I'll Be Looking at the Moon, But I'll Be Seeing You

 I will honour Christmas in my heart, 
and try to keep it all the year.

I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future.

The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me.

I will not shut out the lessons they teach.

-Ebeneezer Scrooge

             

Because of several unfortunate incidents, including, but not limited to: the sunburn incident, the shingles incident, and the great thumb incident of aught-nine, and because Christmas waits for no (wo)man, something had to give this year.

So was it the cookies that got the boot? The Raspberry Shortbread Cookies, Dulce de Leche Gingersnap Sandwich Cookies or the Lemon Meringue Filled Ginger Snap cookies? Inconceivable! (They were awesome!)

Was it the Gramercy Tavern Gingerbread Cake or Meyer Lemon-Cranberry Bundt Cake? Not a chance.

The tourtiere? Nope (more on that later.)

It was Christmas cards that took the hit this year. No cheerful notecard with photos depicting our wondrous life in the Bay Area. No newsy newsletter. Not even the random talking squirrel Ecard (there was the occasional dancing elf card, but that's another story.)

I'm not sure I've ever missed a year of sending at least some cards...even when I had the perfectly legitimate excuse of two small children, or the Hanukkah Eve Wind Storm of 2006 that caused a power outage lasting over a week in below freezing temperatures, when I had to write cards with numb fingers by candlelight.

I fear my omission of the annual card writing only succeeded in offending the Ghost of Christmas Past.

I then had the audacity to provoke the Ghost of Christmas Present by making a short unexpected trip to the east coast two weeks before Christmas. I nearly lost three toes and a finger in the sub-zero weather, and I lost all my gelt in a rousing game of dreidel...so much fun-akkah!

So, to avoid triggering the three-strike rule by goading the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, I offer this appeasement: "Ode to the Christmas Ornament".

The history of the Christmas tree and ornament is actually pretty interesting. The first ornaments were fruits and nuts. Way back when, German families hung shaped gingerbread cookies on their tree as ornaments. I used to do that, too, until the year we were awoken in the middle of the night by mice jumping into the tree to eat the cookies. I don't do that any more.

I started collecting gold-covered brass ornaments- the kind you can buy at tacky souvenir shops- about 13 years ago when we drove from Boston to San Francisco.  And believe you me, there are plenty of tacky gift shops between here and there.  Because I don't live at 30 Rockefeller Plaza I can't display all of these ornaments on our tree, so for now I stick to the more conventional ornaments.

Other than that, our tree is pretty traditional.  Except I don't use tinsel...I find tinsel distracting :)

So, without further ado I give you my peace offering to the Spirits of Christmas Past, Present, and Future.  Here they are, in no particular order:

The year we got engaged

1982: Our first Christmas together

Yosemite

Washington:
Hurricane Ridge ornament,
Space Needle ornament,
Ornament made with the ash of Mount St. Helens,
Ornament from the Stanley Family Reunion 1990


Tijuana


Taiwan


Skiing


No Christmas tree is complete without a Simpsons ornament...
...ours has two!

San Leandro


Poky Little Puppy (complete with diamond earrings)


Oakham and Barre


New Orleans


New England:
Wellfleet,
Faneuil Hall in Boston,
Longfellow's Wayside Inn and Grist Mill,
Kennebunkport, ME
Gold dipped leaves from Walden Pond


Victoria, BC ornament,
Ornament made of olive wood from Bethlehem (Walnut Bowl Factory Store in Lebanon, MO)
Pigeon Point Lighthouse, Pescadero, CA
San Diego golf ball,
Two ornaments from Leavenworth, WA


Issaquah, WA


Handmade by me


Handmade by someone else


From the kids


Disneyland 2000, 2001, 2002


Curious George in NYC, 2001


Ornaments of accomplishment:
Emerson
UC Berkeley


Bodega Bay, Monterey, Placerville


Officially the Oldest Ornament on the Tree, circa 1976
(from somewhere in Southern California)


Berkeley 2000
Lawrence Hall of Science

And finally, the quirkiest ornament on our tree:
Liberace from Las Vegas

Hope your Yule Log is burning bright tonight!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I Ain't Afraid of No Ghost!

I have always loved all things Halloween. I think it may be my favorite Holiday.

I love the candy, obviously. I also love the corniness of bobbing for apples, doughnut races, and scary ghost stories (when I was a kid I read every book my library had by Hans Holzer.)

