Fatuous Observations

Weekday Pleasures

2013-05-20T08:32:00.000-04:00

I've always liked Mondays. They're a fresh start and a return to the comforting daily round. When I was at home full time with my children, I hated weekends. Jon often had to work, and weekends, alone with small children, are so much more difficult than weekdays. Now I work in the nine-to-five world and I've found myself living for the weekend. Jon is about to start a new, normal business hours job, which means for the first time in our twenty-one year marriage, we will both be off every weekend. (Also, for the first time ever, we will both have all the holidays off. Imagine you or your spouse working Christmas and/or Thanksgiving and all the minor holidays. That has been our life for the past twenty-one years.) It will be nice, but I'd like to correct my current attitude that there's nothing to celebrate about the work week.

Anyway, this weekend was dull. It mostly rained, and the house had that icky, sticky feel it gets during damp weather. It was graduation weekend, so it was necessary to either hide in the house, or get caught up among hordes of UVA people.

On the plus side, for dinner Sunday, we had a delicious Indian spinach-peanut-curry soup from the Cabagetown Cafe cookbook and homemade naan bread. Also, this semolina cake.

It's an Italian dessert, and I found the recipe on pinterest. You cook a porridge of semolina and milk, add almond meal, sugar, lemon zest and eggs. Bake. Dust with powdered sugar. It's a custardy cake, not very sweet. Would probably be delicious with fresh raspberries. I like this sort of plain, virtuous cake that can stand alone without frosting. Still, I wouldn't go rushing out to buy semolina just to make this. (I happened to have some on hand.)

Now it is Monday again. I resolved to do two things: accomplish something at home every day, so I don't feel pressured to do everything on the weekend, and enjoy the pleasures specific to the weekday. What might these be?

Blissfully relaxing at home after a day's work.
No pressure to go out in the evening. On the weekend, one feels bored and unhappy at home in the evening. During the week, one wants to stay in.
Mornings before work: I get up extra early so I can have time to myself to drink coffee, read, catch up on blogs. I love my early mornings.
Walking to work. I love listening to my ipod and walking the two miles to work. I walk home too, but I don't enjoy it because I'm tired and there are more asshole drivers in the afternoon.
Work itself. I can't say it's all fun and games, but it's usually pleasant to be there and I have my cozy workday rituals: tea at 11:00, occasional trips to the Corner Cup for a mocha. If I plan carefully, I can run to the Alderman library, check out a few books and be back at my desk in my allotted half hour lunch.
Fun stuff on the internet. More blog posts to read, more chatter and gossip than on the weekends.
Anticipation of the weekend. I'm trying to enjoy the week, but the building anticipation, once Monday and Tuesday are out of the way, is enjoyable in its own way. I doubt I will ever find anything nice to say about late Friday afternoon meetings.

What do you like about weekdays?

Friday Reading Assignment: Cookbooks

2013-05-17T09:01:00.003-04:00

Raise your hand if you like to read cookbooks! Barbara Pym's novels have many references to characters who soothe themselves to sleep by reading "cookery" books, and it's true that reading a good cookbook is an easy way to arrive at a happy place. Not all cookbooks make good reading, and I haven't noticed any correlation between a cookbook's readability and the quality of its recipes. Here are a few of my favorites.

My most frequently used cookbooks

The Cabbagetown Cafe Cookbook by Julie Jordan. Recipes from a vegetarian restaurant in Ithaca, New York. A fascinating glimpse at What Hippies Ate, circa 1972. Many of the recipes are associated with different people who worked at the cafe over the years and are punctuated with anecdotes (but not too many anecdotes). Everything that can be made with flour is made with whole wheat flour. Every recipe that is sweetened is sweetened with honey. (The desserts are terrible.) Butter and cheese are added lavishly wherever possible. You'll find yourself rolling your eyes, but that's part of the fun, and the "Wings of Life" salad recipe is worth the price of the book.

Good Things in England by Florence White. Written in 1932, a compilation of classic English recipes and domestic lore.

The Settlement Cookbook by Simon Kander. This cookbook has been reprinted many times, with the first edition published in the early 20th century. I believe it was intended to be a resource for new immigrants to the United States. I bought the 1976 edition for Brigid when she asked for a good, basic cookbook, and I read it cover to cover before giving it to her. It has a great menu planning chart and is the mother lode of thrifty recipes. I loved it because reading it was like reliving my childhood and my mother's cooking, although she did not own this book herself. (We were a Fannie Farmer family.)

More with Less Cookbook by Doris Janzen Longacre. A thoughtful collection of simple, thrifty recipes. I read it years ago, from the library and I feel like this is one book I need to own. It's companion, Living More with Less is a guide to simple living--one that doesn't involve consuming more in order to live simply as promoted in a certain notorious magazine.

Anything by Elizabeth David. Her "cookbooks" are histories of food and this is a fascinating subject for me. She writes with a certain authority. If Elizabeth David prescribes a method for making say, lentil soup, then that is the method you should use. The end.

English Food by Jane Grigson. Like Good Things in England, above, but with more lore.

The Tasha Tudor Cookbook: Recipes and Reminiscences from Corgi Cottage by Tasha Tudor One reads this one for the pictures. This is also my go-to cookbook for traditional recipes. It wouldn't be Thanksgiving without Tudor's "rolls for special occasions." I am a huge fan of Tasha Tudor's insistence on creating an 1830's life for herself in the twentieth century. I was very sorry when she died.

Home Cooking and More Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin. The ultimate, all-time best cookbooks for readers. Reading Laurie Colwin is like having a conversation with your best friend. She's funny and warm and understanding and she also points you in the direction of many more good cookbooks. Her recipes are good too. If you'll forgive the self-promotion, I'll just mention that one of my favorite posts compares Laurie Colwin to Martha Stewart.

I know you are all wondering, WHAT ABOUT GWYNETH? I haven't read her cookbooks, but I would check them out of the library just for the lolz.

Disingenuous garden tour

2013-05-15T08:13:00.000-04:00

I complain incessantly about how awful my garden looks, and now I am going to show you some photos in which it doesn't look all that bad, which may cause you to suspect me of humble bragging. Just keep in mind that it's only May and the poke weed and trumpet vine are not out yet.

The garden used to be a wondrous place but after fourteen years of my bungling, only the hardiest plants have survived. I'm making an effort now, but once summer comes, it will be a lot more important to not step on a wasps' nest than to keep the poke weed under control.

Here's a tour, going counterclockwise around the perimeter of our city lot. If you're really interested in seeing the details, click on the photos to enlarge them.

Far back corner. This bed is mostly shaded. Planted here are coral bells (hidden behind trashy wood slabs) Japanese painted fern, black cohosh (good for women's troubles; my midwife made me drink it when I was in labor with Seamus) and something that I think the previous owner told me are anemones. She implied that they are fragile, but they have survived my neglect more sturdily than just about every other plant. They produce pink and white flowers at the end of summer. The lily of the valley and Jack-in-the-pulpit that once lived here are dead.

