Jeff and I met on Match.com--ain't no shame in it!--and one of the things he liked about my profile was that I had answered the "What was the last great book you read?" question with The Grapes of Wrath. It was one of those books that had somehow slipped through the cracks of my reading life, and I remember finishing it while sitting on a bench in Chicago's Union Station. The devastating ending made me cry, and then I just stared at things for a while, a character Edward Hopper had forgotten to paint: Heartbroken Lonely Woman Crying Over A Book.
Anyway, one of the characters in that book is named Rose of Sharon, and I always thought that was so unusual--she has a preposition in her name! Last year we were shopping for plants to decorate our new patio, and I flipped out when I came across a rose of Sharon. The man who sold it to us said it was blue, which is not as common as the white and pink version, and after planting it, we waited for about a month for it to bloom. It's in the center of the above photo.
I took a photo of the first rose and saved the picture for a future painting. I started it a couple of weeks ago. I wasn't all that revved up to paint it at first, but after a day of work I was excited. I loved the light on the petals, and the variety of blues and purples I used to create the bloom was challenging.
I fine-tuned the white thing and added more details and texture to the petals.
Then I filled in the background with some bloopy, blurry colors, and I started the rocks in the lower-left corner. Most of the white areas would become leaves and branches.
Next
up: I spent a lot of time with that dry grass on the left side. It had
lots of different blurry colors going on. I texturized the rocks with purples, blues, pinks, and browns. Finally, I did some yellow underpainting
on the leaves, masked off the major veins (seen above as yellow lines) and added an
additional green glaze over the top.
More leaf work...
I
added a lot of details to the leaves and attempted to soften and refine
the veins. Leaves in direct sunlight called for bits of blue, permanent green light, and a whole lot of no-paint. The bigger/closer leaves required some micro veins. This process reminded me of the way I painted the colorful leaf from my Mushrooms painting a year and a half ago. The colors in the photo above are a bit too bright--I took the picture during a thunderstorm and got aggressive with it in Photoshop.
On my last day of painting, I added a branch and some grassy shapes in the center. Those were surprisingly complex and colorful. And then, as if on cue, our new scanner arrived in the mail!
Eleven years ago I bought a kind of so-what HP scanner that did a wonderful job with my watercolors and cartoons, and Bun liked to sit on it, too. When it died in 2009, I assumed it would be easy to find a replacement. But that was not the case--the ones we've tried since then can't handle subtle color changes or things like pastel colors outlined in black pen.
Last month Jeff did some research (and great things happen when Jeff does some research). He found a used Epson Perfection V30 for only $30. A watercolor artist had blogged about this scanner and showed how to configure the settings to work for watercolors. It seemed like such a great deal, especially when you consider that I tend to pay $12-$15 per big scan at FedEx. The only problem was that the vendor was in Hawaii, and the scanner had to endure a month-long boat odyssey and cross-country road trip before it reached us.
We set it up and scanned my painting (which was too big to fit) in two sections. Photoshop miraculously pieced them together--seamless! We were impressed at how the scanner even managed to pick up on the texture (or tooth) of my watercolor paper. Terrific!
And you can find prints of this new painting if you click here!
Imagekind has finally gotten its act together, and now my other new-ish floral paintings are available as prints, too!
Jeff and I learned about Roger Ebert's death last Thursday about an hour after everybody else did. We had spent most of the day away from our computers and were enjoying one of central Illinois' first truly springlike afternoons, reprising our role as The Couple That Walks Around St. Joe Holding Hands.
Jeff found out first. We were sitting in the living room and getting set to watch Justified when he gasped. "Roger Ebert died," he said, looking up from his iPad sadly. Oh no. Instinctively my arms and legs bent in toward the center of my body--sort of a seated fetal position--as sadness swept over me.
My Facebook and Twitter notifications started erupting with "you're the first person I thought of when I heard" posts, and I responded to them for a few hours. Thanks so much to those of you who contacted me--Roger would have appreciated the immediate, easy way people were able to reach out to each other. I would love to see a map of the world dotted with those whose lives he affected and the amazing web of connections he spun between us.
As some of you may know, Roger and I were Twitter and email friends. Not wanting to waste The Great Man's time, I only communicated with him when I had something on my mind that I thought he would appreciate. And he would contact me as well. My Gmail says we had 92 conversations.
One of my favorite exchanges with him was in 2011 regarding the movie Crumb, a documentary I've loved and rewatched on VHS countless times. I had received the Blu-ray edition that included Roger's commentary track for Christmas. I listened to it as I painted one day and told him about how I appreciated his insights and how great it was to hear his voice for a while. We talked about R. Crumb's brothers and their "stupid mother" (Roger's words). It was fun and more than a bit surreal to talk about one of my favorite movies with Roger Freaking Ebert.
He especially liked it when I sent updates about nature, farming, and the weather in this part of the state. I live a few miles from his boyhood/college hometown, and I'd let him know when the corn was sprouting and show him photos of things like a cluster of mushrooms I'd found growing beside a tree stump in the yard.
As time passed, his email messages became shorter--sometimes just a
sentence or two, but always cordial and often humorous. Ignatiy Vishnevesky explained why his notes were so brief in his
wonderful letter to Roger from a few days ago:
"You communicated largely through your computer, but you typed slowly,
your hand hovering over a key before pressing down. It could take you
thirty seconds to type out a sentence."
He wanted to include it in a blog he was writing and credited me there, mentioning (incorrectly) that he owned two of my paintings. I sent Roger a quick "I'm pretty sure you just have the Art Theater" message, and he responded with,
I believe I have that one and the child with the book shelf. I've been in the hospital so it's hard to say…
Anyway, I feel like I have 2. And it sounds better :)
Cheers,
R
Sometimes
he'd send emails to me accidentally--meant for other people--and I'd
let him know. In February I got one containing some
confidential information regarding Ebertfest and his health. He had some big, wonderful plans for the last day. I told him his secret was
safe with me and he called me a dear friend. Imagine!
It's hard to describe what it's been like to have known him even in my minor way. He had over 800,000 followers on Twitter and followed 255. I had the extreme good fortune to be one of them. Whenever I tweeted something, I asked myself, "Is this Roger-worthy?" So there were no "going to the library LOL" tweets from me. He was my writing's conscience, the little voice I heard and continue to hear before I hit "post."
