NaPoWriMo #5: insomnia

Sleepless

Memories tinctured with moonlight
their silver-gilt edges curled, spindled
dog-eared pages of life’s volume
long forgotten on a shelf
until a pale beam falls across its spine
and sleepless, I recollect scenes
that seem no more than dreams
grown too faded to compete
with the shiny present’s noise and brilliance,
but in this place between waking and sleep
the past is now
and I remember.

NaPoWriMo #4: nostalgia

Drinks at the Christmas Café

The last half of my first grade year
we lived with my mother’s parents
their home overlooking Puget Sound
my mom, dad and four kids under seven
packed sardine-like
in a basement bonus room
with pine paneling and a dry bar

the liquor cabinet had been relocated
to safer climes upstairs
but the shelves behind the bar
remained populated with teacups
shot glasses, saltshakers, vases
crystal-hung candlesticks, figurines
and a porcelain Christmas tree
with electric lights

my family moved into a rental
before I started second grade
but by then I had already found my place
as proprietor and hostess extraordinaire
of the Christmas Café
open Sunday afternoons
with special sleep-over hours

in my little world within itself
patrons sipped their drinks
perched on woven-rope barstools
Stevie Wonder sang Sir Duke
on the transistor radio
hand-lettered menus announced our specials
(Cheetos and dry-roasted peanuts)
and the drink of the house
(homemade lemonade
garnished with fresh mint
and strawberries in season)
ginger ale and cranberry juice
available upon request

Nana gave me the run of her ornaments
tinsel, garlands and lights
kept me stocked in lemonade, peanuts, Cheetos
colored toothpicks and swizzle sticks
and in the off hours I cozied up to Grandpa
in the brown vinyl Barcalounger
watching NHL, Wild Kingdom
Barney Miller and ballet

when I was nine I learned
the meaning of passed away
saw a stranger in a casket
wearing Grandpa’s tie
with the watercolor seagulls
we still had sleepovers
but Nana got up early
cooked the eggs and bacon, while Max
their long-suffering German shepherd
wagged his tail, hoping for a handout

within a year, someone broke in
stole Grandpa’s distinguished flying cross
along with some cash and jewelry
Nana moved to a condo
a few miles away
and so ended the Christmas Café

a few years ago I was in town, drove by
the house is unrecognizable from the street
and I can only wonder
if it still has a bonus room in the basement
with dry bar and pine paneling.

NaPoWriMo #3: social media

I have a love-hate relationship with the internet in general and social media in particular. I love how easy it is to keep in touch with my family, who have spread out in an ever-expanding manner. I love how easy it is to find facts, recipes, and educational resources. I'm finding lately, though, that I have much to regret: hours that I waste online, rather than being engaged with my family; how I allow my expectations for myself and those around me to be skewed by standards so completely disconnected with reality. It would be easy to make a break if it weren't for the benefits, so I'm struggling to find a balance.

Today I read a post on Segullah, a blog for Mormon women, about how we present ourselves on the internet. It articulated nicely some of my main complaints about social media, and (somewhat surprisingly) inspired today's poem. It was interesting to me that many readers claimed to have no problem with viewing others' posts, pins or status reports and feeling jealous or perceiving them as trying to appear superior. So maybe it's just a few of us with weak character that struggle with it--on the other hand, I know I'm not the only one amongst my acquaintance because recently a good friend shared a link on Facebook to this blog post about how social media informs the way some of us feel like we are expected to go overboard in the way we celebrate holidays. Not that I agree with the entire post, but it raises interesting issues. Do I feel the need to compete with others to show I'm "doing it right"?

Lest you think I'm casting stones, I freely admit to thinking almost all of the things I say below--so this is an indictment of myself, if you will.


Reality Check

It’s a big, bad, braggety brag-brag world
out there
in the rarified air
of the social media stratosphere
full of tweets, reviews, pins, pix and posts
look-at-me-look-at-me-look-at-me-me-me-me

my kids are smarter than
my boyfriend is hotter than
my house is neater than
my lunch is tastier than
my garden is greener than
my outfit is cuter than
my carbon footprint is smaller than
my recipe is better than
my cat is fluffier than
my crafts are more clever than
yours

please pay attention to
who my friends are
what politician I support
where I went to high school
what products I use
where I went for dinner last night
what I ate
who I’m engaged to
what game I’m playing
where I shop
who’s on my blog roll
what I’m wearing
where I went for spring break
why this movie star is hot
and that celebrity is an idiot
and oh, yes
how cute my baby is

I’m so much more
frugal fertile
funny fashionable
clever creative
connected compassionate
sweet skinny sincere
socially aware
political progressive
healthy intelligent
(and did I mention well-read?)
than you

some days it’s exhausting
just hitting the on button
but the part that gets me
where it hurts
is I allowing myself to get sucked in
to buy into it, all of it
every time the voice in my head
responds with
oh yeah?
instead of good
good for you
every time I don’t just walk away
every time I post or repin or share
something that I think will make me
look even better
every time I try to edit
or tweak
or crop
or spin
or photoshop
just to outdo someone else’s standard
of how things should be
because
I’m making it my own
impossibly high bar for being

who do I think I’m fooling?
that big, bad world
or myself?

