Methods and Madness

If anyone ever tells you I am organized, you must know that they are a liar. That does not mean that I don't love organization. Or that I don't try. Or that I have not purchased innumerable organizational tools in the hope of finding the magic bullet that will kill forever the clutter-vampires that stagger around in my wake, making life incredibly (and unnecessarily) complicated.

Take this week. I have company coming toward the end of this month. I had a writing workshop that I was hosting for a friend last Sunday. I have a group of teachers coming for dinner on the 11th, and my own writing group meeting elsewhere on the 10th. In between, I have the usual detritus of my life: my mom's Tuesday doctor's appointment, my second painful visit to the dentist, the preliminaries to collecting, printing and publishing the church's Advent devotional, my daughter's birthday..that sort of everyday stuff that goes on like the post office through rain and snow and dark of night.

Anyway. Anyone with an iota of sense would establish a to-do list,  preferably arranged in sequential order, to deal with the stuff that needed to be done for each event. Instead, I decided to re-do the patio and pull out the fall decorations. Reasonable people would hire a front-end loader to attack the guest bedroom so that our guests would not have to sleep on the floor in the hall.  Instead, I emptied the closet of boxes and sorted through the paper and photos and craft supplies I unearthed--donating half to a teacher I know and the non-teacherly other half to Salvation Army. I also took myself to lunch a couple days out of last week. I baked cranberry scones. And yet another plum cake. I boxed up some summer clothes. (They are sitting on the floor in my bedroom.) I bought two wrought iron obelisks at the nursery, and brought them home, only to discover they were too big for their intended pots, that flank the front porch. So I dragged the too-small pots over to the wall of the patio and dragged two other (slightly larger) pots from the patio to the porch. (I DID check that the obelisks would fit these before I did the transfer.) I was reminded of the days when I used to stack literally a ton of hay bales in the barn when Sarah had her horse. Moving heavy objects is not my forte either.

What I have not done is planned what we will do with our friends while they are here. I have not planned a menu for the meals we will serve them. I'm not sure I even have pillows for the 2nd guest bedroom--or that I will be able to shift enough clutter to enable us to open the Murphy bed there. I don't have any but the sketchiest plans for the teacher meal: soup, maybe? Salad and bread? Maybe a dessert--ah, I feel another plum cake coming on... My house is in its customary state of chaos, although I have a nice wreath on the door, that I put together this week. My entry-way is decorated with colorful autumn flowers and gourds and snazzy black cats--but I don't think any of these will be entertaining enough to make my guests overlook the lack of food or bedding.  Nor will the pots-with-obelisks at the porch distract them from my failure as tour guide.

When you come right down to it, it will all get done. It will look good. It will look as if I put some thought and effort into my preparations. People will think I am organized. Like the proverbial duck, I will float calmly on the surface of my life--and will be paddling like hell underneath. Maybe I need to focus on the minutia in order to solve the macro-issues. Maybe I just need the last minute as motivation for getting things done. Then again, maybe I'm just a little nuts.

Cataclysm(s)

It has been a blockbuster month, August has. Barely out of the chute, this month brought the birth of our second beautiful granddaughter, who was in such a hurry to join us that she couldn't wait for a trip to the hospital. Born at home, Claire's entry into the world was quickly followed by the entrance of the Providence Fire Department and then, the ambulance crew that took her and her mom to the hospital. An hour old, and she had already made the acquaintance of two of the three groups of first responders in Providence.

Given succeeding weeks' events, that acquaintance might have been followed by additional encounters. In the next three weeks, young Claire experienced a rare east coast earthquake and the effects of Hurricane Irene, who hit Providence a glancing blow after her destructive route through New Jersey and New York. (No wonder Claire looks worried in some of her pictures!) Fortunately, neither of these events assumed the predicted magnitude, and Claire's main issue in her first few weeks was coping with an all-too-loving big sister, and the upset of having assorted grandparents underfoot, playing 'pass the baby' with far more frequency than is conducive to sleep.

On the home front here in Alexandria, August has exhibited a variety of weather faces: wet, wet with high winds, wet with warmth, wet with cool temps, and wet with more wet for days at a time. Early in September, we personally experienced 'wet without power' due to a cable break under our patio. We've met and become fast friends with Dominion Power crews as they de-bricked, jackhammered and dug with shovels through our back yard, searching for and repairing said cable--and then, kindly, efficiently, and expertly, restoring the original appearance of the surface, as well as our electrical power.

With all this hubbub, it's no wonder August disappeared in a puff of smoke, a gust of wind, or a brief, but emphatic storm. We now return you to your regularly-scheduled life.

Organization?

