silver falls

This afternoon, we headed south of town on the 213, through the rolling fields of the eastern Willamette Valley towards Silverton and the lovely Silver Falls State Park. There, we met M's dad and his two good natured step-sisters (who were visiting from Los Angeles) for a 9 mile hike along "The Trail of Ten Falls." I led the charge, as is my habit, despite being rather light-headed and tired to the bone. It was strange to find myself dragging and ready for bed around mile 8, since I am usually good for twice that distance in an afternoon. But M reminded me that, of the 5 of us, I was the only one concurrently growing a human and stalking through the forest at the same time. And he makes a good point.

a day at the yamhill farm

pet peeve of the month

There are two phrases that whenever I hear them I have trouble restraining myself from severe sarcasm and derision:

"It is what it is..." and "What are ya gonna do?"

What is it about these phrases that annoy the hell out of me? Is it the implied hopeless ho-hum nonchalance or the empty faux zen?

"What are ya gonna do?" I want to spit back: "What ARE you going to do?!"

Slightly more annoying is the oft-used alternative: "What can you do?" because there in fact is an awful lot one can do. I most often hear this version idly tossed into the mix when things like the environment or racism or unjust war or fiscal responsibility are spoken of (and typically as a means of changing the conversation). You can almost see the shoulders shrugging and imagine the speaker casually turning back to his or her flickering TV screen to soak up a few more commercials. "What can ya do?" You can do a million things, if only you'd stop being so cool and insouciant!

And "It is what it is" is the ultimate empty phrase. It is used as filler, like putty in the cracks of a crappy vocabulary. It attempts a profundity that just isn't there and comes across rather stuffed with New Age fluff. "It is what it is." "Well, you don't say?"

evil glee

I've been listening with glee to all the news of Barack Obama's overseas adventure, meanwhile John McCain languishes here at home, petulantly whining about the dearth of coverage his dull escapades are attracting. I hate to be an ageist here, but I have to note how marked is the distinction between the two candidates: Barack Obama -- fresh, beaming, lusty and confident, and John McCain -- stooped, flaccid, pale and timorous. Of course the cameras love Obama. He's better on film. He's better on tape, his voice sonorous and deep compared with John McCain's thin whine. I giggled when I read of the scene in which McCain rolled along in a golf cart with George Bush Sr. and together they "looked more like fellow members of a Past Presidents’ Club than a party elder passing the torch to his political heir."
(http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/23/us/politics/23watch.html?_r=1&ref=politics&oref=slogin)

And I feel slightly evil. It is a poor human soul that takes such pleasure in the discomfort and suffering of another. But it is so dreadfully hard for me to feel sorry for Republicans. This sentiment reminds me of a passage from a fantastic book I just finished by Anne Lamott called Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year" (the book really deserves it's own special blog post, thick with favorite quotes and analysis). Lamott writes:

"I keep wanting to do what Martin Luther King taught us -- to walk in love, to love the racist and hate the racism --but I must say, it is not going very well these days. I am often beside myself with hate. I have a quote of his on the wall over my desk that says, 'Let us not despair. Let us not lose faith in man and certainly not in God. We must believe that a prejudiced mind can be changed and that man, by the grace of God can be lifted from the valley of hate to the high mountain of love.' But I sometimes despair. My hatred of American conservatives apparently sustains and defines me as much as my love of Jesus does, since I don't think I'm willing to have it removed. Who would I be without it? I know I'm as much a part of the problem as anyone else and that we're all like the people in that old Dylan song who think God is on their side. Part of me does not want Sam to be like this at all, and part of me thinks that it's right and important to scorn and revile the conservatives, because --well, because they're bad, or at least their wrong."

I confess that I am far from Martin's so-called mountain of love. It's sick, but I relish the thrill of scorn and judgement from time to time. And the ultimate irony in all this is that the very thing I hate most about conservatives is their judgement.

organization

ASIDE: Since I am offering up excuses, I might add to the pile the fact that my laptop has been on the fritz of late and it has made settling in for a long spell with thesaurus on hand a bit of a drag. The computer still works, but only for upwards of a hour (all the while the fan whirs insanely) at which point it overheats and spontaneously pops off -poof. Since this became an issue I have lost a great deal of work by way of blog posts, emails, etc. and in frustration I tucked the bugger under the sofa until funds can be had for the purchase of another. But I dragged it out today and risk heavy losses out of pure guilt feeling for being so absent these last weeks (I am reminding myself to hit "save" after every comma and period).

