And the best quick bread goes to...

We were eating our pre-Oscars dinner last night when our guest offhandedly mentioned that if he had leftover ham, he'd have ham on biscuits the next morning at brunch. The s.o. and I exchanged meaningful glances.

"Thanks," the s.o. said to him, smiling.

The idea percolated in my head later that evening as we were eating zabaglione and engaging in a Marsala-fueled critique of the nominees' and presenters' clothing, acting skills, speeches, etc. The boys tore into the ham again during the wee hours, but they still left plenty for biscuits, and for a bevy of split-pea soups and the like in the future.

I make great biscuits. I came by it honestly--I had to work at it. There was a time when my biscuits sucked and weren't worth eating. But over time I've learned that biscuit dough is a little like pie dough. There is a certain very specific way it has to be handled, and if you do exactly that, you'll have excellent results every time.

My biscuits are squarish, which the s.o. jokingly says is "wrong, just wrong." There's a reason for it, though, which is that I don't own a good round biscuit cutter. Contrary to popular opinion, you cannot simply stamp out biscuits with an upended drinking glass; the dull edge will crimp down the sides of the biscuits and they'll end up flat. Your biscuit cutter must be knife-sharp so it frees up the layers, and that's why I use one of those big rectangular kitchen scrapers with a sharpened edge to cut mine.

My biscuits are also half whole-wheat flour, which I suppose is wrong in some people's view, too. I certainly wouldn't make strawberry-shortcake biscuits that way. But I like my regular breakfast biscuits to have some nutritional value to them. And I promise you they are just as delicious and fluffy as white biscuits.

Although we do live near Athens, Ga., my biscuits are not made from the Grit's famous whole-wheat biscuit recipe. The recipe they printed in their cookbook is either missing some crucial secret ingredient or is too persnickety to be executed successfully by most mortals. Even at the restaurant, the biscuits are only really transcendent when a guy named Chuck is in the kitchen. He has the touch.

So here's how to do it. And in case you were wondering, we decided that the worst gown of the night was Hilary Swank's Guy Laroche, which looked like a choir robe held tight to the front of her neck by rubber bands. (It was almost as bad as Diane Kruger's Marchesa horror from the Golden Globes.) On the other hand, we thought Cate Blanchett and Kate Winslet looked especially nice.

BISCUITS
1 c. whole wheat flour
1 c. all-purpose flour, plus a little extra for the countertop
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
6 Tbs. unsalted butter
1 c. buttermilk

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.
Combine the dry ingredients in a large bowl and, with a pastry blender or two knives, cut in the butter until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Pour in the buttermilk and stir with a fork just until the batter pulls away from the sides of the bowl.
Flour the counter lightly with all-purpose flour. Flour your hands. Lift out the wad of dough and, without messing with it too much, pat it into a squarish shape about an inch thick. Pick up the end of the square that's closest to you and fold it to the top. Pat it to flatten it slightly, then turn the resulting rectangle 90 degrees and fold it over exactly once more. (If you know how to make croissants, you'll recognize this as being a similar technique, although much simplified; you're doing this to align the butter into layers.)
Now pat and adjust the dough into a neat rectangle about 3/4 inch thick. Again, don't mess with it too much. The less you work it, the better.
Cut the dough into 12 or 16 biscuits. If you are using a scraper to cut them, feel free to razor off the sloppy edges so your biscuits will be more aesthetically pleasing.
Place the biscuits close to each other, but not touching, on a nonstick baking sheet. Bake 15 minutes, or until golden-brown on top and just cooked through. Remove from the baking sheet immediately so they don't overbake.

Recommendation

If you're older than 25 or so (or even if you're not, really), you might want to give this internet radio station a listen. A lot of it is great, and a lot of it is pretty obscure. (For example, I had forgotten that groups such as Fun Boy Three even existed.)

Exotic canned good makes good

The one thing that is most noticeably American about my kitchen is the sheer amount of food in it. I love to grocery shop (it's not a chore for me; it's something I look forward to), and if I see an unusual ingredient I'm fond of, I have a compulsion to buy it right away, whether I need it or not.

This occasionally leads to flabby vegetables that have to be thrown out or made into stock, but more often it leads to adventuresome cooking and eating when I ponder, "Okay, what the hell can I do with this?"

Thus it came to be that there was a tin of guava paste in the pantry that had been there for kind of a long time and really, really needed to be used up. I have been known to make Cuban-style pastries with guava paste, but I haven't done it in a long time and couldn't foresee doing it. So I decided to serve a few little cubes of guava paste with the cheese/fruit course of tonight's dinner. And in the meantime I invented this, which I think is the absolute most delicious smoothie of all time:

GUAVA-BANANA SMOOTHIE
1 frozen banana, broken into small chunks
1/2 c. nonfat plain yogurt
2 Tbs. guava paste

Put all the ingredients in a blender and pulse until smooth. Makes 1 smoothie.

A foolproof way to tell you're still asleep and dreaming

Someone informs you that Apple has released a new color of iPod, called "Liver Fantasy."

What the hell?

Dinner recipe

Well, this made me feel better!

ITALIAN SAUSAGE AND BEAN STEW
3 Italian sausages (we use the lower-fat turkey kind)
1 Tbs. olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 medium green bell pepper, sliced thin
14-oz. can diced tomatoes, with liquid
14-oz. can Great Northern or cannelini beans, partly drained
1/4 tsp. fennel seed, chopped
1/4 tsp. red pepper flakes
1 to 2 tsp. red wine vinegar, to taste

Preheat the broiler. Prick the sausages with a fork and place them on a foil-lined broiler pan. Broil, turning once, until sausages are well browned and cooked through. Cut each sausage into about four pieces. Set aside.
Heat the olive oil in a large skillet and add the onion, garlic, and green pepper. Saute until crisp-tender, about 5 minutes.
Add the tomatoes and their juice to the pan. Cook over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally, until liquid is somewhat reduced.
Stir in the remaining ingredients, including the sausages. Bring back to a quick simmer, stirring, then slap a lid on the skillet and reduce the heat to low. The dish is done when the flavors are combined and the vegetables are soft.

Dept. of self-sabotage

Sometimes it is so frustrating not to have the eyes and nose of a dog.

Silver and I are walking at the edge of the woods. She pokes around in the pine straw at a leisurely pace, and I have to keep an eye on her to make sure she doesn't find a pile of deer shit and eat it.* The dog across the street starts barking, but I don't pay it any mind because that dog is very bored, what with being tied out all the time, and it barks at a lot of things.

Suddenly Silver tenses up and stares fixedly into our side woods. I stare in the same direction, but I don't see anything. I walk with her to the top of a little hill, hoping (by following the arc of her gaze) to triangulate exactly where the object of interest is. Still nothing. I squint. Dammit, I have 20/10 vision with my contact lenses in, but I can only see tree trunks and privet.

Silver stares as only a border collie can stare. "Wuh," she says quietly--that noise dogs make when they're fixing to bark but haven't quite committed to it yet.

"What is it, girl?" I ask, and then I roll my eyes at my own stupidity. This is not Lassie. I shrug and lead Silv back up to the house.

I haven't been too bright today, all in all. I started out feeling great but then acted contrary for no reason when the s.o. and I were at the thrift store. I kept at it until I succeeded in ruining our fun. Everything he found, I'd say that we couldn't afford it without going to an ATM, or that we didn't need it. And then of course the whole way home, I kept bringing it up and self-flagellating and continuing to dampen the mood. Lovely.

So rather than subjecting anyone to a continuation of the eternal "I suck" litany, I present you with the farm report:

Arugula - Up in great quantities - woo hoo!
Lettuce - Just barely up.
Peas - have so far failed to thrive since sprouting, and I am beginning to wonder if they are rotting in situ because of the soggy soil.

Eh.

-----
*Notice I didn't say anything about wishing for a dog's sense of taste. This past Christmas I got my dad's onetime girlfriend a recipe notebook with cartoon dog chefs on it. To me it was funny, because dogs really, really don't care what they eat. And yet for some reason I am still flattered when our dogs beg for, say, my Chinese sesame cabbage. "They like it!" I exclaim.

Oh yeah...

Tonight:
A navarin of lamb from Jacques Pépin's Simple and Healthy Cooking, which I always involuntarily pronounce "Sample and Hell-tee Cookeeng," and you probably would, too, if you had spent as much time as I have watching Jacques' show on PBS. I love Jacques Pépin. Not only is he a font of knowledge, but he's goofy and smiley. I think of him as the French Fred Flintstone.

His navarin--at least his lowfat one--is a little odd in that it doesn't have turnips in it, which I thought was a requirement. But I secretly don't like turnips all that much (I grow them for their delicious greens, and for their self-esteem value--i.e., they grow like scary radioactive weeds, so by virtue of their inevitable success they make you feel like a Real Gardener), so no complaints here. Two thumbs way up.

Friday has suddenly taken on a cheerier and more leisurely character because a key interviewee for my article has been sick and hasn't called me back. The editor has given me additional time to interview him and then finish writing. Cue music from Ferris Bueller's Day Off...

Gosh, that sounded irresponsible. Joking! Joking!

February was never like this

Spring has sprung. The early flowers are up all along the rural highway. There is one place in a town called Maxeys*, about 10 miles north of here, where there's an old pink dogtrot house with a little woods next to it. The woods are full of naturalized daffodils. It reminds me of a field of tall yellow daffodils at my grandparents' place when I was a kid.

Also in Maxeys, the farmer(s) at Green Acres Farms have freshly manured the fields. I keep forgetting to put the car fan on "RECIRC" when I drive through there, but it's not so bad, really.

I was worried that the torrential rains had washed away all my seeds, but today I found that my radishes had survived and sprouted. You know how you look and look in the dirt and can't see a thing, and then you see one sprout and all of the sudden they're everywhere you look?

Today was so lovely (70 and sunny again) that I went out in short sleeves for the first time this year. I drove into Athens and ran errands:

New battery for the Accord - check!
Deposit check at ATM - check!
Craft store - check!
Big Lots - check!
Wine store - check!
Bakery - check!
Real grocery where they can identify the produce - check!