Just when I thought he wasn't reading this blog anymore--the man was beyond busy--I'd get a comment (!!!!!!) or a retweet. He even read at least one of my recipes. He made my month when he told his Twitter followers that "damn it, she's right" when I ranted about how most fruit crisps contain too much fruit and nowhere near enough crisp. Roger Ebert cared about the fruit-to-crisp ratio!
So the past few days have been loaded with Roger memories.
I was in the right place at the right time when he discovered my watercolors. He gave me confidence to pursue my dream. I've made new friends because of him. I've sold watercolors and prints because of him. He gave me the idea for one of my best paintings. He sent me messages from the hospital asking me how I was. He told me "I'm there with you--thank God for Jeff" during my cancer scare.
I was lucky to have met him in person two years ago. He looked at me and applauded. He wrote in his notepad that I was an artist and underlined it. I'll never forget it.
Roger did so much for me, and he didn't have to do any of it. But he did. He did, and I'm one of many, many people who have been saying things like this over the past few days. I can't thank him enough, but I think the best thing any of us can do to remember Roger is to try to be as kind, thoughtful, and appreciative of beauty as he was.
I can sum up February in two words: antibiotics and Treasure.
Antibiotics: Bun is urinary infection-free after we struggled to find antibiotics that didn't make her sick. The first was a brutal regime of 56 pills that made her sick every time we successfully got them in her. We switched to a second type--28 doses of a pink liquid in a rather hilarious cherry flavor (because everyone knows cats love stuff that is cherry flavored). This delightful concoction caused Bun to drool and foam uncontrollably for ten to fifteen minutes after Jeff squirted some down her throat, during which time I followed her around with a billowing handful of paper towels, sopping up the drool as she hustled from one room to another. Thanks to all who donated to Bun's medical fund and even sent her valentines. Jeff and I were blown away by your kindness and generosity.
Between my drool cleanup sessions, I painted and painted. This was the main reason why I haven't updated the blog in a while. I became obsessed with my unusual and challenging still life. It's another cluster of jewelry along with other items including an old photo of me as a baby. My mom put it in my birthday card back in late Janurary. I whimsically added the photo to my still life setup and loved the idea of painting a tiny girl surrounded by objects she would eventually own. I spent the first couple of days painting my baby self. My head is about the size of a nickel. I'm in my parents' dining room holding one of Dad's college books. I had trouble sleeping during this first week of painting--I found myself repeatedly waking up at 4:00 aching to get back to work on it.
Next I added most of my turquoise bracelet (I wore it everyday during my early teaching years), some coral beads, and an antique dragon that might be made of ivory, but I'm not sure. I like how the orange-red beads resemble fire shooting from its mouth. In real
life the dragon is about an inch and a half tall. The
painted version is about five times larger in this 20"x26" watercolor.
During one productive week, I
finished the dragon and a lot of fussy jewelry in the lower left
corner, including an antique orange bead necklace that was nothing but
trouble! On our first Christmas together, Jeff gave me the swirly silver charm on
the right.
I selected the jewelry pieces mainly because I liked the way they looked together, and the setup came together shockingly quickly. Some of the stories behind the jewelry are meaningful, and some are not. For example, one
morning I was on my way to school when I noticed the beginnings of a
wardrobe malfunction and needed something to pin myself together. I popped
into a drugstore and bought the above purple pin for $4.95. It may have been cheap, but it took an entire day to complete. The orange beads run through the bottom half of the painting. They had many diamond-shaped facets and were difficult but fascinating to paint. I loved producing every bead in this painting, but the many connecty things here were a chore.
Not wishing to annoy my Facebook friends with daily in-progress photos where I had covered maybe a couple of square inches, I limited myself to Friday-only updates. The above photo shows some new objects: a
sparkly gold charm that is the focal point of a statement necklace,
most of a turquoise ring that is too heavy to wear while painting, and a
perfume compact of a leaf with a dragonfly on it. Because the gold
charm was so impossible, I couldn't make myself work on it all day, so
during the afternoons I painted fun stuff. The dragonfly/leaf
and the circular gold compact in the lower-left corner were gifts from my friend David,
who is a makeup artist at Estee Lauder in Bergdorff Goodman, NYC. I
bought the ring in Santa Fe, and the gold necklace is from some catalog
or other.
The next week I
finished the turquoise ring and dragonfly/leaf compact (that took a lot
longer than I thought it would). Then I worked on the space above those
two things. I referred to this area as "the little garbage."
Finally I painted the silver Eddington necklace, which I
thought acted as a kind of fun signature, a pearl, and some more beads.
Note the tiny chain draped over that red bead. Why didn't I think to
hide it when I put this still life together? Those links were so impossibly small, even on a large-ish painting.
Last
week I took care of the little items in the lower right corner,
including a raspberry-shaped earring composed of small garnets. Most of
the items here are resting on foil, except for those on the right side.
You can see where the foil ends and the table begins. (If you click on the picture above, you can see the details more easily.)
I adore Venice and was happy to find the above matchbox at a local antique store. It shows the Ca' d'Oro ("Golden
House") and was painted in a jazzy
style that I had fun mimicking. The lettering and skinny black lines made me so nervous that I kissed my right hand after I finished them. I devoted the last day of
painting to the turquoise chunks in the top right corner and tightening
up the gold floral piece in the center.
For a while the
working title of this painting was Treasure Chest, awesomely suggested
by Jeff. A couple of weeks ago we decided to shorten it to Treasure. I
liked that idea because it can be a noun and a verb. I'm so happy with
the painting and think this could be a great new way for me to create
portraits--a photograph of the subject surrounded by beloved objects--and I want to do more.
Prints of this brand new painting can be found here!
It's been a lousy few weeks for Bunny. The story is so convoluted and boring--I'll try not to ramble.
Bun takes a miracle drug twice a day to keep her regular. The University of Illinois' small animal clinic gets it from India, but the supply recently ran out (for good? conflicting stories!), and all animals on the drug needed to come in so their doctors could talk about alternatives. So Jeff and I brought Bun in.
During the exam, the doctor suspected that she had a urinary infection. She gets these about once a year, and after further tests, we learned that yes, that was the case. The antibiotics she had to take: 56 Clavamox pills over the next four weeks, which seems incredible. Bun hates pills, so this would be a twice-daily power struggle. I drew 56 erasable Bun faces on our kitchen chalkboard for motivational purposes. Fine.
