Locked Doors

I owe you a really long post. A catch-up. An explanation of an absence.

Oh I really, really do.

In the last month, I have moved to DC, started a new job, uprooted my life, said goodbye, said hello, made new friends, tried new things, breathed new air, been thankful for the newness at every corner. I have been very very sad, and then very very happy, barely any time to experience the emotions in between.

And really, trying to sum all of that up is daunting. The new apartment, my new {huge!} patio/garden, my failed/successful attempts at vermicomposting...... so many things to say.

But I shall start with this:

Locked doors are really not so bad after all. It is a way of meeting neighbors, seeing people when they are vulnerable, helping someone in need.

Story Number One
On Saturday, I went outside to walk Barley - barefoot; no cell phone, keys or wallet. It was a happy-go-lucky, tra-la-la type of evening. We were outside for less than two minutes, and when we came back I realized that the door was locked. There is no worse feeling than staring at your front door and realizing that you cannot get in. Especially when you are barefoot, don't know anyone nearby, and have no means of contacting help. For a while, until it all sinks in, you must just stand and look at your front door, willing it to open. {Tell me I'm not the only one to do this.}

A moment of light {hallelujah, angels, all that jazz} came upon me when I realized that I had left the back door to my patio open. {I live in a townhouse-style building, so my backyard is bordered by both my neighbor's backyards, and there is a gate between all the patios.} Cautiously, quite reluctantly, I rang the bell of my next-door neighbor. Oh-so-thankfully, he was at home (woo hoo!). But I certainly did get the raised eyebrow when I asked to walk through his house and through his patio to get to mine. He apologized profusely for his messy house (it was immaculately clean), and was kind about letting me (and my dog) barge right in. How Neighborly!!!

As it turns out, he was about to go out for the evening and invited me along. We had a grand time exploring the neighborhood, and he showed me all the best spots to grab a beer on a Saturday night (friend #1!!).

Story Number Two
Tonight, I went outside to walk Barley (is this sounding quite familiar yet?). I very obsessively checked three times to make sure I had my keys, and after I got outside met a woman - about my age - who had locked herself out of her apartment. She was standing in the courtyard with her dog (a much more well-behaved dog than mine, might I add), and was visibly upset. She had no cell phone, money, or means of contacting anyone. Of course I invited her inside my house to use my phone/internet and to contact a locksmith. And just before the locksmith arrived to let her inside, we agreed that we would have to meet again in a less disaster-like scenario (friend #2!!).

I'm not going to wax poetic about why "when one door closes another one opens" (<-- hardy har), but the situation is quite ironic. I am meeting my neighbors - one by one - by one of us locking ourselves out of our apartment and being forced to meet the other.

It is so very easy to pass by our neighbors with a cursory nod. It is easy to feign indifference and chat on our cell phones and text away as we pass people on the sidewalk. But when we find ourselves without cell phones and keys and accessible homes, we really must turn to our neighbors for help. I am so intrigued by these people that live only a foot from me, separated by drywall and a few layers of paint. I hope to meet more of my neighbors - really talk to them and get to know them.

Though, I do hope that we can keep locked doors and locksmiths out of the relationship from here on. We've learned our lesson, thankyouverymuch. We'll make proper acquaintances from here on by ourselves.

scintilla

I am very very very excited.

This girl here, who once thought that she would be a writer, and now isn't so sure, is participating in a writing project!!!

And you can too!

You can go here to Scintilla to sign up. After you sign up (and starting on 3/14), a prompt will be sent to you every day. You can write a response to the prompt and post it on your blog.

Or you can just respond to the prompts in your own private journal, but I don't think that would be quite as fun.

For two weeks - starting on 3/14 - I will participate in the project, and will be posting my responses to the prompts here.

I hope you'll join me.

spring

Sun setting, birds chirping, neighborhood dogs barking, light filtering through the trees. Sweatshirt-wearing, wine-drinking, book-reading, Barley-petting.

