grief

The Great Defrosting

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What a start to the week we’ve had here. A massive storm stalled over Pittsburgh Sunday and dropped upwards of 3 inches of rain in about 15 minutes. For the first time in my life, I got to see big chunks of golf-ball-sized hail fall. You’ve probably all experienced the sound of hail falling. It never occurred to me — though I acknowledge that it makes perfect sense — the bigger the hail, the higher your heart rate gets as the hail hits your 125-year-old windows. 

Our street became the Colorado River rushing between canyon walls. I have no idea how fast it was going but I wouldn’t want to get knocked off my feet in that deluge as it raced down the hill toward the big open sewers at the bottom of our street. 

Everyone in my little community lost power at about 6:30 Sunday evening, right in the middle of the storm. Losing power is a rare event in the city. We have a great — deeply underappreciated IMO — electrical grid that is almost never out. Unfortunately, the storm was actually enormous, with high windows and torrential rains that got the best of the grid — bringing down trees, blowing transformers and ultimately knocking out power for tens of thousands. We were literally powerless for a little over 21 hours. 

As soon as we realized that the power was not going to blink right back on, I began to think ruefully of that box of no-longer-charged external batteries that my husband used to keep charged in case of emergencies. I was also reminded of them by my loving children several times throughout those long dark hours that “Dad always kept those batteries charged.” Yeah, I know. I miss him, too. I also know that, when next I see Ken, I’m going to get an earful about those damn batteries.

Sadly, warm weather and equipment age/inefficiency combined at our house to cause The Great Defrosting, an event that will be retold and elaborated for future generations. We opened the fridge and freezers after the power returned, you know, to evaluate the situation: Melona bars (a treat for the ages) liquid. An entire half gallon of vanilla ice cream (good-bye dreamed of sundaes and banana splits) poured down the drain. I could go on but tears are obscuring my view of the screen.

In truth, we lost a lot of food and hours of work time, but we’re very lucky. We were safe and dry. We don’t rely on electricity to power oxygen pumps or dialysis equipment or a baby monitor. We can afford to replace the food we lost. We work for ourselves so we didn’t have wages docked or lose our jobs because the power was out. Not everyone was so fortunate.

On the humorous side of the whole experience, I was the guinea pig for food spoilage. “Mom, can you taste this for me?” was the common refrain once the power was back on. You’ve really never experienced the extraordinary power of your taste buds until you have been given a generously sized block of spoiled feta cheese, which you put — in its entirety — in your mouth because you are so confident that “it’s fine.” Wow. It’s … well, it’s hard to describe the taste, kind of bitter and vinegary and just really awful. It was decidedly not “fine.”

But we are. 

Today is, thankfully, garbage day. We’ll be cleaning out the spoilage and taking the opportunity to assess and reconsider before we stock up again. It’s sad work to throw away food that could, in a different story, have been a community banquet. Maybe, in fact, we don’t need a chest freezer stocked with food. Maybe it’s time to develop some new habits.

Be well. Be safe. Be kind. 

Oh, and unclench that jaw.

Much love.

The Great Defrosting

Sky Blue Eyes

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I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of agency. One of the things I’ve struggled with the most since I lost Ken is my own agency. At first, after he died, I lived within the construct that was already established, long established, during and by our relationship. 

Over time, though, that construct started to crumble. I’ve mentioned before that a few months after Ken died, a doorknob fell off a door. (Apparently, Ken tightened doorknobs regularly and I just didn’t know or didn’t notice.) Instead of reacting as things happened to me, I needed to start acting — making choices and decisions about where to spend time, where to spend money. 

Maybe that’s a big DUH moment for all of you but for me it was both endlessly freeing and terrifying. Children in abusive households choose their survival strategies … stay with me here. I’m saying that, as a child, I had to decide whether to capitulate or fight. That wasn’t a conscious choice obviously and it wasn’t a single event. I usually chose to fight, which is probably not a surprise at all to people who know me well. And it’s not some bullshit humble brag either. Choosing violence in a violent household is a survival strategy, not a Tiktok video made to gain followers.

Anyway, the point is that AGENCY, the ability to act independently and to choose freely, is not something emphasized in abusive households. Since my husband was also raised in an abusive household, I think we probably unconsciously just leaned into each other’s survival strategies. Therefore, I didn’t have to learn to think and act independently until my husband died. GULP.

So, here I am, older than sliced bread, learning to make decisions for myself. I am living proof that old bitches (I will not call myself a dog and I will own the use of bitch as applied to myself and it’s amusing that it’s a bit of wordplay — HA!) …  can learn new tricks.

I’ve been sitting on the porch steps, listening to the baby birds in the nest above our back door. The parents were so discreet that we didn’t even realize we had bird neighbors until we heard the babies yelling at dad — more food please! — yesterday morning. Now, there’s a cardinal calling. I can’t see it — it’s perched in our enormous honeysuckle — but its call is loud and clear, standing out from the cacophony of early morning tweets and chirrups and cackles. 

The gift of our little backyard — watching a bird slip into its nest in the neighbor’s eaves, listening to the squirrel scolding the dog barking next door, sitting in the silent peace of a sunny afternoon — is a pleasure that makes me hope fall never comes. 