The next bed: blue spikes are ajuga. There are also a few day lilies here, rudbekia, and a cheerful yellow flower called a sun drop. Also heavily infested with wild strawberry and ground ivy.

The rescued garden. I took this picture before planting tomatoes and habanero peppers. Those are stray rudbekia along the wall.

This bed is day lilies with a small clump of sedums. Once upon a time it also held wild foxglove. Poke weed alert on the right.

More ajuga, a Virginia sweet spire, and an inconvenient dogwood, which seeded itself from our next-door neighbor's tree. Inconvenient, because much as I love dogwoods, this one is growing up from the middle of the sweet spire. They're like conjoined twins. Separating them would probably kill one or both, and the dogwood is already a good twelve feet tall. Hidden behind the sweet spire is an enormous hydrangea. Our friend's girlfriend, a gardener at UVA, on seeing the robust hydrangea, said, "I bet all you do is breathe on it." Not even that, actually, although once I fed it some Holly Tone, which turned the flowers pink. I prefer blue hydrangeas, so we don't feed it any more.

Side yard. Tulips in the foreground and mint. That's a peony poking up among the daffodils. Unfortunately, it doesn't get any sun during what must be a critical infancy stage, so it doesn't flower very well. The year I carefully tied back the daffodil stems and watered the peony with bunny-dropping tea, I managed to get two blooms. Also in this bed, Siberian iris, which I prefer to bearded iris, and a flower I haven't identified. There's a close up below. It's another flower that has thrived through my neglect. We mourn the pretty blue flax and the pink dianthus that used to grow here.

Who can identify this silvery white flower?

The "waste bed." Where the previous owners tossed all their extra day lilies and vinca. Did you know that an anti neoplastic agent is made from vinca? It's called vincristine and it's used for leukemia.

That's a bleeding heart and something with big waxy leaves the produces a sort of bloom in December. Also, a Solomon's Seal (I think) and hidden behind the bleeding heart, a primrose and a hosta.

This bed will be overrun with mint soon. I have tried and tried and tried to get foxgloves to grow against the wall, without success.

Butterfly bush and spider wort. This bed used to also have a riot of candy tuft and blue globe thistle.

Rhododendron and a crepe myrtle in front.

Lettuce.

Continuing up the other side, rose of Sharon, sedums, and a sad, sad lilac. Jon transplanted it here from the front yard. We hoped the additional sun exposure would help it along, but it hasn't grown an inch or produced a flower for as long as we've lived here.

My bunny-fed rose. (Bunny fed because I planted it with George's droppings, which I used to collect and distribute to plants that needed care.) It's a not-fancy, old fashioned variety that I bought at Cville market. I'm proud of it because it's one of the few things I've planted that has lived for longer than two years. (The others being the butterfly bush, primrose, and hosta in front.)

This bed used to be bee balm and purple cone flower. Now in the grip of a particularly malevolent trumpet vine. I find it hard to believe that people actually plant them on purpose.

Figs.

An early fig.

I think this is a Russian sage.

Probably the worst bed of all. It once had more varied perennials than all the other beds: lady's mantle, oriental poppy, Joe Pye weed, rose mallow, black and blue cohosh, ferns, phlox, butterfly weed, daisies, and others. Now it's mostly poke weed as big as small trees. Boxwoods, transplanted from the front yard in the background. We have long term plans to build a studio here.

Allspice bush, which brings us full circle. It has a lovely, spicy smell in the autumn.

In the middle of the yard are plantings grouped around the deck: Russian kiwi, clematis, and bright orange polka dotted lilies that grow taller than my head. They're like fake flowers on a 1930's movie set.

The previous owners thought it was romantic to have day lilies growing up between the steps. We don't agree, but as much as I hack at these, they always come back.

Our plants have always bloomed a few weeks later than others in C'ville. We seem to be in a tiny cool spot. Cold air sinks, and it's a fact that hollows like ours will have frost when slightly higher areas don't. For years, I've observed that we will have frost on our grass, and the next door neighbors, slightly higher on the hill, do not. We had a frost on Monday night when the rest of the neighborhood did not.

I'm happy to see that the family of bunnies survived the winter. Twice now, I've seen a baby bunny, nearly spherical because his ears haven't grown yet, playing near the rose bush. When I went to get a closer look, he darted under the deck stairs and quivered there, apparently unaware that his bottom was sticking out of his hiding place. We hope to see Trevor the sociable toad, or his offspring soon too.

Oatmeal! Canisters!

2013-05-13T08:52:00.001-04:00

In 1997, I had an epiphany. My mother had just died of cancer, my sister had just been diagnosed with cancer, Ian had a new heart murmur, Grace, who was an infant, was failing to gain weight, and Brigid had developed terrifying asthma.* Jon worked twelve hour shifts on the weekends, so I'd spent Mother's day alone with three children under the age of four. It was one of the most stressful times of my entire life. The next day I was at a friend's house, listening to her rant about her disastrous Mother's Day in which they'd had to spend Sunday afternoon visiting her mother-in-law and how her husband, who should have devoted two full days to her had selfishly chosen to visit his own mother and thus, her "Mother's Day weekend experience" was ruined.

Mother's Day weekend experience? FUCK. YOU. I was smarting from guilt because a year earlier, my mother had spent her last mother's day alive babysitting for me so that I could go to an adults-only party with Jon's family. (None of us knew she she was sick then.) I realized that Mother's Day sets us up for failure, by raising expectations and entitlements and tossing chains of guilt around us all. I decided to set myself and my children free and ban all Mother's Day observance.

Except not, because it's impossible to ignore and even though I tell myself it's a day like any other, I find myself suppressing, "Really? On Mother's Day?" type thoughts when everyday conflicts and issues crop up. But I really do try not to have expectations. Ordinary days are really the best days.

What did we do this fine weekend of ordinary days? Friday night we went with our neighbors for a beer to The Farm and later put in an appearance at Friday's after five where we met Jon's brother who was in town, packing up our nephew from his first year at UVA. We finished off the night with a drink at Ten.

Saturday afternoon I went to Fifth Season, ostensibly to buy tomato stakes. I had no idea they have a nursery out back! It's also the mother lode of canning, cheese making, and beer brewing supplies. I left with the stakes and two astilbes, a wide-mouth funnel and canning rack, and a giant canister which now stores our sugar. Isn't it glorious?

A five pound bag would get lost in here

Why, when sugar and flour come in five pound bags, are canisters so small? For twenty-one years, I've been pouring partial five-pound bags into my inadequate sugar canister and leaving the half-empty bag in the cupboard until there was room in the canister for it. I have a similar problem with oatmeal, so as soon as I have time I'm going back for another one. Years ago, I bought a canister that holds fifteen pounds of flour and I still consider it one of my all-time best purchases. Suspect I have passed a blogger threshold in photographing my canisters and in shamelessly using mention of oatmeal as an SEO.

