After the reading

Don't think that I don't know that I do this. That I start things. That much, much later, as it turns out (as it will turn out), I will never finish said things. That I cut out pants that I translate from the Dutch that I bellydance on Wednesdays that I can my own sauce that I'm a blogger a knitter a salsera that I'm a crooner and a wife. That I am crooning. That eventually, like just now, between the third and the fourth poem, I'm not even listening anymore, that I've bored of my brewing my apples my half marathon in February. My stockings and my garter belt. The funny thing is that the people I like best tend to do the same things over and over. And over. I know. What can I say except that I'm sorry. Except that I'm here. Again. Now.

I think maybe we are the Man

Let me just state that I would get a lot more writing done if it weren't for Boggle, or more specifically, for the online version of the word game found on that social networking site that the kids are all on about these days and that I swore and swore I would never stoop to join because I didn't want my browsing habits traced, right up until the moment that I joined.

Before Boggle it was Scrabble, which just two months ago was blocked by our company servers but which is back now, in apparent recognition that it is far too antique and plodding to pose much of a distraction anymore. But this Boggle thing is a real time suck. My interest dipped after I managed to beat my niece M., who is a monster, in a single, glorious game, but really only enough to make my addiction more furtive. "Did you play your video game?" th'usband often asks after a night when I've once again begged off of some social event to do a little CPR on my inner life. I have no inner life.

To make things worse, I recently took my company up on its offer of a PDA. Now instead of looking out the window before I get dressed in the morning, I can check the weather on my personal hand-held device. Instead of reading a book on the train ride home, I can check to see if any e-mail has arrived since I left the office. When I'm not online, I'm worrying about the extent to which the Man might track my movements. The other day I IM'ed my friend G., who sits a few cubes over from me and who has the same PDA, to ask him if he also worried. There was a brief pause. "I think maybe we are the Man," he typed back.

And so, if you've been waiting for a letter for me, I'm sorry. If you've been waiting for an invitation for dinner or that case of beer or home-baked pie I promised you, I'm really sorry about that, too. I'm sorry about the state of my plans to visit Cooperstown or train for those half marathons or cut out the pants and the little Madmen jacket from the length of roasted pumpkin wool that I take out every few months to repin and set aside again. If you want to help, you could hack into my computer and redirect my browser to the Truth. Or you could challenge me to a word game. If you look hard enough, I'm sure you'll pick up on the white flags and bread crumbs I've scattered on the board.

Beet wine and better days

By all measures, April has been a really unproductive month. Just took a walk with the husband and all we could say for ourselves was that May is coming. With any luck we're through with the chills, the monsoons, the constant cloud cover shrouding our spring. With any gumption I'll shake the tangles out of my head regardless.

I was born 2 months shy of my mother's 30th birthday, so when I'm really in the mood to give myself what for, I compare whatever it is that I'm failing to accomplish with what her daily duties were like--or in an even more extreme mood, those of my grandmother--when she was my age. I grasp the obvious stuff right away--like the fact that I've never had to potty train a toddler, let alone do so in an outhouse in Minnesota in the winter, or follow it up by warming water on the stove for a succession of baths--but a letter from my friend who's still waiting for her mohair straightjacket this past week really gave me insight into how even in the kitchen, where I'm pretty proficient, I can't begin to match what previous generations of women considered routine. M had been out at the farm visiting her elderly mother-in-law, and came across an old recipe box. In it was a recipe that she thought (in the spirit of this blog) I needed for beet wine (& it is true that I was drowning in beets from our weekly CSA farm shares last summer) that goes like this:

5 lbs. beets
3 lbs. sugar
1 lemon sliced
1 orange sliced
1 lb. raisins
1 yeast cake

Cover beets with water and boil until done. Take out beets and add just enough clear water to make a gallon. Put in jar and add sugar, lemon, orange, raisins and yeast. Let stand 28 days. Stir every day. Strain and let stand 4 or 5 more days to settle. Put in jugs or wine bottles.

The real kicker, though, was the list she turned up on another recipe card of what this woman canned as a young bride in 1940. My friend's note puts it mildly: "It makes me tired just to read the list...and she didn't have electricity & the water was hand pumped." In a later conversation she told me that the carrot pickles had apparently been made from the little skinny ones pulled out when thinning the rows, so that truly nothing was wasted. It's a list I'll keep on my desk and read daily in May, if I have to. Onward!

1940 canned:
Beans 25 Qts.
Carrot pickles 8 pts.
Beet pickles 10 pts. 2Qts.
Peas & Carrots 4 pts.
Bean pickles 1 Qt. 2 pts.
Strawberries 20 Qts.
Cherries 10 Qts.
Apricots 12 Qts.
Sauerkraut 5 Gallons
Mixed veg. 12 pts.
Rhubarb 24 Qts.
Strawberry jam 10 jars