In a Strange Place

So I'm totally faltering here, leaving my blog un-updated for days.  I've been in a weird place.  Friday I found out one of my friends died.  A friend my age, and freaking STRAP of a man, who had a wild heart and a dancing wife and a life poured out before God.  With leukemia somewhere in the mix.  It pushed everything interesting and witty and energetic right off the table and left me with a big wide space.  I sat down to my computer and got back up again and walked away several times.  Dull.  Eyes brimming.

Now the week is rolling on, but today I was swept up into a project so big, so vast that not only are multiple cans of paint involved, so is Dust - with his power tools.  It's a playroom overhaul at Lindsay's house for Jack, Em, Ry (a.k.a. Boy) and Eve (a.k.a. Girl). 

My brussel sprouts post will have to wait.  Along with my i Love Looking Tuesday, because I don't want to rush either of them.  I'm working all week and painting in the gaps in between.  Colors like Nutmeg, Clove, Pencil, Graham Cracker Crust, Yam...and some owls. 

"I'll be back later to check on your work."

If you can name that movie, massive props to you.

Unbelievable

 

Ok, y'all.  I am so excited about this feature.  (I love how I refer to features within my blog like it's the New York Times).  Anyway, I just sat and went through all of our hundreds and hundreds of pictures of our thru-hike on the Appalachian Trail and... it was amazing.  I mean really.  Suddenly I'm having one of those moments where it's hard to believe something is real.  Dustan and I have these moments sometimes, we'll be sitting around talking and one of us is yakking our head off and the other one is like "Stop, I'm having an I-Can't-Believe-You're-You moment."  And we'll both get quiet and just kinda nod at each other, remembering what it was to be painfully (almost angrily) in love with each other - in silence - before the other one knew, each of us being too prideful to let on.  Waiting on God for green lights, for hope, for a word in due season.  All of it came, of course, in much glory, but I remember so clearly the letters and the late-night calls of "Will we ever sleep in the same bed, really?"  

So anyway.  Yeah - I'm looking at these trail pictures in a bit of disbelief.  You have to know how quaint Harpers Ferry was, and how beautiful Boiling Springs, Pennsylvania is and how incredibly other-worldly the Whites and most of Maine are.  I am so *so* excited to pull out pictures that never got published on the first blog, and to tell stories of things I forgot to remember along the way.  I could do a whole series on Food on the Trail, Wounds on the Trail, Animals and Insects on the Trail, Friends of the Trail, Hiker Trash on the Trail - it's gonna be so much fun.  If you're not the hikery, outdoorsy type, that's okay.  Take heart.  While I was out there, I wasn't really either.  I was just putting one foot in front of the other, bidding bathtubs and mattresses goodbye, getting into fights with that dreamy man of mine, (not caring that we shared the same tent if you know what I mean) and learning how to pick out hiking pants that wouldn't chafe too bad.  

As you would suspect, most all of the scenery and views were straight up epic, all the way from Georgia to Maine.  Looking at our pictures again tonight, I remember it afresh.  From the mountains of Tennessee covered in snow - not a leaf in sight - to the scraggly, stubborn pines hanging out on top of a balding summit in New Hampshire.  (Pointing)  Epic, epic.  The "ponds," they called them in Maine, even though they were vast enough to be tidal, the babbling crystal pools underneath ancient root systems in North Carolina, our first bear sighting, mornings in springtime - epic, epic, epic, epic.  You know nature in its most primitive and varied state is all gorgeous, mind-blowing serenity.  But I think it would be superficial of me (and a little boring) to only focus on the grandeur.  Because one, it's pretty much a given that it's ....yup, epic.  And two, there are also really gross, funny, entertaining, honest, ugly things about the AT.  

Like - did you know snails poop?

No Time

Sorry I don't have time to do a real post today, but I thought I would share something with you.

If you eat a pretzel and wash it down with orange juice, it tastes just like a sausage biscuit.

I'm just sayin'.

The Filing Cabinet

This filing cabinet was one of those things that I didn't like but I didn't hate and we definitely needed to keep handy with important stuff that I'm notorious for losing (social security cards, marriage licenses, school records, passports...).  So I decided to spruce it up a bit.  

First I found an image for inspiration.  I don't remember where it come from, but I'm giving the credit back to you, Internet.