Yesterday morning when we opened our bedroom door, Bun was not there to greet us and boss us around. This was highly irregular, so we started calling for her. She emerged from the living room and limped up to us. She didn't want to put much pressure on her back left foot, and as a result she was moving slightly sideways.The foot in question:
Jeff once had a little dog that had a stroke who moved the same way, so he immediately thought, stroke. Maybe it was a side-effect from the pills? He scooped her up in a towel and we both started crying and holding Bun like a baby. Our poor girl!
She seemed alert in every other way, though, and was not yowling in pain, but we knew we needed to get her to her local vet as soon as possible. Jeff held it together long enough to make the necessary call, we threw on some clothes, and we rushed her up to the vet just as it was opening.
Bun's kind of a big deal up there. Her file is one of the thickest they have, so everyone knows her little face. She is incredibly docile and sweet to all humans, and she also has this way of giving her doctors and other vet people homemade cookies "just 'cause." I took one look at the always-sympathetic C., working the desk as we blew in, and got hideously weepy as Jeff explained our situation. We were hustled into an exam room.
The first available doctor looked in Bun's eyes and did the usual exam, saying she wasn't showing any stroke symptoms. She suspected that Bun had injured her leg in some way and wanted to take some X-rays.
[fast forward through stressful waiting period where they kept Bun for a couple of hours]
The X-rays showed no signs of breakage. We were able to see that she was a bit constipated. ALL of Bun's doctors had looked at her and all concluded that she had not had a stroke. Consensus was that she had a soft tissue/tendon injury. They gave us something to treat her pain and we went home. I came up later with some cookies from Bun.
What could have caused the injury?
Theory A: Bun's kinda-pal Quixote likes to engage in grab-ass (see video below, and now I feel like such a jerk for chuckling)...
...and occasionally those two get into some knock-down, drag-outs during the wee hours.
Theory B: As Bun has aged, her ability to jump has declined. Last week I watched in horror as she attempted to jump from our dining room table to a window sill and missed, falling to the floor. Maybe something like that happened overnight.
But Bun has been frightened of Quixote since yesterday morning and actively hides from him now. So I'm leaning toward Theory A.
Attempts to give Bun her pain medication were met with a frothy, spitty, puking girl who was having none of it. She refused food for the rest of the day and hid in Jeff's office. Her eyes were dilated and I know she must have been in pain. We ended up sleeping on the floor beside her last night.
In the morning (5 a.m.) we all woke up. Happily, I was able to coax Bun into eating some of her dry food and drinking some water. She used her litter box a little--she had to have been almost totally dried out. Standing in the box seemed uncomfortable for her and I feel that's a top reason why she's avoiding it. Jeff managed to get her various meds in her. She's spent most of today in Jeff's office, eating and drinking a bit but not much. Jeff has become worried that she's not passing the stool we saw in her X-ray yesterday and, with the advice of her U of I doctor, he has upped her laxative dosage. We don't want this to turn into a repeat of two summers ago.
SO we are hoping that between now and 2 p.m. tomorrow, Bun will have had a successful litter box trip to Town #2. If not, she has another date with her U of I doctor. I really hope it doesn't come to that.
If you would like to donate some money toward Bun's hefty medical bills, I have a PayPal button on the right. Or please consider buying a print here, stuff here, or originals here. Thanks!
EDIT! It's late Friday morning, and I am pleased to announce that Bun gave birth (basically) to a bouncing baby boom-boom, as we call them. Actually, it was more like octuplet boom-booms. Crisis averted! Even though she's still got that sideways walk that will hopefully heal over time, Bun's feeling a lot perkier today. AND she gets to nap the afternoon away in her sunny basket, narrowly avoiding a scary, expensive trip to see her U of I doctors. GO BUN.
I mean, seriously, there was cheering going on in this house. People were dragged away from desks to gape at things in litter boxes.
And I would like to sincerely thank everyone who wished our cat well and donated some money to her cause. You almost completely paid her surprise expenses this week. Thank you very much for helping us. Bun loves you and wants to give you cookies, just 'cause. I was genuinely surprised that anyone had even bothered to read to the bottom of yesterday's post. I propose a toast to you, my dear readers. You made a little cat happy.
(I made it clear that Bun pooped today, right? She did not have a litter of kittens. I was trying to make a little joke and am saying this preemptively in case people didn't get it.)
Jeff and I finally broke down and put up our Christmas tree. I've been busy with some U2 lunacy and a difficult portrait commission over the past couple of weeks. Those tasks completed, I engaged in a bit of therapeutic ornament-making, this time with salt dough. In the past I've made gingerbread ornaments, but this year I thought the tree needed something more colorful, and salt dough is so much easier and less expensive. I used to make salt dough ornaments with Mom to give to my teachers as Christmas presents, so the smell and texture of this dough transported me back to my pre-teen years.
INGREDIENTS
1 cup salt
2 cups flour
1 cup water
DIRECTIONS
In a large bowl mix salt and flour. Gradually stir in water. Mix well until it forms a doughy consistency.
With your hands form a ball with your dough and kneed
it for at least 5 minutes.
Store your salt dough in a air tight container and you will be able to use it for days.
You can paint our creations with acrylic paints and seal with varnish or polyurethane spray.
You can let your salt dough creations air dry; however, salt dough can also be dried in the oven. Bake at 200 degrees F until your creation is dry. The amount of time needed to bake
your creations depends on size and thickness; thin flat ornaments may
only take 45-60 minutes, thicker creations can take 2-3 hours or more.
You can increase your oven temperature to 350 F, your dough will dry
faster but it may also brown, which won't matter if you are painting
your entire creation.
-----
My ornaments, which were between 1/8 and 1/4 inch thick, took around an hour and a half to bake at 200 degrees. I used the entire cup of water in making the dough, so it may have been a little on the damp side. I let them continue to air-dry overnight before I painted them the next day. I used cookie cutters shaped like Christmas ornaments--an early present from Jeff--and, when I dipped them in a little flour, they cut through the dough beautifully, and those complicated, delicate shapes were no problem.
