You Take the Cake!

Me, I’d rather have bread – and lots of it! There was a time when Katie was little that I made all of our bread. I enjoyed making it, we all enjoyed eating it, and, well, is the sort of thing that I assumed good mothers did. Regrettably, my hopes for garnering the MOTY award (mother of the year) for all this bread making were dashed when Katie came home from her first Daisy Scout meeting and informed that Abby’s mother served them peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and the jelly came out of a jar with a picture of a grape on it and the bread came sliced, right out of the bag!

At that time, I limited my lawyering to three days a week and on those days, I donned my suit, tied a bow at the neck of my button down shirt, slipped into my high heels, and left Katie at home with Mrs. Tallent. In my office I crafted wills for my clients, counseled them regarding financial uncertainties and tried to help them cope with the angst that comes with family bickering and disappointing children. The other two days, I pulled on a turtle neck and sweats, slipped into an old pair of running shoes and stayed home with my daughter. And on one of those days we made bread.

Kneading the bread took a while and also took muscle, as Katie was fond of observing. Standing on a stool beside me at the counter, she worked on a small mound of bread while I handled the larger portion. It was a great time to visit. Katie took seriously her responsibility for a large family of dolls and bears, many of whom were often in need of medical attention or simply coddling. Thankfully, as a result of her concern and ministrations, most had recovered sufficiently by afternoon to share in tea and toast, made with our freshly baked bread.

Occasionally one of those hot button topics such as “where babies came from” made its way into the conversation. When I offered an explanation equating the process of baby begetting to making bread, I was rewarded with a sideways look of skepticism. Even at three, she wasn’t about to buy into something that silly. Now that she is a fully fledged physician working at a Children’s hospital, I am prepared for the inevitable lecture on the ill effects visited upon children by parents who take the easy way out by talking nonsense to their offspring. (Yet another blow to the coveted MOTY award!)

Making bread is time consuming and that was part of the beauty of the project – we simply had to stay put and hang around home in order to cover all the steps. Mixing the ingredients, kneading the dough, letting it rise, then forming the loaves and waiting for them to rise and finally baking the bread could eat up half of the day. Having heard of someone who was getting his wife a bread maker for Christmas, Fred inquired if I thought I would like one. I scuttled that suggestion quickly and probably not very diplomatically. “No! No! I like all the fuss and bother of making bread and kneading the dough is the part I like the best!”

One day my friend and neighbor Maureen informed me that there was free swim every Thursday morning from 10:00 to 11:00 at the local indoor pool. Maureen was a teacher who like me was working part time while her son Michael was still at home. Of course, I thought that was a great idea. I had grown up swimming in the local lakes and a large irrigation canal (aka ‘the ditch’) located about a mile from our house. Besides, at this time I hadn’t yet thrown in the towel in my quest to be “mother of the year” and I was confident that taking kids swimming would garner me some points in that unspoken competition. The only problem was that Thursday was our bread making day, so we would have to get creative.

As it turned out, combining bread making and swimming was surprisingly easy. Once the bread was mixed up, kneaded and placed in a buttered bowl, we covered the bowl with plastic wrap and a towel and set it in the trunk of our red VW Dasher. The sunlight coming through the back window created a warm slightly steamy place without getting too hot. We picked up Michael and Maureen and drove to the pool. After swimming and showering, we returned to the car, punched the bread down, shaped it into loaves, covered them with a towel and drove to Big Tom’s for grilled cheese sandwiches and a lot of bragging about our aquatic accomplishments. By the time we got home, the kids were ready for a nap and the bread was ready to go into the oven.

Despite the fact that making bread has routinely been in the top ten of my yearly list of things I promise myself I will finally get around to, until quite recently, I hadn’t made bread on a regular basis for many years. In the meantime, I have devoted a great deal of time to finding the perfect bread to buy, sometimes travelling a great distance to check out a bakery that is rumored to be good. I have been a devotee ever since the new Great Harvest Bakery was opened on the west side of town, right next to Trader Joe’s.

All of this changed about two weeks ago, when my copy of Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg, M.D. and Zoe Francois arrived in the mail. I didn’t stumble on to this recipe book on my own. Once again I have my friend Julie to thank, the same friend who shamed me into mitered corners. She raved about how much fun she was having making this bread and then how easy it was. Finally, she served me some and I was hooked! The bread was incredible – crusty and toothsome, just the way I liked it!

And even though the title sounds like one of those unlikely boasts that are so common to weight loss and exercise programs, in this case the claim is true. Getting this bread ready to bake takes no time at all. And while the bread is baking, the kitchen smells heavenly. Once it comes out of the oven, the sight of it on the cutting board transports me to another time and place. This technique which features very wet dough requires a few pieces of equipment - a baking stone and pizza peel are necessary for the baking process and plastic tubs with lids that are not air tight are needed for mixing and storing the dough. When I went on line to order the mixing and storing tubs, I realized that I had just become part of a bread making movement that had been going on for a number of years.

