Oh woe is me

This would be the post in which I whine about my pathetic life, with violin music in the background.

Well, no not really. Maybe just a little in the beginning.

To date: I had a wearying and self-absorbed three weeks at a new job (with benefits) and thought I was going to suffocate or go mad. So much like an assembly line, a sweat shop, so rote, so . . so . . so wrong for me.

I am a free-range chicken, apparently.

I’ve gone back to private practice. Back to the road. Back to my free-wheeling, take your chances contract life.

In other news:

Mrs. BC and I went to the Jemez last weekend for our anniversary and enjoyed it mightily. Friday was my last day at the new/old job, Saturday was the first anniversary since our lovely wedding last summer in Quebec and the 11th since our first ceremony.

We slept a bit and made good food and had massage and tubs at the hot springs. Then we went shopping and picked out jewelry for each other from the street vendor outside of the biker bar on the main street in Jemez. 

We played Scrabble and read cheap romance novels. We had bacon lettuce and tomato sandwiches for lunch.

The massage I had on the third day was the best. The massage therapist directed me to visualize my ”happy place” and I, being quite malleable after three days of soaking, napping and lying around, immediately saw my own front yard, from various angles. The grape vines, the honeysuckle, the rose of sharon, the hollyhocks. The barns, the willow tree, the cottonwood, the geese marching solemnly, wings tucked back hasidim-wise, nodding their heads thoughtfully.

What a marvelous thing, how fortunate we are, my wife and I, to live in our own happy place. How lucky I am to be able to turn around and walk right back to my previous work, without even missing a step. How lucky the two of us to have found each other.

No woe allowed. I am too damn lucky.

Marshmallow Creme Sandwich on Wonder Bread

  

When I was a kid, I had a friend named Kitty. She was Dutch, and had a glass eye. This worked in favor of our friendship, since I was slightly funny looking too, but mostly okay in the ways that count when you are a kid. I think her mom must have worked outside the home, because when I went to her house after school a few times, it was always just the two of us. This was Kitty’s favorite after-school snack:

• 2 slices Wonder Bread
• Marshmallow Creme
• Miracle Whip
• Sprinkles

How to prepare: Take one slice of bread, spread first with Miracle Whip, then with Marshmallow Creme. Cover with sprinkles. Put second slice on top. Squish flat. Wash down with chocolate milk.

I wonder if this was a mom-sanctioned snack. I can’t imagine that it was. I can say for sure that it was a memorable recipe, if nothing else.

How to eat like a millionaire

Wow, I love this headline.

I’ll interview all my millionaire friends and let you know. Back soon.

Well, first of all, they tell me billionaire is the new millionaire, so I’m going to raise the bar.

Second — I was thinking it must be all about eco-friendly, sustainable, local food. Rich folk are locavores this week, right? Here’s the food-for-the-rich scenario as I had imagined it (turns out to have been entirely wrong):

“I’ll have my au pair drive to the farmer’s market to buy all the freshest just picked vegetables - the lettuces, the leeks and onions, the rainbow chard, the homemade pies, the early baby creamer potatoes, the hand-salted goat cheese. It can be a lesson in sustainable farming for my seven-year-old. Truffles dug up by my yard man’s farmer friend Joe. Corn and raspberries are hand-picked and delivered to my home weekly.”

As I looked into it, I realized actually that’s how I eat, and I am not a millionaire. Or billionaire. Plus, I don’t have kids, an au pair or a yard man. Wish I did - at least a concierge or something.

How do the very wealthy eat? I did some light reading, and this is what I found. Let’s go look at some of the finest restaurants in the most expensive cities in the world:

According to selected menu items listed in the SPellegrino 50 Best Restaurants in the World, the very wealthy might be eating at this very moment:

Snail Porridge
Bacon and Egg Ice Cream
Warm lettuce hearts soaked in vanilla brine
Sheep’s milk curd seasoned with hay and toasted fern
Beef roasted with the embers of vine cuttings
“Macaroni and Cheese” (butter-poached Maine lobster with mascarpone-enriched Orzo Pasta)
“Oyster and pearls” (”Sabayon” of Pearl Tapioca with Island Creek Oysters and White Sturgeon Caviar)

This convinces me that I am not a billionaire. However, thanks to the beautiful farmer’s market in the small village where I live, I do eat like a millionaire of home-grown tastes. Very sensible of me. Only without the yard guy or the au pair.