Seamus obliged me by taking pictures of the canister shelf at Williams Sonoma when we were in Short Pump on Sunday. Paltry. Serious cooks need serious food storage.

Back to Saturday: Seamus made us Alice Waters' Bolognese sauce for dinner on and Jon and I went out for martinis later that night. Sunday afternoon we drove to Richmond to collect Brigid, who will be with us all week until the summer semester starts, which I would consider an awesome Mother's Day present, were I to celebrate it, which I don't, and yet, seem to anyway, at least a tiny bit.

Here's a picture of my mom in 1970 (in the middle) looking groovy with her sister and sister-in-law in the matching skirts that my grandmother crocheted for them.

*My sister was cured, Ian's heart murmur turned out to be harmless, Grace eventually began to gain weight, although it took months to get her back on track, and Brigid's asthma became less severe as she grew, although for many years, we traveled everywhere with a nebulizer.

Trying to achieve respectability

2013-05-06T07:08:00.000-04:00

Friday evening we had an official meeting (as opposed to casual mentions over beers) with contractors. We're hoping to paint the exterior house, replace a damaged soffit, install new gutters and squirrel-proof attic vents, and possibly restore our front door.

I am especially excited about the door. It's over 100 years old and has been clawed to shit by the dogs--both ours and the previous owners--and one of Seamus' friends shot a bb through the largest glass pane and we haven't gotten around to fixing it. (We were forced to put a new pane in one of the sidelights after one of the kids hurled a shoe through it.) I am hoping they will take it away to a magical workshop and dip it in stripper and remove the superfluous lock and lovingly fill in all the claw marks with wood putty and paint it a gleaming white and deliver it home in pristine condition.

Dog claw marks + useless lock

The contractors went all over the house. I balked a bit when they wanted to see the basement, but was told, "If we're working on it, we get to see it all." They didn't seem to think it was as bad I thought, although there was a festival of fiberglass insulation all over the floor, which definitely had not been there the last time I visited. I had horrifying visions of rodents scrabbling under the floors, but then remembered that Jon had torn it down the day of the kitchen pipe explosion. (It had been dripping into the the circuit breaker box.) They remarked on the mystery machine, which is still entrenched, although last summer the air conditioner repairman kindly pushed it upright so it is no longer blocking the doorway.

For the exterior paint, we want yellow. Not an anemic "Ryan homes" yellow, but a strong, golden yellow with crisp white trim. We saw many good examples of this color in Lisbon.

Yellow House in the Distance

And a couple in our neighborhood.

This yellow is the perfect yellow

I asked the contractors if our house could ever be rescued from its current shabby state. "It'll be the nicest house on the street," they said. So we went out for martinis to celebrate. Saturday I got to the farmer's market early, ahead of the kinfolk hipsters and the Hateful Yuppie Families. I bought a few more plants, as well as local strawberries and eggs and a bunch of asparagus that became a transcendent creamy lemon/asparagus pasta for dinner.

I put all my plants in: tomatoes and habaneros into the old vegetable plot that I'm trying to save and some perennials into the beds in front. At the nursery this week, I found two little cone shaped boxwoods that will be transplanted into elegant planters. The guy at the nursery told me that they could grow in containers and that I would have "total control" over their size and shape. His words were confident, but his voice was less so.

Since this has degenerated into a "what I did on the weekend" post, I'll just conclude by telling you that I also launched an anti-ant offensive that involved emptying the pantry and counters and spraying them with cucumber-scented cleaner. This has not deterred the ants, but at least I have confirmation that there is no sticky bag of dates or stale sugar cookies that is attracting them. Also reorganized my pinterest boards and began process of transferring my CDs to my itunes library and tossing them. Those flimsy "jewel cases" are the worst.

On the Nightstand

2013-05-03T09:10:00.001-04:00

Let's take a look at what's in my reading lineup.

Coleridge: Early Visions, 1772-1804 by Richard Holmes I am reading this now. You'd think Coleridge would offer a wealth of material to a biographer, what with the drinking, whoring, joining the army under the fake name Silas Tomkyn Comberbache, (the name for my next dog), and becoming a "pantisocrat*" which, I am sure you will be disappointed to learn, has nothing to do with wearing fancy pants. All this, AND he was hot, in a puffy sort of way, but the bio is a bit dull.

Summertime by Rafaella Barker. A loan from Becky and the sequel to Hens Dancing, which was an earlier assignment. I am reading this now too and it is a nice, funny counterpart to the Coleridge biography.

The Good Apprentice by Iris Murdoch. I am reading my way through all of Murdoch's books and this is the next one on the list.

Three Doors to Death by Rex Stout I am also reading my way through all of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe books. Formulaic and less intellectually stimulating than Murdoch but entertaining in its way and Archie Goodwin, Wolfe's assistant, hilariously refers to himself as "getting erect" when he stands up.

The Faber Book of Letters edited by Felix Pryor A collection of letters written over the course of history, beginning with Sir Philip Sydney to Edmund Molyneux in 1578 and ending with Franklin D. Roosevelt to Albert Einstein in 1939.

Getting the Message: The Story of the British Post Office by Christopher Browne.

White House Diary by Henrietta Nesbitt. Nesbitt was the housekeeper for the Franklin Roosevelts. She was a famously terrible cook and it has been suggested that Eleanor deliberately allowed her to make the White House meals as unappealing as possible as a passive-aggressive punishment for Franklin's infidelities.

In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson. A permanent denizen of the nightstand, although I have read three or four pages since I last did one of these posts.

Flea Market Chic: The Thrifty Way to Create a Stylish Home by Liz Bauwens and Alexandra Campbell. Technically, has no business on the nightstand, as it is not serious reading and I usually put my picture books on the floor. This book has pretty pictures, but can hardly be considered an example of thrift, with its $8,000 Aga cookers and rooms full of exquisite trinkets that one's decorator's assistant found.

Death in the Garden by Elizabeth Ironside. Another loan from Becky.

Taffy's Tips to Teens by Dolly Martin (1964). I was obsessed with this book when I was twelve and found it recently after a decades-long search. It will be getting its own post.

What's on your nightstand?

* You may be asking, "What is a pantisocrat?" Coleridge coined the term himself. It's a sort of 1790's hippie. Coleridge planned to set up a utopian community in Kentucky, but only got as far as a walking tour of Wales. Holmes cautions: "Coleridge created the word from the Greek roots pant-isocratia, an all-governing society; not of course from the Latin root panto-mimus, meaning a comic dumb-show." That's a relief, but I still want to know: where do pants fit into all of this?

Can This Garden Be Saved?

2013-05-01T08:56:00.000-04:00

That's not a rhetorical question. I told myself I wouldn't worry about the back yard this year, and focus only on making the front presentable, but I found myself back there, literally weeping over the state it is in. I thought I'd take one bed--one of the worst ones--and restore it.