The Haunted Mansion is one of my favorite rides at Disneyland, and this is great.

I love scary movies, but no one will go with me, and I'm too scared to go alone. I was probably around 7 years old when I first saw The Blob, and it scared me to death (years later of course I wondered what could possible be frightening about gelatinous ooze from which one could literally stroll out of the way.)

I love all the new paranormal reality shows on TV now, much to the dismay of other members of the family....hey, they're Roto-Rooter Plumbers by day, ghost hunters by night! What's not to love?!!)

Dark Shadows was my favorite TV show when I was a kid- when I could sneak over to a friend's house to watch it, that is. Now I watch these episodes and they're so schlocky (this one is terrifying though, especially at 5 minutes and 8 seconds into the video. Schtick around until the end...you'll be glad you did!)

I am especially fond of pumpkin carving (if it's scary pumpkin carving, all the better.) I didn't think I'd be doing a pumpkin this year, what with my developing pathological fear of knives (if I had only known, I would have started doing this), but apparently people depend on me for these kind of things.

Pumpkins I Have Known:

Circa 1965: Arizonan Primitive Pumpkin

1999: Our "Party Like It's 1999" Berkeley Pumpkin
(quirky but lovable)

2000: Ooh, Our Scaaary Millenium San Leandro Pumpkin

2001: Our "If We Don't Have a Pumpkin the Terrorist Win" Patriotic Pumpkin

2002: Another San Leandro Pumpkin
(I think this subconsciously signified the
beginning of our interest in the culinary arts)

2003: What happened in 2003? We may never know...oooh, spooky!

2004: San Leandro again

2005: Issaquah Pumpkin
(surprised the pumpkins stayed lit with all the rain)

2006: More Issaquah, More Rain

2007: San Mateo: Great Pumpkins- Crappy Photos

2008: San Mateo again

2009: Ho Hum

It's obviously time to either move or perk up our pumpkin projects. Maybe next year I'll try something more challenging, like this, or this.

Here are some amazing pumpkins for your perusal.

If you've got a young 'un, or if you're feeling particularly agressive, you can take a hammer and nail (if you dare) to your pumpkin.

If you're wondering what to do with all your leftover pumpkins, there's always this.

Happy Halloween!

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Can't Touch This

The surgery to repair the tendon on my left hand went well; stitches came out last Tuesday. The pain is mostly gone now, and I'm in a splint for 6 weeks. PT won't start until week three; until then my thumb is completely immobilized, trussed-up like a Thanksgiving turducken.

A sort of ennui has settled over the house.

All the stuff I love to do is taunting me from their dusty corners. My sewing machine sits dejected- all those promises of pulling it out and getting started early this Holiday season tossed out like so many pattern pieces along the dusty trail of life (sigh).

My knitting needles mock me, aiming their pointy tips accusingly in my direction..so many unfinished objects.

My Cuisenart and rolling pin, Kitchenaid mixer- well, I can't even make eye contact with them, especially after seeing this. It's all just so, well, sad.

All the while the knives lay menacingly in wait in their new little Kapoosh-y home, all safe and dry, while I sit in this cursed splint, unable to perform even the most simple domestic tasks (If I had one of these, I would be awesome.)

Okay, I've got my Hammer-pants on; break it down!

The awesome pasta maker I found in a Wellfleet thrift store for $4?

Can't touch this

(but everyone else can:)


Pasta Making from Steve Miller on Vimeo.

All the free tulle I scored (thanks, Mom!) that's just begging to be sewn into produce bags?

Can't touch this!

I had such high hopes for this fabric from Paul and Mark, but...

Can't touch this!
Yo, I told you! Can't touch this!

I found this vintage fabric children's book at the same thrift store in Wellfleet; I imagined upcycling it into quilt squares

Can't touch this!

Steve's vest I've been trying to finish for a year. I was just about to separate the fronts and back when

Why you standin' there, man? Can't touch this!

Front View

Side View

Back View

Stop! Hammer time!

But that's just stinkin-thinkin'...I guess all is not lost. There are some things that apparently can be done with one hand tied behind your back: like this, or this, and it would be so cool right now to have one of these. A big "thumbs up" to this guy!

Thumbthing in the Way She Moves

I just finished Julia Child's My Life in France which I enjoyed immensely, and I've been spending some time trying to put into words exactly why.

Partly it was the pure joy that she imbued throughout the process of learning to cook, and as the book progresses you can see how her love of French food expands to all things French.

