The Fine Art of Puttering

I last had significant time off of work in June 2012, when I went back to Chicago to be with my mother as she died. That was three weeks: the dying week, the funeral week and the drive back to California with my sister and all of her possessions in a U-Haul week.

I'm on vacation this week and I'm strangely defensive about it. People ask me what my grand plan is, and I have no answer. I just kind of want to be in my house and putter. And eat cheese—good cheese, the expensive stuff, not like the fistful of discount pepper jack I just hoovered. I want to plant some plants. I have about 70 tulip bulbs that need to go in the ground, and I have an entire succulent frame that needs to be planted and hung. I want to create some art. I help create a really cool newspaper every week, but I haven't created anything using paper and paint and brushes in a long time. I want to take a few day trips. Read fiction. Go to the city council meeting for my own amusement, because they're funnier than any sitcom on TV right now. (Except Girls. Holy hell, have you seen Girls? Funniest thing going. I am fully aboard the Lena Dunham train.) I thought I might go to Chicago this week, but fuck, it's like 22-degrees there right now and according to the forecast, when it's not snowing in the next few days, there will be freezing rain. I'll wait on Chicago.

I've technically been on vacation since Friday, but it doesn't really count since the office holiday party (which always takes place about a month after the holidays) was Friday night. And even before that, during the day, my boss kept emailing me with, "Hey, I know you're on vacation, but what do you think about blah blah blah." Good party. Excellent party. I have to be drunk to dance in public and boy did I dance. Woke up Saturday and my hair hurt. Ate waffles with my husband, walked over to the homeless encampment at City Hall (or, as I like to think of it as, an object lesson in what happens when the city dismantles a homeless encampment and leaves the denizens with nowhere else to go). Last night, a cocktail party at our friend Nate's house. This morning, sleeping, reading and puttering. I puttered and Chuck made David Chang's steamed pork buns

I puttered here:

I also puttered here:

And then I puttered here too:

Puttering, for those unfamiliar, is the fine art of rearranging stuff.

Farm to Table

So last Saturday, we went and did this.

And had she been alive to see it, my mother likely would say this:

“Your grandmother didn’t haul her ass from the mountains above Krakow, land at Ellis Island and go to work in a Chicago slaughterhouse so her college-educated granddaughter could kill her own food. Get your head out of your [expletive] and go to the grocery store like a normal human being.” And then she would utter a few curses in Polish while shaking her head in disgust.

It was a breathtakingly expensive turkey. We named him Carl, in honor of the irritating kid on The Walking Dead. (He has has his own twitter hashtag— #killcarlalready.) Here's what he looked life before:

And here's what he looked like after 12 hours in brine and nine hours of smoking on the Weber:

No, Carl isn't burned. That's just what the skin looks like after nine hours of smoking. The tradeoff for not having the crisp golden skin is probably the juiciest bird we've ever had. Seriously good turkey.

I came home from work last night to find Chuck in the kitchen, scalding and peeling Carl's feet. The feet went into a stockpot with celery, carrot, onion and some herbs; Carl's neck went into the oven to roast. I chopped up the neck meat and used the drippings and foot stock to make gravy. Seriously good gravy too.

And then we ate. The complete menu: cold cracked crab, crab cakes with homemade remoulade, the world's most expensive turkey, mashed potatoes, roasted potatoes (because as much as my friend Carmela says she doesn't like children, she knows my youngest loves her roasted potatoes more than anything), my mother's bread dressing, cornbread dressing (because Chuck doesn't like fruit in his dressing and you can't make my mother's recipe without the dried fruit) and green bean casserole. Dessert: caramel apple cake, cheesecake with pineapple compote and vegan pumpkin pie (don't ask). The guest list: fun people we love.

Apropos of nothing, here's my friend Koly with a crab claw shoved up her nose.

And just in case you were wondering, it's been 10 days since Nigel's last escape.

Frailty, Thy Name is Turkey

In about 10 hours, Chuck and I are going to a harvest party. What's being harvested: the main course at Thanksgiving dinner.