This bed has always been reserved for annuals and vegetables. I haven't planted anything in it in years, so the grass has taken over. Here's how it looked the evening I decided to reclaim it from the weeds. As you can see, we have a dire problem with Japanese honeysuckle along the top of the wall.

In addition to a sharpie marker, a brick, and a Frisbee, I found a stress ball, handed out on the nursing unit where I worked when our hospital went live with Epic in March, 2011, proof that I have been in the vicinity of this garden, at least once in the last two years, although it's also possible that I hurled it out the back door in a rage. The text around the lightning bolt says, "The future is coming." Indeed.

After the weeping, Ian mowed the lawn, and things look less hopeless. Jon cut back most of the Japanese honeysuckle on the top of the wall. I've pulled the weeds and added a couple of wheelbarrow loads of the new dirt. A clean slate!

I am planning to go to the nursery today after work, although just for flowers, as I feel like vegetable plants should come from the farmer's market. Also hoping to find elegant topiaries for the patio. Something like this, only not $250 and not for indoor use only although I have to admit that an indoor boxwood topiary would really class up my living room, at least until the dog knocked it over.

Tweets I Never Published

2013-04-29T08:34:00.001-04:00

Oh, I'm a "bitch" b/c I won't lend you my cell phone? HOW ABOUT A KNUCKLE SANDWICH?

Did the test script SAY to leave the order-entry window?

Yep, I will totally respond to "Hey baby" as you pull up your zipper in the bus stop.

Mandatory minimum 24-hour waiting period before I will respond to BS emails flagged as high priority.

DON'T play in the porta-potty!

This last, I was tempted to scream out my car window as I passed three grade-school aged kids, who were occupied with tossing clods of dirt into the toilet of a porta-potty in a city Park.

I really am fed up with the panhandlers on the Corner. (Non-C'ville people, the "Corner" refers to the stretch of University Ave, adjacent to the grounds of the University of Virginia.) My office is near the Corner and there's one panhandler in particular (the one who called me a bitch) who is so aggressive, that I hesitate to walk there alone, even in the middle of a business day. It's one thing to ask someone for money, but quite another to call someone a bitch, or anticipate that she will cross the street to avoid you, and cross the street yourself so you can harass her some more. It would be so satisfying to punch this asshole in the face.

In happier news, my sister and her husband came to visit for the weekend, as did Brigid and her boyfriend. We went to the Shebeen for lunch. Afterwards, Ian and I walked to the upscale Feast to stock up on treats for drinks later. For the walk home, Ian suggested that we take a short cut by walking along the railroad tracks. ("Really, like a homeless person? Oh, what the hell.") So we scrambled down the embankment behind Feast and walked down the tracks for about a quarter of a mile, our Feast bag with the baguette sticking out contrasting with the numerous empty bottles of bottom shelf liquor that were strewn about. It was a good shortcut, although Ian cautioned me sternly never to take it by myself.

Dinner at home--I made pizza using my Jeffrey Steingarten recipe and the pizza stone, which I only use on special occasions. I had a craving for a margarita from Continental Divide, so we went there after dinner and it was surprisingly not-crowded. Then we headed to Millers to see our friend Nate who is the drummer in The Pollocks.

Thus concludes another weekend. My goals for the week ahead include a trip to the nursery for plants and, hopefully, elegant potted topiaries, and pinning down a paint color for the front hall.

Friday Reading Assignment: English Passengers

2013-04-26T09:19:00.000-04:00

English Passengers by Matthew Kneale is the book I always mention when someone asks me for a recommendation. It's a many-layered story that manages to be hilarious and tragic at the same time.

It's 1857 and Reverend Geoffrey Wilson is convinced that the original site of the Garden of Eden was Tasmania. He organizes a pilgrimage and charters a ship, which the good reverend is unaware is run by a group of smugglers from the Isle of Man. The first part of the novel is told from the point of view of the ship's captain, Illiam Quillian Kewley, and taught me everything I know about Manx culture, which is admittedly still very little.

Reverend Wilson gathers a group of people to travel with him to Tasmania, one of whom has unorthodox opinions about race, viewing people of Saxon descent as superior to all others. He looks down on Normans and despises the Celts, and his views become less and less enlightened, the further south a group originates from and the browner their skin. Also in the group is an unpromising youth, who's forced to join by his father as a way of curing him of being flippant and drinking too much. The journey gets underway, with a detour off the coast of England to steal someone's silver. Later, there's a wine smuggling caper in Capetown.

This is all very funny, but then the perspective shifts to Peevay, a Tasmanian Aborigine in the 1830s, as well as prisoners in the Tasmanian penal colony and the governors of the colony. Tasmanian Aborigines were hunted like animals, raped and abused, and eventually herded into a supervised colony where every single one of them died. Peevay's story moves forward in history, while the expedition approaches Tasmania, for their inevitable collision. It's been years since I read this and I don't remember exactly what happens, but I do know that there's a dramatic conclusion and that the unpromising, dissipated youth, turns out to be the hero, while the racist Saxon enthusiast is one of a host of villains.

Civet de Mouton

2013-04-25T08:55:00.001-04:00

I wanted to make something nice with the lamb stew meat that I bought at the farmer's market and found a recipe for Civet de Mouton in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. "Mouton" translates to sheep or mutton. (And now we know why mutton is called mutton.) The only people I've ever known to eat mutton are characters in Victorian British novels, and they don't seem particularly enthusiastic about it, but lamb is very nice and seems like a luxury meat to me.

Civet de mouton is really just boeuf bourguignon, only with lamb instead of beef and a slightly shorter cooking time. You will want to prepare this on a day when you have plenty of free time, because it takes hours, but is well worth the effort.

You start with some thick hunks of bacon, which you must boil and then drain and pat dry. I'm not sure why Julia Child wants you to boil the bacon, and this isn't the first recipe of hers which calls for this. Once boiled, the bacon is browned in an enameled casserole.

Remove the bacon from the pan and set aside. Turn the oven on to 450, turn the heat under the casserole to high and brown the lamb in small batches. Our lamb was very fatty--so fatty that the farmer gave me an extra package for free.

Set the lamb aside with the bacon after it's browned and cook a sliced onion and a sliced carrot in the same fat. Return the meat to the casserole, season with salt and pepper and sprinkle with flour. Bake in your hot oven for about eight minutes, until the flour has formed a crust around each piece of lamb.

Reduce oven temperature to 325, add lots of red wine and some beef broth and bake, covered, for about three hours. Here's how it looks when it comes out of the oven.

Strain the meat/veg from the sauce and let the sauce sit for a bit so you can skim the fat off the top. (Julia makes you wash the casserole at this point.) Brown some mushrooms in butter and braise some pearl onions in more beef broth, add to the stew, reheat the sauce, mix it all together. We served ours over egg noodles. Delicious! And probably the last stew we will eat until next autumn.

Blogger friends weekend

2013-04-22T08:25:00.000-04:00

Here's how it looked on pinterest:

Here's my attempt.