Wish I had a wide-angle lens to capture what this is all about, but I guess that wouldn't be enough anyway. Can't take a picture of the cool breeze, the warm sun, the taste of wine, the smell of new leaves.

Spring is coming.

Spring is coming indeed.

bread

The bread is done, and it is perfect.

If you'll recall, I introduced my pre-ferment here, and the recipe may be found here. There is something about doing things the 'difficult' or 'long' way that makes them more special, isn't there? This bread could taste just like something from a bread machine, but I love it so much more because I started it on a Sunday, thought about and worked on it all day Monday, and pulled it out of the oven Monday evening. Of course it gives me more pleasure than a bread-machine loaf might.

I could never make my process look so beautiful as this movie, so you may watch it here to get into the proper bread-making spirit.

the art of making bread from tiger in a jar on Vimeo.

There, are you feeling the bread-making spirit? You want to go make a loaf now too, don't you?

Here are my finished loaves. They are beautiful and perfect. I love them.

I need to bake bread more often.

Too many onions = a crazy pizza

I bought a five-pound bag of onions. I'm really not sure why. I only use onions on occasion, and even then I only use about half an onion at a time. I had no need for seven organic onions that would sit in my warm kitchen and spoil before I needed to use them.

Rather than watch them all slowly perish, I decided to try out a recipe for onion tart in the Healthy Hedonist (I love this cookbook).

A bit of dough, some onions, green peppers, olives, and goat cheese. Made for a pretty lovely dinner. I only ate one piece, so I cut the pizza into pieces, froze them individually, and then stacked them in a plastic bag in the freezer. Now I can just pull a piece out and heat it in the toaster oven whenever I need a quick dinner. Yum!

The goat cheese makes the meal.... which is true in many, many instances.

Dessert
I am thankful to live so close to Florida. Strawberries have been on sale for a week or so!

Artisan-Style French Bread (and a new rain jacket!)

Remember when I said I would be making soap tomorrow? Well, I've decided to put it off. I really want to use Smart Soapmaking by Anne Watson as a guide, but I can't find it in any local bookstores. I'll have to order it online, so I'll make it next weekend instead.

I completed the first step of a new bread recipe today. The artisan-style french bread requires that you make a pre-ferment mixture that sits for 8-24 hours, and I'm excited to see how it comes out. The recipe came from my cookbook, but I found it online and am glad I can share the recipe with you here. The pre-ferment is sitting on top of my fridge now, and I can't wait to pull it out tomorrow to finish making it. Homemade bread is one of my favorite things, and I ought to make it more often. For some reason I always imagine that it is more difficult and time-consuming than it actually is.

This was my first cookbook (thanks Mom!) and is still my favorite. Lots of good, basic recipes.

Pre-ferment mixture

Sitting on the fridge, waiting until tomorrow

And, I got a new rain jacket! The weatherproofing wore off in my old jacket, so a replacement was in order. I got this beautiful Patagonia jacket on clearance at REI last week, and it came in handy on this rainy Sunday. {It is a Patagonia Women's Torrentshell Trench Coat, if you are curious.}

   

I wanted to keep myself out of this post, but you can't really see how cute the jacket is when it is on a hanger.

 

I am in love with it - swoon!

What is your favorite bread recipe? I'm always looking for a new one to try out.

Big Goals, Small Steps

When I was young, I went through a horse phase (don't all little girls go through a horse phase?). I thought of little else, talked of little else, and read about little else. Horses, horses, horses.

My parents, being the sly devils that they were, decided that it was the perfect time to introduce me to the concept of the allowance. Four dollars per week for doing all of the laundry in the house (there were five of us). Naturally, I pounced on this huge sum of money, certain that my saving and my thrifty nature would bring a horse to the backyard in no time. Sorting, washing and folding in the dark, musty cellar was pleasant, even thrilling. I was happy. I imagined the money quickly multiplying in my bank account empty coffee can. Nothing could have brought me down from the cloud I was on. I practically danced with enthusiasm for the black thoroughbred (naturally) that would soon be mine.

