dreaming@echonyc.com

dear people who used to live in this house,

why do you hate me?

now i know you'll protest, "julie, we don't hate you! why, we hardly knew you. how could we possibly hate you?" you might even say, "in the brief time we basked in your incandescent presence, we felt our souls fill with warmth and loving kindness for you and all mankind."

but i must insist: you hate me.

how else can i explain what you did in that room, the room that would become my office?

i suppose i understand the impulse that made you stick glow-in-the-dark stars and moons to the ceiling — perhaps it was a room for a baby, who could thereby lie in his crib and look up to an indoor milky way instead of, you know, a ceiling.

but why did you have to put them up with double-stick tape?

and weren't the stars and moons enough? did you really have to augment them with thick blobs of glow-in-the-dark paint, globs that are impossible to efface without assiduous grinding with a power sander, painfully held above my head with aching arms? globs that then require at least two coats of toxic, fumey primer if they're not to glow through the new coat of ceiling paint?

apparently you did, because: you hate me.

(we will not speak at this point of the way you used that same paint on the bedroom wall to declare your love: i ♥ joe, you painted. but rest assured we will discuss it later.)

but you couldn't stop there. you had to twist the knife. you had to apply still more double-stick tape, to the walls this time. and just when i thought i was equal to the task, i uncovered your diabolical scheme: instead of removing the tape before the room's last paint job, you painted over it. yes, i can scrape it off with the help of several trusty single-edged razor blades. but not without taking the paper off the sheetrock at the same time.

oh, you were filled with hate and rage. shut up! i know you were.

i am a gentle person, a kind person, a person who prefers peace to strife. i do not hate, as a matter of course. but now, after spending hours on end in earnest efforts to eradicate the evidence of your seething hatred, i hate you right back.

yours loathingly,
julie

Posted by dreaming at 12:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (50)

seems to me the thing to do is to encourage gay people to marry. it might lift the tone of things a bit.

Posted by dreaming at 06:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

another quilt completed!

i started this one months and months ago. the holidays intervened, and it's been sitting in my workroom waiting for me to finish the binding for the last few weeks. i took advantage of sunday's law and order-a-thon and spent several hours putting the finishing touches on it. done and done.

• full view
• single block close-up
• corner including pieced border
• star quilting motif, which appears in the center of each block and at every intersection in the main body
• label, including a backing so busy it makes my vision blur

mailing it tomorrow, though it breaks my heart to see it go.

Posted by dreaming at 05:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (40)

the egg wreath i hung so proudly in my hall is garbage.

last night i was passing and noticed a crack in one of the eggs. i thought maybe one of us had bumped into it while carrying something heavy. no problem, i thought; a single cracked egg would add character.

but on closer inspection i found that all around the wreath, many of the eggs had cracked. i guess it's variations in temperature and humidity. one cracked egg would have looked good, but a bunch of them just make the whole thing look trashy.

back to the drawing board for something cool to hang at the end of my front hall.

Posted by dreaming at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (68)

one day we will forget how horrible my office currently looks. here are some reminders: view of the wall, which currently sports dime-sized holes left by the mighty anchors needed to hold up the shelf brackets; and view of the bookcases, before patching, priming, and painting.

today i slapped a bunch of sheetrock mud into the shelf bracket holes and onto the new closet wall. tomorrow i sand...and apply more mud...and sand...and...

Posted by dreaming at 04:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (45)

the moles just won't leave us alone.

yesterday paul was down in the kitchen looking out the back window when he saw a small, dark creature scrabbling around in the snow around the bird feeder. it was

picking up spilled thistle seed from the snow and taking it back into its den of iniquity.

it did the same thing to the snow as they do to the ground underneath it.

mom, now i want a picture of your possum to add to the gallery of outdoor horrors.

update: arlene kindly (?!) sent a photo of the possum who'd been terrorizing perrysburg. enjoy. or have nightmares. your choice.

Posted by dreaming at 02:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (24)

the time has come to disconnect the webcam as i prepare to move my computer before i prep, paint, and floor my office. for the next couple of weeks, enjoy the view out my window as it stands today — this time of year, it doesn't change much.

Posted by dreaming at 02:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (47)

in case you weren't here to enjoy my birthday feast, please sample it vicariously:

• snacks. betty, please note red plate. homemade canape bread with pesto cream cheese rosettes, pumpernickel with port salut and apple-smoked ham, and crispbreads (not shown) with boursin and truffled paté.
  
• lobster bisque. i used a recipe from bon appétit with a few substitutions (thickened it with puréed lobster meat instead of corn starch, no sliced tomato because february in vermont isn't exactly the season, added a big dollop of cognac before serving). it was fantastic, delicious, insanely good. in hindsight, for maximum visual impact i should have added the lobster claw and chunks of tail meat after ladling the soup into the bowls, but it was fine.
  
• beeves after baking. the puff pastry decorations were magnificient. the hearts all held their shape, and everything turned a lovely golden brown.
  