NaPoWriMo #2: acrostic

I went a bit nuts here, but it was hard to limit myself to just one word per letter on the subject in question.


Children

Chaos, cheesy, curious, cherish, clever, change, cheeky, crayons, cry, cuddles, crawl, choosy, concrete, careful, crafty, calm, courteous, chickenpox, compassion, creativity, cunning, conflict, chatty, complex, camping, cheerful, comics, conscious, cats, cooperate

Happy, honest, helpful, hugs, humbling, heart, hilarious, handprints, home, haircuts, high-spirited, harmony, hunger, handkerchiefs, hardy, hurry, haven, headache, hotdogs, heaven, honey, hijinks, holidays, hygiene, hiccups, hand-me-downs, heritage, hope

Innocence, intuitive, inquisitive, important, imaginative, infuriating, intelligence, ice cubes, itchy, intensity, inadequate, informant, impressionable, innovate, intrepid, impish, independent, impulsive, indebted, ingenious, imperfect, inspiration, insects, intangible

Labor, laughter, loud, learn, legs, lullaby, laundry, lively, lesson, likable, lucky, lava, limber, lavish, linear, loyal, lilting, loquacious, listen, library, life, limits, literal, longing, loving, lucid, lyrical, lunacy, lemonade, loopy, loss, leap (before you) look, longsuffering

Determined, deep, diapers, dirt, dedication, delicate, daredevil, discipline, dear, delicious, dreams, drawing, dandelions, dinner, devotion, driven, discovery, dinosaurs, development, diligence, drama, delight, discern, demanding, defend, deprived (of sleep)

Rowdy, running, reading, restless, real, reasons, receptive, relax, routine, rollicking, respectful, responsive, rude, rapid, ready, road-trip, rewarding, renewal, rocks, reliant, ride, resourceful, rigorous, ridiculous, rip, roller-skating, ripe, rebellious, romp, replete

Expecting, eager, effervescent, enervation, excitement, endurance, enthusiasm, engaged, elbows, extreme, entertaining, emergency, education, expressive, eloquent, embarrassment, exhausting, empathy, exacting, energy, excel, exploration, evolve, eternal

New, nurture, needs, nose-kisses, now, nursing, nonsense, nest, no, nape, nuggets, noble, nap, naïve, naughty, nightmares, nutty, normal, natter, notebooks, nimble, naked, noisy, neurotic,  nightlight, nose-picking, nebulous, necessity (is the mother of invention)

NaPoWriMo #1: sick kids

How ironic that as I look back to the last time I did NaPoWriMo (2011), the first poem I posted was inspired by Audrey having stomach flu. 'Tis the season, I guess: she's had a cold for most of the past week, and now Joe and I are sick, too. Sadly, Sunday didn't feel much like Easter to me, since the kids and I stayed home from church to rest and recoup.

It's always hard when babies are sick because they don't understand why they feel miserable, only that they do. I've been spending a lot of the time laying on the couch with Joe, rocking him to sleep so he can have some relief. I might enjoy getting to cuddle him more, if I didn't feel so lousy myself. The silver lining was a bit of poetic inspiration.


Easter

A golden afternoon
promises of summer in the wings
I am aware, just barely
of two older children
laughing somewhere outside
while I am stretched out on the couch
with my youngest
resting his sweaty head on my shoulder
his hair plastered to my cheek

after almost an hour
of me rocking, wiping his runny nose
of him squirming, coughing fretfully
he has finally fallen asleep
one clammy hand wrapped round
a fistful of my hair
I breathe in, but only half-way
because if I let my lungs fill
it will tickle my scratchy throat
then my coughing
will set him off coughing again, too
so I breathe shallow, shift my legs slow
so as not to wake him

my step-mother
who has no children of her own, says
I don’t know how you do it
how you care for them
when you are sick

at first I think

I don’t know how I do it
but as my mind drifts between dreams
and waking I see
the question is all wrong

and when I know

the right question

I can feel the answer

in the intricate web
of wrinkles, scars and callouses
that cover my hands

I can read the answer

in the braille of my baby’s spine
as I run my finger lightly over the vertebrae
beneath the thin knit of his shirt

I can hear the answer

as I finally float off
to the rollicking harmony of laughter
and roller skates grinding down the sidewalk:

this is what I do.

