The Viking and I, Part I.

I love living out here, but this house has some interesting quirks of its own. Like not really having a front door (I use the one by the garage).  Small bedrooms, but a giant kitchen. And the world’s biggest laundry room. As soon as I can figure out how to move the washer & dryer, I’m turning that into a dining room. Until then, I mostly keep the appliances covered and use the rest of the room as my gallery/studio. It gets good light—from both sides—but isn’t insulated, and is really c-c-c-cold in the winter.

I digress. Back to the giant kitchen. And the giant Viking stove.

The one that hasn’t worked well since I moved in, and has been getting worse. Those yummy Blondies, which should take about 25 minutes to bake, come out half raw inside after an hour and a half. (They’re actually really good that way, but still.)

For the past couple of months, I’ve been mostly ‘cooking’ in an old toaster oven a friend of mine was going to throw out. It doesn’t heat up the whole kitchen, which was nice during the summer, and actually works great for a lot of things. Not for baking, though. Which has been good for my waistline, but…

So, with the weather turning, and the holidays rapidly approaching, I finally got somebody out here to take a look.

Took me almost two years before it got so bad that I had to do something about it.

Took almost a week between me calling, and them actually showing up.

Took him almost fifteen minutes before he was packing up and writing up an invoice.

This is where my insecurities come in. Now, mind you, I really did wait until I was ABSOLUTELY sure that there was something wrong with the oven (and the burners weren’t all that reliable either) before I called. That it wasn’t me. That I hadn’t, every single time, forgotten an ingredient, or set the timer wrong, or forgotten how long it takes to roast a chicken. Or bake a batch of Blondies.

So I only had to watch him, stunned, for a minute or two before I got up the courage to ask “You’re already done?!”

(Internally, the dialogue went something like this: He’s been here five minutes! I can’t believe I’m going to have to pay him $65 to give me one of those condescending looks and say “Lady, “ (I hate being called “Lady” that way) “There’s nothing wrong with this oven…”)

He did none of those things.

He told me, in slightly more detail than required, exactly what was wrong with my oven and the range above, which parts he was going to order, how he was going to replace them, and the adjustments he’d make once the new parts were in to make sure that the temperature stayed even, that the burners didn’t sputter, and that never, ever, ever again would the flame go out leaving the gas flowing and me worried that the dog and I would asphyxiate in the middle of the night and that weeks later the neighbors would start complaining about the smell and send the fire department in to find our dead rotting bodies… that is, if the house hadn’t blown up first.

I almost kissed him.

The Rain in Liverpool Falls Mainly

About those boots. The ones I hadn’t worn in years. The ones I bought in Liverpool.

I hadn’t been there very long—it must have been the first or second weekend. I’d already been through not three, not four, but TEN bomb scares.  Was trapped in the tunnel—UNDER the Mersey River—for hours and hours each time. Had my car searched each time. Had already changed hotels—to one on THIS side of the Mersey. Which is where she picked me up that day.

So it must have been the second weekend.

Anyway…

It’d been a rough two weeks. I was seriously considering calling New York and asking for hazard pay. I was thrilled when one of my new colleagues suggested going riding.

And really disappointed when I woke up Saturday morning and it was raining. The phone rang. I assumed she was calling to cancel—and you know what they say about assumptions. She laughed it off.  ‘If we cancelled our plans every time it rains here, we’d never do anything. I’ll pick you up in an hour. I’ll bring a spare jacket.’

Fair enough. Besides, she assured me, it was ‘just spitting.’

I found this recent image when I googled “Liverpool rain.” Just to give you an idea: http://www.pixdaus.com/single.php?id=188006#first_new 

(It was a long couple of months. Really nice people, though.)

The British have an incredible number of terms to describe each incremental increase in precipitation. Isn’t it the Japanese who have seventeen words for ‘yes’ and most of them mean ‘no?’ ‘Spitting’ turned out to be what, in California, we call RAIN. That steady, drenching drizzle that doesn’t look like much when you’re standing in a doorway, deciding that you can dash to the car without bothering with an umbrella…until you’re in the car a few minutes later cold, wet, and realize that your clothes are soaked all the way through.