I started with the master recipe which the authors describe as an “. . . artisan free-form loaf called the French boule. . .” From there, I went on to try the roasted garlic and potato bread followed by the oatmeal bread. The first time around, I tried to follow the recipes to the letter. Following directions is pretty hard for me because I nearly always think that I have a better idea! I made up the oatmeal bread last week following the recipe, pretty much. I didn’t have wheat bran so I used some wheat germ in its place. It produced very tasty bread that was great toasted for breakfast. Remembering a favorite oatmeal bread from the past, this week I made up a batch substituting molasses for maple syrup and added some toasted sesame seeds. It was as good as I remembered. Not necessarily better than the recipe in the book but a tasty alternative. Yesterday I baked out three loaves of granola bread, to rave reviews.

So here I am, baking bread as if my very life depended on it, with none of the attendant fuss and bother that I once deemed essential to my enjoyment. Of course, in my former life it was necessary to scheme in order to justify staying at home; now that I am a full time homebody, with career ambitions culminating in a long walk with the dogs, I no longer need an excuse.

Recently my friend Steve told me that his dinner club hosted an evening where everyone brought what they would want for their last meal. I know exactly what mine would be -crusty bread, Havarti cheese, an apple, and a glass or two of red wine. Nothing hard about that decision. Of course, I now realize that if I don’t quit treating every meal as if it were my last, they may have to find a piano box to bury me in! In the meantime, I am doing my best to dispel the notion that man, or woman in this case, can’t live by bread alone. Give me Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day and I will give it my best shot!


 

My Friend Bob

In mid February, our dear friend Bob Funkhouser died. Fred and I were both asked to speak at his memorial a month later and below is a transcript of my remarks. Even though this was written for a particular friend and a specific friendship, the elements of joy and pathos, humor and resiliency are common to all great friendships.So I decided to share it hoping that it resonates with others.


Figuring out where to begin on a life as rich as Bob’s is something of a challenge. An even more difficult task is knowing when to end. As Fred mentioned, Bob was an exceptional listener, one who could hold his tongue longer than most. When he did speak, he was generally economical with words. I will try to take a page from the Bob Funkhouser playbook, and not prattle on.

One of the first times we were in the Funkhouser’s home, in the course of snooping around, I came upon a picture that I had grown up with – a photo taken at the Junior Livestock Show in Spokane, when Harry Truman was making a whistle stop campaign tour of the country. There were three men on a podium – my dad, Harry Truman, and some other guy. When I asked Bob what he was doing with a picture of my father in his house, he replied – “we always wondered who that other fellow was.” Turns out that the third person in the picture was Bob’s uncle, Frank Funkhouser, who Bob visited one summer that later prompted him to leave Indiana and settle in Washington. That picture hangs in the small bathroom off their back porch, which I consider “my bathroom” whenever I am there. That picture that our two families shared was the beginning of an enduring friendship.

Bob and Coke’s gift for hospitality is legendary. Susan and Karen both brought home their friends from kindergarten through college, many of whom considered 826 Percival their home away from home, and no doubt a few of them, wished it had been their real home. I expect that nearly everyone in this room has enjoyed a meal at their dining room table or coffee on their deck, drinking in the amazing view of Mount Rainier and the Capital Dome.

For many years, Bob and Coke acted as the unofficial medical welcome wagon, inviting all the new physicians who came to Olympia to their home to get acquainted and settle into the community. Many of us here will remember Bob’s 40th birthday party with the beer Keg in the trunk of the Falcon. It wasn’t the first time I had drunk beer out of the back of a car – Fred and I met at the University of Idaho, for crying out loud. But it was the first time I had been to someone’s 40th birthday party and I was amazed that I could actually know someone that old! Of course now, the only 40 year olds I know are my friend’s kids, and many of them won’t see 40 again. Time does have a way of moving on.

I am sure I am not the only one who refused to recognize that Bob had retired, just because he was no longer at the MedArts building. I continued to chat him up on all maladies, real and imagined, knowing that he would want to be in on the front end of some new medical discovery. One memorable examination came about when I managed to ram a lavender stem into my eye. It was late fall and I had been in the garden cutting back the lavender – any of you who have tackled that project will know that when lavender stems dry on the stalk, they become hard and sharp – much like bailing wire. This occurred not long after Bob’s mishap on the garage roof that Chris alluded to earlier. With broken bones in both legs, Bob was getting around in a wheel chair. He decided that the best place to perform this examination was the bathroom, with me on the commode and Coke standing to my left holding a large flash light. Bob rolled in the door directly in front of me. What made the examination doubly difficult was the fact that we were all laughing so hard, we couldn’t hold still. Eventually, he was able to get a good look at my eye and confirm that I had scratched it – translate, I wasn’t just making this up – but that the injury didn’t look permanent, thus dispelling any fantasy I might be entertaining of becoming a romantic figure with an eye patch. We adjourned to the living room and he poured me a glass of red wine as a pain killer. One of many glasses he served me through the years.

