Thank You Note

Oh my gosh I have so much to be grateful for. Two birthday lunches in a week. (See? I did manage to pull off that second lunch!) A great spring storm. Some yummy presents.

Hand-sewn napkins from Megan. We've been using them every night and dinner feels so special.

A wine cube and some of her very own earrings from Marianne. This one (the wine) was definitely meant to share. That little thing holds FOUR bottles worth. Not wonder it was so heavy! It might see us through an afternoon at the beach this summer. Maybe.

Not to mention this from Marianne.



Yet again photography skills fail me. Oh lemony loveliness. Oh mousse-heaven. The yellow on top? Lemon curd of course. I wish I had a better picture. I wish you could taste it. Marianne, can you believe we had this for a whole week? It helped that I left it in the freezer at school for a few nights. It also helped that I was so unflinchingly miserly about sharing. Even with myself. Seriously. I almost never cut a full slice, but furtively spooned a sliver off the edge so Neel and Callum wouldn't know. We ate that pie a spoonful at a time. I'm in awe of this dessert. Baking, or being a good baker, much like photography and so many other things seems like magic to me. Maybe it's about skill, but the ability to be a good baker seems more gift than skill, as unattainable to me as brain surgery. And just as mysterious. I think of suitably domestic phrases like, "She had a light hand with the batter..." I don't strike myself as the kind of person who has a light hand with anything, much less mousse. Thank you so much, dear friend, for sharing your gift with me.

But here's the best gift of all:



My dad arrived today for a long-weekend visit. We deliberately didn't tell Callum, and boy was it worth it. His joy and surprise were awesome. A gift in itself.

There are presents for everyone. But the best part is right now. After a great dinner together, knowing that the weekend of fun and laughter stretches before us.

And the pen and notecards at the top? Creme-Brulee Tracy, of course.

Hound Sniffs Around

We're having our first significant storm of the spring tonight. When I went for my run earlier the sky grew darker and darker as I got further and further from home, but it was so bloody muggy that I still hoped it would dump on me. The clouds darkened all evening, but the rain held off for several hours, waiting until after dark. The wind came first, cooling the air. We've had two hot days and the breeze was a nice change. Then a bit of rain; fat plopping drops. Harbinger. This is a gentle storm. Broad strokes of lightning, taking the evening sky from dove gray to bright, hot lilac. Lucy was outside for that part. Unfazed by the rain and by the sporadic lightning. Neel, a self-proclaimed expert on beagles, claims that storms don't bother them. The way she just bolted under my chair? Well, I beg to differ.

I love nights like this. It's not so warm that we have the house shut up, the air conditioning chilling us. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing sweeter than that cool, conditioned air when summer lolls hot and heavy. But these nights, with the windows open and the sound of the rain and the swish of cars in the street, oh how I love feeling so connected to the air and the night. The storm has moved around us now. When it started, it was north and east of us, the wind and the lightning coming at the back of the house. Now bright bursts of icy blue light up my livingroom windows. It grows stronger as it circles us, the rain more intense.

This (as if any given moment is any different!) is when I feel my limitations keenly. I feel frustrated with this burgeoning photography bug, the need to document with pictures not just words. I am not good at it at all. I yearn to capture that brief clash of color, the sight of the trees silhouetted against the sky. Still, even if I could, would you smell the rain in the air? Or the damp sigh of the grateful earth?

A Tale of Two Meals

Well, the artichoke soup was a bust. Much better as a wall color. Seriously, we all took one bite of it and pushed it to the side. I told Callum that it was fine that he didn't like it, really, but we didn't need to dwell on it. He only mentioned about ten more times how awful it was. And once more in the car on the way home today too. I redeemed myself with Heirloom tomatoes and home made blue cheese dressing from The Barefoot Contessa at Home Oh the sweet deliciousness...man those tomatoes were like candy.

We should probably take a closer look:

Neel asked me what it is about recipes that sometimes they just don't work. And sometimes they just don't. I don't consider myself a phenomenal chef, but it's rare that I have a disaster in the kitchen. Still, I'm always ready to assume that the fault is mine, not the recipe's. Hard to say with this one, the artichoke soup was that bad.

Lunch today was a different story...Happy Birthday to me from Tracy (not Traci) and Megan. The restaurant we went to today is perfect for celebration lunches. Kind of formal looking with dim lighting and cozy booths. You feel fancy, but can get out of there with an entree around seven bucks. Not too shabby.

Here's lunch:

And then our server, who had watched me open presents, brought us each a glass of champagne.

What's better than a champagne lunch with the ladies? Dessert!

Cinnamon doughnuts with coffee ice cream.

And here's Tracy with no more Creme Brulee.

All in all it was a lovely afternoon. Kind of hard to come back down to the ho-hum of work and driving home and painting shutters and cooking my own meals. (Hey Megan, thumbs up on the Contessa's Tuna Salad, by the way!) Maybe I can trick someone into taking me out for lunch tomorrow.

Progress

Because of this (Lucy, STAY!):

And this:

We finally decided to do this:

And this:

Seriously, we must have had four patches of different shades of purple on our porch for the last two, okay three years. That's why we decided to paint the steps something called "Essex green." Or a little darker. Don't worry, the purple still exists, in its darkest mood.

Here are the steps:

And the purple door.



Looks nice together, hmm?

What's funny is that while I was doing this:

Neel and Callum went off to do this:

Not very fair, but the reward is having it done. And knowing that Neel will do the second coat.

yep, it's me

Twenty-eight years ago, can you believe it?  This sculpture is titled The Juggler's Birthday, named, believe it or not, for me.  As I think back, it's the only thing that has ever been named for me.  My dad wanted to do something to represent that stage in a girl's life where she is juggling a childhood of treehouses and stuffed animals with the lure of make-up, clothes and boys.  He and my mom did a good job of juggling me, I think.  It can't be easy to raise a moody girl-child.  There's a nice juxtaposition here, of sculpture, spring and growing up.  This piece was first presented at the annual Dogwood Arts Festival in Knoxville, TN (not to be confused with the "Dog-Fart" festival which runs congruently) which always fell near my birthday in the spring. 

That year, it fell on my birthday exactly and my parents let me take the day off from school.  What a thrill to be free in the sweet Tennessee sunshine...the day goes by so fast when you're not confined by classroom walls.  I wandered from booth to booth, making friends far more easily than I ever could now, and shyly revealing that it was my birthday.  It's funny how kids are about that kind of thing.  I wanted desperately for everyone to know that it was my actual birthday, on that very day, but I didn't want to have to tell anyone.  One man, a potter, gave me a little stone chipmunk, another older man (I don't even remember what his craft was, just his leathery fingers) gave me a dime for ice cream.  Big, big stuff to a little, little girl.



My present to myself on this most-recent birthday (aside from the fabric, the new running shoes and some new clothes) is to start this blog thing finally.  And here I sit, feeling the need to be my most brave as I embark.  Even feeling so self-conscious and knowing (almost hoping) that next year at this time, I'll look back on these early posts and absolutely cringe, I'm ready to go.  So come along with me.  I can't promise to be wise or even witty, but I do hope to be true.

And after all this introspection?  I'm going to paint our stoop and blend some artichoke soup to chill for tomorrow's dinner.  If I can manage to do that without blowing the top off the blender and painting the kitchen "artichoke soup" (doesn't that totally sound like one of those crazy paint-chip names?!), I'll consider the day a reasonable success.