Trader Joe's Honor Roll

After all the tree drama, today's post is just a light, fun list of food I love to buy at Trader Joe's. If you don't have a Trader Joe's near you, I am so sorry. They're not everywhere, which is stupid. When we were deciding areas of the country we'd be willing to move to for his job, I told Mark that I wouldn't live anywhere more than 20 minutes from a Trader Joe's. Part of that is cultural, part of it is addiction.

Here's the stuff I get nearly every visit. I put the prices on things I bought today and have the price for; others have been in my pantry, so I don't have the receipts anymore. These are more staples, but I'll post a list of some of their packaged meals soon. They're delicious, though we've had some misses I'll warn you about.

First up, olive oil. I'm as snobby about olive oil as I am about wine. Eight years (going on nine!) in California can do that do a girl. The big bottle on the left is great for cooking--I used to saute veggies, get a sauce ready, whatever. The bottle on the right is for lovers, baby. It's about $6 a bottle, but it tastes like it should cost $25, and I hate to admit it, but I have paid $25 for a bottle of olive oil (I was single and had more disposable income--rolling in that teacher dough...). I could drink this out of a cabernet glass. Lordy. Pour it on a plate, sprinkle a pinch of kosher salt from up high, crack fresh pepper next, then dredge through it with hot bread. You'll die. Just totally die.

Here's another little side: Pour a can or two of these black beans into a pan, shovel two or three or four tablespoons of peach salsa, cook until it boils then let it simmer until whenever (but not forever or it'll brick up). Add chicken or ground turkey or carnitas or carne asada or fish if you're feeling it, some shredded colby jack, sour cream, jalapenos, and eat!! If you don't have any fancy fixin's, this is excellent straight up, and CHEAP!!

I have a love/hate relationship with the minced onion/shallot/garlic mix ($1.69). It's awesome because I'm a crier who hates the smell of raw members of the Allium family (and there's your fun fact for the day! What's up genus??), but it's awful because it reeks!! I literally had to roll down my windows driving home from the grocery store this morning.

I double seal the stank in my awesome Pyrex containers with rubber seals. I'll use this mix right quick. It's important to confront difficulty head-on. Take the reigns and drive these onions directly into pasta sauce and tequila lime marinade pronto.

I love these when we get a craving for Mexican, Thai, or Indian. The taco seasoning needs major salt though, so be ready with the shaker. The chutney is lovely, but too spicy for kids even though it's sweet too. I dump a jar onto chicken, tilapia or cod and bake it in the oven for however many minutes I should. Serve it over rice with sauteed red and yellow peppers. Yummers. The satay sauce is perfect. Use it for classic chicken satay or pra ram with broccoli and spinach and jasmine rice. Use it for a crudite dip. Paint some on your wrist and wear it like a watch that you can eat, I don't care. Just get it, crack it open, and live life to the peanutty fullest, people! (When I start writing like this, it's usually because of low blood sugar. Lunchtime is upon me.)

Agave is awesome. Because of my Southern and Midwestern heritage, I am almost angrily suspicious of sugar substitutes. Agave won me over. It's mild, not like honey, which I don't particularly care for. Put your favorite fruit in a saute pan, cook it down a bit, pour some of this in (1/4 to a 1/2 cup), and maybe a tiny pinch of salt (I only ever use kosher, btw, because it is perfect in every way and because iodized salt tastes like metal). Pour the fruit over ice cream or Greek yogurt. I cook peaches this way and put them over roasted pork tenderloin, which usually almost makes up for the pork not being cooked by my dad or my brother. Almost.

Don't let the name fool you. This is fruity crack sugar ($2.49/bag), but holy pajamas. Mark can eat a bag in four minutes.

I struggle with chocolate. I need it every day, happily and sadly, but obviously I can't have too much. Snacky-sized ones are usually too small, so I end of eating a big-bar equivalent of snackies. That is because I lack what is apparently called "portion control." These ($1.99/box), however, are the perfect size. I have to sit down and really savor it, but just one makes me happy, and I don't go back for more. Unless it's been one of those really bad days. Then I have two. But never three. I don't need three.