With that in mind, here is a recipe for pasta, fresh vegetables and goat cheese with herbs de provence:

Set your pasta water on to boil.

• Prepare your vegetables - chop or slice nice and thin, as you liike it
  (you choose your veggies - this is what we had yesterday):Onion
  Garlic
  Yellow bell pepper
  Yellow squash
  Zucchini
  Fresh oregano
  Herbs de provence - chervil, rosemary, savory, lavendar, tarragon, marjoram, mint (variations are common)
  Goat cheese

Sautee onions and garlic in olive oil. When these are soft and clear, add each vegetable in turn. Cook at a medium-high temperature. Don’t abuse your vegetables by mashing them about with a spatula or boiling them to death. Add a generous splash of vermouth or white wine. Let sit for a moment.

Drain your pasta and dress lightly with oil or butter.

Plate the pasta, sprinkle an ounce or slightly more of goat cheese on it. Spoon the sauteed vegetables on top of all that. Add salt and pepper.

Serve hot, with a glass of chilled white wine. Have some while you are cooking, too, if it seems advisable.
Light mixed green salad on the side.

Life can be relatively easy, can’t it?

Uh-oh, it’s July already

Well, the chicks, guinea keets and goslings are all peep-peeping in their new coops. The grown geese and ganders are standing guard. All is secured. The goslings grow inches overnight. They are two weeks old — the guinea keets and the chicks were just hatched Tuesday. About the size of a golf ball right now. 

I’ve made a commitment to blog every day in July. Maybe twice today will catch me up?

The topic on nablopomo (huh?) dang - let me get back to you on that, with link - anyway, for the month of July, is food.

 

I can write about food. No problema, chicos y chicas. I can write about food chains, about predators, about bechemel, making a proper roux, about grilling fish, about what chickens eat. Ah — a starting point!

Today: food for hatchling chicks

Ingredients:
Starter scratch
Water

Preparation:
You’ll need tiny little watering jars, usually a standard mason jar with a lid that has a specially designed lip to provide water for the peeps. Fill the jar with water and turn it over. It must be teeny-tiny or new-hatched chicks will fall in and drown. Do not assume instinct will inform them. It does not.

Notice:
Keep hatchlings separate from your other birds. They need more heat and protection. They are easily stomped to death, and are prone to die with very little provocation in those first few days.

Next:
You will also need little feeding dishes, also made with mason jars and chick designed lids. You can buy these at your neighborhood feed store. They will also sell you incubator lights and guide books on how to raise chicklets. Now, if you live in a city, don’t assume that you can’t have chickens. In most cities, hens are fine, but roosters are not. You can order your chicks sexed (funny job, that), online or through your feedstore, and even hens who do not have roosters will lay eggs every spring. They will also eat bugs and provide manure that can be used in your garden (another topic for another day).

Pics of chicks as things evolve.

I’ve got a new job and a bunch of other stuff too, but for now, think about baby birds. Peep-peep!

 

 

Fly-by

Here I am, stopping in to say hello to my personal blogging self.

Hello Chica, where the hell you been?

Funny you should ask. Seems like I never see me anymore. All the time on the go. I passed me on the way out the door a week or two ago, had to pretend I didn’t see me cause I didn’t really have time to stop and chat. Been playing phone tag with meself for a month.

What, is e-mail better?

Sure, but I never answer e-mail. You should know that.

Any relief in sight?

Well, today almost everyone cancelled on me. That helped a lot. My house is a pit though, and the wife is hiding out in the study trying frantically to finish her GPS final, which she put off til the last possible minute. I push a tray of food through the door every 12 hours or so, then back out quick.

The dogs have a message for you: Pay attention to them or they will be forced to have a big fat meltdown involving sneaking out and wandering in heavy traffic or possibly just incessant head-biting games til someone puts an eye out.

Right. Well, I know that.

What about your friends, family, the geese? What about the iguana, your mom, what about going to a movie once in awhile maybe? I notice everyone’s starting to give up on inviting you to anything. Anything you want to tell them?

Not much. Just working for a living. Well . . . vacation is coming up. 10 days off, in the middle of May.  

Gonna do the happy dance?