Not only did I count on Bob for all things medical, but he became my personal “go to” guy for shopping. I am a terrible shopper – buying is the part of that equation that I excel at. I lack the patience to check out multiple sites in order to find just the right, whatever. As my family can attest, through the years I have had numerous bouts of organization mania, where everything gets thrown out of the cupboards and closets and then returned in a manner that confounds anyone else who is looking for an item in its former home. On this occasion, I decided that what I really needed were some of those wire racks that attach to the back of a cupboard door to hold cleansers, and brushes and cleaning rags. I hadn’t clue where to begin and so, naturally, I called Bob. He not only directed me to the store but told me the aisle and shelf where I could find them!

One day last December when Fred and Bob were having coffee Fred mentioned that we were thinking about getting me a new car. Well, shopper Bob came through again recommended that we look into buying it through “Costco”. (And to think, we thought they only sold Salsa and Worcestershire sauce by the gallon!) And so we did. I drove directly from the car dealership to Bob & Coke’s so that they could see and smell my new car. Bob allowed as how he felt like a “godparent” to the car and from that day on, I have called my lovely new cheerful red Outback “Bob.”

We are all familiar with the notion of leaving a legacy, something for our family or community to mark our lives, to remember us by. Not a day goes by that we aren’t asked, even badgered at times, to consider the “gift that keeps on giving.” And that is not a bad thing. But as I have been thinking about Bob these past several weeks, I have come to realize that the real legacy we leave is the life we live, and Bob “lived his life well.” His was a life of intelligence combined with intention; a life of problem solving and caring; a life of love,and laughter and good humor.

It is hard when a good friend dies not to feel a wave of sadness when you recall something you did together – a trip, a meal, a quiet moment. You find yourself picking up the phone to call and tell them about something, or cutting out an article you are sure would pique their interest. We have all done that, I am sure. But I have decided it is blessing, a kind of ongoing grace that survives. And so I am making a point of doing something every day that reminds me of him. Just something small, done without a lot of fuss and bother or fan fair, but something that invariably brings a smile or nod of remembrance. I call it “doing a Bob.” I invite you to do the same.

And so I return to the beginning. My “Bob” for today will be to quit talking and take my seat. It was a privilege and an honor to be asked to be part of this remembrance and Fred and I thank the family for that. It was an even greater privilege and honor to be Bob's friend. It was a lot of fun as well!

GOG

Growing old gracefully. Gracefully growing old. Growing gracefully older. Hum – no matter how I turn it around, it still seems out of reach. Pity that, as the phrase has such a nice ring to it; sounds so beguilingly simple. Something that anyone who put their mind to it might achieve. Of course it can only be regarded as simple if in fact it is something that a person really wants to do. And therein lies the rub.

We none of us want to grow old, but there is little that we can do about that. I suspect that everyone who graduated from high school in 1961 is hoping to put this whole process on hold at least for the next six months. This August I will attend my fiftieth high school reunion where I see myself standing around (well, maybe sitting around) with a lot of people I haven’t seen in 50 years, each of us telling the other how good we look, all the while assuring ourselves that we couldn’t possibly look as old as the other guy. (The hotel could surely charge an enhanced rate at these events if they promised to remove all of the mirrors!)

So, it is a given that it is impossible to escape the first part of the equation – the growing old part – oddly enough, if anything the graceful part is more difficult because it requires an “attitude adjustment” that is pretty hard to get my head around. Even if I wanted to, I don’t think it is in the cards. As a consequence I am getting a little worn out with all the press the notion manages to generate. Yesterday I got an email from a friend informing me that she has cleared out her closets, sold the house she has lived in for forty years and moved across the country into a one bedroom efficiency apartment close to her kids. With annoying regularity marketing materials from one of the local assisted living facilities show up in my mail box informing me that I can take the stress out of my life and that of my family, if I just sign up. Much as I might give lip service to admiring the selfless acts of friends who downsize and relocate to facility that offers a continuum of care, I don’t see myself handing the keys to the car over any time soon, “I’d rather give them to you now than to have you take them away later!” Not too likely.

In my case, getting the right attitude about it is only half the battle. Achieving a state of physical grace is equally elusive. If recent events are any indication, not only will I “not go quietly” but I won’t go “upright” either. A case in point. A couple of weeks ago, I topped off a great walk with ‘the boys’ – Barley and Malbec –with a face plant. I’ve been perfecting face plants on the ski slopes for years but this was the first time I had tried out my technique on the pavement. Without overstating the obvious, there is a vast difference between snow and asphalt, particularly when you lead with your lips. The interaction between my two leashed dogs and a friendly lab on “voice leash” was the direct cause of my shift from vertical to horizontal. Beyond that, the details are fuzzy.

With blood dripping onto my coat and hands the boys and I made it home. Within the hour, my upper lip looked like a bratwurst. Later on that day I was in the grocery store and made a point of telling anyone who even glanced in my direction exactly what I had done. I’d much prefer to be thought of as clumsy as vane. Without an explanation, I was sure to be pegged as “Botox gone bad.” Fred got a little nervous when folks looked from me to him, even though I assured him that if he’d bring me a bouquet of flowers I would tell anyone who listen that he didn’t mean to do it!

