Sisters

My sisters, Denise on the left, Suzanne in the middle. Easter dresses I am sure. Maybe I was ten?

The new year is here. Imagine. What took so long! I have been writing this evening and I came across this little piece that began with a wonderful sentence that made so much sense.

"Fear is what happens when reality collides with our personal fiction." We are sometimes so filled with expectations that no life could live up to them and of course, we become filled with fear because ~~~~ where can we possibly go not being able to meet our expectations. Our moments become so complicated that there is no longer any direction to which we can run and we end up standing in one spot becoming filled with fear because we become saturated with the uncertainty of disintegration. "I am going to perish" And we begin to create hell on earth. No way out? Way out.

Stop thinking. Take up a paint brush, a needle and thread, a vegetable and a knife, and ply a craft. Absorb yourself in the beauty of the craft. Think only about the paint. Forget the self. The self will live whether you worry about it or not. Create something beautiful. Where does this beauty come from? What a luscious quilt! Where does the beauty come from? What a stunning painting! Where does the beauty come from? This soup is so rich and comforting. Where does the beauty come from?

We are each of us filled with a wealth of beauty, a fountain of talent, creativity, and in the end, we have at our service the knowledge of a vocabulary abundant of all the words necessary to describe greatness.

So what do we do? We complain. We become so negative that no one wants to be with us. We don't even want to be with ourselves. We make excuses why we don't communicate with our friends and those we love. The air around us becomes black.
They are our own
I know fear. I have been intimate with it. Leaving the house to go to work has been an issue. Dealing with it was not easy and is not easy. And living without fear at times seems inhuman. Unnatural.

Living without fear or as much as we can without fear, frees us to be more present for everyone around us. It allows us to more enjoy the textures of people. I love that. "The textures of people". And we do have feelings. And it is OK to have these feelings flow out of us freely. We can appreciate them as being a part of ourselves, our own texture. Our own present moments.

Fear is what happens when reality collides with our personal fiction. This really speaks volumes.

Christmas Dinner

My sister made this lovely pie. I love pie. And here is the second bread. A little salty. I have to work with that. But ohhh, the texture was good, and isn't it lovely. Fresh bread.


I wonder how many blogs will be written today about Christmas dinner. Hum.. Brings a smile to my heart. This is mine. A small humble dinner for my sister and me. I am shy to say that in my 60 years, I have never cooked a ham. So here it is. I didn't have a wire rack to set it on, but I did have this pot trivet made of some sort of aluminum iron or something. And it did the trick. This is the ham more than half way through its cooking. I will be placing in the cloves and the pineapple slices now.


These are the sweet potatoes which I have cooked in butter, brown sugar and orange slices in a cast iron skillet. Not exactly your calorie - counting dish. Oh - so - good.


I thought I might cook asparagus, but it was really thin, and Denise eats a lot of asparagus. So I, upon her encouragement, decided to cook green beans and huge pieces of garlic in olive oil and butter with parsley, sage and chives and a little salt. I tried not to over cook them so there would still be a little snap to them. I don't like mushy green vegetables.


The finished ham. It's a seven and a half pound ham, so there is lots left for soup, sandwiches, and just munching on. Love that.

Of course, there is rarely a cooking day without a mishap. Today it was opening the can of pineapple slices. Dole pineapple slices. It was one of those pull top types where you pull on the ring. I was struggling with it. I was almost finished when I let go. My hand got caught between the cover and the can and I got cut. A pretty sizable one too. It's 10:30 at night and it still hurts and bleeds. I'm a winner. Kids do better at these things than I do. I can be so inept in the kitchen at times. But~~~~

We had a peaceful day. The wind has been howling all day gusting to almost 40 miles an hour. But it doesn't touch us in here. The smells from the kitchen are the most comforting smells of the year. This is how to end a year. Great simple food, Champagne, my sister and a good home. I hope everyone had a great day. A loving day.

More on Baking Bread

I wanted to create a bread cloth instead of using towels for rising the dough before it goes into the oven. So I found a really good light weight canvas in my stash of fabrics, trimmed it, washed and dried it and it softened beautifully. So Now I will be using this all the time. i will shake it out between bakes, but it won't get washed. It will simply get stored carefully, so that it ages and lends itself to the taste of the bread, much like the traditional old bakers have used for generations.

