Tag Archives: Everyday Life

The Weather Gods

14 Wednesday Aug 2013

Posted by in Life at Home

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IMG_0657Curious sorts might be wondering whether I’ve done little but stew about Oklahoma’s crazy weather since last dropping a few words onto this blog…given the laments of my last post and the headline of today’s…

If so, I’m tossing out a bevy of lines to say that the weather has been very much on my mind these days… though in a good way.. and that I’m alive and well… and that by this time tomorrow, I”ll be in Seattle… getting ready to board a cruise ship to sail the coast of Alaska.  Who knows?  Maybe if I’m can lasso a little discipline, I’ll drop a few posts during our travels.  Photos, maybe… if words, other than “wish you were here” evade me.

Stating the obvious, in case few have noticed, I’ve become a fair-weather blogger.  Or better to say… a foul-weather blogger — one who’s only willing to write when the forecast for rain is 30 percent or more, when it doesn’t make sense to pull out my paint brush… when finish coats need four hours to rainproof.

That my absence from the blog has more to do with busyness on other fronts, that I’ve been occupied outside… gardening up a storm and happily painting the exterior of my house between rainy spells … stirs up a strange stew of emotions within me.  At times I simply rejoice in the work and the result, for both past times are rewarding in a way that writing, for now, is not.  But I can’t begin to describe the relief I feel to have this burden of projects almost lifted, since I’ve been pondering the work for two years now.

IMG_0659Juggling these two outside chores has meant not only that I’ve dropped writing, but that I’ve tethered myself to hourly forecasts as if everyday life depended upon them.  Of course, in a real way, it has.  For I’ve no shame in admitting that slipping my smart phone in and out of my pocket every few hours to see whether the winds of change say it’s best for me to pick up my paint brush… or shovel… or simply head to the showers till another day.. is as natural as breathing… has become (at best) a fidgety tic…. or, at worst, a mild sort of addiction.

Working outside has given me new appreciation for those whose occupations take place everyday in the wild blue yonder.  For plans are just that…subject to change; their execution hinging upon good weather or bad.  Forget the bedtime forecasts.  What matters is the weather one wakes up to… since it doesn’t take a Oklahoma weather god to know that the bedtime forecast is ‘old news’ when there’s a morning forecast.. and that that, too, grows obsolete in the face of the noon forecast at mid-day.

Why weather changes with the beat of time.  It is mercurial.  One year rainy, the next parched with drought.  Temperatures rise and fall in sync with changing mercury levels of old-timer outdoor thermometers. And crazy as it may be to admit it, I love our constantly changing Oklahoma weather.  Somehow, in ways I don’t wish to describe, it changes me.  And not just my current mood… but something deeper that is tied into faith and hope for all things good.

IMG_0660This year, in a Fat Tuesday post, I gave up all my lovely planting plans.  But come May, I saw I was too quick to give in.  Because in spite of our wetter-than-normal summer– or maybe because of it… (since I always seems to get more done when I feel as if I have limited windows of opportunities of “making hay”) — it’s good to report that the bones of all my ornamental gardens are now installed. And that my  two year old front gardens  — taking up space in this post — are “toddling” about, needing very little attention.

Good thing, given all the time it’s taking to get my house painted.  It feels goods to know that I leave for vacation with the roof trim finished and glowing.  And that I’ll come home to less than a month of painting to the finish line… with just vinyl windows and garage doors to go….  Why by the looks of things, vacationing from the blog has been very good for home and garden… and good for my soul, too, since both offer spaciousness and time to reflect on life and God and what and who I love most in the world.

IMG_0661In between all the work, my husband and I are still making plenty of vacation plans … after Alaska, comes Australia and New Zealand….which seems odd, I suppose… to run away from everyday life when it’s time to step back and savor all that’s been accomplished.  But such in life, I suppose.  And not just for us, it seems, since our very own weather god, Gary England, at the height of a glorious career, will soon be retiring as chief meteorologist for Channel Nine…our local CBS affiliate.