Last weekend M and I became extremely industrious. Owing to the inventive Swedish minds at Ikea, we were able to squash two rooms worth of miscellaneous crap into one room and thereby freed up an entire extra room in our teeny 3-bedroom house. Unbelievable. Our old junked out office is now a neat, nearly empty library/someday-nursery and our front guest/chill room in now an orderly office/guest room. And there is no TV in sight. We congratulated each other on what grown-ups we've become.

I realized that I've been anxious about where I'm going to stash the kid when he/she gets here. I've wanted to carve out a neat, defined space, both mentally and physically, in which to house the idea and the fact of another human. It's usually referred to as the "nesting instinct," and I guess mine came kind of early, because almost everyone I talk to acts like I am jumping the gun. I suppose they're referring to the fact that miscarriage is still an off-chance. I am hoping that at 8-weeks my odds are dropping daily. And the fact that I am sick as a dog bodes well, if you believe the old wives and their tales. I tell myself I come from hardy German baby-bearing stock and that kind of thing just doesn't happen to us North Dakota farm folk. But I suppose it could. In any case, organization is good, even if the new library/nursery doesn't fill up with pink or blue shit within the next year. But I am crossing my fingers that it does.

(And may I add that I think it is just fantastic to imagine blurry baby eyes gazing up from a bundle of blankets to take in shelves cluttered with a thousand classic novels. I wish I grew up in a library).

apologies

Cardinal rule #1 in blogging is this: never apologize for not blogging. If you go missing for a few days, fine. But when you return don't offer excuses for your absence. Your readers just want to know what's going on with you. They don't care about how bad you feel for leaving them in the lurch. Just write something, damn it! But the truth is, I feel really bad about it. Every night I lay in bed exhausted, sore and hungry (yes, hungry because nothing tastes good!) dreaming up all the post topics I should have written these passing days but couldn't because I was too damned tired. It is the most frustrating thing imaginable (second only to the fact that my brain and entire vocabulary seem to have left the premises).

I have to say, I have never longed quite so intensely for a swift passage through time as I do these days, smack in the middle of my first trimester. I feel like I have been hanging out around week #7 for ages. Everyone tells me that things get better during the second tri, and I struggle to believe. Each day I wake up imagining that perhaps today it will be better, that my nausea will have subsided while I slept, leaving me refreshed and once again hungry for healthy things instead of graham crackers and pizza and fruit roll-ups. The other day, I dragged my growing ass to the gym to use the exercise bike (jogging is out of the question owing to the fact that my breast are like giant, aching tumors). I noted a perky young thing across the way, huffing it at high speeds on the elliptical and the girl had to have been around 7 months pregnant. I am thinking, "here I am a measly 7 weeks and I'm lucky to log 30 minutes and that girl is carrying around a bowling ball and looks to have another several miles in her!?" Maybe it does get easier and it isn't just me. I am hoping against hell that I eventually come out of this awful slump.

Also, may I bitch for a moment about all this "treasure these moments" business that I keep getting? I swear, it is only the women for whom childbearing is a distant memory (i.e. women with children who are nearly my age) who insist that pregnancy is a joy and a blessing and that I should be wallowing in each delightful and miraculous moment because "I'll only be pregnant with this child one time." And thank god for that!

Okay -so, there you have it: a little unruly scrawl. I promise to be a better blogger from now on, but please don't expect too much until after August 15 (when everything is due to turn rosy...if I can believe what I'm hearing...)

echinacea

A whole mess of these have appeared in my garden this year.

insonmia

I read the other day that during pregnancy one's sleep patterns begin to alter "in preparation" for the arrival of the baby. Less deep, settled sleep is experienced and instead nights are spent tossing and turning in a state of light, restless, and dream-addled REM sleep. So, here I sit at 3:48AM wondering why in the hell I need to "prepare myself" for a future that involves little sleep? I was hoping in fact to possibly store up a little deep sleep in some sort of secret reserve and draw upon it in times of need. Add to my confusion and frustration the fact that I am bone, dead tired and have never needed the unconsciousness of sleep more than I do these days. I decided not to fight it. Maybe my blog will get more attention (as a reasonable side effect).