And then, one day, I decided to figure out how long it would be until my horse would be mine. I sat down with a paper and a pencil and figured.

I added. I multiplied. I learned the cold hard truth: at four dollars a week, my horse would be mine when I was 22.

Twenty-two?!? ANCIENT!!!!

Though I still sorted, washed and folded, doing the laundry no longer held any pleasure for me. I wasn't working towards a goal, I was toiling without a goal. Unless I got a second job [which seemed very plausible to me at the time, even though I was probably ten], the horse would never be.

It was really quite devastating.

I no longer dream of owning a horse - though they are beautiful and enjoyable to watch in the fields - but I do have dreams. Dreams that seem unattainable and out of reach. Sometimes its like I'm ten again, figuring and multiplying and looking down at a number - an age - that seems dreadfully far away.

I hang pictures of sheep on my wall, I read farm blogs, I imagine what it will be like to live on a farm. The farm is in my brain. I see the vegetables, the bees, the sheep, the wool, the chickens, the eggs, and perhaps a pig or two (but oh! mostly it is just of the sheep that I dream...). I imagine the baby clothes I will sew and the tiny things I will knit. I read animal care books for fun. Tom has accompanied me to tractor supply stores just so I could look at the feed and the books and the people and the tools and the supplies that I have no earthly idea how to use. I stalk farms for sale in Northern Virginia like it's going out of style.

A painting I bought in Galway, Ireland

And this dream has been mine - growing and expanding and evolving - for years. For some unearthly, silly and completely maddening reason, I am waiting. For what, I cannot say.

I think some part of me expects that this farm is just going to jump into my lap while I'm looking the other direction.

Some part of me is still looking down at that impossible age on a piece of paper, that time in the distance when my dream may materialize. I can't enjoy the dark and musty cellar, because I've just realized that the dream will never be.

You know what this 29 year-old would tell my ten year-old self? Girl, you just keep on working. If a little bit of math is going to spoil your dreams, you've got a hard road ahead (just wait until you have to take calculus in college....twice). You keep on putting those dollars in the jar. When you've got ten dollars buy a book on how to care for a horse. When you've got more buy a riding lesson. Volunteer at a barn. Clean stalls. Make friends with the neighbors. Ask if you can ride their horse. We don't reach these big goals all at once, we get them piecemeal. We fight for them, we give something else up, and we claw our way through a whole lot of not-dream before we reach that dream.

And I think my ten year old self would tell this 29 year-old girl here: Self, don't lose sight of the dream. Sometimes the magic you feel in your heart is better than the dream, anyway. Sometimes dreaming about the horse is better than the horse. If you want a sheep farm, and if you're saving for a sheep farm, toiling at work all day isn't so bad.

So, here it is. Small steps are the name of the game from here on out. I'm making soap on Monday (a task that has always frightened me). I'm going to make sure that my new apartment in DC has a small patio or a balcony or a shared yard or a south-facing window that will support a couple of tomato plants, a worm bin and some herbs. I'm going to start looking at seed catalogs. I won't let my sewing machine get dusty. I won't let my knitting needles stay still. I'm going to stop dreaming and start doing. I'm going to keep the magic in my heart, and listen to where it leads.

Today is the day. I am carpe-ing this diem. Tiny steps, baby steps, and when the time is right - some really big leaps too.

Life - I am struggling to realize as I enter my third decade - is ever so short. It's just a blink, really. You and I and the entire lot of us better just get moving, set off in that dark and uncharted direction, and bite off more than we can ever chew.

PS. I must give credit where credit is due. I was much inspired today by this post on coldantlerfarm. And this little video of hers sealed the deal.

Thank you to my amazing parents for this perfect birthday gift. It is as if someone jumped into my heart and took a picture of what they saw there. My heart jumps when I see it. Thank you.