• beef and asparagus. i served the wellingtons cut in half — i'd carefully placed the decorations so that none of them spanned the middle of the package — with a bundle of steamed asparagus rolled in lemon butter, crunchy salt, and black pepper.
  
• individual molten chocolate cakes. (this picture is the pits, alas.) i used a recipe of nick malgieri's, courtesy of terry, and perched each cake in a puddle of crème anglaise with a zigzag of raspberry coulis. they were really, really good, crispy on the outside, molten on the inside — and yet it's really not my favorite dessert. next year we're having my old birthday standby. (i was going to make a pretty pattern in the puddle of sauces, but everyone was standing around watching so i felt too self-conscious to be quite that anal in front of people.)

today's menu: bread and water. and leftover lobster bisque.

Posted by dreaming at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (42)

the beeves wellington have been constructed and are resting in the freezer for this weekend's dinner party. enjoy them vicariously in their embryonic state:

• mise en place
  
• mid-assembly (layers of spinach, caramelized onion, beef, portabellos, and more spinach)
  
• cloaked in puff pastry, unbaked

Posted by dreaming at 09:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

if you've never had the pleasure, you might not know that to get into a bottle of clam juice, you have to use a bottle opener. this could be a hindrance if you're really thirsty. i hope they consider the more convenient twist-off caps. i felt like i was kicking back and cracking open a frosty beer on a summer afternoon (as i so often do). only...much clammier.

(lest you think i keep a six-pack of clam juice at the ready for unexpected guests, let me assure you that it was a special purchase — tonight i made lobster bisque.)

Posted by dreaming at 11:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (62)

if you've visited my house in the winter, you probably know that the metal roof sheds snow quite readily, usually in big sheets that are spectacular to see and hair-raising to hear. (under such circumstances, snow's noisier than you might think.)

unfortunately, the snow therefore piles up under the eaves. all around the house there's a high hump of snow. it requires assiduous labor to keep the entrace to the garage passable; if we don't keep it shoveled a mountain develops. going up the mountain in our burly suv is easy. going down it into the garage, though, is a treacherous slide.

i went out today with the intention of bringing in a few loads of firewood. i opened the door from the garage to the back yard and found yet another impassable moraine, this one neatly embossed by the panels of the door.

i manfully scaled the peak, stood proudly atop the summit, filled my lungs with the bracing mountain air — harder than you might think at such dizzy altitudes — then waded through thigh-deep snow out to the woodpiles. several falls and humiliating stalls later, the woodbox was filled and my clothing was soaked.

when i do stuff like that i always think of little house on the prairie, and i imagine how cumbersome such a task would have been without a nice canvas sling and polarfleece (to say nothing of the luxury of a cord of pre-cut, pre-split, kiln-dried logs). i think i might start getting pretty careful about how much firewood i use.

Posted by dreaming at 01:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (66)

just because i'm not eating sweets these days doesn't mean i'm not baking.

not as pretty as terry's cookies, but pretty enough, and i imagine they're delicious. i'm counting on paul to report back (and to tip the scraps into the garbage before i succumb).

Posted by dreaming at 12:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (15)

look, i've never been a fan of china's one-child policy, but i'm starting to think it's a damn good idea. people i know are having babies at such an alarming rate that i just can't keep up.

i have three baby quilts in varying stages of completion at the moment. if you are of childbearing age and a close enough acquaintance that you have any reason to hope you might merit a quilt, please do not make plans to reproduce until you've gotten the all-clear from me.

it's really better that way. (to get bigguh pictures, as matt would say, click the puny ones, as tom would say.)

Posted by dreaming at 05:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (8)

last weekend betty and i surprised mom by appearing on her doorstep to celebrate her birthday. just what everyone wants for a present: unexpected houseguests! (click the disembodied head of aunt betty for a larger picture.)

we ate pizza, baked cookies, ran errands, watched the super bowl, and laughed like madwomen. we also made a pact that's making me a little bit nervous — we've granted each other show-up-unannounced-whenever-you-like privileges. i figure if i just keep the driveway unplowed and impassable, i'm safe...for now.

Posted by dreaming at 05:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

nevil shute's a town like alice, strenuously recommended and then finally purchased for me by mom, was good enough that i stayed up until 2 last night reading it, even after being up very early for a long day of travel. (my seatmate on the plane was a jackass who wanted to talk, even though i kept conspicuously opening my book every time he paused to draw breath.)

it's a romance, but not a trashy one. jean paget is a young englishwoman taken prisoner by the japanese in malaysia during world war ii. as the story unfolds, she meets an australian soldier who makes an extraordinary sacrifice for her.

back in england after the war, she inherits a sizable legacy and decides to return to malaysia. there she repays the kindness of the villagers who saved her life — and learns by chance what's become of the australian soldier.

it's simple, slow, and satisfying. it's beautifully told, and it ends exactly as it should. i wish i could read this book again for the first time. (happily, in a few years i will have forgotten the details entirely, so will revisit it then.)

Posted by dreaming at 12:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (48)

i have visited all of the red states and none of the green.

we'd better get cracking.

create your own visited states map.

Posted by dreaming at 03:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (14)