NAILED IT

Ian helped me to string a wire diagonally across the new patio. I was a little nervous about this, as the wire is practically invisible and I would prefer not to garrote anyone on my property. Still, we hung it as high as we could, and it is well above Ian's head, and at 6'2" he's the tallest person around.

Homemade mason jar lanterns were just not happening. The example I photographed above looks far better than our original attempts, which I failed to capture for the camera. I could show you some pictures of tortured wire, but why would you want to see that? We found ready-made glass lanterns, loaded them with candles, strung them on the wire (and from a nearby tree) and the effect is magical, though I say so myself and obviously this shitty photo does not do it justice.

This was a very exciting weekend because Melissa came to town to visit Jen and we all got together at Becky's house for drinks and delicacies, including bacon jam on freshly baked bread and fancy chocolate from Gearharts. I just finished reading Melissa's novel, Whipped, Not Beaten, which is a fun and surprisingly sexy story about one woman's experience with the home party business. It was great to meet Melissa and lots of fun to hang out with the other ladies. I like how we're all a part of a larger blogging community and I hope we can get together again someday, maybe with some of our other blogging friends.

Friday Reading Assignment: Dorothy Sayers

2013-04-19T09:22:00.000-04:00

Times like these call for books that take you utterly away from our grim world. Dorothy Sayers' books are just the thing. Are you familiar with Sayers? If yes, good for you. If no, what are you waiting for? Sayers was a master of the mystery genre and Lord Peter Wimsey is her mystery-solver. He also ranks on my list of sexiest literary characters.

The Nine Tailors is the first Sayers mystery I read. It was our first, unbearably hot, summer in Virginia, when my mantra was "Virginia is a synonym for Hell on Earth." I literally used to say that to myself every evening as I dragged myself to the trash cans behind the garage with the day's offering of uneaten soggy cereal and melon rinds. I was in the morning sickness stage of pregnancy (Seamus) and half dead from lassitude and loathing, but The Nine Tailors saw me through one particularly miserable weekend.

The plot: honestly, I can't remember much about the finer points, fourteen years after reading it, but I do know I could hardly tear myself away. It's set in the eastern part of England in the 1930's. There's a dead body, of course, but the mystery isn't just about who killed it, but how the victim died. It kept me guessing until the very end.

Who's a Dorothy Sayers fan?

Dirt

2013-04-15T08:40:00.004-04:00

Our load of dirt arrived late Thursday afternoon and the kids and I worked like crazy to get as much of it as possible into our new planting beds. It seems we ordered too much, as the beds are full, but there is still a large pile of dirt in the driveway.

The remains of Mt. Crabstick

It's not rocket science to calculate the volume of a cube: length times width times depth. I divided the total volume of all three beds (in cubic inches) by twelve and then again by three when I learned that one orders dirt by the cubic yard. My result? Over two thousand cubic yards, which, judging from the size of the five yards we actually ordered would probably fill my entire house.

My neighbor, James, who helped us with the shoveling consoled me by saying you can never have too much dirt, and it is certainly very nice dirt. If I were ready to go forward with the backyard kitchen garden plan, we'd be set, but I am so not ready for that. I could put it to use in the existing beds in the back yard, which is probably what I'll end up doing, but I'm not strong enough to push the wheelbarrow when it's full, so I'll be trundling around with half wheelbarrows, which means we'll be able to park in the driveway again sometime in 2014.

Taking Suburban Correspondent's suggestion, I went to the farmer's market this weekend to buy some lettuce plants, which can occupy the front beds until I decide what to plant there permanently.

Lovely lettuce

I used to go to the Charlottesville farmer's market every Saturday without fail, but have become less enthusiastic about it in recent years. Remember when you were in middle school and you'd walk down the hall and see the groups of cool kids who snubbed you, and you felt like a loser? That's how I feel when I go to the farmer's market. It's no longer simply a place to buy local food. It's a place to be seen buying local food.

I bought eggs and eight young romaine lettuce plants and two pounds of locally raised lamb stew meat, which became a civet de mouton on Sunday. It's unthinkable to come home from the market without a treat, so I bought some pastries from a bakery stand. I made a point of not buying anything from the booth that's owned by a Montana-based bakery chain, over which there was an outcry last year. Farmer's markets should be for locally-owned businesses and locally-grown foods and as far as I'm concerned, local ownership of a franchise does not count as locally-owned, especially when that franchise has a shop in town that is open on Saturdays. But I don't know, maybe other people in our community have a different opinion.

It's not against the rules for this business to be at the market. The application does not specify that businesses participating must be local, only that the food is produced locally on property owned or leased by the seller. I guess I was too quick to assume that the owners would be gracious and bow out this year since they can sell all the bread that they want in their store, six days a week and the other vendors at the market don't necessarily have permanent retail space.

Two questions:
1. What would you do if you had a pile of very nice dirt + compost. (I'm thinking I should go ahead with a raised bed or two after all.)
2. Would you be pissed if there was a business franchise at your local farmer's market?

Exterior upgrade of doom.

2013-04-08T08:39:00.001-04:00

I am pleased to announce that the front yard of neglect and ill-repute is no more. When we bought our house, the previous owners had compartmentalized the entire front yard into a series of garden plots and raised beds. It was creative and beautiful, and I loved the departure from the traditional boring lawn, but with a north-facing house, and a large tree that blocks the afternoon sun, most of the plants were doomed.

Here are some "before" shots of the front yard. Clearly, something had to be done; something that did not involve me becoming a master gardner.

Jon put his "good" motorcycle on the porch to protect it from Hurricane Sandy. It was a huge project to get it off again.

While we were conveniently away in Lisbon, excavators jackhammered the concrete walk and dug up the front yard to a depth of two feet below the level of the porch. Remember the portal to the underworld? It turned out to be nothing. Our contractor thinks it was a support for a lamppost or other structure that once stood there. We were seriously worried that it was going to turn out to be an old well.

This is how it looked the day after we got home from Lisbon.

There followed a few very muddy days, although soon our contractors built a mud-free path so we could get in and out of the house without sinking ankle deep in the wet red clay that was piled around the perimeter of the courtyard. There were several days when it was too cold or snowy to work, and other days when the mortar had to be protected from the cold with a huge, walled tent that enclosed the entire front yard. A kerosene furnace heated the inside of the tent--of course we didn't leave it running all night, but we'd let it run for a while before we went to bed and fire it up again first thing in the morning.

Progress

Now, it looks like this.

We preserved the flowers on the side of the yard. There's more sun exposure, and these beds aren't nearly as dead and weed-infested as the main part of the front yard was.

The masonry is finished, but we still have a lot of work to do. We have a tentative arrangement with painting contractors about painting the house. We need an asphalt contractor to patch up the transition between the wall and the driveway. We need to clean and redecorate the porch, and the front door needs rehabilitation. Jon needs to sell both of his motorcycles. I also need to plant something in those embedded planters. We ordered a load of dirt and compost but I still haven't decided what to plant. There's still the issue of the shade, although the largest bed gets more sun than the two smaller ones.