 

 

 

The how-to on this project is pretty simple.

I removed the hardware, sanded it lightly, wiped it off really good.  (Then probably had to stop and take Trail for a walk).  Next I painted it two coats of Venetian Gold (my new best friend) and then did my little design on the side.  For the little design I used a pencil, an eraser, some kind of acrylic out-of-the-craft-bottle kind of paint as well as some other kind of paint out of the can, and water and small brushes.  Then I polyed the whole thing because I knew it would be in a high traffic area.

Fleeting Childhood

There's something so strange about pictures.  I mean, I definitely don't understand how cameras work, so therein is enough Why is the Sky Blue mystery to keep my gears huffing and puffing.  But even beyond the technology of taking (and successfully getting) a picture is the idea that we want to grab a sight out of the air and make it last.  I did this, I saw her, he was there, we were all together. We take a picture of good stuff.  The couple who just got engaged, a pie with a nice, even, brown, crispy crust.  I take pictures of my house all the time (when it's clean).  But once upon a time, when pictures were not nearly so abundant and accessible and editable, they were a big deal, weren't they?  You didn't take a picture of the foam on a perfect latte.  Pictures were planned and taken on purpose.  One try.  You tried for the good stuff, of course, but at the end of the day, you got what was there.  

When we were kids, this is how it was.  You get one shot in front of the sign that says Smoky Mountain National Park and that's it.  Then Dad rewinds the camera and takes it to Revco "to get it developed," a phrase we'll have to explain to our kids one day.  It's so funny to look back and see that sometimes those pictures were very...forced.  You know, right after a major meltdown, when our faces are stained with snot and tear trails, and the corners of our mouths are propped up by the imaginary fingers of the one who wants a nice family photo (Mom).  Like - there you go.  You might be at the Smokies, Dad may have taken time off for this, we are all together, but the camera is still going to show you whatever you show it, and maybe a little more.  There is no Photoshop here. And that's my favorite thing about pictures.  You think you're seeing one thing, but when you look at the picture, at what was really there, it's something else entirely.  Not only that, you go back and see stuff you never saw before.  Like how incredibly young your Mom was then.  And how that's probably why they let you and your sister go to pool by yourself...for hours.

Every time I look at this picture of my nephew Ryland I am reminded of how fleeting childhood is, and how weird it is to be on this side of adulthood saying things to make him smile for the camera, when once I was the one who couldn't be bothered to stand in for one more blasted picture.  One day he'll look back and think Were my hands ever so small? but now - well, it's pretty much written all over his face that he's about to drop a four-letter word on me AND my camera.  

That, or he's wondering how they keep that thing so clean. 

Maple Vinaigrette

I did some tinkering on my blog this weekend to change the layout.  The banners I made are kind of obnoxiously large, but I don't have the energy to change them.  All my pictures are on one hard drive, my photo editing program is on another, and I run back and forth between the laptop in my guest room and the desktop in the living room with a little memory stick so many times I am going to start counting it towards P90X points.  (You don't really get points in P90X - but you totally should).  Why don't I bring the laptop into the living room you ask?  Because Al Gore cast a spell on my living room and I can't get online in there.

Ok.  One of the *coolest* things I've finally broken into in the kitchen is making my own salad dressings and marinades.  It's something I put off for ages because...I don't know why.  Not only does the homemade version end up saving loads of money, your end result often tastes waaaay better and you get it sans the preservatives, additives and colorings packed into most all of the bottled stuff.  Does everybody already know this?  Am I way behind the curve?  Anyway, I needed Kraft's Asian Toasted Sesame dressing to marinate my chicken in not long ago, so I snuck down the grocery aisle, wrote down the ingredients and made it myself.  I. felt. so. smug.

The recipe that pushed me over the edge was a Maple Vinaigrette that I found in one of those little Everday Food Martha Stewart magazines.  Here's what initially caught my eye.

 

I've been meaning to make the switch from my regular old pancake syrup to pure maple syrup for a long time, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it because it's so much more pricey.  But then I read the ingredients in my normal pancake syrup:  sugar, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, distilled marshmallow creme and caramel coloring.  I took this little salad recipe as an excuse to buy the real stuff. 