Yesterday, the sky was so intensely blue that looking up was like looking directly into my mother’s eyes (I looked up into my mother’s eyes the depth of the morning sky). My daughter was snoozing in the shade. My neighbors sat under their umbrella listening to pop music in another language. I could tell that it wasn’t English but I don’t hear well enough to know what language it was. They’re Scottish and Syrian so it really could be anything, including Donna Summer, Five For Fighting (yes, even THAT song which is a little surreal), classical, opera, folk music (mostly middle eastern). 

A couple weeks ago, they were listening to French pop music, deliberately loud in order to drown out my other-side neighbor who is also HOH but does not use headphones for her Zoom calls. Until Isla and Dan put on the French pop, we were all listening to a very explicit discussion of treatment options for a high-risk pregnancy. 

I wouldn’t say that I like listening to French pop but I like it a lot better than listening to analyses of transvaginal ultrasounds. Nothing against transvaginal ultrasounds other than that they’re extremely uncomfortable to receive (speaking from experience) but it does seem intrusive to listen to doctors talking about someone else’s. You know?

In other news, this week, we’ve been exploring lavender — lavender sugar, lavender lemon cake, lavender cream (in coffee). I don’t drink coffee so I can’t comment on that but the lavender lemon cake was delicious. And there’s an added bonus that the whole house smells great.

My saucy protagonists found something disturbing on their walk yesterday. They’re still processing it (and so am I) but it seems likely that they’re going to need to be very clever to get out of this situation. I left them in the middle of the woods, panicking, so I think I should get back to terrifying those teenagers now ….

Be kind today. 

Unclench your jaw. Relax your shoulders. Take a deep, SLOW breath. Find something to laugh about … if nothing else, here’s a mental image for you of my 10 year old Maine Coon learning to wear a collar with two very loud bells. He hates it but the birds and I are very happy that he jingles with every step he takes. 

Much love.

Sky Blue Eyes

Sea Turtles, Butterflies, and Brownies

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Years ago, my husband replaced our key locks with keypads. It was a convenience thing mostly. We didn’t want to leave the ubiquitous key under the doormat for our kids in case they forgot their keys and we didn’t want to give out keys to people who inevitably need to get into the house. The keypad unlock codes are easy to create and just as easy to delete. It was one of those true perfect systems. 

At some point, we got a little sloppy with the code distribution and one day, unfortunately, my daughter woke up to someone in her room. I still get a sick feeling in my stomach when I think about what could have happened but the person who came in was a friend. My daughter had overslept. When she didn’t answer her friend’s call, the friend was understandably concerned and entered the house by a keycode we didn’t realize she even remembered/knew. Still, it was a big wake-up call for me and I deleted all the codes, created new codes for us and swore to never let that happen again!

Anyway, earlier this year, the keypads started to fail. I reset them, fiddled with them, replaced their batteries, took them apart, etc. They’d start working again temporarily, only to fail after a few days or a couple weeks. One evening, Haley and I came home a bit late from an outing. We were trying to solve a particular home repair problem … hours walking the hard floors of DIY big box stores, UGH. We had drive-through Wendy’s in the car and a few small packages of screws and bolts and … you know, STUFF. 

You saw it coming, didn’t you? Both keypads had failed again. We were locked out of the house. The temperature was below freezing. Ian wasn’t answering his phone. What could we do? 

Eat ALL the Wendy’s … no, no, that isn’t the answer. 

Break a window … wait, break a 125 year old window? Are you crazy? Those are irreplaceable. That wasn’t the answer.

Get the ladder out of its storage spot and climb onto the second floor …. NO. First, the ladder isn’t even tall enough to reach the roof. Second, that’s exactly the kind of thinking that leads to broken bones and hospitalizations.

So, what did we do? We banged on the door until we (or perhaps the hysterically barking dogs) woke Ian up and he let us in. A simple, noisy solution but it worked. And Ian got a share of the Wendy’s too.

Oh, and I’ve replaced the keypads. The hardest parts: finding keypads in the right colors and waiting for a somewhat warm day so I could work with the door open. The job took me about 45 minutes but mostly because I made a couple false starts, nearly removing stuff that didn’t need to go and … possibly … putting something on upside down. Anyway, they work great! 

Ian had a birthday recently. Since we’re not 100% vaccinated, it was another quiet one. As the birthday boy, he chose the meal — chicken fried rice with my own chocolate syrup brownies for dessert. Ian said that we weren’t allowed to sing so I did a brief spoken word birthday poem that made him say, “MOM.” Haley sang an aria and Tristan said, “Sorry, bud” and patted him on the shoulder. You’d think, after 15 years on this planet, he could have seen our responses coming.

Ian and Haley played a beautiful game of chess as part of the birthday entertainment. It’s the kind of game he excels at because, like his father, he’s actually good at playing three or four moves ahead. Haley is new but she’s also very good, especially at the end game. The outcome was inevitable because Ian has much more experience but it was a pleasure to watch. And the trap Ian set for Haley was one that Ken would have been proud of.

