… that I live in this particular small town. Because tonight there were four, then six, then ten of us at the local bistro for dinner. Because on Sunday nights they’ve started doing all-you-can eat dinner with a big bowl of salad on the table and then a parade of their fabulous wood-fired pizzas. Because dinner conversation was all about Brian Schweitzer’s inaguration as the first Democratic Governor of Montana in 20 years, and about how when the Governor came into the Ball, it was the Plains Tribes drummers who drummed him into the ballroom, not something anyone ever saw…
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I have a very long, narrow garden bed along one side of my yard. For the past couple of years, I’ve been using those cheesy coated-wire fences to keep the dogs out of them, and suddenly, today, I couldn’t stand them anymore. Also, there’s a random patch of grass at the far end of the bed, beyond the plum trees, that I’ve been meaning to get rid of — it was about six feet by six feet, and mostly the dogs just seemed to use it to poop on. On the far side of the grass patch, is a long,…
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Fire up the rice cooker with rice and water and a wee bit of salt. Preheat the oven, with your marvelous cast-iron skillet inside, to 425 degrees. Put a hunk of lovely wild salmon caught by your friend Chris Beaudin (who promised to scope next season’s crews for a husband for yours truly) in a piece of tin foil with some leftover fennel fronds, a few rinsed salted capers, a splash of white wine and a little butter. Seal up the tinfoil. Snap the ends off some asparagus, and roll them around in some olive oil and sprinkle with salt.…
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This morning my friend Nina called and asked, with that sort of tense tone in her voice, what I was doing. Why? I said. Do you need a rescue? Turns out, she was in the car with the twins, who had a pediatrician’s appointment, and her husband (who is writing for TV trying to support them all) had a sudden deadline at eleven. She needed an extra set of arms. Well count me in. There’s no cure for a case of low-level January depression like a two month old baby that needs a snuggle. I did have to check my…
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Blogging has been slow here at LivingSmall because I just haven’t felt like I had anything interesting to say. It’s been a weird month — I’ve been a tiny bit depressed — I have to say, I sort of thought this grief thing would get easier at some point — like after I made it through the first anniversary, or got through the holidays — but it still just sucks. And trying to write this book isn’t helping — I mean, last January was SO horrible what with the crying on the couch with the dog in my lap, and…
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I have a perfect bowl. My cousin Elizabeth made it for me many years ago. It’s exactly the right size for a single-girl meal, and tonight, after a very blinky day brought on by one of those nuits blanches a full moon sometimes brings, I made some dinner in the Perfect Bowl. It was very monkey-brain in my house last night — I have a totally different job at my Real Job, and I don’t really know how to do it yet. So, it was one of those nights where one thinks about everything including many things one has no…
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Last weekend it was five below, this evening I was sitting out on the front porch, enjoying the latest New Yorker on a fifty-degree evening, in a sweater and a light jacket. Lovely to get some fresh air again. Lovely to have daylight last past five o’clock again. No matter how dark December sometimes seems, the light and the warmth come back as always ….
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When last week’s article in the Boston Globe about food blogs came out and it listed Pim’s full name, I got to wondering. So I googled her and it turns out that Pim, of Chez Pim, and I not only work for the same very large computer company, but we’re in the same division, and even in the same building (which considering there are about 45 buildings on campus, is pretty interesting). Who knew? So I emailed her, and she IM’ed me this morning, and we made plans to go out next time I’m back in town. Small small world…
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My grandmother is ninety four today. Ninety four! She’s still got all her faculties, although she’s got a glass eye, and an artificial hip. She started a lending library in her little farm town in Illiniois at ninety because she’d “retired” and she needed a project. So she got a lot of people to donate books, and she got a donated building, and she catalogued all the books. If you want to borrow a book from my grandmother’s library, basically you just write it down in the notebook, and you bring it back when you want. It’s a great little…
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Argh — I feel like the Bad Blogger. I’ve been so consumed by the Tsunami, by the subzero weather, by a rousing game of UpWords with Maryanne last night, and by getting my New Year’s resolutions organized ( a:sitting again in the mornings, b: writing writing writing the second and third sections of the memoir and c: reading Virginia Woolf’s novels in order [as opposed to the letters and diaries which I love]), that I haven’t gotten around to blogging. As for cooking — I made a bomber bolognese sauce with hot italian sausage and ground antelope the other day…