Before the day was over, it became obvious that I’d had a slight concussion – nausea and chills were my first clue. I should know; again, I am no stranger to that phenomenon. I have putting my skull to the test ever since I was about five and stood on the top of a fruit picking ladder, only to have the ladder go to the left while I flew to the right. The strongest evidence on that occasion that I had hurt my head was the fact that my brother, who had suggested I climb to the top of the ladder in the first place, convinced me that telling mother about it was a bad idea. “It would only upset her.”

So for a couple of days I had a fat lip, an abrasion or two on my face and a swollen and tender hand. As is often the case in my life, it could have been a lot worse. This fall that could have/should have resulted in a broken wrist or nose, chipped teeth and stitches, to say nothing about having to replace my expensive new glasses, left me with a fat lip and nothing more! So there’s no take away here about being more careful in the future; rather, it is cause for celebration. A high five for good luck and strong bones!

A few days later, I loaded my red metal wheel barrow up with tools and rolled it down to Shipwreck Corner to help with a neighborhood work party. As long as our local garden club, the Sewer Sisters, has been maintaining the landscaping on the corner, I have reported for duty on the business end of my wheelbarrow. The following day, I woke up “old” – no graceful, no gradual about it. Every movement was painful. My neck was so stiff that I had to rotate my entire body if I wanted to look at something over my shoulder. I took the stairs slowly, one at a time. I ached – all over. Flu type aches minus the flu.

A few days later I discussed all this body stuff at length with Swede, my trainer. I generally confer with him before I call my doctor partly because Swede doesn’t preface his remarks with prepositional phrases such as “at your age. . .” I suppose he is an enabler of sorts, as he generally advises me to get back in the game. His theory was that since my body had suffered a significant trauma from the face plant a few days earlier, the added strain of hauling my wheel barrow a mile and a half was overload and my body said, enough already. We focused on stretching exercises for a couple of days, I had a great massage thanks to Mary Beth, and well – I am back at it, wheel barrow and all.

So, here I am at what could be an opportune time to evaluate my life and decide which activities I might forgo in the days ahead. Create a “been there, done that” list of things I really don’t need to do anymore. Starting with face plants! Of course, I don’t really want to repeat on that, but reinventing myself as careful and cautious sounds boring at best.

Intellectually, I am quite aware of the inherent tension that accompanies life at this stage of the continuum as a good part of my professional career was consumed with helping clients and their families cope with the vicissitudes of aging. Certainly, I don’t want to make life more difficult than necessary for my family. On the other hand, now that my body is back to normal I think that I will stay in denial a little bit longer. Like Scarlet O’Hara, I’ll worry about it tomorrow! Maybe then I will consider living gracefully and all that might entail. It is just that right now, I am not ready to commit!

Keeping Track of Myself

For Christmas this year, Fred got me a “pedometer.” Not my first, but it could well be the last. It is probably the fifth or sixth device of this type that I have owned in the past 30 years, and in my estimation, it is clearly the best. All the previous iterations of this device that I have owned have been duds. Price seemingly had no bearing on functionality. Five dollars or fifty, they all were abandoned within a week or two, because, for the most part, they were too friggin fussy to figure out. A couple of years ago I ask a geeky young friend (perhaps that is redundant) to help me get one set up and working. He assured me that he would sort it out and provide me with a tutorial in a day or two. When he was likewise stymied, I threw the device in the trash and decided to just forget about it. Really, if they can put a man on the moon, you’d think that someone could invent a pedometer that didn’t require the user to hold down two buttons at once, while advancing a third! Who are they making these things for? Monkeys? Well, I have news for you. Finally they have.

Fast forward to Christmas, 2010, and my OMRON, Pocket Pedometer, Model HJ-112, and I have arrived at statistical nirvana. I drop this light weight device into my pocket first thing in the morning, where it rides around keeping track of me until the last thing at night, when I remove it, record the day’s results and then smugly trundle off to bed. If I happen to don something without pockets, such as the skirt I will be wearing later on today to a funeral, there is a clip that attaches the pedometer to my waist. It makes me look a little like a physician on call, but that’s not all bad, especially since I am neither. There is of course the risk that someone will spot me in the church parking lot, assume I am a doctor and expect me to get someone breathing again.

In the course of the day my pedometer records every step I take and then separately keeps track of the number of aerobic steps and the time in which those steps were taken. For example, yesterday I logged in 11719 aerobic steps in 100 minutes. Speaking of yesterday, it was something of a record day for me and the pedometer. My tally for steps of any kind was 19,250 which equated to 8.50 miles. My average daily mileage for the past 30 days is 6.76 miles. Are you asleep yet?
If not, there is more and it gets worse. This device also tells me how many calories I have burned along with kilograms of fat. Yesterday, the day I logged my all time high mileage, I managed to burn a measly 580 calories and 41.3 grams of fat. I bet I shot through that number with the first fistful of cracked pepper kettle chips and glass of wine, including the few extra calories expended getting the darn chip bag open. How depressing!