This recipe produced over 40 ornaments, each about 3 inches tall. I took them up to my work table and busted out some sequins and extra-cheap acrylic paint. I had no real plan, but I found myself painting each ornament with tints of a single color accented with coordinating sequins. Then I varnished them with a clear acrylic glitter paint. A couple of hours later, I had these:
I found a half-box of ornament hooks (or whatever you call them) leftover from last year, and I was ready to hang them!
Earlier this year, Jeff and I rearranged our living room furniture. We love the new setup, but it messed up our usual tree-area, so we moved the tree to our library, which you might remember from this painting:
The tree is small, so to give it some height, we set it on the table between the two wicker chairs. We also had to move the middle bookshelf away from the wall to access the outlet behind it. But soon enough we were decorating the tree, and Jeff used some gargoyle bookends to hang stockings behind it.
And here are some of the ornaments, which we paired with our usual birds.
They're prettier at night.
Two weeks ago, I transformed my studio into a GLOW CHAMBER.
As I sat on the floor, trying to arrange the lights in a way that made a tiny bit sense, I'm pretty sure a spider bit my foot through my sock. I felt an instant, mild itch and watched a small light yellow spider crawl beneath my bookshelves on the left. The bite swelled up immediately and turned pink. Fearing a week of pain, I popped an antihistamine, applied some antibiotic cream and anti-itch gel, elevated my foot, and put the sucker on ice. Over the following week I watched the formerly-swollen-but-now-just-bruisey area, which was about the size of a Chips Ahoy! cookie, turn a rainbow of colors: dusty plum, cadet blue, zombie green. But it never really hurt or itched, and then it went away. I suppose I'm writing about this so that if one day my skin splits and billions of small light yellow spiders come streaming out, well, here's how that happened.
And what holiday season would be complete without Christmas Marvin Gaye? I've always thought his What's Going On album seemed Christmasy, and for years I have made a point of displaying it next to something festive. First known example:
So that was great, but this year I really topped myself by placing him in the GLOW CHAMBER. I urge you to make Christmas Marvin Gaye a tradition in your house.
One last time: I have to plug my online merchandise store. Thanks to all who have ordered items with my paintings on them--I just put together some new compacts featuring details from Ruby Liberty Dragonfly. I appreciate each and every sale I make. Please go there and get a little something for yourself!
And it's not too late to pick up a print of mine from Imagekind. Prints are 25% off this weekend, and how about that free shipping? Framed and canvas prints tend to take about a week to ten days for them to produce, but unframed prints usually get shipped out a couple of days after you order. Thanks again, everyone!
Last weekend Jeff and I hosted our family's Thanksgiving for the second year in a row. My parents, my brother Ryan, my sister Emily/Poof and her husband Tyler, Jeff's parents, and his daughter Melissa were all there, and everyone on my side of the family stayed overnight.
We had a great time with lots of laughs, and Poof put together a video for her second YouTube channel, Beauty Vlogcast. Since I was too busy cooking to take lots of photos, some of what you'll see here are screen-grabs from that video. Jeff also took some photos of the food moments before we destroyed it. So thank you, Jeff and Poof!
Mom, Dad, Poof, Tyler, and Ryan arrived in the morning, and I made sure they had plenty to snack on. We planned to eat the big meal at around 5:00, so the above spread, along with a massive pot of chili, kept everyone happy until then.
I've already blogged about everything you see above. It's great to have some recipes that I know people will like, and they included pumpkin cookies, seasonally spiced nuts, li'l smokies, a roasted red pepper cheesecake, the heavyset cheeseball, various crackers, cheese, and vegetables, and tiny peach and raspberry star-topped pies (I changed that recipe, using the same crust but filling the pies with peach preserves and raspberry jam). Mom kindly made one of her spectacular apple pies.
I loved seeing my family, and we enjoyed a relaxing afternoon laughing, snacking, and telling stories.
Ryan, Tyler, Poof, and Dad entertained our cats in the living room. Tyler's holding one of the festive mimosas that he and Poof made for everyone.
Mom helped Jeff and me while we puttered around the kitchen. Jeff wanted try something different with the turkey this year, and he did a great job preparing Tom Colicchio's butter-and-herb recipe here. He started working on it at around noon, taking it out of the oven to baste it every half-hour or so.
A couple of hours before the turkey was supposed to be finished, Jeff took its temperature just for the heck of it, and to our great alarm we discovered that our turkey was done! Upon further examination of the recipe, we learned that Tom had called for a 14 to 16 pound turkey, and ours was only 12 pounds. So that made a big difference, and suddenly I was scrambling to get the sides together for our meal, which had just been moved up two hours.
I made Parmesan smashed potatoes, which usually take about 45 minutes from start to finish, and put the stuffing and sweet potatoes into the oven. Luckily I had prepared those ahead of time, along with cranberry sauce, and the rolls were a heat-and-eat situation. Meanwhile, Jeff carved the turkey breast and Mom got as much meat as she could from the rest of the bird. Jeff's folks arrived with their extra table, and soon all we were waiting for was Melissa and her ratatouille. And Melissa was running pretty late, so we stuffed almost the entire feast into our oven's warming drawer and hoped for the best. When she arrived, I hope I didn't appear too exasperated.
Me: [I can't remember if I even said hi to her, sorry Mel!] What temperature?
Mel: I don't know.
Me: How long?
Mel: Until it's done?
I popped it in the already-hot oven, set it for 20 minutes, and figured that would work (it did). The warming drawer did its job too, and I relaxed and got the buffet organized.
That turkey was so good, by the way! We were lucky to have caught it at just the right time.
That's Melissa's ratatouille in the foreground. It was nice and light, and it contrasted nicely with the carb- and butter-tastic dishes that made up the rest of the meal.
Everyone was stuffed to the gills, as we say in Illinois, but certain people who were in New York City last month demanded dessert immediately after the meal, so Jeff and I broke out a couple of our lethal candy bar pies (pictured above with our creepy sumo gnome) along with Mom's apple pie. Readers of this blog may recall our trip to the Momofuku Milk Bar in New York and the little dessert we began referring to as the meth pie. Melissa bought the Milk Bar's cookbook for me a few weeks ago--and it is just the greatest thing--so Jeff and I could make the meth pie for Thanksgiving.