The recent cold spell delayed our butterfly release. Today is the big day! It reminds me of a trip we took in 2014 to Padre Island, a National Seashore, completely natural, with — literally — no phone service, and facilities only at the visitor center. We camped a mile from the access road, on an empty stretch of beach. It was quiet, windy, and amazing. Poor Ken, who hated being warm, hated sweating, and hated sand, was pretty miserable but he endured it for our sakes.

It was so hot on the beach that we got up at sunrise, not just because it was beautiful but also because the tents became unbearable within about 40 minutes after the sun came up. The water was so warm you could walk right in. Dolphins — and sharks — made regular appearances, following the schools of fish. They never came close enough to scare us out of the water, though small tropical fish sometimes tried to nibble my pink bathing suit. 

Anyway, one morning, we got up even earlier than usual in order to attend a turtle release. The Park Service has an extensive volunteer program to identify nests and ensure that the eggs are protected until it’s time for the hatchlings to be released. Because the island is deliberately untouched, there are many turtle predators — we had frequent close encounters with snakes, coyotes, and lizards. Alligators are also common in the marshes though we didn’t see any, not even from our kayaks. 

Sea turtle babies walk into the ocean toward the sun as it rises above the horizon so you have to be at the beach early to watch a hatchling release. We stood there for over an hour, as the temperature climbed from the chilly 60s into the 90s, watching turtle hatchlings about the size of a silver dollar crawl slowly toward the water, eventually getting picked up by the tide and swept out of sight. 

As we prepare to release these nine butterflies, I’m thinking about those turtle babies. Did any of them make it? Did they return as adults (many do) to lay their eggs on Padre Island? Will our butterfly hatchlings lay eggs in our butterfly garden? Will we see future generations of the butterfly cycle at work? At a minimum, we’ll give these little ones a fighting chance by releasing them when our pets are inside the house! 

Time to get back to work:  My protagonist has added another wrinkle. She still has feelings for an ex-boyfriend from high school. He’s a cutie with dark eyes and a teasing grin. What’s a girl to do? What’s the author to do? She needs to do some healing, focus on some self-care, not get involved or re-involved with someone. But will she listen to me or herself? She’s a teenager, so that seems unlikely.

Take a deep, slow breath: in through your nose, out through your mouth. 

Stay safe. Wear your mask. Get BOTH of your shots (unless you got the J&J, in which case, please only get one shot!).

Much love.

Sea Turtles, Butterflies, and Brownies

Painted Ladies

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I have poison ivy … again. Thankfully, this time it’s only a small spot in the crook of my elbow. Yes, it’s tremendously itchy but I have all the necessary defenses to keep myself from scratching this itch. In particular, I have memory. 

So, let’s go back, briefly, to another spring and another case of poison ivy. Eight years ago, I spent a lovely spring weekend digging in the dirt. I pulled weeds, raked leaves; you know the drill. Two days later, I noticed a little spot on my left arm. By that Friday, my arms and legs were covered with red, itchy poison ivy sores. It became badly infected and I made multiple trips to the doctor for treatment. It was my first encounter with poison ivy and it was a great teacher. 

That experience also gifted me with an amazing memory. Someone — no, I am not telling — recommended a foolproof treatment for poison ivy: gasoline. Yes, you read that correctly. To treat poison ivy, this individual told me to pour gasoline all over the affected area(s). I love everything about that recommendation: that it was said with such purity, with a great desire to be helpful; that it involved covering over half of my body with a highly toxic and flammable liquid; and that the individual had absolutely done that to their own person (I know for a certainty because I asked).

To this day, I remain convinced that pouring gasoline on my poison ivy would have killed it. It would likely have killed me too. Sometimes the host has to die in order to remove the infestation, right?

The weather has been very spring-like here: sunny, then cold, then rainy, then windy, then sunny again. Today looks to be one of the sunny days but later this week we are expecting temperatures to drop below freezing. Those of us who live in the freeze zone can thank me personally. I brought the freeze to us by anticipating summer and seeding our newly dug wildflower bed. I knew that it was too soon but I did it anyway. And I enjoyed it so much that I’m not even sorry, though I might be when I have to do it again after the freeze….actually, no, I won’t be sorry even then because I’ll still be digging in the dirt.

We have 10 butterfly chrysalides hatching today. Four butterflies are currently perched on the side of the habitat while their wings dry. We got to watch the fourth one emerge, sliding slowly out of the chrysalis and landing in a heap on the habitat floor, wings crumbled. It doesn’t take long for their wings to straighten, and now each of them is resting. We’ll have to let them go over the next several days but the weather here is going to turn chilly again. I hope they don’t have to move in with us. 

Watching the butterflies makes me think about how closely our own transformations match theirs. Perhaps we should take a lesson from them and be a little more gentle with ourselves as we emerge and stretch our damp and wrinkled wings.

Over the weekend, Haley made paneer masala, a homemade cheese in a fragrant tomato-based sauce with chili powder, whole cinnamon sticks, ginger, cardamom, fennel, and garlic. The house smelled amazing. This one can be a multi-day project since the cheese should rest overnight. I’ve included the link below in case you are interested. 

This week’s recipes are yogurt cake and the latest internet sensation: deep-fried pasta. I’ll report back on the results for sure. 

