We're all on the couch

Our family visit last week (the H's step-aunt, uncle and their son, Dido's age) went swimmingly, even though we failed on our mission to deliver swimming as an activity. (Are we weird that we didn't swim much at all last summer, save some welcome invitations to friends' pools? It seems that we need to embrace the lake culture. We're going to work on it.) It took a while for all of us (save the two boys, who call each other "Cuz" and leapt into an easy groove instantly) to find our rhythm, but once we did, we had a great time hanging out and exploring.

However...vacations are exhausting, and this was no exception. Saturday morning, their last day here, I ended up spending at the pediatrician, and then the hospital, where Dido received his first x rays in the quest to determine the source of a lingering pain in his left hip. The x rays revealed...precisely nothing at all. The H and I suspect that he pulled a muscle in his groin, but we're still not sure and if the pain doesn't get a lot better soon, we may be in for more tests. Think good thoughts for the little man, who has essentially been on bedrest since Saturday morning. As a result, he's had lots of TV time (joy, rapture) and we've been somewhat grateful for the excuse to lie low at home and skip out on some of the summer socializing. (Though I was really sorry to miss this. That's my cool friend Linda with the awesome short hair and groovy glasses.)

Meanwhile, I'm thinking a lot about some various things I've been reading and learning. Everywhere I turn, it seems, I am confronted with different expressions of the idea of universality. Whoof. As I read that, I think--too big and too pretentious a thought for so early in the morning. Or, maybe, any time. But here's the thing: I've been reading a bunch of stuff--novels, books on the creative process, the Mahabharata, for heaven's sake. And what they all have in common is this idea that is kind of metaphysical and kind of mythical, that there are spheres within spheres of energy, and that creativity and bliss arise when a window, or a door, opens in this most prosaic world to let all that beyond-our-perceptions energy in. Ok, I'm going off the woo woo deep end. Maybe. But the key to tapping into all that wonder is the most prosaic thing of all--call it focus, perseverance or discipline, the answer all comes down to putting your ass in the proper chair.

I realized last night that I am so tired of being disappointed by my answer to the "what are you working on?" question, and that my problem (duh, the H is thinking right about now, if he's reading) is about sitting down to work. The ideas, they come. I can see all the tantalizing beauty outside, but nothing will come through that window without my heaving up the sash.

Holy s*&%

How in the world did I not know that beloved cook Lora Zarubin blogs? How? She's here. Dive in.

Back again, briefly

We've had a lovely visit with family all week, which has been fun and exhausting both and kept me offline for longer than I had intended. I'll be back,soon, I promise.

My friend Margaret

Love that internet. Love my creative friends. Read all about the former and one of the latter right here.

My vow of abstinence

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to take a vow: to never go online after I put the kids to bed. I have found that too many nights are spent randomly blogreading, occasionally blogwriting, hyper-traveling through netspace when, in fact, I should be asleep. Since discovering the (very real, at least for me) lack-of-sleep/depression link, I have been trying to do better at getting 7-8 hours a night--and since we're up with the kids every morning at 6:30, latest, that means shutting my eyes by 10:30. Not easy to do, when they are often not really asleep until after 9.

This has been, overall, great. More reading time, more sleeping time, better mood. But...I've been a pretty irregular blogger during this time, too. And I am, in general, struggling with organizing my time now that the Babe has a regular school schedule, the Au Pair has a regular school schedule, and I...I still have five million things I'd like to do, a few that I must, and blocks of time that feel long on paper but somehow evaporate before me.

The H and I had a bit of a set-t0 this week: he was in a funk, and I finally sat him down and said some version of: "I can tell you're trying really hard not to lose your temper with me, but it's clear that you're angry and irritated with me, so--what's up?" (I thought this was a very mature and diplomatic way to confront my growing irritation with his irritation.) His response was that I was taking on too much--the chickens! the (sorry attempt at a) vegetable garden!--and other things (the decluttering of our home) were falling by the wayside. Now, whether or not or home is in fact messy is a matter of debate and opinion. Some say no, others would agree with him. My first reaction was an angry one--"you don't want me to have anything that's just for me--you want me taking care of you all the time"-- and there's probably some truth to the latter part of that statement, though not the former. But then it made me think about what I am taking on, and what my time goes towards. I don't think I have too much on my plate, but rather that I let the wrong things absorb too much of my time because I don't have a structure for getting them done. Freedom Filer and Nozbe, as wonderful as they are, can't plant my ass in my desk chair and write the checks for me when it's time to pay the bills. I have to impose structure upon my own cobwebby brain, and this is a challenge. Hence, the no 'net night rule, which I am hoping will keep me from spinning off into endless (and endlessly fascinating) hyperlink journeys which, though fun, are somewhat fruitless...stay tuned.