Which we did! This pie was INSANE. Even the pie's creator Christina Tosi describes her pie version of a Take 5 candy bar as "a little bit of a bitch to make," and indeed it was. It's four recipes in one, and one of those recipes contains a sub-recipe. The instructions go on for eight pages. It took two people two days to make these pies, and the recipes involved four dangerous experiences with boiling sugar water. You guys, we made nougat. Nougat is apparently something people can make!
Just to break it down for you: it's a chocolate cookie crust topped with a thick layer of not-runny-but-not-solid caramel that is a little bit of a bitch to make, peanut butter nougat made with crushed peanut brittle that you of course have to create yourself, and a toasted pretzel trapped between a mixture of white and dark chocolate (melted together to form a super-chocolate).
I'm not going to copy eight pages of recipe for you. As far as I can tell, only a few people on the Internet have attempted to make this pie. If you want to give it a try, you're just going to have to buy the book, and I wish you good luck in your baking endeavors.
And make no mistake: we're totally making this pie again sometime. I'm thinking this would be a fine activity for when we're snowed in and bored out of our minds. The next time a blizzard hits, I'll be the one in the store stocking up on butter, chocolate, and peanuts while everyone else is buying flashlights and snow shovels and salt and stuff.
BACK TO THANKSGIVING.
The next morning I had apple dumplings for everyone. My family had made it through the night with our cats afoot. Poof had a migraine headache before she went to bed, and she said she had trouble sleeping, but luckily she felt better by morning.
Poof loves these apple dumplings, and I received the best reaction of my cooking life when she tried them for the first time last year, so I had to make them again. You can find the recipe here. They're a teeny tiny bit of a bitch to make, but they're worth the hassle because things like this happen:
SHE IS SO CUTE. And the following is my favorite frame from Poof's video:
I love when Poof gets that glimmer of ramping-up-craziness in her eyes. You want Poof at every meal you serve, trust me.
And here is Poof's video of Thanksgiving! Look at my family moving around doing things and talking to you!
I seriously do not know why I do that thing with my mouth when I talk or how I can ever stop. It disturbs me as much as it disturbs you, it's all I can see, and I apologize for any emotional distress it may have caused you and your family.
Thanks to you, my dear readers, for getting all the way down here to the bottom of this post, and I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving, too.
Make no mistake, this is The Summer of Bun. We've been taking her outdoors once or twice a day on what I like to call "supervised walkabouts." We don't let her out of our sight and stay within a few yards of her--she seems to want us to follow her around and act as her entourage. Bun mostly noses around the patio, where she monitors the comings and goings of chipmunks and our big fat woodchuck. (Heh: nosin' aroun'.)
Our other two cats don't get to go outside. Hypatia becomes confused, and Quixote simply bolts and gets lost. Bun is the only one we trust, and she's been microchipped. I feel bad about the unfairness of this situation because it calls to mind the opening scene from The Royal Tenenbaums. If our cats were Tenenbaum children, Bun would be Richie (ff to 4:19 to see what I mean, although you really should watch all of this).
So I guess that makes me Gene Hackman. Back to the adorable kitty pics.
Bun has spotted a chipmunk!
And I am ruining her chipmunking experience.
Bun spends a lot of her walkabout time lounging in the grass. Please enjoy this Jeff-filmed video of Bun rolling around in the dirt like a grub (sorry it's vertical).
This never gets old. Seriously, I could watch that all day.
I wish that blade of grass wasn't blocking her eye!
Impromptu grooming session.
She is so little!
While I took these photos today, something like four mosquitoes bit me, so I wanted to at least get a blog entry from my time outside. Also, for each half-hour that she spends walking about, Bun devotes an equal amount of indoors-time to standing by our patio door and wailing like a banshee because she wants to go out again. It's awful.
But Bun's just so cute when she's outside doing stuff!
All rollin' around on the rocks and everything.
And we're back on chipmunk watch. She pays attention to every sound and movement around her. She spent her kittenhood (before she decided that I should be her mama) outdoors fending for herself, and I often wonder how much she remembers from that time.
After a successful walkabout, Bun settles into her "happy pose" and takes a nap.
Jeff says Bun is more than just a pet. He calls Bun my "animal familiar," and witchay-woman BS aside, I love that idea and know that it is true.
Friday was Jeff's birthday and our final day in Los Angeles, and we had decided to play it by ear. Still wiped out by the previous two days, we slept in and felt content to lounge in our room, eating cookie butter and waiting for our 5 p.m. appointment with Brian at the frame shop. We thought about visiting the Getty, but as far as Jeff could tell, it was pretty far-flung and unreachable by bus. This seemed elitist and cruel of the Getty, and as I began to settle in for a delicious day of resentful sloth, Jeff discovered that no, wait, we could get there by a combination of long bus rides after all. Okay, The Getty, this had better be worth it.
Our bus lumbered slowly north along the interminable Sepulveda Boulevard, stopping every fifteen yards or so. After about an hour of that, we switched buses at UCLA and continued north. The route took us on a hilly, serpentine tour of Bel Air, where we saw many gates, dense hedges, lush vegetation/shade, and other signs of extreme wealth including glimpses of mansions. This was lots of fun to see, but the bus ride was so profoundly bumpy that I was forced to clutch my breasts with both hands to keep them in my dress. "Be still, my wee ones!" I said to them as an amused (Jazzy) Jeff looked on. So ladies, here's a travel tip you won't find anywhere else: wear a sports bra if you have to take a bus through Bel Air. Once we left Bel Air, the bus unceremoniously deposited us in the midst of a construction site. We could see the Getty's gleaming white edifice at the top of a hill about a mile away.
"I think we're gonna have to walk up there," Jeff said, and I emitted a heartbroken cry of betrayal. We trudged through one of those covered walkways common to urban construction areas, and when we emerged--hooray! A TRAM!
Let's all go up on the tram together, thanks to this video I just found!
We had been told that the Getty would be an oasis, and it certainly was. The cars, the noise, the buses, and the sprawl were replaced with mondernistic architecture, Zen gardens, panoramic views, and oh yeah, some art.
Herb Ritts photography (yay) and Gustave Klimt drawings (double yay) were that day's special exhibits along with the museum's permanent collection, and, unbelievably, everything was free.
This garden was a zig-zaggy maze of beautiful flowers, trees, succulents, and water features. I could imagine plenty of people coming to the Getty solely to escape the rest of Los Angeles and enjoy the architecture and gardens.
