Monday, February 28, 2011

Buttermilk Pie, Neurology, and other Miscellanea

Thank God for Granny's Buttermilk Pie recipe.  I got the stuff to make it yesterday when I braved Wal-Mart, and after tweaking it, I have a new favorite dessert.  There is not one healthful thing in that pie.... It's the only thing I bake that actually uses real butter, but it was in every single way worthy of it. 

Right now, I have the beginnings of a RAGING migraine.  I can feel it cranking up to kick me in the head until I'm in a whimpering ball.  I am hoping the pie will somehow miraculously stave off the pain.  It's a combination of all the wonderful factors that always give me headaches....  The weather is doing stupid stuff, my body is doing stupid stuff, work is full of stupid stuff; combine it, and voila! a perfect storm.

All I have to say is that it had all better enjoy it.  I have an appointment to see a new neurologist, and I think I'm just going to tell him to open it up and take out the offending bits (ha).  In all reality, I'm as happy as a person can be about going to a doctor that I've got this appointment.  I haven't seen a specialist in far too long, and clearly my condition is changing.  I need piece of mind even if there is nothing that can actually be done for my poor aching brain.

There was more I wanted to say, more to tell you about the day, about a poetry contest and my entry therein, about pottery tonight, about all the little trivial nonsense you've come to expect from me, gentle reader, but right now, somebody is gleefully slamming me in the head with a sledgehammer.  I think it's Maxalt time, soon to be followed by falldown and cry time, to be followed by sweet and merciful unconsciousness if there is any justice in the world. 

Sunday, February 27, 2011

The Watchmen

I just watched The Watchmen, and I feel like I need to see it about eight more times to get everything that went on in that movie.  That was an astonishingly complex film, and at 2:30, it was still too short to do everything they tried to do in it.  I know it's from a graphic novel, and I need to just get the graphic novel, I think.  The storyline was so layered and the characters all deep and rich.  The plot and the motivation behind were full.  It went places I both saw coming and at the same time, didn't really expect.  It was very good.  I think I'm going to let it tumble around in my head awhile and then I'll watch it again.  I'm definitely glad I saw it.

Saturday, February 26, 2011

Ag Museum

I went to the Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Museum today with the Nikon as a photo expedition.  I've been wanting to get out somewhere for awhile and shoot some, and this seemed like a good place to go.  I had planned to go last week, but the weather wasn't as good, and I never was able to get up my momentum, so I lost that opportunity.  Today, I was determined, and I was walking out of the house pretty early.

The weather today was absolutely delicious.  When we actually get spring here, it's a gorgeous thing.  All the plants that bloom here are starting to open tentatively, and that hazy green mist that is the breath of the season is hanging in the tops of the trees.  The drive over was mercifully free of psychopaths intent on running me off the road or proving their manliness, so I soaked up the sun and joy of being behind the wheel. 

When I got to the museum, it was early still and mostly empty, and I walked around the collection of old buildings outside shooting whatever caught my eye.  It has been years since I have been there, but the place still brings back memories of Saturday and summer trips with my Granny and Granddaddy.  They'd load my two cousins and me up and take us over for the day, taking us through the inside museum and the outside "small town" I was walking through telling us stories about the things we were seeing since all of it was actually things they knew from personal use.

I gravitated toward the church at the center of the town.  It was quiet and cool, still, despite the increasing foot traffic of parents and small children.  I sat down on a pew and stared up at the complex patterns of board and bat, of arch and beam, that had gone into the construction of that simple country house of worship at some point.  Its crowning glory is a stained glass window of lilies.  I shot it repeatedly, but, as is so often the case when I try to capture something, I never got a good angle on it.  There was a pendant light right in the way, and although I think I tried every angle except for standing on the little piano in the corner, I don't really like any of the pictures of it I took.