At the grocery they had watercress. Watercress! Good, fresh watercress, too, not the flattened, yellow watercress you see sometimes that already smells like decay. I've been waiting months for it to appear. I grabbed it and a head of butter lettuce so I could make my favorite salad of all time.

The s.o. is as enamored of the watercress salad as I am. We both take seconds--so what if we spoil our dinner! I see this as one of many signs of our compatibility. Let's put it this way: Once upon a time when I was married to my ex, I took that same salad to an Easter brunch with his family and every one of them turned their noses up at it. Great people, but no taste. That was the brunch where I was introduced to the Swedish-American dish known as "sandwich loaf." It's Wonderbread with the crusts cut off, layered with ham salad, egg salad, etc., and then "frosted" with mayonnaise so it resembles a cake. Gak! Please let me never see such a thing again.

Spring also brings American Idol. Seacrest...in! The house! Tonight was the results show from the first week of voting. Super emotional. I'd say the viewers pretty much voted off the right people, with the possible exception of Sarah Mather, who simply sang the wrong song for her talents (Earth to Sarah: If you are a delicate Victorian beauty, do not choose a song that requires raunchy soul).

I still have high hopes for my boy Constantine, although earlier this week he was so nervous that he kept lapsing into Tourette's-style grimaces and winces**. He's gotten over it now--he's all smiles and smoulders. Something very beneficial has happened along the way: The producers have drummed up a faux rivalry between him and the other "29-year-old rocker guy," the also-excellent Bo Bice. Psychologically, that's cool, because the little girls will pick a favorite and vote for him. I think it will benefit both.

I should finish painting the pantry, but no, I'm lolling around, paging through my new Sunset and Vogue magazines. The s.o. is listing eBay items, as he does. We are both looking forward to morning, too. Don't think I would have visited the bakery without getting a breakfast pastry. The s.o. is lucky--Big City Bread cuts its raspberry coffeecake into pieces that are too big for any sane person to eat alone, so I share mine with him.

-----
* Supposedly the only town in Georgia with a possessive name, except that it's not a possessive anymore because they dropped the apostrophe. I hate to be a grammar nitpicker, but...no, wait, I don't hate to be a grammar nitpicker. That's how I am, dammit.

** It reminded me of the first chapter of Infinite Jest, it was that painful. I can't believe I just wrote that in a footnote.

Fish tale

I'm hesitant to blog this, because non-foodies are going to think that this blog has suddenly become All Food All The Time. It won't stay that way, I promise. Surely my life is fascinating in myriad other ways. Um, or not. But I like to pretend it is sometimes. Anyhow...

Recently we bought a couple of tins of smoked shellfish--one of mussels, one of oysters. They were on sale for 99 cents each, probably because no one was buying them. My thought was, well, shoot, there's got to be a recipe for this stuff out there somewhere.

There was.

A half recipe, made with neufchatel instead of cream cheese, then spread on little toast pieces and baked with cherry tomato halves on top, made a wickedly good appetizer.

Then I cooked a couple of whole catfish according to the "Gary Fooks' Chinese Sea Bass" recipe in The River Cottage Cookbook. It was weird how little they tasted like catfish. They had no muddy aftertaste (or, as the s.o. joked, "none of that characteristic PCB flavor"). It was either the ginger that was tucked inside the body cavity during the steaming, or maybe fish farming has finally succeeded in breeding the river out of the river cat. (Not sure that's a desirable thing.)

Anyway, thumbs up to Hugh F.-W., and/or to his friend Gary. The fish was served covered in oyster sauce and fresh herbs. My mother called just at the moment when I was pouring a drizzle of smoking-hot peanut oil over the entire dish to sizzle it. I let the phone ring. I really wanted to talk to my mother, and I knew it was her (not because I was expecting her call, but because I somehow always know when it's her), but the fish wouldn't wait.

She called back after dinner. (I knew she'd do that, too.) She and my stepdad had spent the holiday weekend in Philadelphia and New York City and were driving back to Ohio. I was pretty jealous until I remembered that I'd been in Savannah last week, which is almost as good. Almost.*

They also went hunting for pheasants somewhere out in the country, and came back with a coolerful of them. Mom's a crack shot. She's so petite** that I can't figure out how she withstands the recoil. I chalk it up as one of the great mysteries of life.

TV: All of the Ohio news tonight is food-related. In an Akron pizzeria, a guy was beaten severely because someone cut in front of him in line and then overheard him complaining about it on his cell phone. Elsewhere, in a school cafeteria, "a baked potato became a dangerous weapon." Welcome to my home state. You live it, you love it. Reach for my dinner and you'll draw back a nub! (I guess now I know where I got it from.)

-----
* It's amazing what a large gap there is sometimes between "almost" and "totally."

** She wears size extra-small hip waders when she goes fly fishing. I didn't inherit her build. I didn't inherit her aim, either, if my tentative experiments with pellet guns and tin cans are any indication. I sucked at Girl Scout archery, too.

The many lives of a potage parmentier

What a lovely day in central Georgia. We were promised 70 degrees and raining, but it seems yesterday's violent thunderstorms (complete with two sessions of marble-sized hail) drained the reserves, because what we have today is 70 degrees and sunny. I would be outside all day, but I have a lot of interviews to do for the article I'll be turning in on Friday. So I'm stuck (most of the time, anyway) to my desk.

The s.o. is watching Dania Jai Alai on his computer, and I can hear a soft "whack-pock-squeak-pock" coming from the speakers, interrupted every so often with the announcer talking about trifectas, superfectas, etc. Our vacation in Florida can't come soon enough.

Those of you who frequent my other blog, Manor Menu, may have seen that I have decided to move the food-related content over here. My reasoning is that food is a massive part of my life--the one thing dearest to my heart, probably, other than family and dogs--and that it seems awkward and pointless to sequester it the way I have been. It made sense at first, when Manor Menu was an unadorned record of everydamnthing I ate, but now that I am more selective and I chat about the food, it's silly.

("C'mon, three! Let's go, three!" the s.o. is cheering.)

Also, lately it's become increasingly difficult to know where to write about events. For example, the zucchini incident would have been just as appropriate over yonder as it was here. And I have even omitted talking about things because I wasn't sure where to put them. This week I devoured John and Karen Hess's The Taste of America on the recommendation of the lovely Bakerina, and it was (if you will forgive the expression) a lot of food for thought. It mourns the fact that most Americans have forgotten what real food tastes like--a point that was proven many times over by the unknowing cashier at Ingles. That's been on my mind a lot.

I have also been reading Mireille Guiliano's bestseller French Women Don't Get Fat, and while it didn't tell me much that I didn't already know, it was a charming read that reinforced all the things I've been doing right lately and gave me inspiration to continue on. I highly recommend it. Her main thesis is the opposite of what most diet books preach: Instead of limiting your foods to a certain few bingeables, you should explore as many tastes as possible and revel in little teeny bites of exciting, perfect, decadent food. Eating half a rotisserie chicken for lunch every day (which, I am informed, a publisher of mine does in order to stay Atkins-appropriate) is a sure way to sabotage your appreciation of food and make things worse in the long run.

She's nuts about nuts, this Mireille person, and she spends a lot of time talking about freshness and quality. Stale, borderline-rancid airplane peanuts aren't worth eating, in her opinion; freshly shelled Oregon hazelnuts are another matter completely.

That's why even though the grocery store staff are incompetant, my visit the other day did give me a ray of hope. I was just leaving the produce department when I saw a thirty-something mother with her daughter. The little girl had picked up a plastic bag of pecans and was asking her mother, "Mama, do you like nuts?"

"When they're straight off the tree, yes, I do!" said the mother, smiling and gently putting the package back on the shelf.

A person who knows fresh from packaged! A person who would give the Hesses and La Femme Guiliano a reason to smile. She doesn't prefer the facsimile to the real thing.

So before the title of this post becomes completely irrelevant, I'd better at least mention the leek and potato soup I made yesterday. No use talking about where I got the recipe, since Deborah Madison and Julia Child agree on almost every detail. You take a couple pounds of peeled potatoes and a couple pounds of trimmed, sliced leeks, and you simmer them until they are soft. Then you puree the whole mess, season it, and drizzle in a little cream.

Mine wasn't exactly like that, though, since I had boiled down the carcass of a Psycho Chicken the night before. I had all this delicious broth, and a bunch of little chicken pieces-parts. So I strained out the bits of meat, set them aside, and used the broth to simmer the vegetables in. Then, after the pureeing, I stirred the chicken bits back in. It was awesome.

As soon as the s.o. and I got up today, we knew that it was the perfect day for a brunch on the back porch. The soup would figure centrally in it--that was all we knew.

I needed to cut down the old winter sorrel out in the herb garden in order to encourage the new leaves to grow, so I took Julia Child's advice and stirred in a bit of julienned sorrel as I heated the soup up. Anyone who's not into sorrel yet, get online and buy some seeds at whatever seed place you prefer. It's stupid-easy to grow, and it's perennial. My favorite herb/vegetable of all time, or at least a close competitor.

Meanwhile, I laid out some thick-cut bacon in a jelly-roll pan and stuck it in the oven at 350 degrees. The s.o. and I like bacon. He especially is passionate about it. You know the dog-treat commercial where the dog sees only bacon, no matter what Rorschach blot he's shown? I think he feels a little like that.

I brought some water to a very low boil and poached two eggs. I floated one in each bowl of soup. Meanwhile, I toasted two slices of crusty bread.

I don't think I even need to say how good it all was. There's still more soup. I wonder what form it will take on tomorrow...

Damn, now I have to get back to work. I have a long, handwritten fax about a challenging marine canvas project that I need to decipher before...um, seven minutes from now.

By request

Not the best photo, but here you can see Cairo making use of his new dog stairs. The s.o. used scrap materials from around the house--complete with old paint, etc.--to build the stairs.

We intend to paint the wainscoting a greenish color and stain the risers, but at the moment I can't bear to take the stairs away for a day to do it!

Woo hoo!

My peas are sprouting!