So there's the staple list. I love knowing what other people like, because I'm afraid to try things cold. Post in the comments if you've got some TJ's love to share. :)

Red Dirt Girl...

This is just to say that I'm still here! I'm just mired in a rat infestation in our attic. I was able to escape today after Mark got home and drove out of town--it doesn't take long--to practice shooting my camera on manual. I took this, on manual, but then messed with it in Photoshop, which kind of defeats the purpose?

Special thanks to Liz and Mike, who kinda talked me down from the rat-infested ledge today. Hearts.

It's Time for School; It's Time for School...

Today is the first day of school for lots of people in my life, so I thought I'd write a little about my favorite memories of being a teacher. It's really just a list of students, and what you see here is pathetically incomplete. I could go on and on, but you'd get bored.

I'm so lucky to be in the first generation of teachers who get to friend their students on Facebook (after graduation) and watch them go on in their lives. It's wonderful.

If you're a teacher and you love what you do, I hope you have a shiny, happy year. If you're a teacher and you don't love it, and I say this with all appreciation of money and the recession and obligation and everything, but GET OUT. If you're a parent of a student, I wish you easy drop-offs and a year free of worrisome mid-quarter reports. And if you're a student, make good choices!!

Here is my highlight reel:

The one who showed up one morning with one shoe on. He said he just forgot the other one.

The one who had no inner monologue. Everything came out of her mouth. I pitied her because I’m the same way.

The one whose mother bullied him about not being smart enough. He was the same one who used to say the most beautiful, most humane things in class. He struggled with details, but he saw the universe clearly.

The one who brought a “bomb” to class and put it in my hands when I asked him what was in his sweatshirt pocket. It was calculator he had modified heavily, so much so we called the bomb squad.

The tall, gorgeous one who was teased constantly for being tall and gorgeous.

The first period class that made me a coffee mug for my birthday…with all their pictures on it. Every single face.

The twins I always mixed up.

The one who nicknamed me VRob. It stuck. For. Ever.

How they all used to write about how much they loved their families--their mothers and their fathers and their brothers and sisters. They would write it in class like a secret they didn’t want anyone to know.

The one who read the Polish poem in the original Polish, even though he wasn’t Polish and had no idea what he was doing. I cried I laughed so hard. It wasn’t disrespectful. He just wanted to try and he went with it.

The one who grew a foot in eight months.

The one who didn’t grow at all in four years.

The one who had a strong preference for my black plastic-rimmed reading glasses and not the wire-rimmed ones and would be audibly disappointed anytime the wire ones were on my face.

The one who broke up the fight.

The one who, when I asked if anyone had any questions about the pronoun lesson, raised her hand and said, “Did you wax your eyebrows yesterday? They look different.”

The veteran at my community college who needed synonyms for “bullshit.” He had a hard time writing about his deployment without using “bullshit” at least twice in every sentence.

The one who ate Styrofoam out of a shipping box and explained in detail that it was totally fine to do so.

The one who came to my empty room during lunch and came out of the closet.

The one who came to my empty room about seven weeks into my pregnancy and said, “We know something’s wrong.” I had thrown up every morning, sometimes in between classes, and I was trying so hard not to let it show. I think they thought I had cancer or something and wasn't telling them, the little sweethearts.

The one who asked, "Did you buy that sweater . . . like that?"

The CC student who came to class reeking of pot and could write only about dealing drugs. He used to explain little things to me, like this: “So, Ms. R, my friend wanted an Infiniti, but he wanted a pick-up truck. Now, Inifiniti doesn’t make a pick-up, but money talks…”

The one who indignantly yelled, “I didn’t say anything!!” and then said, “Well . . . I might have said something.”

The one who photographed my wedding.

