Letters From Grandma

Dear Amber and Aaron,

Sorry I'm so late with a thank you for the beautiful picture and dish. They made the trip just fine. Right after Christmas I had a bad cold that kept me down many days. The first time I was out of the house was Jan 9.
My word is it cold here -- Brrr. We also have more than our share of snow.
We didn't have our sewing bee at Church this morning. Too cold for us. Last year we made 60 quilts for missions.
I went to my Circle meeting yesterday. It was nice to get out.
Heidi was here for a quick trip to officiate at a funeral for a friend who was killed on a snowmobile. Very sad -- left a wife and 2 children. Speed! Speed! That did it.
Love,
Grandma B.

Folk Craft at the Double A Ranch

We've been keeping busy lately. Aaron finally finished his first woodworking project, and it's beautiful. Bookshelves are in high demand, so it was a good project to start with.

Our downstairs library is finally becoming more library-ish and less boxes-piled-up-along-the-walls-ish.

I've been working on some small projects, myself. I've been having fun making these dolls (template here):

I sent the boy doll off to a new boy, even though he wasn't perfect. I was kind of torn about sending it...it's weird when something doesn't turn out just right...do you give it anyway, or decide to scrap it, even though it took you most of a Saturday to make? Working with velvet is tricky...any tips?

I also spent the later part of December teaching myself how to embroider, which is so much fun.

I think the windows need window boxes, so this isn't quite done.

Yearly Report Card

I always like to start a new year by summing up the last one's highlights and projecting goals/ideas/etc for this fresh one.

2008 was interesting. It was hard. The biggest deal: The wedding, of course. I am a married woman. The big question is: does it really make any difference? The answer: I think so. Not that anything has changed dramatically within our relationship, but I've noticed that outsiders treat us a little differently. It has indisputably validated and solidified our relationship in the eyes of others. All of a sudden, he means something. "My husband and I share a car, so we need to plan a schedule in advance. I'll have to talk to him before I can agree to work late."
"Husband" seems to be this ghostly presence looming over most women. Never seen, but always discussed. But, we are a team. We work a lot differently. I think I really scared some people at work when I called Aaron to come help after none of the volunteers we had lined up showed up for a big event we were hosting.
"He'd really do that?"
Uh, if I ask nicely, I guess.
"But there'll be children here!"
I'll tell him not to wear his coat made of knives? What?
Did that get them on to call their husbands to high-tail it out to help? No, I think there was a game on or something. I like us.

Other things: loss. 2008 was filled with sadness and loss. I officially lost my best friend this time last year. That was equally liberating and difficult. When you are so close to someone, it is really hard to get over something like that. Maybe it's just me.
And Cody. I think my mind is just coming around to the truth of it. For the last couple months, the shock was overpowering. I feel so sorry for my family and what they're going through.

Things to look forward to in 2009:
A better garden, more crafting, new reading goals, more responsibility at work, etc. In 2009, Aaron and I will have known each other for 10 years. I don't even know how that is possible, but here we are...

65 Books

I should start off by admitting that I didn't reach any of my reading goals this year. I'm not telling what they were, I can't face the shame of naming my failure. The drop in my reading clearly coincides with starting the second job: I've only read 15 books since the end of August. 8am-8pm work days will do that to a reading schedule. Also, wedding planning will do that. Geesh. I am not listing the multitudes of wedding books I consulted, but I decided to list a couple that really helped in planning the ceremony, which I read cover-to-cover at least twice. I am also not listing the hundreds of picture books I've read for work, but maybe will come up with a best-of post for that, because there were some really great ones.

My reading was kind of all over the place this year. I read a lot of kids books in attempt to get up to date for work. It was fun and light, but in general, I've noticed that many, many kids books have an interesting premise but no follow-through. Please let me know if you have a suggestion in this department. Nothing I read this year even came close to the Phillip Pulman books. I also read a lot of big, fat books. And I was able, for the first time, to read many books released in 2007-2008. The best were probably Tree of Smoke or The Good Thief.