Gary has always been our “go-to” weather guy, in good weather and bad.  It will be hard to imagine everyday life without him.  I will miss his calm, reassuring voice and comforting presence in my living room.  Especially on stormy nights.  Gary is the sort of person that most people feel like they know even when they don’t.  Many nice words have already been written about him and his long career here in Oklahoma City.  And I expect many more will be aired, in one fashion or another, between now and his final forecast later this month… though it has surprised me to realize it’s not just the local press.  A LA Times reporter wrote a nice article right after the May 19th and 20th storms worth reading if you’ve the interest and time.   Similarly, the New York Times published a piece a few days ago, which by the sounds of it, had been baking since the storms of May 31st… awaiting for Gary to announce his retirement… for Gary had admitted during the interview that he had been encouraged by station management to keep on being a weather god until it stopped being fun…. and well.. sometime after the May storms, he admitted to the reporter, it had stopped being fun.

IMG_0662When things stop being fun, whatever “things” are, those lucky enough to have choice in the matter move on to the the next fun thing.  For Gary, it’s an executive job at the television station.  For me, for now, it’s being outside painting with latex formulas and flowers instead of painting with words at my computer.  And I don’t regret a single minute of being away — for what a glorious time it has been to be out of doors.  Why this is the first time, in a long time, that Oklahoma lawns have been lush and green entering August.  Or that I can recall tomatoes still setting fruit this late in the season, and evening temperatures hovering below eighty at night.  Today’s morning forecast is mid-eighties and sunny — a change from yesterday’s 50 percent chance for showers.

IMG_0664Some times, during all that planting and painting, I’ve wondered whose summer weather we have had the good fortune to experience.  I’ve wondered whether, perhaps, the jet stream made a wrong turn and lost its way… giving us some other fine state’s weather in the process.  Because if I didn’t know better, I’d think I was living in Oswego, New York rather than Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.  However it happened, whatever its source, wherever our fine summer weather has hailed from, I don’t imagine I’ll soon forget it.  Nor Gary England, the T.V. weatherman, either.

Could be that the weather gods are just bestowing Gary with a fine parting gift.  Because to do the unexpected…. to deliver what could never be forecasted in a million years by the best weatherman of all… well… that would be just like those ‘ole weather gods… wouldn’t you say?

Green Beans & Good Deeds

19 Friday Apr 2013

Posted by in In the Kitchen, Life at Home

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BlogGardenPlan

Weeks of Lenten pondering has led to an Easter-tide realization…that nothing I can do will ever rise to the lofty standard of being good.  Certainly, my thinking roots back to that biblical text of God calling His creation good… against those pointed words memorialized in Luke, where Jesus disassociates himself from goodness with a theoretical ten-foot pole cross, by saying

“Why do you call me good. Nobody is good except for God.”

I once confused the standard of ‘good” with being ‘good enough.”  Where now I know that good is better than I know.  Better than I am.  And that only on my better days, can I offer up ‘good enough.’

Upon that landscape, I’ll still confess that if someone (or something) calls out for assistance, I do what I can to help — even when I know I’ll fall short of doing the good others deserve.  Some weeks I pour time out and spread myself thin, while others, like the last two, not so much. I’ve no need to recount details, but my “good enough” deeds usually connect me to one of my four children.   Sometimes to Sis or Aunt Jane.  But rarely beyond these.  Which may be why I wish to record this one that took place during the dark days of Lent, that had me fulfilling a strange promise to a stranger living out west that I’d earlier tracked down via Facebook’s email system.

Yes, I’m back on Facebook — for the moment, anyway — because of some good-deeding  committed to last autumn.  A pastor friend of mine is writing a book and he wished to more easily facilitate comments within a digital writing support group on Facebook… and since I was the only holdout, and wished to help…

Facebook has its place and its uses.  One, I’ve learned, is this:  For the bargain price of one dollar, I can contact anyone in Facebook’s planetary system, including a lady whose one-of-a-kind name appeared at the top of an ultrasound photo taken of her unborn child….hmm.. seven years ago, I think.  Or was it eleven?  Funny how I can no longer recall and that the number of years no longer matters.