On Baking Bread

This is the raw dough in its first for ready to go into the 18 hour rising.

This is the dough after it has risen 18 hours. That saran wrap dome is very tight and isn't it beautiful!

The dough gets turned out onto the work surface and dusted with flour and coarse bran, then folded six times with a rising in between. The oven gets pre-heated for 2 hours at 500 degrees and the cast iron dutch oven goes in after the first hour. So when the boule is ready to be cooked, the cover of the dutch oven is removed and the dough is carefully put in and re-covered. Then the cooking is begun.


This is the result. I am pleased. But the next loaf, I will cook it for another ten minutes. The crust was not quite hard enough. Looks great though!


I am baking bread. A whole new method. Very interesting. The first rising is 18 hours in a glass bowl which I just happen to have. Then I created a bread canvas which will not be washed but re-used over and over if this technique works. It calls for coarse bran which I had but is a little old and I have to get some new bran. It is now baking in the oven in my cast iron dutch oven. totally fascinating. I tried to take pictures but the process of getting it from its third rising into the pot, covered and into the oven was a little awkward and I didn't get a picture. Next time. If it comes out well tonight, I will be making it again on Christmas Eve and will take pictures again.

I have made thousands of loaves of bread in my life. I have failed her in the West. Totally different atmosphere. I am going to master Portland bread this new year.

OK. The timer just went off. The loaf is out of the dutch oven. It is a beautiful color and sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom. Can't cut into it. Too hot.

Will post later. Pray for success ~~~~~~~

Learning to walk

I realized earlier this year that my shoes are really scuffed in some very odd places. I have never seen this wear in my shoes in the past. When did my walk change? It had to be in the past few years because I have never seen this before. And the heels are terribly worn on the outside. And these are not old shoes. When did my walk turn into a shuffle?

So I have become very mindful of my walk. Especially when it is outdoors to any distance. I can tell I have been successful as I can feel it. I can feel the flat of my shoes. I need to have them re-soled. They rarely scrape each other, and when they do, I notice it and become mindful again as it is a sign that I have returned to shuffling. Is it old age do you think? I watch the women at work who are over weight and I see how they walk and I really don't want to be like that. I want to be graceful. I want to glide on the ground not push the dirt I walk on. Know what I mean.

Then a couple of weeks ago, having finally recovered from a sore neck that I think was the result of stress, I realized that I now walk hunched over. This is a difficult one. Walking flat with my shoulders back is a stretch on my mindfulness. But I am determined. Bone deterioration begins by poor posture and bending them out of shape. You open the pores of the bones and subject them to all sorts of problems. So I am now working diligently on the posture. Very important. I will talk more as I go along. We all have to check this out. My sister seems to have a good hold on this. It seems natural for her. It always has. But she has always been so pretty. So natural. She doesn't think so, of course. So humble she is.

The breath of Christmas is in the air. My husband George has not received the box I sent him over two weeks ago. I am disappointed. In the news, they said one out of every 10 packages will be lost in the mail this season. Goog god!!!

Microwaves and leftovers

OK, so, I finally broke down and bought a microwave. There was a cute little red number that was the perfect size and color. However, it was the same make as the one that I had for 14 months that died. So why would I buy but another made by the same company? And it is not like I use the microwave every day, several times a day and that I cook everything I eat in the damn thing. I am not a frozen dinner person. I don't thaw foods in the microwave. Maybe I will put the heat on ice cream for a few seconds. Mostly heat up a cup of coffee. Heat up left overs. I love left overs. When I cook, I always cook a lot so that I can have leftovers for work and for meals.

About size, this one is big. Very big. Look at how it dwarfs my coffee pot! I had to completely rearrange the kitchen which is tiny to begin with. I thought it would never work. But, there it is, looking like it was made for that counter. What I like about this one and what I will always consider in the future, is that it has a door handle instead of a push button for opening the door. On the unit that broke after 14 months it had a button that you had to push that was so difficult to push that I ended up having to put the microwave on a rubber mat so that it would stay in place every time I opened it. It was ridiculous. Why do designers design components that are so people-unfriendly?