We also need furniture. I've decided that a few elegantly potted topiaries will be just the thing to define the transition from the patio to the porch. I looked for furniture at several stores, from local consignment shops to Target to the absurdly expensive Restoration Hardware. We bought a bench and coffee table at the Plow & Hearth outlet and there are a few pieces at Circa that I'm thinking about, although they would need restoration in order to be acceptable. Let's just hope Jon doesn't come home from Circa with this, the next time my back is turned.

True story: When we lived on Locust Ave, Jon came home from Circa with a chair identical to the one above--it could possibly be the same chair--and I immediately returned it, to the amusement of the Circa staff.

Most likely it will be a year or more from now before we are 100% finished with this project. We also need to do something about the back yard, which is pretty bad. Right now I'm considering turning the entire back yard into a kitchen garden, with raised beds and gravel paths. Grass is overrated, and with a park across the street, there's no need for kid play space on our property. Speaking of kid play space, Seamus and his friends have discovered that the new courtyard is a sort of miniature, netless, basketball court.

Despite the long to-do list, the courtyard is now ready to use, and a very pleasant place to hang out on a sunny afternoon--much more pleasant than the old yard. It's almost like we've added a new room to the house.

Friday Reading Assignment: Cazalet Chronicles

2013-04-05T10:01:00.000-04:00

I already wrote about the first two books in Elizabeth Jane Howard's Cazalet Chronicles. Last week, I finished the third book, Confusion, and I just started the last one, Casting Off. I'm in mourning because I have no more Cazalet books to look forward to.

To refresh your memories, this is a family saga set in the 1940s in Great Britain. In Confusion, the focus is mostly on the teenage girls in the family, but everybody gets bits of the spotlight including the servants, the demented old great-aunt, the noble, pathetic governess, and other outsiders. The reader becomes absorbed in their stories, partly because all the little plots are interesting and partly because you are so interested in the characters. Right now I'm into Rachel, the youngest sister in the family. She's generally "nice" and well-liked, but I realized that her habit of constantly putting others' needs ahead of her own has made her into a bit of a monster. Interesting how that can happen.

If you love to escape into books, but are irritated by poorly-written best sellers, The Cazalet Chronicles are the perfect choice.

Pardon my dust

2013-04-03T09:28:00.000-04:00

I may start re-designing things around here, so don't be alarmed if Patience Crabstick looks a bit funny at times. For about $35, you can buy a code package and paste it into your blogger template. The resulting look is better than the canned templates that come with blogger, but there's still a certain sameness to them.

I also got a web design for dummies book from the library. It would be fun to design my own template from scratch, and it's similar to what I already do for a living. I dabbled in HTML during my old school blogging days so I'm sure I'd figure it out eventually, but there's a lot to learn. Maybe I'll buy a template AND learn to design for myself.

I bought the patiencecrabstick.com domain name, but I keep getting an error message when I try to switch my current address over to the new one. I'm not going to stress--at least I know that now, no one else can be patiencecrabstick.com. Dog in the manger, that's right.

I've considered the blogger vs wordpress thing, and I've decided to stick with blogger. Go with what you know, and blogger is like an old friend at this point. I created an invisible test blog, where I can practice playing with code, and then I copied the code of a blogger whose design I admire, pasted it into the CCS box of my new blog, and voila, my blog had her design. Of course, I immediately deleted it. I have no intention of stealing. Ethical issues aside, it wouldn't be much fun.

I'd also like a better camera. My $89-from-Best-Buy point and shoot camera does not cut it. I don't imagine myself to be a photographer, but when you combine my crap skills with a crap camera, the results are embarrassing.

Talk to me about blog design. How did you decided on the look of your blog? What do you consider to be desirable and not-so desirable features of a blog's design?

Easter Funday

2013-04-01T08:00:00.000-04:00

"These are really ghetto jelly beans," Grace said, scrutinizing the bag I bought at Kroger on Saturday. They were pretty appalling: slightly smashed and stuck together, and probably left over from Kroger Easter clearance, 2012, but they were the only real jelly beans in town. By "real" jelly beans, I mean Brach's or similar and NOT Jolly Rancher or Starburst, or those annoying mini, chemi-tasting "gourmet" beans in unnatural flavors like bubble gum, peach, or blueberry yogurt.

We had a brunch. The menu was a schmorgasboard of different cuisines: Bloody Marys, Champagne, a chard/ricotta frittata (Italy) potato/Serrano ham croquettes (Spain), Moroccan orange salad, a Swedish coffee cake, German sour cream twists and pain au chocolat. Everything was delicious except for the Swedish coffee cake--I forgot to add the sugar to the dough, so it turned out like an almond/cardamom pie rather than a cake. Seamus was in charge of the pain au chocolat--his first attempt at yeast rolls. He also ably fried the coquettes.

We were contentedly sipping our cocktails after the meal, when a pipe under the kitchen sink burst, which was not optimal, as I'm sure we can all agree. It was like that scene from season 5 of Mad Men, when the Campbells have the Drapers over for dinner and the kitchen plumbing explodes.

Turning off the water under the sink did nothing, so Jon had to cut it off at the main valve. A plumbing emergency on a holiday weekend is no joke, but our friend Jessreal of Real's Clean & Neat Plumbing, who was out fishing, dropped everything and came to our rescue.

Today, of course, is Dyngus Day. Last year, Anderson Cooper, doing a story on Dyngus Day in Buffalo, lost it over the word "pussywillow" and laughed uncontrollably on camera. I would embed the video for you, but there seems to be something wrong with the code. You will have to make do with a link. It's funny, I promise.

Friday Reading Assignment: An English Year

2013-03-29T09:08:00.000-04:00

I know that I added An English Year by Nan Fairbrother to my book list after seeing it mentioned in a biography of Bruce Chatwin, but now I can't remember what connection there was between the two. Bruce Chatwin was a travel writer and Nan Fairbrother was a landscape architect, who mostly wrote about land use in Great Britain.

An English Year is the story of a year living in a sixteenth century farmhouse in the country with the author's two small sons, while her husband is away fighting in World War II. It reads like a blog, with random thoughts about everything from picnics to whooping cough to reading Donne in the summertime, to her children's propensity to use dead mice as dolls for their dolls' house. (That last gave me pause, and I'm pretty laid back about germs.)

There are tantalizing hints about her house: we know that it has a moat and that there is no front step, so the children can ride freely in and out the front door on their tricycles. It has a thatched roof, and was vacant for so long that tree roots are an integral part of the kitchen floor. At one point, they're marooned in the house on an island during a severe spring flood. It is rumored to be haunted and the villagers won't visit. Fairbrother doesn't mention any ghosts, but the house itself is very much a living presence.

