Monday morning

the sun follows me around all day; actually I follow the sun. I start my day in the library, which is on the eastern side of the house. I am usually up before it, although today I slept until almost 7. It is cloudy and there will not be a lot of sun, but even a little bit warms up a room. This time of year, it is not bitter cold out, so 10 or 20 degrees makes a big difference. I put the heat on too, sometimes, but the sun somehow feels warmer. The library is a grandiose name for a small addition on this 100-year-old house. It does have books and computers in it, but so much more. The sewing machine and all the boxes of fabric and supplies that go with it. wrapping paper, a dresser stuffed with shawls and old sweaters. a keyboard I haven't used in years. old family photos, slides and vhs tapes that I plan to organize and throw away. The room has faux wood paneling and dropped ceiling tiles with fluorescent lights in the middle. The floor is plastic laminate that looks a little like blond wood. Most of it is covered by one of my grandmother's braided rugs that has held up for maybe 100 years itself. Near the door is a clear patch of plastic floor, good for taking off boots if it's wet outside. The back door is in the adjacent hall, and we have a boot tray in front of the bookcase. The desk, my fancy desk from Levenger that my Mom helped pay for, is buried, of course, like most desks. There is an inbox, full of random things that do not really belong in an inbox: a New York Times Sunday paper from a few weeks ago, that I thought I might read, but cleared from the dining room when guests were expected. A laptop that I use very occasionally, when we are traveling or for a remote yoga class. Early in the day, the sun is streaming in the east windows, bathing me in warmth as I sit at the computer, back to the bookcase, catching up on the emails from the day before and slowly, grinding away at the backlog from 6 years or more. I delete and delete and unsubscribe. But I also sign petitions and donate money and buy things, so I keep getting added to more and more lists!

Solitaire

Gray and damp, but not actually raining. I played a game of Spider, the solitaire that my Dad always played on vacation. It uses two decks and is hard to win. I figure it's good for my hands to shuffle 104 cards 10 times at least once a day. I often play more than once--my rule is I can play as many times as it takes until I win! So if I win the first game (rare), I only play once that day. It is hard to define why the game is so appealing to me. One part is tradition--the game reminds me of watching my Dad play and of showing younger people like my daughter or my nephew how to play. It's fairly complicated to explain and is available to play on line as well. There are advantages to that, like no shuffling and hints, but I only play with real cards. My favorite deck is getting pretty worn out. I know which card is the four of spades from the crease in the back, but that's not much of a help and sometimes I forget when I'm concentrating. After shuffling the decks 5 times, I deal ten cards face down. Then I repeat that 3 times, so there are 4 cards face down in 10 piles. I deal four more cards face down on the first four piles, to make the numbers come out right. Then I deal 10 more cards face up. If you're counting, that's 54 cards, so I have 50 left. I study the 10 cards I can see and put lower cards on higher cards--a Jack on a queen, a five on a six. They don't have to be the same suit, but it's better if they are, so I place the ones that match first, if there are any. If the cards are the same suit, they can be moved as a unit (unto another, higher card). So the Jack and Queen of diamonds can be moved together onto the King of diamonds. Then the card underneath can be turned up and played if there's a place for it. If you play all the cards in a pile, you have a space. A space is very handy, critical to winning the game, so I move cards from piles with fewer cards before the piles that still have 5 or 4 cards in them. You can put a card (or run of matching cards) in a space to rearrange something or turn over a card. When everything has been played that can be (or that you want to play) and all the spaces are filled, you deal 10 more cards face up on top of the 10 piles. It's a mess. Now you have a King in your space (Kings can only be removed when all the lower cards of that suit are piled on it; you win when all 8 suits are complete) or a 5 on a 4. By planning and thinking, you decide how best to resolve the chaos. Sometimes that leads to more cards being turned up and played and more spaces opening up, but sometimes there are few or even no cards you can play. They mysteriously seem to come in groups. I had 4 Kings in my first deal (not a good sign). Later, there were lots of Jacks. Perhaps it is the sense of following rules and making order out of chaos. Or the satisfaction of solving a complicated puzzle. I start each game naively hoping that it will go well--oh great, there's a two of Spades I can put on the three! As it devolves into a mess after 3 more deals, I say, Yeah, this one's not coming out...Usually I can tell within the first few deals if it's going well, but sometimes a really great deal will be followed by a deluge of kings or a deal with no moves...and sometimes I can pull out a surprise win on the last deal. I think I'll go try again!

asparagus tart

This is a great make-ahead recipe because you do it in parts. It uses a whole wheat crust (well, part whole wheat) that does best if you make it over a few days. Mix the flours and salt and butter (NYT Cooking recipe) and divide the dough in two, flatten it and let it chill overnight. The next day, roll it out and put it in the pan and chill overnight again. Meanwhile, sometime during those 2-3 days, you roast the asparagus. Rinse it and dry it and roll it around on a baking sheet in olive oil, then cook it for about 15 minutes. Saute some scallions in oil and add them to the asparagus with some herbs.

The third day, you mix up the eggs and put it all together and bake it. You can eat it hot or room temperature, so make it when you like (if it's hot, bake early in the day and eat later).

Happy New Year!

