I made it back to the gym today. I’ve always been a sporadic gym person at best, but last fall I had been back in the gym about six weeks, and was really enjoying it, when Patrick died. Afterwards, I tried a couple of times, but I just couldn’t do it. The treadmill seemed like a terrible analogy for my life, there were too many people, I couldn’t face having to see people. But, now it’s spring again, and my garden is coming back to life, and I’ve found myself the last few days getting cranky in that way that…
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I splurged and bought Goodbye Babylon from Dust to Digital — an outfit who is, as their website says dedicated to re-issuing music from old 78’s. This five-cd set (six if you count the bonus cd of sermons) is SO fabulous — there’s everything from shape-note singing to holiness string bands to jubliee gospel quartets to just wonderful weird singing about Jesus (or as I like to think of him, Jeeee-sus). I slugged all five cds into the player and have been listening to it nonstop for about a week — I don’t know what the deal is — I…
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There was a really dumb article over at Salon the other day about the heartbreak of being a midlist writer. The anonymous author is being duly spanked this morning in the letters for her whininess, and for the amounts of money she’s made over the past few years, which hardly seem to qualify her at all as midlist. Among the many, many things that annoyed me about this article, the one that hit closest to home is the idea that having a day job and being a “real” writer are mutually exclusive. I’ve seen this falsely romantic idea consign so…
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Yesterday I planted peas (2 kinds) and radishes, arugula, a raddiccio mix and an endive mix (from Seeds of Italy), an intriguing-looking plant called Saltwort, also from Seeds of Italy which is apparently all the rage in the finer restaurants of that fair land, laccinato kale, and interplanted spinach seeds amongst the transplants (which are looking sad, but that’s what transplants do for a few days). It’s only March and I know, despite our recent spate of 50 and 60 degree weather, that there will be more snow. But I’ve decided I don’t care! So it snows? So the seedlings…
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I organized the basement propagation center this weekend — it’s fabulous! I took one of the five-shelf utility units from Patrick’s storage unit, bought some cheap shop lights and grow-light tubes, and I now have four shelves set up with lights. Last year, I bought a couple of heat mats to help with germination, since it’s cool in my basement, and I have them set up on another short utility shelf unit. It’s like a real potting bench down there — space to store flats and cells, space for the bucket of potting mix, space to start seeds. It’s organized…
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In the freezer there was both ground lamb and ground elk (thanks Parks!) and after Maryanne and Jimmy’s magnificent dueling sauces for our Soprano’s-spaghetti-and-meatball-dinner on Sunday, I was inspired to make meatballs. I do not come from a meatball people, so meatballs are one of those things I come to late. In fact, I’m not much of a ground meat kind of gal, but when you buy (or are given) meat by the animal, you wind up with ground meat. So, I decided to do meatballs. Because I had lamb in the freezer, and because I made some really yummy…
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I have deeply mixed feelings about the Martha Stewart verdict (says the woman who just blogged about ironing for goodness’ sake). On the one hand, it seemed pretty clear from the beginning that she was guilty of insider trading, but on the other hand, insider trading happens every day among folk of her ilk. Why the vigorous prosecution? Why not just a fine and have it done with? I mean, Ken Lay destroyed the retirement savings of thousands of his own employees, (to say nothing of the Neil Bush’s role in the S&L crisis of the late ’80’s — anyone…
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I’ve blogged before about ironing. I iron — or at least I did before. I got teased for it a little bit last summer by Patrick and his girlfriend — they’d come over for dinner in the backyard and we’d have a nice, ironed tablecloth and ironed napkins. I believe in table linens, they were the first thing I learned to iron years and years ago at the resort we’d go to in northern Wisconsin. I was a kid who was often bored, and who liked to help, and somehow I took to hanging around the laundry (the bag of…