Street Fight

I shouldn't have been up so late, and furthermore, shouldn't have been staring out my window like the persnickety lady with nothing better to do. But I was guilty on both counts, and so I saw the street fight. It wasn't the same as others. There was no pomp, no trash-talking, no chanting circle. Instead a few people were huddled around a car. At first I thought the car had rolled back on a guy. Then I saw that a man was beating this other guy on the ground, jerking him up to hit his head on the underside of the car, then punching him, then banging his head against the tire. When at last the few people around had started to pull this guy up off the ground, the man stepped back and screamed at the guy on the ground. Then he hauled off and kicked him in the face. So swift, like he was on a movie where he lost his job and then comes home and kicks over a trashcan for dramatic effect. A final blow. I watched the guy’s face split open and my blood ran cold.

Do you know how many people I’ve seen shot, stabbed, hanged and massacred on television? Nothing compares to real life. If you’ve ever witnessed an act of violence, you know. I thought about my husband sleeping in the bed. I thought of my freshly washed dishes. I scurried to the bedroom and burrowed down deep. He doesn’t snore. In fact, he looks so serene I want to pluck out one of his eyelashes. Instead I press his calves with my cold feet. I want to say You will never believe the fight that I just saw! It would only punish both of us at this hour. I make myself think instead of Scarlett O’Hara and Ashley and those big dresses. I see Margaret Mitchell hunched, scribbling furiously, churning out a saga so big, so vast, just words on paper. I want to go into another world altogether and forget that balding bastard who’s just beat a young drunk guy for whatever reason, and then stood, cool as a cucumber. I know he is about to go home to some family and put those same hands on sleeping bodies. Men have done this for ages I know, but tonight, the thought is too much for me. I shudder out loud and tell myself Rhett Butler.

Stuff People Make, Part 2

Ok, while I'm on the topic of making stuff, I couldn't resist sharing the awesomeness that is: The LiteBrite. Do you know this experience, coveted by all in the 80's? Do you remember the mind-numbing method of poking trillions of lights into black paper with a satisfying pop? You can imagine the Moment I had in that thrift store when I saw this puppy staring back at me for $3.50. Dustan's mom was with me, visiting at the time. I may or may not have pushed her down on the way to recapturing part of my childhood.


Even had the original box!

Moving on to a creative feat almost as impressive as the stove...I've had this picture in my recipe book for quite some time. We decided to attempt an ice cream cake bombe like this for Dustan's big 30th birthday this past December.

The trick to making one of these things is super simple. Pretend you're 7 years old and your mom just gave you the keys to the car and told you to go get groceries. We came home with a gallon of cookies n' cream ice cream, a half gallon of chocolate ice cream, brownie mix, a pack of Double Stuf Oreos, and two containers of Magic Shell. (Ahhh, Magic Shell. I could pour you over a twig and eat it).

Then you freeze the whole conglomeration. And then...

you party it up.




I also had a birthday in December! This was the absolute worst french toast I've ever had, even if Brahma did get up early to make it, cut it into heart shapes and dust it with powdered sugar. The best part was coming home after work and going downstairs and across the street to Asiana. Reeeeally good Korean food that cancelled out the french toast.

Trail made something this holiday season too. A new friend! Her name is Karma, she's a blue heeler and she is a spastic, frenzied wad of destruction on a leash. She kinda knows the system now, and when our door is open, she runs in and grabs a stuffed animal out of Trail's toy basket and then hops on Trail's bed and stares at her with an open-mouthed perma grin like What?

I guess that about sums up the making of stuff. And as completely messed up as this sounds, I feel like Christmas is finally here. What I mean is - I started working a job that was supposed to last a week at the beginning of December. But that week stretched into another week, and the next thing I know, I'm still working. It was, of course, a huge and timely blessing to have consistent work during this moving transition and the holiday season - but it definitely cramped my Christmas style. I like to have those interminable baking days. The kind that require multiple packages of almond bark and vanilla extract and peppermint sticks. I like to buy my gifts painfully slow. I look at them. I make Dustan look at them. And then I wrap them even slower than I bought them. I position them all nicely around our tree and they sit there for weeks, until I pack them up and drive them to Virginia. This year Christmas totally snuck up on me and there I was on Christmas Eve, painting and re-painting those two. freaking. dots.

