Switched At Birth

Lemon Meringue Clouds

Meringue. I am flying in a Boeing 767 American Airlines plane, flight number 52 from Chicago to Glasgow, looking out the window while most of my fellow passengers are sleeping off a viewing of Shrek 2 and City Slickers.

The clouds above the sunrise look like meringue. They make me think of lemon meringue pie. Soft golden curlicues. The last time I baked a homemade pie was twenty one years ago.

I cook when I’m happy, which is most of the time, broiling, sauteing, baking, assembling the fresh good stuff.

Sometimes when I have a temporary dose of melancholia, the lengthy peeling and chopping process necessary for making a bodacious big pot of vegetable soup or chili is cathartic, especially when a few tears spill out in the onion chopping.

The evidence suggests I only bake pies when I’m angry. There’s a story in that, but the person who lit that fire in me is still around on the fringes and my anger refreshes itself even after twenty one years when I think about that night. Nope. Like fine smoked chipotle peppers, this one needs a few more years of aging to leave the heat but tame the flame.

We made it to Scotland this afternoon, dined on scrambled eggs and toast,  bathed in a huge ancient claw-footed tub, and are about to crash out.

Don't worry. Maggie will be fine during the hurricane. She has the equivalent of a samurai named Pauline guarding her life and limb in Pensacola, whatever Ivan may attempt. Still, my happiness here would be complete with that fine chocolate head on my knee in front of this coal fire.

Note: This restored lost post was written on September 14, 2004, as Buck and I were flying to Scotland. Hurricane Ivan suddenly strengthened, made a surprise turn, and hit Pensacola two days later while we were on the Isle of Arran.

Our Lady of the Manicures

Sometimes you have encounters that don't have any neat explanation. Seems like I have more than the average person. Take yesterday, for example. While Buck was in with a doctor for some routine exam, I sat in the waiting room with coffee, miniature bran muffin and laptop, happily pecking away and getting fully caffeinated.

The room was almost full, but I had found a back corner by a coffee table with a lamp. My peripheral vision early warning system went off. "Intruder alert! Intruder alert!" Looking up, I saw a plump, cheery looking woman bearing down on me, fingernail polish in hand. She was dressed in a white Pensacola Junior College sweatshirt and blue sweatpants.

Before I had a chance to react, she sat down beside me, started talking as though we were old friends, uncapped the bottle of clear nail polish, took hold of my hand, and began painting my fingernails! I barely had time to close the laptop lid with my other hand.

Why didn't I pull away? I don't really know, except that with her gray-blond curly hair and infectious smile, she didn't seem at all scary. In fact, I wracked my brain trying to figure out if maybe I really did know her.

After applying one coat of clear lacquer to my fingernails and chatting a bit about her retired professor husband, she got up suddenly as though some inner bell had run. "Well! My purse is way over there! I had better get back! Nice talking to you!" (All her sentences seemed naturally punctuated with exclamation points.)

I felt a little stunned. "Um, thank you. By the way, I'm Beth."

"I'm Irene! Bye!"

Could I possibly have had a visitation from Our Lady of the Manicures, out doing good deeds for the bare of nail and ragged of cuticle?

Note: This "lost post" is restored from February 4, 2004.

Full Circle

I feel like the little boy I saw in a television commercial once who announces, "I'm leaving, now!" He inches toward the door, and periodically stops to look back to see if anyone is noticing his imminent departure. "I'm leaving now!" His mom watches this small scene play out, smiles and goes to him with open arms. He runs to meet her. "I'm back! Did you miss me?"

This is the account, recovered from a lost post, of one of the times I took a blog sabbatical, only to return the next day! It was posted originally on October 13, 2004.

Something happened today.

Our front door was open to the cool autumn air. I peered out, and felt suddenly rooted to the spot. "Look, Buck, look! Oh, God, it's so beautiful!" Buck walked toward me. "What is it, sweet baby?"

