3/17-26/10 - Got fever....

Yep, it's here! Much like Martha, I've been spending the better part of the past couple of weeks planting seeds and photographing flowers. I managed to cut back and repot many of my houseplants in anticipation of their annual move back to the front porch in a couple of weeks. In the meantime my little seedlings are sprouting away on my windowsills and a few have even been moved up to little pots from their eggshell starter homes. The peppers seemed to lag behind a bit, but since I moved them to the mantel above the heater a few days ago, they're busted through the soil as well.

And on top of it all, I seem to have regained something of a social life. I'm the first one to use cold or rain as an excuse to not leave the house, and as a result, I've had little face-to-face contact with the world beyond my immediate neighborhood for much of the past three months! Things appear to be changing.... I actually made it out to an art opening Friday evening with my pals Jim & Kenneth. We swilled wine, rubbed elbows, & spouted sarcastic amongst some pretty cool stuff that included a day-glo painting of a patterned monster shooting a neon rainbow out of its naughty bits, a meticulously displayed collection of drain clogs and pissed-on copper tiles gone green, a series of pearl necklace-strewn flesh-colored latex chest casts overseen by a couple of lovely ladies clad in translucent gauze, and a hot-air balloon performance/sculpture that wandered around the reception area propelled by a pair of human legs.

By the time we made it back to the house, Charles was home from the office and settled into schoolwork while me & the boys spent the rest of the evening around the dining room table eating leftover gumbo, tossing back Sailor Jerry n' tea, and pouring over recent issues of Country Living and Saveur. My guests had left by midnight, but apparently I was just getting started....

[Insert backstory: About a week earlier, I caught Charles humming "The Meatball Song" (a.k.a. "On Top of Spaghetti") and decided to chime in. Keep in mind that carrying a tune is a Sisyphean task for me and when compelled to perform, I tend to turn to comedic overdramatization. Charles petered out somewhere in the third verse but I carried on and on and on in a mock opera performance that left him stunned. This is what passes for romance in our marriage and I may as well have serenaded him with an aria from La Traviata—every couple of days afterwards, he'd sweetly ask me to sing the meatball song. Somewhere along the line, while enjoying my second cup of Sailor Jerry n' tea in the tub a few days later, I hatched a plan to perform an interpretive dance to the Meatball Song. I worked it all out in my head giggling along the way and managed to forget about it, until.....]

This is what happens when I relaunch myself into society after a long winter's nap! Possibly inspired by the creative energy and overdue human contact of the evening, I decided it was my turn. I mentioned my rum-inspired performance aspirations to Charles and he jumped on it, immediately reaching for the camera and egging me on. Needless to say, I was hung over and barely remembered the performance the next morning. By the time I made it out of bed and on to brunch, Charles had already gone into the office and showed the video to his coworkers! I gotta admit it's humiliatingly hilarious, especially since I crap out during the last verse and forget the words. My husband is determined to post it to YouTube, but I'm not sure I'm ready to go viral yet....

With that hovering over my head, I've managed to carry on. Though I've been thoroughly occupied by cleaning up and cutting back around my garden, I'd realized I hadn't attended to such tasks around my own being! This finally hit me during yoga class the other day when, while in downward facing dog, I glanced over to see a small forest sprouting from my armpit and looked back to realized my feet & ankles had gone Sasquatch. Though I'm not a particularly hairy person, I truly believe that at some point in my ancestry a Hobbit & a fairy must've gotten freaky—somewhere around mid-calf, my legs break into fur and tufts of inch-long hairs sprout out of each big toe (this must explain my long-standing celebrity crush on Chewbacca). It's not exactly something I keep on top of during the winter months as the only time I'm apt to put on a skirt is if someone gets married, someone dies, or the temps soar into the upper '90s. I'm pretty sure the last time my legs had seen a blade was in early December when the spaghetti-strapped minidress I wore to a wedding required some ladyscaping. I figure with temps in the '70s, I'm likely to bust out the cargo shorts & flip-flops soon enough, so I set aside a good hour of tub time and went through three blades tackling the issues. I'll be submitting the drain clog to an upcoming art exhibit....

3/5-17/10 - While you were out....