And I will say the dreams are most fantastic. I dreamed tonight that I was up at the cabin of my childhood in Northern Minnesota. Somehow, in the strange way of dreams, the bathroom had a window that overlooked a child's play area, so while showering you looked down upon a magical land filled with colorful toys, and verdant flowers and children chattering and running wild. It was rather awkward to be showering in full view of a bunch of kids. At one point in the dream, someone asked M and I about the pregnancy, and I made the snide comment that "fatherhood is theoretical." M laughed, but the person who had asked the question looked confused and uncomfortable with our bizarre candor. I confess I have no idea where that came from, because in my case M's fatherhood is fairly well established. Ah, dreams...

Okay. I have knocked off a giant glass of water, which will likely complicate my efforts to drift away, but I am compelled to try for sleep anyhow. Good night.

lavender honey

boiling water bath

As a special birthday shout-out to my oldest, dearest friend, I am posting some very basic canning instructions in hopes of demystifying the process for her while helping her sort out what she should do with a zillion blueberries:

First, you must acquire some basic equipment:

* a giant canning pot

* a rack that fits inside

* a bunch of wide-mouth jars (1/2 or 1 pint for jams, chutneys and peppers - I use quarts for tomatoes), lids and rims (note also that you must purchase new lids each time you can -lids cannot be reused!)

* a few gripper-type thingys with which to handle hot jars

* a ladle

* a canning funnel

I think I purchased all the tools and gadgets as a part of a set at the same time I purchased the canning pot.

The important first step whatever you're canning is to thoroughly sterilize your jars before you seal them up. Simply fill your canning pot with water, dump in all the jars, lids and rims and bring to a simmer. Leave these items simmering on the stove until just before you are you ready to fill and seal them. Remove them carefully using the gripper tool and settle them onto a clean towel on your counter top.

Depending on what you're processing, the instructions leading up to the water bath will vary -and that is usually the trickier part. For the sake of our purposes here, I will try to explain how to make the strawberry-honey preserves I made last month, but you could simply google-search for a blueberry-honey recipe and likely find similar instructions.

Put a large cooker on the stove filled with about 2 quarts of mashed up strawberries, 2 tablespoons of lemon juice (for extra acidity -extremely low acid vegetables and fruits must be canned under pressure to avoid the taint of botulism, but that is a whole other story) and 1 packet of no-sugar pectin and turn the heat on high. It will quickly come to a boil. Stirring constantly, drizzle in about 1 and 1/2 cups of honey (most recipes call for tons of sugar, but I am always on the lookout for alternatives that use honey, and even then I often decrease the honey since jams rarely need to be cloyingly sweet to be enjoyable. After you make your first batch, you will get a feel for how much sweetener you need). Continue stirring while maintaining high heat and the mess will come to a full, rolling, splashing boil. (Take care not to let the sticky mess splash up and burn your hands!) Boil while stirring for about 15 minutes. The jam will foam up and then settle down. It will gradually become a deep, garnet red and will grow thick and sticky as the time passes. Remove from heat.

Your jars should have just come out of the boiling water (this is where an assistant comes in handy -otherwise, you would want to take the jars out of the hot water before you started boiling the strawberry mixture since that requires constant attention). The water in the canning pot should be returning to a full rolling boil in preparation for the hot water bath.

Gather together the ladle and the funnel and gently ladle the strawberry preserves into the jars, leaving approximately 1/4 inch head space at the top of the jar (this leaves room for expansion when it is being processed in the water bath). Be careful not to slosh any jam along the rim of the jar and if you do, wipe it off neatly with a clean towel. Place the lids on the jars and seal them tightly. This recipe should make about 4 1/2 pints. I typically double recipes and cram as many jars as I can in a canning pot (even settling them on top of one another), but that is not necessarily advisable:). Using the gripper tool, place the jars equal distance apart in the canning pot on top of the wire rack (the wire rack keeps the jars off the bottom of the pot where the heat is too intense and will cause them to crack and break). Boil for about 10 minutes (other fruits/vegetables require different processing times -tomatoes call for 45 minutes, for example).