2 tbs. extra virgin olive oil

1 tbs. cider vinegar

2 tbs. pure maple syrup

1 1/2 tbs. dijon mustard

coarse salt and pepper, to taste

These measurements are really small, so I doubled the batch to make our salads, and quadrupled it to make salads for company.  Whisk this together and toss a salad of greens, thinly sliced apple, blue cheese crumbles, almond slivers and red onion.  Best salad ever!

Speaking of salads, I'll leave you with a picture of our favorite meal - The Huge Salad.  As you can see, it was before my homemade dressing campaign.  For some reason, I really hate making salads.  Suddenly I'm going to see how many times I can say 'salad' in this post.  You have to drag all the stuff out, and then there's the chopping-endless-dicing-never-ending-slicing.  But once these salads are assembled, they're the best - and now my homemade dressing makes them taste even better!  Weehoo.  The funny thing is that my standard for how good a homemade salad is, is how much it mimics a restaurant salad.  I serve them in a big flat pasta bowl, and I put my dressing in ramekins on the side.  My salads include but aren't limited to:

A good leafy green

One fresh herb, chopped fine and tossed in: cilantro is the best

Red cabbage, shredded

Red onion

Cucumber

Broccoli

Carrot

Apple

Boiled egg, crumbled

Some kind of nuts

Some kind of seeds

Craisins, always Craisins!

Tomato, tomato, tomato (my fave)

Cheese of whatever kind

Sliced grilled chicken or ham, as pictured

 Next week I'll share something from the dark side.  A trifle my Sis just taught me.  Or brownies ganache.  Or the ice cream pie recipe I just made up that would leave a lactose intolerant person in the fetal position for-eh-ver.  Name that movie.

Where The Tough Keep Driving

Today is Friday, and it's the day I was going to write about a memory from the Appalachian Trail.  But instead I thought I'd tell you what happened to me night before last.

When I told people we were moving to Wisconsin, I could kind of visualize myself already here.  In my mind I was wearing a piece of foam cheese on my head.  Ice fishing with a man named Bernie.  Doing shots of beer cheese soup at a hockey game.  Or milking a cow and doing shots of colostrum.  Mmmm, colostrum shots.  But the reaction I got from most people was not nearly as imaginative.  They were all the same.  Wisconsin?  You know how bad the winters are, right?  Or Wisconsin? (Shudder).  Brrrrrrr!  It's cold there!  I've been living with Dustan so long now that I'm sure my response was something like an eager nod, a big golden retriever-grin and an enthusiastic "Bring it on, baby!"

The reactions of people here, learning we'd just moved from Virginia, were even gloomier.  Will this be your first winter here?  (Big, ominous, apocolyptical laugh)  You just wait til your car is buried under a foot of snow and you've got to dig it out before work.  That does sound pretty miserable, doesn't it?  So we got ready.  I should change that sentence.  We got SO ready.  We got here, bought snow shovels and rock salt and small candles just in case we were stranded in a snow drift so big we could always toast our hair and eat it on a cracker.  I turned into a Weather Watcher, made noaa.gov my best friend.  As October turned into November and then December, we were like minutemen.  Watching, waiting, ready to fight the snow.

But something all funny-like happened this year.  We got some snow, yeah.  A skiff here, a mid-morning dump there.  Had to use our shovel maybe twice so far.  But Virginia.  Ohhh, Virginia.  The snow you've gotten this year rivals the winters of my childhood past.  Power lines down, front doors snowed closed, snow so heavy roofs are caving in.  The ominous winter we expected in Wisconsin has been completely and totally trumped by what is going on over there on the east coast.  What IS going on over there anyway?  I sent my mom a Valentine on February 8th and she got it like three weeks later.  The USPS isn't firing on all pistons because of "inclement weather on the east coast."  But haven't they been getting Valentines to Minnesota since before the world began?  And here, my friends, is the vast difference between a bad winter in Wisconsin and a bad winter in Virginia.  In Virginia, the world stops turning when it snows.  Schools close.  Forever.  Kids just sit around getting dumb, watching ice melt.  And Walmart can't keep cases of bottled water or emergency blankets or pre-packaged firewood stocked.  People quit driving.  The roads crust over with crunchy ice on top of snow.  Christmas is cancelled.  No one has to work.  Mailmen aren't required to get Valentines to moms on time.