After leaving the coolness of the church, I went to the General Store.  I had been thinking about a glass-bottle Coke since I had gotten in the car that morning.  Even though I don't really like Coke because it's so very, very sweet, an ice-cold glass-bottle Coke is something very special.  I used to love getting them in Japan and Thailand.  Here, they are very hard to find.  They, too, bring back memories, places I've been, times long gone.  Today, I enjoyed sitting on the porch in the breeze and drinking that fizzy beverage.  Even though it was a small one, I lingered over it.


The rest of the afternoon was pretty much a wash, but I got what I had wanted at the museum.  Even though the pictures are NOT some of my best by a long, long shot, I feel peaceful and calm just from going and taking them and from the walking with the memories that came from the location.  All in all, it wasn't a bad way to spend a day.

Friday, February 25, 2011

What We Have Here Is....

"I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant." ~ Robert McCloskey

Too Much TopGear, Perhaps

Yesterday, I was teaching Hamlet's To Be or Not to Be Soliloquy, and I compared this parody by Prince Charles

Well, frankly, the problem as I see it at this moment in time is whether I should just lie down under all this hassle and let them walk all over me, or whether I should just say OK, I get the message, and do myself in. I mean, let's face it, I'm in a no-win situation, and quite honestly, I'm so stuffed up to here with the whole stupid mess that I can tell you I've just got a good mind to take the easy way out. That's the bottom line. The only problem is, what happens if I find, when I've bumped myself off, there's some kind of... ah, you know, all that mystical stuff about when you die, you might find you're still - know what I mean?

to the original
To be, or not to be--that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep--
No more--and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep--
To sleep--perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th' unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprise of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action. -- Soft you now,
The fair Ophelia! -- Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remembered. 

I'm rather afraid that after that, in discussion, when we were talking about the purpose of the Crown Prince using the cliche, euphemism, and so forth, I then proceeded to compare the first to a Volkswagen and the second to a Mercedes S-class.   I could feel the hot blood filling my cheeks.  The image of a little Beetle creeping along behind a string of prowling super cars had just filled my head.

Somewhere, Jeremy Clarkson is smiling.....

 

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Tumblr Again

I've added the RSS Feed from my Tumblr, A Perpetual State of Wonder, to this blog.  Now you can get all your Wheaties in one quick one-stop shopping trip.  (Well, if you're exceptionally geekish, that is, or interested in books or Doctor Who or Star Wars or fountain pens or quotes or the Beatles or whatever else happens to be drifting through my Tumblr obsessions at the time....Caveat Emptor.  Don't say you weren't warned.)

Something You Should Always Remember....

"Humor is also a way of saying something serious." ~ T.S. Eliot

Musing

I should be grading.

Instead, I stopped a moment to check in on the electronic universe I'm addicted to fascinated with.  I think after the kind of day/week/month I've had lately, I can take five minutes, right?

I've got Sara Tavares playing in the background, and she always makes me ponder.  Her voice is just something beyond. I've blogged my fascination with her before.  You can search for the entry if you like.  If you haven't heard her, proceed to Grooveshark with all due speed and take a listen to Balance.  It's the one I've got spinning now (if things on iTunes can said to "spin"...my age is showing with my choice of verbs, I suspect). 

Anyway, this isn't what I'm musing over.  I was just looking at this odd mishmash of stuff I have here on the blog: fountain pens and pottery jesters; lunar insanity and crushing despair; road trips and tripping down stairs; flights of fantasy and random nightmares; and I wonder who in the world comes on these disjointed little rambles with me and why.

I know why I'm here.  I write this thing to clear the noise out of my head, to put all the broken pieces on the table and shuffle them around until a pattern appears.  It has always worked better for me; I've always been more faithful to this than to a paper-and-pen journal.  Of course, there are things I cannot say here, certain things I have to code or shield since I'm doing this little soft-shoe in front of a live studio audience....but maybe that's not a bad thing, either.  Maybe the presence of somebody in beyond the footlights keeps me more honest, more thoughtful about what's falling out of my keyboard than I might be otherwise.  Nobody likes to turn out a bad performance, after all, not in front of a paying crowd.....

