dual personalities

I still have not baked an apple pie, but even so, we are enjoying autumn to the max. Everywhere we turn in our new neighborhood, there are trees full of changing leaves.

I’m very happy to don a sweatshirt and jeans for a long stroll (and to not break a sweat). I have a new routine of walking to the local library on Friday afternoons, which means I hear a lot of school-departure shrieking and see happy commuters who have also made it through the week. I’ve also spied some impressively decorated Halloween facades — people here get very into lawn decor. We are not big Halloween fans, but it’s fun to live in a place where children are out and about and excited about things.

I am rambling! Our autumnal weekend also involved brunch in the city with friends, something I haven’t done in years and years. It was fun to see friends for a meal and be home in time for a Saturday afternoon nap. On Sunday, it poured rain all morning, so I stayed in bed and read. I spent a lot of time this weekend supine!

I do want to report that we watched a new movie: Can You Ever Forgive Me? starring Melissa McCarthy.

The film is based on the true story of the writer Lee Israel, whose failing career prompted her to forge letters by famous authors for cash. We watched it over two nights, which was possibly not the best decision, since the movie dwells in a bad place for well over an hour. (I.e., we didn’t get any positive moments until night two.) Since Israel isn’t exactly a likeable character, we were left wondering: is redemption coming? Where is this going? Surely someone will be hurt by this? As I ask about so many movies these days, who, exactly are we supposed to be rooting for?

But Melissa McCarthy (clearly trying to prove her “serious” chops, and in a terrible hairdo to boot) was quite good, and the story was relatively gripping. We wanted the other shoe to drop! The ending pays off, though it then wraps up quite quickly considering the time you’ve put in through the slog of the crimes. I might have liked a bit more of a moral triumph. As I write this, I realize how I really feel: perhaps I only recommend this movie if I’m grading on a curve. It isn’t a remake, or a live-action version of a Disney movie, or an unnecessary sequel… sigh.

Perhaps if I want to watch a New York movie with vintage typewriters and library visits and earnest literary endeavors, I should just rewatch Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Varjak, Paul is a writer worth rooting for!

Sorry for the late post, but it has been an unusually busy week. The weather has been full of those crisp, cool, colorful days that make October so perfect.

Last Sunday I took this action photo of a beaver or muskrat (probably the latter) diving into the water near our cottage.

It made a big splash!

On Wednesday I drove up to Canada to pick up my DH’s stepmother who had been attending a conference on Veterans’ Health at a swanky casino hotel in Gatineau, Quebec. Of course, I got lost and found myself navigating unknown territory during rush hour. Finally, I managed to reset the GPS in a dangerous looking parking lot, and after that the drive wasn’t too bad.

We’ve had a nice visit. Last night we supped at what passes for fine dining in our North Country village, the Best Western restaurant.

The chairs were so low that the table was chest high and we felt like little children. That was kind of odd. Otherwise, it wasn’t half bad.

Today’s activity involved a major social occasion: namely, the Church and Community Program Fall Fashion Show. The CCP runs a food pantry and thrift shop, and the board, of which I am a member, thought it would be fun to do a fundraiser at which prominent local people modeled thrift shop attire. We all baked seasonal fare (apple or pumpkin yummies) to sustain audience members as they watched the proceedings. It was a high-calorie hoot.

I contributed a pumpkin Bundt cake (just above the actual pumpkin on the table) and a spiced apple Bundt cake with cream cheese frosting (above the white frosted sheet-cake). Everyone ate a lot!

Here the DH and Beverly study the program in anticipation of the fashion to come. Unfortunately, my photos of the show were either out of focus (surprise, surprise) or taken at exactly the wrong moment. 

Our friend J.J. does a practice run as a sporting man-about-town.

Oh, well. I’m sure you can imagine… It was a very successful afternoon; I’m not sure whether I’m exhausted from baking (two cakes in two days!), serving and cleaning-up or I’m suffering from delayed sugar shock. Whatever the reason, I need a nap!

It has been fun to show off our local sights and people to our guest. Alas, she leaves tomorrow and then it’s back to the grind. Have a great week!

My mother and I were recently chatting about the different buzz around millennials and work — she had seen something like this story, which notes that half of millennials surveyed and 75% of Gen Z-ers surveyed had quit jobs at least in part because of mental health issues.

