And then came the winds

"I blinked my way home through the wind today...
...with leanings and sneezes and cold through my clothes."

-Lauren Feste
The last few nights I have been awakened long before my alarm by the conviction that my panes will be blown out of my windows and onto my bedroom floor. The windswept look, while not necessarily fashionable, is certainly everywhere to be seen. My calves are only just adapting to the extra work involved in maintaining a posture at right angles with the pavement.
It has been rather blustery here.

Winter on the water

It was nearly a week ago today that I feared for my life on the way to work. The setting is dark. There is no one on the street (because most sane people are cozy in their houses at 5:25 am), and it is cold outside. It had snowed enough the day before to last through the night. The continued cold and nocturnal precipitation had layered a dangerous sheet of ice over the crunchy snow so that when I placed my foot on the top step I found, for the first time, that our handrail is intended as a stabilizing feature, and not merely a leaning post. What is generally a three minute walk was drawn out to ten, as I gingerly slid from step to step with a growing certainty of an immanent fall which would cause me to break my wrist. Fortunately, however, I made it to work with nothing worse than a mark in the tardy column in my personnel file.

Two fiascoes and a frozen fake-out

Out of fear that I will not be able to maintain the energy to start blogging, I will save updates on the last couple of months for a better time; (that is, when you call me, or when I have had coffee and my fingers are willing to fly over the keys) but I have promised my mother that I would write about the holiday desserts this year, and it is bad form to break promises so soon after the day of new resolutions. So here is my story.

Anyone who does not read my sister's blog in tandem with mine does not necessarily know that she has become quite the gourmet. I'm rather ashamed to admit that she has, on more than one occasion, saved me from flopping into my bed with an empty and growling stomach by offering me a meal of "planet salad" or Thai Mahi at the end of the day, as I am too exhausted to brown and munch my quick-cook pot stickers. So when Thanksgiving loomed on the calendar and she began rehearsing her menu of honey roasted duck, and other out of this world delicacies I found myself torn between the desire to be helpful and the knowledge of my domestic ineptitude. I offered to make dessert. I culled through some recipes and (skipping over Pumpkin Pie in favor of something more exotic) landed on a Pushing Daisies-inspired Pear Gruyere Pie. Then began the problems.

First, the fridge ate my butter. Second, I forgot that a one-serving-sized blender will not be able to manage the ingredients for a whole (five-serving) pie. Third, Sarah does gourmet cooking: not baking. Therefore she doesn't have unbleached white flour, or fine sugar or anything but sea salt. And Fourth, I'm a horrible cook.
When my slightly overly browned, wheat flour crust concoction had finally cooled enough for me to foist it upon my fellow celebrants, I was simply relieved that there was plenty of coffee and cookies homemade by Tacy (who is an excellent baker and cook) to erase the taste of my mess from our mouths. Fiasco number one.
For Christmas, I was inspired by the untasted Guinness in my fridge, and chocolate all around, and the realization that a cake does not require a pie-crust (which I will slowly work up to making again). So Chocolate-Stout cake was the goal. One would hope that after thanksgiving I would be advised that I should furnish my own baking soda, sugar, etc., but I had again forgotten (I had managed to remember the flour this time) so after countless trips back and forth from my apartment to Sarah's kitchen, a close call with chocolate getting too hot too fast, I managed to spatula the batter into the two pans and stick them in the oven. Then I attempted the icing. The problem with time, is that it cannot be hurried, and so when I tried to squeeze the 2 hour prep time for the icing into 20 minutes, I ended up making a chocolate cake with chocolate sauce. At least it was edible this time. Fiasco number two.

Our New Year's celebration widened from the familial three (Sarah, Zeb and me) to eight. My easily-intimidatable nature suggested that I not test the truth of the "third time's a charm" adage. Our dessert was Trader Joe's frozen Tiramisu. It was delicious. If Lisa hadn't been with me when I bought it, I had been less honest, and the world didn't know about fiascoes one and two, no one would have even known that I am not a world class dessert artist. Thank goodness the next holiday is Valentine's because I sure do know how to pick out good chocolate, and can make drinking chocolate like nobody's business. Small steps away from disaster, I suppose.