The one who sang “Billie Jean” at my wedding!

The one who played a violin in class. A violin she had made herself.

The one who hid in the storage closet three minutes after class started, for the rest of the entire period, just to see if I would notice. I did not.

The one who sent an email pleading with me to recommend him for Honors English. The subject of the email: “Honos English.”

The one who said, “I love this class. It’s like we’re a family. Only we like each other.”

The football players who sported the kiddie-sized Disney backpacks.

The one in the van in South Africa who began to choke—really choke—on a piece of fruit, and the one who, after the first one coughed up the fruit, started to cry and yelled, “Why do you always do this to me???”

The one who did a backflip off a desk when I wasn’t looking and broke his wrist. Great.

The one whose mom passed away that year.

The one whose dad passed away that year.

The one who danced and sang and made everyone happy and joyful no matter what . . . he was the same one who had lost his mom.

All the ones who awaited Ellie’s arrival as if she were their baby sister, and showered her with little gifts and cards and all sorts of love. All of that treasure has been kept for her in a special box, so that when she's older, she'll know how much she was loved by the kids I had before her.

The one who said, "Ms. Robinson, I could never be a teacher. We drive me crazy."

. . .

To a gloriously funny, lively, sweet and lovely school year, for everybody!

Red Bed, Fried Carbs, and One Grainy Turkey

Happy Saturday! Here's Red Bed! The guard thingy takes away some of the glory of the finished bed, and of course it's drowning in stuffed animals, but there you go. The snake is made from sweater sleeves after Ellie went through a snake phase. She got to hold one at school, and this is the one we have at home.

Family dinner tonight was lovely. Two of the few things I need to be soulfully happy are a farmer's market bouquet from the hubs, and sweet potato fries from Trader Joe's.

Ellie doesn't care about the flowers.

This is totally random, but I wanted to share this. This turkey is technically wild but has adopted our friend Katie's neighborhood. Sometimes in the evening when we drive home from hanging out with Katie's family, we spot this turkey (always) on top of this Toyota. It's awesome! Apparently, she had a son, who was really aggressive and one time showed up in Katie's backyard like a serial killer trying to get at her son, and eventually that same turkey slashed a horse to bits just outside of town with its crazy turkey talons. They had to put it down it was so bloodthirsty. But the Mama Turkey isn't murderous, she's just cute, and sad about her son probably. Ellie is obsessed with her. And I wanted you to see her.

Friday Morning (and into the Afternoooooon...)

Ellie woke up a bit early this morning and was insistent that we go to school to see her friends. I nearly cried. This transition has been rough on the little trooper, and today was the first day she popped out of bed and was like, "Let's go already!!" Rock on, lady!

This meant that I got about 45 extra minutes of morning. I needed them. Everything is taking longer than I thought today.

I found out yesterday that I have been offered a reading at a local gallery here in Davis. My professor and publisher Sandy McPherson made it happen, and I'm so, so grateful. I haven't read in five years, so it's a big deal, and I think it will be the last time I read the Carrier poems as a group. It just feels time to move on from them, and the timing is strangely appropriate. Even though it's perfectly understandable, I don't like that my poems are tied to September 11th, and I can't believe it's been a decade since then. I also think because of what happened two weeks ago, I'd like to read them one more time and not tack on newer poems (not that I have many anyway). Read the greatest hits, so to speak, and then be done. There are plenty of other things to write about or read to people. Those things just happen to be in my head and nowhere else right now.

So, the problem this morning was that the gallery needed a recent author photo and bio. The bio is easy enough, but the photo was a little trickier. Back in Philly, I would have called up Brooke, one of my awesome Mamas from my Mama group, and she would have worked her magic. I was missing her this morning! I do have my new camera, and it has a timer, but getting it to focus properly and then for me to sit in the right place and make a nice face--all that was kind of hard! I don't like smiling for author photos, especially for anything Carrier-related, because the poems are kind of sad and I don't want to smile widely and sell a feeling people aren't really going to get at a reading or in the book. But it's tough to look unsmiley and pleasant. I end up looking confused and sedated. It took a lot of tries.