Gingerly remove the jars from the water bath after 10 minutes and place them in a draft-free room on top of a towel. After a time, the lids should pop down and you can tell for certain that you have a secure seal if you cannot snap the lids up and down by pushing on it with your fingers. Also note that theoretically the jars could burst at this stage, so try to put them somewhere in your home where you would not mind a potential explosion of sticky strawberry jam. This has never happened to me in all my years of canning, however, so don't let this scare you:)

And that about covers it! -See! -Nothing to it! Pretty soon, you'll be canning in your sleep!

Meanwhile, M and I picked about 13 lbs of blueberries today, so if anyone knows of a good blueberry jam recipe, I'm in the market...

voices from the past

Yesterday evening, for no reason in particular, I suddenly determined that I would go through all 87 messages on our answering machine and delete the bulk of them. It drives M crazy when I tell him to leave the messages alone, or when I bitch him out for deleting one without authorization. So, yesterday when he arrived home from work and found me hunched over the machine, ("MESSAGE SKIPPED, MESSAGE 16....) he rejoiced. But his joy turned to puzzlement when he discovered that I wasn't really deleting them all. A message from my sister came on ("Heeeey L!...it's me, S...") and I skipped it. Same with a message from my mother, one from my friend S, my friend K, my brother D, a terse, quick one from M imploring me to "pick up the phone!" and a silly message from C begging me to "call back soon! -I need you to tell me to get rid of some of these shoes- because I am never going to wear them but for some reason I cannot toss them!" All in all, I only kept about 10 out of 87, which I thought was a pretty conservative save rate, but M wondered aloud what was going on.

The truth is (and I spilled it somewhat sheepishly) I don't delete voice messages from my loved ones because I am afraid that if they die I will never be able to hear their voices again. If something were to happen to C or to my mom or my sister or K, I should be awfully glad that I saved those small and frivolous verbal missives. Insignificant though they be ("Ok -I'm coming over! -I hope you're there!"), these messages will return them to the waking world for just a moment - and I can imagine that K really might come over and that C is truly waiting for me to return her call. I want to be able to hear my mom signing off, "OK -well, I hope you know I love you!" one more time after it is too late to say it back.

"Seriously?" M asked, somewhat incredulous. "That's weird. That's kind of morbid and creepy and weeeird."

Maybe it's weird. I told my friend B about my freakish tendency and she said she does the same thing. But B is bonafide crazy, so maybe M is right. To add a smidgen of superstition to the mix, I should note that I sometimes worry that if I do delete a message on accident, the person who left it will almost certainly die, leaving me with nothing. Now that's crazy.

naptime

I don't think I am ever going to get used to napping. It just feels wrong to me in so many ways. And by wrong I mean it feels nearly on the level with sinful, wasteful, lazy and degenerate. I know it is just my good German Midwestern work ethic rearing its ugly head, but I cannot help but feel guilty. But guilt or no guilt, I cannot seem to help myself.

Each afternoon this week, upon arriving home from work, I have promptly stripped to my skivvies, hopped into bed and passed out in a matter of minutes. I wake from each nap around 6pm, groggy-eyed and heavy-headed, the day nearly faded and all my industrious ambitions out the window. And just try getting a good, hard jog in at 6:30pm fresh from a nap! -Ha! I am lucky if I can drag myself to the dinner table, much less drag myself for 10 laps around the track at the park.

So today, in an effort to still carve some meaning out my evening, I skipped out of work on the early side and got the afternoon nap routine over with before 5pm. My head is still heavy and I hardly feel like running, but hopefully I can pull myself together and make something of my afternoon.

independence day

Our plan went off without a hitch last evening. As I stood at the ready to snap a family photo, M shouted: "Everyone say, 'L's PREGNANT!" Disbelief, shock, joy -I caught all if it on film. They asked if he was serious. I nodded from behind the camera and kept clicking away. T is a subtle and quiet guy, but his big smile gave away his happiness. His wife was another matter, chattering away, giddy, and generous in her offers of free childcare anytime I need it. She told me that she loves babies and cannot wait for mine to show up. I am glad to be a part of a something that will make her new life with her husband's family in the wild west a little more interesting.