The sea of essays calls to me.  My five minutes are up, and this particular little frolic has to come to an end.  I'm going to tuck up the corners of my curiosity, fold it neatly, and slide it back in the drawer until there's time for it again.  But as I pick up the pen and turn to the task at hand, I have to admit that on some level I'm still wondering.....

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

The New Old Pen

Saturday, while I was out looking for something to take a picture of, I went to an antique mall I like to poke around in sometimes.  I found a book about Faulkner I've never seen before, enjoyed looking at all the fascinating things, but I was getting ready to leave since I really didn't have much money.  I idly asked the guy behind the counter if they had any fountain pens, rather expecting the answer to be no.

To my surprise, he led me over to a case with a tray of restored pens of various brands, took them out, and left me to look them over while he waited on other customers.  Many of them were unremarkable, plain black resin in various states of repair, nothing striking or memorable.  In the end compartment of the fabric-lined tray, however, shining like a little jewel was a garnet-colored 1940s Chatham with a tag that said it had been restored. 

The color and the unusual basket-weave pattern of the resin caught my attention.  It is a piston-fill, and I don't have any of those, so I was reluctant to get something I would have to fill from the bottle, but the more I looked at it and handled it, the more it felt like something that was a part of me.  I finally decided to buy it.

Today, I inked it for the first time, remembering that it was in my purse and that my Levenger ink was in my school desk.  It writes divinely; the 60-year-old-nib is better than any other that I have.  The color continues to enchant, even more lovely in the light of day than it was in the dimness of the shop.  It pleases me tremendously to have this beautiful old object brought to life in my hands and working at its appointed task once more. 

Another Short Piece of Fiction


Another writing exercise, more's the pity.
____________

You somehow conjured yourself into a random dream the night the blood moon filled the sky, pulling back the shower curtain to climb inside the spray with me.  All things changed.  I could not breathe.  There was too much to see, too much to feel to waste time with such trivial matters as breathing -- the water running in tiny sacred rivers down your shoulders, tributaries branching across the plains of your chest, that nameless something in your eyes as they seek mine.  And then your hand slid through my hair, pulling me against you, erasing the unnecessary and unbearable space between us.  For a moment that hung like a falling star, your mouth remained apart from mine.  Hunger bared its teeth, sharpened its claws.   My trembling fingers slid up to your cheek, over your bottom lip, and with water running like tears down our faces, finally, a kiss….

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Stress Is...

It's that hand in the strings of my soul, winding them casually around careless fingers, idle play that tightens and frays all the cords inside.

It's a four-year-old turned loose on a precise old instrument in a quiet room, pounding away with fists and abandoned glee as the tuning slowly disappears.

It's the feather-light caress of a breeze caused by the whisper-soft touch of paper against paper in a pile high as an elephant's knee and rising like a tide of three-hole-punched-white-and-blue-lined waves coming again and again, endless as any ocean.

It's looking at a calendar with filled with missed deadlines, with other people's urgencies, pencil in hand, trying to make space for what used to be me, what used to be important, and realizing that there is not one millimeter left in which that which was once mine can be wedged in.

It's the precise and deliberate cleaning tool, a subtle knife that trails with loving and careful strokes down me, pairing me away to the essentials, and then rasps those away, too.  I give it life, purpose.  I am its maker, its art.

It's walking across the thin-ice, running-cracked-glass arena floor upon which I perform daily and both praying that I don't slip and somehow desiring that today be the day that it all shatters out from under me and lets me just finally feel the relief of falling free at last, devil-take-the-hindmost and every-man-for-himself.

It's watching with fascination as the machinery is wound and wound and wound, unable for no reason that is understandable to stop turning the key despite knowing what will happen, and still marveling at the musical sound it all makes as gears jam, springs reach their final point of tension, and the unsteady and relentless ticking is finally stilled.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Made with My Own Hands

He's not fired yet, but here is my Jester.  You may have noticed that he is now my new blog icon.  It just felt appropriate.  This is a detail shot taken with Instagram (one of my very favorite iPhone apps; if you don't have it, you should get it) before he was put in the kiln for bisque firing. 