I am appalled

About a week ago I went to the grocery store and purchased, among other things, a smallish bunch of cilantro. I was standing in the checkout line, absentmindedly watching the prices tally up on the register display, when I noticed that the checkout girl had keyed in my cilantro as asparagus. I pointed the error out, and the girl asked me, "Well, what is it, then?"

I was a little shocked that she didn't recognize the cilantro. I would give her a break if I thought it was an herb solely used by snobby foodies like me. But there are a lot of Mexican-Americans in our area. Surely they buy cilantro every day. I wonder if their receipts tell a different story.

Anyhow, it didn't matter in the long run. In fact, we benefitted. After we got home, I found that in the confusion, the cashier had forgotten to ring up our bottle of red wine. Free wine!

So today I went back to the store for some more provisions. Squashes were on sale, so I bought both yellow crooknecks and zucchini. Lo and behold, the cashier was befuddled by the zucchini. I saw her furrowing her brow and tracing her finger up and down the produce code sheet.

The bag boy noticed, too. He assumed an air of superiority. "Know what that is?" he asked her.

"No, what?"

"Okra!" he announced proudly.

WHA-A-A-A-AT?

Am I to understand that here, in the heart of soul food country, twenty-somethings are unable to recognize okra unless it has previously been chopped, breaded, deep-fried, and frozen for their convenience?

I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Even though fresh potatoes are one of the cheapest foods available, I have noticed that the meat-n-three across the street uses canned ones. All of their vegetables are canned.

We are so screwed.

The misidentification of my zucchini left me breathless. All I could do was stammer, "No, it's not!" The checkout girl and the bag boy looked at me expectantly, having no alternate theories.

I recommend a mandatory Produce Quiz Bowl weekly for all Ingles employees.

But in the end, what would probably work best is what I said on my way out the door. "Y'all need to eat more fresh vegetables."

A mighty fine day

Yes, I got my books from Amazon. At last. I bet the mail carrier isn't used to being greeted with "Oh, thank God!"

But the real reasons today is a mighty fine day are threefold. The first is that today we ate vegetables from our garden. How is this possible, you ask? Well, carrots are biennial, and I found several stragglers underground when I turned over the soil for a bed of radishes. There were about two handfuls of stunted little carrots (the soil there was, admittedly, too clayey for them to reach their potential, which is why I'm moving them to a loamier part of the garden this season). I scrubbed them, threw them in the food processor with a cored Rome apple, and stirred the resulting shreds together with golden raisins, plain yogurt, a bit of Miracle Whip, and a dash of lemon juice. Voila! Carrot-apple-raisin slaw.

The second reason is that I was gardening in the first place. Planted today:

another variety of lettuce
sugar snap peas
beets
turnips
kale
spinach
radishes

So naturally I am feeling rather accomplished, and quite sore, especially in my lower back.

My final reason for regarding today as extra special is that the s.o. built a little set of stairs for Cairo to climb onto the bed with. Our sweet three-legged Cairo can't make it on his own, but he desperately wants to. So we decided to give him a leg up (so to speak). He took to it pretty quickly and is rather proud of himself. The stairs are not only useful, but they are gorgeous--sturdy wooden steps with wainscoting on the sides and heart-pine risers. Just one of the many reasons why I love the s.o. so very much.

What have they done with my Amazon package?!

USPS Shipment Details
Your item was accepted at 12:14 pm on February 10, 2005 in LEXINGTON, KY 40511. Information, if available, is updated every evening. Please check again later.

Tired but happy

I spent Monday and Tuesday at a conference in Savannah. The way I see it nowadays, if you're living in the south, Savannah is probably the place to do it. It's such a European-style city with all its cobblestone streets and tree-lined squares. It's old and beautiful and haunting, like New Orleans without so much touristiness and crime. Wrought iron railings, stone statues, cafes, seafood. How can you go wrong?

I attended a lot of conference sessions, but I also walked through the city streets for hours. I found the Goodwill to end all Goodwills, and I shopped till I dropped. I got some Vietnamese food. I ate a few fried oysters and some peel-n-eat shrimp. I came home and tallied all my calories and was appalled, because I was actually being rather careful but it didn't seem to help at all. Still, it was worth it, every minute.

Now, having put out most of the administrative fires that were waiting on my desk (aren't they always?), I am getting back to normal life. It was sunny and 55 today, so I turned over the soil in several of the garden beds. The s.o. cut a couple of poles and helped me install the pea trellis. I raked one bed smooth and planted lettuce and arugula. Sure, we're moving, but when? There's probably lots of time to harvest spring vegetables. And if not, then some buyer gets really lucky.

I saw my first lizard of the season today. I was walking Silver at the edge of the woods and spotted a little Carolina anole scampering up a tree. He had turned himself a lovely pale shade of grey-brown to match the tree bark.

The weather report calls for more of the same weather: Coldish at night, sunny and 50s in the day. I hope to see some lettuces soon, and to have time to plant radishes, peas, spinach, etc.

Happy Pre-Valentine's Day

Normally, being a freelance writer is about as flexible as jobs get. But tomorrow morning I happen to be driving to Savannah for a conference. That means I'll be missing Valentine's Day with the s.o. Since we knew in advance it would be happening that way, we went out to dinner tonight.

The Chinese/Japanese restaurant down by the lake is really better than an Asian restaurant in rural Georgia has any right to be. We started out with an Alaska roll. Then we worked our way through the best pu pu platter we've ever had*, which came with a teeny little flaming hibachi that I was afraid I'd catch myself on fire on. Then we split a seafood entree, which was full of big sea scallops and broccoli and shrimp and crab and asparagus. Then we each ate a piece of eel sashimi. The waiter brought out orange slices and almond cookies for dessert.

It was delicious. Romantic, too, even when the waiter walked around to all the "Happy Valentine's Day" mylar balloons and pushed the buttons that made their little electronic innards sing love songs.

This is what Valentine's Day should be like. No overpriced gifts, no false expectations, no hype. Just two people who love each other spending a little quality time in each other's presence.

-----
* Yes, better than the one we had at the Mai Kai during last year's Spring Training vacation. That's really saying something.

It's that time again

My early pick for this season's American Idol: New Yorker Constantine Maroulis. I like his odds because he's totally comfortable in his own skin and onstage. He has an extensive background in theater (e.g., leading roles in national productions of Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Rent) and is the singer in a rock band. His voice is warm and he has a great range.

Oh, and I think I forgot to mention: He's so impossibly hot that his mere existence drives me insane. (Oops, did I type that out loud?)

Chirrup, chirrup

Thanks to heavy rains this week, which have caused soggy patches everywhere...

Thanks to 60-degree weather today...

THE FROGS ARE AWAKE!

*smile*

Strange

Did you know that the first track of Hank Williams Jr.'s infamous Family Tradition album is "To Love Somebody"?

For some reason, that completely blew our minds.

Is this the version Slobberbone were covering? I should ask them.

So sue me

Okay. So I know that the choice of Paul McCartney as the entertainment for the Superbowl halftime show was prompted by the worst possible motivations. The promoters wanted someone safe as milk, who wouldn't show a nipple or say a bad word. They wanted someone who was the opposite of edgy.

But I still loved it. The part of me that adores pyrotechnics thrilled to the sight of fireworks set off in time with "Live and Let Die." The emotional sucker in me teared up to the starry, feel-good rendition of "Hey Jude." And dang it all, Paul can still really put on a show after all these years.

*hmph*

There goes any street cred I might ever have aspired to have.

Pursuant to previous things

1. I am still sick, sort of. I thought I was getting better, but then I relapsed. But I figure as long as I'm not coughing up anything gross-looking, I'm okay, right? Mainly I just have a runny nose and still can't sleep without decongestants.

2. The productivity tools appear to actually be helping me. I've been getting tons done, both on my job and on the house, and haven't neglected the reading of my usual blogs or the perusal of my usual TV shows, either. *grin* It feels nice--and extremely unusual, I might add--to be ahead of the game on all my writing assignments. I really need to cultivate this.

3. My diet is going really well. I'm eating as close to perfectly, nutritionally speaking, as I ever have in my life. (Props to Fitday, which helps me remember to eat that extra piece of fruit or that much-needed serving of legumes instead of, say, even more chocolate than I already usually eat.) I am within half a pound of my goal weight and appear to be plateauing there, which is absolutely fine with me.

4. [Boys, tune out now while you have a chance! This is something you will probably wish you hadn't read if you read it.] I have had my period forever. Absolutely forever. Like, a month. I normally have some, er, patchiness, because I have a Copper-T IUD (ladies, e-mail me offblog if you are curious about what this is like...doctors in the U.S. are reluctant to recommend them because of the Dalkon Shield ugliness a few decades ago, but they are very safe now and I think they are a much better option than taking gratuitous hormones every day). But I always have a definable period and a definable not-period. Not so this month. It's as though someone took my regular period and stretched it out over 30 days. Both the s.o. and I are rather disgruntled about this. No PMS, though, at least. Always look on the sunny side.

5. I got F. to work for me again this week, and I am going to visit the bar owner in a few days and quit the bartending job altogether. I'm tired of my sleep schedule being thrown off so much. I worry about the drive home--so late at night, and with me in such a groggy state. And I guess I've gotten to the point where, if I'm gonna go downtown, I want to be free to goof around and go wherever I like. I have enjoyed bartending, and I'm really glad I picked up the skills. I've made wonderful friends. But I think it's time to start hanging out with them on a purely non-work basis. I need to devote my work energy to writing and editing.

Awesome

Check out these brilliant anti-procrastination tactics!

I've already set my home page to this. It amuses me.

The fine art of small talk

Me to the woman behind the counter at the meat-n-three: "Don't know why we keep getting this nasty grim weather."

The woman behind the counter at the meat-n-three to me: "Well, it's winter."

Okay, what I meant was...

Exercise in futility

I was irked. It was January 31, 2005, the arbitrary end date of my lose-ten-pounds diet. Had I reached my goal? There was no way to know.

My scale had stopped working. Several days before, it had started working only intermittently. Now I couldn't get any reading at all. It read "Lo" when I stepped on it, which I assumed meant the "lifetime battery" was low. Fuming, I got on the phone, dialed the number on the back of the scale, and pushed ones and twos until I got a person on the other end.