There are so many things that I handle and I wonder to myself - This is so stupid! It doesn't work. It doesn't make sense! What were they thinking when they designed this? There was a sewing machine I recently bought and ended up bringing it back. If you put your arm in the wrong place, you would change the entire stitch lineup of what you were working on. The button hole maker was not even primitive. It was simply inadequate. I have seen $100 sewing machines that made better button holes. And this was a Pfaff machine - supposedly well respected! What~~~~ I ended up being so frustrated with this thing that I got a friend to pick me up and I marched into the store that sold it to me and plunked it down and I said "I can't believe you sold me this knowing me as well as you do!" They asked me who sold it to me and when I told them Bill, they just looked at each other and brought the machine to the fixer-man.

So, I went back to the brand that I have had for a couple of decades and there it sits on my sewing table with everything in place and its simplicity. I know. Pfaff. Well known, well respected, a great following. But even greatness can breed errors. Denying it is the worse tragedy.

And that is that for today

Comfort

My sister Denise sent me this picture. Probably taken in the 90's when I was with my husband George. George was a great man. We are still married. Still a great good friend.

How many women did I hug today? People are frazzled. People are rude and the victims are taking it personally and the world, I feel is a mess. I myself am having to take many moments to breathe and separate from what is in front of me so that I can remember that what I am witnessing is not belonging to me. It is not real. This is supposed to be a time of love and family and friendship and yet, people a rushing around and demanding, and I don't even think they know what they are doing! They throw their money at you as though yo9u don't count as a human being!

How many times today did I imagine myself sitting in my chair working on my Christmas pears. I finished Jody's Christmas present tonight. I was thinking today on how I would wrap it to send it to her. I was working with a customer when in the middle of the conversation it just came to me. The customer gave me this look like - are you OK? I just smiled and apologized and told her the light just went on. I am sure she thought i was crazy, but just for a second. She had, after all, been sent to me because I am the store's seamstress and I was going to give her the answers to her dilemma with the dress she was making and she was told that I was the expert. So, this is absolutely brilliant. I am going to do this will all the gifts. It was a wonderful little vacation during the stress of the day.

I am usually pretty calm at the store. I will stand in front of a customer, very still, just smiling, and it is always the same - you'll be fine. It is a lot simpler than you think. Or I will take a customer to my sewing room and show them how to do what they need to do. I teach. I reassure. I advise. I de-stress. I can take a customer who is totally wired and have her leaving as though she has just had a massage. Fellow employees are always giving me the difficult customers.

I like being clam, being silent. On my days off, I can go the entire day without saying a word out loud. Like my friend Jody, I like being with myself. I am never bored. There is always a yarn, an embroidery thread, a fabric to be manipulated. My whole life is filled with color and texture. When I want to write, I take out my books, And the words just flow. I have a wealth of contemplations upon which to draw thought, food for my beautiful pens and inks, my beautiful unlined books.

To have a way of thinking that expands your way of thinking is very exciting. Anything that I do brings me farther than expected. Every day, no matter where I am, or what I am doing, I am being carried farther than I expected. This is the specialty of my life. I would not be who I am without this. And the value of my relationshipseven with strangers would not be as it is without this specialty. I did not go to any special school. No formal teachers, no formal role models. "Picked up here and there." "Born with it." Angels guiding me every step. And I share it at every opportunity I have. How lucky am I!~~~~~

I have to keep this forefront in my thought when I standing in front of a customer who is dressed to the hilt with too much makeup while I am checking her driver's liscence and she is telling me that it is illegal for me to ask for ID and she is giving me all of this loud mumbo jumbo about the law and I am just doing my job and I don't care about what she is saying because all I know is that her signature on the charge slip does not match the signature on her credit card and so I am going to check her driver's license whether she likes it or not and I think she just doesn't want me to know that she is 60 years old as old as me and she looks 75 years old and I just want her to go away because in this day and age of identity fraud and theft I am just protecting her card please go away...........................................

Peace. Give me peace. Help me to give you peace. Let my whole being promote peace. Comfort to an ailing soul. Tranquility to a soul in turmoil. Let my life mean something.