I remember that my mom had one big gray notebook that contained any and all recipes that she used. Even JC’s mother had a box in which she had crammed clippings and cards and scraps of paper with recipes noted down—along with their source. I am nowhere near as organized. I have a recipe box, of course, designed for a neat cook who files all recipes on 3x5 cards in their proper categories. I also have a clipping file, whose only organizational principle is alphabetical index tabs. Then there is my laptop, where files may be in several different locations, filed under any number of categories. And my IPad, which has recipes that I might want to use when I’m in San Diego. And DropBox, Evernote, and I-Disk—all of which store information somewhere in the vast never-neverland of the internet. I don’t think I have anything on my IPhone, but give me time.

                  Plus, one can never forget the 4+ shelves of cookbooks I lay claim to, each volume of which may contain one or two recipes that are family favorites.  Stuffed away in desk, drawers, notebooks, magazines, and assorted other unlikely places are directions for interesting dishes that might come in handy one day.

                  Finding the required recipe has become a veritable game of Concentration. Where did the original recipe come from? My mom? Probably on the 4x6 cards in the gray plastic box upstairs. From a magazine? Probably in the clipping file. Unless I made it before and liked it, which might have forced me to copy it onto a card for the main shoebox-style file. But wait! Did I promise the recipe to someone? I may have typed it and filed it online when I emailed it to them. Thank God for the ‘search’ feature on my Mac. Now what had I called it?

                  I have tired myself out just reviewing the scope of my problem. However, two weeks ago, at the local farmers’ market, I found a wooden box, with beautiful grain and dove-tailed corners, and a lid. Just the right size for 3x5 cards arranged in neat categories, with pristine tabs that would make finding THE recipe an easy task. It would look lovely on my granite countertop. So neat and clean-looking and organized. If I worked at it, I could transfer my rag-tag pile of recipes to sleek cards that aren’t smudged with oily fingerprints and breaded with a crust of ancient flour. I’d type them of course, and wouldn’t have to puzzle over the washed-out ink of that crucial ingredient—is that ¼ or ½ cup? My recipe for meatloaf would not be stuck irretrievably to the previous page and I could be absolutely sure that that tomato sauce and cheese measurement is not part of the page-before’s stuffed peppers. I could consolidate my cooking knowledge into a single beautiful box. When I am dead and gone, my daughters would fight for possession. (Yeah, I know that’s not true, but one of them may at least want the box.)

                  I have begun. However, like many of my enthusiasms, it was countermanded by—guests for brunch. Away goes the shoebox, the clipping file, the piles of cookbooks and index tabs and 3x5 cards. Gone and subsequently forgotten, at least for the succeeding week. But last night we were invited (or JC invited us) to a friend’s for dinner and offered to have me bring appetizers. Fortunately, I had just the thing!

                  Now. The salami, orange and cream cheese things came from a Craig Claiborne NYTimes pamphlet back in the ‘70s, and the little tomato/mozzarella-basil leaf kabob came from Debbie at church a couple years ago—and what about those olives and cheese cubes marinated in lemon olive oil? Kay Phillippe down the street gave that to me, and I wrote it down..was it in the back of my checkbook?

                  Obviously, I’m never going to have that beautiful box, standing alone on my kitchen counter, but it’s good to have a dream.  

Blast from the Past

When you blog--even semi-regularly-- you find that almost anything that pops into your field of vision and hooks your attention for a bit ends up as an entry. I have been in San Diego for almost two weeks and have been luxuriating in the being and nothingness entailed by a prolonged stay far away from all my duties and responsibilities. I admit it. I am a shirker of the first order. Not very often, but now and then. And furthermore, I really enjoy it.

As part of my shirker schedule, I browse through antique (read "junk" ) shops, looking for the odd item that might grab me. Browsing in San Diego is harmless. Whatever you see has to be usable here, as shipping it back east presents the twofold problem of shipping expense and where to put it. Most of my browsing therefore does not result in purchases, but I enjoy looking.

This time, in a shop on Adams Avenue, I found a notebook labeled "Datebook 1906". It was the size of a paperback book, bound in brown cloth. I picked it up and started reading. It really wasn't much. The owner was obviously no writer. Most entries were short and dealt with lists of expenses for the day. That in itself was interesting, allowing me to compare 1906 prices with today's. A three pound 'heel roast' was 30 cents. Today, even if that meant the heel of a SHOE, it would cost more than that. I paged on, and found myself reading all the entries-- and finally decided to buy the notebook. A conversation piece, I thought. Leave it on my coffee table at home. It would fit in my tote bag.

