Letters from an Empty Nest

SNL featuring the best of Amy Poehler was outstanding

2009-04-19T06:48:00.000-07:00

Please, all who read this, be sure and catch what aired last night on Saturday Night Live -- the best of Amy Poehler. I'm certain my laughter, rather, guffawing could be heard beyond the walls of my house. I could be cited for disturbing the peace. She is brilliant and the compilation of her best skits and best roles was perfect.

Wednesday

2009-04-15T13:08:00.000-07:00

His chest hair was so thick you could lose a telephone in it.

This was a reference to Alec Baldwin in a recent New Yorker article.

Tuesday after Easter

2009-04-14T06:57:00.001-07:00

I remember making Martha Washington candies with my best friend in about third grade in her kitchen. Her mom patiently supervised combining powdered sugar, sweetened condensed milk, chopped pecans and fragrant coconut flakes, rolling them into walnut sized balls. The best part was melting a giant Hershey's bar in a double boiler with a bit of paraffin (it was the sixties, remember) and then taking each coconut candy with a kabob stick and dipping it all the way in. We made what looked like professional candy! A sense of accomplishment and pride filled me.

I remember also at about the same age in another kitchen of another playmate whose mother was from Franklin, Louisiana, seeing her mother take a stick of soft butter and stir in pressed fresh garlic, finely chopped parsley, salt and pepper and then pack a dollop into tablespoon sized wooden butter molds. I was utterly fascinated as she did this and then put them in the refrigerator to firm up. A few hours later when we were served our sizzling steak off the backyard grill, her mom placed a green flecked butter pat onto the noisy hot steak and I watched it melt and inhaled the heavenly aroma of garlicky butter.

After these experiences I was hooked on cooking. It has been a lifelong passion.

saturday easter vigil

2009-04-11T06:36:00.000-07:00

Overheard between husband and wife, "now, no more complaining about me criticizing our past president for too long. people are still complaining about judas two thousand years later. that means i still have plenty of time to harp on our recent past president." to which the wife replied, "but george bush didn't betray jesus"

"yeah but judas didn't pick harriet meier"

today i have lamb stock to strain and defat, tables to set up and to set with tablecloths and linens and china and crystal. tomorrow i get to celebrate easter with my very favorite fellow recovering alcoholics at my house; leg of lamb rosemary garlic style, cooked til fork tender, pork roast with a gravy heavy with paprika and the homemade stock; a snow pudding -- seen on the back of the pecan package weeks ago which has intrigued me. i'll serve it with pureed fresh strawberries, lemon juice and a little sugar. someone's bringing cookies, a potato-cheese casserole, ambrosia, bread, salad, squash casserole, i'm making asparagus, someone's bringing mint jelly and someone else is bringing sacks of ice. these are the people whose words and actions have encouraged me this past year as i trod the sometimes uncertain path of sobriety.

lots to do. more later.

and my very fine daughter took my dear darling son out for a hamburger last night for his 18th birthday in hollywood and tonight they'll gather at a terrific chinese restaurant in brentwood. my nyc daughter has scheduled us for regular video chats - they are the next best thing to having her with me.

The house

2009-04-10T18:54:00.000-07:00

My lastborn turned 18 today. Three grown ups grew up in this house where I sit on a Friday night with my two dachshunds. The first two arrived as a toddler and an infant and seven years later the lastborn came into the world on April 10, 1991. The house feels unusually quiet right now. I have dwelled here for almost 25 years. Lots of clamor and movement and stomping and hollering and tears and joy went on here. My second daughter learned to walk here. My eldest lost her first tooth and learned to ride a pink bike with training wheels and then the training wheels were ready to come off and down the sidewalk I saw her go. My son made a squirrel trap with a box and a string and crouched down in the boxwood waiting patiently for a squirrel to take the bait. One Christmas morning we looked out the front window to see a donkey trotting down the street as if he belonged there. We've had two snows to actually stay on the ground for a little bit in 25 years. Nearly everyone who enters this house senses its warm and welcoming spirit. It's a cheerful little house and we draw together contentedly on holidays here. I'll post a snap of it one of these days.

It is Thursday

2008-11-13T06:41:00.000-08:00

For my part of the world the weather is just the way I like it; overcast, cool and about to rain. I got to walk out to the side yard which faces south where my citrus experiments are. One is the tangerine tree and it's laden with ripe fruit which I just picked a dozen or so from. I'll take those to my meeting for the members to enjoy -- show off my horticultural talent. I've just cut a double bloom impatien and put it into a recycled glass spice jar of water to carry with me to meeting. Meeting time. Prayer time. Hope time. Hope being an acronym for H earing O ther P eople's E xperiences. That is one of the devices we access for getting sober, getting a little more humble.