Books Read in 2008

1. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay - Michael Chabon
   
   
2. Macbeth - Shakespeare



3. Revolutionary Road - Richard Yates



4. A River Runs Through It - Norman Maclean



5. I Do: A Guide to Creating Your Own Unique Wedding Ceremony - Sidney Barbara Metrick



6. Wedding Words: Vows - Jennifer Cegielski



7. 100 Love Sonnets - Pablo Neruda



8. Middlemarch - George Eliot



9. Othello - Shakespeare



10. Winesburg, Ohio - Sherwood Anderson



11. Tender at the Bone - Ruth Reichl



12. Falconer - John Cheever



13. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH - Robert C. O'Brien



14. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons



15. Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston



16. If On a Winter's Night a Traveller - Italo Calvino



17. Grendel - John Gardener



18. The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner



19. The Gastronomical Me - MFK Fisher



20. The Heart of the Matter - Graham Greene



21. Bright Lights, Big City - Jay McInerney



22. On Writing - Eudora Welty



23. The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov



24. Love Medicine - Louise Erdrich



25. Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf



26. King Lear - Shakespeare



27. The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon



28. The House of Widows - Askold Melnyczuk



29. Moby Dick - Herman Melville



30. Tree of Smoke - Denis Johnson



31. In Watermelon Sugar - Richard Brautigan



32. The Shawl - Cynthia Ozick



33. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting - Milan Kundera



34. The Red Pony - John Steinbeck



35. Coriolanus - Shakespeare



36. The Color Purple - Alice Walker



37. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce



38. In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto - Michael Pollan



39. Jesus' Son - Denis Johnson



40. Appetite for Life: The Biography of Julia Child - Noël Riley Fitch



41. Summer - Edith Wharton



42. The Days of Abandonment - Elena Ferrante



43. I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith



44. Middlesex - Jeffery Eugenides



45. Scoop - Evelyn Waugh



46. Setting Free the Bears - John Irving



47. Twilight - Stephenie Meyer



48. The Amulet of Samarkand - Jonathan Stroud



49. Hamlet - Shakespeare



50. The Lightning Thief - Rick Riordan



51. Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurtry



52. From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler - E.L. Konigsburg



53. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle - David Wroblewski



54. Timon of Athens - Shakespeare



55. The Awakening - Kate Chopin



56. Princess Academy - Shannon Hale



57. The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks - E. Lockhart



58. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte



59. Inkheart - Cornelia Funke
    
    
60. The Good Thief - Hannah Tinti
    
    
61. The Year of Magical Thinking - Joan Didion
    


62. Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
    


63. The Anger of Aubergines - Bulbul Sharma



64. Beware of God - Shalom Auslander

65. Consider the Oyster - MFK Fisher

Stats:
Books over 500 pages: 11

Children's Novels: 11

non-fiction: 9

Top 5 Books Read in 2008:

5. Bright Lights, Big City - I just really liked this book. It was so funny and heartbreaking. I didn't really expect much from it going in, but it just thrilled me.

4. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay - Chabon at the top of his game. Aaron didn't like this as much as I did, for some reason. I think it's brilliant. There were moments (the airplane/dog) when I just fell to pieces over this book.

3. The Sound and the Fury - This is the better of the top three, but the other two just left me smitten the way a book you don't know much about does to you. I knew this would be good going in and it didn't disappoint. Don't let Faulkner scare you, there is nothing to be afraid of.

2. The Master and Margarita - I just loved the humor in it. UMassians, if you even exist in the world anymore, do not pass up the chance to take a class with it's translator, Prof. Burgen in the Russian dept. Umass authorities: think twice before not allowing someone to get english credit for spending a semester reading Tolstoy with this gifted translator like you did to me. I couldn't justify spending so much time and effort - literally thousands of pages - on one class that wouldn't count towards my major and it is one of the things I really regret about college, especially after reading this book.

1. Cold Comfort Farm - I think I read this whole book with a smile on my face. It isn't the best written on the list. I won't even think about the ending as I'm giving it the #1 slot, but there was just something about this book that I really, really loved. It was so funny and sweet.

Honorable Mention: Jesus' Son. It probably should be #1, it is brilliantly written. Denis Johnson feels like a real writer in our time.



A Word about MFK Fisher: It isn't fair to rank her, because her work wasn't read for the same reasons as novels, etc. She is one of the best writers I've come across in recent years. Completely passionate about food, completely pretentious, extremely witty and wise. She is the reason I want to study food writing.

Bottom 5 Books Read in 2008:



5. Middlemarch - Boring.

4. Moby Dick - Wasted precious hours of my life. This is the only time I ever felt that a Reader's Digest Condensed may have been a better idea. It just went on and on. Hardly any of it was actually story, it was mostly antiquated scientific info on whales and other sea mammals. It felt so choppy and so, so long. I read this during the week of my wedding. Why?

3. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle - the first 150 pages were really well done. After that, it got strange and weird and transparent.

2. Can't think of one that really got under my skin enough to list, but this needs to be #1:

1. Twilight - This book sucked big time. What terrible writing. I read it for work, in attempt to get hip to what the kids are reading these days (I feel old). I keep telling myself that I should calm down, that it's written for teenagers. But then I think that I wouldn't have been so easily fooled as a teen reader. Why are kids reading such crappy books? The movie was just as bad. It was cringe-worthy. Saw that for work, too, and seriously eyed the book I had in my handbag the whole time. Kids, read something better.

Who else needs a cup of cheer?

Chickens and Peppermint Ribbons

Aaron and I recently re-wallpapered the kitchen. The old people that lived here before us had really boring taste (as you can tell from the living room drapes that we still haven't taken down that are featured in many pictures). Here is the before picture of the kitchen wallpaper:

Blah. Totally not me. I always wanted a red kitchen. Red and white. I didn't have a picture in my mind of what I wanted or how exactly it would come together, but I've been slowly accumulating red items for about 10 years (I was the 16 year old that used her Christmas money to buy a red kitchen clock instead of whatever 16 year olds buy). And so, after years of apartment leases that didn't allow painting, when we bought the house I was going to finally do things my way. And I wanted my red kitchen!