In case you are wondering how the real work goes, my YA protagonist has taken matters into her own hands. She has a crush on TWINS. What’s a girl to do? More importantly in this case, what’s an author to do?!  

My MG verse novel is half-finished and on a brief hiatus. My protagonist is so angry and sad that I’m afraid she might kill herself. I don’t want that ending for her so I need to take a break and think about how she can save herself. I’ve killed off a protagonist before but I’ve never had a protagonist commit suicide. That might be too close to home for me to write and too dark for a MG audience to read. 

Back to work on that romance. One of the twins wears a talisman ring. I wonder what it symbolizes for him?

Stay safe.

Here’s the paneer masala recipe. Enjoy!

Painted Ladies

Did You Just Sacrifice Your Queen?

Deb Zuroski, , , , 1 Comment

Today my daughter challenged me to a “quick” game of chess. Of course I said yes. We sat on our patio in the late afternoon sun, her dad’s chessboard set up between us. 

Ken taught me to play many years ago. As with most things he committed to, he was a remarkably good chess player and I never came close to beating him. Both of our sons played in chess clubs in school and participated in tournaments. My youngest, especially, loved the game. He and I used to play regularly and were evenly matched (when he was 9!). 

My daughter, though, had no interest in chess as a child so I was surprised when she recently started studying the game. Today, as she set the board up, Haley confessed that, while she understands the rules, this would be her first actual game. 

No worries, I thought. We’ll have a nice, easy game, test her knowledge of the way the pieces move, have fun so she’ll want to play again. Right? Yeah. She kicked my butt. We played for more than 3 hours and ended in a draw. It was fantastic. 

And yes, I did sacrifice my queen so I wouldn’t lose the game. It wasn’t pretty.

Moments like today are the reason we endure all the rest.

We are still doing lots of cooking, by the way. Yesterday, I used the overripe bananas to make chocolate chip, peanut butter, banana bread (and muffins). It’s my own recipe. If you want it, let me know and I’ll write it up for you. Tonight, because I spent three hours playing chess, we used some leftover rice to make a quick chicken fried rice. It was delicious — also no recipe but I’m happy to provide details if you haven’t tried to make it before.

Tomorrow, back to work on the novel.

Stay safe.

Did You Just Sacrifice Your Queen?

Powerpuff Girls and Clouds

Deb Zuroski, , 7 Comments

I was feeling a little low this morning. My computer and my hotspot were acting up, seemingly not caring that I had work to do. I still don’t know, hours later, if it was the network, the building I was in, or gremlins doing gremlin-y things.

The phone rang — at least that was working, I thought. It was the bank.  There was a snafu with a transfer I initiated last Friday. Could I stop by the branch for a minute? Great. Technology worked fine for that but not for things I actually wanted to do.

As we were leaving our appointment, I tried to negotiate a trip to the local grocery store with my passenger — unsuccessfully, because he’s now a better negotiator than I am, darn it — so I dropped him at home. Bank first or grocery store?  Bank, I decided; and as I look back on the day, I can point to that as the moment that changed everything. 

The bank visit itself took less time than I waited at the crosswalk after parking across from the bank but I was in no particular hurry at that point. Bank issue resolved painlessly, I drove to the grocery store, nearly empty on a Monday morning, and picked up the various essentials, as identified by two hungry young people — bananas (the daughter), a baguette (the son), smog balls (the daughter), wheat chex (me), orange juice (the son), rosemary (the daughter) — you know, just the essentials. 

As I’m loading my groceries into the car, a woman approaches. “Excuse me,” she says. “I need some help but I don’t want to make you nervous so I’m going to stand back a ways.” I know what she’s saying — she’s black and she doesn’t want to upset a white woman.  She’s a little afraid of what I could potentially do to her with one phone call and that makes me feel even sadder than I did when I got up this morning. 

“What’s wrong?” I say, as I put the last of the groceries in the car. I’m smiling at her but she can’t see that through my mask. She’s masked too. It’s deep yellow, drawing the gold from her eyes, but she’s upset and I know she’s not smiling. 

“I’ve forgotten my EBT card,” she says. I don’t hear the rest of her sentence because it’s noisy in the parking lot. 

I pull my credit card out of my pocket (I almost never carry a wallet or purse). “I’m so sorry,” I say. “I don’t have any cash.” 

She’s horrified. “I don’t want money,” she says. “I need a ride. I forgot my EBT card and all I have is $5.” She shows me the bill in her hand. She’s not carrying a purse or wallet either. “I just want to know if you’d be willing to give me a ride home because it’s a long walk.”

“Of course,” I say. She offers to sit in the back (absolutely not, I tell her) and keeps assuring me that she doesn’t have COVID-19. I say, “Me neither.” And she laughs. 

“You’re a superhero,” she says. “A girl superhero. You know, like those cartoon girls.” 

“Powerpuff Girls,” I guess. 

“Yes,” she says and puts out her fist for me to bump. “We’re both Powerpuff Girls.” Yes, we are.

Once we’re settled in the car, I ask where I can take her. 

“The projects,” she says. “Do you know where that is? Low-income housing?” 

I do, sort of. I’ve passed the projects many times on the way to Ian’s school. It’s a long way, more than 3 miles, from the grocery store. I ask, “Did you walk this whole way?” 

