Free Writing About Free Writing

GBE 2 - week 32 is a 15 minute free write.  Check it out on the site, it gives the details.   But this is what I do all the time, free writing I mean.  I may have an idea to work from,  but often I just start writing and something meaningful tends to come out.  I think it just comes with practice.  Writing is soothing, energizing, and everything in between for people who have to write.  I do my best writing in the morning.  When words just seem to slide onto the page without effort and in a coherent fashion almost like the experience writers sometimes describe as "it just came to me."  I have poems descend upon me at all times of the day and night, but when essays, articles or the like flow from me as though someone inside by head is dictating the piece to me, it is usually in the morning.  It is not necessarily the very first thing I do but I think I do my best writing when I starting putting words on the page before 9 a.m.  So it is 6:30 in the evening now as I write this for the Tuesday post.  Probably won't be my best effort ever.  I just love writing and I'm trying to be more disciplined and using different types of motivations to develop the discipline needed for serious blogging and other types of writing.  Blogging gimmicks are doing the trick to some degree.  That isn't to say that the gimmicks are bad.  They aren't.  Nablopomo.  GBE 2.  These are just a couple of the blogging tools I'm employing to get me writing.  I need a voice recorder too.  I have to find an app for that for my Blackberry.  Writing ideas down isn't always practical.  And sometimes when ideas strike, I need to record them, somehow.  Discipline is good, but so are ideas.  Develop one and don't let the others get away. 

Somewhere They Call It Boxing Day

Change on the home front is a constant but some time periods are more like rapids with swirls, eddies, and water rushing over submerged objects rather than the bucolic progress of a gently meandering stream.

The Holiday rush has ended, sort of, but just like this day that has the name of medieval, or possibly older, origins a sense of confusion about this next period aka the last 10 days of Christmas exists.  That is how it is with our family life over the next few days and weeks:  a bunch of eddies, swirls, and steady progress toward who knows what or where. 

It's been a hectic few weeks.  Zilla moved back in with us for the last few months of her university days, with her 110 lb. puppy. Hubby decided in July to take a short semester-long sabbatical this Fall. I frantically tried to get as much of a book written as I could but became overloaded in October and haven't gotten much done for about six weeks.

All this fal-der-al, and fiddle-dee-dee is a way to say I do not have as many neato keen discoveries for you today as I might have wished for a Must Know Monday or a Friday Finds and Facts.

I'm looking forward to being able to focus and follow-through on projects big and small beginning mid-January after my hubby is back teaching and researching everyday at the U.,  and I've  helped Zilla safely move across the country to begin her life as half of a couple.  Guess I better start saving up for a wedding in a year or two.  She won't live with someone without some sort of promissory portable wealth (a phrase from my anthropology days) of some sort.  She's my daughter and she learned her lessons well;  you know, cows and milk and such.

I have to admit I'm looking forward to a road trip, even in the middle of Winter.  I discovered,  only a few years ago,  that I love solitary road trips.  There is something about the call of the open road that I just can't resist given half a reason to venture out on one.

A bit of a digression here:   I haven't been on the road since driving back from my Mom's place for the last time after caring for her as she passed away in 2007.  That last trip wasn't fun.  There was another trip that was hard too,  it was the one where I stopped to see my brother on my way to the Counter-Inaugural in January of 2005.  It was the last time I saw him and was only a few weeks before he passed away from cancer.  I suppose this may seem a bit morose but this Christmas Day was the 25th anniversary of my Dad's passing.  Some anniversaries just can't be forgotten.

But it is time for some perspective that only the road seems to be able to give to me.  Some of my less than wonderful life experiences taught me that I was only safe when I was by myself.  In a car in the middle of the country, hundreds of miles from home where people know to look for me, and hundreds of miles from a destination where people expect me to be at some point in the future seems safe to me.  There is a section of the book on this:  "Inversion of the Expected."  It is, I believe,  a sort of protective semiotic strategy but that is too heady and abstract a concept to take up head or thought space during the holidays.  I want to think about this more and in relation to a couple other ways people create rather intricate behaviors supported by belief systems that may be based on total logically created poppycock.

But you will just have to wait to find out more about all that,  because it is a time for conversation with family and friends over jigsaw puzzles and board games while sipping mimosas or hot chocolate and nibbling on gingerbread and chocolate truffles, and have one of each for me will you, please, as I can't for many reasons.  The Time of the Longest Nights, the days around the Winter Solstice, the 12 days of Christmas, the 8 days of Hanukkah, the 7 days of Kwanzaa, call it what you will  is a time for hot drinks, rich food, and leisurely getting together with friends and family over a longer period of time than other times of year seem to allow these days.

Hope your holidays are continuing and you are with those you love!

Christmas Crepes for Two

Hubby is over at the turtle tank picking out dried shrimp from the canister of turtle food and Randy the Turtle is gobbling them up as fast as they are dropped in the tank.  Merry Christmas Randy! 

The doggies are chowing down on braided doggie chews made of raw hide.  The cats have been brushed with their new brush.

Our tummies are full too!  Our traditional Christmas breakfast of coffee, mimosas, and Christmas Crepes. The recipe will follow a bit further down.  They make great New Years Day Crepes too!

