Monday

So let's get organized! Laundry done, suitcase out. Nothing in it yet, but we'll get to that. Chicago baby still hanging in there, squashing mommy's belly, giving me time to attend to things here. 

What else? Christmas wrapping? Later. I'll get to it later.

How about Ed's top choice: clearing out "clutter."

I can't believe I am actually giving in to this crazy obsession of Ed's to empty out all living spaces around him, but I figure it's for the good of the earth and humanity, so I indulge him and we begin the (odious, according to me) task of either selling or Goodwilling stuff that hasn't been in use for the last handful of years. Sentimental value? What's that? We're dealing with purity of space and mind here. Stuff has little value, right? (I am a little forcing myself to believe this, but it is true that, in theory at least, I will always opt for minimalist over cluttered.)

But breakfast comes first.

And a walk over a windy and frozen outdoor land.

Evening: all right, we Craigslisted a half a dozen items (toys, camera, millions of CDs -- that kind of stuff), and packed into the trunk of Ed's car miscellaneous dust collecting stuff for Goodwill. But guess what I'm not giving away? The mug, the tea towel and the Christmas tree! Mine, forever!

Sunday

I'm to go to Chicago no sooner and no later than when my younger girl goes into labor. That means that I have to be ready to sprint and ready to be away for a while. Everything I do now is with the thought that it may be interrupted.

And I am interrupted this morning. Not by my pregnant daughter, but by the grandkids in town who really, really want to come over.

The day is set.

But my thoughts run to the past. To the years when I was a graduate student at the University of Chicago (sociology, but I never wrote the dissertation that would have netted me my PhD). 

I had a quirky group of smart friends then. Few of them wound up doing conventional tenure track sociology at some prestigious university (well, my then husband did, but he was not really part of my set). One such quirky guy was Steve. He was funny and brilliant and he was the first openly gay friend I had. (I'd arrived from Poland just two years earlier and believe me, in those days, if you were gay in Poland, you did not disclose it, possibly not even to yourself.) Along with another friend, who herself was omnisexual (a category that I definitely knew nothing about), we formed a very fun trio of friends. 

But it didn't last. I left it all and moved to Madison with my then husband who got a job here and I chucked sociology (hence the unfinished dissertation) in favor of law school. I tend to take five minutes to make life altering decisions, both in terms of career and life partners. Had there been email then, I would have stayed in touch, I'm sure of it. But, letter writing wasn't a thing with us and long distance phone calls were expensive (remember those days?)! Besides, I was struggling to be a good cook, a present and caring parent and partner, and a faculty member at the law school. My focus had shifted.

Steve died last night. I got an email from a mutual friend telling me about it. Cancer.  I hadn't spoken to Steve since I stopped attending sociology conventions (some 40 years) and yet it was a real gut punch. It made me think about all the quirky friends I had over my adult life. The sets I joined, then left. The years of being intimately connected to Madison's Latin American musicians. Other years where I hung out with L'Etoile's restaurant crew late into the night finishing bottles of wine customers had had uncorked but never finished. All these friends had no connection to each other. They stayed in their own sets and I was the interloper. No one minded the presence of an outsider. And me -- I was mesmerized by the views into these other lives.

This is what I talked to Ed about over breakfast this morning. It's our ongoing conversation about how to both appreciate and work around differences between people who, like us, seemingly have nothing in common.

I speculated if maybe us immigrants who have switched cultures have an easier time of it with moving between new environments. We don't need the comfort of the same people around us all the time. Academics who mingle with academics, machinists who stick with other machinists. (I say this having been married to an academic and now having entered the world of machinists and machine designing through Ed.) My Polish friends, with rare exception, are equally entrenched in their world of economics and academia. How does it happen that we limit ourselves in this way? That we pick friends not because they're funny or clever or good cooks and talented musicians, or even just good pals, but because they do the same set of tasks as we do?

Anyway, I miss Steve and I wish I had written to him and let him know that he was a very important person in my life and that he made my graduate school years sparkle.

 

 

In the afternoon the kids are here. 

 

 

And in the evening, the parents and Sandpiper join us all...

... for dinner.

First Arctic blast coming at us tomorrow. Get ready for it!

night and day

 Let me start off with my hyggelig moment (my Danish speaking friend tells me that Hyggelig is the adjective form of hygge).

It's nearly dusk and I am lost in reflection on the last 24 hours. It's been intense. 

Last night, as some of you who read Ocean on the early side may have noticed, image loading was disabled on my blog. After all these years of blogging and many many episodes of software or computer malfunction, I've learned the protocol: when something is not working, you erase cookies, reboot your computer, try a different browser, try a different computer, google the issue on the internet to see if anyone else is experiencing the same problem, and finally, only then, call -- Ed!

The trouble is that Ed and I were in the thick of a rather difficult moment (the holidays seem to bring this out: penetrating discussions about the fundamentals of our daily life together). We put it aside to try to resolve the blog photos issue. We tried everything, he tried everything, finally, well after midnight, we gave up. Only to return to our penetrating discussion about the fundamentals of our daily life together -- a conversation that basically took up much of the night. It's not something he enjoys, but I view it as essential. You need to put labels on things, and explain them to each other, and come together (or not) on some happy path forward. 