I still haven't decided on a color scheme, but I leaning toward either something very neutral with a brown/bronze hat and black mask for him or a red hat and parti-colored body as an alternative.  I think he'll look good either way, but I don't know which will be better.

Making him has been great fun, so I can't wait to finish him up completely.  When he's totally done, I'll put up another image.  I hope you can suffer through this pride of craft and indulge me in it just a bit longer.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Another by Neruda - Sonnet XVII

One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII

I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,   
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:   
I love you as one loves certain obscure things,   
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries   
the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself,   
and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose   
from the earth lives dimly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,   
I love you directly without problems or pride:
I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love,
except in this form in which I am not nor are you,   
so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,   
so close that your eyes close with my dreams.
Translated by Mark Eisner

Neruda- "Clenched Soul"

We have lost even this twilight.
No one saw us this evening hand in hand
while the blue night dropped on the world.

I have seen from my window
the fiesta of sunset in the distant mountain tops.

Sometimes a piece of sun
burned like a coin in my hand.

I remembered you with my soul clenched
in that sadness of mine that you know.

Where were you then?
Who else was there?
Saying what?
Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly
when I am sad and feel you are far away?

The book fell that always closed at twilight
and my blue sweater rolled like a hurt dog at my feet.

Always, always you recede through the evenings
toward the twilight erasing statues.
 
Translated by W.S. Merwin
 
There is so much beauty here that it actually causes a lovely little pain inside.  

Signs

I went out with my camera yesterday to try to take some pictures.  I couldn't find anywhere to turn my lens.  I drove all over four towns, and I took only four pictures. 

The driving of course was the important part.  Driving clears my head sometimes.  I drove and thought, drove and prayed, looking for a sign about what comes next.  I found myself lost in backstreets that led to unexpected but auspicious places.  I pulled up in parking lots and sat, looked at buildings.

I was looking for a sign.  Well, I guess literally and figuratively, something to photograph and something to guide me, both.  On my way out of one of the towns, I think I saw it.

When I got home, I sent an email to someone I have known for a long time.  I'll see what happens next.  Regardless of the outcome, a curious sense of lightness has come over me.

Friday, February 18, 2011

Optimized for the Mobile World

If you're on a mobile device and everything is suddenly stripped down and you're thinking, What the...yeah, you're in the right place.  Blogger now allows me to optimize this for mobile viewers.  Now you can view my sage ramblings on your iBerries with greater ease.  Or, if you like squinting at the dangerous sheep, you can click at the bottom and look at the regular web view instead....Everybody else, carry on.

Sign, Please

"I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later." ~ Mitch Hedberg

I have to make a decision about something.  I need a sign, something that will help me know that I'm choosing the right thing.  I wish making choices was easier.  I wish I were wiser, that I had more knowledge or sense, more courage or brains or whatever it is that I apparently am lacking....

Wouldn't it be great it life just came with a map or a manual?  I would settle for a "preview of coming attractions" at this moment.  I'm so scared of running away from something I'm supposed to stay with for the wrong reason.  Ridiculously, I'm also afraid that I'm stubbornly clinging to something I should let go of for reasons that are not sound, either.

So what's the answer?  I wish I knew.  Oh, how profoundly I wish that I knew.....

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Run Like Hell

(with apologies to Floyd, the lyrics of whose song have almost nothing to do with this post)

If I could have contrived a way for the marble floors to have opened up and swallowed me, I would have made it happen today.  It started well; I like Thursdays.  I had danish for breakfast.  I had Diet Mountain Dew back in my pantry and fridge.  I was cheerful.  I was listening to the Beatles' blue album.  I got to talk to a friend who, although she's in the same building, I rarely see.

Then it went right straight to hell.

Less and less am I able to put all the pieces back together.  More and more do I believe the bad things.  There's a line in some movie (I have the horrible feeling I'm about to quote Pretty Woman, but I'm not quite sure...) that says something about how people can tell you something good but the bad things are easier to believe.  That's where I am lately.  The bad things keep coming, and even though I'm trying not to gripe and whine (believe it or not, I really am), they keep knocking me to my knees.  It's getting harder and harder to get up.