So, who cares about this kind of information? I mean, who else other than me? Even I don’t delude myself with the thought that when a neighbor stops me on the road and asks what is new that they are really wanting to know which “step” I am on at the moment or where I was at this time yesterday, “stepwise.” I think that in order to have information like this matter, you have to possess the C chromosome. Never heard of it? Well, that would be C, as in competitive. And, competitive in this context may simply be code for compulsive. Neither of these qualities is intrinsically bad in and of itself. Indeed, there are situations where it serves a useful purpose. A friend of mine who has an estate and tax planning law practice says that what she is really looking for when she interviews a potential hire is some evidence that they are just a little OCD. Unfortunately, she has yet to figure out a question that would elicit the desired response without being sued for discrimination.

So, why does all of this keeping track really matter? Am I really a better person because I know how many steps I took on any given day? I am certainly more boring but is that a necessary component to improved cardio-vascular health? Probably not but it does tend to be a motivator. Keeping track, that is; not being boring. My friend Mary Ellen got a pedometer for Christmas as well. Hers features a touch screen, which I am sure would frustrate me no end. But then, Mary Ellen is a higher tech than I am. Once a week, we meet at Capitol Lake and walk and talk and discuss our data. Well, of course we do talk about other things – books and food and the dogs we are walking. But at the end of the walk we compare our numbers. Her pedometer always says we have walked further than mine which may be the pay off for being able to operate a touch screen, I don’t know.

We have agreed that there is a point of no return with all this keeping track. If I walk 8.5 miles one day, do I walk 9 the next? And then, set a goal to double that in three months? So, if I walked 47.32 miles last week, how hard would it be to walk 50 this week and if I am going to walk 50 miles in a week, why don’t I just walk to Seattle and be done with it? After that, maybe I will walk to the Canadian border and see Jane. And, if I did make it to British Columbia, would I burn enough calories to add a slice or two of salami to my chips and wine? This is crazy making and I seem to be a willing actor in the drama.

Right now I need to end this circular discussion so that I can get my walking shoes on and get out the door. After all, if I intend to best yesterday’s record and get back in time to clean up for the funeral, I need to get going. On the other hand, St. Michael’s church, my destination for the funeral, is only about nine miles from here, so maybe I should just walk there!

If you read in the paper about a befuddled middle aged woman found wandering around muttering to herself and counting her steps, well it just might be me. If the article goes on to say that she was arrested for accosting the officer who tried to take her pedometer away, BINGO! Until that happens, to paraphrase Rick Steves, I guess I will just keep on tracking!

Mitered Corners

For many years, I have made napkins for friends and family members when occasions such as weddings or birthdays called for a gift. When we were first married and I had considerably more time than money, I regularly sifted through the remnant table at fabric stores looking for suitable material. Generally, I chose remnants that would produce at least two nice sized napkins to be part of a set of six or eight. If possible, this collection would be related by color or pattern. That someone might prefer a set of napkins that all looked alike never crossed my mind.

Through the years things changed including fabric. The advent of polyester in the seventies made finding nice 100% cotton cloth difficult. It also seemed that an emphasis in color over thread count came along as part of the craft movement. On my end, there was a realignment of resources. I now had more funds in my checking account than time on my clock. As a result, a soup pot frequently replaced a set of mismatched napkins as my standard wedding gift.

A few years ago I got back into the napkin making business. This shift was inspired by the discovery of a great fabric store in Saint Maries, the closest metropolis to our cabin in Idaho. Whether I am making curtains or mending jeans, the cabin is my favorite place to sew. My mother’s wonderful Bernina is there and the fact that when I am at the cabin, there aren’t really many other claims on my time, makes sewing over there a real delight.

Every summer I make a pilgrimage into Mrs. Sew and Sew in Saint Maries looking for fabric. Most of her customers are quilters and her inventory of high quality cloth is amazing. I get excited when I come upon a bolt that seems to have a friend’s name written on it. One such find featured a pattern of black berries that were nearly identical to my friend Coke’s china pattern.

Making napkins is not a particularly challenging undertaking. It pretty much requires cutting, pressing, and sewing in a straight line. At least, that is all it required until my friend Julie – and the word friend is used advisedly as you will see as this unfolds – told me about someone she knew who always mitered the corners on the napkins she made. Mitered corners – incredible! I could only imagine how impressive they might be.

Contemplating it, however, sent me into a tailspin. On the one hand, napkins with mitered corners would be something to really crow about. On the other hand, now that I knew better, what should I do about all of those “fold over corner” napkins I had blithely gifted in the past. Should I send out a recall notice? Maybe sneak into friends’ linen closets while their backs were turned and take them back? Suddenly, my little hobby had become a knotty moral quandary.

Even though I had never actually mitered anything before, I knew what a mitered corner should look like and felt confident that I could figure it out. Still, I found that visualizing the end product and sorting out how to get there was an exercise that taxed my spatial reasoning skills to the max. The most difficult part was calculating the angle and the number of stitches required to produce a folded corner that would lay flat once it was sewn. Folding - pressing-clipping – stitching – cursing! The results improved as I went along so that the final two or three were something I could actually be proud of. Still, it was a Sisyphean exercise every time I started on a new batch.