“Every time,” she says. There’s no grocery stores near the projects, you know; it’s not profitable enough. She directs my driving gently. “Left at the exit. Can we turn right onto Graham?” 

I tell her that I think so. There’s an officer directing traffic because there’s construction all around us. She says she’s going to ask so we don’t get in trouble and she calls out to him. “Sir, sir. Can we turn here?” 

He rounds on us with such a look that I flinch. Then he smiles and says. “Yes, you can. Have a good day.”

I say to her, “I thought for sure…” 

And she laughs. “So did I. He sure had a look on his face.” We share a relieved laugh. “Left turn up here,” she says. 

And then she talks to me. If there’s such a thing as reincarnation, she’d like to be a tiger — because they take such good care of their cubs — or a cloud. “A cloud?” I say. “I’ve never heard anyone suggest that before.”

“I’m going to explain it,” she says. “Clouds seem so soft but nothing can hurt them. They move. They stay still. They’re beautiful. They come in many different shapes. They even change shape. I’ve been abused my whole life. I think I’d like to come back as a cloud.”

We keep talking. She tells me about her daughter, only two pounds at birth, but now a beautiful, happy 22-year-old. Her neighbor, kind of a nasty woman, passed away two days ago. She wonders if the lady would still be alive if she’d just been a nicer person. What did I think? I said that I thought negative emotions were destructive. 

She nodded. “I’m 47,” she says. “How old are you? You look really young (HAHAHAHAHA) but talking to you is like talking to my daughter AND my mother.” The conversation, and her gentle directions, continue the whole way to her home. “A right here. Do you see that it’s a triangle? You want the sharp angle.” 

As we’re driving up her street, I see a statue (in the Garden of Hope) made from rebar. I point to it. “That’s beautiful,” I say. 

“It IS! There’s another one, a little bigger, on Webster. You should go see it on the way home,” she says. “Just ahead now. You can pull over beyond that white car on the right.”

“I’m glad I met you,” she says as I stop the car. “I hope we meet again someday, under better circumstances. Now, do you know how to get home?” I tell her that I do and that I’m glad I met her too. She slips out of the car and turns around to say good-bye one last time. I watch as she starts walking away. 

She turns suddenly and stretches out her hand. “Do you want this $5 for gas?” She shows me again the bill in her hand.

I shake my head and say, “Thank you but you can’t pay for the gas. It was my pleasure.”

She pulls her mask down and smiles at me. “I hope we meet again,” she says, as she presses that $5 to her chest and walks away.

I didn’t realize until I was almost home that I don’t even know her name. 

If there’s such a thing as reincarnation, what would you be? 

Stay safe.

Powerpuff Girls and Clouds

Want to Play a Game?

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When I was a little girl, my mom used to call herself “attractive.” One day, when I was in school,  I got into a fight with another 7 or 8 year old. She said something mean to me. To get back at her, I said, in my little-girl voice full of little-girl spite, “yeah, well, you’re ATTRACTIVE” because I knew that word meant ugly.  The teacher corrected my definition but I didn’t understand for a long time that what I was actually parroting was my mom’s own self-hatred. Hurting yourself hurts more than yourself, though she really never understood that. 

Mom wasn’t a conventionally pretty woman at a time when a woman’s value was equated even more closely than today to her appearance and she could never see herself as having worth. She’s been gone for 24 years now but I remember how artistic she was and how loving and that her eyes were the color of the early morning sky.

On Saturday, I will quietly mark the fourth anniversary of my husband’s death. Four years of birthdays and holidays and Wednesdays, of photographs and adventures and catastrophes, of dinners and breakfasts, of midnight popcorn and freezer pops and pop tarts (brown sugar), of cookouts and drive-ins …. Are we okay? Are we grieving? To answer, I’ll just tell you this little story: Earlier this month, someone asked my youngest son where his dad is and Ian answered, “if there’s a heaven, he’s in it.”  

And that’s all I have to say about that.

Although I don’t talk about it much, I am a gamer, though I’m not a fan of first-person shooter games. I have a Wii, a WiiU, a Switch, an Oculus VR headset, a Steam account … and yes, I’ve played games like Portal and Terraria, Animal Crossing and Age of Calamity, and, of course, hundreds of hours of Minecraft. My unchallenged favorite, however, is BOTW (Breath of the Wild for you non-gaming folk). I’m even listening to a BOTW playlist right now, as I work. 

For people like me, BOTW is kind of a perfect game. I can meander anywhere my mood takes me, fight monsters or look for treasure or ride my motorcycle (or my horse) or catch bugs or do quests or just explore. I’ve beaten the game on the WiiU and the Switch 3 or 4 times. Playing is a little like rewatching a favorite movie or reading a book so loved that it is beginning to fall apart in your hands. 

We had leftover dough from skillet pizza night last week so we made chicken bake sandwiches a couple days later. They were so delicious that I am thinking about making them again this week, if we have a rainy day. It’s warm enough that we’re grilling out on nice evenings, though I think we’re going to have to invest in a new grill. Ours is over 10 years old and just crumbling to pieces. We like grilling far too much to put up with failing tools — how can you make a good grilled flank steak if only two of your grill burners consistently work?! 