We literally piled all our goodies into the car at 4am and drove straight thru the night. I took first shift, blinking back sleep in the middle of construction in Chicago, with salt-covered headlamps in the middle of an ice storm, and then -poof- we had landed in a pile of unwrapped presents on the east coast. Don't get me wrong, it was a total blast and sooo great to be with our families. But now that I'm back and settled in, and a foot of snow is in the forecast and our crock pot is bubbling with yummy goodness - I feel like saying Merry Christmas!

We're keeping our tree up til it's standing naked in a pile of needles.

Stuff People Make With Their Hands

I have a friend who used to date this guy and, well, she doesn't date him any more. When it was all finally over, she told me one of the things about him was that he didn't do anything with his hands. And it bothered her more than she knew. I thought it made perfect sense. I never knew I valued this in someone, but I totally do, and life would be totally not as good if I hadn't been surrounded by people who get their hands dirty. One of my grandfathers was a carpenter, the other was a coal miner. I grew up around farmers and a dad who cleaned fish in January. Lots of people are creative, lots of people have good ideas, but few are the people who stand in the cold or get a stiff back or endure scrape after scrape to the knuckle or overlook the blisters to produce something.

Behold 2 of the many snow sculptures that were chiseled out in downtown Racine this December. These people are serious about their dwarves and pigs in sacks and roses and sailors kissing women - in spite of the Wisconsin wind chill.


Here's what I contributed with my own two hands, thanks to the Balkcom family recipes I inherited when I got married. Buckeyes. Seriously worth the 1/8 pound-gained-per-every-bite ratio. (I CANNOT blog without my hyphenated phrases!)

Here's another creation people. My mom has been taking a pottery class at Southwest VA Community College, and I am so proud of her. After her first few classes I asked what did she think? How did it go? She reported several things. One was that the professor should have introduced everyone in the class. Another is that he should have told the class more about himself. Another was that there was a lady who wore so much pink! and didn't I think all that pink was over? And finally there was a girl my age with a mouth so filthy no one wanted to talk to her. (Gah.) Yes, but how about the pottery mom? Oh, she centered her first bowl on her own. Which was actually hugely reportable news because centering is hard to master! Whatevs.

Mom made me this to hang on my door.


And she threw Dustan this little bowl. I really love the glaze.


And here's one of the three pillows my Sis made me for my birthday! She found the felt birds at a lady's Etsy shop who lives in New Zealand. I am obsessed with this pillow.

And just to wrap things up, here is the end result of Dustan's stove project. After Olivia got hers, we decided to make one for our niece Amryn. I throw the "we" pronoun in only because I toiled over the paint and poly job. The real glory is Dustan's.











It might have been Amryn's Christmas present, but that little pink glossy door alongside the gold, and the way the smooth wooden knobs turn from high to low? Alllll for me. Dustan will you make me one?

*Crickets*

Please bear with the silence. I am currently working. I know, I know - it's unlike me to have a job. I'm riding to and from Milwaukee with Brahma every day, so that's nice. But I also have to get up before 6:00am to make life sane. That might sound like a contradictory statement. Wait - yup, it is.

I'm temping at an home health agency called IndependenceFirst. It's an amazing zillion-dollar facility and really fun to see disabled and able people working side-by-side. I hung out with a service dog the other day. He was the bigger, smarter, calmer version of Trail and his name was Magic. I'm not saying she's not the cutest ol' Baba ever, cause she is.



Or that she doesn't have killer flexibility, cause she does.


Or that I can't take her places, cause this girl loves herself a car ride.



This is us on the way to deliver the finished (but unpainted) stove!




I hope to get pics of the truly finished version from Dana after she paints it for Olivia. The good news is that I asked Dustan to build me a hovercraft so I can get to to work faster and push my wake-up time to 8. He says yes. It'll be done by Christmas Eve.

Old Things Become New

So I've had this old, lusciously worn pair of Dustan's corduroys laying around forever. You know cords, they get better with age. And if Dustan happens to put on a wool sweater with his cords and ruffle his hair a bit, he looks really J.Crew and I fall more in love with him.

But now they're done. Through oil changes and banister-sliding, from Virginia to Wisconsin, these pants have been loved well. But Dust finally blew the hubs out of them. I'm pretty sure it was in church when I happened to look at his booty and instead saw his wallet and beyond. I'm like duuuuude, those pants are so gone.