"Taylor Scales customer service. How may I help you?"

I cleared my throat. "Um, yes," I began. "I purchased a Taylor digital scale with a lifetime lithium battery about a year and a half ago."

"Yes," the woman replied, not encouragingly.

"Well," I continued, "the battery is dead. The screen reads 'Lo' when I step on it."

"The battery has a shelf life of one to two years," she said.

"But on the scale and the package it came in, it clearly says it's a lifetime battery," I protested.

"The battery has a shelf life of one to two years," she repeated.

"Apparently you didn't expect me to live very long?" I sputtered.

Silence. Then more silence.

I stammered, "Okay. Let's assume that a lifetime is one to two years. My problem is, the store where I bought the scale doesn't carry replacement batteries, because the batteries are supposed to be lifetime batteries."

"Any Radio Shack," the woman stated flatly.

"Is there anything you can do about the fact that my lifetime battery has expired in less than two years?"

"The battery has a shelf life of one to two years."

"But is there anything you can do..."

"Any Radio Shack."

*sigh*

I went to Radio Shack. Tomorrow I'll weigh myself and I'll see how I did.

Words fail me (almost)

This has been happening all night. It's not snow, exactly, but more like sleet with high ambitions. The s.o. worked at the bar last night and had to drive home through it. I was so glad to see him when he finally pulled into the driveway.

We are going exactly nowhere today. F. has volunteered to take my shift. Bless him.

The flu conquers Athens

Ring...ring...

"Hi, F. How are you?"
"Oh, hey, Jamie! Pretty good."
"Hey, I just wanted to call and cancel dinner tomorrow night with you and J. I'm really sick, and I don't think I'll be up to it."
"You know, that's probably for the best. J.'s sick too."
"Really?"
"Yeah. M.* was sick last week, plus two of the guys in my band had it. I don't feel that great myself, but I'm going to work both my shift and J.'s today."
"Ew. Well, hope she feels better...and that you don't come down with it."

Three minutes go by, and then...

Ring...ring...

"Hello?"
"Hi, Jamie. This is L.**"
"Hi, L.! How are you?"
"Well, I have the flu, so I was wondering if you wanted my shift tonight."
"Whew, L., normally I would, but I'm sick too. I hope you feel better."
"Thanks."

We are so screwed.

-----

* Our boss at the bar.
** The boss's wife, who also works at the bar.

Things that didn't go as planned

My pizza yesterday was a disaster. The dough didn't survive two weeks in the freezer as well as I might have hoped, and it didn't rise. Not only that, but it stuck to the pan. Not just a little, but a lot. We had to scrape the whole thing off in inch-long shreds. I've never had that problem with my pizza pan before, but I guess there's a first time for everything.

I am ashamed to say I didn't take it well. I was feeling pretty crappy, and the pizza was supposed to make me feel better. It wouldn't be a stretch to call my reaction "throwing a tantrum." The s.o., who always knows how to make me feel better, drove into Greensboro to pick up some Chinese food. Half an hour later I was stuffing my face with fried tofu bits and crab rangoons, placated.

Meanwhile, the talk of the town is the failed robbery of a country store several miles north of us. Two teenagers from Athens barged in at closing time a couple of nights ago and demanded that the owner and his wife hand over the till. Trouble was, the kids were jittery and trigger-happy. One of them fired his gun at the store owner, but the gun jammed. In the moment of "Wha--?" that ensued, the owner and his wife had time to grab their respective pistols from under the counter, and they returned fire.

It's really a pity that the store had no video cameras, because the melee that followed must have been something. The teen who'd fired the first (failed) shot ran crashing through the aisles, firing actual bullets this time, until he was killed. The other robber had no gun, so he hid in a back corner and threw glass condiment bottles at the proprietors until he, too, was shot down. The entire store was spattered with blood and soy sauce.

The Oglethorpe County Sheriff ruled the shootings self-defense. The robbers were identified and turned out to have lengthy criminal records back in town.

All I can figure is that the kids thought what a lot of us think about rural folks: that they're naive and unsuspecting, an easy mark. But when it's ten or more miles to the next storefront, store owners generally don't take chances.

But in my current dextromethorphan haze, this is too much for me to think about. I can barely even get my head together enough to wander into the kitchen and get some Chinese leftovers.

Sick

I must have touched the wrong dollar bill on Saturday night, because I have an awful cold. I'm sure the sleep deprivation didn't help. I'm spoiled when it comes to sleep. My system is very much used to eight hours a night. If I don't get it, little parts of me start going on strike.

The worst part is the tickling inside my ears. It makes me crazy; the urge to scrape out my brainpan with a Q-tip is very powerful. The sore, sinus-drainagey throat isn't any fun, either. I normally wait until I'm desperate to take any kind of medicine, but... Oh, wait, I am desperate. Tonight may be a Nyquil night.

I look pale and washed out, but that's not completely the fault of the cold virus. I went to my hairdresser yesterday* and she tried out a new brand of hair colors on me. The dye took, er, a little strongly. I am Courteney Cox when I was aiming for Jennifer Aniston. I washed it twice in a row this morning to no avail. So I have a second appointment tomorrow morning to lighten it up.

On the bright side, our weather has cleared up nicely. And! And! And! I am making homemade pizza for dinner tonight. Those two things are enough to bring a smile to my face.

---

* Yes, I remembered to pick up my boots at the cobbler's shop while I was in town. It's a great place. My shoes always come back looking glossy and expensive even though in most cases I originally bought them at a thrift store or a garage sale. The only thing I find disconcerting is their filing system. They stack finished shoes in towering columns along the walls, in paper bags with the clients' names stapled to them. They can never find my shoes when I come to collect them. This time it took 15 minutes for them to track them down. It didn't help that the woman behind the counter couldn't understand my last name no matter how many times I repeated it and spelled it. Look, I know it's a funny sort of Scandinavian name**, but it's only two syllables, and there are no unfamiliar vowels or consonants involved.

** Sometimes I think I should have changed my name back after I got divorced, but it wouldn't have really helped. My current name is unpronounceable, but my maiden name was unspellable. Which is worse?

Harbingers of Artic air, more like

Why the hell is it so co-o-o-o-o-o-old? Last night the wind howled and whipped for hours. The power went out several times. Something in the house, just over the bedroom (of course), creaked every two or three minutes.

I was already short on sleep because of working at the bar. But tired as I was, I didn't sleep much. I'm exhausted and my skin looks haggard.

Still waiting for a call back from the realtor. The couple who looked at our house have had trouble pinning down their granddaughter, so they can't schedule the second look-see just yet. So we continue to keep the house unnaturally clean...and wait.

Meanwhile, little nagging thoughts keep occurring to me. Like the fact that I left a pair of boots at the cobbler's shop more than a week ago and have so far forgotten to pick them up. And the fact that if I don't get my hair cut and colored soon, the What Not to Wear hairdresser guy is going to show up at my door.

Harbingers of spring?

Sunny and cold; frost on the ground. But the dogs notice something in the meadow, down by the pecan trees: Robins. Fat, red-breasted birds, at least 25 of them, picking through the thatch and cocking their heads in our direction.

Tennessee

The guy who first introduced me to Nashville was not really qualified to do so. True, he worked within the legal boundaries of the city, but his office was way down south by the mall and he usually ate his lunches at Hooters. He took me out to dinner a couple of times, once to Shoney's and once to a bar that served batter-fried pickle slices. "That's real southern food there," he declared.

He lived in a small town not far from Murfreesboro and commuted 40 minutes into Nashville every day. Most of the men in his town seemed to have ruddy skin, beer bellies, and sandy-red hair. They shared oddly similar last names, and sometimes the same last names. They favored khaki Dockers and neat little goatees. He was no exception.

I knew the guy through Civil War reenacting. In Minnesota, where I was living at the time, reenacting was a serious academic-type pursuit. We memorized Dickens and the Romantic poets to "get inside the 19th-century mind." We took dancing lessons so we could do the Quadrille and the Waltz Redowa at our annual ball. Our underwear was correct and our clothes were sewn from historic patterns. We hoarded bone-handled silverware. We sent our "soldiers" off to "war" with homemade sewing kits and period-correct oilcloth tarps. Our regiment drilled for hours in the snow so it would know all the maneuvers the regiment in the 1860s knew.

Imagine my rude awakening when several of us traveled south to a reenactment at Chickamauga, Georgia. Suddenly we found out that the vast majority of southern reenactors (which would be the vast majority of reenactors, full stop) were complete yahoos with no sense of history whatsoever. They refused to switch sides if the army proportions were askew (a common and necessary reenacting practice that ensures at least marginal levels of accuracy), declaring that their Great-Great-Great-Granddaddy would "roll over in his grave" if they did so.* They sat in reproduction officers' tents (all of them, even the privates), drinking beer out of plastic coolers and eating pudding cups. The ladies roamed the battlefields in polyester Scarlett O'Hara dresses, filming everything on handheld movie cameras. Once my group had to stage a singalong in order to drown out the sound of a TV at a neighboring campsite. It was frustrating. We brought out our antique whiskey decanter and made the best of it.

So anyway, it turned out that when I moved to the south, I never reenacted again. My exceedingly correct 1860s wardrobe has only seen action once since then, and that was when I loaned a dress to a friend for Halloween. But when I first visited Nashville with this reenactor guy, I didn't know any of that yet. I was full of enthusiasm.

I had a friend who'd just bought a house in up-and-coming East Nashville, a place that inspired deep suspicion in the reenactor. "I guess it's getting better now," he said, in a voice full of foreboding, "but once I went to see a guy play guitar at the Radio Cafe and when I got out there were cops chasing a guy through the alley."

The projects were nearby, it was true. He had a lot of stories about them. "Don't leave your car near there," he said. "They'll come and steal your license plate, or even razor off the renewal sticker. Then you'll get pulled over."

He tried to steer me to other areas of town. There was a nice little neighborhood near a club he went to with a girl this one time, he said. How about there? Or maybe Sylvan Park. That was still kind of affordable, and he thought someone like me would enjoy it.