We also made some great cookies last week. I’ll include the recipe below in case you are interested in trying a cookie made with cake mix and cream cheese. Weird, right? But trust me; they’re so tasty.

The results of last year’s pandemic poetry contest will be announced next month. There were more than 750 entries which seems to have surprised the wonderful folks at publicpoetry.net who hosted the contest. Honestly, what else did we have to do all of last summer but compose poetry about our human condition?! Anyway, I have two entries (the maximum allowed per person) so keep your fingers crossed for me. Wouldn’t it be an honor to be included in their anthology marking one of the most significant events of our lives?

I have a couple things out to agents right now and am working, as I noted recently, on finalizing a STEAM project. I’ve got my agent query list ready and am tweaking the poems and text with the goal of querying the first week in April. It can take weeks to get responses back so I’ll be getting to work on a project I’ve been planning in my creative down time. It’s a YA romance!

So much work goes into writing a novel before the actual writing begins. I’m a little bit of a pantser (meaning I craft by the “seat of my pants” rather than plan out my whole story) but that’s only because I’m not actually world-building like SF/F authors do. Imagine trying to create a magical world like Hogwarts without planning in advance. It would require so much rework/rewriting to fix all the problems created along the way and — believe me — there’s already LOTS of revision involved in writing a book. 

Okay, so if you are interested, here’s the chicken bake recipe I used. Instead of the dressing called for in the recipe, we used homemade ranch because we like it better. 

And here’s the cookie recipe. I have no idea if these freeze well because we ate them all. 

Thanks for spending some of your day with me. 

Stay safe. Wear your mask. Get a vaccine. If you think the vaccine isn’t safe, consult your doctor, not your neighbor, not that youtube video, not fox news entertainment.

Much love.

Want to Play a Game?

DIY Faucets, Switches and Pizza

Deb Zuroski, , , , , 2 Comments

One of my kids had an IN-PERSON appointment today. I’m sitting in the waiting room looking at their artwork and wondering who thought it was a good idea to hang a very large picture of an angry man looking straight out of the canvas. I’m feeling very judged in my jeans with the hole in the knee! But too bad. I love these jeans and also, I’m very happy that we arrived early and freshly showered. One has to celebrate the little things.

As is the nature of home-ownership, as soon as I got the dishwasher humming along, the faucet in the kitchen decided that 10 years was long enough. I disagreed and disassembled it to see if there was something clogged. It’s one of those spray faucets, which look cool but aren’t super easy to disassemble. The internet suggested several options. I have now tried all of them, including soaking the spray head in vinegar overnight. None of my efforts have improved the situation. In fact, the faucet continues its campaign to retire and I am slowly coming to the realization that perseverance may not get me anything but very, very slow running water.

I’ve replaced faucets before so I suspect that it won’t be more than the normal amount of annoying. The worst part of faucet work is how tired my arms get as I lay under the sink, applying putty and tightening bolts … and occasionally feeling the water drip in my hair or on my forehead, running down into my ear. 

Last weekend, a light switch mysteriously stopped working. The light is now permanently on. Since it is not a bedroom light, it’s slightly less important than a non-working faucet but it’s definitely on the honey-do list. I’ve replaced light switches before (yay, two things I know how to do!) but since electricity scares the heck out of me, I have to turn off all the electricity to the house in order to do the work. That’s annoying and requires coordination with family members who don’t like it when I spontaneously (to them) shut off the electricity. Yes, I know there’s a better way but since I haven’t killed myself yet, this clearly works for me.

My daughter is in spring-cleaning mode and yesterday she pulled up the carpet in her closet. We have mostly hardwood floors in our house except for those darn carpeted stairs (see previous rants about vacuuming stairs!) and the floor of some closets. (I’m not really sure why people carpet closets and apparently neither is my daughter.) The good news is that she found a beautiful hardwood floor underneath a hideous green pile carpet of indeterminate age. 

It’s not that much of a surprise. The previous owner told us that he had covered the hardwood on the second floor with laminate (why would anyone do that?!) but we’ve never checked because, honestly, we’ve had other things to do. 

The bad news is that, now that I have confirmation that the original floor is intact, I have to fight my inner beast. She-who-roars (inside my head) wants to rip up all the laminate right now to expose the original flooring. We don’t need to do that now. We don’t need to do that now. We don’t need to do that now…. Any bets on whether the inner, impetuous problem-creator or the outer, sensible problem-solver will win this battle? 

I just finished reading a young adult new release (and NYT best seller!) called Wings of Ebony, by J. Elle. It’s about a powerful Black girl who discovers she has root magic. She is caught between her origins in Houston and her ORIGINS. There’s some graphic violence, a lot of grief, complex and sometimes hard to follow magic, and a good bit of anger over colonization. If you enjoy reading YA fiction with strong female leads, it’s worth your time, even with its problems (which I hope she is able to solve with book 2). 

Wings of Ebony is only one of a bunch of children’s books worth picking up. If you still think Dr Seuss is the epitome of children’s lit, you haven’t looked in the kids’ section of a book store in a long time. 