Here's one more worldly possession that is very sentimental to me: my recipe book. It's just a big blank book that I've scrapped and glued and taped recipes into from magazines, family members, friends and clippings.


(A letter from my Mamaw including her recipe for Sweet Potato Casserole. I love that she's 90 and it's in her handwriting, which still looks like a font after all these years).

Problem is, this is the cover of my recipe book.

A little girl in what seems like overalls at first, but is really a dress. Add a hat, take away the shirt and throw in some roses. Then make the whole thing sepia. I have been looking at this girl since I got married and started making Sis's Famous Burritos and Mom's Sweet Tea and Amy's Lentil Soup and Dawn's Christmas Cookies. She is so sweet I have a sugar headache. She is so cute I want to give her horns with a Sharpie. I can't believe she's lasted as long as she has, Anne.

Today I employed my version of sewing, a little something I call Hot Glue Gun, and did this:

I even have a little pocket for my recipe cards!

Therefore, if any cords be in the kitchen, it's because they've been recreated. Old stains have passed away; behold! a brand new recipe book has come.

A few days ago our furnace broke. It just wouldn't kick on. The thermostat told us it was 63 degrees in our apartment. 63 degrees is brrrrrrrrrr. Just knowing it was that cold made it that much worse. Imagine me hunched over my laptop with fingerless gloves on, swaddled in layers of cotton and fleece. Makes you wanna go boil some water, throw on the hot water in the shower and let it run, just because you can.

And then just yesterday I walked Trail in the rain. My pants got wet. My hair escaped out the side of my hood and started clinging to the side of my face. The wind off the lake picked up and pelted me mercilessly. I picked Trail's tennis ball up out of the dirt, wiped my hair out of my face and suddenly, there I was - wet, cold, dirty, annoyed, heavy-legged and a good .8 of a mile from home. I'm telling you, all I was missing was the backpack.

Ever since that long walk I've been particularly sensitive to how much I hate being cold - not to mention cold and wet. The great thing is that I get cold a lot less easier. Maybe that's why these broken-furnace and soggy-walking days have been so hard on me.

But nowhere near as hard as they've been on this girl.

Progress!

The toy kitchen project is still going strong. Here's an update that shows the little shelf, eyes on the stove and the genius no-pinch door design.

A sneak peek at our storage room. As I mentioned before, this room is an old cigar room (or maybe purposed for a future cigar room? as all Wisconsin bars will become smoke-free by law in 2010). Either way, for now it's the place where our yet-to-be-painted barstools and snowshoes and deer antlers and Christmas dishes and tattered, couldn't-part-with-them Appalachian Trail guidebooks live.

Also Dustan's workshop.

If you have one (a guest room), they will come

Since we've been in Racine we've had the greatest stream of company ever. It just shows that people pretty much think we're awesome.

It started with Tanner back in September. I have no pictures from that visit, and hardly any lucid memories because it was like one big fog of Dustan and Tanner fishing and talking late into the night. But I will say it was great to have Tanner here. He bought us fish sandwiches at Freaky Tiki, got up early one morning and sneaked out to wash my car. Brian and Lindsay had us over for a late summer meal under the pergola. After Tanner left, I barely had enough time to get a coat of buttercream paint on the dresser in the guest room before Mom came.

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I was surprised Susie got herself a plane ticket as soon as she did. But she made it happen, and we had an awesome time. She loved our place, our city, our lake, our peoples.

She wrote Dad a little message on the shores of Lake Michigan.

We went to Milwaukee and saw Dustan at work.


We hit up Anthropologie and Mom got each of us a knob. Mine for my closet door in the guest room, her's for the medicine cabinet upstairs at Hidden Valley. (She actually got me a bunch of loot - including rugs, sheets and a mattress pad - but the Anthro knobs stand out in the mind). When you go to Athropologie, you become unsatisfied with your whole life. I can't tell you why I don't have that apron, and those teacups, that sweater and those bathtowels. All I know is, I don't. But I should.

The Mom Visit ended with such a bang. Well, except for the very end of the visit when Dustan and I screeched in to O'Hare about 45 minutes too late and a German woman checking bags wouldn't let Mom check her bag. So we ended up dragging her 98-pound-full-of-Racine-souvenirs-luggage back to the car. But on the way back we saw The Reverend Jesse Jackson. He looked kinda tired and unimportant. Something like:


Maybe not a Daniel Vosovic kind of sighting, but still a celebrity.