The image had fallen out of a used paperback I was reading, Michael Cunningham’s The Hours, which I had purchased online from a vendor near Seattle.  It’s a fine tale, one that weaves together three stories of three women living in separate times and states, more or less connected together by another novel…. this one, Virginia Woolf’s, Mrs. Dalloway.  I read The Hours during Advent….and I suppose the stranger who first owned it read the book during her pregnancy.  Perhaps she marked her progress in the paperback with an ultrasound photo, before losing track of both.

Rather than tossing the picture out, I set it aside, only to let it gather dust till I ran across it again a few days after Ash Wednesday, buried in my unread stacks of books.  I decided to spare a few minutes to the internet, which led me to Facebook and its lost mother… which led me to draft a strange email that began…. “I hope you’ll not find this too weird, but….”

Now sitting more than two months removed from this event, I wish to say that if that Lenten good-enough deed of mine was weird, how I wish to see more like it in the world, and more of it from me.  So much so, that it would not seem weird at all.  Because… who am I kidding?  Isn’t life, at its best, wonderfully weird?  And isn’t it when we try to keep life in the bounds of the middle of the bell curve, so that we don’t stand out, that life falls strangely flat? You’ll not be surprised, I imagine, to hear that the mother, still unknown to me, still a stranger to me on Facebook (since we are not friends), was overjoyed at my boldness in my reaching out to her past from my present.

Perhaps the weirdest part of all these lines… is that I had not intended to share this strange story between strangers when I began this post.  Instead, I’d planned to share a different one about a landscape design for a prayer garden I’d created for another pastor friend of mine who serves an inner-city Methodist church.  But here we are, with a header photo strangely out of place with the print surrounding it.

That the execution of that landscape design calls for many “good” deeds and ornamental plant material — but no green beans or other edibles — leads me the other original goal of the post: To share a trio of recipes involving green beans that connect me back to three women I love who live or lived in different times and places. It seems right to at least make good on this one.  Because in one way or another, as noted within the recipes below, these green beans have each been synonymous with good deeds.  And there is nothing flat tasting about these.

#1 ~~ Greek Green Beans

Thanks to Aunt Jane, who first preserved my grandfather’s recipe in word…

IMG_0515

2 15 oz cans of green beans, drained
1/2 cup chopped onion
2 minced garlic cloves
2 Tbsp olive oil
2 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp salt (more or less)
1/4 tsp pepper
1/4 tsp allspice
1 8oz can tomato sauce
1 15 oz can petite tomatoes
1 cup of water
 
In a large sauce pan over medium to medium-low heat, saute onion in olive oil for 3 to 4 minutes.  Add garlic and spices and stir for a minute, before adding tomato sauce, tomatoes and water.  Simmer uncovered over low heat for 30 minutes.  Add drained green beans and simmer another 20 to 30 minutes.  Serve with slices of crusty bread, as a meal in itself or as a side, with my grandfather’s roasted chicken or fried pork chops.
 

Amy’s Asian Green Beans

 
Thanks to Amy for sharing her mother’s best friend’s recipe… and for serving them up with a Christmas dinner prepared a few days after my mother-in-law’s passing;  I hope to never forget such kindness, nor that lovely dinner.
 
Amy's Green Beans photo
Add the following ingredients to an oven-safe casserole dish and bake 20-30 minutes at 350 degrees.
 
2 strips of crumbed crisp bacon
1/2 cup of chopped onion, sauteed in 2 Tbsp olive oil.
1 12 oz bag frozen green beans
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup, scant 1 Tbsp, Soy Sauce (original recipe called for Teriyaki Sauce)
1 – 2 Tbsp water
 

Everyday Green Beans

 
greenbeans
 
Thanks to Kate, who told Kara, who told me about the wonders of using broth instead of water… to Mom for the bacon… and Aunt Jo for the chopped onions, that she used to season most vegetables cooked upon her stove top.  This is a true hither and yon family combination….
 
