1. Rain and headaches. That was yesterday. I woke up with a headache and the rain started before my first meeting ended. I was completely scatterbrained and drove past my second appointment and was therefore late. It seemed wise to spend the rest of the day quietly at home, where little actually got done, but I'm OK with that. Cold rainy days seem perfect for random laziness. Perhaps the headache was a gift. The pounding eventually subsided around 6 PM, when I had another meeting, but I still felt subdued and unfocused. I can't explain it but all has returned to normal this morning.
2. A building rises from the mud. Yes. Foundations are in place and they started framing the garage. Roofing materials also arrived and perhaps soon there will be a roof on the addition to the house. That period from Thanksgiving to Christmas felt awfully long, as progress was slowed by rain and mud. Waiting can seem interminable, and although necessary underlayment was progressing, I was feeling somewhat subdued about the project. Foundations, HVAC, and electrical wiring, as necessary as they are, don't look like much when they are going in, and I didn't realize how much I yearned to see something, anything, that looked like I might live in it again. Perhaps I just hadn't recovered from the shock of loosing plantings due to the need to replace and expand the buried drainage system, or the shock of the disruption of the backyard when the old garage was excavated and a buried septic tank was discovered, a buried septic tank that had to be removed. Every day it felt like the mud was increasingly exponentially. In December, that sense of having lost control was palpable, and although it is, perhaps, shallow and frivolous, seeing the framing take shape, floors and walls begin to appear, has lifted my spirits considerably.
3. I made chicken stock this week, for the first time since probably before Thanksgiving. The beef stock surplus is dwindling as well, so I will probably be back on a weekly stock-making schedule before spring is well established. With this batch of stock, I also made a pot Attukal Paya, a spicy Indian soup or stew made from mutton legs and/or feet, except that I used lamb because that is what I find at my local Asian Market. I've been making the soup for a few months now, off and on, but this is the first time I started with a base of my own rich chicken stock before extracting the collagen from those lamb bones. I will never go back.
I tend to pull the lamb out once I've extracted all the flavor, and then drink the pureed soup in a mug, but yesterday I had a bowl for lunch along with some baby bok choy I had seared in some smoked chaabani pepper olive oil. It turned out surprisingly well since I wasn't actually sure what to expect from the oil, a new-to-me ingredient and gift from my brother.
4. I also stepped out of my sartorial comfort zone, by branching out of my everyday boots and jeans mode and wearing a skirt and tights with a favorite pair of everyday boots. Actually, perhaps I found my groove because I was very comfortable and very much myself. Perhaps I am also rediscovering a bit of joy in the occasional jolt of black in my wardrobe. That black knit skirt had not been worn for a while, and now I can't wait to wear it again, black leggings and boots and all.
Of course the proportions worked better with the coat than they did with the sweater underneath, but that is something I can work on. It ended up not mattering much on Wednesday, the day I wore that outfit, because I had two meetings at the house, which is always cold given that it is not yet closed up, and otherwise ran errands. I ended up with my coat on for most of the day, the sweater simply acting as an insulating layer. The sweater itself, much as I have loved it in the past (it is 9 years old) may be spending its last winter with me. It no longer seems to just work the way I want it to work with the things I want to wear.
5. A secret garden. I suppose that best describes how I feel about this small collection of artifacts. Granted, they arrived in this spot because I didn't know where else to put them, but this location, the corner of my desk, has proved fortuitous because I see them everyday and they always make me smile. The glass rose is new, a Christmas gift from my brother, Charles. The silver llamas were my grandmother's, and I see I need to polish them, although at the moment I am also fascinated by the way the reflection of light off the rose plays out in a subtle play of colors dancing across the tarnished surface of the llamas. I don't remember the provenance of the small vaseline glass vase but looking at it I am reminded of where it sat in the house, on a windowsill in the sunroom, the play of light and shadow and the green of oak leaf hydrangeas behind it. Those hydrangeas are now gone, but the vase does not make me sad. There will be new plantings, new leaves, new light. For now however, we just wait, remember, and dream.