Believe I just might. Dogs’ll probably join me, right? I mean, if they still remember who I am.

 

Drafty in here

On my fiction blog, Cuentos, I am in the habit of tossing in freewrites without judging or editing, and this has worked well for me, I think. Here at Trees, though, where I am theoretically exploring creative non-fiction, I’ve got actually dozens of drafts rotting in my manage files, and I am afraid they are stuck there. Why is that? I am somewhat reminded of my journalism internship back in dark wet moldy Seattle. I believed I was an unreliable source of factual information, and found myself wretchedly unsure of my ability to report the facts of the council meetings and “about town” features that I was assigned. To report “facts” at all, actually. I’m given to hyperbole, equivocation and dithering (the robin was 7 feet tall, well almost, well metaphorically, and maybe it wasn’t a robin, maybe it was a shadow or something someone told me or I just heard it somewhere). And sometimes I say things because of how they sound instead of how they mean. I’m pretty sure my internship advisor would still shudder and turn away if she ran into me in a back alley somewhere.

So for no other reason than here I am, awake and ungrounded, here are a few fact-lets (or they may be fict-lets) about my life of late:

1. The geese are frisky due to spring. This is a good time to pat their soft chests (they come running when called) and chat, but a bad time to turn your back on them (they do not ask for your phone number first, they just grab ass and go for it).
2. The elder patients are feeling good with the warm sun heating their bones. Less dying, more sparking.
3. The babies are rowdy and physical, and prone to throw things in one’s face. Exuberant, but no finesse. One split my lip a couple weeks ago. Ha-ha-ha-HA! he said. Little heathen.
4. The lilac is in bloom. It is too big to be a bush now, more like a lilac tree.
5. The friends are lining up to visit. Ah, the bosque in the spring! Warm, green, sleep with the windows open.
6. The missus and I will take a week off in May and stay home to play lady farmers together. Don’t tell anyone, cause we want quiet time in the garden together.
7. We rented our friend’s fire station to a children’s theatre troupe, because they will use the dance floor (used to be the firetruck bay) as it is intended to be used. And because we liked them. They have a St. Bernard named Menaleus.
8.  I am paying attention to the primaries, but even thinking about what a mess it is makes me want to talk about the seven foot robin mentioned above. So never mind.
9. My mom has moved home and is walking, making her own meals, dressing and bathing herself, and getting physical therapy at home three times a week. Pretty good after almost five months in a nursing home.
10. I’m saving money to build a new chicken coop. I’ve almost got it now, but usually something happens to eat the money before it gets done.
11. Our very sweet nephew, Ed, graduates from high school next month. He wants a membership to the ACLU for his 18th birthday, and cash for graduation. He is a good boy. In my head he is often still six years old, playing pirate in the yard.
12. I think I’ll give up private practice and go work in the schools for a while. Summers off. Benefits. Still ambivalent, but the academic schedule is very appealing. Last summer driving around all day doing home therapy was like getting in and out of a pizza oven. I’m dreading the coming months already.
13. It’s about time for another all-day writing retreat here at Casa de Bosquechica. More planning this time - the last one needed more structure.
14. Mrs. Bosquechica is looking for a job. Her funding is way gone now. Anyone need a brilliant systems analyst with a background in medical research?
15. I’m in the mood to go hiking, biking and camping, but have been spending weekends working. This seems fundamentally wrong.
16. I’d like to go back to sleep now, or if not that, I’d like to write a great play or a poem, or decide what to be or do next with my life. Maybe that’s the problem.

Goodnight or good morning, wherever and whoever you may be.

 

Apes and aphids

A few thoughts about writing:

I’ve started writing fiction and poetry in small groups again after a long break. In these I work freewrite style, loose and open associations with timed writings — see Red Ravine for more on that, they are the awesome goddesses of writing practice. I love fiction and poetry, and often have no idea what I’m writing about until I’ve read it aloud.

My latest piece of timed writing, The physics lesson of Australopithecus, (written Monday in 30 minutes) is sitting percolating over at Cuentos, my fiction and poetry blog. It is a circular prose poem about time and evolution (I think). The phrase “apes and aphids” is tucked into the piece somewhere and it caught my eye.