I got a slightly-out-of-focus picture that will have to work because the camera battery was dying and I was sick of the tripod and at some point it's just time to get on with the day. When I get the details of the reading, I'll post the link.

After that, I got started on the projects for the day: Red Bed and the Blue Comforter.

Red Bed was easy.

Before: black bed. $30 including slats and kiddy mattress, craigslist.

(All the photos today are iPhone ones. The Nikon needed to recharge.)

After: Red Bed!

This took exactly one can of spraypaint.

The Blue Comforter was harder:

Before: old, white Ikea comforter from college:

During:

This is when I started to get nervous:

Shoving the comforter into the blue gave me corpse hands.

Good to know for Halloween.

The dyeing process means three runs of the washing machine:

1) With the dye and the comforter.

2) With detergent and the comforter.

3) With bleach and detergent and nothing.

The comforter is in the dryer now, and it turned out just as the lady in the fabric store said it would: looking like bad tie-dye. I told her it was a what-the-heck kind of project, and I'll cover what I can with fabric paint polka dots (BIG ONES). For a potentially cute-ish bedspread at the cost of a bottle of dye and some paint I already have, we'll just see how it goes. Ellie's potty training right now, and it'll be nice for her to pee all over stuff we're not too invested in. Silver linings!

Anyway, after all those cycles, and one in the dryer, here's the comforter. It's not too bad:

But it does have blotches:

So this is how I did the polka dots. The bucket is just for tracing circles, the top for big circles and the bottom for smaller ones. The pen is a disappearing ink pen I use for tracing sewing patterns onto fabric.

My stash o'paint.

I strategically placed polka dots over blotches.

The ink will disappear on its own, and if it doesn't, I can just steam it out with an iron.

Freehand circles aren't as hard as I thought, and it was easier not to use a stencil. This one was in-process and looks better now. :)

Repeat about 16 times while listening to Brett Dennen radio on Pandora, and done! Four hours in the sun should set everything. Or fade it. That's life, ain't it?

The finished bed in Elo's room will post tomorrow if nothing goes awry. Hooray! I'm gonna go get the Ellicus and take her out for a snack. :)

Why I Sew

Note: I came to love blogs, and to realize how spectacularly beautiful some of them are, through sewing blogs. Grosgrain is a favorite of mine, and so is Made. Dana, the author of Made, has a section in her blog about why she sews. I thought I'd answer the question too, since some of what I'll be posting here is stuff I've sewn.

. . .

A few months back, I started to post a lot of my little sewn things on Facebook. I liked showing my friends what I had made, since sewing is a pretty solitary activity (at least the kind I do is), and it was fun to get some props for making something on my own.

After I posted a photo of a felted wool owl I had handstitched, a friend of mine (you know who you are and you know you're reading this!!) wrote to me and basically said, "You should be writing more and sewing less. You're a writer."

I responded to the sentiment by sewing another owl.

I should write more because I'm good at it. I sew because I'm not good at it, and that's why I like it and why it's meaningful to me.

My grandmother was 89 when she taught me to embroider. I was 29. This is not the usual image people have of a grandmother teaching her granddaughter to stitch, but there we were, in the kitchen of her little ranch house in Newton, Kansas, in the retirement community where she and my grandpa lived (and she still does, at 94, God bless her every day). She still has that classic midcentury furniture and the little square breakfast table (think blue-collar Mad Men!), and that's where we sat while she held the hoop and told me what to do with the thread and cloth. My embroidery looked loose and wobbly, fluffy almost. Grandma's embroidery--the embroidery she did that day, a decade after having a stroke that affected her arm--was straight and tight and efficient and gorgeous. I said to her, "Grandma, mine doesn't look like yours!" To which she replied, in her frank, Kansas way, "Well, I've had more time to practice." Uh, yes.