We finally fell asleep at around 6 a.m. and of course, I was up soon after because I had a date with the grandkids to bake cookies.

I rushed to get things ready. I mean, I was a speed demon!

I thought I would be tired, but somehow all that expression of inner most thoughts seems to have been good for me because that and the presence of these wonderful two kids absolutely lifted me to places where tiredness does not exist!

Here's our cookie baking morning and early afternoon:

(arrival)

 

(ready to roll)

I remembered several things about cookie baking: the "natural" sugars and coloring agents are tame in color. Unless you pour it on, you'll get pastels rather than eye popping color. Which, to me, is a very good thing! A gentle blue on the snowflake. A quiet green (or pink!) on the tree. Soft, not brash. 

(tasting chocolate sprinkles)

And cooking times can be way off if you roll out a thicker cookie dough than the 1/8 inch you're instructed to produce. (When you bake with a three year old, you need a cookie that is slightly less fragile than the 1/8 incher.) What was to be a baking time of 12-15 minutes produced a cookie that clearly looked like it hadn't been in the sun long enough. Another 10 minutes still did not produce the golden glow at the edges. So you need time and patience.

Sprinkles go on prior to the bake, frosting goes on after. More sprinkles can be added to a frosted cookie of course. (Sparrow is working through color combinations...)

The kids were so excited and happy that there was plenty of patience to go around. Time? Not so much. Snowdrop had a violin lesson later in the afternoon and we needed to be done by then. (Who knew that cookie baking and decorating would take more than three hours??)

Finally, if you are going to put your own frosting into little jars for squeeze-decorating, well then someone has to stand there and force feed that frosting into the little opening of the little jar. And squeezing it back out is going to require strong little hands!

(Thanks, Ed for helping with this part!)

 

 

 

 

 

In the end, we produced several dozen of credible Christmas cookies! The kids were soooo proud!

(first batch)

(Ed took this one...)

(...and this one)

And after I dropped one child off here and the other one off there, I came home and I put up the final tree decoration -- the star, made of grape vines, and sat down to exhale and reflect. And the tree looked so beautiful and my day felt so full and rich.

holiday flowers

At this time of the year, I see the proliferation of so called Christmas flowers: the Christmas cactus, paper whites, amaryllis -- often thought of as a lily, a Christmas lily, even though it has no relation to a true lilium. I like them, but they each present a challenge: the Christmas cactus often chooses to bloom in November or March, so you have to be vigilant and manipulative to get it to flower in December. The paper whites can grow tall and keel over. The Amaryllis has both problems: hard to time a bloom and it can plop down if it's tall and unsupported. 

This year, I replaced my ancient Christmas cactus and sure enough, the new one is entering a period of full bloom early. By Christmas it may well be done for the season.

Still, it's an easy care burst of color at a time when it's hard to find much color in growing things. So, thanks, little plant on the kitchen table!

 

 

And speaking of plants, I am back to adjusting the Christmas tree. It's a never ending project! I bet you didn't notice that I doubled the lights today. That's okay, I noticed. Much better. I'm still waiting for the twig star for its top. Maybe this weekend. 

And one more comment on the subject of color: I finally took on the holiday project of baking cookies with the kids. (We have a baking date set for tomorrow.) I resisted it in the past for the very simple reason that others were happy to bake with them. This was just fine with me: I don't like baking things that I dont find yummy and cookies with lots of sugar and glaze and color always seemed to me a bit over the top. Shhh! Dont tell the kids I said that.) But I was intrigued by a recipe for sugar cookies that promised a good taste (by Alison Roman in the NYT). Fine, let's do it! I supplied myself with "natural dyes" and sprinkles and sugars that didn't list ingredients you'd be terrified to ingest. I'm not a fanatic about this stuff -- I eat plenty of junk with suspect ingredients when I'm out and about or traveling. What you don't see wont hurt you! But if I'm going to be the baker here, I prefer to use stuff that hasn't been grown mostly in a laboratory.

My errands this afternoon included finding a bake shop where I could find naturally dyed red sprinkles. (Please stop laughing at me... we all have our ridiculous moments!)

While on the subject of sweet stuff -- I also made my second and final visit to Clasen's bakery, and no, I don't care what they put into their chocolate covered gingerbread -- it's all good! (Why final trip? Well, the chocolate covered gingerbread can really break your budget. But, it's a December luxury that I love.)

 

 

 

I then picked up Snowdrop and we went shopping for her mom's Christmas present. She'd been bugging me about it for many days. So we went and no, you can't see or hear what she got. We are full of secrets! (One tiny hint, we are in a store that has a Christmas tree in it.)

 

Then farmhouse, and their house, and farmhouse once again. That's the routine. 

 (read)

 

 

(wrap present)

 

 

(at home, take one)

 

 

(at home, take two)

 

 

... Even as Ed is grumbling with his most grinch-like expression (too much clutter: it interferes with his peace of mind). No matter. I'll never change. I'll always love the lights on a Christmas tree. 