In the end I ignored everything the reenactor told me. I found a great little 1920s house in East Nashville for $500 a month and moved in. The yard was shady and was speckled with violets. I had hardwood floors and a huge eat-in kitchen. It was centrally located and made me happy.

I discovered a lot of things that year. First of all, I had to admit that the reenactor probably hadn't exaggerated his Radio Cafe story. One time I was walking through the Kroger parking lot and saw a security guard running after a man who had a frozen turkey tucked under his arm. The area was economically depressed. It was like the Reagan '80s at their worst. People would try to sell you things out of the back of their vehicles when you went to the gas station.

There were feral dogs. They were bold. Once I saw one dragging an entire Hefty bag down the alley. There was nobody to call about catching them.

Traffic was appalling in the city. The accident rate was so high that my insurance was almost too much to afford. The water tasted bad and there was no good Italian food.

But I fell in love with East Nashville. The people were friendly. The thrift stores were fantastic. I discovered Prince's Hot Chicken and Cantrell's Barbecue and returned obsessively. I lingered at the international grocery and the taqueria. The weather was beautiful most of the time, and I loved to walk through the neighborhood and look at the historic homes and gardens.

In The Joy of Cooking, the egg-yolk cookies are described as a "sturdy indefensible." There's nothing to recommend them, really, in their own right. But they are the right thing for the right time--something you might even love with all your heart even though you know in your heart that something else is objectively better.

I love Nashville. Especially East Nashville.

-----
* Which, to me, begs the question, "So your Great-Great-Great Granddaddy would be okay with your 250 men being whipped by 10 or 12 Yankees?" But I rarely said that kind of thing, because some of those guys really were yahoos. Rednecks, even.

CROSS THOSE FINGERS!

Just got a call from my realtor. Her partner has talked with the people from this weekend and says she thinks they may want to make an offer! The partner is coming by tomorrow to collect paperwork from me.

Imagine...the one time someone sees the place all askew and fluffy with dog hair, they go back to the agent and rave about it! I am stunned and very cautiously hopeful...

-----

Update:

No realtor today. She's coming tomorrow instead, since she was stuck for longer than she expected at the doctor's office this morning. Word is that we'll be scheduling a time for the couple to bring their daughter to look at the place this weekend. Then (and I'm quoting here), "they'll probably want to make an offer." (!!!!)

But I mustn't count those chickens.

More progress

Sanding drywall mud makes me want to kill someone just to watch them die.

If, in a blind, helpless rage caused by sanding drywall mud, I were to kill someone just to watch them die, I would have a really hard time choosing between a life in filthy, squalid solitary confinement with lots of rats versus life on a drywall-sanding chain gang.

I can't stand the opressive face mask, which seems to filter out all potentially fresh air yet let in wisps of powdery contamination. I can't stand the drying effect on my skin--my eyelids papery and painful, my entire body raw like the end of your nose after a two-week head cold. I can't stand the white, plastery turds of powder that stick in the corners of my eyes. I can't stand the fact that no vacuum cleaner ever made can clean it all up. I know I will find more of it...somewhere.

I denounce powdered drywall mud as a middle-school health ed teacher denounces other white powders. Poison! Poison! Just once, and it will be the ruination of everything you cherish in this world.

I think I'm going to buy one of those thingies that connects a sander to a Shop Vac. But I know in my heart it won't make it better.

Oh, did I mention we're finishing the upstairs?

Adrenaline

Wow! A really nice retired couple with tastes just like ours stopped by this afternoon unannounced to look at the house. It was a bit of a jumble--our usual mess--but we had just finished setting up the dining room really nicely and they seemed to love what we've done. They loved the upstairs too.

It's their daughter, who lives about three miles north, who's supposedly in the market. They said they'll send her in our direction and that she'll surely want a look. I hope so! C'mon down! Although I must admit that some days (sunny, clear winter days like this one) I think I could live in the south forever...

A casualty in the coffee wars

J. is in a panic. Blue Sky Coffee has closed, depriving her of access to her favorite "Dancing Goats" coffee. She has gone so far as to call corporate headquarters: "Okay, so is there somewhere in Atlanta I can drive to so I can get this?"

I think Blue Sky was doing pretty well until Starbucks played its usual trick of opening two doors down. Then there was a long protracted turf battle. In the final throes of it, Blue Sky turned itself into a cafe that served pretty good food. Unfortunately, the white tablecloths and waiters made all the coffee hounds uncomfortable, and that arrangement didn't last long.

I used to go to Blue Sky a lot, but that was before I worked at the bar. There's an Espresso Royale less than a block away from the bar that employs cute young musicians and sells local band CDs as incidentals, right up there on the counter along with European wafer cookies and artisanal ginger chews. Everyone thinks it's an indie coffee shop, but I know better because I used to go to an ER that was near the west bank of the University of Minnesota, which isn't exactly right around the corner from here. Anyhow, I get preferential treatment at the ER. In fact, lately I have even been getting free coffee, because when one of my favorite colleagues and his wife left Athens for Hollywood, the wife gave me the ER freebie cards that were in her purse.

When Espresso Royale is closed--which happens sometimes, such as winter break or slow weeknights--I have to admit that I have been in the habit of going to Starbucks. There's a girl who works there who's a bar regular, so my money is no good there. It really is something to get Christmas Blend for free, plus tip of course.

But I'm going to miss Blue Sky. It was the only one of the three downtown coffee shops that used to be nice to hang out in. It reminded me of a place in Iowa City called The Great Midwestern Ice Cream Company, which was primarily a coffee shop but also sold delicious vegetarian sandwiches and soups, and (predictably) excellent ice cream. My friend Kevin and I used to sit there for hours and pound iced coffees while we talked about life, school, whatever.

I'm told that the Great Mid closed a few years ago.

*sigh*

Status of various Christmas presents*

1. Books-A-Million gift card: Has been converted into the anniversary edition of Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. 1.

2. Barnes and Noble gift card: Shared between me and the s.o. last night when we went shopping after a dinner at J. and F.'s place. He got two really nice art books that were on deepest deepest discount, plus a little wooden artist's model. I got the new edition of the Writer's Market. I think the givers (my brother and his wife) intended us to get a specific very nice coffee table book with the card, but we hope they won't mind that we divvied it up the way we did.

3. Fluffy white robes: Worn daily by both of us. It's like a spa around here. I keep offering to give the s.o. a pedicure, but I hope he knows I'm kidding.

4. Origami Page-a-Day calendar: Lots of fun and faithfully executed every morning, except for the one where it had you cut up the paper and make four origami pencils. I thought that one was stupid and threw it out. The bunny head from January 2 is especially beloved ever since the s.o. turned it into a full-fledged character-about-the-house. In comedy Japanese accent: "You have made Origami Bunny very angry!"

5. Return to River Cottage DVD: OH MY GOD BEST CHRISTMAS PRESENT EVER, except for maybe that trip to South Africa a few years ago. But that's some very stiff competition.

6. Calphalon roasting pan: Much adored but not yet used.

7. Homemade book of Nana's favorite recipes: Ditto. I should post some of the recipes on my food blog one of these days, but not the pie crust recipe because it is a Family Secret.

8. Pen set: Ditto.

9. Home Depot gift card: More than half blown already.

10. L.L. Bean fleece sleeping bag liners: Tucked away for use during Spring Training vacation.

11. Bottle of Bumble & Bumble tonic shampoo: Used every time I shower, and if the s.o. uses any of it, I'll exfoliate him until he begs for mercy.

12. Tin of Lebanese baklava: Wow! Way better than my baklava. Two pieces eaten; the rest stowed in the freezer for a leaner time.

13. Bottle of wine: So very very gone. Weeks ago.

-----
*I have a huuuuuge family, not because of excessive childbearing so much as due to repeated divorces and remarriages. It's really stressful to find good gifts for everyone, but then again, it's fun to receive so many cool things, because they all have very good taste.

A short respite

I sat in the idling car at the intersection, waiting for the light to turn. A pod of Harley Davidson enthusiasts revved and farted beside me. I could hear them shout friendly exchanges above the din. My window was open. My jacket was off.

Every once in a while, it is a true and complete pleasure to be a southerner. This week it has been in the 60s and 70s, mostly sunny, mild, breezy. It won't last, but it's fun to pretend it will. Endless summer is the myth that southerners live for...the whole reason they (we?) get to lord their (our?) superiority over the silly yankees nowadays.

We spent this Saturday morning at the outdoor flea market among a great congregation of Mexican-Americans, basking in the weather, eating excellent chicken tacos, and exchanging our excess stuff for cash. We outsold our next-door booth neighbors by miles, but only because we had so many things to sell. Our friends J. and F. dropped by and purchased some of the s.o.'s old Tae Kwon Do equipment. A townie hipster type couldn't turn away from the s.o.'s drum machine. A woman just about my age handed us a fiver for my My Friend Mandy doll from the 1970s, including all her little doll clothes. An older fellow stopped in and--to my disbelief--asked, "Do you have any books about rocks?" And it was thus that I sold four well-used college-level geology texts that I had never expected to see a dime from.

I bought our produce for the week from the fruit and vegetable vendors. I chased down a taco with a juicy orange, then was followed by bees until I could find some water to wash my hands with. The s.o. and I insisted that we weren't leaving without buying one of the chickens in the livestock stall, but of course, since we're moving and don't own a coop, we eventually left them alone. They looked a little ragged anyway.

We have decided to put away the money we made for the ultimate southern warm-weather pleasure--Major League baseball spring training in Florida. We hadn't been planning to go this year, since we're saving up for the move. But then again, when will we ever be able to do it again? Florida is ours for one more year.

Sniffle

I just finally watched the finale of The Office.

I'm so happy.

Aye, Matey

Today I did something that could legitimately be described as "swabbing the deck."

The front porch was filthy, probably because we had never ever cleaned it since the day it was first stained. The blue stained planks looked greyish-brown. So I took a scrub brush on a pole and a bucket of soapy water, and I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed. It felt like it took hours. I was forced to stop, panting and obsessively taking my pulse, several times.