I love it that my grandma can still school me in sewing. I have always prized book-learning and conceptual understanding; you can't get a master's degree in sewing. It took me a long time to really appreciate that that didn't mean it wasn't really hard or didn't take a lot of critical thinking. I stood in the fabric store today, awed by a older woman's quilt for her grandchild. She'd done the whole thing by hand. It was a heaping dose of "You can't do that, so shut up about yourself," a medicinal moment that helps prevent The Smug and also comes in "Car Repair," "18-Wheeler Driving," and "Aircraft Carrier Propeller-Welding" flavors.

I sew because some of my problems stem from not doing enough on my own. See the yard sale post. Would that much stuff be in our house if I had to make it all? Oh most definitely not. I would have four skirts, maybe one dress, and for shirts, I would wear pillowcases with armholes cut out of them (Shirts are crazy to make. I don't think it can be done without magic.)

That my grandmother or my mom or anyone else can look at a bunch of 2D shapes on tissue paper and figure out how to turn them into something that flatters a 3D person is an insane feat of cognition and engineering. I'm not good at that part. I think I made a skirt upside-down once, and I know that I sewed the top part of a dress inside-out to the bottom part, which was inside-in, and you can't fix that without taking a blade to it. The pattern drawers at fabric stores should be labelled "shirts," "dresses," "pants," and "despondent insanity." Then people would know.

The machines break, the needles break, the fabric tears or pulls or won't feed through, the thread is too strong or too weak or not the right color even though you thought it was the right color, the presser foot is the wrong kind and is now eating your owl, the felt won't stitch together, you have to do it by hand. You have to stop and do it over. Or you have to keep it, and live with it. You have to decide what you're going to do. It's harder than it sounds.

I made a skirt once and the zipper pinched a tiny bit of my backside every time I zipped it up. I'm not redoing that zipper, ever, but I sure am going to wear that skirt. Even if it makes me bleed.

Why would I still sew?

Partly, I sew as a lesson in economics, a field my husband will tell you I clearly know nothing about. So it's my kinetic education in labor and cost and profit. I continue to be amazed that it is cheaper to buy a toddler dress at Target than to make one, but of course I'm not surprised that it's less risky too. If Ellie doesn't like it, I just take it back and no one's feelings are hurt. High-end quilts can become attractively priced when the alternative is (even machine-)stitching them yourself. On the whole, I have found that I'm more thoughtful of the people behind the making of the clothes I buy, be they in factories if I'm buying something at a warehouse store, or those artisans from whom I might buy something handmade. That little doll at the craft fair I didn't want to pay $50 for probably took 3 hours to make, plus material. What's my time worth to me? What is someone else's time worth to them? This consideration is especially real when I buy shirts, because I hate making them and can't imagine spending all day, every day doing just that. That would be a circle of hell. I've tried more and more to buy used things of every sort, to eliminate the worry about labor (and, let's face it, cost). Much of the fabric I use comes from the thrift store, usually from men's shirts and sweaters, since they can be so large. When I buy yardage from a fabric store, I tend to feel it's out of laziness or lack of patience ("I didn't check the thrift store first. I should have browsed fabric lots on eBay..."). But sometimes I just need wide, flat yardage right now, which is its own lesson in time and energy and money. I know it sounds a little Michael-Pollan-meets-Martha-Stewart, and I get that. But there it is anyway.

Mostly, though, I sew because of what happened just before and just after I put that owl on Facebook.

Before I put it online, I finished it. That's it, that's the "it." I just sat there, knowing that I got my project to "work," and it felt disproportionately exhilarating to what I had actually done. I just sat there at my table, thinking, "It's not exploding. It's not melting. It actually looks cute! I did it! I'm calling Grandma!"

Right after the photo went on Facebook, I gave the owl to Ellie, who was right around 2. I asked her if she liked it, and she looked at it, really considered the question, shook her head solemnly and said, "No."