Garden Club with Birding Friend

2008-11-12T05:55:00.000-08:00

I have precisely one hour to blog, shower, beautify with newly purchased skin care products, style my thinning hair do which is almost always out of control and be ready to be picked up by my birding friend, as she will from now on be called. She also doubles as my garden club buddy as we were provisionals in the same year and gave each other courage on what was for us a daunting foray into inclusion in exclusivity. psychologically i sort of subscribe to woody allen's philosophy "why would i want to belong to a club that accepted me into its membership?" AT TIMES. but not always. just sometimes. in reality, i have rarely enjoyed anything so much as acceptance by these women -- we get to learn volumes about horticulture, one of my hobbies, conservation, FLOWER ARRANGING,landscape design,botany,cooking with homegrown herbs,show off our talents as photographers,designers,artists,cooks. so in short order my birding friend will fetch me en route to the november meeting where we'll witness a professional floral designer, hear the club news, chatter with each other afterward and then four of us head to the japanese garden in our city park where we'll picnic and discuss our project for the year - the spring walk. oh Lord, i am sounding really boring to myself again. i know i ought to edit this but here it is, plain, dull outlining of my day. a day that i'm really looking forward to. seriously. after the picnic-meeting-planning session i get to meet with someone who is interviewing me and my first cousin about our flamboyant aunt and uncle in the early years of their marriage, l933-l937. the scope of the book is about the neighborhood where he grew up, celebrating a centennial this year. i'll report on that in the next post. now i must find something to wear in front of three hundred tony women that says "Yeah, I've got it goin' on. I'm wearing jeans. I've got clogs on for comfort." and tease my bangs just so, obscuring my rapidly progressing bald spot.

a typical day

2008-11-11T16:57:00.000-08:00

alarm clock goes off at 4:45 am and the snooze button gets pushed around three times before i phone my dearest friend and exercise partner for reveille, time to wake her up and prepare for Hour of Power or Bikini Boot Camp at the gym. having popped a synthroid and gotten dressed for the gym, it's coffee, packing up the noise reduction headphones and a short drive to my friend's house. the signal of my high beams on her driveway usually alerts her but sometimes i have to cellphone her inside to get her attention. being a major tightwad i bring my own coffee but she is still purchasing three dollar coffee from starbucks so we ooze through the drive by window and flash her paul mccartney starbucks card. it is a long trudge up the three story stairwell at the fitness center. i mean you have to be in great shape before you ascend the stair case to get into great shape. at our ages we hold on tight to the railing. once in awhile i am perky enough to run up but not often. towel pick up, selection of a treadmill positioned as close as possible to our favorite cable channel where we bill and coo over steve doocy. after one full hour of trodding the mill, we wipe our brows, toss the towel into the bin and holding on even more tightly to the railing, descend out into the daylight and the short drive home.

it is now 7:15 am.

in my full nest days none of this would have been possible -- for years my friend and i spoke of the day when we'd have these early morning hours free and all to ourselves, arranged around her need to be in her office downtown by 8:30 am. and now that it is here, i rather like it. i like having my exercise regimen done, finito, finished by this early hour for i have always loved the early morning. i loved rising early to wake sleeping children and pack lunches and sling hash and sign papers and check homework and drive carpools. i didn't make much time for fitness. it just got avoided mostly. this early routine is a big part of adjusting to the nest that is now empty. it happens monday through friday -- and as long as my friend needs that early morning wakeup call, i relish rising well before the sun.

i now attend an aa meeting daily; during the week it is usually at 10:30 and on the weekends at 8:30. gee are y'all totally bored by now? this is not scintillating reading. i trust my writing skills will improve with practice.

yes, aa. i got sober eight months ago. for me alcoholism was a disease of isolation and it is a treatment of social interaction. the thirty or so minutes before and after the meeting are a delight most days. i love the characters, the variety of people from every walk of life, the new ideas derived from the oldtimers that demonstrate life can be satisfying and full -- better sober.
it's true for me.

OK, so thus far I've exercised, had coffee, showered, gone to an aa meeting. i fetch an aa friend and we attend the funeral of a fellow member who had the kindest heart but the most astoundingly bad combover. in life i could barely gaze upon him with a straight face. ok i am being honest here. it was a very bad bad combover. the funeral was not terribly well attended so it's a good thing i went. something in me wanted it to be this gigantic circus of people who thought the world of him and were inspired by his good nature. i was a little saddened by our small congregation.

since my friend and i were pretty gussied up and hungry for late lunch we repaired to a popular italian restaurant for calamari, shrimp and house salad. and tapwater. Tune in again. this is a work in progress.

Letter One from an Empty Nest

2008-11-11T15:57:00.000-08:00

I actually still have two dachshunds living in the nest but it is devoid of the fruits of my thirty years' labor as a domestic engineer and human developer. One dachshund, a miniature red smooth haired named Biscuit, is scratching the carpet underneath me practicing for the day he'll get to hunt badgers for real. Fred, my black smooth haired, is lollygagging on the couch watching me.

My humans, my babies, my children, my works of art are scattered to the four winds.