We find ourselves

I find my self here north of Beantown, visiting with oe of my oldest dearest friends, ensconced in her home, a place of consuming, cossetting beauty and great warmth.  Tomorrow, we will head into hte city to explore wiht the short people, plans to include the MFA, the Museum of Science, the Boston Children's Museum, and the US Constitution.  Do you think we can pack it all in?  If not, we will still be mad with joy to be here, and to be with our dear ones.

Of old friends, and new birds

My mother may be the only person in the world who wants me to blog about my college reunion, and since I already talked to her about it, I don't really feel like I have to honor her request! But the first pictures are of one of the highlights of the weekend, a meal worth risking digestive drama for (happily, I had none. Apparently months of gluten free allow me a few indiscretions, which means that a) I don't have celiac disease and b) it's all worth it.) Those are from Pepe's, which makes the best pizza in the land. If you have the chance, go. The paler one in the second photograph is white clam pizza, second only to ambrosia as food of the gods.

And then, also for my mom, some new pics of the chicks, happily ensconced in a new, bigger enclosure in the coop they will call home. They're still not big enough to meet the other girls or go outside, but they seem very happy in their new digs. Today I added some perches and a nice screen cover, so they should be safe, and amused. The girl in the last pic is a mystery chick--note her feathered legs. Can't wait to see what she turns into, but if her plumage is as dramatic as I think it's going to be, I might have to name her Cher. Or Bob Mackie.

We interrupt the regularly scheduled bucolic musings...

For some befuddled political....outrage isn't really the right word. Utter disbelief? Concern that perhaps certain candidates and their entourages ought to take a time out?





Make sure to watch the whole thing, to get the full benefit of Terry McAuliffe's delusional, party-destroying, solipsistic perspective. It's nice to know that gracious behavior and a firm grasp on reality flows all the way through the Clinton organization.

Flotsam and Jetsam

• It's a whole lot easier to blog than to talk these days. The cold I caught before leaving for the weekend (which I swore to myself Friday morning was just allergies) has wiped out my vocal chords.
  
• My summer CSA share started today, which means there's stuff happening over on the other blog.
• Does Hillary think she's the Decider? It would appear so from tonight's less-than-gracious speech.
• The weeds are back in my garden. On the bright side, the grass down by the barn is now cut so I can (finally, really late) put in my raised beds.
• I referred to my peers as being in the middle of their lives. The people I said this to, a good forty years older than me, took some exception. Good for them.
• And goodnight.
  

Base Ten

Scarily a propos given how I spent my weekend, here's a meme from Gina. Do you blog, too? Then guess what? You are tagged!

Ten Years Ago
I was in the home stretch of planning my wedding to the H. My favorite parts of my wedding were the cake (made for us by dear dear friends as their wedding gift,) arranging the flowers with my mother, my mother-in-law and her sisters the day before, the band, and the toasts from our best people, which were staggering in their breadth, humor and vocabulary. My only regret about not videotaping the wedding is that we don't have a record of those speeches.

Ten Months Ago
Last August I was stressed about the looming writers' strike, and depressed in general, as well as dealing with familial strife that still feels unresolved. Not a good time.

Ten Days Ago
I was trying to get kids to go to sleep--same as now.

Ten Hours Ago
I was working on a pitch for a small magazine piece. Nothing like an unanswered email query to set me obsessively checking my inbox.

Ten Minutes Ago
I was explaining--at length and occasionally at higher than preferable volume--to both children why insisting that they cannot fall asleep is counterproductive to all of our happiness. They were not persuaded. The H is now with the Babe, and Dido is lying in bed in silent protest (God bless him for this manner of self-expression.)

Ten Minutes from Now
I will read some more Laurie Colwin.

Ten Hours from Now
I'll be getting the kids out the door.

Ten Days from Now
I will be out on a date with the H.

Ten Months from Now
I hope I'll be reading a great script for my movie project, and be well into my own writing project. I feel like I'm jeopardizing both by even admitting that I want them.