A not-so-silent film review

This evening I donned my new polka-dot blouse, my platform heels and my Audrey Hepburnesque black raincoat, and strolled the three blocks between my apartment and St. Anne's Church to watch the silent version of Gaston Leroux's Phantom of the Opera accompanied by Larry Molinaro on the church's magnificent organ music starting at seven in the evening.
It was quite an experience. I had never seen a silent film on any screen bigger than my computer before so that in itself makes it memorable. For an hour and a half I, and a score of others, sat mesmerized (despite the discomfort of the pews) and entertained by the alternating sepia, black and white, and occasionally the red or blue images on the screen in front of the altar. To call the famous drama a comedy is perhaps a strech, but the composer/accompanies Larry Molinaro swept the story along with the beautiful-yet-not-to-be-taken-too-seriously score which included variations on the cancan and Pick-a-little as well as other famous pieces that I couldn't quite put the name to.
All in all it is the best movie I have seen in a long time due, in great part, to the surround sound and the fact that I haven't been to see a movie since my return to the States.

On Locales

Everyone knows about Townies and Bumpkins: those particular people who simply cannot live without __(fill in the blank)

a. neon lights shining down on their repose, the gentle lowing of taxi horns and uncontrolled radio decibels, and the company of those so rich that if they were a garden they could feed a small country and can locate planets with their very high noses.

-or-

b. crickets (and other creatures far too small to be able to emit sounds at the volume that they do) hosting raves, winds sweeping through the plains and the shutters, and the cracks around the door, a wake-up call performed far too early by the sun, and the company of quadrupeds.

Such categories as City Slicker and Hillbilly are easily defined, and those who fit into them are even easier to spot. But I fit into an entirely different slot. I am a Suburbanite. A Cul-de-sac-ee. One who was born at the end of the asphalt, but could look down the street and see one of the last pairs of horses actually kept within city limits. My family was made for this kind of life. There was the perfect "field" for us to play in, until the builders actually developed that two-acre plot. And there were trees that were climb-able as long as we weighed less than 50 pounds, but really, one shouldn't expect too much from a tree that was only planted twenty years ago. And then there was my family. We were made to live in a neighborhood. Large and friendly, we were absent-minded in that way which necessitates borrowing sugar from the clan next door because no one remembered to put it on the shopping list. The children of the street formed a docile gang whose dangerous activities included playing Uno in the middle of the street or a round of Truth-or-Dare which forced someone near the outhouse the construction workers had been using all month. When we felt particularly edgy, we would attack a house with rolls and rolls of toilet paper. Our logic was that we could trick everyone into thinking that we were innocent if we merely TP-ed one of our own houses. Of course the next morning we would have to clean up our own mess, but we never seemed to mind.
With this sort of background, it is no wonder that I have some trouble adjusting to life downtown. I've learned that between the loud talking or singing stumblers, the high heels on bricks which sound as though an old fashioned horse and cart is walking through my room, and the streetlamp perfectly positioned to shine like a very close and very unfortunately unmoving sun directly in my face, sleeping in the city is a skill. Fortunately my day expired around 2 1/2 hours ago, and so I will have no need to work particularly hard in order to sleep tonight. Right now, actually.

Shades of rodents

We usually had some package of nuts to strew about the back porch for Chester. Why we named the fattest of the fox squirrels Chester, which to my mind is reminiscent of a floppy-eared dog, is beyond me. There was a whole crew of climbers who were unbelievably resourceful in poaching the contents of the bird feeder before dinner.
As I grew older, I slowly stopped noticing the squirrels. Sure, I noticed the chipmunks at the Grand Canyon, and the campgrounds, but that's because they were always so cute with those black eyes and the stripe down their back. When I went to Germany, for a time, I noticed them again. They were no longer that muted brown I had come to expect as the only acceptable dye-job for squirrels. These punks had red hair. And they weren't quite as long or fat as the American squirrels. Today I noticed these East Coast squirrels. They are like those pieces of wood that are faded to a gray by the sun on the top, but still show that living red-brown underneath. Except the squirrels scamper. The wood does not.

...Of Untamed Weather

Did I forget to mention that I got my very first "tropical storm day off" from work last week? Well, I did. They thought the town might flood, so Phillips told me to stay in bed, and I got some of my shopping done instead. I'm telling you: things are different here. There are fireflies, tropical storms, and unbelievably muggy days.