(Early Ocean readers: Blogger fixed picture loading glitch! I filled in the missing pics this morning.)

not all turtles are bears

You know, perhaps, that nearly all bears den up for the winter (the exception being bears who live in climates where the winter doesn't stand in their way for getting food -- Mexican black bears, for example). In Wisconsin, there's no easy winter. And bears are not the only ones digging in to go without food or water in the dead of the cold season. Turtles found in this climate also slow down and burrow in wetland locations. They cant breathe underwater, but they have a complicated way of getting air to keep them alive (through their butts). They don't necessarily sleep, but they stay in this inactive state until spring. They have the capacity to stay that way for up to eight months.

This is why Ed and I were surprised to see a turtle sunning herself on a tree limb jutting out of the pond at our favorite county park up the road.

Shouldn't she be burrowed and asleep? Perhaps we should not expect all turtles to be like bears.

Or all partners in life to follow some basic partner protocol of behavior.

Perhaps there will always be the outlier, sunning her (or him)self in December even as the rest are long dug into the muddy wetlands. 

I think of Ed oftentimes as that solitary turtle who refuses to acknowledge that December (and all that it implies) is here. 

 

 

He has his own radar. His own internal compass. It underwent one cosmic (for him) adjustment when I came into his life, but that was it. I can expect that how he is today or tomorrow will not change. Oh, a tweak here or there. But at the core, he is his own turtle and this particular turtle is not going to be a bear, even if all the turtles on the planet are long in their deep sleep mode, much as can be said of the bears.

In the afternoon, I pick up Snowdrop at school and we do what we did three weeks ago: I take her home...

 

 

 

(Hi, Sandpiper!)

 

 

 

... and her dad drives her to Pope Elementary, where kids are getting their second shot of the Covid vaccine. I follow and wait for her to come out.

Afterwards, happy and excited, she comes back with me to the farmhouse (where she immediately points out all the new ornaments on the tree).

In the evening, I take her back home

(As always, I see her brothers in and around pick up/drop off times at their house.)

And back at the farmhouse, I cook up a sweet potato, corn and jalapeno bisque. Perhaps you saw the recipe in the Washington Post. We had about four pounds of sweet potatoes left over from our CSA veggie box and it was a good use of them. And as Ed said -- it was very filling. And spicy. And I probably wont go out of my way to make it again because there are too many fantastic soups out there to cook up on a cold winter night, so why waste time on one that's fine but not great?

Now, back to a little wrapping and a lot of admiring of the Christmas tree!

 

 

the grumpy and the smiling

Happy December!

What, you think that this is completely inappropriate, given that the world is falling apart around us and everything is crashing into an abyss of horror? Well, all true. Nonetheless, let me put it out there: let's aim for a happy December.

Here, at the farmette, we are working on just that. With some success some of the time. For example when we are not reading the news or when I am not playing Christmas music without earbuds.

No sooner had I written here, on Ocean, that Ed was an utter angel with respect to the holidays, than I noticed the slow crawl toward the grumps on his part. It may have been the result of me launching the Great Christmas Wrapping Project. Stuff covering the floor, chaos everywhere. And of course, I need music to wrap. (Though I did use headphones so no complaints allowed!) Or maybe it was that I asked his advice on scheduling the next surgical dental procedure. We don't tend to ask for, or offer advice, so he got a little discombobulated over that one. Or maybe it was that I did not want to go for a long hike. I have too much to do here. I can't take the time to go to Brooklyn Wildlife. (Instead, we did walk locally, in a city park. It was too close to the highway. So -- loud.) 

Or maybe it was that I got grumpy first. Momentarily. But he caught me at it and said -- take a deep breath. I know this time of the year can be stressful. Then he went back to idly browsing his computer.

The fact is, that December is not stressful, it is beautiful. I then made the mistake of trying to convince him of it. There is Ed, with his very idiosyncratic belief systems and then, additionally, there is a type -- a species of human that refuses to feel joyful in the weeks leading up to the holidays. This type will come back to work after Christmas and say things like -- I'm sure glad that's behind us! All that work!  Even as they are rarely that household member who does most (any?) of the holiday work. 

So we had to put in a little effort to combat grumpiness. Starting right at breakfast time.  

 

Dance, please! Do not disturb the puzzle! I'm just getting the border finished!

In the afternoon, any dumb irritants faded. I got my box of glass ornaments from 32 North and they were beautiful! Here, I'll show you some tree improvements! Scandinavia meets central Europe.

Now of course, the tree, to me, feels very underlit. I'll redo the lights on Friday! (Insert either smile or eye roll emoji here, depending...)

Still, it is very very beautiful. 

 

 

 

And here, in case you too are fighting a wave of no-good-reason grumpiness, throw a glance at this article in the New Yorker. I did not get all the subtexts in it, but most of them did make me smile. It has come to this: the pandemic has been with us for so long, that we are already able to laugh at ourselves within it. Not at everything, but at least around the edges. And I think that is probably a good thing.

Now, back to my wrapping. With a smile and with love.