Ten Years from Now
What does it mean that I cannot project that far ahead? I hope I'm really working, and that my kids like me better than they do at this moment.

A reun-ing we will go...

I'm off to the big two-oh. Don't plan to be blogging from New Haven, but anything could happen, including throwing my healthy wheat-free system to the sharks by indulging in some Pepe's, the best pizza on the planet. Reports on Sunday, possible Utterz or pictures before...

Blogging in the right hemisphere

I'm thinking a lot about the idea of the mind as its own place (thanks, John Milton) these days. As some of you know, I'm an inconsistent meditator, yogi and would be Buddhist. (Though lately I've been reading about Sufism, and that sounds pretty good to me.) In any case, some of what these things share (other than a healthy rep for being Eastern "woo-woo"--thanks Margaret) is that they all aspire to both tap into something beyond the self, a shared realm beyond consciousness that somehow links person to person to creature to plant to planet to universe, and also to place the self firmly in the moment, the now. (At least, that's my read on these practices. Scholars can feel free to augment and correct, as long as they're not nasty about my mistakes, intellectual or typographical.)

Last Sunday, I read the NYT's Sunday Styles piece on Jill Bolte Taylor, neuroanatomist, stroke victim, and advocate for the idea that the keys to the universalist kingdom, so to speak, lie within our own brains, specifically the right hemisphere. She asserts that the experience of bliss, nirvana, universality, peace (or whatever you want to call it) is accessible via the right hemisphere of our brain, that by accessing that part of ourselves, we can tame the left brain, which is all about chatter and worry and fretting about the past and projecting future and linear thought--in other words, everything but the experience of this particular moment.

I mentioned a few days ago that friends are enduring a particularly terrifying present. Their five year old son was diagnosed a week and a half ago with Wilm's Tumor, a cancer of the kidneys that occurs in little kids. Though it has around a 90% cure rate, it's not something you want to have to experience as a patient or a parent. If their blog is a fair representation of their reality (and I suspect it is, as much as any blog can be) they are dealing with this fearful adversity with great balance and love. Their ability to maintain calm and positivity speaks, I think, to all this right brain woo-woo stuff. I hope that as you all did for Mieke when she began her hard times this year, you will send all your powers of belief, hope and love towards Pablo and his family as they move through their cancer journey. Whatever your belief, it never hurts to send love in someone's direction.

For those who can't get enough...

I've started updating my cooking blog again...in fact, kind of broadening it to include my so-called gardening life, as well. So if you're interested in those facets of, well, me...check it out. Some good recipes of mine, as well as links to things that have worked for me. I make no promises about whether or not kids will eat any of it though.

Can't believe where I left off...

Nothing like a dose of self-pity mixed with a bit of embarrassing personal history to turn out the kind emails and comments--thanks to all who sent good thoughts in response to my little hissy fit. The sting of the comment is healed nicely, now, and I've moved on. To what, I'm not sure, as this evening finds me crashed out on my bed, waiting for the H to arrive home from a three-day trip to L.A. He's hard at work on an adaptation of this, to be directed by this guy, which is all pretty exciting. The books are good for kids 7 and up--Dido can't read them yet but listens to them on CD and is obsessed. He's taught all his friends to play at being owls on the school playground. It's pretty delightful to see them all swooping around.

Reveal yourselves

I woke up this morning and (as I too often do) obsessively checked my email. Along with the daily junk, I always hope to find a note from a friend or a comment on my blog. Today I got both, and both were nasty surprises: the (anonymous) comment was unkind, and the friend's email contained sad news about another mutual friend. I can't do anything (except think good thoughts) for my friend who's going through rough times, and I can't do much around the random nastiness, either, except to change things a bit, and a disallow anonymous comments. I know I have a few real-world friends who read and like to comment anonymously, and to you, I apologize--I don't mean to invade your privacy. Unfortunately, it appears that my skin isn't quite thick enough to deal with random hostility. I'll work on that. In the meantime, sorry to any of you who are inconvenienced or made uncomfortable by this change.