I really suck at this blogging thing—it's been nearly two weeks since my last entry! Not that I haven't been busy, and actually Martha might be right approving of my erstwhile pursuits. Though she's been engrossed with duties such as deep-cleaning her kitchen appliances (I'm betting this task was thrust upon minions?), cleaning stables (again, minions?), fertilizing & edging the lawns (still more minions?), vacuuming upholstery & curtains (ditto), shopping for art & antiques at fancy NYC shows (she could probably handle this one, though I bet minions were in tow to fend off the paparazzi), and flying to LA and back, I did manage to clear out & plant one garden bed w/greens & root veggies, clear out another bed & lay down black plastic to kill off weed seeds, start my seedlings, clear a nasty patch of privet & replant with native beautyberry bushes, pull the last straggling specimens of lariope from my patio flower/herb garden, take some lovely shots of spring blooms around the yard, cook quite a few Martha-inspired meals, and travel to Tallahassee & back to meet my brand-new nephew in-law, Max (and present him with his own Aunt Melissa-made baby quilt).

Still tackling recipes from last month's foodcentric issue, I served up an easy dinner of croque monsieur sandwiches with a side salad one night (translation: Mr. Crunchy) and whipped up some arroz con pollo on another (this was really tasty but a bit flat, It coulda used a little brightening up with thyme & fresh parsley & a dash of paprika for heat). I also delved into my backup supply of frost-discount local farm carrots and some freezer-burnt broccoli and knocked out a quickie veggie/venison stroganoff one night (in an effort to put a dent in the massive supply of ground Bambi in our freezer). Once upon a time, I toyed with various degrees of vegetarianism for about 12 years. Veggie stroganoff was one of my favorite meals (the chewy creamy tangy combo of sauteed mushrooms, worcestershire, wine, & sour cream makes up for any missing meat—though in these frugal d-i-y obsessed days, I sub homemade yogurt for sour cream). It must've made me nostalgic, because just a couple nights later I set my heart on another favorite vegetarian meal, the Golden Bowl. This is the signature dish of The Grit, a much-adored local vegetarian restaurant. It's basically rice topped w/ soy sauce-sauteed veggies, topped w/ savory twice-sauteed yeast-sprinkled tofu cubes, topped w/ yeast gravy. The Grit cookbook reveals the secret formula for the tofu, but it takes a special touch to pull it off anywhere close to Grit good—Charles declared it almost indistinguishable from the real deal.

Now that Spring has finally decided to show herself a bit, I'm having a hard time staying inside during daylight hours to do stuff like clean my house or blog, much less get around to mending clothes, making curtains, and covering couch cushions. I've been spending every possible sunny afternoon on my hands & knees elbow deep in the red earth of Georgia. I'm not one to wear gardening gloves and my orange-stained fingernails and cracked, calloused hands would definitely cause Rhett Butler to scoff—I wear them like a badge of honor! It is kinda a pain in the ass though when I'm doing something delicate like darning a sweater or sewing a button on a silky flowy thingy and my sandpapery fingers keep catching & scratching the fibers. But when I break a nail, I need only turn to the other hand for built-in file!

In the meantime, daffodils of every variety are all abloom and the yard weeds have exploded into a carpet of tiny flowers—this is when I know winter is truly behind us. Say what you will about daffodils & crocuses as the harbingers of the season, those lyin' ass flowers are known to show their sunny faces well before the final snowstorm—shit, in these parts they tend to be up & at 'em around Christmastime! I'm more prone to celebrate the miniscule little blossoms of stuff like henbit, chickweed, pepper cress, violets, and a dozen other adorable little mystery weeds that appear scattershot across the lawn. Unfortunately so many people go to great measures to eradicate these precious little specimens. I won't let Charles near the mower 'til the purply haze of henbit cloud has started to dry up in the near summer sun and the chickweed has long gone to seed. Instead I head out with my camera to photograph the blazing glory. I'm even prone to creep around on hands & knees and collect some of the edible varieties to toss into a salad—this practice won't seem so freaky when the shit goes down!

This is exactly what I did yesterday as I picked through a patch of dock and collected a handful of dandelion greens & violet leaves. Today is St. Patrick's Day and in an effort to acknowledge my ancestors, I always make corned beef and cabbage and colcannon. Though supposedly, corned beef isn't purely Irish. From what I understand, the proper Irish meal is boiled bacon and cabbage (Irish bacon being more akin to what we know as Canadian bacon rather than those fatty pork belly strips we like to fry to a crisp). Apparently the Irish immigrants to America were introduced to the corned beef brisket via their new Jewish immigrant neighbors and adopted it into their traditional dish. As for the colcannon (mashed potatoes and greens), that's pretty damn Irish and I made it just like my peasant kin would've done back in the homeland—with lawn-gathered greens, overwintered onions, wrinkly old potatoes, and a healthy dose of homemade soured cream (in my case, yogurt). And in an effort to make proper use of our Bambi supply, I actually corned a venison roast myself. A three-day cold bath in a seasoned brine made for a perfectly savory little hunk of meat. I even lay a couple strips of American bacon on top as I piled on the cabbage, local farm turnips, and mutant forgotten carrots discovered during spring planting prep.