Today, I didn't even want to.  Staying down seemed both right and good.  If down is where they want me so badly, maybe down is where I am supposed to be. After all, if I get up to fight again, I'm just going to get hit again.  What's the point of that?  It hurts and the effort involved in dragging my bleeding self back to my unsteady feet isn't going to be appreciated by anybody but myself....

When it was over, I sat very still for awhile, just thinking.  A friend came in and we talked.  I gathered my things, and we left, she to her home, I to mine.  I just ran away.  Despite the mountains of things I needed to accomplish, I couldn't do another thing, soul-sick as I am right now.  I'm going to watch a movie, see if there's anything edible in the kitchen, and look for joy in the small things that surround me.  I do know I do have to get myself back up again.  I just don't know how I'm going to do it.

Monday, February 14, 2011

Jester

I'm building probably the best piece I've ever done in pottery right now.  I finished up the handbuild tonight; he is now drying.  Next week, I'll see if I can clean the greenware piece without doing damage.  I'll take a picture when I get it cleaned before it goes into the kiln.  I can't help but be proud of it.  It's worlds away from the little cat I have here on the shelf of my living room, yet they are related. 

I love hand building more every time I sit down to do it.  It is so satisfying to see the whimsies of my mind come to life by the effort of my hands. 

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Now We Are 35

Maybe that quote doesn't really work when you're not 10 anymore....

I woke up feeling so cheerful and happy.  I don't know if it's just because it's my birthday or if it's something else altogether.  Whatever it is, I hope it lasts. 

I've had birthday greetings coming in via text and FaceBook since just before midnight last night.  It's meant so much to me that people have taken the time to drop me a note.  Some of my former students have said very sweet things, better really than any gift.  It's nice to know they remember me, that what I gave them is still something they value.

Today itself was a wonderful day.  I slept late, had lunch at Olive Garden with my parents (eggplant Parmesan...yay,yay,yay), and then my Mom and I went junkin'.  I found a beautiful wooden box for my handkerchiefs and a couple of other things as well.  Mom took a picture of me in a silly hat at the antique mall. It has been a thoroughly peaceful day. 

Tomorrow will be a return to "the real world."  I'm going to fight to hold on to this feeling though.  Maybe it's finally mine for keeps.

Saturday, February 12, 2011

The Birthday Indulgences, 2011 Edition

In a few hours, I will be 35.  God.  How did that happen?

I'm sort of excited about this birthday.  It's weird.  Usually I get in a grim black funk about them or have a moment of introspection and move on, but for this one, I kind of want to go to a place that does the whole sombrero on the head thing and make them sing to me.  It's odd.

Thirty-five.  Half my life, realistically.  I should be in a navel-gazing cloud of despair over all I haven't done, over where I am now, blah-blah-blah, but instead, for no good reason, I'm sort of giggling and amused.  In four hours, I will quite officially "no longer be young," if ever I was.

Since I instituted the "Week of Senseless Indulgences" a few years ago to fend off birthday blues, I have carefully plotted and planned to make sure I have neat things near my birthday.  This year, I think I outdid myself. Of course, I have my earrings which were my big gift to myself this year, but I also went to the Eudora Welty conference Friday, something I always enjoy, and that intellectual stimulation made me feel like a person with a brain again instead of a dead teacher minion.

After the conference, I went to Target and just wandered up and down the aisles, on nobody's timetable but my own.  I bought myself my favorite type of pencil, the gravity-feed Dr. Grip (if you don't have one, you need one and can get one or at least take a look at the specs on one by clicking on the helpful Amazon box at the left....they're a little hard to find....), and a Beatles t-shirt.  I got a new scented candle for my classroom.  Little things.  Little things.

I finally remembered to return two movies to NetFlix that I've had forever, and I took the time to watch two more that I've wanted to see for a long time.  It's been nice to have something not a rerun to watch in the evenings.  