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming...

NaPoWriMo? I know, I know. It's been a long time since I've actually posted, let alone posting poetry. In spite of--and perhaps because of--being incommunicado for so long, I'm quite excited for NaPoWriMo this year. For the past three weeks, I've been working on a fiction project (but that's another post) and after a very long time away from writing, I'm starting to get back into a routine again. My project is going well enough I think a month-long detour won't derail it, so I'm ready for the challenge.

Wait--did I just say that? Why yes, yes I did.

2013: a sourdough odyssey

Okay, so that may be a bit sweeping and dramatic--but the last few weeks have certainly been a delicious odyssey. Since my first foray into sourdough baking in December, I've baked four more batches, making incremental progress each time. The wonderful thing is, even when things go wrong, the bread has still tasted great.

My second attempt, a few days after the first, yielded a slightly more browned crust, thanks to a slower, longer rise. The loaves were soft and tasty, but still lacking a tangy sourdough flavor, so I went back to the sourdough blogs. Sourdough Home's "starter primer" in particular was quite helpful, as was Wild Yeast's post about raising a starter.

I learned I had been mistaken in thinking my starter wasn't the problem; a "starter" technically begins as a "culture", and then as it becomes healthy and established, it begins to develop the distinctive sour taste. Mine, only a few days old when I first used it, was far from being a starter--it was still a culture and as such, needed to be fed and tended until it could double itself in a twelve-hour period. Knowing that, I put off more baking to work on getting my starter going.

Rather than going back to the beginning and making an entirely new starter from scratch, I just took what I had out of the refrigerator (which is where the instructions in The Tightwad Gazette said to store it) and started feeding it per the instructions in Sourdough Home's starter primer. In order to keep it in the warm temperature range recommended by the primer, I stored it in the warmest place in my kitchen: on top of the fridge. Finally, at the beginning of this week, my starter was doubling itself every twelve hours, so I felt ready for another try.

I baked attempt #3 on Tuesday morning. At long last, sourdough flavor and a browned crust! I made a batard (oval loaf) and a boule (round loaf), but my dough ball, and later the loaves, developed a hardened "skin" during the rises. So for my fourth attempt, the next day, I baked a single loaf in a loaf pan and experimented with spritzing the towel that covered the dough with water while it rose. Still pretty dry, but getting closer.

Today was my fifth attempt. I spritzed the dough with vegetable oil during the first rise, covered it loosely with plastic wrap, and spritzed it with oil again after shaping it into a loaf and letting it rise a second time. This worked well to prevent the dried skin on the dough, although I think halving the recipe (which I did just for the sake of not having too much bread on hand) didn't make quite enough dough for the size of bread pan I used.

My latest loaf still tastes wonderful, though, and makes lovely sandwiches that my kids gobble up!

A house in order

I've been meaning to post for a while, but having been sick off and (mostly) on since Thanksgiving, something had to give. Blogging was only one of several casualties.

Around the last time I posted I realized I just didn't have the energy to do all the things I wanted to do for the holidays, so it was time to cut my losses and stick to the priorities: 1) teaching the kids their lessons until we (mercifully) hit winter break; 2) making balanced meals; 3) making sure there were clean dishes to eat the meals on; and 4) making sure there were clean clothes to have the meals spilled on. Only slightly lower on the priority list was making Christmas pajamas for each of the kids. Other than that, if it didn't happen, oh well.

The great thing about lowered expectations is I'm seldom disappointed, no matter the outcome. We had a modest but lovely Christmas, scaled back from previous years in terms of quantity, but overflowing with all that mattered.

My favorite thing about this Christmas was that as soon as we finished school on December 14th, the kids disappeared for the following week, holed up in our basement atelier making gifts for everyone in our family (including the cats) out of pipecleaners, beads, string and scotch tape. This resulted in Jimmy's first working invention: a cat toy made out of a single pipecleaner twisted into a ring. Something about the shape and fuzziness is irresistible to both of our cats, who've been chasing them all over the house for the last three weeks.

Simple really is better.

The week after Christmas, as I was putting away patterns and flannel scraps leftover from the Christmas jammies, and casting furtive, longing glances at the corner where the new dressform Santa brought me sat in its box, I had an "aha" moment.

One of the things I love about this drafty, ramshackle old house we rent is it is big enough for me to have a room of my own, à la Virginia Woolfe. It's a combination sewing room/office in a finished-off portion of what was once the root cellar, and lately the preferred hidey-hole for Santa to stash the kids' presents. As I was doing post-pajama clean-up, though, I realized that even with all the gifts cleared out it was still an unqualified disaster. I really, really wanted to set up my new dressform and get sewing so I could finish winter break doing a fun project just for me, but before I could even put it together, I knew I had to make a place to put it.

