It’s holiday time again. Again, people! God. Every corndog thing people have said to me about things accelerating as you get older, etc and blahblahblah - it’s true.

NC’s pretty sure that overwork is the reason I haven’t said much here lately. While I’ve had plenty of work - which I still quite enjoy, by the way - that isn’t why, exactly.

Oh - should I expound? Does anyone still even read what I write here? Hm. Just really thinky, really. The economic news makes me grouchy on several levels, but it’s tempered with the desire to DO MORE. Do more in the neighborhood, do more to get information to more people, try harder to get away from the machines for awhile and just take care of business. I don’t handle holding patterns very well, unfortunately, and while I’ve learned to deal with it on the job (more or less), my personal life is another thing entirely. This reconnecting with Real Live friends, neighbors, and kindred spirits and putting some ideas out into the community at large (and then having face-to-face dialogue come out of it) has been nothing short of awesome. It’s good to share and be shared with, and from where I’m standing (not sitting! So much sitting!) that means both doing the tappity-tap and dealing with the risks involved with sharing face-to-face.

[For the tappity-tap, I can often be found updating in bursts at Twitter. I’m Wordydiva.]

Getting through the next two years will require a certain amount of discipline, though, and I lack it. I’ve gotten comfortable, and that makes me uncomfortable. I get tired of having the bootstraps conversation with myself; I need new ways of motivating myself that don’t involve self-hatred or ulterior motives. Should be interesting.

So… go bake these, OK? They make a questionable day better. Just ask Kelly.

Mom’s Cinnamon Rolls 4 1/2 - 5 C (unbleached/organic, if you can) flour 4 t active dry yeast (2 packages) 3/4 C milk 1/2 C water 1/2 C vegetable shortening (part butter — also, I use Spectrum’s non-hydrogenated shortening — it works very well) 1/2 C sugar (or rapadura, or ecocrystals, or turbinado) 1 t salt 2 eggs, room temperature Measure 1 3/4 C flour into yr large mixer bowl. Add yeast and blend. Measure milk, water, shortening, sugar, and salt into saucepan. Blend. Heat until warm (about 120-130 degrees F). Pour into flour/yeast mixture. Add eggs. Beat 30 seconds with electric mixer at low speed, scraping bowl constantly. Beat 3 more minutes at high speed, scraping bowl occasionally. Stop mixer. Gradually stir in more flour (by hand) to make a soft dough. It will be rather sticky. Knead on lightly floured board or counter until nice an’ smooth, about 5-10 minutes (it’s good exercise!!). Cover with bowl or pan and let rest for 20 minutes. Shape as desired. Here’s what I do: I cut the hunk of dough in half, roll out one of the halves until it’s flat and rectangular and large, brush it with butter, sprinkle it with a cinnamon/sugar mixture, add raisins (sometimes), and roll it up. Then I cut off the ends and cut the rest into 1″ wide slices. They usually fit nicely into 2 9″ greased cake pans. Then I put them in a warm oven (I usually warm it to 200 degrees for a few minutes, then turn it off) with a pan of hot water under them and a foil tent over them and let them rise for 40 minutes, or until doubled. Bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes. You can ice these with powdered sugar icing after they’ve cooled off, but believe me when I tell you that they’re wonderful just plain and warm out of the oven. Cool them on a rack. When they’re cool, you can wrap them in foil, and freeze. Just warm them in a 250 oven for about 45 minutes and oooh baby! It’s like you just made ‘em. Enjoy them — the recipe is from a cookbook called Homemade Bread, published by the Farm Journal folks in 1969.

photo by Ben Baker

“…perhaps he is snatching us away from the jaws of certain psychic and cultural death by asking us to put on our thinking caps.”

Please vote today.

Someone turns 10 years old today. This girl baby…

… gave way to this girl child…

… in what seemed to be no time at all.

Happy birthday to my darling girl, my Bunny, my Pookah, my Pumpkin, my Lilly Belle.

I had dinner at Prairie Fruits Farm in Urbana, IL. Taken by Cody.

We put Cody on the Amtrak to Chicago on the 26th and eased into an extremely short work week (I just worked Thursday and half of Friday). Saturday and Sunday were spent running errands, deep-cleaning the kitchen, working on some lighting and furniture issues on two floors (which makes our place sound big… it isn’t), and, of course, knitting and watching football. Today I puttered around, much satisfied with my total lack of progress toward anything productive, took Lilly and her best friend R to see Enchanted, and Jim has just returned with our traditional Chinese takeout dinner.



Tomorrow is another day of food and football (the university in my backyard has a berth in the Rose Bowl this year, so of course we’re watching), with some bonus couch-lounging, recipe-perusing, and garden catalog-scrutinizing taking place as well. The gym is closed along with everything else, plus the weather’s supposed to turn iffy, so I am completely content to stay here and do absolutely freaking nothing tomorrow. Wednesday is another day off - which really won’t be a day off as much as a day to put into place the projects I have in front of me for January - and then it’s back to work Thursday. And part of Friday. Whew.