Everything changed for the better this summer when I engaged in a bit of “strategic whining” in the presence of a professional seamstress. After I explained my frustration to Loraine, she tore off a square of paper from a post it note pad and folded down two of the sides a quarter of an inch. Then she opened the paper back up and folded the corner of the square toward the middle, producing an isosceles triangle with side angles of 45 degrees. This triangle was clipped off along the base, and then folded toward the center one quarter of an inch. She refolded the sides along the original crease and then folded the paper a second time. Have I lost you? Very possibly as this is truly a case of pictures surpassing words. Trust me. The napkins produced using the pattern are the ones I have been dreaming about for years. It should come as no surprise that when not in use, I keep this pattern in my safety deposit box!

I experienced another one of these “mitered moments” the day before Thanksgiving when I was preparing to make the pies. The crusts, which I had mixed up the day before, were waiting to be rolled out in the fridge, four plump discs wrapped in waxed paper. As I placed the can of pumpkin and the two cans of evaporated milk next to the mixer, I glanced at Cook’s Illustrated which was open on the counter. Recklessly, I wondered if they had anything to say about pumpkin pie. Of course they did. If you have ever consulted Cook’s Illustrated you know that have something to say about just about everything culinary.

For starters they nattered on about the fact that the traditional method of preparing pumpkin pie invariably resulted in a soggy crust. Of course, I had to agree but since I’d never known anything different – my mother and grandmother and I all followed the directions on the Libby can – I didn’t consider it an issue. Well, it doesn’t have to be soggy and if you are willing to add the few extra steps required for prebaking the pie shell, you can serve up pumpkin pie with a crisp and flaky bottom.

Though it adds a little more time, this step isn’t all that complicated. It requires lining the crust with foil and weighting it to keep the crust from shrinking, then baking it for about fifteen minutes, then removing the foil and weights and baking the crust another ten minutes or so. Fussy as all this sounds, I was willing to go the extra mile because from my perspective, the crust is the pie. The filling is secondary at best. I have unapologetically served any number of runny berry or peach pies through the years, confident that the crust would carry the day.

Nonetheless, convinced as I was that the true test of the pie, or let’s be honest here, the pie maker, was the crust, I plunged ahead and considered their suggestions for the filling. Under their tutelage I heated the pumpkin puree in a sauce pan with brown sugar, cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon and salt. Once that concoction bubbled, I removed it from the heat and added the dairy. When I say “dairy” please note that we are now talking about heavy cream and whole milk. (Just take those cans of evaporated milk to the food bank.)Well beaten eggs are added last. Since I was more or less doubling the recipe, I ended up with seven large eggs!

Try as I might to follow their directions to the letter, I fell down when it came to “making sure to pour the filling into the pie shell while it is still hot!” My shell had cooled for about fifteen minutes before I got around to filling it. Obviously, those “laboratory cooks” don’t ever have to go to the bathroom, or answer the phone or throw the ball for a dog!

When I did pour the filling into the shell, there was considerably more pumpkin than the shells would accommodate. The directions contemplated this and calmly assured me this was nothing to worry about. Once the pies had baked for a “few” minutes in a 425 degree oven and the filling had begun to set up, I was directed to open the oven door, stick my head into that 425 degree oven (think Hansel and Gretel) and add the surplus to the partially baked pie. Well, as it turns out, I could also add it to the floor, the bottom of the oven, and my apron! Fortunately, I had put off doing the floors until after the pie preparation.

Of course, the seminal question floating out there is, does all this produce a better pie. Well, yes, damn it, it does! The crust is better – crisp and flaky and frankly, the filling tastes better as well. Of course, with whipping cream, whole milk and twice as many eggs, it should taste better – we are talking calories after all! Will I do it again next year? Need you ask? Of course I will. The obvious lessons that a more reasonable person might take away from all this, are lost on me. I am defenseless against the siren song that merely suggests that harder might be better; any assurance in black and white that it is so , and I’m a goner. Once you’ve mitered a corner, there is no turning back!

Talking My Walk

It is with no small degree of trepidation that I launch myself into this topic, knowing full well that it might come back and bite me in the future as “Exhibit A” in a commitment proceeding brought by Fred and Kate as a last but necessary resort in dealing with the old lady. Still, it is what is currently in my craw, so I will foolishly rush in, quivering angels be damned.

Even though we all may not embrace the concept with equal dedication, we all know that exercise is good for us. It is a difficult bit of information to avoid knowing since the message is ubiquitous – on line, in print, and long ago replaced astrological signs as an ice breaker at parties. Often after a numbing comparative analysis of the aerobic benefits of one form of exercise or another, the author concedes that walking is the best choice for most people. It is easy and doesn’t require a lot of fancy equipment or a membership in gym. People can walk in all sorts of places and in all kinds of weather, provided they have the right clothing. Where I live, gortex is de rigueur about six months of the year.

Dr. Fay tells me that walking is good for my heart and my blood pressure. My jeans tell me that it is good for my fanny as well. Not surprisingly perhaps, it turns out that walking is also good for dogs. Cesar Milan, the “dog whisperer,” observes that to be healthy, happy, and well behaved, dogs need three things: exercise, discipline, and affection. When I read that, I concluded that his prescription for dogs pretty much covered my needs as well and I embraced his admonition with the obsession of a zealot. Dogs not only add companionship to the daily slog, they bring guilt to the equation, which goes a long way to making sure I hit the road every day.