In the past year, DN and I have both transitioned from the fully-academic life to the academic administration life, i.e., staff jobs. 9-to-5s! Salaries! Office culture! Meetings, meetings, meetings. In many ways, this has been an extreme improvement, namely because of an increase in financial stability and a decrease in the emotional pressure to consistently prove one’s brilliance through scholarly arguments. For me, the beauty of a job is actually stressing less about it. Of course, I am prone to declaring that “I need a glass of wine” at the end of a day full of this or that annoyance. But I’m not sure if that makes me a millennial with marginally better mental health than others, or if academia has just set the bar for the workplace very, very low.

That said, I would like to own this hat

At any rate, it’s been a topic for reflection lately, and when I thought “maybe I’ll blog about work this week,” I was reminded of Louisa May Alcott’s nineteenth-century novel Work: A Story of Experience. One of my friends has said that she thinks it’s truly the Great American Novel, which, I’m not quite there, but it is good and I do recommend it.

The novel’s protagonist, Christie Devon, is a young woman like many in the nineteenth century: she wants her life to have purpose. She wants to work! She believes in family and the home, but she also wants to see the world and contribute to it. Some people seem to think this is a new approach to womanhood, but it really isn’t! Christie tests out a variety of careers, including work as an actress, a caregiver, and a seamstress. What I like about the novel is that it doesn’t focus on the work at the expense of all else. Christie also has friendships and romances, and at times even chooses not to work in order to be at home. It isn’t about the work, you see — it’s about collecting a whole life of experiences.

Christie was one of that large class of women who, moderately endowed with talents, earnest and true-hearted, are driven by necessity, temperament, or principle out into the world to find support, happiness, and homes for themselves. Many turn back discouraged; more accept shadow for substance, and discover their mistake too late; the weakest lose their purpose and themselves; but the strongest struggle on, and, after danger and defeat, earn at last the best success this world can give us, the possession of a brave and cheerful spirit, rich in self-knowledge, self-control, self-help. This was the real desire of Christie’s heart; this was to be her lesson and reward, and to this happy end she was slowly yet surely brought by the long discipline of life and labor.

How good is that?

Well, I was going to write about how tired I am of hearing a certain actress who married a prince talk about being a victim, but I didn’t want my mom’s blog to get kicked off the internet. And then I watched this week’s Dancing with the Stars and watched Christie Brinkley’s daughter literally weep when she got eliminated. This followed Lauren Alaina’s contemporary tribute dance dedicated to her stepfather on the one year anniversary of his death. And the dichotomy of these two moments, both of which featured women weeping on live national television, really struck me. Anyway, the plan to prevent a not great dancer from progressing further than relatively good dancers has failed because America has kept Sean Spicer out of the bottom two each week (insert crying laughing emoji).

On another note, I ventured to Cape Girardeau last week for work–and I was really impressed. I realize I was there on a pretty fall day, but the downtown was cute and clean. Cape is about two hours south of St. Louis–but, amazingly, it’s still another hour to get to the tip of the bootheel! It’s a cool little river town–I thought the Mississippi didn’t seem quite so wide there.

The downtown area is in the distance near the bridge. 

They have some rich men who are investing in the downtown in a way that is designed to encourage young people who go off to college to return and to get those who go to SEMO to stay. We visited an incubator for start ups–they’ve helped over 40 start ups and created 150 jobs. And there is a very cool rooftop bar/restaurant that I thought had more ambiance than anything in Mid-MO.

I’d work here. 

I’m a sucker for old towns with a few blocks of old buildings. And luckily my job is letting me visit some of them! On Monday, I ventured to Webster County (near Springfield) and, while there was not much in Marshfield, I will note that when I said to my co-worker, I assume Webster County is named for Daniel Webster, I was met with a blank stare [insert eyeroll emoji].

And I just checked and it is.

Happy Monday! (Is there such a thing?)

We had a good, relaxing weekend. It started on Friday, since I took “personal leave” for the afternoon. (It expires at the end of the year and taking the afternoon off for no reason almost feels better than taking time off for a real reason, right?). I made use of this time by walking to the local library and getting a new library card.

The library is part of a brand new community center in town, but it’s tiny! Maybe a dozen shelves of books total. But, importantly, there is a whole shelf of Jan Karon hardbacks waiting for me. I checked out In This Mountain and “binge” read it this weekend.

As always, reading about Mitford was very comforting. In this volume, Father Tim has a terrible accident and has a difficult time recovering emotionally. He struggles for much of the novel, though prayer eventually helps him break through. In a culminating sermon, he preaches “just four words” — In everything give thanks. While thanks is an important word, he says, the most important word is everything. Even the difficult things. We’re a little ahead of Thanksgiving time, but surely we could all use this reminder year-round.