About Dr Seuss I will only say this: many of the people we admire are not wholly good. Geisel created racist imagery. That’s a fact. That fact doesn’t make The Cat in The Hat, for example, any less of a treasure but it does acknowledge that some of his books were and are hurtful. If you are having a panic attack about Geisel’s foundation stopping sales of material that is actively hurtful to huge portions of the population, it might be time for you to do some self-discovery. See also, Disney’s Song of the South ….

And that’s all I have to say about that.

As I was preparing the dough (recipe link below!) for tonight’s cast iron skillet pizza, I did a little mental math. We’ve used more than 80 pounds of flour since the start of the pandemic. That’s a lot of bread, pizza dough, (chicken pot) pie crusts, cookies! 

Skillet pizza is genius for us because we’re particular about our toppings. My daughter is from the school of you-can’t-have-enough-veggies. Ian prefers pepperoni and black olives. I like a meat-lover’s pizza, light on the crust, heavy on the cheese. I doubt that I’ll ever order pizza again, honestly, not when I can make it at home, exactly the way I like it.  We made three 10-inch pizzas and ate all but one slice. We even have enough dough left to make garlic knots to go with tomorrow’s “something and sauce” as a dear friend’s mom used to say. 

For those of you interested in a homeschooling update, Ian is about halfway through Earth Abides, a great post-pandemic story that, unfortunately, includes some painful stereotypes. We’ve had some great discussions about racism as Ian has questioned some of the language and descriptions in the book. 

We’ve started combining our current events discussions with some historical context. During the freeze in Texas, we spent quite a bit of time following the catastrophe, exploring their role in the Civil War, recent secession threats and how those align with their request for federal aid, as well as the history behind the devastating heating bills some of their citizens are now facing. (It takes a lot of after-hours research to make these conversations work!)  

Our first crocus bloomed — purple! — over the weekend. The sun was bright and warm against chilly March winds. It was cold again today but that’s just Winter’s final temper tantrum before it heads off to its room to sulk. Spring has arrived.

Here’s the recipe for our pizza dough. If you want the easy-peasy details for making skillet pizza, hit me up in the comments below.

Stay safe. Wear your mask. 

Much love.

DIY Faucets, Switches and Pizza

If You Give a Cat a Twist Tie

Deb Zuroski, , , , , 2 Comments

My elderly cat — she is 18 or 19 — has always had a penchant for bringing a little something to the food bowl. As a last resort, she’ll carry a stuffie or sock to gnaw on in between bites of cat food but her favorite item — far and away — is a twist tie. My next question, really my only question: where does she find the abundance of twist ties? Socks? Pretty easy to find. We leave socks stuffed inside shoes or drop them by the washer. Stuffies? The dogs leave them absolutely everywhere. 

But twist ties? I may not be the tidiest housekeeper you’ll meet but I can assure you that there are no twist ties just lying around for a cat to collect. Does she have a secret stash? Can she open the junk drawer to get one out? Does she have a twist tie radar that pings out the coordinates to the lone twist tie that somehow ended up under the frig? I expect that I’ll never know the answer, that I’ll go to my grave (or the crematorium) with this question lingering like the last hint of honeysuckle in the air.  

I have been thinking a lot recently about “what I’m good at” and “what I like to do.” For some, these are usually complementary concepts. With the exception of writing and making foods that I shouldn’t eat, I’m sorry to report that I can’t claim that level of compatibility. That’s okay, though. Instead of being good at things, I am learning how to do things. 

Last week, I installed a new dishwasher. Removing the old, broken one was the hard part, surprisingly. While it wasn’t heavy, it was … um, connected, tightly, with the screws inserted backwards. There was a lot of puzzling and out-of-the-box thinking involved in figuring out how to remove screws that couldn’t be reached and how to remove epoxy (don’t ask) and on and on.

Connecting all the bits and pieces and having the new dishwasher work was an extraordinary feeling … until I heard Haley say, “Uh, Mom. You need to come down here.” Water was dripping, paint was bubbling. The dishwasher was leaking into the finished basement, in exactly the same place I repaired after the old dishwasher leaked in 2015. Sigh. 

I’d like to thank the inventors of pipe dope and the internet for assisting me in figuring out that teflon tape was not the leak-proof solution I had expected. And yes, for those who will inevitably ask, I did test for leaks prior to running the dishwasher. To the dishwasher industry, I would like to suggest a product enhancement:  the addition of a leak frog to the underside of the dishwasher! 

Really, the greatest gift to myself since I lost Ken nearly 4 years ago has been allowing myself to learn, to make mistakes, to try with uncertainty. Yes, I will be checking the basement drywall for damage and yes, I’ll be repainting a wall where the paint bubbled but that’s okay. I learned that I can replace my own dishwasher and that I can fix mistakes in the process. The dishwasher has been working like a champ for a week now and I’ve chiseled away at another insecurity. 

A member of my writing critique group gave me the nicest compliment, saying that they could see their teacher-spouse reading my latest book to their classroom. I hope I find an agent who agrees with that assessment.

The weather is improving here. We’ve had multiple dry, warm-ish days and even held school outside today for the first time. It was lovely to sit on our patio while the birds chirped and tweeted and the neighborhood kids giggled and shrieked and the sun shone on the backs of our pets as they sprawled in the warmth.