Even more endearing is her enthusiasm for putting these recipes down on paper, her commitment to getting every step of the recipe precisely correct, her thoroughness, attention to detail and pure delight in every aspect of the process, right down to the all the foibles and flub-ups. Just after beginning her work Mastering the Art of French Cooking she writes, "Now that I had started writing, I found cookbookery such fulfilling work that I intended to keep at it for years and years."

But mostly what I think I loved was the gradual process of her finding her true passion in life, her raison d'etre, if you will. Julia writes of her time at Smith College that she was "[...]only operating with half my burners turned on." Even at at the age of thirty-seven she was "[...]still discovering who I was." This gives me hope.

The one important message I took from this book: Don't be afraid of tackling the hard stuff or the unknown. The result doesn't have to be perfect; what's important is that you tried, and hopefully learning from your mistakes. "[...]it's all theory until you see for yourself whether or not something works."

Here is today's lesson: always take your time when you're putting your sharp knives away.

As Julia would say, Ouf!

We all make mistakes. Especially crafty people, with all those exacto knives and all. But as a wise person told me recently, cautious people may not end up in the emergency room, but they rarely create anything exciting, either.

So I bought one of these...

The jury is still out however. Reviews are mixed on this product, but it circumvents the surprisingly dangerous task of slipping the knife back into the cover that's supposed to protect you from cutting yourself on a dangerously sharp knife...you gotta love the irony.

Another good thing: it's dishwasher safe! But it can't hold knives that are more than 8" long (I would never store a knife as shown in this photo. Never. Ever.)

This is next on my list.

Burning questions remain, however:

• Will I ever thumb-wrestle again? (I coulda' been a contenda')
• Or do whatever the hell it is they're doing here?
• I do fear that my pencil spinning career has been cut short, so to speak.
• Even knitting is taunting me!

Big thumbs up to Steve for taking time away from Photoshopping gophers into wedding photos to help me promote my new line of "Thumbstrong" bracelets. Thanks, Steve!

All the Shingles Ladies

Have you heard? Thanks to the recession, Victory Gardens are making a comeback.

As is knitting. Apparently, "worried women knit". Maybe that explains my attraction to it.

Meanwhile, there are those things that are that are going the way of the dinosaur. Am I the only one concerned about the fact that our kids are growing up without knowing about carbon paper? They may go their entire lives without knowing how to dial a rotary phone! I don't want to be an alarmist or anything, but I feel we've really dropped the ball on this one.

Then there are the styles that should never, ever come back: shoulder pads, mullets, and acid wash jeans.

Lots of things from your childhood can come back to haunt you later in life: orthodontic braces, incontinence and acne, for example. I myself have actually suffered a recurrence of two of these childhood maladies. I'm not going to tell you which two ;)

For me, however, the chickens have come home to roost.... for lurking inside each and every person who has ever had chickenpox, a case of shingles lies in wait.....muwahaha!

Yes, it's been the "Itchy and Scratchy Show" at our house lately. What an uncomfortable little disease this is! I had much higher hopes for my second childhood. But, my inner child came out to play and ended up wreaking havoc, just like Thing 1 and Thing 2.

It started with a very puffy, painful, swollen, painful, red (did I mention painful?) eye. Luckily it was caught pretty early, and my cornea was not affected. But it's going on 4 weeks now and though there is no rash, it is still quite itchy and, yes, painful. David Letterman had shingles in his eye also. Here's his "Top Ten List" when he returned after being away from his show for 30 days. Once again, David Letterman has crystallized my thoughts exactly.

All this research of chickenpox has made me hungry

(KFC: My secret guilty pleasure)

Now that my confession is out of the way...over the last couple years, we have made a concerted effort to live more environmentally conscious lives. We've always tried to be responsible: recycling wherever we could, re-using when it was appropriate, trying to eat local when possible. But we always knew we could be doing much more.

When we moved back to California, we tried to stay very focused on what was important to us, and strove to live within walking/biking distance of the stuff we knew we needed to do and all the stuff we wanted to do. It has worked pretty well for us, and reinforces in us the commitment to try to reduce our reliance on fossil fuel. We are far from perfect in reaching this goal, but we're trying.

One of the great perks of living close to the stuff you need is having more time to do the stuff you want. Over the past few years we have become more and more interested in cooking and baking, especially in the perfection of these hobbies. One of the problems/advantages with striving for perfection is that you start to find that a product you used to happily buy off the shelf of the grocery store- such as bread- starts to leave you wanting. Lately we have branched out and tried to start baking our own bread (all sorts), with very mixed results. But when it's good, it's really, really good! But that's a post for another day.

