Bon Appetit, Christmas Eve, Orangette, Peppermint Bark
In dark by five, showers, snowy on December 24, 2008 at 11:35 pm
Tonight we’re making peppermint bark in anticipation for Christmas Day. Molly from Orangette is crazy about Bon Appetit’s version, and I’m taking a break from smashing up candy canes to post. It will be dark in an hour, and later we’ll sit down to cider-braised pork and cumin sweet potatoes and persimmon pudding.
Something about the holidays makes me want to write about food instead of weather, which has been so exciting lately it’s surprisingly hard to choose where to begin. Cross your fingers for a white Christmas.
December, fall, thundersnow
In chilly, dark by five, foggy, freezing, post-autumnal equinox, showers, snowy on December 19, 2008 at 12:57 am
Thundersnow hit the city around 5:30 this morning, which was about the same time I realized this thing about being family.
D has a chest cold. He’s all coughs and sighs, and I was up and down with him all night. At one point in the early morning, I thought about how as a kid my mom would sit with me all night when I was sick. I’d always felt a mix of love and chagrin back then, when I was the taker.
And now I’m understanding, being in that role of caregiver to D, that sitting up through the night is such a simple, even good, practice. I know someone well enough to tell you when he’s asleep and breathing clouds or kicking through water. It’s a pleasure.
While I was thinking about this, I jumped. A huge clash of thunder shook the bed. I went to the window to look out and all at once I was a wounder, a wanderer, and a healer.
Cliff Mass, December, fall, KUOW, The Weather of the Pacific Northwest
In chilly, cloudy, dark by five on December 10, 2008 at 3:09 am
Northwest weather is a real shape-shifter. Sometimes she’s green-tumbed and vital. Other times, she’s like a rubber band around a water balloon. A prickly pear.
I heard weather writer Cliff Mass interviewed by Steve Scher on KUOW recently and now I can’t stop reading his blog. I keep scribbling down notes about particular causes and effects of weather in Washington State. He talks about storm watching, predicting the waves and swell. And also about a rare but true green flash that is sometimes visible for a few seconds when cooler air travels over warmer water.
With everything being so unstable across the planet, it’s easy to see why it’s hard to stop reading Mr. Mass. Just last week he said we’re in store for a wetter, cooler pattern in the weeks ahead. And he was spot on.
Buy Nothing Day, fall, November
In chilly, cloudy, dark by five, showers on November 28, 2008 at 6:14 pm
It’s Buy Nothing Day, which this year feels farther away and just plain sadder than ever. The day after Thanksgiving—when all we want to hear is save your health, save your house, save your leftovers—and all we get is a gaggle of Kohls employees, sleepy from opening for a line of three people at 4 a.m., half-assed mouthing spend spend spend.
Oh Christ, pop in and I’ll fix us all a giant fruit salad with berries we picked and apples we plucked.
And you can turn us around, from the mall towards the water in a fleet of white hot air balloons.
fall, November, Thanksgiving
In chilly, cloudy, dark by five, showers on November 26, 2008 at 1:50 am
Last night, I had a nightmare about this grizzly old duplex that sits on our street in Capitol Hill that the city finally knocked down yesterday. I dreamt that its remains stretched into a track of wood and stone, thickening towards my building and rising into an arc to just under my open window. Suddenly an old landlord crawled up the pile and through the screen, looking venomous.
I was so used to walking past the duplex when it was still in tact, held together with a million band-aids, that it got to the point where I stopped noticing that it existed.
I’m realizing that this is the exact opposite of the kind of people we should like to become—ones who get so used to what’s wrong that we forget how to start over. Like a slap on the wrist or a tiny pinch, we need something to tell us that being healthy is better than being sleepy.
Rooting out old fear kept inside of even older parts of our heads, in spite of the fact that nobody’s buying Baby ballet shoes this year.
fall, November, Thanksgiving
In chilly, dark by five, sunny on November 25, 2008 at 5:46 am
On my best behavior, I read from the Book of Hours. I’ve marked the page where a Benedictine writes:
“Pour into us now, O most loving one, the gift of eternal grace, so that, by the misfortunes of new deception, old error may not destroy us.”
fall, November, Saint Gertrude
In chilly, cloudy, dark by five, still bright foilage on November 19, 2008 at 2:30 am
It was this time of year when a house I rented with friends really came alive. With rats. It was a big 1920’s Craftsman near Greenlake with a drafty crawl space in the basement. Having always lived in old houses I should have known that there was a real risk of the place having rodents. It sat close to a string of restaurants and a grocery store and was blocks from the water. But before this house I hadn’t dealt with anything larger than mice–cute as they are creepy–and never dreamed of living with their big brothers.
I should have been pleading with Saint Gertrude for help the whole time. She’s the patron saint of suriphobia—the fear of rodents.
By the time I was packing up the kitchen and moving out the next summer, a long list of rat stories had unfolded. The rats had been quiet for some time, likely traipsing across the yard in the warm summer weather. Exterminators and dozens of traps later, it had gotten to the point where I knew I was cohabitating with the rodents instead of getting close to actually beating them. And as a result, the rats were gracious, for the most part keeping out of food and sight. But when I left I knew that really, the rats had won.
I opened a cupboard and grabbed a stack of plates to wrap in newspaper. And there it was, this perfect pellet dropped on the center of the top plate. Sort of like the rat was giving me the finger as a farewell.