Now, in writing practice it’s not unusual to write things like “apes and aphids” without thinking about it, and then wonder where the phrase came from. Typically, I can’t resist the urge to google and today found that ”apes to aphids” referenced both other poets and the biological sciences. Nice. I am a poet with a background in the sciences; it all makes sense.

Then I keep looking: From the Universidad Completense Madrid, I find lists of published works on the biological sciences, housed in the Royal Society of London.

These include:

Self-sacrificing gall repair by aphid nymphs;
Humans deceived by predatory stealth strategy camouflaging motion; and
A naked ape would have fewer parasites

I love all of these titles.

 Then, as I’m fiddling around linking at will, I discover that wow, Red Ravine is writing about bugs today too! Coincidence? But then again, I just stepped on a bug in my hallway in the middle of the night and had to scrub my foot in the sink (ugh), so I guess it’s just spring.

In summary, isn’t writing amazing?

Chickens with singers’ names

  Today someone found Trees for the Forest by searching “chickens with singers’ names”. I love that. I wish I had a chicken named Aretha Franklin or maybe Lori Anderson or Bono. I replicated the search (not having anything else to do, apparently) and was surprised to find Moonbeam McQueen at the top of the list. Small world, isn’t it?

I’ll be getting back to work here at Trees. So many things to say. Marriage, family, animals, springtime, woeful feelings, career indecision, poetry, politics, my ongoing discussion with myself about what I want to be when I grow up and I wish it was a beachcomber, like it always says on the Chinese astrology placemats. But enough about me. My main point is I’m trying to come out from under the bed and join in again.

Mom update

Surprising development - I’ve just put down a deposit on an apartment in assisted living for my mom. That means it’s a regular apartment with help, three squares, bathing/dressing, schnauzer welcome. Posh place, better than anything she’s had in years, but still costs less than any nursing home. It’s five minutes from my house, and I’m in and out of the place all week anyway; my homecare agency sends me there frequently. Stress city getting her there though. Even with experience in the field it’s confusing. Wierd system we’ve got, that makes things so complicated it takes an entire family of motivated, well-educated people to figure out what the hell to do to make tolerable living arrangements for the disabled elderly.

I am completely amazed that she’s recovered enough to be accepted there. She’s worked really hard in rehab to get out of the nursing home and back home to her puppy.

I’ve had a complete shutdown on my fiction writing. There is too much reality in my life.

More later, must go attend to my insomnia.

Yard sale rhapsody

I love yard sales. I love the beginning of yard sale season. Like yachting, all the cheerful colored signs bobbing along on the horizon. Other people’s stuff.

I love yard sales the way I love eavesdropping, a guilty pleasure a search for rare treasure, a treat a retreat a brief moment away from my own life and into yours.

I love yard sales, the free box, the sticky lemonade and the 11-year-olds who wistfully offer me some for a quarter. I love the bad portraits of your mother’s cousin Jean, the macrame holders still tightly wrapped around 2 liter coke bottles, with leggy spider plants hoarily clinging to that crafty harvest gold past.

I love yard sales and talking to strangers, agreeing on the dangers of overpricing, underpricing, bad weather and early morning poachers. I love finding out that my girlfriend dated your son back in high school, I feel so local, and that he’s married now with two kids but having problems and then changing the subject.

I love yard sales and looking at other people’s decorative choices. The red walls with blue accents, the rock garden, the swoopy window treatments, kitchen appliance excesses, the incredibly organized and labeled garages of you not me. The beaten and smirched record of your children’s discarded toys, your baby’s first velvet dress with the little matching mittens.

I love yard sales and the over and under valueing we all do of our stuff and our stories, the unexpectedly good artwork inexplicably stuck in the workshop behind the arc welder and the broken rakes. I love the costume jewelry, the plastics and resins, the hand-blown glass beads and the tarnished milagros. I love rummaging for change, the good faith willingness to hold your perfect estante rústico until this afternoon when I can come back in the red truck with some muscle and moving straps.

I love yard sales, the lumpy old dogs, the ladies in sequined sweatshirts, the avon bottles shaped like ships and trains, the huddled men comparing tools and two-stroke engines. I love getting home with yard sale amnesia. Unwrapping the little packages in anticipation, I become my own secret Santa, pleased and surprised at the silliness in which your past becomes my present, rubbed clean and new and ready for whatever comes next.