What can I say about this year?



It’s been a good, slow end to what has been a confused year, a year falling short of many expectations but exceeding others in weird ways. If there’s a single lesson I’ve learned from the events of this year, it’s that excessive worrying is fruitless. That hasn’t stopped me from worrying excessively, but the realization that worry accomplishes v little is something new.



I fell off the food wagon a bit. I didn’t grow as much of my own stuff as I would have liked after a good seed-starting beginning. It got hot and nasty dry in late July and the garden was out of control by mid-August. Work definitely put a huge cramp in my food preserving (and, shamefully, harvesting) style, and a few weeks ago I relinquished my last chicken to her former owner. My tiny farmlet was and still is in disarray.



We did incorporate meal planning this fall, though, and it’s been awesome to shop the markets/supermarkets WITH MY SPOUSE knowing what’s needed to make meals we agreed upon before embarking on our voyage to the grocery store or farmers’ market. It’s not really like me, but this is a place where I don’t mind rigidity, because dealing with what’s for dinner? with no plan often means going down Easy Street, which is just not OK with me more than occasionally.



Also, where I fell short at home, I made gains at work. My work now has me much more involved with food policy and advocacy, and some of my work has been at the state level. I’m not doing anything important yet; that’s what 2008 is for. My garden will be better, though. I also learned this year that Jim is a more-than-willing partner and does awesome work back there.



Dudes, I joined a gym! It took a full year of feeling like total, unmitigated crap, but in December I joined a local fitness center (after much judgement on those who join fitness centers, so hahaha on me) and I’ve been going damn near every day. It’s too early to tell if it’s helping in terms of chronic pain - the dampness of this winter so far has done a real number on my back, plus you can insert other complaints and ailments worthy of someone twice my age right here - but I know that getting up and exercising in the mornings has helped me feel better in the brain. I get up at the asscrack of dawn and I do something just for myself, which brings me to another point:



Martyrdom sucks. I spent the better part of the year in a fog of mild resentment about a lot of little things, which, I’m sure, contributed to my general feeling of malaise. I made an at-first-uneasy peace with a lot of things having to do with work and money and the kids; I started asking more of my family, and I started trying to carve out time to myself. I’ve never spent much time alone - I’ve always had roommates, then a kid, and now a family - and it still takes some getting used to sometimes. Finally admitting to one of my doctors that I can’t do everything (and hearing her response, which was uh, yeah?) was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. The fact that I admitted this to a physician before, say, my husband is a little sad, but it set me straighter.



I do things differently than most, and it’s no big whoop. Cody still hadn’t walked when he was 14 months old. Just when I was getting worried enough to consider taking him to a doctor, he got up and started running like he’d been doing it his whole life. It turns out this waiting around is hereditary; when I try to squeeze my square peg ass into a round hole, it usually doesn’t work. Why try to squeeze and be disappointed in myself when I can do my own thing on my own schedule (ie, change when it’s time as opposed to forcing change) and avoid the self-flagellation? That self-flagellation is so bad, you guys. I turn 40 this year and frankly, I need to get over myself.



OK, it’s getting close to 2008 and we have a Scrabble game to finish. I have no real resolutions except to keep doing what I’ve been doing; I have plenty of goals, but they’re little and personal and when I accomplish them, I’ll write about them.



Happy New Year, everyone, and thanks for reading.

… but he was raised by elves.



Or not.



Hope everyone’s holidays were merry & bright.

The food was good (very good), we all gave each other warm things to wear, and it was enjoyable even though it was a balmy 51 degrees. But there’s nothing like v v thoughtful regifting to make a girl’s Winter Solstice complete. In 1997, the year before Lilly was born, the three of us went to Ireland with Jim’s family for 9 days: On one of our day trips we went to a little shack on a cliff overlooking the sea and found a guy making beautiful crystal things - goblets, vases, jewelry. He worked alone, having left Waterford years before; he was a quiet guy who set up shop in a place where little English was spoken. I really dug his work and figured I’d come back someday, another year (decade?) and buy something. Later that evening Jim presented me with a little box, and inside was a crystal charm on a silver chain. I’d lingered over it while we were at Rinne, and somehow Jim and his mother had orchestrated some Cody-related faux crisis to get me out of the building so he could buy it for me. It was the first piece of real jewelry he’d given me since we’d started dating about two years previous, so in addition to being gorgeous, it was also a signal of sorts, and it was another glimpse into Jim’s very giving nature. For several years I wore it and wore it and wore it, but one day it fell off the chain; the delicate piece holding the charm onto the chain had disappeared. I reluctantly put the piece away in its box - there was no money, none whatsoever, for a trip to a jeweler for repair - and wore other things around my neck. Occasionally I’d get the box out and look at the crystal and think, I really need to get this fixed, but never got around to it. So, ten years after giving me the crystal, Jim got around to it, complete with presenting me with the original box: I married a good, good man. ****** The wind here today is vicious. I’m sad that some necessary weatherproofing didn’t get done, but them’s the breaks when your seasons don’t behave the way they’re supposed to. Winter’s late arrival this year inspired prodigious laziness in us - the garden is an embarrassing mess and I wish the snow hadn’t melted because it covered my negligence so nicely, and few of our windows got their yearly dressing of extremely fug plastic - but I figure we’ll get some sort of reprieve in January and we can at least remedy the windows. The garden can wait. Oh, I haven’t mentioned this - our last chicken, Emma Goldman, went back to her original home last weekend. Her previous owners needed her coop back to house some ducks, so we decided to let Emma go live out her remaining… months? with them. She’s happy as can be, but we’re without fowl for the first time in almost 3 years. It was a wonderful experiment. So long, Emma, and thanks for all the eggs: Happy holidays, everyone!