An hour later I was the slightly resentful new owner of a helmet (no rain cover, which is basically just a shower cap, anyway. They assured me I wouldn’t need one—by then it was ‘barely a drizzle’), a pair of slightly water-resistant breeches in some incredibly unnatural polyester blend, and that now-infamous pair of knee-high rubber riding boots.

And her big brother’s borrowed barn jacket.

Just an attractive picture all the way ‘round.

And a wet, windy hour after that, I was flying—right over the head of my horse, ALL BY MYSELF over a three-bar jump.

Apparently, the horse thought I looked lonely. Or that, having seen me go over, the jump was safe, after all. So then he jumped too—damn near landing on top of me.

Afterwards, we put it all together. We’d been over the same jump, with a lower bar, a couple of times already. The rain had tapered off a bit, but the wind had picked up to compensate. As the horse and I were approaching the just-raised bar, one of those ubiquitous white plastic grocery bags went whizzing by outside the ring and >SMACKED< into a nearby post.

My horse startled, planted his feet, and dropped his head. I slid forward on my wet saddle and sailed right over the top of his head, (right between his ears), somersaulted over the jump (clearing it with plenty of room, thank you), and crash landed on the the other side. This surprised the horse, who threw his head back up and, in an effort to catch up (and quite impressively, I might add) bounced over the jump from all almost-complete stop. He landed with two hooves—that’s almost 1,000 pounds of horseflesh in two round, razor-sharp, iron-shod packages—on either side of my head.

This stuff happens. A more experienced rider (or maybe just a drier one) would have kept her seat. I just lay there for a second, stunned, desperately trying to catch my breath and staring up at a great, brown expanse of heaving horsehide above my head.

(It was actually kinda nice to have something blocking the rain for a minute.)

I was fine. Muddy, sore, and mortified, but fine. It did NOT help that my colleague—who has since become a dear friend—still looked like Grace Kelly, despite the rain and the gear, perched blonde and graceful on her mount on the other side of the ring. I had now added mud—a great MUCHNESS of mud—to my overall ensemble. (Plus some impressive, Technicolor bruises which wouldn’t be visible until later in the bath. And for weeks to come...)

As soon as she saw that I was all right, she started laughing her head off.

I caught my breath, caught the horse, and got back on. As you do.

And went over the jump a couple of times—successfully—just because.

An hour after that, I was curled into the tiny hotel tub, tired, and SORE, but happy. And looking forward to going again.

I mean, having invested in all that gear, I kind of had to, right?

I  got to wear the boots a few more times after that in Liverpool, then off and on after I moved to London.

And hardly at all since.

But now they’re out again. They’re ready. Maybe even lucky. Wouldn’t it be nice? ♥

Boot Scootin’

I got stuck in my boots yesterday.

There are all sorts of things I love about being single, but there are times when it would be nice to have someone else around.

Yesterday was one of those times.

It was a glorious Sunday, sunny and bright and I was muddling around the house, as my British friends would say, “happy as Larry.”

I don’t know who Larry is—don’t ask. Since I usually think “happy as a clam” (which doesn’t make any more sense), I usually now picture a smiling clam with a little  “Larry” nametag. Pinned to the left corner of his shell. You know, like, “I’m Sandy…Fly me.”

ANYway--

I was happy and relaxed, and thinking about what a great day it was, and had just decided to take a long walk with the dog later, when it occurred to me that I didn’t know where my riding boots were. The ones I bought when I lived in Liverpool.

I haven’t ridden in ages, but somewhere in the back corner of my brain and rapidly elbowing its way forward, it occurred to me what a nice day it would be for it.

So off I went, hunting through the various closets until I found them.

And started to pull them on.

(And yes, Kim M., if you’re out there anywhere, I did remember to check them first. Not for mice—that would really be unlikely—but for spiders. Because the number and variety of arachnids out here is unbelievable.)