It didn't take long to get absorbed into this woman's life. There was Roy, who must be her husband, who had chronic problems with his 'wheel'..which I suppose must be 1906-ese for 'bicycle', as my diarist mentions taking hers down to her parents' house along with Roy. Poor Roy gets stuck innumerable times, taking a car (streetcar?) and squandering ten cents a day whenever his wheel fails him. One can sense the head-shaking that goes on every time his wife writes down a new repair cost in her book for that incorrigible wheel. Occasionally, Roy will take it to Ansil (who apparently has a way with wheels) and will evade the cost of repairing the wheel for another day.

There is of course, Mamma and Pappa, who appear to host dinner all too often. Our dutiful diarist spends a lot of time at their house, shopping with Mamma, washing clothes at Mamma's, making curtains and hanging them with Mamma...how old IS this woman, anyway, and doesn't she have any friends?

Then, there is Harold, who may be a brother, but at least seems to be part of the Mamma/ Pappa cast of characters, along with Uncle and (infrequently) Auntie. Jennie and Byron offer some hope, as Dutiful Daughter occasionally goes for a walk with Jennie. There is also the list of visitors, who may (or may not) live in Los Angeles. (DD always reports on receiving the Inglewood News in the mail.) They pop up in the entries as arriving on the steamer or by train. People get sick, too, and no sooner has our friend recorded their fevers than she mentions the arrival of the doctor--who visits, then stops back the next day to check on his patient. (In case you had any suspicion that the timeframe might not be accurate...I think 1906 may have been the last time a city doctor made a house call.) On at least one occasion, someone dies. On another, Mamma is suffering from La Grippe, and dutiful daughter comes over and does her work. Other times, one of them stays the night with whoever is sick, fixing meals or just helping out. Sometimes, people spend the night for no apparent reason. Maybe they missed the last car home?

On happier days, the ladies call on other ladies, leaving their cards. They make blueprint postcards, which I think must be something like the blueprint pictures we did with our kids years ago--selectively exposing light-sensitive paper to the sun to get pictures. The ladies write letters and receive them and read them to each other. They buy material and make shirts for Roy (a black one. Is he an undertaker?) and aprons for him, as well. Mamma is making a white 'waist' and a skirt for dutiful daughter. They all go to church once or twice on Sundays, and there doesn't seem to be any devotion to a particular denomination. They go to hear the sermon or to hear someone sing or play. They go as a group to Mission Cliff (more on this later) of a Sunday afternoon on the car. And once, Roy rented a three-seated gig and they all drove out together.

The picture is of a slow-moving, but work-filled life: cooking, cleaning, doing laundry (or having someone in to do it at forty cents), visiting and returning visits, walking, and writing, and attending church, as well as some theatrical productions, club meetings, and excursions to parks, all facilitated by the streetcar system.

So, what does this say to me, here in my 21st century world, with TV and car and computer and modern appliances that can deal efficiently with all of the chores that Dutiful Daughter filled her life with? It really is interesting to think of this woman's life superimposed upon my familiar modern landscape. I can associate her comings and goings with actual locations. JC and I even visited the actual site of Mission Cliff--after googling it and reading an article on it in the San Diego Historical Society Journal. Here we are, more than a hundred years later, looking out at a view that DD might have seen herself (though blessedly free of freeways and shopping centers and housing developments. But, there is the stone wall they mentioned in the article, and a street sign marked "Mission Cliff Drive"...and the neon sign over Park Boulevard that labels the neighborhood as University Heights contains a street car image, and the support poles are surmounted by ostrich statues (there was a famous ostrich farm next to the park...) You'd think that  living in Alexandria would have brought this home to me long ago, but it didn't...until now. I'm looking at San Diego with new eyes, thanks to the nameless diarist I found. Maybe I will try and do the same in Alexandria.

Later note: Further reading of the notebook produced some interesting--and poignant--notes:


"April 18: I went over to Jennie's and while there Byron telephoned and told of the San Francisco Earthquake which happened early in the morning."


and another, written and dated some years later:


"Tuesday, 12th (of July) 1911: Harold LeVerne Calkins born. Lived one hour."


I even did some research on Ancestry.com to find out what I could about the diarist--her name, her fate; did she have any children after this lost baby? how old was she when she wrote this? was there a family somewhere who might be interested in this history? 


Her name was Ruby.

Past Tense?

Now that I am no longer Alexandria's Poet Laureate, when that topic comes up in conversation (and JC usually makes sure it does--I love him so) there's one question that always seems to arise. "Do you still write poetry?" The first time I was asked, I must have looked as flummoxed as I felt. Why, of course! Just because I am no longer paid my handsome honorarium (which amounted to about enough to have a hamburger each week) doesn't mean I don't see things and write about them. What an odd question!

