in september, when the leaves come falling down

boy, oh boy

he's eight

accolade

There has been the teensiest bit of complaint (Rebecca) that SOBO was not getting its due here in blog-land.

So in the evenings after work we gather in someone's yard. Bug spray is propped on the porch. The kids rush through their homework to eek out the last few minutes of sunlight in a quick game of football. Grown-ups complain about the company they had over the weekend or tell a funny story about something that happened at work that day. I sit in the middle of this watching Neel throw the football and commiserating with Jean, soaking it up and stalling dinner for as long as I can. Who wants to go inside?

Finally I capitulate. Slopply lasagne and early bedtimes urge me toward the house. As I'm crossing the street, back to the little gray house, here comes Rebecca, like a fairy-tale image of herself. She's beskirted and aproned and has a tray of crab dip (homemade, of course) from leftover crabs, leftover beer and crackers for us. "Come on! I thought it was happy hour!" she calls to me.

There's nothing to do but an immediate about-face and linger a little longer. (The crab dip was excellent, by the way, maybe she'll leave the recipe in the comments for us.) Later on, as evening was drawing in, I'd been back across the street for a third time. Dinner was finished, the dishes were done and jammies were on. I ran into Tyler on the way home from rowing from his dad.

"You know Lauren, I was thinking, we haven't had that first gin and tonic of the summer yet."

"My god Tyler. You're right."

"Well, let's pick up some Number Ten and get on that."

That's what it's like in SOBO. That's how things are around here.

recipe tuesday strikes again

See that? In the casserole dish to the fore? Neighbor Jean called me Sunday afternoon and said, "Should I bring a double recipe of hot wing dip?"

My response?

"Uh. Well. Since I plan on parking myself next to it for most if the evening, yes."

So she did, and I did and here it is.

Hot Wing Dip

2 bars of Philly Cream Cheese, 1 bottle (12oz) of Ranch

Dressing, 10-12 oz of Hot Sauce (we recommend Frank's) and 40 oz of Chicken.

Mix cream cheese and ranch dressing over low heat until smooth, add hot sauce and chicken - stir until mixed - pour into a 13 x 9 baking dish and cook at 400 for about 40 minutes.

labor day weekend round these parts

There are times that I just imagine that it looks like I have a charmed life. That my days are filled with dapple-shadowed back-yards and sunswept beaches. And really, for strangers reading these posts, it probably does look like that a good bit. I know I've touched on some sad stuff here, and there were days that this summer has been really hard. And really, whose life is totally charmed anyway? For all of us those dapple-shadowed back yards can hide clobber-filled sheds (and I'm speaking both figuatrively and literally!), and sunswept beaches can swarm with red tide. Still, charmed is the way it really is sometimes. And that's how this weekend was for me.

We started on Friday night celebrating a birthday with some newish friends of ours. We've been hanging out with this other couple, some friends from work, since just after the first of the year, and it really feels as if we're starting to get a groove on. Do you ever notice that you have first dates as couples? It's funny to look back on those first nights that we went out to dinner when we're now teasing each other about "no mas Jose'" and how I saw Peyton Manning last night. We share an interest in food and movies and (for some of us at least) football and just being together and having a good time. Not a bad basis for a friendship, I think. The beribboned package is this (perfect for beach picnics). We made her put it together...a sort of beachy-trial by fire.

It's a good Friday night when your dinner consists of portabellas with blue cheese and a chocolate pound birthday cake. When you can grill sitting down and the beer is icy cold. When the water is warmer than the air and someone has a birthday so you can drink champagne. We've tried to do this little celebration several times and in a summer of near-drought got rained out again and again. At the start of a long weekend, this third time was the charm.

Not to be outdone, neighbor Rebecca decided to hold a crab feast on Sunday night. What a marvelous place we call home, really. Ours was a street in transition when we moved here very nearly four years ago. Older families moving out, young couples moving in. Well, those young couples are moving on with their lives, having babies, growing families, all sorts of crazy things and here we are smack dab in the middle of all the fun. We call ourselves SOBO, based on the direction of our block, and any given evening you can find the kids playing football across the front yards and the grown-ups drinking beer beside somebody's firepit. Sometimes, someone steps it up a little, formalizes things enough to ask for side dishes, and suddenly there's a party.

We aren't at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay for nothing, and apparently Rebecca had been thinking about picking crabs all summer. We had a perfect night for it. I've said it before, summers are muggy, buggy and hot here and they usually last deep into September. Not that night.  That night was perfect.  Clear.  Not muggy.  Star-filled and almost cool.  It's all part of feeling charmed, and I know our hostess felt that way.

A perfect cool evening with so much good food.

The kids were thirsty, and someone said, "Here's the lemonade." Well the kids drinks were in a bucket on ice. The stuff in the pitcher? Lemon drop martinis. Our kids our pretty sharp though. "This tastes like alcohol!!" was the horified cry, and the mistake was quickly remedied.

I have one friend who I knew would go into the crab-zone. "Gonna pick any for me?" I teased. I didn't think he'd really do it.

"Um," he said. It sounded sort of affirmative. It's clear, he's in the zone. As I prod his bubble, he continues his rhythm of WHAP with the mallett, crack of the claw, peel off the meat. I would not actually call the ensuing dialogue a conversation.

"I'll pay by way of a drink," I offered.

