Suspended in Time

29 Friday Jan 2010

Posted by in Life at Home, The Great Outdoors

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, ,

Sugar frosted flakes are covering the world outside my window.

Inside it’s warm – thank God.  No power loss for us, though others are less fortunate.  My husband came to bed last night telling of an entire town, just an hour south of here, going to bed without power.   I wondered how many others were left to huddle in the dark and cold, as I turned over to turn out the light.

This morning I woke to an outdoor skating rink.  Gingerly, I stepped outside to salt down the back porch.  But already the lazy falling snow is blunting the slick ice, and soon it will be safe for even this thin-boned woman to venture out.  I don’t imagine I will; I prefer my experience of winter delights from an inside perch.

Like my mother before me, I do love to watch a pretty snowfall.  Suspended in time, each flake finds its own way to earth, riding an invisible magic carpet of air.  About twenty feet up from the ground, some reverse direction to go up, making somersaults in the air as they fall back to earth.  Some fall and turn sideways while others twist and turn in a spiral of snow ribbon.  Fast then slow; thick then thin, the flakes build to cover the ground in mass.

The dogs can’t resist the snow.  In and out… in and out… inandout… the door blurs in constant motion.  Sometimes they go to answer a nature call, but mostly they go out to play.

I look out to see Max grazing on snow; he reminds me a graceful deer at a salt lick.  Once he gets his fill he looks up and our eyes meet through the window.  I know he expects me to drop everything to let him in, even without courtesy of bark.  And like the dutiful mind-reading canine mom that I am, I open the door and in flashes a dark fur coat full of icy rhinestones.

Replete with snow, the dogs are now napping, insulated from an outside that has gone strangely silent without buses running up and down Walker.  I’m ready to settle into the silence as well.  I’ll carry a good book to curl up in my favorite spot.  And between book covers, and the covers of a warm blanket and the cover of snow that has put the neighborhood to sleep, I’ll enter a new world.   Between three layers of covers, I’ll be suspended in time.

Whether that new world will be one in a book …or one in a dream…. it’s too soon to tell.  But I’ll keep you posted.

Freezing Reign

28 Thursday Jan 2010

Posted by in The Great Outdoors

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

Freezing rain and snow will be here soon….unless, of course, the experts are wrong.

Pity the experts when they are wrong.  Pity anyone who is wrong.  Because admitting to wrongs is for sissies, especially in the public realm.  To make mistakes is to appear weak, to lose face.  To err is no longer just being human.  Today, we live in a world where it’s more acceptable to rationalize as adults OR… point fingers like children on the school playground — whaling out —   “He did it! “

Am I the only one who sees anything wrong with this picture?

I didn’t watch our “State of the Union” address last night because I expected it to be just another political speech, as all such speeches have been for as long as I can remember — emphasize the good news — skirt over the bad news –   when what I most long to hear is a hard and balanced look at how the state of the union really is.  Call me an idealist, but what I most want to hear is one truthful report out of the mouth of one man — and not two biased mouths, neither of whose word I can accept “as the truth and nothing but the truth.”

I was talking to my husband about this sad state of our world last night.  My wise husband smiled at me and said, “Oh, you want to live in a world that has an American president that acts like Michael Douglas, who has the courage to admit to making mistakes.”

I ask:  is there anything wrong with this desire?  What if my husband was right last night and he’s right this morning after the big speech —  that what I most want is the kind of president that comes out of Hollywood and not Washington?

Listening to the NPR recap, it seems as though last night’s speech was another verse of the same political song, with the exception that  no booing was heard by the President’s naysayers.  Is this the best that we can do — celebrate that there was no booing by our elected officials?  If so, today I am a very mad-sad American — red with anger and blue with sadness.

My friend Ann once called me apolitical.  If this were true then, it no longer is — though I confess to voting for both Republicans and Democrats.  I vote my conscience, both sides of the ticket, based on who I believe will do the best job for the office being sought.

If only our elected leaders could do the same — if only they could do the best in the job that were elected to do in spite of political cost — rather that seeing the world through red or blue shades — then maybe I would watch the State of the Union address — because then, it would live up to its name.

Well, there’s some freezing rain outside my window, living up to its name and making the expert right for now.  It will be a good day for movie watching about a great, if fictitious,  American president.  Hope we don’t lose power from a freezing reign.

Chocolate Sheet Cake

27 Wednesday Jan 2010

Posted by in Far Away Places, In the Kitchen, Life at Home

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

, , , , , ,

 

On the Irish Ruins of The Quiet Man set

Buying my father a Christmas gift has never been easy.

Just ask my brother Jon  —  he’ll tell you all about the time he learned too late that  Dad was not a Willie Nelson fan — at Christmas or any other time.  But one year, about sixteen years after that Willie Nelson Christmas, I thought I had finally come up with the perfect gift for Dad, when I offered to take him to Greece, to see the land of his father’s birth.

It should come as no surprise to learn that Greece was not on Dad’s radar.  Instead, my father wanted to go to Ireland.  And not just any old place in Ireland — Dad wanted to make a pilgrimage to a city I had never heard of where a movie I had never heard of had been filmed.  In other words, Daddy had his heart set on a visit to Cong where the movie The Quiet Man had been filmed.

Being the gracious gift-givers that we were, we exchanged Greece for the Irish vacation of Daddy’s dreams.  And before travel plans were finalized, the trip grew to include three days each in Paris and London.   All this horsetrading of countries taught me that my beloved father — the quietest man I had thought to ever know — could be quite vocal when it suited his purpose.

In the end, it didn’t matter where Daddy wanted to go.  To his three traveling companions, it was all good.   The days and nights were a blur of memorable sights and sounds, that collided and bumped into each other like fast-moving scenes from the roller coaster ride my sixty-eight year old father rode at Disneyland Paris.

There were the soaring spaces of Paris — Notre Dame, the Louvre, the Eiffel Tour and the Arc de Triomphe — the green rain and gorgeous plump flowers of the Irish countryside, along with lazy sheep crossings on the way to an intrepid picnic on Dingle Bay shared with sea gulls — a ‘mind the gap’ tour of London tubes and seeing history come to life with visits to the Tower of London and walking in the footsteps of Jack the Ripper.

And then there are all those special memories I will always hold dear, like when Daddy, wearing his new tweed jacket and cap, was mistaken for an Irishman by tourists.  And then there’s the photograph of Dad above, standing near the ruins of the “White-O-Mornin” cottage featured in The Quiet Man.  Daddy took in all fifteen days with wide-eyed wonder.  All the memories are precious, especially as I think of how quiet Dad has really grown over the last year, so that he can no longer string two words together.

Amidst all the changing scenery and countries was the constancy of my sister’s chosen dessert of chocolate cake.  It is because of this shared trip with Daddy, that I can no longer see a slice of chocolate cake without thinking ‘Christi.’   And the sweet irony of the association is that I don’t even think chocolate cake is my sister’s favorite dessert — on her birthday, she always asks for a light lemony cheesecake instead!

But two days ago, when I was enjoying a slice of my family’s favorite chocolate cake, I thought of Sis and this shared memory of a fifteen day tour dotted by pieces of chocolate cake.  And with today’s visit to Dad, it seemed right to flip through the photos from the trip and share this recipe with you, along with the few memories that will forever be held together by crumbs of chocolate cake.

Make a chocolate cake memory and you’ll see what I mean.  From my life to yours.

Chocolate Sheet Cake

2 cups sugar
2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
2 sticks butter
1 cup water
4 Tbsp cocoa
1/2 cup buttermilk
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla

In a large bowl, sift together all dry ingredients.

In a saucepan over medium heat, bring butter, water and cocoa to boil.  Add the hot mixture to flour mixture.  Sitr well.

Add remaining ingredients and mix well.  Pour in a greased jelly roll pan (10″x15″x2″) and bake at 350 for 20 mins.

Chocolate Frosting

1 stick butter
4 Tbsp cocoa
6 Tbsp milk
1 box powdered sugar (16 oz)
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup chopped pecans (optional)

In a mixing bowl, add powdered sugar.

In a saucepan over medium heat, bring butter, cocoa and milk to a boil.  Immediately pour over powdered sugar, mixing with an electric mixer until smooth.  Mix in vanilla and nuts.   Immediately spread over hot cake.