everything i know about working on anything
but
finished is better than perfect. — some lady on simply quilts
two coats, everywhere, no matter what. — julie
but
...well, you get the idea. — grandma
there. [satisfied tone] — paul
but
@$#^!*#^$! — dad
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August 29, 2004
August 16, 2004
julie and paul's feed and seed
i looked out the dining room window into the front garden this morning and saw a small goldfinch perched in the cosmos, munching happily on some seedheads i hadn't yet removed. it was joined shortly thereafter by another, bigger goldfinch. they snacked together companionably until a grackle buzzed the scene.
today i feel good about neglecting the deadheading.
August 15, 2004
julia child, 1912-2004
Julia worked hard in preparation for the shows, always determined to direct her efforts toward the home cook, but on camera she was, as Paul [Child] said, "a natural clown" as much as she was a teacher and chef. She improvised, she joked, she dropped food and utensils. In one of her best-known television episodes, she flipped a potato pancake in the air and, instead of landing in the skillet, it plopped on the table. Julia simply looked straight into the camera and said, "You just scoop it back into the pan. Remember, you are alone in the kitchen and nobody can see you."— a los angeles times review of a julia child biography
thank you, julia, even if you never did drop an entire side of beef on your filthy kitchen floor.
muffin says lovin' like something from the oven
in the oven right now there are blueberry muffins, made with shockingly delicious local blueberries. there are two reasons this pleases me:
- it is a very satisfying state of affairs when you have in your cabinets and pantry the ingredients to whip up...well, almost anything...at a moment's notice. the blueberries were the only thing i bought fresh. everything else was ready at hand.
- the kitchen is clean long before the muffins even come out. i can't say i love cleaning the kitchen, but i do love the feeling of being ahead of the game when every dish is washed and every counter is wiped before whatever i'm making is ready to eat.
- muffins!
August 14, 2004
the bad guy
my job is mostly a cakewalk. i can do it from virtually anywhere. it takes a couple of hours a day max (unless, you know, someone steals an election). i can do it without pants. it's a good job.
but, now and again, just like with any job, i have to earn my paycheck.
some background you may not know: i work for a news organization. how busy we are heavily depends on what's happening in the world. most of the time we can't predict that, but sometimes (like, say, when an incumbent stands poised to ruin america for another four years) we have ample warning.
today i had to tell one of my employees that it was absolutely not convenient for her to take time off from november 4 — two days after the election — to november 13. not even (and here is the part that makes me cringe) to visit her dying grandmother in england.
well, obviously she should go visit her dying grandmother in england. but just as obviously, i had to tell her i couldn't spare her. she plans to go anyway, as she obviously must. what's not obvious is what i need to do about that, beyond bringing on another person to do her work and docking her pay for that time.
no one likes to be the bad guy, me less than most. i loathe having to settle disputes, give unpleasant news, and make unpopular decisions. i don't even like telling my team what to do — after five years with these employees, i am happiest when things are humming along with little need for intervention. but my job is to manage the team, to see that the work gets done, and occasionally to be the bad guy.
guess that's why they pay me the big bucks.
August 10, 2004
public enemy #1
our next-door neighbor has a beautiful yard and a gorgeous garden. she and her husband spend countless hours making their property lovely — they actually mow the lawn at least once a week, imagine!
they seem to like mirrored gazing balls, ornamental birdhouses, and those wooden wheelbarrows you put big pots of geraniums in. they also like this cow.
i, on the other hand, hate this cow. it is perched merrily right near the property line, where it is impossible to ignore as we drive down our driveway. i loathe this cheerful menace.
normally, being a cantankerous sort myself, i might suspect they'd put it there just to piss me off. but, no, i know they actually like it. how do i know? because the cow has a security device through the end of its tail, to keep the roving youth gangs of montpelier from making off with it.
flapflapflapflapflapflapflapflapflapflap
today as i was out harvesting weeds from between the bricks of the front walk, i got inspected by a hummingbird.
a juvenile male or a female — meaning small, gray-brown, and uninteresting in appearance — browsed around the bee balm for a while, then hovered up to look at me, hanging about three feet from my head.
i stood as still as i possibly could.
then it buzzed closer, about two feet away, at eye level.
i didn't breathe.
then it moved closer, until it was no more than a foot from my head, looking me straight in the face.
it hung there for about fifteen seconds, checking me out. i could feel the air move from the beating of its wings.
when it had decided i was neither a predator nor good to eat, it wheeled around and went back to its breakfast at the bee balm.
an unexpected pleasure
paul and i were out talking with the burly men about how high to fill the pond area with topsoil. we mentioned that when we replace the driveway, we planned to remove the unsightly turnaround that projects into the front yard.
"i can do that for you," burly man #1 said. "see this crack here? it'd come up real easily right along there." (though he is in general very helpful, he's not fooling anyone — it's obvious to anyone with eyes that he's just looking for excuses to play with the backhoe.)
lo and behold, the crack he pointed to followed exactly the curve i'd hoped to create.
so the turnaround is currently being pulled up, a happy surprise. it's going as easily as he predicted, too.
August 09, 2004
imponderable
the other thing the burly men did today was to fill in the pond. the pond, as you'll remember if you've seen it in the, uh, flesh, wasn't worth glorifying with the name — it was actually a hole, a hole in the ground about 3 x 5', deep and murky and dry half the year.
it is a hole no longer.
it has been filled with gravel and layered with landscape cloth. we hope it will continue to serve as a sort of dry well, since it's situated at the lowest point of the property.
"are there any plants from here you'd like to save?" one of the men asked me. "i see you have some rosebushes here..."
"i hate them," i told him. "kill them if you can."
clear the deck!
this morning two burly men arrived to tear the side off our house.
among other projects (finishing paul's workshop with windows instead of a garage door; replacing some rotting basement windows; closing off an exterior door or two), we'd asked them to remove the balcony that protruded off the side of the house.
i'd hated it since before we bought the house. it was badly in need of paint when we moved in, and had only deteriorated, with palm-sized flakes of paint shedding with every puff of wind and the rot increasing with every drop of rain.
and now, it is gone.
enjoy the magic with me, won't you?