Random stovetop still-life: my mother's harvest-gold soup pot, red teakettle, cast iron which lives on the stovetop because other than that harvest-gold pot from my childhood and one stainless saucepan, it's virtually the only cookware I ever use. And the Instant Pot Vortex Air Fryer, which my sister-in-law gave us for Christmas last year. Upon receiving it, I thought: what the heck am I ever going to do with this thing? Answer: use it every day. I did chicken drumsticks in it last night, in fact, and they were delicious. Just salt, pepper, garlic powder, and a lot of crispiness. We had them with cranberry-orange sauce, because I still have a freezer full of cranberries and had bought some mandarin oranges, and with peas blanched in the aforementioned harvest-gold pot.
Tonight's menu: pork "country-style" boneless ribs, baked apples, probably more peas because I seem to have a lot of them. OR I could go out and cut salad greens, though I'm not sure I have enough for four people. My salad garden was really planted with two in mind.
Tomorrow is my husband's birthday, a rather monumental one: he turns sixty. The only real party I've ever thrown for his birthday, because neither of us is that much a birthday-party person, was the year he turned thirty. It was our second year of marriage, our first winter in Salt Lake City, my first winter in grad school at the University of Utah. Between our Episcopal parish and my classmates, we had collected, in the short months we'd been there, a strange assortment of friends. I'd bribed a guy we barely knew and have never seen since to take my husband cross-country skiing, a thing I think neither of them wanted to do, especially when the other guy came down with the flu at the last minute. I can't remember now how I got my husband out of the house. I do remember that we had all kinds of people packed into our little fifth-floor walkup apartment on South Temple Street, including our 84-year-old next-door neighbor, whose distinctions included having been the first female ham-radio operator in Utah. She was a Mormon of sorts –– of sorts meaning that the first time I ever drank bourbon was with her. I'm assuming she was at this party, because I can't really imagine not having invited her. We were not on quite such intimate terms with our other 80-something neighbor, Miss Genevieve Macbeth, who shows up completely as herself in my short story, "A Fire in the Hills." It's probably because we weren't on intimate terms with Miss Macbeth that I could appropriate her into a story. I don't generally do these things quite so baldly, and I don't do them to people I actually know to any real degree. Anyway, I know she wasn't at this party, though in retrospect I'm sure the noise must have bothered her. I wouldn't apologize for putting her in a story, but I would apologize for the noise.
The only thing I really remember with any vividness is that the invitation I made up for it, xeroxed and slipped to everyone I saw, included Yeats' lines from "Sailing to Byzantium:" An aged man is but a paltry thing,/A tattered coat upon a stick. And the reason I remember that is . . . well, really. It tells you how young I was, that I thought thirty was aged. There are many things about my younger self that I look back on with cringing, and that, though relatively minor, is certainly one of them.
So tomorrow he turns sixty, and I'm not sending out any invitations. With the two children still home, we'll have New York strip, a gratinée of cauliflower, and green beans. I've got to come up with a dessert: maybe cherry cheesecake with some dark chocolate grated over it for special, since we're lucky enough to be actually growing old together.
Then the next day the children and I get up and start driving west. One other thing I've got to do this week is plan my backpack-packing. We'll do our December routine in reverse: two days in Memphis with the grandmothers, then a night at my oldest daughter's house in Dallas. I can dump the students off at the dorms on the Sunday after Mass, at which time I will either go back to my daughter's for one more night or start driving east again, depending on how tired I am. The eastgoing drive will be a solitary one, though really I'm never lonely when I'm driving. I like roadtripping alone. I especially like the drive home through the increasing hilliness of Tennessee. I prefer that drive in the summer, when it's still light by the time I reach the mountains, but honestly I like it anytime. I love the mountains even in the dark –– I didn't grow up with them, but they always say home to me.
One of these days I'll trust Dora enough with new people to have her come with me. On getting a new dog, I had envisioned a dog who would go with me everywhere. Of course, just now it's as well that she isn't coming, because with the bass and the amp and everyone's big bins of stuff, there wouldn't be room for her. But also, she'd be more trouble than it's worth to me, and more stressed out than it would be worth to her. My hope is that we'll reach a point where many things that currently send her over the edge won't do that anymore. Already we're seeing progress: she can be in the backyard and not flip out when she hears the neighbors talk or bring their garbage can back from the curb. She can see a squirrel and not chase it over the wall. Confronting certain triggers at a certain remove, she can come to me and sit instead of melting down. All of this is an improvement. I hope she will be my road-trip companion someday. But I'm just as glad that I'm not taking her with me this time.
Meanwhile, wearing today:
