Tag Archives: Everyday Life

An Everyday Poet

26 Wednesday Jan 2011

Posted by in Writing

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I began a poetry class today with no wish to write poetry.  Instead, I long to listen to poetry recitations.  And read more than a few poems.  And hope keeping company with poets will infect my prose in a good way.

While there, I learned my passionate-for-poetry professor desires that poetry once again be written in everyday language so that it will, once again, connect with everyday people.  “Some call marijuana a gateway drug,” he said, “So I call Billy Collins a gateway poet.”  All I can think of, sitting in my chair, is that his words smack of addiction rather than the mild infection I signed up for.

Yet my professor’s use of that word everyday — not once but twice — made me wonder if Billy Collins is not a pot-like poet at all, but more like a meat and potatoes poet.  And if so, Billy and I will get alone just fine.

White Spaces

25 Tuesday Jan 2011

Posted by in Home Restoration, Life at Home, Writing

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Painting a room is much like writing my everyday life on this sliver of white space; I’m finished only when I’m willing to walk away from it.

Usually it’s because I’m satisfied with the result.  But when not, I’ve learned to leave well enough alone — that is, until I know how to improve upon it.

Downstairs in my living room, I lived with a smudged and streaked ceiling for three years.  After three failed attempts at getting it right, I realized I didn’t possess the skills to make it better.   So I lived with it, looking up at it ever so often, as if wishing upon a star.

A few weeks ago I knew it was time to try again.  I had just finished the dining room and had spent the last seven months painting for others.  So, with my husband’s help, I emptied the room of all its furnishings and spread drops cloths all over the floor.  And painting quickly, with a very wet roller cover, I covered the ceiling with paint and smoothed out the lines, trying not to look back on what I had just finished.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s painting or writing — it’s hard to move forward without a backwards glance, and not get caught up in fine-tuning what’s not ready for finishing touches.  As it dries, a freshly painted ceiling will appear streaky when it’s not; and when I give in to temptation to roll-over those phantom streaks, I end up making streaks where there were none.

When I write, if I don’t continue to dash forward on my thoughts —  instead editing away on what’s all ready there —  I not only get derailed but often eliminate what ultimately could be an important thread.  But it’s hard, so very hard to keep moving across this digital page, to see where my thoughts will take me, to encounter emptiness and white space.

I don’t have white spaces in my house.   Unless one counts woodwork.  Bathroom tile.  And crisply painted white ceilings.

Egg Salad Revival

22 Saturday Jan 2011

Posted by in In the Kitchen, Life at Home

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The first time I tried it was at Apple’s Way, a cute little tea room in Lake Jackson locally famous for serving plates of assorted triangle-cut triple layer sandwiches full of salad mixes — chicken, tuna, ham, pimento-cheese and egg — mostly to women.

Being unsuitably impressed, I avoided egg salad with something akin to religious fervor for fifteen years.  My mantra, when ordering my favorite assorted plate of sandwiches during frequent stops at the tearoom became  — “Anything but egg salad, please.”

But somehow, in the twenty years of residing near Apple’s Way, I grew a change of heart.  Perhaps it was living amongst friends who had roots in the deep South which caused me to give egg salad another taste  — or maybe it was a certain Methodist preacher who shamelessly hinted for egg salad sandwiches to be brought to every church function that made me wonder if there was a certain charm about egg salad I had previously missed.

Whatever it was, and whenever and however it happened, I now confess to loving this simple stuffing.  My redemption was so absolute that when my good friend Ann and this certain preacher-friend and I would gather for our weekly book study on Wednesdays at Noon, it was me bringing in the sheaves — carrying individually wrapped egg salad spread on fresh-baked white bread as repentance.

Five hundred miles away and who knows how many years, egg salad has found a permanent  spot on my rotating lunch menu —  though no longer  limited to Wednesdays.  And while there are many recipes for egg salad — I believe my father favored one including chopped olives — I like this one the best.  Appropriately, it hails from a recipe I found in the pages of Southern Living, which I’ve adapted to my own taste.

Thank goodness our hearts do soften toward new ideas and tastes when we keep minds and mouths open.  Care to confess your own food conversion story?

Egg Salad Sandwiches

Makes 4 sandwiches

5 large hard-boiled eggs, grated
2 Tbsp. finely chopped celery
1 Tbsp. sweet pickle relish
1 Tbsp. finely chopped onion
2 Tbsp. mayonnaise
1 Tbsp. sour cream
1 tsp. dried salad seasoning
1/2 tsp. Dijon mustard
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. sugar
1/4 tsp. pepper

Combine ingredients in a bowl. Cover and chill for an hour or two to allow flavors to mix and mingle.

To serve, spread evenly on a slice of white sandwich bread — fold it like my father would — or make it a holy trinity sandwich, by topping it with another slice of bread and another layer of spread and another slice of bread, slicing that triple-decker sandwich into tea-room triangles.