No spiders. Good thing, because I didn’t actually remember to check until I was halfway into the second boot.

Barefoot.

Well, they still fit. Sort of. Were a little tight, to tell the truth.  Especially that hard edge up around the top of my calf, right under the knee. But not as bad as I’d been afraid of and I decided to leave them on for a while.
See if they’d stretch out.
Did I mention that these are rubber?
But rubber stretches, right?

So off I went, and they either did stretch out a little or my lower extremities went numb. One way or another, they were actually pretty comfortable.

For a while.

A couple of hours later, I briefly considered leaving them on to walk the dog. By the time I actually got around to walking the dog, however, I decided that that might not be such a good idea.

You can’t actually flex your ankles in hard rubber riding boots. And I realized that I did have some feeling in my lower extremities and some part of that feeling was definitely PAIN.

Apparently my left foot is slightly larger than my right foot.

Or maybe it’s just that one toe.

In any case it was time to take them of and trade them in for a pair of running shoes.

But in the meantime I’d been walking for hours, barefoot and bare-legged, in tight RUBBER knee-high boots on a WARM day.

You get the idea.

I mean, they’re lined. Sort of. With thin nylon lining stuff that gets warm and damp and (it turns out) gloms onto bare skin in a smooth, unbroken (and almost unbreakable) air-tight seal from knee to ankle.

I couldn’t get them off.

Here’s where a guy would come in handy.

Someone to grab those boots by the ankle and PULL.

Of course, if I were really prepared for all this country living, I’d have a boot jack (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boot_jack) hanging by the barn door, ready for such an emergency.

Having neither boot jack nor barn, I was left to struggle on my own.

And struggle I did.

Now, to my credit, I didn’t panic. Worked on that pesky left boot first. Used the right one to get it started. Since they’re rubber, they don’t even have that hard, raised edge around the sole and heel to grab with, but I did the best I could. Stood on the side of one foot with the other. Kept wiggling and twisting—the boot, my ankle, my calf—and inching it down. Maybe centimetering it down would be more accurate. In between I lay backwards on the bed in that time-honored pulling-on-jeans-that-are-too-tight move, and used both hands and both arms and everything else I could think of to p-u-l-l.

And finally got it off.

Then I realized that now I had NOTHING left on my left foot to get the right one started.

The one that was WAY too tight up around the calf to begin with.

Just breaking that air-tight seal took a couple of minutes. I finally, at great pains—and a giant mess—used one hand to pull the rim of the boot away from my leg and the other to dump baby powder, mostly on the floor, but some of it made it into the boot.

Took twice as long to wiggle my way out of that one.

Luckily, rubber is sort of flexible.

Luckily, so am I.

But a little help would have nice.

I left them standing by the door. Not back in the closet. Just seeing them there makes me smile.

Besides, I might need them sometime.

Soon.

Cooking with Books

When my cousin was here a few weeks ago, she’d just seen the movie “Julie and Julia.” She loved it—and thought I would, too—and wanted to see my copy of that first, original Julia Child cookbook, “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.”

It’s not unreasonable for her to assume that I would have it. I’ve been collecting cookbooks since before I could read and have a pretty good collection.

The majority of them are here:

A couple of key volumes are in the kitchen, here,

 

and here,

-including a Simone Beck! (That one was a gift—I’ve never actually used it.)

The rest are in two mis-matched bookcases in the living room; some are stacked with the Christmas  and Easter books (I love Easter); and some absolute favorites, plus all the recipes I tear out of magazines or get from friends and can’t wait to try, are in two big drawers in the kitchen.

But I didn’t have that one.

It took me almost two years in the last house to get all my books organized. And I mean ALL my books: the classics, the books on natural history, the children’s books, the writing books, the photography books, the sci-fi and fantasy books, etc.  And they were REALLY organized: for the first time, maybe ever, I had almost enough room, and had made the time to sort them all. A lot of them were shelved two deep, but for a brief, glorious moment in time I knew where every single one was.