The first day hike was amazing, but it was not peaceful. There were people everywhere. I was afraid of the hanging bridge, but I went across it. I wanted to wait until no one else was on it, because it bounces so much, but they came out of the woods and walked on behind me. They didn't know I wanted to be the only one on it, or they didn't care. They were just going on with their walk. We signed up and we were a little later getting there than we had wanted. You know, someone had to use the bathroom just as we were leaving. There were three of us. It's harder the more people you have to wrangle. There were signs and volunteers directing us to the parking spots that were left. There was a crowd visible through the woods. I truly think there may have been 500 people there. There was a long hike and a short hike. More people went on the 4-mile hike--maybe 300? We waited for the second group. It was supposed to be about 2 1/2 miles. There was a line at the bridge. We chatted with other people waiting. We could see people ahead of us, behind us, across the river. Splashes of color, noise. It was a beautiful sunny day, not warm, but not bitter cold. We were all there for the same reason. Some people left because it was too crowded. Ray and Amy went to look at the rocks. I stayed back. I could see them most of the time, a red jacket, a hat. Near them was a small group getting ready to go in the water. A teenage boy and his younger brothers or smaller friends. He stripped down to his striped underwear and waded in. One of the others ran in and out, splashing, but he was calm and unhurried. On the way back, I saw another group in the water. The bare skin contrasted with the layers of clothing the rest of us were wearing. Is this a tradition I don't know about? We turned back, enough walking for us today. I was out of breath and didn't want to push myself too much. There was hot chocolate with marshmallows in compostable cups. Ray made a donation.

Yup, it's Fall.

The geese are gone; I did not hear their racket this morning. We live near a pond and they are quite noisy. They are also really messy, their poop is disgusting and it's everywhere around the pond--even sometimes in my fenced backyard (since they can fly). The only sad thing about them being gone is that I need to accept that Fall is really here--not the early sunny Fall days with pretty leaves and visits to historic sites. No, it is solidly mid-Fall and that means winter is coming. We have managed to avoid putting the heat on so far, but today might be the day. If it is sunny, the house warms up nicely. And it helps if I bake some pumpkin muffins (well, this batch will be squash, but they taste at least as good if not better). Right now, it's 64 in my house and the sky is a little cloudy. I might hunker down in my library (it has one wall of books) and turn the electric heat on just in here. Or I can take a nice warm bath and see if the sun has done its work when I come down again. I have a nasty cold, although I'm past the worst part. We went to the Topsfield Fair a week ago and I bet that is where I caught it. I usually wear a mask when I'm in a crowd, but didn't do it. Of course, I had to eat some funnel cake and French fries and drink Coke, so would have had to take the mask off then. I love the Flying Wallendas. We have seem them almost every year when we go. The grandfather is the announcer, probably in his 70s and still standing on his head on the wire, and riding a bike. His son carries the 4 year old on his shoulders across and then the daughter-in-law. I often cry at the daring of it. There's a clown poised to catch them on the ground. "What could he do?" I ask, and Ray says, "try to keep them from landing on their heads." There's a 2-year-old as well, but I think she is not going to be joining the family business. They juggle together, too. There was a crowd, as usual. No screens, no special effects, just a traditional family act, maybe 8 generations of practicing from an early age, starting on a low wire, I presume. Tuesday evening at yoga class I felt great, no back pain, able to do everything the teacher suggested. But Wednesday morning i had a cold, starting with the drippy nose. I take my Dayquil and my Nyquil and drink lots of tea and eat a million Ricolas.

Seriously rainy today, been threatening for a few days. So gray, too bad I'm not good at sleeping in! It is cozy and dry inside, but dark unless you turn the lights on. We are delighted to finally have a working upstairs bathroom, although it is a tub only and really too low. I have tried it a couple of times, you just have to be careful not to fill it too full or splash. Now that there is a new floor, I feel a little better that some water won't seep through to the floor below. Hopefully the guys who installed it caulked around the edge well enough. The old floor was curling up by the tub, sheet linoleum. This is kind of cool fake marble vinyl tiles--yes, I am afraid it is not made of anything sustainable. If people would stop burning the petroleum, we could use it for things like flooring many more years. Although it is cooler without the sun, it is not cool enough to bake, and we don't really want to open the windows and let the dampness in (and the heat out). But I can mix up some cookie dough and put it in the freezer for another day. There are still some things in the storage unit that I need to deal with, unless I want to become one of those people who pays for storage indefinitely. I could fit everything in the basement, which is quite dry, thanks to our dehumidifier. Ray empties it every day. I think it was our painter who said, "Just dump it into the washing machine, it's clean water." Before then, he was carrying it up the cellar stairs and dumping it outside. This is a win-win. A funny thing (kind of): we were not able to get the box spring upstairs for our guest room bed (a queen). It's sitting in the library until we decide what to do with it: find someone who wants it, store it indefinitely, trail it to North Carolina...I think we can pay the city to take it away. Tamara got a new bed and Molli and Michael brought us the platform bed she was using. They brought it upstairs and Ray put it together; it was kind of a pain, but looks pretty good. Imagine our surprise when we tried to fit the mattress on it! It was a full or double bed, not a queen! So now we are in the position of having to buy a frame for it, even though we already have three other beds that we don't need.

The best laid plans

The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry--I believe Mr. Robert Burns said it first, although in Old Scottish...and many others have said it since, including me, many times. Like the plan to walk every day or the intention to detail my meal prep ideas... the meal for today involved eggplant, but since I had leftover spaghetti for lunch, I can't have pasta, which is my favorite thing to have with eggplant. I also don't have any peppers or mushrooms, needed for the excellent Eggplant Scallopini. Or zucchini, which could make some variation on ratatouille, which I would then eat with rice instead of pasta. There is an eggplant curry I haven't made in a while, but it calls for peas and I don't think I have any in my freezer at the moment.