They left just before sundown, and on a whim M and I decided to race down to the east waterfront to catch the fireworks on the Willamette. We'd never gone before in all our years here (our tradition is to climb a ladder and settle in on the roof of our garage and watch the neighborhood display with beers and blankets. The fireworks aren't as grand, but the novelty of hanging out on the roof of the garage makes it well worth it). We parked on SE 7th and joined the throngs of Portlanders heading for the bridge and the Eastbank Esplanade. The Hawthorne bridge was closed off to allow pedestrians a perfect vantage point and we reached the eastern flank of the bridge just as the fireworks began.

It seemed that all of Portland was in attendance -a perfect cross-section of our fine city was represented: 30-somethings with alternately frightened or mesmerized children riding hips and strollers, hipsters in too-tight jeans on bicycles, huge hispanic families, obese white trash with Burger King bags and giant sippy cups. A few stoned hippie-kids wearing sunglasses ambled past, giggling and trying to disappear.

The fireworks were deafening and the smoke from the gunpowder drifted out from the city and floated like a mist over the water. We both tired quickly of the scene. Fireworks have never been my thing. I cannot understand why anyone would want to ooh and ahhh over the mimicry of "bombs bursting in air." I thought of the soldiers returning from Iraq, stricken with PTSD, downing a fifth of Jack Daniels and hiding in their basements until the sound of gunfire has subsided. I could imagine the earsplitting crack of sniper-fire as I listened to the neighborhood revelry and I shuddered to think that in war the sound is much the same. Holding our hands over our ears, we backed down the bridge and left just as the finale was building to a roaring crescendo.

We drove back up the long ascent from the river to our home further east. The city streets were shrouded in a dull, smokey haze and the acrid smell of gun powder hung heavily in the air. The streetlights glinted through the smoke and the cracking and snapping of fireworks rang out from every side street. We thanked the heavens that our city was not in truth a war zone. We rejoiced that upon the morrow, the smoke will have dissipated, and that instead of the shell casings of spent ordnance, the streets will be littered with burnt and colorful wrappings of fireworks.

announcement

This afternoon, M's father and his wife are coming over for a cook-out and we plan to break the big news to them soon after they arrive. We held off letting them in on the secret since they were the only family we could actually tell in person, seeing as the rest of our respective clans live far from Portland. Today is the first opportunity we will have had to make our announcement and we are both on pins and needles with excitement.

My friend C suggested a great surprise plan, and we are thinking we might try to steal her idea. According to the plan, I will grab the camera and suggest that everyone round up for a 4th of July, garden-party photograph. Just before the shutter closes, M is going to yell "Everyone say, 'We're having a baby!'" and then I snap off a few good ones of their initial expressions upon hearing the news (note to self: remember to use the sports setting and hold the shutter). My only fear is that they will be nonchalant and blase about it, but M said it would be just as fun to capture that expression as it would be to capture elation and joy. And he's right: it would be mighty funny to catch a few "ho-hums," but I highly doubt that's what we'll get. In any case, we'll see how it goes...

Now, I've got some cleaning to do before they arrive...

summer cleaning

Our Southeast bungalow is a modest 950 square feet (1000-some if you count the mudroom). It is the perfect sized space for two comfortable, easy-going partners, but potentially quite cramped once you toss a kid and all its attendant gear into the mix. Also consider that as a crafter and artist I have accumulated piles of papers and objects whose value might be questioned by a casual observer (like every single copy of the Seattle Art Dealer Association's publication -this is the stuff great collage is made of). And I can never seem to cast off a book, no matter the title -they are like treasures to me.

So, in the interest of my future sanity (I anticipate a day months from now when this task might seem a particularly painful form of torture), I have resolved this fine morning to start cleaning out my closets to make room for the new family member. First up: all my skinny clothes.

raspberries and lavender

I haven't the energy to write tonight (will this become a common refrain?). I skipped out of work early and headed to a local farm where I picked pounds and pounds of strawberries and raspberries in the heat of the mid-day. The box-elder bugs were out in force, dive-bombing my hair and eyes, clinging to my neck and shoulders. The strawberry foliage stung my arms like nettles as I reached among the plants to find their hidden treasures. The sun took nearly everything I had. Upon returning home, I stayed on my feet long enough to give a dozen jars of raspberry and lavender jam a boiling water bath (there is nothing like boiling water in your kitchen for a few hours on a hot and muggy evening in July). Now my shoulders ache and my sun-kissed skin stings and I am sweaty and worn and ready for bed. I promise more another day...