For some reason, getting a turkey raised with organic TLC by someone we know sounded like a great fucking idea two months ago. But now that I received the Facebook message from a friend advising us to wear clothes we don't mind getting bloody, it seems like less of a good idea.

It's part of next week's cover package. The Silence of the Turkeys: Sometimes to make a killer holiday dinner, you have to kill your holiday dinner.

Random Facts

Or, ten things most people don't know about me.

10. I read every single thing I can get my hands on about Mt. Everest and the climbing of it. I get altitude sickness if I'm more than five feet above sea level, but I love reading about climbing.

9. I have a Chandler & Price 1904 treadle-action letterpress and two job boxes of type. I like to think of it as, "What I'll do when I retire."

8. I become obsessed with certain music based on the season. Right now, it's the Tomasz Stanko quartet, Spoon, and Gorillaz. In January, I will obsessively listen to Sting. Food obsessions take place based on season too. Right now, it's soup and cheese.

7. My sister is 20 years older than me; she lives with us and we take care of her. If anyone messes with my sister, they will end up wishing they were dead. NOBODY messes with my sister on my watch.

6. I work for two men who have really empowered me to speak my mind when it comes how the workplace operates. I'm sure there are days when they regret it, like when I told them they were hypocrites for taking vacation the week between Christmas and New Year's while the rest of us are at work.

5. I get nutty if my house is messy. This means I'm mostly nutty all of the time.

4. My idea of perfect happiness--Chinese food and a movie with my family--takes place almost every Friday night. Tonight the eldest teen joined us for the food, and the youngest joined us for the movie.

3. My best friend became my best friend by stumbling on an early blog I had and making me a sock dog named Fergus. The BFF can do anything she sets her mind to and is a good counterpoint to my approach of neurotic laziness.

2. If I feel a relationship is doing me more harm than good, I have no qualms about ending it, and once it's done, I will never think about it again. This has given me a reputation for heartlessness, but really I just figure life is too short to be with people who suck the life out of you.

1. I miss my mother something fierce.

Heidi Chronicles

Ruthlessly stolen from someone who ruthlessly stole it from Heidi, creator of The Heidi FAQ.

Q. What is Mary wearing?
A. Honestly, who gives a shit? It's almost midnight and Mary is in a mood. The country's going to hell-in-a-handbasket, and Mary doesn't even know if that phrase needs to be hyphenated or not, that's how grumpy she is.

Q. What kind of mood is Mary in?
A. See above.

Q. What are the factors currently affecting Mary's mood?
A. Desperate need for three days of absolute solitude and quiet and not worrying about anyone else's needs.

Q. What is Mary's situation vis-a-vis coffee?
A. Mary is looking forward to a peppermint mocha in the morning.

There's Always Something To Do In Salinas

Two weeks ago Sunday night, this happened in my front yard.

One week ago Sunday night, this happened down the block from my house.


It's Sunday again. So far, my friend Heather,

who is visiting from Virginia, was almost killed—KILLED, I tell you—by a hipster driving a shopping car erratically through the condiment aisle at the Whole Foods in Monterey. A condiment aisle where, I might add, I was forced to buy hipster wing sauce for our planned hot wing pizza (shredded chicken, wing sauce, blue cheese and mozzarella, shredded carrot and celery leaves) because they don't have low-rent Frank's Red Hot Sauce.

(Why shop there at all? It's not an unreasonable question. I've just grown very fond of their prepared whole grain pizza dough and as I had 20 lbs. of tomatoes—a case of dry-farmed Early Girls and a case of heirlooms from my favorite farmer, Jamie Collins, owner of Serendipity Farms

—to process and can this afternoon, I wanted to make the dough easier ...) (Take note: we finally, after 18 months of living upstairs in the main house, have kitchen counters.)

So far, it's been a quiet day and I'm hoping men and dogs make it through the night without bullets flying around the hood.

What I've Been Up To...

First, there's this.

And then, there's this.

In a few days, when I get my thoughts together, I'll be writing about how Walgreen's "lost" a prescription for a morphine patch—a so-called Class II Controlled Substance—leading me to waste precious hours that could have been spent sitting with my mother instead of running between pharmacy and doctor's office in a futile effort to help relieve her pain.