up, train of thought interrupted. The phone rings for him? I lose my concentration. But Congressional hearings? Coffee shop noise. No problem.

After my hour-long chat with Snowdrop, I do the rest of Wednesday chores. Including picking up spinach from our CSA delivery site.

(lovely views on the drive there: snow on fields of corn, geese, and a disappearing sun.)

 

 

I wanted to use this outing to put myself on city streets once again. Perhaps take a walk along the lesser lake, which is quite close to my spinach pickup. It isn't a great day for a walk. We are just above freezing and there is an occasional drizzle. Yuk. Moreover, I am spoiled by the emptiness of park trails. There are too many people on city streets and way too many of them are without masks. 

Instead of my city saunter, I pause the car just before reaching home. How about at least a thousand or two steps in the far reaches of the undeveloped-as-yet new development? It's pretty now, at the time of sunset. And quiet.

Later still I bake a frittata. Spinach, mushrooms, potato, cheese.  A  wonderful dish for a winter day that seems otherwise to be a little too damp, too gray, too dark too early.

Twinkling porch lights, a soft, ever so light fragrance of pine from my candle, a warmth that feels so good on a yukky weather day.

Tuesday - 305th

Two competing sides, presenting strong arguments, fighting for scarce resources.  So which side should win?

The first says -- what a beautiful day! Seize it. Go outside and collect your vitamin D. Sunshine has been rare this month. When it delivers winter blue skies and a sheen and sparkle to the snowy fields, we should be right out there, taking it all in.

(It doesn't quite start out sunny: it's a misty morning, but with promise.)

("What's our game plan for today? Barn? Venture out?")

(Ed comes down for breakfast, but is then called away to a work issue. Still, we overlap a little.)

The second side says: you got a good start on doing a final rewrite of your book. There will be sunshine in future days, but you have struggled to immerse yourself in this project for years now. You've immersed yourself yesterday -- return to it while the going's good. 

So who does win? Where would you place your bets?

Ah, the art of compromise... In the end, I return to the rewrite. I am so darn focused on getting it done that I will not make excuses for myself. It's now or never! At the same time, a late afternoon saunter on skis can still be accommodated. And not just your single loop in the county park...

We fit two loops in! We are richly rewarded: at around 3, those who wanted to ski or hike in sunshine will have done so already, at the same time that the dog walkers are not yet out there for their pre-dusk walk. And so we have this corner of the park to ourselves.

And it's beautiful.

(close up...)

(Driving home, pausing to say hi to our friends...)

So compromise is possible and in the end both sides win. How about that. Who would have guessed that sometimes, you can have your cake and wolf it down too. A smaller portion perhaps, but it's there, to be divided, a wee piece for one, a wee piece for the other. Yum.