This is a thoughtful book for thoughtful people. It also seems to be out of print. I did find a cheap copy on Amazon, but it's basically a sheaf of bound photocopies. Here's a vintage copy that someone is selling on Etsy.

One Girl, Forty Martinis

2013-03-25T08:47:00.002-04:00

I am long overdue for a martini post. I've been faithfully drinking a Bang martini nearly every Friday night since my last Martini post in November, although apparently not every Friday, as that would be sixteen martinis, and I have only seven to tell you about. Let's get started.

The Esquire: Makers Mark and sweet tea vodka plus cointreau and white cranberry juice. This is my natural reaction to sweet tea:

And we've already established that I don't like whiskey, so this one didn't go over too well.

Frosty's Nightcap: I don't have the precise ingredients for this one, but I remember that it is made with cider and that I loved it. I drank it the night before we left for Lisbon, and feeling very festive. I would definitely order this one again.

Girls Revamped: pomegranate liqueur, peach puree, champagne. This one sounds better than it tastes, unfortunately.

Honey Ginger: Ketel One with ginger simple syrup and honey. I definitely liked this one more than the Girls Revamped, but not as much as Frosty's Nightcap. I don't recall this being overpoweringly sweet, despite the simple syrup and honey, which is drizzled onto the sides of the glass and never really gets incorporated into the drink.

The Joe: Gin, ginger simple syrup, lime juice, white cranberry juice, and a dash of Chambord, which sinks to the bottom of the glass so that at end of the drink you get one taste of black raspberry to remember it by.

Just Peachy: Peach vodka and peach schnapps. Took me straight back to freshman year in college, when the fuzzy navel was all the rage. I've moved on, thank goodness.

Key Lime: Delicious and refreshing with a floating lime slice. The rim of the glass is lined with graham cracker crumbs. I loved this drink, but it's better suited to a hot summer night and not a freezing March one like last Friday.

I took photos of most of these drinks, but all martinis look alike, when photographed in a dimly lit bar. Here's The Joe--you can just make out the Chambord, lurking in the bottom of the glass.

Speaking of last Friday, we had a drink at Bang and then met a friend at the Black Market Moto Saloon on Market St. This is the place that generated controversy last summer when the city shut them down for playing live music without a permit. OK, so the city puts out the welcome mat to anyone who wants to cram another restaurant into downtown Belmont, but they shut down this place for live music when it sits next door to a junk yard and across the street from a tombstone dealer? Makes sense! Anyway, they're back open now. I liked the Moto Saloon because it had a lively, but not too lively atmosphere. You can easily find a space at the bar, and it has a friendly, eclectic feel. We shared a plate of nachos, creatively topped with radishes and pickled cactus, along with more traditional nacho toppings.

Friday Reading Assignment: Life with Father

2013-03-22T09:33:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, I read Life with Father by Clarence Day, a classic of American humor. Originally published in the The New Yorker in the 1930s, it's a series of tales about Day's cranky, exacting, demanding, belligerent, somewhat misogynist father. For all that he's a lovable cranky misogynist. Mr. Day reminds me of my grandfather--who was NOT a cranky, belligerent, misogynist--but who did appreciate a well-regulated lifestyle. Born in 1903, he gracefully wore the mantle of an earlier era until the day he died in 1998. Maybe it's not so much Mr. Day who reminds me of my grandfather, just the time period that the book describes.

The book was the inspiration for a Broadway play and a movie, which I haven't seen, but added to my netflix queue. Read it if you want something light and funny that will give you a good taste of upper-middle class domestic American life in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

And so another weekend is upon us. Rejoice! Seamus left this morning for an impossibly ambitious art field trip to New York City. Their itinerary: Frick Collection, "time in Chinatown & Greenwich Village," a cruise around Manhattan (we've been asked to confirm if our kids get seasick or not, and if so, can they be given dramamine), Metropolitan Museum of Art, "Time on 5th Ave," Museum of Modern Art, Empire State Building, Times Square, Guggenheim Museum, Central Park/Strawberry Fields, The Cloisters, Whitney Museum of Art. How they will have the time to do all that in a single weekend is beyond me, but I admire impossible, grand plans. If the teacher and two parent chaperones (for thirty middle schoolers) don't come home in straitjackets, the trip can be considered a success. Meanwhile, the math teacher chased Seamus onto the school bus before it departed yesterday afternoon, to give him a packet of math homework for the weekend. That is dedication to the cause of algebra! It is extremely unlikely that this assignment will be completed, but just for fun, I'll send Seamus a text and ask him if he packed it and his graphing calculator. Oh well, school may be cancelled Monday, since we're in the path of another snowstorm.

For the weekend, I plan to chip away at my to-do list of doom, and maybe finally learn all the mac keyboard shortcuts, now that the tax returns are filed. I'm having a gardening conundrum that may result in me putting a sign at the curb saying, "CLEAN FILL WANTED." Or maybe I could steal some top soil from the environs of the county jail. (That's a JOKE.) If anyone has a small truckload of dirt they'd like to dispose of, see me after class.

Lunch in the City

2013-03-18T08:38:00.001-04:00

I almost missed the train. It's not like me to be late for anything, but I was overconfident in estimating how long it would take me to walk to the station. End result: me sprinting (in a dress) across the endless Amtrak parking lot, while also holding an umbrella and still plugged into my ipod. The platform was empty, but for one conductor. He scanned my ticket, I boarded, and the train began to move almost immediately.

I had been expecting an empty car, but this train began its route in New Orleans, so it was full of people who'd been sleeping and farting all night, and I was a sweaty mess. Once my heart rate returned to normal, I enjoyed the trip. The countryside is beautiful and the view from the train is so different than that from the road. The old farmhouses and tiny, secret communities appear to have sprung from the earth like mushrooms.

My sister Margaret met me at Union Station in Washington and we walked to her apartment for a much needed freshen up--the waistband of my tights was perilously low. We were going to Bethesda to have lunch with our cousins, some of whom we hadn't seen in many years.

Once freshened, we plugged the address of the restaurant into Margaret's iphone and off we went. The metro arrived one minute after we got to the platform and we congratulated each other on our superb timing. We got off a few stops past Bethesda and knew we would have to walk nearly a mile to the restaurant but then my sister's iphone told us that we were supposed to take a bus...which was just pulling away, so we ran--again with the running--and managed to flag it down and were born away into suburban Maryland without the least idea of where we were.

My sister has lived in DC for only a few weeks (her car is still in Florida) so we were both unfamiliar with the area and the bus was turning left, and then right and taking us farther and farther away from the safety of the metro station. Still, a red dot on my sister's phone showed us where we were and a blue dot showed us where we ought to get off so we watched the two dots converge, but we fumbled at the critical moment and the bus made another turn and deposited us on a quiet residential street that certainly did not contain a restaurant.