And to Anonymous in Rochester, let me just share a couple of things. When I was in high school, some girlfriends and I (and I seem to remember that I was, I am ashamed to say, kind of the ringleader) took out anonymous snarky ads in the school paper (why we were allowed to do this, I can't fathom) making thinly veiled attacks on another girl. (We believed, I think, that she was chasing after another friend's boyfriend. It was high school, and I know, it was pathetic.) In any case, Anonymous from Rochester, I still regret having done such a cowardly, dopey thing--twenty five years later, I still think of it from time to time. So, really, why bother? And to address specifically your concerns about me. Yes, I went to Yale. But my classes were not pass/fail (perhaps you're thinking of Brown) and I did ok in English. Even so, my overpriced and overrated diploma fails to guarantee a typo-free existence. So for the grave sin of typing "an new New Yorker" instead of "a new New Yorker", I apologize, and hope you weren't too harmed by the experience of reading my words. I, too, loathe typos, try to avoid them, but I tend to blog quickly, and don't catch them all.

More friendly brilliance

Check this out, and then go here to buy my friend Betsy's wonderful book. If you're an animal person, while you're at it, buy this one, too.

Green days; or, John, meet Chip, Muffy, Biff & Buffy

This weekend was a flurry of green: a visit to lovely Margaret's paradise of a garden, a Saturday family adventure to what the kids labeled the "garden fair" followed by an afternoon of occasionally frustrated or frustrating planting.

Friday took me to tour my new 'net friend's corner of the earth. As with my class the other weekend at Hancock Shaker Village, the whole thing was almost too much to take in--so much beauty and so much knowledge. I kept reminding her that I know nothing when it comes to plants and gardening, and she was patient with my inane questions and gaping, awed face. I went home with lots of babies to plant and a hope that in twenty years, my little plot of earth might look half as good as hers. I cleverly left behind a bucket so that I'll have to return, soon.

Saturday we roused ourselves for a field trip to northwestern Connecticut to experience "Trade Secrets", an annual fundraiser that gathers boutique nurseries and garden furnishing purveyors in one field of horticultural dreams. And, it was in Connecticut. I repeat the location because, you see, other than the Hartford airport and a long ago trip to my college reunion, the H had never really experienced Connecticut. As he put it, he'd never seen so many 58 year old women who looked exactly alike (think blonde highlights and headbands.) He was also surprised to see the Bentleys and Rolls Royces in the parking lots. I realized, seeing this high WASP, high roller culture through his eyes, that Connecticut is a lot like Beverly Hills, only preppier, and we agreed that though there's much beauty to be found in the Litchfield hills, we prefer our ragged little farm-y county across the state line.

We dragged our bounty (from the show and from the Agway on the way home) into the yard, and started to dig. Thanks to Margaret, I had geraniums, and cannas, and angelicas and others to re-home, and the show gave me some gaudy pink heucheras to throw into the mix. I managed to get a good number of them in, but at a certain point, fatigue and despair took over. My beds looked like crap! No matter how many weeds I pulled, more seemed to instantly appear! I would never get all the hated boxwoods dug out and transplanted to their new home on the south side of the house, where they will help hide the air conditioners....And forget about getting the kitchen garden in. I can't even figure out what is already growing there...The babe took the moment when I was most discouraged to pitch an hysterical tantrum because I wouldn't let her have a Reeses peanut butter cup that Dido dragged home from a birthday party (why, parents, why??? do you give candy in party bags? None of us want to deal with our kids when they eat sugar, so why do you sugar up other people's kids??) After she calmed down (and it took a while) I lay on the couch on the screened porch with a pillow over my face, while the H mulched the (mostly planted) front bed. The rain had started, and the air was soft. Nothing looked that bad, and there's time to do more this week.

I told my mom this story when we spoke tonight, and she laughed. Why, she wondered, do I think I am exempt from learning? Why should I know how to do something perfectly, right away? Gardening is all about learning--I'll learn.

More friend brilliance

My friend Colette is (yet another) brilliant writer. Check out her story "Lamb" here.

Farming, Hollywood and the Great Unknown

I moved to Hollywood (from a kind of bi-city existence on the east coast, based in DC, but working in NYC two or three days per week) on Friday, September 13, 1991. I used the many frequent flyer miles accrued in my advertising job (my first career) to upgrade to first class, so though the day may not have been auspicious, the surroundings gave a transitory sense of calm. Once in L.A. (or, more precisely, Culver City; at the time, well-deserving of the nickname I gave it, "The land that time forgot", now, just another stop on the overdeveloped Westside) I stuck a toe into the waters of business school, hated it, and from that point on, felt like a raccoon trying to strap on water wings to pretend to be a shark. If that image is uncomfortably awkward--yep, that's it.