It has been a relaxed Christmas morning thus far.  This is our first Christmas on our own since 1989.  While we were expecting Zilla to be here with us this Christmas, her Honey Bunny's older brother sent her a ticket to surprise the HB in Minneapolis for Christmas.  She left yesterday morning, and when her HB arrived at his brother's house to open gifts before Christmas Eve Dinner he thought he was opening a "coffee table" over which Zilla had been obsessing and was supposed to be for their new home (and life) together that will start in January.   HB's older bro. told him Zill had something shipped to him and he had assembled it.  So HB was none the wiser when there was a huge box among the presents.  He was dumbfounded when Zilla popped out of the top of the box.   What a wonderful present for them, and what a wonderfully calm Christmas for us!  The East Coast contingent of the family are down at the winter home of  Poet Boy's parents South of here, close to the border, and we will see them later today or tomorrow morning to watch the twins dressed in new clothes play explore new kinds of play with new toys. 

I'm happy and content.  I'm writing and Hubby is sketching.

Here is the most decadent recipe ever, it is Hubby's own, perfected this year after over twenty years of testing.  Yum!  We've drastically cut the usual amount of sugar this year and it is not only something that might be appropriate for a celebratory breakfast even for a diabetic like myself by cutting the sugar or substitution of a stevia-based sweetener for the sugar.  The fat content is sinful, and absolutely delicious.  It is probably safe to eat this once a year.  More often would not be healthy; delicious, but not healthy.  

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Robin's Christmas Crepes

Strawberry Topping (for 4 crepes)

4 very large strawberries (or as many as you want!) sliced into very thin slices
juice of 1/2 large lemon
1 Tbs. sugar


toss all ingredients together and let stand while you make the filling and crepe batter



Crepe filling (for many!) 

1   15 oz. container (which is  425 gr.) ricotta cheese
1 stick of butter (1/4 c. is 113 gr. which is also 4 oz.)
1 pkg. of cream cheese (8 oz. which is 227 gr.)
1/4 tsp. vanilla
1 Tbs. sugar
lemon zest

beat all ingredients together (we used a mixer) beat until mixture is a consistently thick, smooth and creamy

makes far more filling than is needed for four crepes,
cover and refrigerate unused filling,
use in crepes when you whip up new batches of crepe batter and fruit topping for others as they drop by throughout the day or week of festivities  --  topping keeps for up to three days when properly sealed and refrigerated 


Crepe batter (for 4 crepes)

beat together
3 eggs
1/3 c. heavy whipping cream        
1/4 tsp. of vanilla
lemon zest

slowly sift
1/2 c. flour
into mixture


pour 1/4 batter on preheated and oiled griddle, or pan, to make a nice round crepe,
flip crepe over when top of crepe begins to appear rubbery and non-liquid,
cook until done and lightly golden brown on both sides

repeat 3 more times until you have four crepes

Assembly

We usually have the person eating the crepes do their own assembly.

place crepe on plate
spoon filling to taste into the center of crepe and spread to desired thickness
roll up the crepe
top with strawberry topping

Eat and enjoy!

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May this Holiday and the coming New Year be Merry, Bright and Prosperous for all of you my dear readers!

Graduate Growing Pains

I didn't succeed with Nablopomo this month, but I did succeed with doing an absolute ton of stuff.  But it has not been enough for everyone around me.  Expectations placed on mothers are sometimes huge and unrealistic ones. Sometimes mothers do not live up to expectations both realistic and unrealistic.  Moms are humans. 

Daughters are human too, but sometimes they are scary monsters.  Zilla got her nickname with good reason.  This past week has been a roller coaster of ups and downs.  Her last semester of college was this past week.  She attended the more intimate School of Science Graduation where the graduates actually walk across the stage while a saying they have chosen is projected on the stage's backdrop and hands are shaken and recognition given.  It was good.  She had a bit of a melt down when we were where we were told to go after the ceremony and not where she thought we would be, but we all survived, met up, and her sister, father and I are all very proud. 

Did I mention her sister who lives in NYC along with hubby and twin 1 year old daughters are all in Southern Arizona for the Holidays? 

Zilla has always easily been wound up and at times has difficulty disengaging and the stress of finals, the details and expenses of graduation, coupled with her understandable anxiety about completing applications for graduate school in in the next few weeks, and about moving across the country and away from nearby family shortly after the New Year is taking its toll on her.  The graduation party at our house was a success... both the early part with our friends and those folks with small children, and the later part that was more raucous and composed mainly of her friends were pleasant and appropriately celebratory for the people to whom they were tailored.  

Still I am the target of my baby's scorn more often than not in the past week as not everything is unfolding as smoothly nor exactly in the manner she envisioned and she feels the need to affix as much blame as possible to me.  I actually understand this.  It doesn't mean that I accept the blame nor tolerate the scorn, but I understand why we are so touchy about everything.  My therapist once reminded me that often it is easier to leave a place or person when there is some anger reinforcing the necessity of the separation. 

I'm proud of my baby.  This is a difficult time because we are close, stress is high, and it makes us both sad to think of being so far away from each other.  We will get through it and it is instructional to learn that being close can make for more stress at times of transition than families that are not as close and just going through the motions required of a formal occasion. 

Rain Again, an observation and poem

I woke up this morning to more rain.  It usually doesn't bother me, but today it does.  It is a cold sad rain.  An unopened package from Ypsilanti was on the kitchen table.  A friend, now dust and perhaps  a memory at any given time  - his words were in there.  Parkinson's was killing him when I knew him.  His eyes, pale and piercing, could see through people.  For some reason, he liked what he saw in me.  Those Monday nights at the Unitarian Universalist Church were a treasure.  Rest in peace my friend. 
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rain again

Tucson was once lush
grassland
diorama of spears hefted
by little brown men
and a dying mammoth
told me so

this wet lack of sun
sends me back
the world of chill childhood 
lives in such damp days

today
is different

some of his last poems
are in that book
on the coffee table

words from when I knew him

"you, you can come back"
after hearing me read
and i did

all the way from
For Neruda, For Chile
to surfings

nfh, 13 dec 2011