Then it hit me: I am my  sewing room. It is me. We are both a hot mess.

Upstairs my house is moderately presentable. The living room, bathroom and dining room can be made company-ready in 20 minutes to a half-hour, tops. The kitchen, well, maybe an hour. The point is, I keep things functional and presentable up there so life can go on, even when I'm teaching phonics, refereeing squabbles, and dealing with teething babies.

And that's pretty much how I work emotionally, physically, spiritually and intellectually--I do enough on the surface to be serviceable. I have down days and forget to pray or meditate, I get stressed out, I eat too much, I don't get enough exercise--but I'm basically a good person who helps other people, cares for my family, gives back the wrong change the cashier made and tries not to yell at my kids. Too much. In public.

Below the surface, though--down in the basement, if you will--it's chaos. Things are out of place, neglected, haphazard. Boxes and bags and baskets--stacked every which way, filled with mementos, fabric, books, papers needing to be filed. A huge backlog of keep-or-toss. Because of that, I feel like I'm putting off doing the things I want to do because I haven't yet done the things I need to do, and I don't want to live my life in a holding pattern.

After I had this realization, a phrase started echoing in my head: "Put your house in order, put your house in order." We were in Yakima all day running errands on New Year's Eve, and I couldn't get it out of my head. I knew there was a scriptural reference, and finally looked it up (thank you, smart phone). As I read the passage, rather than feeling behind the 8-ball, I was filled with an immediate sense of calm that I could go about this a little bit at a time, systematically, when I had small chunks of time between my other commitments.

As I've said before, I don't believe in resolutions--making the start of a new year an arbitrary time to implement changes--but now is the time for me to put my house in order so I can start living in ways I've been putting off because I had other things I "ought to do"' first.

For the first time in months, I can see the top of my desk. It feels good.

Tightwad tuesday: sourdough attempt #1

I finally acquired the third volume of the Tightwad Gazette, and have been enjoying it in sporadic bursts. About halfway through I found a recipe for sourdough bread (my favorite kind of bread, by the way) that the author assured her readers was not only inexpensive (less than 50 cents per loaf), but goof-proof.

Maybe not.

I carefully followed the instructions for creating starter, which my friend Carol, the bread guru, later explained to me was a "cheat" because yeast is actually one of the ingredients in the Tightwad Gazette recipe. Apparently "real" starter is made by cultivating the yeast that naturally occurs in flour or fruit, and has a mystique unto itself. Cheating aside, my starter wasn't the problem--but more on that later.

The initial rising happened overnight, per instructions, and this morning when I got up I punched the dough down and formed it into two baguettes.

My kitchen is cold and drafty, and especially so in winter, which makes it a hostile environment for yeast to proof. When I bake my regular wheat bread, I usually pre-heat the oven early, leave it open an inch or so, and let the bread rise on the stovetop. I figured the same would hold true for making sourdough, so for the second rising, I put the formed loaves on top of the stove while the oven pre-heated.

The recipe instructed that the loaves should rise about four hours before baking, but within two hours, mine were rising so quickly that they were joining at the side. So I popped them in the oven, and my house quickly filled with the most delicious aroma--even better than my whole wheat bread.

When the bread came out a half hour later I was slightly disappointed to see that the crust, while nice and chewy, was a rather anemic shade of beige. I whipped up a quick egg-white wash, brushed it on, and baked the loaves for another ten minutes, with only marginally improved results. The flavor, too, had a nice tang to it, but not the almost pungent flavor my tastebuds were anticipating.

One of the things I've discovered over the last few years of baking my own bread is that having a good recipe is only part of the equation for success. Methodology is often much more important than just the right ingredients in the right amounts. This is true in baking much moreso than cooking, since baking is more scientifically exacting, in that its success depends on the chemical reactions of the ingredients with their environment.

So I've done some research on a few bread blogs (blogs devoted to sourdough--who knew?) and I think the immediate fix is to not let the bread rise on the stove. Apparently if the dough rises too quickly, the distinctive sourdough flavor doesn't have time to develop AND the yeast consumes the natural sugars in the dough, which would otherwise carmelize into a nice, brown crust.

Besides sewing stockings and Christmas jammies, I think I've found my project for Christmas vacation: honing my sourdough skills. I see lots of French onion soup in my future...

Advent, day 2

We always read "The Tale of Three Trees" and put up our Christmas tree on December 1st, as the first activity inside our advent calendar. Today's pocket on the calendar held a tiny candy cane and a slip of paper that said, The candy cane is shaped like a shepherd’s crook, used to bring lambs back into the fold. It is a reminder that we are all our brother’s keeper. Put the candy canes on the tree.