As a consequence, I now look upon these daily dog walks as my job, something that must be done, rather than a choice I make if there isn’t anything else going on. All things considered it is “nice work if you can get it!” Where else might I find employment that I can wrap up in a couple of hours spent out of doors in the company of pleasant co-workers. This walking time also is prime talking time and the dogs provide a nice foil for this. If a passerby catches me gesticulating to emphasize a point, I simply point to the dog. None of the locals would assume I was schizophrenic. In my neighborhood, you are suspect if you don’t have a dog and I am pretty sure most of my friends enjoy similar canine conversations. For sure, they are missing out if they don’t.

After a couple hours of chatting myself up, I can’t help but marvel at my brilliance. How insightful, how witty, how amazingly astute! From time to time I break this scintillating silence to confer with the dogs in order to discern their opinion. Invariably, they signal their concurrence with a wag while fixing me with an expectant look. That is my cue to turn the conversation to something they particularly enjoy with a remark like – “Aren’t you the best dogs in the world? Don’t you think you have a treat coming?” On cue, they sit and look at me, and I dig a little something out of my pocket, once again confirming that we are in total accord.

Then we set off again. Walk. Talk. Talk. Walk. By the time we get back to the house, the dogs are ready for a nap and I have the tough choice of deciding whether to sit by the fire and read, or clean up the kitchen. We are relaxed from the exercise and rejuvenated from our long mutually satisfying conversation. Is it any wonder that it never occurs to me to pick up the phone and call someone for a chat let alone drop by for visit? Some of my friends have suggested that my failure to do so indicates that I am becoming a reclusive, antisocial crank – well, no one has used those exact terms, but I can read between the lines. “I haven’t heard from you in such a long time, what have you been up to?” “Has your phone been out of order?” “I swear we saw more of you when you were working!”

I was starting to think that there might be some truth to that reclusive crank assessment until I realized that after spending a couple of hours every day talking to myself, I didn’t really need to talk to anyone else. Been there. Done that. Besides having experienced the joy of talking to myself, conversing with another person would surely tax me. First of all, I’d have to let them talk at least some of the time. I can’t think of a single friend who wouldn’t demand equal air time. Then there is the very real possibility that they might not agree with me on all points, resulting in some inevitable relationship angst. Finally, as if all of this isn’t enough, there is the certainty that they will want to talk about something other than me – themselves or their children or their own dogs, for crying out loud. Who needs that?

We are pretty happy with things the way they are, so for now we are sticking to our present regimen. Provided, that is that I quit being a slacker and get a move on. Indeed, at this very moment, if I am interpreting their wags and wiggles correctly, they are admonishing me to turn off the computer, get off my fanny, and, in a word, walk my talk!

On A Roll

I made a trip to the cabin the last week in September. Fred wasn’t able to go so I invited a couple of girl friends to join me. Bonnie and Linda were promised several days of rest and relaxation, punctuated with long walks along the river or on forested logging roads, ample quiet time to sit and read by the woodstove, along with food and beverage in abundance, though not gourmet. You can tell that I got my marketing ideas straight out of the Personal Ads. Well, they bought it and realized too late that all of this was just code language for come on over and I will put you to work and maybe if you are lucky offer you a cold beer at the end of the day.

Buoyed by my recent triumph behind the dryer and the piano, I added the cabin to my cleanup agenda. The cabin purge began with a large storage area which is accessed by a ladder going up to the second story from a deck on the back side of the cabin. Next to the door is a large wooden sign placed there by my father, which reads “Odds End.” I smile whenever I think of it as it is so quintessentially my parents. More than anything else, they enjoyed a play on words, and “Odds End” qualifies on many levels.
The cabin itself is pretty much a collection of odds and ends, from the initial structure to the recycled cupboards and furniture. Just as it was the end of the line for much of what comprises the structure as well as the furnishings of the cabin, so it was the final place of fun for a pair of “odd ducks” like my parents. (Their self description, not mine.) As it turned out, it is also the final resting place for their ashes, and though I doubt that they considered it at the time, I am confident that the cabin is where they would most like to be.

The “Odds End” storage area is a place that I had never really ventured into before. Of course I knew it was there and I recall climbing up and taking a quick peek upon occasion but I know for certain, I never before garnered the courage to go face to face with the spiders and wasps that I assumed had claimed it for their own. Whatever was up there could simply stay as far as I was concerned. After all, “out of sight, out of mind” had worked pretty well so far.

What prompted me in September to abandon this laissez- faire attitude and embark on an unprecedented foray into the unknown, was the vague belief that an extra screen door might be lurking somewhere in the detritus of flotation devices, extra plywood, and discarded mattresses. The new closed in sleeping porch that was under construction needed a screen door and the options I had checked out in town the day before were a little too upscale for the cabin. I won’t keep you in suspense any longer – no screen door emerged. No real surprise there. But in the course of confirming this, I decided a purge was called for.