We walked out on the screened porch. It had been emptied of lawn furniture in anticipation of Luke the Power Washer coming the next day to remove Hurricane Ivan-etched dirt.

Buck saw it, too. The bright orange sun ball melted into the tree line and a young doe stood in silhouette in the darkening landscape. She looked at us, motionless.  We didn't move, either, and the sweet fragrance of the mint I planted just by the wind-lost screen door wafted under our noses.

The beauty is back. It never went away, only temporarily my ability to see it. The brokenness is all I could see, and my words dried up.

There was rain yesterday. It settled the dust and my spirit. And so, with heartfelt thanks to you all for your kind expressions and best wishes, like the little boy, "I'm back!" Shortest sabbatical on record.

I bought a flat of tiny copper penny violas yesterday, a dozen candy corn orange and yellow marigolds, eight blue-colored snapdragons, two tiny globe-shaped miniature thujas, several decorative kale plants so ugly they are cute, two strawberry plants and a glamorous blooming red bromeliad.

Buck and Harold worked all day with chain saw and tractor to cut and drag off the trees busted up by September's big storm.

Bell South called to confirm our phone is working properly. "On, no, it's not," I said, over a loud buzzing noise on the line."No?" The nice young man seemed puzzled. "Are you at the pole on the street?" I asked. "Oh, no, I'm downtown," he said. "Well, if you were at the street, you would see there is a tree down with a tangle of phone line woven through it, snapped off from the pole." 

"Ah," he said. "We'll send someone."

Our house plan. The old trees. Blooming wild flowers. A pond about to be dug. A grand piano -- the special gift from my love that I would never have dared to dream of even alone in the deep dark night under the covers. Books. Writing. A garden. Moonlight swims. The fragrance of an old-fashioned rose garden.

Hurricane Ivan's wind-driven fingers vandalized this freshly painted dream canvas.

The ugliness made us feel like running away. Everywhere there is rubble. Everywhere holes punched in our community and those nearby; trees knocked down, ripped and shredded. Even now, with convoys of workers filling up trucks with storm debris fifteen hours a day, it is dangerous to travel on many roads. Twisted sheet metal is pushed into road edges, mixed in with fallen trees, chopped up branches, sodden mattresses, drowned appliances, mildewed rolls of carpet and moldy upholstered chairs.

It is unremittingly ugly. For now.

We joined friends for dinner Saturday night at McGuire's Irish Pub, a Pensacola institution. It survived, unlike my favorite retail store, Joe Patti's Seafood, which is closed until further notice. Another couple was invited to join us for dinner, but one of them fell ill during the day. They are staying in a motel for now, their Bayshore Road home totaled. Can you imagine riding out the storm, as they did, climbing ever higher until precariously balanced in the attic, clinging to one another as the water rose and the wind screamed, picking up heavy furniture collected over a lifetime and reducing it to toothpick-size bits? Believing you are about to die. Our friend's illness may be a post-traumatic event stress syndrome. There's a lot of it going around.

Our house plan is almost complete. The fellow drawing it is an expert in roof trusses. He is needed to help get roofs back on businesses and homes, a necessary first priority. Even when our plan is complete, subcontractors and building supplies will still be scarce as hen's teeth for some time to come.

We have pondered what to do for the next year or so. Whether to abandon our dream of Longleaf Preserve. Whether to move back to North Carolina or to Colorado or to Pennsylvania or to Point Clear, Alabama.

When we walked again today over the cleared roads, I involuntarily exclaimed. "Look at the trees. Wow!" this time, I wasn't thinking of the poor demolished old ones, but the little ones, planted over the past two years. They were jumping up in the sunshine.

Here's the deal. We have a chance to buy a house just down the road that will give us the space we need to have all our stored stuff sent down from the warehouse in North Carolina and give us the comfortable stretching out space to plan carefully for Longleaf's restoration and the expansion of our permanent home there. We're looking into it.*Note from the future. . . we stayed put in the existing cottage and left our furniture from the North Carolina house in storage until construction was complete. It spent almost two years in storage. You can imagine how happy we were to finally have all "our things about us."