Once or twice, passing trucks honked at me as I stood there scrubbing and swearing. I daydreamed about ways to kill the drivers, or at the very least to humiliate them.

The end result was quite nice, though. The wood is blue again, and there is a lovely scent of Murphy's Oil Soap out there.

Hey! I exercised! (By accident.)

House hunters

Currently there are two families who have expressed interest in our house:

(1) A couple with two kids who live in the country north of Athens and run a hunting-dog training kennel. They have already sold their property and are renting it back from the buyers until they find a suitable new place.

(2) A couple (perhaps retired?) in Connecticut who are moving to the south and like older homes.

I'll keep everyone posted as to what happens! I hope they actually make appointments. All I can say is that the place already looks better than last time. Maybe that will make the difference.

The only interesting part of the game

"Well, that went well," I say, smirking.

The halftime show of the Orange Bowl has just drawn to a close. The crowd is booing Ashlee Simpson*, who has shouted herself hoarse to try to make up for the fact that she can't hear herself through the monitors. I picture her storming backstage, ready to impale the first soundman she finds, only to discover that Kelly Clarkson and Trace Adkins are already bearing the unfortunate engineer's head on a pike.

The camera cuts back to the sportscasters in the booth. Their voices resemble the staticky remarks of embedded reporters in the Iraqi desert.

"Someone ran over a cable somewhere," the s.o.** guesses.

-----
* Probably not unusual, in and of itself.

** A longtime soundman.

-----

UPDATE:
Gawker covers the event. Heh.

Kentucky

The roads were covered with nubbly ice, the kind that shakes the fillings out of your teeth when you drive over it. Our headlights seemed to get dimmer and dimmer. We attributed it to them being jostled out of alignment, but in reality a coating of scummy road spray was probably the culprit.

We tried to stop for the night in Bowling Green, but the EconoLodge there wanted to charge us a monstrous pet fee. Onward we forged.

We pulled off for a second time in Cave City. We were getting pretty punchy by then, and we made a game of inventing new slogans for the town. Our favorite was "Cave City: It's shitty!" Little did we know how right we would be.

The Knights Inn offered a very reasonable rate, and the lady at the front desk cut me a deal on the pet fee. She handed me a key card, and we drove around to the back side of the motel to find the room.

The s.o. unlocked the door, walked in, and immediately walked out again. "The room hasn't been cleaned," he said. "It's filthy."

Clapping our hands for warmth in the single-digit weather, we got back in the car and drove around front to the lobby. I explained the problem. "Oh dear," the lady said. "A lot of the maids didn't come in today. The weather was too bad." She assigned us a new room and re-swiped the key card.

We found the room and the s.o. inserted the key in the door. Nothing happened. He tried again. Nothing. And again. Nothing.

Back at the front desk, the lady assigned us yet another room, postulating that perhaps the key card reader was frozen.

The s.o. tried the key card in the third room, successfully. He walked in and looked around. It was clean. Then he noticed the rapidly spreading puddle of water coming from the bathroom. The tub faucet was on full blast and couldn't be turned off.

We drove around front again. I explained the latest issue to the lady behind the counter, and she dispatched the handyman to see what was up. Meanwhile, she re-swiped our key card and sent us to room number four.

The s.o. stuck the card in the reader. The green light flashed, but the door wouldn't open. He tried several more times before returning, defeated but laughing a little, to the idling car.

When I returned to the front desk, the lady looked a little haunted. She assigned us a fifth room--poolside!--and apologized profusely.

The s.o. opened the door. He scouted out the room and gave me a thumbs-up sign. I walked the dogs (with little result, because the grass was frozen solid and was painfully pointy under their paws) , then took their leashes in hand and led them into the room.

"It's not very warm in here," I observed.

"I just now turned on the heat," the s.o. said. "Don't worry. It'll be warmed up by the time we get back from dinner."

Dinner. What an ambitious word. Thanks to our room assignment capers, it was now after 10 pm. Any restaurant that had braved the blizzard to open its doors today was most definitely closed now. We ended up in a convenience store, eyeing our options. We were chilled to the bone and desperate for hot food. The only possibilities were (a) the kind of nachos where you push a button on a machine to get your "cheese," or (b) one of the Polish sausages that turned endlessly on rollers under a heat lamp. Neither of us could face the "cheese," so we chose the latter.

Back in our room, which did not seem to be getting much warmer, the s.o. took one bite of his Polish sausage and lost his nerve. "It's not even hot through," he said. He set it down on top of the TV and started munching his way through a tin of Christmas cookies.

I ate my Polish sausage hungrily, then devoured his too. I was shaking and couldn't take off my coat. I walked over to the heating unit and stuck my hand in front of it. It was turned all the way up, but the air coming out of it was barely warm. Apparently the heater was unable to compensate for the frigidity of the air it was sucking in from outside.

I called the front desk and asked if they had any space heaters. The answer was no. After a short negotiation period, they sent the handyman to the room with a stack of four extra blankets.

I couldn't get any hot water to come out of the faucet when I washed my face. I was too tired to care. I put on thermal underwear and fuzzy socks, then climbed under the heap of blankets.

In the morning, there was still no hot water. The boiler had burst.

Two good things came of our night in Cave City:

(1) We got the room for free.

(2) I didn't get food poisoning.

New Year's Resolutions

1. Stop procrastinating! Or at the very least, stop procrastinating so much.

2. Stop going back for seconds. As I've mentioned before, I am blessed with a speedy metabolism. Unfortunately, I am cursed with the appetite of a pack of 15-year-old boys. As a result, I spent a decade of my adult life 30 pounds overweight. I lost that weight in late 1999, but ever since I've been struggling with 5 or 10 pounds that keep creeping back on. If I would just eat a reasonable portion and then stop, I would never have to worry again.

3. Meanwhile, stop feeling ugly because of 5 or 10 pounds that nobody else can see.

4. Spend a little time every day working on a long-term project, such as home improvement or writing that isn't for an immediate deadline.

5. Enjoy the outdoors more often.

Ohio

"Like a bow," my mother said. She didn't mean like a Christmas bow; she was talking about the kind that shoots an arrow. What she was getting at is that Akron's two main streets, Market and Exchange, intersect with each other twice, once at each end of downtown.

Every time I go back to Ohio, I rediscover places that were special to me when I was young. You see, I moved away to college before I spent any substantial time in the driver's seat of a car. As a result, my geography at home is atrocious. I have a lot of pictures of places in my head, but no idea how they relate to each other on a map.

December 29, 2004 required me to drive to some places I'd never driven to. For one thing, I'd volunteered to cook a lamb dinner for my grandmother, my stepmother, my sister, her husband, and the s.o. I needed shoulder chops, which can be hard to find. So my mother suggested I go to Acme #1, the chain's flagship store, in west Akron.

Following both my mother's instructions and a rather nebulous MapQuest printout, I guesstimated my way from I-76 into the Quaker Square area and figured out which way I was going. (Market is north of Exchange in downtown, so if you come to Exchange first, then Market, you're headed north, and vice versa.) I crept from block to block, headed westward on West Market with my tires wading in three or four inches of dirty slush. The neighborhood started to look really nice, and I suddenly realized I was near the house of one of my mother's friends. Then the Tangier restaurant appeared on the left. Then I spotted the West Point Market, an upscale specialty grocery my dad used to take me to. And then there was Acme #1. Inexpensive lamb shoulder chops abounded. I also got some really lovely ciabatta bread.

As I drove even further west toward the Montrose intersection, I was startled to see the Skyway Drive-In. So that's where it was! The Skyway was another place my dad took me to when I was young. He'd been a fan of a fizzy grape drink they made, and he'd spent hours of his youth trying to recreate it at home, with no success.

I turned south at Montrose and soon arrived at the house my dad used to live in, an up-and-down duplex on 33 acres that currently houses only my grandmother (AKA Nana). My grandfather is usually there too, but he has been in a care facility recently because of recurring infections. I think both of them are pretty lonely.

A selection of cheeses. Red wine. Greek braised lamb, gravy, crisp-tender green beans, and crusty bread. Nana said she hadn't tasted lamb in years. She really liked it and it made me feel so good.

After dinner, the s.o. and I went out to play pool with my sister and her husband. Since I was absolutely burned out on following other people's cars (thanks to a grueling day of crosstown bumbling in Canton the day before), I got directions so I could meet them in downtown Akron. The bar in question was on East Exchange Street. Following Market all the way there was out of the question; it'd take hours. So once again, I hopped on the interstate and learned anew. Hwy. 8 to Carroll. Right on Spicer. Right on Exchange. I had a flashback to, of all things, preschool. I went to preschool at the University of Akron while my mom was completing her education. This was the neighborhood.

There was E.J. Thomas Hall, with its massive pendulum-like counterweights. There was the building my mom taught English Composition in. I had seen them so many times, but never knew where to find them. And now I could find them once again.

Happy New Year!

Our trip home was a lot easier than our trip north. The weather was misty and warm most of the way. All of the snow and ice on the highway--although not all of it in the fields and woods--had long since melted.

Cairo turned a corner on this trip. (How could he not?) On December 23, the first day, he had thrown up three times before we even got to Atlanta. The Happy Traveler didn't seem to help at all. But then he only threw up once more on the entire trip, and that was under extenuating circumstances (lots of bumps, turns, and stops in quick succession). I am tempted to believe that he was never carsick in the first place...just anxious. Once he figured out that nothing bad was coming, he relaxed quite a bit.

Since the drive home was easy, we took the opportunity to relax and to pop into thrift stores at every opportunity. We got a ton of great stuff. The s.o. got a whole new wardrobe and gathered stacks of books for his eBay business. I ended up with two blouses, a pair of trousers, a skirt, and two necklaces. Our kitchen was enriched by the addition of a set of cream horn moulds (they were British, so I'm spelling them accordingly) and a ravioli press. With all those stops, I think the trip home might have taken as long as the icy nightmare on the way up, but BOY was our mood different.