Today, I went back to Jackson to see my best friend for the first time since school started.  We went to MugShots and had big, unhealthy burgers laden with blue cheese.  We roamed around Pier1 and the Craftsmen's Guild Center.  It was a good day.  More little things.

Tomorrow, on the actual day, I think Mom and Dad are going to take me out to eat, and we'll get to spend time together.  Mom said something about going junkin', and there's a show at the Riley Center I might try to pick up a ticket for if I feel like it and there are any left.

Little things.  Little things.

Maybe I shouldn't keep all these little things bottled up for just this time in February. Maybe I should focus on trying to have every week, every month be filled with Senseless Indulgences.  Life would certainly be a lot more pleasant if I did....  Something to think about as I start the second half of my life, perhaps.

Wednesday, February 09, 2011

Snow

We may or may not have snow tonight.  Some flakes are falling now, but after all the recent cries of Wolf, I am something of a skeptic.  I will believe in the whiteness when I see the whiteness. 

It would be nice to have.  We haven't had snow in a long time, not a real snowfall.  I'd love to get out and take snow pictures now that I have a good camera.  The last pictures I took were just with my iPhone.
 
I miss the snow from Indiana.  I have crazy memories of a huge mass of graduate students, a bunch of cheap sleds bought at KMart, and a big snowy hill....  Of course, I also have not-so-happy memories of creeping across campus trying not to be the obligatory student-on-his/her-backside on the ice-slicked sidewalks since no salt could be used on IU's campus...  It wasn't funny to see somebody's legs go flying out from under them after you had it happen to you once.

As I listen to the icy drops click against the window, I wonder what my world will look like tomorrow.  I wonder if I'll have to go to work.  I guess all the mysteries will be revealed soon enough.

Tuesday, February 08, 2011

Heard on the Radio

"Jesus loves you, so I'm gonna, too.  Here's a CD."  ~ DJ on Air1 in reference to the idea that this Valentine's Day we should attempt to focus on loving those around us who get on our nerves or who are generally "unloveable" and find real ways to show it. 

It made me smile.  Then it made me think.

Sunday, February 06, 2011

Recipes

We were headed out of my great-aunt's funeral when my aunt asked me if I had my Granny's recipe box.  It's a small wooden card file that she kept handwritten and clipped recipes in.  I do.  It's the source of her homemade macaroni and cheese recipe and the rice pudding recipe I pull when I feel bad and want something not at all healthy but deeply comforting.  My uncle wanted a cake he remembered Granny making, an apricot nectar cake, and she asked me to look for the recipe. 

Today I got around to looking for it.  After a day of cleaning in an attempt to try to bring some order to the neverending landslide of chaos with which I seem to be surrounded at all times, I opened the cabinet, took out the little brown wood box , and sat down in a chair in the living room to look for the requested article.  There are probably more than a hundred recipes in the box, and there is some order, but not a great deal, to them.  Granny's neatly typed cards are in with irregularly sized pieces of yellowed newpaper clipped from the EMEPA newsletter or the local daily paper. 

As I flipped through them with the tips of my finger, I saw recipes from other members of my family, many of them gone now, from members of my community, the august ladies of the church, and I smiled as I thought of those women and those particular dishes.  They were famous for some of those dishes.  Whenever we had a churchwide fellowship or a family reunion, they could always be counted on to bring those specialties. 

I don't cook like that.  Few women of my generation do,  I think.  It's not that I can't cook; I have the skills.  It's that I rarely take the time needed to assemble the ingredients, use the machinery, do all the intermediary steps that produce the glorious final results.  Looking through the box made me sad, and not only for the lost ladies.  I always miss them.  It made me sad for the way I live.  Even though I choose it for its convenience in my hectic and tiring life, sometimes I can't help but think "modern convenience" has lost something in its microwave translation. 