Above is part of the Getty as seen from that garden.
We thought these gigantic planters were ingenius and wondered how many years it took the plants to grow up through the centers before spilling out the tops.
It a treat to see Klimt's drawings. I wrote an independent study honors art history paper about him when I was in college--like many post-adolescent art girls, I was dazzled by his glamourous, richly-patterend paintings from the early 20th century. Many of those paintings are in Vienna, and I've only seen reproductions.
Above is one of his very fine academic studies from early in his career. His lines were razor sharp and frighteningly confident. (That black-and-white-on-toned-paper technique is one of my favorite ways to draw.)
Drawings that would inspire his dreamlike later work were also featured.
I was especially touched to view drawings that found their way into finished paintings, such as the above study for Klimt's Medicine. I left with a better understanding of his process and the way his mind worked.
"I'm not familiar with Herb Ritts," Jeff told me.
"Oh yes you are," I said as we entered his "L.A. Style" exhibit.
Photographer of supermodels, celebrities, athletes, and beyond-perfect anonymous male and female bodies, Herb Ritts is responsible for many iconic images of the 1980s and 90s. Skin is rarely photographed this lovingly. I remember seeing his above cluster of women in Vogue when I was in grad school. Unlike the overly-photoshopped pictures of models you see today, Herb Ritts' women never made me feel inadequate. They made me happy that creatures like that were walking the earth.
And then, perhaps in an attempt to remind us that art is more than just naked bodies, the permanent collection included THIS.
"Oh Jeff..." I said, tears in my eyes.
I've written about Vincent Van Gogh's Irises before, but this item bears repeating:
The Getty was such a lovely experience, and if you're going to be in Los Angeles, I urge you to do whatever it takes to get there, even if that means riding multiple breast-jangling buses. For a couple of hours, we felt like we could breathe again.
And then it was back to our construction zone bus stop. We arrived about 30 seconds before a bus arrived, but for whatever reason the bus driver blew right by us and a handful of other people. We fumed for half an hour.
Somebody had tagged the curb by my feet with "STATE," and this reminded me of Coach Taylor's whiteboard on Friday Night Lights, S05 E02, an episode to which I cannot link easily. But you people who watched that show: you know what I'm talking about, and I took it as a vote of confidence.
Does it go without saying that the ride back to the hotel was soul-destroying, and that once we were there it was nearly mid-afternoon, and after we'd had just enough time to freshen up and attempt to print boarding passes using the hotel's Pliocene-era computer, we had to turn around and get on two more buses to return to the frame shop, and that was also lousy? And before we hit the frame shop, we walked pretty far out of our way to try Beligian fries (Jeff's holy grail) that were, as usual, not everything they should have been?
It does go without saying any of that? Good. Let's consider ourselves at the frame shop. It's 5:15.
I was flustered and sweaty from our mile of sprint-walking in the afternoon heat. Luckily Brian wasn't there yet. I positioned myself beneath the Sherman Gallery's ceiling air conditioning outlet and fanned myself like crazy with a pamphlet. I was happy to meet Mike, my gallery worker and email pen pal for over a month, who came out with the painting, beautifully framed and wrapped in plastic. He had done such a speedy, great job with it, and again this cost me hundreds of dollars less than if I'd gone to the shop's many competitors. Check out these guys if you need to frame something in L.A. I took a photo and enjoyed a few final moments with my--soon to be Brian's--painting.
Brian appeared at around 5:30 in his SUV. I'd made sure that he had a vehicle big enough to transport the painting. It was wonderful to finally meet the man with whom I had exchanged nearly 300 emails (no joke) during the course of this project.
Brian took us out to dinner at Fig restaurant in Santa Monica. Fig is a young, hip place that--let's all say it together (especially you, Caroline)--Jeff had researched on the internet. Birthday boy had the beet risotto...
...which he loved, and our pal Brian...
(hi Brian)
...enjoyed a nice-looking plate of fish (halibut?).
The gentlemen did not take any photos of me, probably because I was a blur of tornado-like eating action. That was the best chopped salad of all time.
Unfortunately, Fig was packed and very loud, so we almost had to shout our conversation. But we still had fun talking with Brian about his upcoming wedding, the house he and Katherine had recently purchased in Colorado Springs, and our misadventures on Match.com, where we had all eventually found love.
Brian was supportive and enthusiastic as I completed this painting--I couldn't have asked for a better client. I'm lucky that he had discovered my work while searching online for portrait artists last year. He is also a true romantic and obviously in love with Katherine. I wished I could have met her in person, too, because she sounds amazing! Brian told me my painting was phenomenal, and he knew she would love it. He dropped us off at our hotel--what luxury to be in an actual car for a change!--and we wished him a happy wedding and marriage. Brian said, "I hope we'll be even half as happy as you two." D'awww. See what I mean? Great guy.
Mission accomplished, we went to bed early in anticipation of our 4:00 a.m. wake-up time.
That wake-up time came about as quickly as this new paragraph did. We took a speedy cab ride to the airport at 5:00 and were waiting at our gate at 5:20, a new record for us. Repeat: from hotel to gate in 20 minutes. Most of that time was spent curbside where we checked the gun case. This time it contained Jeff's extra shoes, cookie butter, and a bottle of Belgian beer he had purchased at Trader Joe's.
Baggage check man: I'm going to have to open that. What's inside the case?
Jeff: Alcohol, shoes, and peanut butter [It was just easier to call it that.--K].
BCM: [quizzical, smiling look] You don't need to open it. [waves us through]
Jeff: [a minute or two later, to me] It's like they want us to get out!
Me: It's like an apology.
(I will never stop loving the Pac Man-shaped fields Texas. I'm guessing that was Texas, anyway.)
We flew from LAX to Dallas/Ft.Worth to Chicago to Champaign. Nothing much happened on our flights, except for a Dallas passenger whose eye-watering halitosis had a radius of about six feet. As the day wore on, Jeff and I became slap-happy, laughing our heads off over signs like this one.
Jeff: "Caution! Do not trip over tiny hat!"
Me: "Beware of smashed sombrero!" "Extra dangerous if you have no hands or feet!"
Each layover lasted at least a few hours, so by the time we were back home, it was 9:00 p.m. A very long day of travel!