In Wisconsin, however, nothing changes when it snows.  I'm preeeetty sure their definition of inclement weather here is a whiteout, below-zero temperatures, and a tsunami coming off Lake Michigan.  Simultaneously.  Because work ain't cancelled, baby showers aren't cancelled and no one goes home early if around, say 3:30, it starts snowing at your place of work with such fury that your car is suddenly buried and no one has cell reception.  And you too would feel like a total pansy if you stood up and peaced out because you were such a thumb-sucking baby that didn't believe in driving in the snow.  Because girl, if you don't drive in the snow here, you're not going anywhere.  For a very long time.

So I stuck it out until five, gathered my things and trudged out to my car.  I had to use the ice scraper-slash-snow brusher offer to get all the snow from Ruby while she idled, and then I started my long journey home to Racine from Milwaukee in really bad conditions.  It was like the snow surprised everybody, especially Wisconsin's equivalent to VDOT.  WDOT?  And the roads weren't plowed at all.  I was white-knuckling my steering wheel on the interstate all the way home.  It was impossible to change lanes without your backend squirrelling around, so I just stuck to my lane while brazen Neons and 18-wheelers flew past, probably jamming out to Pink and smoking a cigarette in their cab.  Wisconsin-born.

I finally got off at my Racine exit and was desperate for gas at this point.  So as I start to turn right into the gas station, my car decides: no.  We're not going that way.  In fact we're skidding the opposite way.  Right towards a concrete median with a big stoplight mounted in the middle of it.  It all happened in slow motion.  It wasn't dramatic or heart racing.  It was more like "Ah man! No, man! Crap." My car banged into the concrete base of the stoplight and then the stoplight fell on my car.

That's right, A STOPLIGHT FELL ON MY CAR.

By stoplight I mean a big steel pole with a diamond-shaped sign on top that holds three big red, yellow and green bulbs.  On my car.  Unbelievable.  I'm too proud to leave work early and the price I pay is having a stoplight on my car.  Ruby is actually OK.  No windshield busted, just a dented hood and some undercarriage stuff, whatever that means.  My airbags didn't even go off.  But still.  A stoplight on my car?  A stoplight that costs ten thousand dollars that belongs to the city that I have to my insurance company has to pay for?

The policeman looks at my license and says to me "Welcome to Wisconsin."

And I say "This is inclement weather!"

Bringin' It

Dustan and I are doing P90X.  It's all the rage.  It's how skinny people get even skinnier, and also totally ripped.  It's how soft, desk-bound people torture themselves at night.  P90X.  We are doing P90X because we were fat.  We hiked the entire Appalachian Trail, but then we moved back in with Mom and she made us chicken pot pie and we got fat again.  Who wants to be an AT thru-hiker with nothing to show for it but calves the size of grapefruits (we both have them) and a sticker on their car? 

So we order this 90-day workout program that will give you muscles in your gums.  It's based on something called "Muscle Confusion."  I don't know if this is a gimmick or what, all I know is that we start the first day doing Core Synergistics.  Core Synergistics is a workout that makes you jump around so much your fat jiggles until it hurts, your face turns red, your throat throbs, and you feel like the chubby kid at basketball practice running suicides.  The next day we were supposed to do Cardio X, but I wilted from my push-up position like a noodle.  It was not a gimmick.  My muscles were definitely confused.  So confused that I just wanted to cry over a bowl of ice cream.  The thing about P90X is that it's old-fashioned.  In Cardio X we do jumping jacks (light fixtures trembling in the bar downstars) and curls and squats and lunges and push-ups.  Next is Shoulder & Arms. This means you put a chin-up bar in your doorway and almost kill yourself. Because right after chin-ups (which I can't do), you get down and do push-ups. Again, wilting like a noodle.  (Food metaphors give me comfort while I'm talking about P90X).  Then there's Yoga.  Now instead of your fat flopping around, you try to stick it into places it was never meant to go.  Now instead of jumping and crunching breathlessly, we are fixating on a spot on the wall, wobbling back and forth, our arms moving in synch, slow as molasses through the air.  Slow as honey through the air.  Slow as caramel sauce through the air...

But I really do like it.  Because there we are.  Two standing birds.  Pelicans on one foot.  Side by side, fibers from the rug all over our workout clothes, happy to be doing something with our blood and lungs and breath again, together. 