It didn't get any better when I started working in the entertainment business. My first job was easy, if time consuming; I was an assistant (code for secretary) to a producer (yes, with an MBA from a then top tier B school. Welcome to Hollywood, baby.) He was a good guy who needed a lot of attention but in return was thrilled to have an intelligent and rapt audience. He taught me a great deal about the kind of producer or executive I might want to be (one who cultivated relationships, did his own reading, said no in a way that was kind and constructive, one who had strong and well-founded opinions) and when I moved on, to my first "real" job, he sent me with his blessing and an enduring willingness to mentor and support me. I was lucky. But even when I worked for him, I had the nagging, itchy feeling that I was missing out on some key piece of information: everyone else understood the "business" in some innate and critical way that eluded me--if only I could see through their eyes, every decision would be obvious, every negotiation successful, I would always say the right thing.

Instead, when I moved to that new job, I found myself working for an amateur machiavellian, the kind of guy who would gaslight his own employees just for the power rush. I kept notes in my journal about all things he was teaching me, by example, about how NOT to do my job. He was mean, capricious, mercurial and syncophantic-- everything I didn't want to be (though he had excellent taste in furniture, literature and music. So you can't say I can't find something nice to say.) Still, working for this evil non-genius, I felt like it was all about what I didn't know. If had that Key Piece of Information--I would know how to deal with him, how to do my job in a way that didn't constantly result in eye rolling, screaming and scapegoating.

Even when I moved on to a later position of arguable power (I could actually say yes to projects and mean it, meaning I had the power to decide which scripts my department would develop into films) I still felt like I didn't get it. (Maybe this was all the fault of the script I developed at the old job about Werner Ehrhard and est. If you don't get it, well....*) Eventually, I decided I had to stop worrying about what I was missing and do the best I could with what I had, which was wise, if perhaps a little too late in the game. I finally came to believe that Hollywood rewarded the appearance of certainty and confidence as much as it did the reality of those qualities, and though I agree with the H that Hollywood is in many ways a meritocracy, it also confers awards of merit onto those who merely bullshit very, very well.

Now I find myself living at more than arm's length from Hollywood, even as I stay somewhat engaged with it both personally and professionally. But my day to day present is about the place that surrounds me. And every time I look around my barn, I am absolutely certain that I lack information. Not a single idea that would make it all make sense (perhaps this is why I always hated Economics classes? Because I never believed that those theories could make it all make sense?) No, this time I lack generations worth of nearly-ancient knowledge: how to build things, how to take them apart, how to move water, or straw, or wood, how to handle, feed and nurture animals and plants, how to plan ahead for weather, how to clean the floor, the ceilings, the walls. What I don't know is immense, and I am aware of it constantly.

Today, I visited my intended asparagus bed. Indeed, there is a small spring feeding water into it. In fact, I have made asparagus crown soup (heavily seasoned with expensive bags of organic compost) and a big wet trench. This will not be the year that I start my asparagus patch. But I did manage to dig up two of the hated boxwood bushes (two down! Only eighteen to go!) and plant perennials in the empty spaces. Whether they will survive--I can't know. The pansies and violas I bought several weeks ago are thriving, their blossoms hardy and intense. While weeding in the kitchen-garden-to-be, I found a white violet, which I spared, and some sweet Johnny-Jump-Ups which arrived from who knows where. I bought two bird feeders and some seed, and tomorrow the kids and I will hang them. I know how to finish fencing the apple trees in the new orchard so that next winter, the deer won't feast on their still-soft bark. I can look with satisfaction at the immense pile of thorny brush I cut (and still need to burn) on the lower part of the slope, where it was threatening an old lilac. I am learning, and I will never, ever be done.

What I've Learned, Part 2

Water isn't always standing, or the result of the rain. Sometimes, it's moving through the earth to find a place to rest. If that place is supposed to be your new asparagus bed...well, maybe it won't be.

Gardening is not rocket science. (Says the head gardener at Hancock Shaker Village. Me, I'm not so sure.)

Chickens may protest a lot when you clean their coop, but they sure a lot of eggs the next day.

I am thinking a lot about growing things, which means I may need to invigorate my other, long-neglected blog, Trip to Bountiful, in order to spare my less-garden-involved readers from such in-depth exposure to the greening part of my brain.