As I was trying to decide on how we should do it, I kept thinking Candy Store. Something fun and juicy. We were only re-papering one wall, the others are painted a flat white, so I could go a little wild without creating a monster.

I think Aaron and I turned into monsters trying to hang the wallpaper, though. It sucked big time. We both agreed that we will never do it again. Trying to time everything just right and align everything was frustrating and by the end we weren't speaking to each other. But now it's up, it's cheery, we're happy.

It looks kind of Christmasy. It's like pretty wrapping paper.

We got some beautiful ribbon candy in the mail -- it's so nice looking that I don't want to eat it. I just like putting it in the chicken by the polka dots, and lifting the lid.

Tree

Confession time: We put our tree up well before Thanksgiving. I was feeling low so Aaron took me to a tree farm. Had I known we were going to have a photo-op, I might have taken a shower and changed out of sweatpants. But I thought we were going to Walmart, and the outfit seemed about right for that kind of shamefulness. Yes, Aaron is wearing two kinds of flannel!

I think we picked a good one. There are a few holes, but you can't really see them because we put them toward the back. We didn't go for the 1/2 room model like last year because, for the first time in my adult life, I have a couch in the living room. We've used futons and day beds and lawn chairs long enough! I am officially an adult. And the cat officially has a new scratching post. Ugh. She's like spiderman: she'll claw her way all the way across the back of it in seconds. I recall similar maneuvers on the box spring Brennan had resting against the wall when we stayed with him when she was a kitten. And Meghan's curtains! Gah. It was embarrassing because I was like "oh, don't worry, she's really well behaved." Two seconds later, she's climbing the walls. We've resorted to the spray bottle. Elf is more afraid of it than she is.

Anyway, this is about the Christmas tree. I had to get in the right mood to decorate it, so I put on a silly sweater, made some hot chocolate, popped some popcorn, and put on the Charlie Brown Christmas album. And all was merry.

We couldn't get Matilda to sit with us

I like putting the lights on first thing in the morning, having a cup of coffee and reading Little Women. You can't beat that.



Now it's December and I don't have to hide my tree. It is open season for the holidays. Bring it.

Thanksgiving

We had a bit of a misfit Thanksgiving, inviting another orphaned couple over for turkey and whatnot. We missed Dana and Neal, our usual Thanksgiving company, but I just needed to stay in a home-base this year.

Also, since we were doing that, we decided it was a good idea to try to cook everything from scratch, for the first time ever. I am all about turkey on normal days of the year, I think it's a good, cheap, unfancy food (can't beat taking a real turkey sandwich to work for lunch). But I've never done the whole meal. Most unusually, I got most of the recipes online, and I can't take photos that are any better than the ones already up, so I'll give you the links:

• Pecan Pie
• Corn Bread Stuffing (which I have to admit, wasn't the best. Aaron and I think that the trick might be to have some white bread in with the cornbread, instead of our home-baked dense wheat)
• Sweet Potato and Sage Gratin (one note, even though people post things on the internet and provide beautiful pictures, it does not mean they are good recipe authors. This was a beautiful recipe and it tasted great, but some important things felt missing)
• Aaron made the gravy, and used his own experiments, while taking a tip from Martha to puree roasted vegetables (We netflixed Martha's Thanksgiving special for inspiration.)
• We made our usual mashed potatoes with nutmeg and added 2 tbsp. of horseradish and 1+ cup of buttermilk to make it delicious.

And some other tasty things. Maria made beautiful cranberry sauce and baklava. I've never had baklava actually made by a Greek citizen before. It was out of this world.

Cooking felt good. I liked taking the day to cook....and cook and cook with Aaron. It was therapeutic. It's something I wish we could do more often. We do good at cooking together and don't fight too much (however, with our limited counter space, things did get a little tense when the gravy needed to be made). I can't say the same for wallpapering. More to come on that, later.

First Snow

In November

In November, the smell of food is different. It is an orange smell. A squash and a pumpkin smell. It tastes like cinnamon and can fill up a house in the morning, can pull everyone from bed in a fog. Food is better in November than any other time of the year.

-Cynthia Rylant, In November

puff pastry leaves with goat cheese and caramelized onions

Things I was Going to Blog About This Fall: In Photos

I had big blogging intentions for this fall, but couldn't quite get my act together. I've been so busy. So much is happening. Here are a few things I've been meaning to tell you about:



The praying mantis that came to visit us




The time Matilda dressed up like an Ewok




Our run-in with Jesco White




Yaffa's visit and the 400 dishes she made for us. The biggest and best being Kubba!
Aaron making kubba




Kubba balls




Amber trying




The finished product




Kitty hates posing for pictures




And a good dose of Elf never did anyone wrong

one small step