I will - inevitably - keep you posted.

The Bedroom

*I updated this post at the end.*

I sit here, scrolling through huge chunks of photos, not even knowing where to begin.  So I guess I'm gonna start with the first thing I painted in the apartment.  Our bedroom.  When we got here, it was hot and sticky - even in Wisconsin.  I couldn't believe it.  We just kept moving piles of boxes from one corner to the next until we couldn't take it anymore, and I decided to make one room normal.  Here's the bedroom evolving, from before we moved in, to blank whiteness, to the wrong peanut-buttery paint color, to the right one, and so forth.

This is how we slept for ages.  Nothing on the walls, nothing on the furniture, barely any covers on the bed.  The air may have been hot, but the walls were a nice Oatmeal, and that's all I cared about.

In every other room, I've done loads of small projects that make up the final product.  But in the bedroom, all the furniture/decor was pretty much ready to go.  I only did one little project.  My jewelry box:

This guy has been in my bedroom since I was a young girl, and I've always thought it would just be...I don't know, somehow wrong to paint it.  But I got over that when I finally decided that it would look good painted green, distressed, stained and rubbed with black.  You can't really tell the true color because of the exposure in this picture.  I like it so much better now.

Wow. . . I just had to come back.  Because as I was looking at these pictures I realized that everything in this room was given to us.  Everything!  I seriously can't look at one thing that I bought.  The chocolatey velvet curtains, matching sheets (that you can't see), puffy white comforter and lovely pillowcases all came from my aunt JJ.  The brown blanket on the bed came from my Mamaw Meade.  Rachel gave me the lamp for Christmas ages ago, and Rachel's mom gave me the red throw pillow as a wedding gift. Linds gave me the small white throw pillow, the furry rug, the furry pillow and the two excruciating little wooden boxes on my vanity.  Brahma's Mama gave me the vanity, and brought me back the small red lamp from Thailand.  Spring, Brahma's sister, gave me the bed.  Mom gave me the wooden rocking chair (I used to be rocked in that chair, now I paint it black and throw clothes over it) and the heavy afghan on it.  Furniture, window treatments, bedding, decor - free.  Getting free stuff?  Priiiiiiiicelessssssss. 

Nighty night.

Where the Child and the Dog Lie Side by Side

Today is the day I get to use a picture to talk about whatever the heck I want.  Here's a picture that makes me happy every time I look at it. 

This is a blog right?  What good would it be without some awkward Internet confessions.  I really like animals more than kids.  I mean, I like kids all right, in fact I have a really fun time with some of them.  But if there was a dog to pet in one corner and a baby to tickle in the other, I'd choose the dog ten out of ten.  No baby picture can make me squeak with a heart-squeezing I want one! the way a bunch of pudgy little labs in a wheelbarrow can.  Can I address the Sarah McLachlan commercial now?  You know the one.  The dogs, the cats, the puppies (oh the puppies!) trembling in cages with those huge brown, scared eyes.  It seriously sticks with me for hours.  I don't think I really cared about the tsunami or Katrina or Haiti until I saw images of a dog sitting on a porch that was about to go underwater.  If I don't turn the channel quick enough, I have to make up for it by giving Trail a hug so long it just annoys her.

Anyway, I know it's a bit dysfunctional that I am way more excited about getting a pet pig and a second pup than I am having a baby, and I'm OK with that.  Because it doesn't mean I'm not excited about a baby at all.  I really am.  That's why this picture isn't just a picture of a big shiny dog that I want to squeeze.  See?  There's also a little baby in it.  Maybe this picture makes you go "Those parents are fools" (because you watch too much Dateline and fill your brain with stories about snakes that eat small children), but it makes me really, really happy to see the family pet and the baby co-existing.  When we finally do get around to having a kid, I don't want that ol' Baba Gurl to get lost in the shuffle.  One of the blogs I read is Dooce, the Supreme Mommyblogger.  And the thing that keeps me a dedicated reader?  Is how her mutt and her (cah-razy, shelter-worthy, kick-to-the-curbable) Australian Shepherd get so much air time in their family.  I look at this picture and think, yes.  Trail will be that dog who has to endure lots of ear-tugging and eye-gouging, but in exchange she'll get to lick Stonyfield yogurt out of my kid's mouth.