I'm pretty damn proud of my efforts to acknowledge my ancestors and Charles repeatedly declares corned beef & cabbage to be his favorite meal of the year. Though he was a bit suspicious when I informed him of my plans for a more home-grown version of the dish. The meal was ready and waiting for him when he walked through the door carrying grocery bags full of on-sale corned beef and potato chips—my Irish ancestors are likely spinning in their graves knowing the fate that's fallen upon their precious potato! I pretty much banish crap like potato chips from the house, but apparently our weekend with the in-laws kindled some nostalgia in my husband. At some point he'd polished off a bag of readily available chips and it reawakened his craving for nutritionally vapid crack food—he just couldn't resist when he came across the 2 for 1 sale on the way to the checkout aisle.

In the end, I had the last laugh. He gobbled down a second helping of the venison & veggies & even declared the weed-infested colcannon a hit. And I'm already hatching plans for an appropriate eviction of the potato chips....

2/23-3/4/10 - Beware the Ides of March

How the hell can anyone with a real life keep up with all this crap?!!! With two deadlines, a couple of meetings, a presentation & a workshop to give, and a neighborhood function all piled into the same week, my house has gone to pot! In the meantime, Charles had a client in town which had him out for dinner on the company dime a couple of nights. Although this conveniently relieved me of my obligation to cook for him (and he managed to sneak home with enough leftovers to keep me fed as well), that box of crap he'd swept off the dresser over three weeks ago is still sitting in the middle of the living room, and it's attracting followers—piles of schoolbooks, pairs of smelly socks and shoes, unopened mail, scattered DVDs, an empty box of Cheez-Its, and a half-eaten jar of peanuts.

Apparently Martha spent her week attending to pleasantries such as arranging pussy willows, harvesting spinach from the greenhouse, repotting seedlings, wandering the grounds in search of snowdrop & witch hazel blooms, and showing off her orchid blooms. Granted, I am the mistress of procrastination and I function best under pressure—I certainly did my fair share of late evening lazing google-eyed in front of the TV watching the lovelies on ice of the Olympics (Evan Lysacek is my new celebrity crush and I'll be asking Santa for a Johnny Weir dress-up doll come Christmas).

I'm a bit hyper-involved in our little neighborhood association, and we had a potluck party to throw at a downtown bar Saturday afternoon. I found myself running the bake sale and managed to use what was left of last week's runny chocolate icing on a dozen or so s'mores-themed cupcakes (they were quite a hit with the kiddos). I also somehow managed to take it upon myself to come up with a neighborhood park proposal to be considered for a list of future sales tax-funded projects. Friday evening had me baking cupcakes while most of Saturday was occupied with icing them, baking venison sausage balls for the party, and constructing a display on the park project for the neighbors to check out that afternoon. Somewhat sadly, partygoers seemed more interested in swilling beers, shooting the shit, & shoving cupcakes down their throats than offering any constructive commentary—the Power Point that I presented to the local gov committee had a much more interested audience (OK I guess, since they're the ones that wield the power).

When it rains it pours. Part of the reason I even took on this blogging project was because I found myself bored & broke as the freelance writing gigs just weren't pouring in like they used to. Blogging certainly won't cure the broke, but it definitely helped with the bored. With that said, I've suddenly got two articles and a copyediting job due within a week of one another. And while I managed to hold a seed-starting workshop for my townie hipster community gardeners on Sunday, I've yet to get my own garden started—probably a good thing considering it snowed again this week! I swear Mother Nature if fucking with us. While they spent two weeks trucking in snow to Vancouver, we managed to get slammed with two snowstorms in Georgia! And lately she seems to be bustin' out the big guns & getting tectonic on our asses—Hell hath no fury.... Can't say that I blame her.

While I wiled away at my Power Point late Sunday afternoon, Charles got busy on my belated Valentine's gift. Both the south-facing windows in our house now sport handy little shelves hungry to host happy little seedlings. In the meantime, March arrived and I've moved on to my new issue of MSL. This week's duties seem a bit spring-cleaning oriented (not my forté), but I did manage to bleach-soak the kitchen sink yesterday (only after a foul smell started emanating from the drain) and I finally tackled a massive pile-up of laundry. And when I was through, sitting triumphantly amongst towering piles of fragrant freshly-folded clothes, it dawned on me that it had been nearly 72 hours since I'd washed myself! Deadlines be damned, I retreated to the tub with a hot cup of Sailor Jerry n' tea. By the time Charles made it home from night class, I was pajama-clad and soundly passed out!