Three joyous cats met us at the door. Each had many needs to meet and many things to tell us. Bun walked around nervously for about an hour before finally settling down, satisfied that we weren't going anywhere else for a while.
That was pretty mean of me to show the painting wrapped in plastic up there, wasn't it? All will be revealed in my next post! Please *like* the heck out of my Facebook watercolor page, and I'll see you soon. :)
"Remember the time I made this for you?" I asked Jeff as he licked the spatula. This was unfair of me. How can anyone be expected to remember the taste of a baked good he had eaten four and a half years ago, based on the raw batter alone?
Jeff had no idea.
"I had known you for twelve days. On the morning of January 3 [first day back at school after winter break, a.k.a. the most depressing day of the year--K], my car wouldn't start and needed lots of repairs. You volunteered to drive me to and from work for as long as it took, and to say thank you I made you coconut bread."
Jeff didn't remember that either. He also didn't remember it after tasting the finished product.
OH WELL!
I guess it's that kind of baked good. But I'm telling you, he loved my coconut bread then, and he loved it when I made it again this week. Please note the torn-into nature of the top photo: this is clear evidence of greed. Why the long gap between loaf 1 and loaf 2? I don't know. It's near the front of a cookbook I keep around for a handful of stellar recipes, but it's older and I don't browse through it all that much. Tyler Florence's Real Kitchen, I guess you're that kind of cookbook.
Easy stuff, people. Mix dry things into wet things, pour into loaf pan, bake. And when you bake it, you'll see deep valleys form in its crust, and you will think to yourself, Why yes: I certainly am an accomplished baker. And the loaf is dense--a little goes a long way. We ate about half of it over the course of a couple of days, and then I cut the rest into manageable chunks and froze it.
Tyler Florence recommends that you top this with pineapple butter (8 oz can of drained, crushed pineapple plus two sticks of soft butter), and that's such a Tyler thing to do, isn't it? We didn't have enough butter, and anyway, we don't want to clog our arteries any--well, much--further. We did top it with T.F.'s peach and rosemary spoon fruit from the same book. I'll probably blog about that next.
INGREDIENTS
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted, plus more for greasing the pan
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 cup brown sugar, packed
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Zest of 1 lemon, finely grated <--I kind of prefer this without the zest, but give it a try if you enjoy lemon in everything
1 1/2 cups unsweetened coconut milk <--Light coconut milk is fine
1 1/2 cups shredded coconut, toasted <--I was lazy and didn't bother toasting it. In fact, I have never toasted it for this recipe. But go for it if you're feeling ambitious and want to impress that adorable man who's driving you to and from work everyday. I'm just saying that he will still ask you to marry him even if it's not toasted.
DIRECTIONS
Preheat the oven to 375°F.
Grease the bottom and sides of a 9×5-inch loaf pan with butter. In a large bowl, mix the flour with the baking powder, salt, and cinnamon.
In another large bowl, whisk together the melted butter with the brown sugar, eggs, vanilla, and lemon zest. Pour in the coconut milk and whisk together.
Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and fold everything together with a spatula until you have a smooth batter. Gently fold in the shredded coconut until evenly distributed. Pour into the prepared loaf pan and set it on a cookie sheet. Bake for 1 hour to 1 hour 15 minutes, or until a wooden toothpick comes out clean when inserted into the center of the bread. Rotate the pan periodically to ensure even browning.
Note from K: I always take this out at around 50-55 minutes because it totally smells and looks done to me, but the center-top comes out a little raw. But I don't really mind that. We like slightly underbaked goods in this house.
Cool the bread in the pan for 20 minutes or so; then when cool enough to handle, remove the coconut bread to a cutting board and let it cool completely before slicing.
PS: It's good toasted and good with powdered sugar on top!
This is where I went to elementary school and junior high between 1974-1983. My classmates and I were bused to a middle-ish school in a neighboring town during fourth and fifth grade, but I spent the bulk of my childhood here at La Harpe Elementary. My parents and siblings went to school here, too, as did most of my aunts, uncles, and cousins, and possibly even grandparents. My dad taught P.E., coached, and and was principal here for decades.
And it's going to be demolished soon.
My cousin Tyler took the photo above, and as I write this he is attempting to receive permission to show his photos of its now-damaged interior. [Edit: he got permission! I'll share more of his work as the photos arrive; two are below.] The idea that this building will not be around anymore triggered a wave of nostaglia that woke me up this morning. As I mentally walked from classroom to classroom, dozens of memories and "firsts" piled up, and I think I'm going to drive myself crazy unless I write some of them down in a series of disjointed paragraphs. I apologize if you've read any of these anecdotes before. I just wanted to see them all in one place.
Kindergarten
We had to fill out worksheets according to instructions played on a tape recorder. These were called "Listening Lessons." One of the items was a pig that we were told to color pink. Knowing that pigs were more of a peach color, I colored it peach and was deducted points. I have been a realist since the day I was born, damn it!
Across the hall was a girls' bathroom with four or five stalls. A rumor circulated among the girls: if the seat was up, that meant a boy had used it, and we should avoid it because, yuck, boys. Much later I realized that the seat was up because it had been recently cleaned by the janitors.
(I'm in the back row, far right, next to teacher aide Mrs. Yetter, blinded by the sun)
The class made a cookbook where each of us described how to make our favorite meal and were quoted verbatim in a dittoed booklet. My recipe was for spaghetti with meat sauce. I remember being interviewed for this like it was yesterday.
Kelly: Brown the hamburger...
Mrs. Y.: How much?
Kelly: The whole thing.
And so on.
First grade
I learned how to read! Our teacher Mrs. Strand must have taught us by osmosis, as I don't remember much about the process, but I do know that a whole lot of flashcards were involved. A small group of us were seated around her, and the intimidatingly big word "something" came up. None of the other kids knew what it was...but I did, and I thought to myself, I really know how to read now.
I was shy and always waited for other kids to ask me to play, except kids don't do that. They just start playing and do not issue engraved invitations. Lonely and frustrated one day, I sat on the bleachers and cried. A sweet girl named Sara (front row, green dress) sat beside me and said she would be my friend.
Teenagers fascinated many of us, and we were able to observe the high school kids during lunch in the cafeteria. We idolized the ones we recognized from swing choir, who were every bit as good as the people on the radio and were basically superstars already, and the cheerleaders when they wore their purple and gold uniforms to school. We went bananas for Judy Bradley, this blonde, sunny creature with feathered hair and a great big smile.