I typed up the recipe for Apricot Nectar Cake, converting the old Underwood print to modern fonts and a Word document, but I also pulled three or four others and typed them up, too, one for the barbeque chicken I remember her making in her crockpot, one for the buttermilk pie I love and can't get anywhere else, and one for the self-crusting fruit cobblers which are the fastest and simplest of all the Southern desserts.  All of the recipes I chose are easy, all should mix up quick, and I think that all of them will yield leftovers for days and days.  I am going to try to blend in a little of what's in that little brown box and see if I can't take some of that pride those ladies had back into the preparation of meals.  It seems too important a thing to leave undone.

Saturday, February 05, 2011

Luxuries

This morning, for the first time in more than a week, I feel good.  Really, really good. 

I still have on one of my favorite pair of snuggly flannel pajamas and am buried under a warm fuzzy red blanket on the couch.  Pearl, my big grey cat, is curled up on the back of the couch half-asleep.  TopGear is on TV, and the weather outside is cold and uninviting but the sun is trying to peek out. 

Unintentionally, I slept 12 hours last night.  I sort of dozed off watching TV sometime after nine and woke up about two, went to bed properly and slept until nine again.  I think I woke up around 5:45, just my mind checking to see if it was a school day, but I dozed back off.  Apparently, a feast of sleep is what my body needed. 

I suppose, too, it could have been the good meal I had last night, nothing microwaved or fast food.  Or the chocolate.  I got a box of Belgian chocolate at Tuesday Morning when I was there buying a suitcase yesterday, and it may be the best chocolate I've ever had.  I don't know why this particular batch is so good, but I had some last night, and it made me very happy. 

In a little while, I will get up, take a long hot shower, put on my favorite worn pair of jeans, a tshirt that makes me laugh, some Chucks, eat a chicken salad sandwich, grab my camera, and go junkin.   Or maybe I'll brave the crowds at Wal-Mart to get supplies.  Even that doesn't seem onerous today.

I know these little luxuries don't rate very high on anybody else's list, but they sure are going a long way toward making me feel good just now.

Two Thoughts about History

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." ~ Voltaire

"History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind." ~ Edward Gibbon

Cause and effect?

Friday, February 04, 2011

Waxwings

I was grading during my planning period when my colleague from across the hall stuck her head in and told me to open my blinds and look at the tree just outside my window.  She said, "I know you'll want to see them.  They're like Christmas ornaments...."  The cedar waxwings were making their annual stopover in the cherry tree that marks the changing seasons in stately grace within touching distance from my classroom windows.

There were probably more than a hundred of them.  They were busily stripping the tiny berries from the tree, twittering in that squeaky, rusty hinge noise they have, hopping and gliding, and largely taking no notice of anyone, especially me behind my pane of glass.  I stood and watched them for a long time.  I love all birds, but their particular beauty caught me today, their feisty little crest, their charming black mask, the sulfur yellow dipped tip of their long graceful tails, in such sharp contrast to the tranquil colors of their bodies, and there, just at the tip of their wings, a tiny shocking splash of scarlet, almost like random drops from a trailing paintbrush. 

A couple of them seemed to be watching me watch them, tiny heads turning in bemused curiosity as I tried to get my iPhone to focus on them.  I had started to take the Nikon to school this morning as I need to take a photo or two of the National Honor Society for the yearbook, but since the weather was despicable, I decided not to take it out into all that nasty slush.  I was kicking myself for not obeying that impulse as I watched the tiny feathery clowns preen and pose in the water-draped branches of the tree.  Everywhere I looked, there was a picture. 

I will take my camera Monday even though I know they probably will already be gone on their way.  Who knows what else might appear that I will regret not being able to save and share?  At least I have the waxwings in my memory.  I can save them there if nowhere else.

Thursday, February 03, 2011

Good Things

School was dismissed about 1:00 because of foul weather. Because the students left early, I got to eat lunch by myself in the privacy of my own room.  I didn't have to go through the ordeal of sitting through the Hell of 3rd Lunch as I've come to think of it counting the minutes until I could run away to freedom.  I turned on some Ella Fitzgerald on iTunes, ate my chicken salad sandwich, and read an article on MentalFloss.com.  It was surprisingly sweet.