In the end, having collected our cat at the s.o.'s dad's place and lingered over a Mexican dinner, we straggled home at the last possible minute before the New Year. We pulled into our driveway at 11:57 p.m., rushed in the door, and turned on the TV to New Year's Rockin' Eve. The s.o. and I kissed as the ball dropped, and POP! went the champagne we'd bought on the way home. Then we talked about how much we hate Ashlee Simpson and sifted through our gifts.

I know it sounds strange coming from people who've braved a blizzard, but we hope all of you have had a holiday season as wonderful as ours.

P.S.
Several of the upcoming entries in this blog will be titled with the names of states, and will explore various parts of our vacation. There's too much to tell otherwise.

Delinquent

I'm in Ohio, having fought the aftermath of a major blizzard. It took us 25 hours to get here. Ugh!

Anyway, I'll be back in the New Year. Happy holidays, everyone!

A big functionless tub of clammy waterlogged jeans and t-shirts

The bad news is, our clothes washer has died just two and a half days before we are scheduled to take a major road trip.

The good news is twofold. First, the washer is under warranty. Second, Tuesday happens to be the one day of the week when Sears repairpeople visit our county.

Oh, wait. There's more bad news. I have to get up at a respectable hour and be dressed because we don't know exactly when the repairman will show up.

Testing...1...2

Thursday our entire little family will be piling into the car for a holiday trip. Taxi will be dropped off in Rome, Georgia, at the home of the s.o.'s father. The other two furry kids are riding all the way to northeastern Ohio.

This presents a challenge for Cairo the Carsick Dog. We've been trying to work him up to it. A week ago, we took him and his sister to a potluck dinner party about a half-hour away, and Cairo made it all the way to the driveway without throwing up. But unfortunately, the driveway was unpaved, long, and extremely bumpy, and the s.o. had to hold a bucket for Cairo to puke in.

On the bright side, Cairo did make it the whole way home with only a little uneasy drooling.

While we were at the party, a fellow dog lover (whose coyote mix, Scooby, was in attendance) recommended we buy a canine herbal supplement called Happy Traveler for our slightly nauseated passenger. She said Scooby had used it, that it would help calm Cairo down, and that it might even be beneficial for Silver (who tends to be a little excitable and nervous when she's around certain other dogs). The very next day I shelled out the eleven bucks and brought a bottle of it home. But then I started to look askance at it. What kind of mother gives her child an unknown substance?

The s.o., who is familiar with herbs from his hippie college days, was unfazed. "Valerian, chamomile, kava kava, St. John's wort," he read off the bottle. "Yep. That'll sit you down."

I wasn't comforted yet, so I did some internet research and found out that not only are the herbs in the mixture supposed to be fine for dogs, but they were actually tested on dogs for use in humans. I hadn't thought of that. There was no record of toxicity for amounts anywhere near what was in the capsules. I felt a little better.

But in the end, there was only one thing to do. I shook out two of the capsules* into my palm. And then I gulped them down with plenty of water.

In about half an hour to 40 minutes, the capsules began to take effect. I don't remember much after that. My mind stayed relatively clear, but a warm, tingly torpor overtook me. It was a challenge to find the ambition to brush my teeth, wash my face, and put on my pajamas. Once I was under the covers, I didn't fall asleep right away, but I didn't want to move, either. Nothing mattered. Everything was good. When I eventually fell asleep, I slept like a baby.

I vote Yes for Happy Traveler.

-----

* Two capsules was the suggested dose for a dog Cairo's size, and also, coincidentally, the suggested dose for a person my size.** With all the medicines I've run across that can be used in both species, the dog dosages don't tend to be directly proportional according to weight, but are actually a little closer than you would expect to the recommended dosages for people. I don't know why this is, but it is.

** Not that Happy Traveler is packaged for use in humans.

Um...thank you

Cairo has just presented me with what I am pretty sure is a possum jawbone.

TMI

The grocery bagging girl seemed unusually intent upon helping me to my car with the groceries.

"It's okay, I'll..." I began.

"No, that's fine."

"It's all right, I'll just..."

"No, I'll take them for you."

"I--"

"That's fine, I'll take them for you."

She had a death grip on the handle of the grocery cart.

I relented. "You must really want to go outside, huh?"

She pushed the cart through the automatic doors, and I directed her to the right.

"Hooooo-ee, I have had some kind of strange day today!" she exclaimed.

"How do you mean?"

"Are you sure you really want to know?"

Here is the point where I could have made my escape, I think. But I was polite as usual. "Yeah, what's been strange about it?" I asked.

"I'm not saying I have premonitions," she began. "Because I don't believe in premonitions. But a month ago, I had this dream." I opened my car trunk, and she helped me load the groceries in.

"I dreamed my brother's girlfriend was pregnant. And then today I find out she's two months pregnant and she didn't know it! They say, 'It's just a coincidence.' But I tell you what, in seven months they are going to know I'm right. Because in my dream it was a little baby girl, and she had a full head of hair, and she looked just like my brother except her skin was darker than his."

"Maybe you smelled the hormones on her," I offered weakly. We were standing at the back of my car. A cold wind blew.

"In this same dream, I dreamed my best friend's mama was very sick. And what scares me is, in my dream she died. And I couldn't think of anything to say to her except 'There is no way I can know how you feel right now.' So I hope I'm not having premonitions. I hope I'm not right. And then the other thing is, in my dream I was pregnant! And my boyfriend wasn't with me at the time, but then he came back and he helped me with the baby boy."

Silver's furry snout appeared in the back window of the car. She blinked at us quizzically. The girl spotted her and waved.

"So I don't know what to think, because I've been throwing up in the mornings, especially when I see my boyfriend. We broke up, but if my dream is right, he'll be back with me three months after the baby is born."

I tried to get into the spirit of the story. "Huh...I think you might be pregnant," I said with a mixture of joviality and warning. She continued as though she hadn't heard me.

"I almost hope I am pregnant, because you know that's the greatest gift God can ever give you. Everyone says this is all just a coincidence, but I know in seven months they are going to start seeing that I am right. She was already pregnant a month when I had that dream, and she didn't even know it. She didn't believe me when I told her. When that baby girl is born, they'll know..."

"I--" I wasn't sure what to say. What I was thinking was, I hope this psychokinetic pregnancy business isn't contagious. Silver looked out at me forlornly.

"But what I wonder is if I am right about me. It'll be a little boy. I've been throwing up a lot of mornings, especially when I see my boyfriend."

My car door seemed to be a thousand miles away.

"But next time you come, you talk to me, and you'll see."

And as suddenly as she had introduced herself into my afternoon, she excused herself from it.

How does it happen?

Every year around this time, I find that:

(1) I still need to buy Christmas presents for some of my closest and most beloved relatives.

(2) I am desperately trying to contact people I want to interview before the holidays, hoping against hope that they haven't already left on their vacations. (Will I ever learn? How have I managed to be a freelance writer for so long without learning?)

(3) My body still hasn't adjusted to the cold weather, and boy will I ever be in for it when we drive up to Ohio.

(4) I have no energy and I can't seem to wake up in the morning. Someone tell the sun that I NEED LIGHT! Arrrrgghhhh...

(5) I am preparing to cook some ridiculous complicated holiday foodstuff that I have never cooked before. (This year it's H.F.-W.'s "three-dishes-from-one-goose" extravaganza.)

(6) I have "Sleigh Ride" running through my head on infinite hellish repeat. We used to play it in high school band, so I know every single instrument's part down to the smallest detail.

Let's take the road before us and sing a chorus or two...

By definition

Slug (n.)

1. Any of various small, snaillike, chiefly terrestrial gastropod mollusks of the genus Limax and related genera, having a slow-moving elongated body with no shell or only a flat rudimentary shell on or under the skin.

2. A small metal disk for use in a vending or gambling machine, especially one used illegally.

3. Physics. The unit of mass that is accelerated at the rate of one foot per second per second when acted on by a force of one pound weight.

4. A unit of mass that sits in front of the television and refuses to be acted on by any force whatsoever, or to act as a force in its own right.

What I'm up to tonight

This is one of the very few things in existence that could compel me to sit outside in a lawn chair, uncomplaining, on a cold winter night. The chills I'm getting aren't from the temperature!

No more salsify?

Anyone who's into gardening has probably heard that we're losing heirloom plants at a rate of thousands per year. The genetic diversity of cultivated vegetables, fruits, and herbs is dropping at an alarming rate, which could have catastrophic effects on our ability to feed ourselves planetwide.

Of course, some of us are more selfish-minded than that. I personally get all hot under the collar upon learning that many of the plants Thomas Jefferson grew at Monticello can't be found today. What if they tasted good? What if they might have been my favorite thing ever?

When I visited Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill in 2000, I was served a dish of scalloped salsify. It was delicious. I had never eaten salsify before that, but immediately I knew I'd have to figure out a way to get my hands on more of it.

So when I moved here and suddenly had a bunch of arable land at my disposal, I bought a package of salsify seeds at Victory Seeds and planted them in my garden. They sprouted like gangbusters, and I looked forward to the full-grown roots with great anticipation. Unfortunately, by midsummer the burrowing animals discovered them and found them just as tasty as I did. One by one, the plants were pulled down to their subterranean rodential doom.

Anyhow, the other day I got a catalog from Pinetree Garden Seeds and noted with some alarm that their Mammoth Sandwich Island salsify (the only breed of the plant I'd ever seen advertised) was listed as a "Last Chance" purchase. They're dropping it from their catalog, probably due to low demand. I surfed around on the 'net and found the Sandwich Island seeds in all the usual places, including Victory, but I got to wondering: Isn't there any other breed? Are we down to one genetic population of salsify?

Then I found Harvest Moon Farms & Seed Company, and I was delighted to find that they still offer two varieties of salsify, plus two breeds of a similar European vegetable called scorzonera. That's still not nearly enough--how many do you suppose there were in the 19th century? the 18th?--but at least there's more than one.

Fortified with this information, I plan to grow salsify again after I move. Only this time, I'm going to grow the plants in deep containers with chicken wire cages over them! This cannot be left to chance, because I swear up and down that I'm going to make some scalloped salsify one of these days.