I don't want this web log to be just a personal journal. I want to work on learning to be a better story teller and a better writer. I'm going to be working on that in private screeds, rants, and reveries -- not here. Maybe something will come of it. What I want to do in this space is to tell the story of Longleaf and my life with Buck.

And about that sunset. Damn, it was beautiful.

Yaupon Tea

 

Sometimes I complain about the ubiquitous, tough yaupon bushes when one of their branches whips back in my face or legs to remind me of a childhood switch. (Mother made us cut our own.) Fact is, the yaupon is a generous food source for deer, squirrels and birds. And don't be put off by the scientific name: ilex vomitoria. Hurling may occur if you eat the berries, but tea brewed from the dried, ground tender young leaves is full of caffeine and tastes remarkably like black tea.  Uh. . . so I read. Maybe I'll try it next April, when there are new leaves.

This photo was taken as part of a Christmas/New Year's walkabout right at the end of 2003. The following slide show album is a recreation of that walk. Most of my earlier photo albums that had been organized on Typepad were lost when I impetuously zapped the original Switched At Birth in June of 2005. Luckily, I have copies of the photos on discs. They are in a state of anarchy, and not always easy to locate, but I'm hard-headed and persistent. There are lots of choices now for preserving photos and embedding slide shows. It's much easier than the old method, which feels like hunt and peck.

Harbinger of Spring

 

Joy is wandering through transitional woods on a cool, sunny afternoon; to see tiny grasses emerge and pine seedlings planted last year like green beacons through the gray-brown landscape. Wild blueberries grow here: tiny navy blue ones and the large types that look cultivated. I do not know their proper names, only that this photo of blueberry blossoms is a promise of spring and sweet berries bursting in my mouth.

Yet another in the "lost post" archive restoration series. My sense of urgency to complete the archive has increased. Imagine the photos, words and videos from Longleaf Preserve as exhibits in a public forum. . . This post was originally written on February 19, 2004.

Deer Track in the Sand

 A variety of soil types coexist here at Longleaf. They range from rich and loamy to full blown swamp. Acres of iron rock and clay turn the earth rusty red. But in some spots, it is so sandy, were it not for brown dirt unearthed by this deer's hoof, it might look like she was picking her way through sand dunes on a beach.

Another restored post from the lost archive. Original from February 19, 2004.

Sweet Maggie on the Green

There is a spot in our woods where lush grass grows. The roots stay slightly damp, but a broad open area in the tree canopy lets the sun in to warm the blades. Every time we go there, Maggie runs into the tall grass at full speed, then jumps around in the grass like a dog with pogo stick legs. I'm sure she smells creatures in there, but she has never emerged with anything. Looks like fun. 

In this same area, squirrels have turned a tree knocked down by Hurricane Ivan into an al fresco dining room. See here what's left of a pine cone dinner. 

The wild turkeys have grown so bold (or comfortable), they are walking right down the middle of the road. This turkey track is embedded within a truck tire tread. Looks like an arrow, doesn't it? 

Post restored from lost archive. Originally written March 17, 2005.

Tools in the Toolbox

I am seeing woodpeckers high up in the standing snags in one particular neighborhood of the woods. It is a circular cul de sac, formed by a convergence of fire line paths. To my naked eye, they look rather dull colored, except when they fly. Then, I see white patches on their wings.

I have taken a few pictures of them, but without a telephoto lens and more knowledge than I have, the birds remain dull colored and incognito in the morning light.

Buck reminds me that we have a fine pair of small Leica binoculars. He finds them for me, unzips the case, unwinds the cord, and drapes them over my neck. "There, now. Go out and identify your bird."

I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't this.

The contrast between my naked eye's ability to see and the reality brought in close by those binoculars was staggering. The birds' color blocks were so sharp, they looked like paint by number birds.