Well, I also puttered around the house and even ventured out to Target and Michaels’ for various supplies. I am starting an ambitious stocking project, pictured above. Here’s hoping I can pull it together by X-mas 2020! In the meantime, we trudge ahead to Monday. We can do it!

How can it be Saturday again so soon? Time does not march on, it sprints, and I can’t keep up. I’m not sure which confounds me most. Is it that I’m doing the same things for the millionth time or that it takes me longer to do what used to be quick and easy jobs? Whatever the reason, life is speeding by at an unprecedented clip and I never seem to have anything to show for it. My week went something like this:

1.  The weather was cold, dark and rainy. I went to work in the dark and came home in the dark.
2.  Although I had a day off teaching for October break, I used every minute of it to grade papers and exams (very much my own fault).
3.  I spent an inordinate amount of time attempting to prevent a colleague’s semantic error from morphing into a career stunting disaster (theirs, not mine).
4.  Beyond the usual activities, I attended a church meeting, a department meeting and one tai chi class (the department meeting prevented me from attending the second one).
5.  Our furnace broke so I had to wait around all day yesterday for the repairman to come and fix it. After about five hours, we had heat again. Glory hallelujah! It was getting cold in here, but at least  that inspired me to get some cleaning done.
6.  The highlights of the week involved phone conversations with all three sons, my future daughter-in-law and my sister.

Having spent my energy on absolutely nothing out of the ordinary, I had no time or brainpower left over for reading or watching. Every time I tried, I simply fell asleep. The ONLY new thing that happened this week was that I managed to use up the Romanesco that came in our CSA.

It’s pretty but very alien looking, isn’t it? After separating the little doohingies into florets, I roasted them with olive oil, garlic, spring onions (also in the CSA) and seasonings, and served them on a bed of fresh fettuccini topped with grated Romano cheese. The Romanesco tasted like a cross between roasted cauliflower and broccoli. I always feel that I’ve accomplished something when I manage to use the odd things that come in our CSA. Plus, I could congratulate myself on preparing a healthy, vegetarian meal!

And that’s about it. My DH’s stepmother is coming to visit this coming week, so hopefully I’ll have something fun to report next Saturday. Though my blog posts may be a little boring, I know how blessed I am to live as I do and to have such a wonderful, loving family. Sometimes the weeks are a little routine and that’s okay!

*Mervyn Peake, Gormenghast 

Greetings from DN!

Non-alcoholic cocktails (“don’t call them mocktails”) are very trendy right now, and I have been trying my hand at different recipes. Success is varied. An orange shrub served to recent dinner party guests was not a hit. Everyone was nice about it, but you couldn’t avoid the acrid nose of vinegar no matter how the drinks were mixed. On the other hand, there are also real triumphs! For example, a worthy bourbon substitute for a non-alcoholic old fashioned. Daughter #2 calls them faux-ld fashioneds.

The most difficult flavors to replicate in a faux-ld fashioned are the bourbon’s smoky and malty flavors (the sweet part I can handle!). However, since I lack the time to barrel-age anything, what can replace these qualities? The answer, it turns out, is barley.

Specifically, barley tea. And not wanting to pay through the nose on Amazon, I decided to make my own.

Recipe blogs make all kinds of claims for barley tea. Antioxidants? Barley tea! Inflammation? Barley tea! Hot and cold! Hey, everyone in Korea is drinking barley tea year round. And now you can too! The recipe blogs would also have you believe that making barley tea is quick and easy. This is partially true. Easy, yes. Quick, not so much.

Toast at a low temp

Keep toasting

Almost there

When your kitchen begins to smell of burnt popcorn, you’re about halfway done. Ultimately, simmer this for about half an hour and you’ve made the roastiest “tea” you’ve ever tasted.

It also turns out that our faux-ld fashioneds need a vanilla note. But because Daughter #2 had made vanilla ice cream for our dinner guests, I had an empty bean pod ready for repurposing in a syrup!

Fresh vanilla beans cost about five bucks-a-pop and are to be cherished. After this, the pod will retire to the extract bottle, where it will happily live out the rest of its days in darkness.

  
Et voila! It’s a non-alcoholic cocktail that I’m quite proud of! Now to hold my nose and return once more to the shrub grind.

*Kingsley Amis, from Everyday Drinking