Then I told her I made it.

She made this puzzled face like, "I don't know what you're saying to me right now. Please hold on." And then a smile came over her and she lit up and grabbed the owl and hugged it. It's on her bed right now. Even if it's not perfect, and even if its creation meant swallowing a tablespoon of growling frustration, there's a deep, lasting sweetness to something handmade.

I hope that the things I make for her will help her understand, even as a toddler, that people can make things (and not just out of Play-Doh). My dad made her 180 blocks for Christmas, and the box to put them in. He also made her a wooden duck that waddles when she pulls it. She asks regularly if something was made by someone she loves. That's pretty awesome, even if she quickly follows up by asking, "...Or is it just Target?"

I'll be turning the fabric in the first photo into two skirts over the next few days. They're really easy to make, and the tutorial is here, on Made. I'll also be dyeing and fabric-painting a comforter for Ellie's new bed, and painting the bedframe, so that the bed she calls "Red Bed" because of the flannel sheets will actually be a red bed. I'll post pictures. :)

Tales from a Yard Sale or Two

We had two yard sales in two Sundays.

The reason is because, even though the math says that this house is only 10% smaller than our old house, it is rejecting about 30-35% of our stuff. Perhaps this new house has moral reasons. I would probably nod knowingly if you told me that our new house--in its California, hippie-ish town with its less-is-more way of life--is offended that we moved a billion pounds of crap here and wanted to shove all that crap through its adorable stuccoed face.

Take, for example, the rocks. I realized when we got here and started unpacking that we had shipped--across the entire country--ten or eleven softball-sized stones I had collected over the years, usually from beaches. They weigh about eight pounds each, totalling about three toddlers' worth of geological debris. We made the struggling public university system of the brokest state in the union pay to move our (um, my) ROCKS. I don't want to set an ugly precedent here and curse, so I'm just going to say that yes, we know we are a word that starts with "a" and ends with "holes."

We also have kept all of the trappings of any Future Baby. We'd like to have another kid, most days, so we've schlepped one giant trash bag filled with clothes for each clothing size, and a kid goes through four sizes in the first year, and Ellie's two and a half, and big, so we have sizes up to 4T. So, in a way, Future Baby currently lives in our garage, and her name is Ridiculous Mountain O'Babygear. If she's turns out to be a boy, 80% of Ridiculous's stuff will have been pointless to move, so please refer back to the last sentence of the previous paragraph.

Finally, one of our rooms at our new house is doing double-duty as an office and sewing room, rooms that in our house were separate. This is the room I wish were a black hole, where matter could co-exist with other matter, only I would need to be able to reach in to this place of infinite storage and pull sewing notions out. Whether Mark could reach into our black hole room and extract Target receipts to enter into Quicken is of little interest to me. Actually, it'd be nice if he couldn't so that. Sometimes stuff is on sale and I can't help it.

But alas, our "sewing office" is nothing like a black hole, and the matter in it can't share space with other matter, and it can't share that space with Ridiculous Mountain O'Babygear, who lives in our garage, or with the three toddlers' worth of rocks, so some things had to go, y'all. Like, about 30% of our things.

The easiest stuff to get rid of was clothing. I just had to look in my closet, ask myself what I actually wear in the course of my actual life, and then prune. I pruned like an axe-murderer got trapped in my closet. No one needs 20 pairs of jeans (this is not the actual number--I'm trying to make a point), even if 4 of them are maternity and 4 of them are post-maternity, and 4 of them are for the moderately fat phase you go through about four months after you lose all your pregnancy weight (by the way, what the hell???). And no one needs clothes for a job they haven't had in three years and won't have for another three. For me, that meant high school teacher clothes, which made me sad, but this house isn't a black hole, and I can't keep everything. Pale blue khakis aren't going to make a job I loved dearly come back to me. They're just not.

Linens and blankets were bulky and easy to give away provided no one we knew made them. Unfortunately, I collect quilts. Hrmph.