But, as it surfaced time and time again, I became sadder and sadder. Apparently one is supposed to require payment--or at least some recognition or status--to do something, anything! I was a closet writer for over fifty years without any notice, without any pay. Most people never knew that I wrote sentences, much less poetry, for over 80% of my life. Then, by some inexplicable lightning strike, I suddenly was recognized as a writer, as someone with something worth saying. And then, my term ended. Does a candidate stop speaking when he's not elected? (We should be so lucky..) Does a reporter stop writing when he retires? Or a chef stop cooking when his restaurant closes? Granted, recognition is nice, but it usually doesn't last forever. Writing is like breathing, for those who do it. An autonomic response. Just as artists carry a sketch pad to catch on paper something that inspires them, so do writers scribble things down when a phrase or image strikes. It's a lifelong passion, a habit that doesn't quit.

Of course, I still write poetry. The audience may be smaller, but it's the one that counts most: me.

Big Brother

I had an issue with my debit card today, causing the bank to call me and suggest that I authorize them to cancel it and send me a new card. I of course agreed. But I stopped in at my bank to check on the bona fides of the caller, just to be safe. I'm not sure I feel safer, but I was reassured.

The teller at the local branch asked me to type in my social security number, and then, with a few keystrokes, proceeded to recount my activities from yesterday--from grocery shopping to the pharmacy, to Target--even to my parking meter in Arlington. Who knew that my debit card carried so much information? No wonder the first thing Gibbs does on NCIS is tell McGee to get phone and credit card information. It is a virtual diary--one that we are unaware that we are recording. Even I tend to forget where I've been in the course of a day, but my debit card is my own personal Boswell, faithfully following and recording my progress. I can only imagine the commentary of someone watching my activities. "Hmm..Safeway again? Didn't she just go there?" "A PARKING METER?? Does she not have a quarter?" Well, no I didn't at the time, and I truly regretted pulling out a debit card to spend a dollar so I could have lunch without fear of a ticket on my windshield. Had I covered dinner as well, the observer would have seen Taqueria Poblano, followed by The Dairy Godmother. All it would have lacked was the information on the flavor of the day (salt caramel, thank you very much.)

I guess what I am bemoaning is the fact that there is so much personal info floating around out there (she says as she updates her Facebook status) and the thought that my life can be reduced to purchases and services in an instant, given the right keys. I'd like to think I am more than the sum of my spending patterns, but in these days when demographics govern everything from TV schedules to advertising to political posturing, maybe that is more me than me. I spend, therefore I am. Food for thought...paid for with a debit card.

Gretel

One of my favorite poems is "Gretel" by..(I'll think of the name and edit it in) that explores Gretel's world after she and Hansel emerge victorious from the forest. As you remember, Gretel is the active agent in the demise of the witch and the freeing of her brother. Anyway, the line of the poem that always gets to me is "'Ever after' was the size of a kitchen.."

I think of that line often when I'm cooking dinner because sometimes, it does seem that that's the only important thing I do out of the day's activities. Sure, most of my errands are useful, but the world wouldn't come to an end if I didn't get to Target or the cleaners or the bank or the drugstore or the grocery. They hardly measure up to an 'ever after'.

From Martha in the New Testament on through 2000 years of pots and pans and utensils and inevitable, inescapable, relentless meals to prepare, 'ever after' has meant KP for most women. I'd hate to think that my happiness was defined by eternal meal preparation, however. There's so much more out there, and while some creativity is demanded (what's for dinner when you have tomatoes, onions and maybe a little cheese?) I am no culinary Michaelangelo or Shakespeare, worthy of commendation for the mundane stuff that issues from my kitchen most nights. "Ever after"? I think not.

So what do I pin my hopes of immortality on? What is it that I expect out of life, out of marriage, out of my personal fairy tale? Surely something better than Gretel's oaf of a husband. Surely a prince (whom I have, even though he might be in disguise). Surely some breath of wonder, of triumph, of larger-than-life experience. No matter what that is, there is definitely a page from Gretel's book that we all need to tear out and remember. There is no husband, no prince, no fleeting triumph out there that can give any of us what we want. It's a DIY world, ladies. We are responsible for making our own ever afters.

GRETEL

said she didn’t know anything about ovens

so the witch crawled in to show her

and Bam! Went the big door!

Then she strolled out to the shed where

her brother was fattening, knocked down

a wall and lifted him high in the air.

Not long after the adventure in the forest

Gretel married so she could live happily.

Her husband was soft as Hansel. Her

husband liked to eat. He liked to see

her in the oven with the pies and cakes.

Ever after was the size of a kitchen.

Gretel remembered when times were better.

She laughed out loud when the witch

popped like a weenie.

“Gretel! Stop fooling around and fix

my dinner.”

“There’s something wrong with this oven,”

she says, her eyes bright as treasure.

“Can you come here a minute?”

--Ronald Koertge