We all have forgotten tools in our toolboxes. Scratch around. Never know what you'll find.

A lost post restoration, originally written May 17, 2005.

Depot Mania vs. Rural Artistry

Home Depot, Office Depot, Cabinet Depot, Ceramic Tile Depot, Carpet Depot, Flooring Depot, Hot Tub Depot, Hardware Depot, Bar Stool Depot, Light Depot, AAARRGGHH!!

The meaning of "depot" according to Merriam-Webster's on-line dictionary:

Main Entry: de·pot

Pronunciation: \1 & 2 are ˈde-(ˌ)pō also ˈdē-, 3 is ˈdē- sometimes ˈde-\

Function: noun

Etymology: French dépôt, from Middle French depost, from Medieval Latin depositum, from Latin, neuter of depositus

Date: 1795

1 a : a place for storing goods or motor vehicles b : store, cache <a fat depot in the body>
2 a : a place for the storage of military supplies b : a place for the reception and forwarding of military replacements
3 : a building for railroad or bus passengers or freight

Depot gets my vote for the most over-used, mostly inappropriately used, word out there in retail land today.

Whether it's a "big box" retail store, a cookie-cutter franchise, or a tiny hole-in-the-wall outfit, the word "depot" is ubiquitous among business names in the home construction arena. The only way that word is mellifluous to my ears is when I think, nostalgically, of old train stations in small town America, as in "down at the depot."

Okay. No more ranting and raving. Here's something wonderful, instead.

Discouraged by assembly line kitchen cabinets and distressed by post-Hurricane Ivan prices, Buck and I drilled deeper. We heard about a family-owned and operated cabinet and furniture maker just over the Florida line in Alabama, about an hour's drive from Pensacola. We took a nice drive in the country, and found the Country Pine Furniture Company in Flomaton, Alabama.

Robert Carden, his wife, and their staff are artisans. A thick layer of sawdust has settled into the walls, lending a yellowish, old book feel to the place. A shaft of light showers motes onto the head of a young man carefully shaping and smoothing a table leg. It's quiet here at this hour of the late afternoon. Something about the atmosphere reminds me of the good feeling I get being in a library with time to soak in literary waters.

Mr. Carden had to leave us for a few minutes to sign for a delivery. Buck said to me, "Well, Twitchy Baby, I've seen all I need to see." When Buck speaks those words, it's a clear thumbs up or thumbs down. "He's got all the equipment to make us some beautiful cabinets." Ah, good. He agrees with me!

I love the thought of being able to "visit" our cabinets as they are being made, run my hands over the smooth curing wood, and dream of Thanksgiving.

p.s. You might think these custom-made cabinets are more expensive than those from a mass retailer. Not so. We bid the work, and saved more than 30% by going with the local, independent, family-operated business.

Yep. Another "lost post" restored. Original written April 17, 2005.

Cranes and Girders and Trusses, Oh My!

Everybody gets excited when a crane shows up on the scene,  lifts huge girders high in the air, and swings them around like toothpicks. The big red crane looks like a man-sized version of a child's toy.

 

The fellow driving it looks a little like Wayne Newton. A white, ten-gallon hat almost covers up his long sideburns, and his triangular shape attests to many hours sitting in the operator's seat.

 
The chance of getting any non-housebuilding work done around here these days is slim and none. Here was the view from my desk last Friday.

 
The crew came out yesterday, even though it was Saturday. They were trying to catch a few hours of rare sunshine to start sheathing the main roof. They got a good start. Won't be long now until we're fully dried in.

 
I'll never forget the look of this amazing skeletal structure. Looks to me like a dinosaur's spine, or a super contemporary skylight.

Moving right along, now, with restoring the "lost posts." When this was originally written on April 10, 2005, my blog buddy from Wales, Daisy-Winifred, said "Be fantastic if that were a skylight, you'd have a punk roof with a Mohican haircut then."