So every year my hometown blows out the 4th of July with tents on the school lawn and live music and a sheet cake that stretches the entire length of a flatbed truck. Mom is the kind of person that rocks out an event like that. She arms herself with small bills and sunglasses and stays all day. That's why I was so glad she happened to be in Racine for Party on the Pavement. And that was the real bang-of-a-visit-ending I was talking about earlier, not the Jesse Jackson sighting. It was a whole day of streets lined with tents and food and vendors, a Ferris Wheel, pony rides, a petting zoo, Star Wars storm troopers and about a bazillion bands, all right outside our apartment. Mom bought a teapot, a scarf, a necklace, danced in the streets unashamedly to a band called Folkswagen and then we all ate Asian chicken on a skewer. No wonder we were late getting to the airport!

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Next came more people who think we're so amazing that they piled into a minivan with two small kids and drove twelve hours through the coalfields of Kentucky to come see Wisconsin. Dustan's sis Spring, Keith the bro-in-law, Ryland the First and Amryn the Munchkin.

We hit Chicago. I barked at Ryland to get him to stand in for this picture. Proof that yelling at kids always works. See how happy he was to comply?

I could only hope he'd bounce back.



I spent the entire visit trying to figure out which one of them I liked best.



Impossible!

Can you spot the window washer?

How about the boy on the shoe?


Our Spring and Keith Visit was another great time, and by great I don't just mean no one got into a fight and there was no wreck on the interstate. Visits aren't by default good. If you've done your share of taking in family or visiting out-of-town friends, you know this well. But we've enjoyed really great times with friends and family so far. Visits that are well-rounded but not exhausting, laid-back but not listless. Spring and Keith got to experience Racine, Milwaukee, Chicago, train rides, a water taxi, a romp on the beach (and one in the rain), meals with our friends here, a Sunday church meeting, conversation on the couch, and, each night, the soothing bass line from the band downstairs right under their pillow, gently coursing through their bodies, throwing off the rhythm of their heartbeats.

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Another person who is wowed by our awesomeness enough to come see us is Dr. Wentz. Much to my chagrin, the cover band downstairs still hasn't sorted out the tempo on "Billie Jean" and it drives Eli crazy. Not so much the ill-timed drummer as the noise in general. However, it's shaping up to be The Great Eli Visit. In fact, it's Saturday, it's 70 degrees and sunny outside, Dustan made us pancakes this morning, and now they're fishing. You book a plane ticket to the Dairy Air in the month of November to see your friends like that, God will smile on you too.

Eli did his homework and made reservations for us at The Publican the night he flew in. We got dressed up and I thought this would be a good time to show off the fact that Brahma shaved the beard again. And I actually curled my hair.


The Publican is a restaurant in Chicago that crosses a farmhouse with a European beer hall.



Pictured above is the apple salad with celery root, pumpkin seeds and aged gouda. We also had oysters from British Columbia, walleye, clams, pork shoulder, sweetbreads, homemade spicy pork rinds, suckling pig, brussel sprouts with bacon and chestnuts, and doughnuts with pistachios and yogurt sorbet for dessert. So glad I'm not a vegetarian in these moments. Although I should be.

It was unanimous. Gorgeous and delicious and the best treat ever. (Thanks Eli!)

We also had a perfect moment with the server. He was quick, current, cocky and simultaneously polite. So Dust asks him how far the Sears Tower is from the restaurant. He says "A ten-minute cab ride." Dust says, "So, how long to walk - too far?" And the guy says:

"That depends. How far can you walk?"

No joke. I like, snap my face to Dust with disbelief. Did this guy just fall into an unknowing trap or what? Dustan just shakes his head and smiles. Eli busts out laughing. My mouth is still hanging open, perma-grin. I just look at the guy. How far can we walk? Do you know how many thru-hikers are out there, just waiting for the irony of this question to leave them gobsmacked? We glory in the dismissive amused shrug.

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Our guest room is one hopping spot and we love it, or more obviously, people love us. They are throwing stuff in bags, hopping on planes, driving long distances, wining and dining us. It has been such a fun stint of familiar faces in our new world. We can't wait for Thanksgiving when Dusty's parents come for a week. After that, who knows? I'm looking at you, Sis.