"Yes."

"What do you want? Beer? Wine? Planter's Punch?"

"Beer."

"Corona or Sam Adams?" Seriously, I think he found me annoyingly chatty.

"Corona," he grunted. I delivered an icy-cold Corona, got the tiniest sliver of crab meat in return and didn't see the guy for the rest of the night. It's a whole different world out there in crab-land.

People sat around this table deep into the night. Talking and laughing and always picking crabs. Music played, babies danced, people talked and laughed. As night fell, the firepit was actually necessary and you had that sense of being caught in a perfect moment in time. It just doesn't happen like that in real life.

Picking crabs, I must admit, is an art that remains elusive to me. I do love some crabmeat, don't get me wrong, but the process of getting it is new to me. Daunting too. Many of my friends are old hands at this, however. Growing up around here makes it a way of life. And Rebecca cracks me up. She is so lady-like in her pink and green strapless sundress as she ruthlessly wields her crab mallett and stuffs the meat in her mouth. She told us great stories of her granddad teaching her how to pick crabs a child, and as shift after shift would surrould her table Sunday night, she was almost always in their midst. I love the idea of growing up with something like this as part of your life. Knowing how to do it from childhood. Knowing all the parts of the crab from the feelers to the dead man's fingers. Knowing how to steam them (Miller Light and Old Bay) and what to dip the meat in (cider vinegar and Old Bay...always Old Bay, butter is for the weak apparently). And I love the way an activity is connected to a place the way picking crabs and eating crabs is so connected to this place, crab-land.

Sometime after ten Callum looked around and said, "When are we gonna have the crabs?" He'd been so busy circling the house with this huge pack of kids and icy pops and glow sticks that he didn't see all the dozens of pickers at the table. Patiently Rebecca sat with him and taught him every step. (She has photos of this, but they'll have to belong to another post.) One rule, "Don't pick crab for other people," shifted a little in this generational pass-down to, "Pick some for your mom." A fact for which I am very grateful. Even after I went to bed, he sat with her, picking crab until almost midnight. He's nearly eight, just a few more days now, and of this place more and more.

And even on Monday that feeling of walking glowingly through someone else's life didn't end. Monday afternoon we spent again with friends. Due to some camera quirks that have me very nervous, I don't have any photos, but this little guy captures all the joy I was feeling. The sun, the friends, the kids always hovering around, the water, the wind and the sense of "this can't be my life" as I swim out to a boat belonging to the Friday night birthday friends. He took us on a great ride. The water was so blue and the sun so bright. As I floated lazily on my back heading back to the beach, I couldn't help thinking, charmed, I'm sure.

How Neel and my friend Shoshana conspire to make my morning bright

Dear Shoshana,

See that jam? That lovely orb of purpleness? You made me this jam a long time ago. You made it for a lot of us actually, and I'm probably the only one with any left. Partly that's because I don't eat breakfast much. But I'm also a hoarder. I savor slowly the things that are lovingly made for me. I don't want them to end. I liked knowing it was in the refrigerator waiting for me almost as much as I've been enjoying eating it.

I know I thanked you at the time, but I wanted you to know how much I've appreciated it this week, particularly. This week of waking up and clock-watching and having to shower at a certain time instead of waiting until I feel like it. In this week of hollering about brushed teeth and "we need to go NOW!" your jam has been a sweet way to start my day.

xoxo,

Lauren

A few weeks back Alicia said that when she started blogging, she thought that blogs were about what people had for breakfast...and they are! And while I usually don't eat much of a breakfast I do know that it's the most important meal of the day, blah, blah, blah, and I'm trying to stat the school year off right. Neel makes me coffee every morning. Even if I'm up two hours before he is, I usually wait. Coffee is always better when someone else makes it. In the summer, we'll share a cup together before Callum gets up, but now that the school year is back upon us, Neel'll bring it up to our bedroom while I'm showering. It's funny how you so quickly fall back into familiar routines. I'd forgotten about coffee in the bedroom until Neel carefully rounded the corner yesterday morning, and yet his appearance in the doorway, mugs carefully balanced, was instantly familiar.

And Neel is a careful coffee maker. He could set the timer, but likes to grind the beans each morning. It only takes a second or two he points out, and tastes so much better. Then he always puts my coffee in my favorite Tracy Porter Artesian Road mug, and always puts his in a totally different mug so we can tell them apart. These are from the Crate and Barrell outlet north of San Diego. Man, how I miss that store. And I love these mugs. Now that Tracy Porter has moved in, I rarely drink out of them. Neel had a meeting at school on Tuesday, so he took Callum in and left his coffee behind. I obligingly finished it for him and was surprised at how different his mug felt against my lips.

So while it's coffee most mornings, this week it's been a little more. Sliced peaches with a sprinkle of sugar and nutmeg. Whole wheat waffles with Shoshana's jam. It's not fancy. I use EGGO waffles. I am not loving these whole wheat ones however. I have to toast them three times and they're still a little soft in the center. Shoshana's jam more than makes up though.

These are mornings of shifts. New rhythms to be sure. I'm still figuring the blog thing out. How to have the juice for it after spending the day at the computer. When to write and what to share. It'll all shake out. Soon I'll have as many mornings with my coffee here, buy the computer, as I do at the shower. Just bear with me for awhile, 'kay?