And then I moved again.

I tried really, really hard to keep them organized as I was packing. How does that saying go? “We plan, God laughs.”

So now I don’t know (yet) exactly where all my books are, I still don’t have enough bookcases (is there such a thing?), and even the categories that are more or less all in one place, like my cookbooks, still aren’t sorted properly.

Which is why I couldn’t find the Julia Child book when my cousin asked for it. I didn’t even think I had it—I’ve never been big on French cooking, and couldn’t remember ever using it. And I hate to admit it—but for a while there, Julia Child was a little bit of a joke. I knew someone in college who worked for her for a while, and there were some stories….

Anyway, we did manage to find another book of hers, which, after paging through it for maybe half a minute, my ‘cooking-is-so-NOT-my-favorite-thing’ cousin handed it back with a “well, the movie was really good. I think you should go see it.”

So I finally did.

And I did love it. It’s nice to know that a movie like that can still get made.

And it turns out that I have every single one of the cookbooks they showed in the movie (except for the one with the ‘Marshmallow Fluff”).  And so I started stressing a little, thinking maybe I should get a copy of  “Mastering…” after all, and thinking that all the good, old, copies are probably expensive by now, and consoling myself that a new one would do just as well, when, near the end of the movie, they show Julia receiving her first copy of that first book.

And I realized that, of course I had it. And I knew exactly where it was. I came straight home, went straight to the bookcase, and pulled it out. (I’m a very visual person. I just didn’t remember what it looked like.) And since my cookbooks still aren’t sorted properly, it wasn’t where it should have been.

It’s right there, in that first photo of the green bookcases, just a scootch southwest of dead center: the (slightly torn) paper cover is kind of a teal green with white spots, and it has a soft orange box around the title. It’s on the wrong shelf—that’s the shelf where the baking/chocolate/candy making books are. Or should be. It’s a 1969 edition. Just eight years after it was first published, they were already on the eighteenth printing.

Wouldn’t it be nice if I could say that about one of my books someday?

But Julia’s still on the shelf for now. There’s a recipe for a scrumptious-sounding dessert I’ve been wanting to try in that pile in the kitchen drawer…and I’m going to make it tonight, so it’ll be ready for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow.

I’m grateful for so many things. Being able to read is one of them. Scrumptious desserts are another. And having family and friends to share them with, most important of all.

Bon Appétit!

Buy a Calendar, Save the Bees!

I got the following email this morning, from Gretchen LeBuhn, an associate professor at San Francisco State University, and project leader of The Great Sunflower Project.

You can find out more about how you can get FREE sunflower seeds, and help support bee research by watching and counting the bees in your garden--a great project for all ages—here: http://www.greatsunflower.org/en

In the meantime, they’ve had these GORGEOUS calendars made, with beautiful pictures and all sorts of interesting information.

I didn’t know that there are more than TWELVE different kinds of native bees! Every third bite of food we eat comes from a plant dependent on wild pollinators.

Calendar orders must be placed by November 30, and all proceeds go toward supporting this vital research.

FWD:The Buzz:
The Gorgeous 2010 Native Bee Calendar

Busy as a bee this holiday season? Take care of two things at once. Get a mini-guide to some common garden bees and help support the Great Sunflower Project by getting one of our calendars! This gorgeous calendar has twelve of the most common bee genera and descriptions that will help you learn your garden bees. The photographs are by Rollin Coville and the calendar was put together by one of our participants, Celeste Ets- Hokin. All the proceeds will go to supporting the Sunflower Project!

Imagine stuffing a stocking with a calendar, a data sheet, a garden description form, Lemon Queen sunflower seeds and a pair of new garden gloves. We think they will be wonderful gifts.

All orders must be received online by Monday, November 30, 2009. Calendars will be shipped to arrive by the holidays.

Price: $14.00 (including shipping).
Buy the calendar now. You can use a credit card, check or paypal.

Sales of this calendar directly benefit the Great Sunflower Project

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Gretchen
The Queen Bee