379: beautiful year, january

I would ask if anything has been this cold before, except I know: it's that way again now. January was the month our bathroom chugged away with a space heater, keeping the pipes from freezing again. I kept my hands warm by knitting, reading poems with my book club, and making asparagus soup.

January is the month I also left footprints of another sort: these at Palm Beach during the annual poetry festival, where I studied with Kimiko Hahn and was pushed and prodded in new poetic ways. I watched seagulls hover, collected shell slivers, brought the ocean back in my suitcase wrapped in a juice bottle.

President Obama was inaugurated; I watched that, warm from the Florida sun, while eating brie and croissants.

PS: This beautiful year reflection is inspired by Eireann. Just so you know.

378

I'm sad to report that the vegetarianism hasn't really stuck; last night, I had a chicken sandwich at the end-of-semester celebratory dinner with my husband. Happily, he ate the bacon, and I had some alcoholic concoction involving a spiral of orange peel and pomegranate juice. All kinds of naughty going on in my consumption.

I love the ways Eireann and Shari have been looking back on 2009, so I've decided to join in--take a look back into the archives and bring in images that best represent that month and a few words about the landscape of my life at that point.

For now, I give you some thoughts about 2010--not resolutions, but little bits I wouldn't mind to put on my horizon.

A dozen things to do in 2010:
- Go maple syruping.
- Go on a writing retreat with my poetry girl friends.
- Visit the local pizza farm.
- Replace our fence with something dog-sturdier.
- Make a loaf of challah or other braided bread.
- Get that letterpress up and running!
- Add another "new" place to Ryan and my collection of travels... for our wedding, my gift to him was a mounted map of the United States and pushpins for all the places we've visited. I want to add a new pushpin with him.
- Knit a hat. Or a sweater. (For the first time.)
- Try new vegetables in the garden. Replace withered asparagus and strawberries.
- Go on a hot air balloon ride.
- Bake a new kind of cookie or cake or muffin each month. Try a new recipe every week.
- Go to a cabin up north with Ryan and the pups. Camp at least three times this summer.

And you? What are some of the things you'd like to do in 2010?

377

Something about the neighborhood: there have been so many fires since the temperatures have turned to the negatives, one of which was just one, two, three houses away from our own (ah, when Ryan and I discussed it, the how-much-to-donate to the neighbors' fund, and he flicked those fingers up slowly: one-two-three).

In the winter, we do dangerous things: space heaters to keep us from last year on this day, and the bathtub is now covered in mouse poo (oh, darnitall with my stupid squishy heart!).

All I can say is: Thank goodness, thank goodness, thank goodness.

Three houses away and I'm aware of our home-ness, our meager bedrooms and my stupidity in checking the smoke detectors. It's enough to keep me rooted to that sofa, which brought about the Emily Dickinson-Elizabeth Bishop collection, which kicked me into some poems, and all I can say to you is this: STAY WARM.

376: blizzard one

The Huberts, my friends, are winning the war. I caught one not many evenings ago, and it spent the night in an old twenty-gallon aquarium, and when I woke, it was gone. Ryan left some crumpled paper in there (he apparently felt badly that the cats had greedy wet noses pressed against the glass) but when I woke, no mouse. And since then, I have been peanut-butter-filling and getting-foiled on a regular basis. There are sweet little claw marks in the peanut butter and clear gnawings at the ridiculous plastic trap I've set. I told Ryan that I couldn't let them go in the snow now; it's too cold. He said I couldn't keep them in that glass cage, which makes sense too, so I suppose I ought not to get a new trap. Of course, checking beneath the sink has become a habit, a kind of gambling I've lost more often than anything else, which I don't mind. I have a secret grin reserved for the Huberts when they win.



We had a blizzard here in the Midwest, a storm which technically brought seven inches onto our town, but Ryan and I suspect that number is a wee bit inaccurate, and we are guessing something more like ten inches onto our own shovel-able land. All I know is that it was one of those rare days in winter, the ones where we take turns with shovel versus plow, and my back hates me more than usual. The worst, though, was the driving, which was a tad precarious after thesis, but I made it, proving, once again, my prowess as a winter driver.

This week, was a big one for me, for my students: it was our last day of classes. And I've taught for five or so years now, and I've had many, many individual students I've been very fond of, but this is the first year I've been fond of an entire class. I do feel sad I won't see them as a group again, but it was a good semester, felt moderately complete, felt ready to nudge them on and into new experiences at the university. I hope next semester's crew is just as pleasant to be around; they may convince me that teaching freshmen comp. is my calling, which is something I've begun to suspect. How incredibly unexpected.

PS: I'm bashful to admit how much I've enjoyed our new cable-acquisition. My favorite is Ace of Cakes, which I chided Ryan about until I actually sat down to watch an episode and decided I could only dream of being in such a magical workplace. Also: most anticipated judges for Iron Chef America? Tiny Fey on the Paula Dean episode and Michelle Obama in early January.