Thank goodness

I just got an e-mail from my brother who lives in Columbus, confirming that neither he, nor his wife, nor his wife's brother were at the Damageplan show where this happened. I am so relieved. All of them are hard rock/heavy metal fans, but they had other things to do that night. My brother said that our bro-in-law would almost certainly have attended if he hadn't been studying for finals.

That's a major weight off my mind. And on some level, so is the fact that the s.o. is no longer a touring rock musician! I'm not the sort of person who'd ever try to limit what I or my loved ones do because of fear, but yeesh. There are some bona fide crazy people out there.

Here's a follow-up report. Very unnerving.

Occurrences

Strange weather yesterday. My county was under a tornado watch from 6 pm until 3 am. Nothing happened that I know of, but it was eerie: periods of ghost-quiet calm alternating with little spatters of rain, flickering lightning, and hastening grey clouds. Oddly warm, too. Sometimes it's hard to remember it's December, because it feels more like early October.

Which reminds me, I planted a few salad greens last week, just to see if they'd take. The mache has sprouted (although the winter lettuce and the arugula haven't), and now there's a nice little fuzzy green row in the garden. It's in good company; there are still fennel and carrot plants there from earlier in the year.

The odometer on my car rolled over to 200,000 miles on my way into town last night.

I bartended at a party and served a bunch of drinks to this guy. He seemed like a nice person and bought round after round for his friends. But you'd think people in the public eye would realize that if they don't tip, it reflects badly on them. I'm just sayin'.

This afternoon, on my way back from the post office, I was temporarily stopped by a chaotic scene in the 25-mile-per-hour school zone just north of Union Point. Two pickup trucks were in the ditch, one on top of the other. The bottom one was upside-down. A crowd was gathering, and a woman ran into the road to pick up a baseball cap. How do you create a disaster like that at 25 miles per hour, I wonder?

Today I got a reminder of one of the best things about my job as a freelance writer. I called a guy on the west coast to make an appointment for an interview, and we got to talking. We chatted for 20 minutes about cities (he and his partner are contemplating a move to Portland), home renovation, traffic, ethnic food, and so on. He turned out to be quite an interesting person. This happens to me every once in a while, mostly on Fridays when people are looking for any excuse to avoid work!

As for me, I just blog when I'm trying to avoid work.

Productive, I suppose

Even though I don't think the people who visited our house will buy it, the exercise was not completely pointless. I gained focus: All the little things that mortified me will be the things I will strive to correct most quickly. I have planted a few winter annuals to spruce up the languishing flower beds, and I will mulch them starting tomorrow. I will paint the ugly green cabinet; I will bleach the tub again. I will finish the freaking drywall upstairs! I will put a second coat of paint on the foyer.

Although now that I think of it, it all sounds like a lot of work.

There is too much on my agenda. Freelance writing-wise, I am booked solid through mid-January. My grandfather is ill for the nth time this year, and that fact is tugging at a corner of my brain constantly. The spedometer is not working on the "new" car (it swings wildly between 0 and 70 mph) and all the tires have to be replaced. I have mysteriously gained 8 or 10 pounds and can't fit into several pairs of my jeans. Okay, it's not so mysterious if I think about all the crappy fattening food I keep eating. I have a wonderfully speedy metabolism that I have often managed to defeat by pure gluttony and mindlessness.

Still, there's nothing I can do but keep on swimming against the current, right?

Panic panic panic

My realtor called today and said there's a woman coming to look at the house tomorrow. Our very first interested person, after an entire month on the market, and we can't let her in the kitchen, not to mention the fact that all the kitchen stuff is crammed into the dining room and everything looks like ass. ARRRRGGHHH!

-----

Tuesday update:
Hmm, I'm not sure if that went well. The people liked the house, I think, but they were quite elderly and the lady had dislocated her arm and was afraid to climb the stairs to the 2nd story. Also I'm not sure whether they'll want to deal with the renovation of the guest house. My gut feeling is that these people are not the "match" for our property. But c'mon, fate, prove me wrong!

Kitchenless

Today we pulled all the furniture out of the kitchen and I painted the parts of the floor that still needed to be painted.* This is creating a massive inconvenience for us. I'm a foodie, after all. Cooking is what I do! So we have stowed leftovers from tonight's dinner, plus a carton of milk and a 12-pack of beer, out on the screened porch where it's fridge-like in temperature. I have my organic Kashi red berry cereal and a loaf of wheat bread and some peanut butter. We are planning on eating out, mostly, for the next three days while the two coats of paint dry.

Anyhow, I thought I'd take this opportunity to share a few of the things I've learned about painting floors:

(1) If you can spare a room for an entire week and a half and have infinite ventilation and don't mind working with paint thinner, oil-based floor paint is the sturdiest stuff you can get.

(2) Otherwise (and this is my preference), buy a latex porch and floor paint. Don't even think about buying the Satin. Semigloss or Gloss is the way to go. The less porous the finish, the cleaner you'll be able to keep it.

3. Sand the entire floor before you paint. Yes, the entire miserable thing. If you happen to have one of those giant commercial sanders, more power to you, but the same result can be achieved with a hand-held orbital sander and a lot of time and effort. You may wish you were dead when you're slogging your way through it, but believe you me, you'll wish it even harder if you skip this step, paint the floor, and then find out that the paint hasn't adhered.

4. After you sand, vacuum the entire floor, using the brush attachment for the corners. Then use a Swiffer or something similar to go over it once more. Swiffers are godly at picking up tiny particulates.

5. When you paint, give it at least two coats two days apart.

6. An artist's flat brush is nice for doing edges when you don't want to mess with a paint shield. I'm not much into taping things off; my experiences with this house have taught me that there are easier and more effective ways to paint neat edges.

7. Have a plan in place for painting yourself out the door and turning the light off. A broomstick can come in handy for distant light switches. Don't leave paint can lids, brushes, etc. on countertops and then paint yourself away from them.

8. Don't rush to walk on the floor. The more drying and curing time you can allow, the better. Latex will need at least two days after the final coat. You'll know you've screwed up if your socks leave little cloudy heelprints.

9. Be even more generous in the time you allow before placing furniture and other heavy items on your new paint job.

-----

* When I bought the house, half of the kitchen floor was new wood and the other half was old wood covered with incredibly nasty, tarry tile adhesive from the 1960s. I spent days and weeks of my life with a respirator on my face, belt-sanding that shit off. The end result was fairly convincingly uniform, but still not quite nice enough to stain. Thus, the paint. Initially I went for what I thought would be a nice blueish-gray, but it turned out to be the color of auto primer, which is why I'm repainting it in a lovely dark blueberry color at this extremely late date. There's a history to every damn thing in this house. *sigh*

Good things that happened today

1. Got a license plate for my second car. There's a long story to this car. It is a 1994 Geo Prizm, smurf blue, which was previously owned by my brother, then by my stepsister, and which went through a long period of limbo while all of us were trying to rustle up the proper documentation and government hoo-hah to get a valid Georgia title for a car with an Ohio salvage title. At one point I actually had to pay the state Department of Motor Vehicle Safety to send a real live person out to Woodville to inspect the car (this has something to do with the salvage title and proving that the vehicle in question still exists and is not dangerous). Anyway, aside from the fact that now I can't get the Ohio license plate off of it because the bolts are rusted shut, I have achieved victory! I have a title, insurance, and a tag for it. It is legit.

2. Got more George Dickel No. 12 for my Horizon Organic eggnog. Self-explanatory, I think.

3. Got two new writing assignments for the upcoming weeks, and in the course of researching my current one, found that it was actually not only interesting, but quite amusing as well.

4. Discovered that the new Chinese restaurant/Japanese sushi bar (!?) down by the lake is, against all odds, really good.

Lifestyles of the furry and differently abled

We've had Cairo the three-legged dog for slightly more than six months now. He has become an integral member of the family. I can't imagine being without him.

Aside from his sunny, loving, loyal disposition and his marvelously plushy orange fur, the best thing about him is his absolute non-acknowledgement of the fact that he's missing a hind leg. I think he dreams in "four legs"--I'm guessing that from the way his body moves when he's running in his sleep--but he has certainly learned how to live life to the fullest with three.

Cairo's number-one favorite game is fetch. He loves tennis balls especially because of their bounciness and mouthfeel. I throw one, and I hear a frantic one-two-three one-two-three one-two-three of toenailed feet across the hardwood as he runs to get it. He doesn't corner well, bless him, but he can really move on a straightaway.

In case you're wondering where Silver is in all this, she's lying in wait. Silver's favorite game is not fetch; it's tug-of-war. She ambushes Cairo on his way back to me and tries to pry the ball out of his mouth. She usually wins, but Cairo doesn't care. If Silver is the one who returns the ball to me, it's fine, as long as I throw the ball for him again.

Outside, Cairo is even more in his element. The grass and dirt give him excellent traction. No dog needs four legs on natural turf. Cairo frolics and dances around with every bit of joy in his doggy heart.

At the risk of offering too much information, I am awed by the way Cairo poops. Recall, if you will, that dogs adopt a hunched, seated-with-levitating-butt posture when they do a #2. To approximate this, Cairo has to use some serious Dog Yoga. He places his right front leg waaaaaay back alongside his left (and only) hind leg, and he balances in a perfect, tenuous tripod.

Cairo still can't jump onto the bed by himself, and he has a lot of trouble with the steep staircase to our upper story. But he gets stronger and braver every day. Recently, when the s.o. was holding a tennis ball aloft, just out of reach, I noticed him pogoing into the air on one hind leg.

People tell me they can't understand spending as much money as I did to bring a stray dog back to health. But I don't understand that point of view, and I guess I never will.

Somewhere in an upstairs wall, a secret lurks

I think remodeling this house has changed us on some fundamental level. We understand the world a little differently, find different things funny.

This evening we were watching In a Fix, and my boy Sparky discovered an unforeseen junction box when he broke open a wall. This is his pet peeve; he believes, reasonably enough, that electricians should have access to them and know where they are.

"People!" Sparky bellowed into the camera. "Don't bury your junction boxes!"

The s.o. and I suddenly shot a glance at each other. A guilty glance. A slight smirk.

"Heh," the s.o. giggled.

"Heh, heh," I giggled back.