2 strips of crumbled crisp bacon
1/2 cup of chopped onion, sauteed in bacon fat or olive oil
2 cans of drained green beans
2 cups of beef broth
 
Bring to a boil and simmer for a few minutes before serving.
 

Vacationing with Proust

16 Tuesday Apr 2013

Posted by in Good Reads, Life at Home

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IMG_0575So… I’ve begun reading Proust.

More than once, I’ve begun Swann’s Way.

I can’t say how many times I’ve picked it up off my nightstand… only to put it back down two paragraphs later. I tell myself I’m done with it, that the time isn’t ripe for me to read this  masterpiece; but then, resolve weakens.

So I pick at it.  And it picks back.

Between all that picking, sometimes I flip pages back and forth to ferret out meaning, while wondering where Monsieur Proust is taking me.  I’ve no answers.  Only questions.  Easy ones, like what brings people to Proust if he’s such a hard read?  What causes readers to persist and not give up hopes of reading his work?  Is there any plot?  If so, has it begun… and I missed it?

With no small relief, I’m able to report my reading experience imperfectly normal, if one ignores all my vacation time away, which amounts to something like four days out of every seven.  I know this because, when on vacation from Proust, I take off on the internet to visit other readers who’ve confessed their many failed attempts in reading this four thousand word page story.

One of my favorite retreats, which I’ve visited over and over since beginning the novel last month, is a blog piece addressed to a reading group connected with The Guardian.  Authored by Sam Jordison, the entire post is wonderful; the blogger’s insights, as well as testimonies of other readers, has assuaged my guilt and inspired me to soldier on in spite of the questions littering Swann’s Way.  A short excerpt follows:

Of course, describing Proust in terms of plot alone does no justice to the reflections, counter-reflections, digressions and musings that form so much of the immersive pleasure he offers. But it does explain why so many readers feel themselves going under so quickly. Even those who find his writing lovely struggle to progress, as Reading Group AndrewLesk puts it,

‘I have started this book four times. Once got to page 200. Why did I stop? Time, ironically. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve read. Looking forward to getting through it all now that the Club is onto it.’

He wasn’t the only one to struggle.  JuliaC42 wrote:

‘I started reading it once (the Moncrieff) but it took me so long to read the first chapter that I gave up. It is now doing a good job of supporting my clock radio at the correct height.’

So what brings me back?  Why do I continue to pick up Proust?  I wish I knew.   But what I know instead is that is has nothing to do with checking off bucket lists or acquiring bragging rights for traversing the work’s heights “because it was there.”

Perhaps Proust’s appeal lies in passages, like the one below from page 116 (The Modern Library Classics version, translated by Moncrieff, Kilmartin and Enright) as well as others that allude to the way reading a book can help us better read everyday life… to know reality rather than the perceptions of reality that too often blind us to truth.

Next to this central belief which, while I was reading, would be constantly reaching out from my inner self to the outer world, toward the discovery of truth, came the emotions aroused in me by the action in which I was taking part, for these afternoons were crammed with more dramatic events than occur, often, in a whole lifetime.  These were the events taking place in the book I was reading.

By excerpting this, I’ve killed its passion, haven’t I?  So it goes with me and Proust and why I turn so often to the world-wide web for comfort.

If my internet interludes tell me anything, it’s that there are many ways to take Proust.  Some read to get the gist of his thoughts; others consume his prose in small doses, like poetry.  That neither approach has worked for me, nor that I’ve yet stumbled upon some middle way, may explain why I’m out of step with my own on-line reading group since I’ve only half-finished with Part One.  And why I’m planning to take Proust with me on vacation next week… if not to catch up, or to catch on, then to at least allow Proust to catch some Caribbean sunshine…before we begin again.