The iphone was suddenly useless, as it would not tell us our present position, and we had somehow become disoriented and had no idea which way to proceed to get to the restaurant. I was certain we'd missed our stop and should retrace the bus route. My sister thought we'd gotten off early and should forge ahead. Here we were, two adults, helpless as babies because our sophisticated technology had failed us. If we hadn't had an iphone, this wouldn't have happened, because we would have had a map. But nobody has maps nowadays. We were also hampered by our inability to pronounce "Schuylkill," which was the street we wanted. Of course we realized how ludicrous our situation was and we were laughing, although in a slightly panicky way, as we tried to decide what to do, when we heard a voice behind us say, "You two are hilarious."

Who knows how much of our conversation this man had overheard, but he was able to point us in the direction of the Black Market Bistro. We were to head back along the bus route, pick up a trail through the woods, cross the railroad tracks, and there would be the restaurant. We made it without further incident, although laughing so hard that casual observers might have been justified to assume we were drunk. I mean seriously, a trail through the woods?

The lunch itself, with our beautiful cousins, was lovely. There were eight of us altogether. We stayed until the dining room shut down and then we still had so much to talk about we hung around in the parking lot for awhile. It was so much fun. Our cousin drove Margaret and me back to the metro station.

Back in Charlottesville, Jon met me at the station and insisted that we go to Continental Divide for dinner. I had bought a virtuous salad at Union Station and eaten it on the train and I was starving. Eating in restaurants at 9:00pm is not conducive to my diet, but one does not simply turn down a chance to eat at Continental Divide. I had a margarita while we waited for a table. They make a bangin' margarita at Continental Divide, and we had a delicious dinner and thus a lovely conclusion to the day.

The Work Day in Gifs

2013-03-10T11:21:00.000-04:00

Friday Reading Assignment: On the nightstand

2013-03-07T22:00:00.001-05:00

Actual Nightstand

The nightstand: ideal place to keep the books you're planning to read soon. (Opposed to the bookcase, where you keep the books you're planning to read someday.) Here's what's on my nightstand right now.

The Philosopher's Pupil by Iris Murdoch. This is what I'm reading now. It has the classic Murdoch elements: well-off people living in beautiful houses, facing existential crises, and dogs with personality.

An English Year by Nan Fairbrother. Also reading this, although very slowly. The chronicle of a year, written by a woman who was living in the English countryside with her two small children while her husband was off fighting in WW II.

The Complete Book of Sewing by Constance Talbot. Written in 1943. Fabulous illustrations.

Confusion by Elizabeth Jane Howard. Book three of the Cazalet Chronicles.

Casting Off by Elizabeth Jane Howard. Book four (and last) of the Cazalet Chronicles.

Castle Rackrent by Maria Edgeworth. Written in 1800. Possibly inspiration for Jane Austen.

Inflating a Dog: The Story of Ella's Lunch Launch by Eric Kraft. Eric Kraft's whimsical novels are hit and miss for me, but I can't resist the "lunch launch."

Nikolai Gogol by Vladimir Nabokov

Miss Buncle's Book by D.E.Stevenson

The Far Side of the World by Patrick O'Brian The 10th book in the superb Aubrey/Maturin series.

In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson. A long-term resident of the nightstand. I read it when I'm bored with whatever else I'm reading.

Whipped, not Beaten by blogging friend Melissa Westemeier. I'm saving this one for a rainy day when I need cheering up.

Last Day in Lisbon

2013-03-04T06:16:00.004-05:00

We spent the morning shopping. Overall we didn't buy very much, but the post-Christmas sales were irresistible. Brigid desperately needed a new winter coat, and we found a beautiful coat that was a good deal, even with the euro/dollar exchange and the 3% foreign transaction fee. The other kids got a few little fashion doo-dahs and I bought myself a hand-painted tile depicting a tram and a sweet little pitcher. I love its elegant shape and the cheerful blue and yellow flowers.

There are ceramics everywhere in Lisbon, but many are churned out for the mass market and did not appeal to me. I bought my pottery at a little shop that has been making their own ceramics by hand since the 1700s. (She said smugly.)

Later, Seamus and Brigid and I walked to the Museu Art Antiga. Here is some of what we saw.

I liked this statue, but neglected to write down which saint it is, thinking it would be obvious to me later. Well, it wasn't. Sorry.

A detail from The Temptation of St. Anthony by Hieronymous Bosch c. 1500

More from The Temptation of St. Anthony. This was our favorite painting.

St. Jerome in his study by Albrecht Durer

All I remember about this painting is that it's a portrait of a sculptor.

Detail of a Persian carpet

Our landlady told us about a Tuesday flea market that's sort of a local secret. It closed at 6:00pm. At 5:00-ish, I glanced at my map and predicted that it would be a fifteen minute walk to the market. Forty-five minutes later, we arrived, somewhat fretful, at the market, which was just shutting down. Many of the tents were packed up already. What we did see was piles of random junk--old cell phones, CDs--the sort of trash you wouldn't bother to garbage pick if it was out at the curb for free. It reminded me of the Porta Portese market in Rome, which the guidebooks say is the ultimate flea market experience, and which turned out to be miles of tables on which were dumped made-in-China tee shirts and other items too downmarket for a bargain bin at Wal-mart. Then there was the forty-five minute walk home. The experience wasn't entirely a waste, as spotted the domed edifice that popped up in most views of the east side of Lisbon, but that I'd never been able to locate. It's a church--I believe construction began in the 1700s, but the dome was not complete until the 1960s, so it has become a symbol of projects that take way too long to complete. We didn't get any closer, because it was getting dark and we were tired.

For our last night, we went to our favorite restaurant--the one with the amazing tapas. Mine was the lone vote for the other tapas place with the waiter who looks like Gael Garcia Bernal, but I was overruled.

Speaking of restaurants, we saw the word "farta" associated with a few restaurants in the area, which made us giggle. In Portuguese, it means abundance.

We have come to the end of the Lisbon tales. With Ian and Brigid so grown up, this may be the last trip we'll ever take as a family, although all the kids have asked if we can go to California and see the giant redwoods, and I'm tempted to try to bring that off some day.

Friday Reading Assignment: The Hamlet

2013-03-01T06:59:00.001-05:00

We've already established that I suck at reading Faulkner, but that was after I added several of his books to my reading list for the Fifty Classics project. The Hamlet, at least, is a fairly straightforward narrative, except for a murky part in the middle where someone is in love with a cow and everybody is unhappy about that.

This is the first novel in Faulkner's famous trilogy about the Snopes family, who insinuate themselves into a position of power in a small town in Mississippi. One of the things that interested me about The Hamlet was the portrayal of rural American poverty--eating turnip greens out of a tin pail for lunch, women who wear the same shapeless dress day after day because it is all they have, a family of five who share three pairs of shoes. Also, I think I am starting to understand Faulkner's sense of humor, which is a dark combination of tragedy and comedy.

As for the Fifty Classics project, I've committed to reading fifty classics in five years, and eleven months into the project, I've finished seven of the books on my list.