Stay safe. Wear a mask. Get your Fauci ouchie.

Much love.

If You Give a Cat a Twist Tie

If You Can’t Be Nice …

Deb Zuroski, , , , , 5 Comments

My daughter and I were out doing the food shopping recently and we stopped at the Dunkin Donuts drive-through. (Haley likes their coffee.) She wanted a doughnut but they didn’t have any. So, she asked for hash browns and the voice, a young person, said “I’m sorry. We’re really short-staffed and we can’t cook anything.” 

I said, just casually, “Oh, my gosh, I’m so sorry. That must be making your day really hard.” She told the manager. Get this. They comped Haley’s coffee because we were the only people who had been nice to them that whole day. 

And that’s all I’ll say about that.

If you live in the eastern US, you may be feeling a little down today because Phil has doomed us to another six weeks of winter. Here in Pittsburgh it has been a shockingly snowy winter; already this year we’ve more than doubled last winter’s total snowfall.  It feels some days like we’re hibernating, settled in our winter nests, awaiting the warming breezes of spring.

After a disastrous four months of virtual learning, Ian and I decided to begin a new journey. In January, we moved to homeschooling for the remainder of the 2020-2021 school year. I mean no disrespect to any of his teachers or the administrators trying to figure out how to help students learn this school year. We simply came to the realization that Ian could not be successful in the current learning construct. 

It has been a remarkably positive experience for both of us thus far. We’re lucky to be living in interesting times, as they say; so our civics lessons always run over. We both dislike math so we bless Khan Academy for helping us over the hurdle of geometry. The Khan Academy site has also supported Ian’s science requirements gracefully. 

Ian wants to stop talking about sentence structure (hehe) but we’re really enjoying our literature discussions.  This week, we’re reading books that have been re-told as movies. He’s reading Stardust. I’m reading Chocolat. We’ll be discussing them next week and picking out our next books from the stack I’ve already put together. 

Having far too many books has been helpful on this journey. We’ve pulled from the shelves for our civil war/confederacy discussions, our review of sentence structure and the roles of passive/active language, our early budget creation, even our discussions about propaganda.

We had our first conflict when I tried to do a combined civics/poetry lesson using the inaugural poems by Jericho Brown (in the NYT) and Amanda Gorman. We watched the inauguration live, including Ms Gorman’s moving reading of The Hill We Climb; but when I planned to review the role of poetry and those poems in particular, Ian staged a protest, stating emphatically that he has no particular love for poetry and no desire to review either the messages in those poems or the means by which those poets communicated their thoughts. He was both more direct and less polite than I’m being. It made me think again that we don’t pay teachers even half what they deserve for their efforts.

As we sit together every morning, however, I watch his eyes light up before he laughs and I listen to him sing softly to himself while he works on a problem and I am thankful for all of the decisions that brought us to this particular moment, to this opportunity to be here, now, embracing the slower pace of our lives and the strengthening bond of our relationship. 

Writing has been more of a challenge, as I expected. I carve out some time every day to work on my current WIP but teaching is intellectually and emotionally draining which means less daily progress on the WIP! I used to complete four full verses daily for the book but now I’m happy to get one *mostly* done each day. Mary Oliver’s exploration of grief has helped a lot and has inspired me to do some exploring myself. 

We continue to cook. Last week, for National Chocolate Cake day, I made half of a dark chocolate layer cake (it’s made with boiling water — MOIST!) with chocolate buttercream frosting and shared half of that with our next door neighbors. 

They’re in their 90s and don’t make many treats anymore. The cake was a big hit but Mr Neighbor especially likes it when I share homemade cookies. I gave them a gift bag of Christmas cookies over the holidays — buckeyes, ginger snaps, frosted nutmeg cookies, decorated sugar cookies, etc — and his wife texted me that she didn’t get to eat any! Mrs Neighbor said she was inspired to make Scottish shortbread. She’s from Scotland so when I say that shortbread SMASHED, I suspect you get what I mean. 

My current favorite recipe is heavy cream biscuits. They are tender and flaky, heavenly with the spicy winter stew that simmered on our stove all afternoon today. 

Stay safe. Wear your mask. Be kind.

Update: Here are the recipe details for the foods I mentioned.

Beef Stew — I add approximately 1/4 cup of dark soy sauce and 1/4 cup of Worcestershire sauce with the beef stock/bouillon/better than bouillon and I simmer it for 2 full hours before adding the veggies. Sometimes, I also add a hearty shake of Penzey’s Black and Red Pepper (a spicy black and cayenne pepper mix).

Heavy Cream Biscuits — After trying a zillion different biscuit recipes, I stumbled on this one in a cooking subreddit. It’s a Kenji sausage gravy and biscuits video. The biscuit recipe is the first five minutes of the video. I’ve never made the sausage gravy but the biscuits have turned out perfectly every time. We cut them in half and ladle the stew on top.

Dark Chocolate Cake — I halve the recipe, making a single 9″ layer that I then cut in half to make a half layer cake.

Buttercream Frosting — This is identical to the Hershey frosting recipe we used when I was little. Still my favorite! Don’t forget to halve this if you’re making a smaller cake.

If You Can’t Be Nice …