Anyone that has eaten with us knows that we can spend literally hours critiquing our technique and/or taking pictures of our creations. I don't know why we get such a kick out of it- we just do. Interestingly enough, we find we have less of a desire to eat out at restaurants now, because we often decide, "Meh, we could do better." Slowly but surely we have become part of the "slow food" movement.

We are fortunate to be able to live so close to so many Farmer's Markets: Jack London Square in Oakland on Sunday mornings, The Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market in San Francisco on Saturday mornings, San Mateo Farmer's Market on Wednesday and a Whole Foods Market right nearby (Edited 8/13/09: I'll be shopping elsewhere for a while after reading this today.) And it's becoming more and more rare for us to buy something from a grocery that doesn't live by Michael Pollan's rules (from In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto) quoted here from the NYTimes:

• Don't eat anything your grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.
• Avoid those food products that come bearing health claims.
• Especially avoid food products containing ingredients that are a) unfamiliar, b) unpronounceable, c) more than 5 in number-- or that contain high fructose corn syrup.
• Get out of the supermarket whenever possible.
• Pay more, eat less.
• Eat mostly plants, especially leaves.
• Eat more like the French. Or the Japanese. Or the Italians. Or the Greeks.
• Cook. And if you can, plant a garden.
• Eat like an omnivore.

With that in mind,we decided to plant our own little garden (the operative word here being "little"). We don't have what you would call a traditional backyard...if you were to walk too far into our backyard you would be in for a surprise (you and the ducks, that is.) But, we do have a deck, so we decided to start a little container garden there, which we now refer to as "the lower forty".

As soon as I started feeling a little better, we planted three basil plants, parsley, thyme and oregano (I know what you're going to ask, and the answer would be we really don't use that much sage, and the rosemary is in the front yard.)

My first basil harvest

Our first meal with our first basil
Summer Vegetable Gratin

summer squash, zucchini with oil, pepper and thyme mixture

with caramelized onions

tomatoes

breadcrumbs and fresh basil

Dinner!

This meal was fussy, but it got an A+ in our critique (100% of our tasters agree.)


“Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything. 14% of people know that.”

The More You Know!

Throwing Caution To The Wind

The other day we went on a bike ride.

I bought a bike a while ago because it was pretty.

Apparently, according to my sources, you shouldn't buy a bike because it's pretty. Just because it seems all comfy and upright doesn't mean it is comfy, and upright isn't necessarily the best position to ride (isn't any of this stuff written down somewhere?)

It was a beautiful day, and I was feeling more confident on my new bike, getting the kinks worked out on the fit, etc. It was supposed to be a little over four miles one way, and because we had done 10.26 miles the week before, I felt up for the challenge.

About five minutes into the ride, I realized I hadn't put on any sunscreen. I debated for a minute going back to the car to get sunscreen, but I figured it was only supposed to be a short ride, and I'd probably be O.K.

It was a little more than 7 miles one way when we reached the Hayward Interpretive Center with the wind at our backs (a 20mph westish wind according to the Oakland International Airport.) Coming back, fighting a really strong wind, took much longer. My arms and shoulders were killing me, I think from trying to hold myself upright on the bike in the wind. What was supposed to be a short ride ended up being 3 hours long, 15.35 miles, but it felt more like 30.

I am a walking billboard of a cautionary tale....

The moral of the story: always go back for the sunscreen!

I should have plush safety barricades surrounding me...or nice, soft, wooly safety cones!

This Ain't No Party! This Ain't No Disco! This Ain't No Fooling Around!

I am in a very bad mood.



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It's official. California is falling into the Pacific, but it's not because of an earthquake. Governor Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency because of the legislature's inability to fix the budget 24.3 billion dollar deficit.

As of today, California will begin issuing IOU's to pay it's debts (except to the legislators, of course), mostly to the most neediest of the community.

Unemployment in California is at an all time high of 11.5%.

And, did you think you might want to save some money and go camping in one of California's 278 beautiful state parks? Think again!

If you're at all curious about where the troubles began, you can start here.

To top it off, California is in it's second year of a drought.

And don't even get me started on the cost of our new Anthem Lumenos Health Insurance plan (no really, you don't want to know...)

When life gives you lemons....

...make lemon bars.