After a slickish drive home, I checked the mail early, but there was nothing there.  I waited until near dark, went out to put my car under the shed, and took the opportunity to surreptitiously drive back down to the mailbox.  I had to take my MagLight and use it like a club to break open the rime of ice that was sealing the box shut, but inside was the newsletter from my power company and the package holding my diamond earrings made by Artifactum.

They're lovely.  Really, really lovely.  The diamonds in them may not be worth a lot (or they may, what the hell do I know?), but I love the way they look.  They are the perfect size, and they will easily go with things that are simple or fancy.  I am extremely happy with them.

My fountain pen is here, too.  It came the day of the massive migraine, so I haven't written about it yet.  I've been cheering myself up with it for the past two days.  It's a gorgeous thing, cream with deep purple and hints of chocolate swirling through it.  I find myself just sort of picking it up and absently running it through my fingers, watching the light play on the resin.  It's ridiculously lovely.  Beautiful, well-made, practical things that one can use everyday; there really are not enough of these items in the world.

My other good thing is not an object at all, but rather a long-hoped-for opportunity.  I found out that I'm going to be able to do something I've wanted to do for a very long time, and while I won't talk much about it here right now, it represents a professional step forward for me as well.  It makes me feel valued and valuable, maybe a little bit like the rough diamonds in my ears.

Maybe tonight, then, I won't have nightmares.  I can only think of one thing that would be better than the things I've put here now, and that, unfortunately, is not possible in any way at all.  I will settle for the happinesses I have been blessed with.  They are bountiful enough right now.

Disquiet

I woke up to the sound of strong winds at two a.m from bad dreams.  My grandmother was in the hospital again, and so was I.  Granny was trying to tell me something important, and we kept being wheeled down those horrible anonymous and endless hospital corridors.  I do not remember what it was we said; as always with this dream, I keep thinking that I should remember, that it was important. 

This is probably just the product of my stupid brain trying to cope mixed with the death of my great-aunt, one of Granny's sisters, last Friday.  I don't know.  All I know is that I'm tired. 

Tuesday, February 01, 2011

Migraine and Rain

It started out as stressful Tuesday.  Everything blew up, got lost, ran out, shut down, and wasn't ready this morning.  My head started hurting before school started, but because it was a low-grade pain, I ignored it thinking that it would loosen up as the day went on. You really would think I'd know better by now, wouldn't you?

A missed planning period kept the pressure twisting, and outside, the weather patterns were shifting into something horrible.  By the time we got to the end of third period, the pain was intense.  I tried using acupressure points, lowering the temperature, and so forth, but nothing did any good. Fourth period came in, got settled, and I took a Maxalt. 

Usually Maxalt will stop migraines for me.  It has been very effective.  Today, however, it did nothing.  It could have been peppermint for all the good it did me.  I was doubled over and crying by the middle of the period.  I've never had that happen in class.  The students in that tiny little class cut the lights off, and I sent one to go get my administrator.  I called somebody to come get me, and I started packing up.  I had to leave.

My advisory class came in and it was terrible.  The lights were cut back on.  One of the kids actually said that he was glad I had a headache so they didn't have to write an essay today.  I know they're young, but really, how insensitive can a person be?  There I was with pain so bad I couldn't see, and then there was that...

I wound up being sort of half-carried downstairs by the nurse and security to sit in the nurse's office and wait for my ride.  I napped until he could get there, and then I finally got home.  I took a phenergan and slept for six hours.  Now I'm up to eat dinner, etc. The pain is finally gone. 

My doctor is finally going to refer me out to another neurologist.  I don't know that there is anything that can be done, really, but after seeing the non-existent thing on the floor last month and this now, I think I need to get the gray matter checked out.  That probably means a wonderful trip into the claustrophobia-inducing MRI hellbox, but I'm just not going to think about that right now.  They can just drug me well and do what they need to.