Annoying-but-not case of the sniffles, complete with itchy nose and occasional mouthbreathing? Check. Way behind on all holiday baking? Check. Oh, check. Cat climbing holiday tree no matter what? Check. Not finished with shopping, much less mailing? Check. God. Sore toes from reckless winter youth in Minnesota? Check. A rapidly-approaching January 2008 with three enormous projects happening all at once toward the end of the month? Check. Philosophical approach to the holidays for the first time in years? Check, oddly enough.




I figure if stuff doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen. I can’t bake the way I used to, back when I was home with the kids. Every night this week has CINNAMON ROLLS somewhere on its agenda, and this weekend I’ll be making three different kinds of cookies to give away to friends and family (chocolate shortbread, sugar cutouts, and jam-filled cream cheese crescents), but gone are the days of 50# sacks of flour and 25# sacks of sugar from the co-op sitting in my chest freezer labeled “FOR HOLIDAY BAKING”. Gone are a lot of things, actually, but that’s OK. Things change, life goes on, and everyone seems happy taking more of this on (especially Jim, who really identifies with Buddy the Elf). I’m learning how to groove on this time of year for the first time in my adult life. Kinda pathetic, being that I’m 39, but it’s cool.




Here’s what we woke up to on Saturday morning:









It reminded me so much of being a young teenager in MN. In December 1981 I was fresh from Florida’s waterskis and hurricanes and unsure of the new weather, but the smell of the air on the sunny day after the first blizzard came through won me over, and the blue of the sky undid me completely. Saturday morning (December 2007) was sunny and cheerful like that, full of possibilities with its new landscape and neighbors digging out.




I think part of the reason I’m OK with the holidays, and this will sound dumb, is because winter is behaving like winter here. So many December holidays over the last 9 years or so have been unseasonably warm, lacking snow (and raining!) and feeling generally wrong to my lizard brain. I don’t know.




Could it be that simple? I doubt it, but I’ll run with it this year.

Tired of old-school holiday stockings? Jim’s cousin Katie has the solution.

A junior at Sacred Heart-Griffin High School, Katie is owner of Miss L’ Toe Boots, which claims it can “kick up your Christmas.” She began making her one-of-a-kind collection of boot-shaped stockings last December after an assignment in a fine-arts fashion and textiles class. Her teacher, Jane Seelbach, had instructed the students to create their own Christmas stockings. While Seelbach provided the class with several cutouts and ideas from magazines, Katie wanted something different. “I was like, ‘I’m a boot wearer, so I kinda want a boot,’ ” she said.

Link to the article about her here.




Link to her Etsy store here.



Me? Just planning for a retreat with the Common Ground Food Co-op Board of Directors on Saturday, procrastinating because I don’t feel like working on a grant proposal (yes, I’m at work, and I have about 11,000 windows open), and pondering joining a fitness center.




[It was really weird - I had pretty much talked myself out of the idea, because the joining fee, with processing, was $120. There’s no way I can justify this, I said to myself, and that was that for approximately two minutes. My mother-in-law, apropos of nothing, then sent an email offering some quick turnaround freelance copyediting work at a damn good rate, which I accepted. A phone call to the fitness center (for work purposes, actually) revealed that there’s a low-key deal going on right now that basically halves the joining fee. I’m going to pay for fitness, which, sadly, is probably the only way to ensure that any fitness actually happens, but the upside to that is the fact that working out will definitely stave off the Crazy. And, you know, I’m not getting any younger and while I do not expect to defy gravity, I do believe that some maintenance is in order.]




******




I’m a little heartbroken these days, people. Just yesterday a good friend, one I’ve mentioned often in my years of blogging, moved across an ocean. This makes two close friends in less than two years that have moved far away, the other being Jeanne the Wise (who could also be called Jeanne the Fiber-Spinning Research Coordinator, which I think I’m going to use). As I get older and my time gets more occupied with work and having older children, and - oh, him, my husband, him too - combines with the added sometimes-not-such-a-bonus of living in a college town with a rather transient population, I find myself suddenly needing to make friends all over again. You can’t manufacture friendships that have meaning, and getting to know people takes time, and… sigh.




I’ll write about Jane the English Reflexologist soon. Right now, I’m just missing her.