My parents weren’t exactly pack rats or “hoarders,” at least not in the pathological sense that we hear about these days and that I often witnessed among my clients as well as a few relatives that will remain nameless for the time being. Since we share a common gene pool, I prefer to think of them as pioneer recyclers. Dad never encountered a piece of wood that he didn’t think he might use in some fashion or other later on and mother could never let go of a piece of fabric that might prove useful in a quilt or a rug. Mom didn’t stop at making rugs from fabric as I discovered when I opened a large black garbage bag and found a collection of colored plastic bread bags and a two foot oval rug that was a work in progress.
Having competent and energetic help at the ready, I started pitching things out of the door at a feverish pace. My friends, waiting below, hauled and sorted stuff into two piles - one destined for the burn pile and the other for the dumpster. Richard the resident handy man was then deployed to dispose of the collection, which he did with admirable dispatch. Before you let yourself feel too sorry for my friends who I readily admit I hookwinked into this project, you should know that they are both closet “neatniks” and I suspect felt as if they were saving a soul by doing the heavy lifting for this undertaking. Two “treasures” Bonnie and Linda insisted had to be salvaged from this purging included a “bathinette” and a wooden shipping box for Black & White Scotch whiskey.

The “bathinette” is a baby bathing device undoubtedly acquired in 1940, in anticipation of my brother Peter’s arrival. A pink tag was still attached which read: “The BATHINETTE of course! Your friends will look for the name like sterling on silver.” The rubber bathtub, which by the way is more than “hospital” rubber attaches by a hose to the sink water supply as well as the drain. Once the baby has been bathed, the tub converts to a changing table. By simply by stepping on a foot pedal a sturdy cotton cloth stretched between two dowels comes up and locks into place over the tub. The freshly bathed infant is placed on the changing table and for added security, a strip of fabric about five inches wide with holes for his arms can be fastened over the child, so that there is no chance the wee one will fly off the table while the changer is looking for a safety pin. Disposable diapers were as remote at the time of the “bathinette” as a landing on the moon.

I had seen the Scotch box before and was delighted to find it still intact. Frankly, I have a bit of a thing for boxes myself and confess to having trouble parting with them, especially if they are made of wood. The fact that scotch had originally made its way across the Atlantic in the box coupled with an inherited fondness for the stuff, moved this treasure into the keeper category. It is now screwed onto the wall in the kitchen, next to the old wooden telephone, where is serves as a mini bar. There are wooden dividers at both ends that accommodate and secure six bottles. In the center, there are removable slats with rounds cut out the size of the neck of a bottle that slide into the middle of the box to hold them in place.

While I was occupied cleaning out “Odds End” at the cabin, Fred was busying himself at home cleaning out the garage. Now this is a task that I have been talking about for a good part of the 43 years we have lived here. And though he has never outright denied that a good cleaning might be called for, whenever I brought it up as a possible activity for the weekend, he chose instead to characterize it as a “rainy day” project thereby putting it off for some yet to be identified time in the future. Given that we live in “rainy day country” you might suppose that the rainy day list, no matter how extensive, would be completed in any one season. In Fred’s case, he manages to be gone during a great deal of the rainy season, so what appears on the surface to be a legitimate effort to prioritize work, has evolved into a great avoidance technique. Oh gosh, fooled me!

Though at 6:00 a.m. on a very rainy Sunday when I left for the cabin I didn’t know of his plan to tackle the garage, I did learn about it during the day, somewhere east of Ephrata. While I was stopped in a wheat field to give the dogs a run my cell phone rang. Fred was calling from the land fill to advise me that he had just dropped off 600 pounds of stuff that up until that morning, one of us at least didn’t think we couldn’t part with. He confessed that he was motivated more by the fact that he had decided to jump start a weight loss resolve by fasting and drinking only water that day than by the encroaching clutter at the work bench. Staying out of the kitchen and staying busy made this resolution easier to keep.

With those inroads made in the garage area, I came home and threw myself into the potting shed and greenhouse. What a pig sty! The potting shed was a virtual maze of buckets and wire, cluttered with countless discarded plant pots and overlaid with a patina of filth! You will be spared the details largely because I have some embarrassment about publicly acknowledging them. Suffice it to say that it is a project that I am still working on; despite the fact that I keep moving the “finish” date back, great strides have been made. So far, in addition to sorting and cleaning and culling the pot collection down to a manageable number, I have scrubbed the greenhouse with a bleach solution, tackled the fly nests and spider eggs, and placed a moratorium on Fred’s penchant for stopping at garage sales on the lookout for something that he might use as a planter or a tray.

We are on a roll around here that I am determined to keep the momentum going. Really all this getting rid of stuff is pretty heady. Fred managed to lose some weight in the process and I feel lighter, just knowing I have gotten rid of a lot of crap. Still, don’t expect to see a photo montage of either the garage or the potting shed with the Christmas letter. Nor should you anticipate being entertained there any time soon. These areas may be clean and tidy by “Gentry standards” but that is several notches below anything that might pass inspection with the health department let alone meet the hospitality level worthy of our friends.