375: hubert

His name is Hubert. I caught him in one of those plastic, "Have-a-Heart" traps, which, I agree with Shawn, is a bit of a cruelty, especially when you leave over Thanksgiving break and then recall the peanut-butter laden trap. I am, of course, glad my husband is Ryan, who holds his hands up in I-have-nothing-to-do-with-this-ness, which means I do not have traps in the basement (AKA, the "vortex of hell") as I will not go down there on my own, but when little mouse poos started showing up beneath our upstairs bathroom sink, I thought, "Aw, rats, I have to do something about this." I'm also glad that my husband does not leave me to do brain-bashing of mice. Instead, he's fully accepting of my field trips to release our errant wildlife. I'm not sure I could motivate myself to do it any other way.

And so I did. A little opaque trap, cemeterily black, a daub of peanut butter and then the lip closed and I picked up, just a wee bit heavier than when I set it down. I discovered the weightiness before bed, and the next morning, Hubert spilled onto our bathtub floor.

This is what I do: I anthropomorphize these little buggers and then fill up with ridiculous guilt. I put down a saucer of water and a spoonful of peanut butter and went about my morning routines, hoping Hubert would fill up; he didn't know it, but his next step was the chilly outdoors. Oh! If I cannot handle it, then don't set the trap, right? Curses.

I did drive him to the cemetery, which is only a few blocks away, and I tucked him beneath a bush and near a building, but I suspect he wouldn't make it. I wanted to give him some chance, no matter the bedraggled conditions, and at best, I suppose he'd make a wee meal for some chilly creature.

I have a sneaky feeling there are many Huburts in our house, though not by the excess of poo. Meryl informed me, after needing to hire an exterminator, that mice are fairly timid, that each male has its territory, that mice are certainly blind-ish and leave poo-trails to find their way home, and mice also leave poo-piles for territory marking. This is the third mouse, unless you count the flying mouse, and I do not: Libby caught one, and Gatsby sent the other from the second floor to the first and I caught it in a tupperware. The third was of cruelty, and the fourth will be less so.

374: back to bodies

Photo: Life; Unknown Source
(photos aren't permitted in the exhibit--hence, my not using any of my own, which drove me a bit nutty)

Another field trip up to the Twin Cities for a tour of Bodies: The Exhibition, this time with company who would allow me* to really take the time I needed to write and process so much material--someone who spent some time writing and processing herself. Thank you, Meryl, for your forever-good company (and thank you for talking me down from my poetic ledge this past week!). I wrote a great deal; it was a successful day, which makes me awfully happy.

We spoke to the woman at the end of the exhibit, who didn't mind us haranguing her, who asked us if we were medical students, and told us that all the bodies died of natural causes, were from China because China is the only country that allows full-body preservation, and there are three of these competing exhibits touring the world--this being the one focusing mostly on education, and the others a more artistic endeavor, which makes sense, touring the photos on the web, discovering the shock of some images.

In searching Google images: This image is interesting by this artist.

Also: I love this image from a Valparaiso exhibition.

After peering into the caverns of bodies and jotting notes from placards, we went to Ecopolitan, a raw foods restaurant new to me, with a completely vegan menu. I had the "Rawvioli," which had this walnut wonderful on it, and we shared a Orange Julia, and, of course, very good conversation. Feel free to check out a new project we've started, welcoming Colleen C (and others who wish to join us, just let us know)--strange, yes: I love dead bird poems, already featuring Elizabeth Bishop and Adam Zagajewski.

* to be fair, Ryan and Mike would have tolerated my slow locomotion, though it's not entirely fair to them!--kind of like taking me hiking or camping with my camera--

373: thanks and giving

Our Thanksgiving recipes (all from Cooking Light, with the exception of the pie):

- for the bird: classic roast turkey and giblet gravy
- for the veggies: roasted Brussels sprouts and apples, green beans (meant to make haricots verts without warm bacon vinaigrette), sauteed carrots with sage, cranberry, apple, + walnut sauce, and sweet potato and butternut gratin
- for the pie:

Bumble Berry Pie
- 1 cup blueberries
- 1 cup blackberries
- 1 cup strawberries
- 1 cup raspberries
- 1 cup sugar *
- 5 tablespoons flour
- 2 tablespoons corn starch
- 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat oven to 375.
Line a 10-inch pie pan with crust. Combine the sugar, flour, corn starch, and cinnamon and mix well. Lightly mix in the fresh fruit and pour into the pie shell. Dot with butter and cover with a top crust. Prick the crust and sprinkle with sugar. Bake at 375 for 35 minutes in a convection oven or 40 minutes in a regular oven.

from Betty's Pies: Favorite Recipes from Betty's Pies in Duluth, Minnesota

* Recipe note: I used organic cane sugar, which smells so very strongly of molasses, and, consequently, tastes like molasses. Yum.


PS: Cooking Light gives a few recipes for the vegetarian.