Second grade
I read a story called "Great Day In Ghana" and came to understand that the world was larger than I could ever imagine, and people lived in places that were vastly different from all-white, small town Illinois.
One time Mrs. Eckhardt used my name in a sentence during a spelling test. "Blue. Kelly is wearing a blue turtleneck." It has stayed with me forever and will most likely be my dying thought.
Jimmy Blue (back row, orange shirt) wrote a poem about spring that was better than mine. Then he moved away, tragically, and I decided to focus on writing poems.
Reva (front row, aqua shirt) and I decided that if we had to get married someday, we would marry each other, because yuck, boys.
Third grade
We were the favorite class of teachers. One time I overheard an exhausted-sounding Mrs. Eckhardt talking to our third grade teachers about us. "Enjoy them!" she concluded.
Mrs. Wernecke forced us to listen to tape recordings of poems by Robert Louis Stevenson every day after lunch. During this time I drew microscopic comics on folded-over, 2"x1" pieces of paper for the amusement of Sara and Michele (back row, red dress, standing by me).
Mrs. Wernecke was a tough customer who also forced us to say, "May I go to the lavatory?" None of us had ever heard of a lavatory before, and many simply called it "the laboratory."
My poetry had improved to the point that Mrs. Wernecke created handmade blank books for me. I wrote my poems inside and illustrated them, and that was terrific. But then she wanted me to read them aloud to my class and the other third grade section, and any hope I may have had of being popular flew right out the window (second floor, west side).
During an open house my art teacher, the mysterious and very old Mr. Soule, told my parents that "this one is special."
By the time my class entered fourth grade, our teacher Mrs. Smith (at our building in Terre Haute, which is pronounced, appallingly, as "terry hut") was amazed at the amount of math catch-up she had to do with us. And that was kind of understandable, what with all the nonstop poetry going on in the lower grades.
Two years later we returned to the elementary building in La Harpe for sixth, seventh, and eighth grade.
Sixth grade
Study hall, late September, Mr. Doyle's room (social studies): I was reading/devouring a Judy Blume book and paused to look out the open third floor windows. Golden afternoon light bathed the trees across the way, and out on Main Street a car drove by, blasting Late in the Evening by Paul Simon. And I felt so content, sitting there, reading my book, loving that song and feeling somehow older.
Dad was my P.E. teacher and coach, and he spent a lot of extra time at school after hours. Sometimes I sat at his office desk drawing cartoons, or my brother and I goofed around in the gym. I distinctly remember trying to figure out how to serve a volleyball on the day after John Lennon died, sadly thinking about his then-current song (Just Like) Starting Over.
It was a bad year for assassinations, and later that spring attempts were made on the lives of Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul. We watched TV coverage of both in our school's big study hall, and to help us cope with the violence we were instructed to write a poem (of course) called Assassination. We had to take the letters of assassination and make each one begin a new line. This was an excercise in futility because (1) the word contains a ridiculous number of repeated letters, and (2) the word contains a ridiculous number of repeated ass-es.
Seventh grade
Dad is basically synonymous with La Harpe Elementary. The number of times he carried televisions up and down those stairs and the number of times he put Vom-Sorb on messes when janitors could not be found would boggle the mind. To be in the school with Dad as he closed the place down at night after a late ball game was always discombobulating. The cavernous black hallways creaked with scary "building settling" noises that I relive in nightmares to this day. And yet I always felt fortunate to be there at night, like I was seeing a secret side to the school that most kids never saw.
Mrs. Logan, our reading teacher for sixth and seventh grade, seemed like--heck, was and is--a perfect human being. She was kind, thoughtful, interesting, and generous. Her easy smile lit up the room, and she selected books for us that were exactly the right books. Mrs. Jones was like a dear aunt who taught us grammar via a series of handwritten dittos that I adored. She encouraged me as a writer and praised my "dry" sense of humor. She died nearly twenty years ago, and I still think about her all the time. Her room is on the left side of the hallway (photo by Tyler).
Eighth grade
I won the school spelling bee in the study hall, memorized the countries in the Middle East, was intimidated by algebra, touched a computer for the first time (a Radio Shack TRS-80)...
...read dozens of books from our library (including an account of the Salem witch trials that freaked me out for days), and was misinformed about the pronunciation of the word "duodenum" (it's this not doo-oh-DEN-um). My science teacher said it a lot, along with "uhhh." I used to keep a running tally and doodled spectacularly to stay alert. I experienced my first migraine headache and accompanying wave of nausea while taking an English test--luckily no Vom-Sorb was involved.
Our particular arrangement of teachers and sports-related activities created a pressure-cooker. I was obsessed with learning new things, even the dull stuff, and did at least two hours of homework each night. With a handful of exceptions, my relationships with my peers had become a bit shallow or competitive. Most students were friendly in a "hey how's it going" kind of way. But during my years at the top floor of this building, I could feel myself separating from the rest of the group, who most likely didn't care about the pronunciation of "duodenum" and probably weren't even listening in the first place. My differences didn't matter as much to me as they used to, and the twenty-one girls and seven boys who were born in 1969 along with me started to seem more like a group of random kids rather than the most important people in the world. I still longed for the kinds of friends I would eventually find later in life, but in the meantime I wasn't going to sit on the bleachers and cry about it. My thirst for knowledge was that voracious and overriding, and this evolution began at La Harpe Elementary.
---
To augment his teacher's salary, Dad spent many of his summers painting the walls, ceilings, and sometimes floors of our school, and he let me help him. He did the roller work, and I took care of the edges. We listened to the radio and worked happily in the old, hot building. Not content to simply paint a room beige, Dad figured out how to create snappy racing stripes in a variety of bright colors and patterns, making each room unique. Our work is buried under thirty years' worth of additional paint [Edit: no it is not! We painted those stripes up there!], but that summer job made me feel intimately connected with my school, and I'm sure Dad feels the same way.
La Harpe Elementary is a structure much like hundreds of other Illinois schools built during that period in a style that did not set the architectural world on fire. Vandalism and decay have set in after its doors closed for good three years ago. But like thousands of other former students who spent their sometimes-happy, sometimes-sad formative years there, I can't help but shed a tear knowing that part of my childhood will soon vanish.