Kitchen stuff: super easy! I do not give a crap about that seventh wooden spoon! Sell it!!

Pregnancy pillow that looked great on the web but made me feel like I was trapped in quicksand: just don't tell the hugely pregnant woman who stops by for all the baby stuff. You know, maybe she won't feel that way. Maybe she's nimble and spry....at eight months.

Once everything was organized into shallow, wide boxes for easy display or on shelves in the garage, we posted on craigslist and let the magic happen. There were four or five things that we put price tags on, but mostly everything was "pay what's fair." We had a very, very flexible definition of "fair." After all, we wanted all this stuff gone, so what's "fair" when you'd put it on the curb the next day anyway? Curb alert people will not be leaving us a quarter for that painting, so we might as well take it from the elderly woman who keeps offering a quarter for every single thing in our garage, even items with, say, a hard drive, or fifty years' worth of gorgeous patina.

On the first Sunday, we got about five people, but two of them were Mary Louise and Inez, who managed to mutually convince each other that they needed about 25% of what we had. They were lovely and funny and lively and hungry for our junk. I wanted to invite them over for dinner because we all had such a nice time that morning, but I refrained. Of the $186 we made that day, $110 of it was theirs. I also met a sweet neighbor and her son, who kept calling me "auntie" in Chinese. I saw her today while I was driving and we waved happily at each other.

On the second Sunday, during which we sold leftovers from the first Sunday and newfound junk from the week between, we got a better crowd. Reuben came and scored all the electronics to ship to his son who's starting university in Mexico. Three Japanese women came and tested everything in the garage, from oven mitts to hot rollers to children's toys. They laughed so much I couldn't help but laugh with them, a trait I tend to have regardless of the situation, but maybe more when three women are test-driving a ceramic pitcher and pouring imaginary beverages onto my garage floor. Dan showed up last. He owns an antique store in town and he asked me about poetry (there were books of mine) and Mark's time in the Navy (there were military items), but he made the mistake of telling me most of my vintage stuff was overpriced and that I should sell it all to him at a crazy discount so he could take it back to his store and sell it for what I was asking. Um, no. This woman eBays, sir. I did sell him $25 worth of stuff I didn't want to deal with, and he put it all in the back of his truck, with a broken guitar and a rocking chair and some brass fixtures he got at another sale, gave me his number, and told me to tell my ex-flight-surgeon husband that if he ever wanted to go up in a fixed-wing to call him, since he was retired Air Force and had a plane at a regional airport nearby. That was cool.

What didn't sell in the yard sales will be picked up by one of the many roving trucks dispersed by various charities in Northern California. Unlike those in Philadelphia, these charities make their rounds once or twice a month instead of once a year, leaving postcards with dates and instructions and asking for everything from electronics to household items to clothing. On Wednesday, a cancer charity will come to our street, see our seven boxes and five garbage bags of stuff we don't need in this chapter of our lives, and take them away. Hopefully they will help two sets of people in the process.

I'm happy with our house now, and while I thought that getting rid of that much stuff would leave me feeling naked, I feel delightfully content. I will wear the clothes in my closet, stir soup with each of the spoons in my kitchen (not one soup with all the spoons...you know what I mean), sew with the notions that fit unobtrusively in the sewing office I share with the hubby. What we have, we want and need. What we will no longer have after Wednesday, well that was only giving us anxiety. None of it was helpful anymore and ridding ourselves of it feels good.

I did, incidentally, keep the rocks. I'll find a place where they can be round and smooth, and beautiful again. I decided that they need to do a little community service and make amends for their embarrassing joyride.

New Camera, New House

I got a new camera, and it's superfancy. I'm slowly learning all of its ins and outs, and I thought it might be fun to chronicle my evolution as a superfancy photographer here. So we might as well start with the new house. I love peeking in other people's homes, and the sneaky thing about a new camera is that I only have to show the places that look good. There will be no garage photos. Ever.

I got a 50mm prime lens to supplement the lenses that came in the kit, and I'm still getting used to the whole no-zoom thing. The result is a collection of photos that look either boring or self-consciously artsy. Alas. I'm learning!

Enjoy . . .

Our $50 china cabinet, with my paper bouquet from our Treehouse wedding...

Ball jars from a Pennsylvania flea market...

The horse that was Mark's and now is Ellie's...

Oh, fabric, my fabric! For the record, I do not consider this photo pretty. It's just...indicative. Also, I don't know what I was thinking when I bought two yards of asparagus print (center).

If you can get my daughter to brush her teeth happily, regularly, I will give you a million dollars as soon as we have it.

This is why our movers hated us.

I feel better about the dishes in our sink when I see the dishes in hers...

And finally, the art studio...

Happy Weekend!

Gentle on My Mind

I've been trying to find a way to acknowledge the SEALs who died Friday in a Chinook crash in Afghanistan. I knew two of those men well enough to be shocked and grieved by seeing their names in the paper. I thought, after nearly a decade of survival, all of the Navy men and women I knew would be lucky enough to make it to the end of this and go on growing old like I get to do.

Those friendships have their story in other places, but it's been a long time (seven years), and I haven't wanted to say much about it since. However, these last few days have churned my memory, and while I tried to write about remembering, I wasn't satisfied with what you would have read here.

I will say that knowing each of the men who lived in the big house in Ocean Beach, and the additional men who came to visit and party and sleep there, shaped who I have become in my adult life.

I have been a more patient and forgiving teacher, particularly to boys, and most particularly to hyperactive boys. I'm better at letting go of inhibitions and admitting that no one cares if I embarrass myself in the name of a good time. I dance more at weddings and embrace the folly of pratfalls. I'm friendlier, more open, braver, and more adventurous. I probably curse more than I should and have far less patience for cowardice.

I have a special attachment to times spent eating in big groups with people I love.

I'm a better mother for having taken care of them in whatever little ways came up.

For all of the instances in which knowing them made me incredibly, at times unbearably, sad, I am, in fact, probably happier.

For what more could I have asked?

I realized the other day that a lot of what I remember was the music we listened to, in the car and at their houses. There is plenty that reminds me of them, but Johnny Cash's version of "Gentle on My Mind" fits best now. Have a listen.

Exchanging Money for a Pen

Given my druthers, I’d probably be doing something else. Definitely.

I grew up with a single mom who worked herself tirelessly up a crazy corporate ladder to become an international business consultant for IBM. Yeah, I hold myself up against that. Staying at home and writing for zero money while my kid goes to preschool isn’t cutting it. I feel bad about that, but then there’s the dull fact that to be a writer, to get anyone interested in your writing, you have to first sit down, ignore everything else including your kid, and write something. Anything!

I’ve applied for tens of jobs, of all kinds (teaching, writing, unpaid internships with publications…), and no one is interested. That by itself is okay; the economy is bad, the school year is very close at hand, I’m old for an intern. What to do after it is the problem. Apply for more jobs? I will. Yank Ellie out of preschool after she just started? We won’t. Work at Starbucks? I hate standing, and after having Ellie, I can’t do that for very long anyway.

At some point, you look at the scales, and at your own strengths, and say that they tipped in favor of this. It is better for me to make no money writing and wait for fruit to bear later, than to work an odd job that I don’t really care about, just to say that I’m working to justify Ellie’s being in preschool or to supplement, however modestly, my husband’s dwarfing salary.

I’m lucky (and always have been, really) to have friends, family, and now a husband who think that my writing is worthwhile, outside of any stabs at moneymaking. What a crazy gift. For a long time, I didn’t consider a waste of anything not to write, especially because my circumstances were so different from what they are now. Now, however, if I’m going to justify the way we are living, and what I’m doing with my life and the life of my family, I have to do something I’m good at.