Dawn Potter's Blog, page 9

Little Chuck was up early this morning, chasing a leaf ar...

Little Chuck was up early this morning, chasing a leaf around the bedroom. Yesterday he discovered a cache of leaves in the basement, autumn detritus tracked or blown in during wood stacking and lumber moving and such. Delighted, he's started carrying them upstairs in his mouth, one by one, as if he's caught a mouse, and then pouncing on them till they fall to shreds. It's amazing how much noise one dry maple leaf can make at 4 a.m.

So here we are, Little Chuck and I, awake too early on a Sunday. After his leaf fun and a nice breakfast of fish oil and four kitten Greenies, he's sitting sweetly on my hands as I attempt to type this letter to you.

Yesterday I caught up on a few harvest chores: cutting bunches of oregano, dill, and thyme for drying; also batches of wheat grass and hydrangeas for winter bouquets. Now they are festooned in the back room, wilting and fragrant. Today I'd like to sow some more fall-crop greens and herbs, though this deepening dry weather is not ideal for seed starting. Altogether, it's not been a great garden year, weather-wise, but I did cut a big batch of chard, the cucumbers are thriving, and oddly the okra looks promising. For dinner I braised chicken thighs in lemon, garlic, red onion, and oregano, then tossed them with cilantro and Thai basil. Alongside we had new potatoes mixed with green beans, a chard tian, and a salad of mixed greens, cucumber, feta, and mint. For dessert: homemade lemon ice cream and local blueberries. Summer food is the best food.

And finally, after weeks spent focusing on other people and other people's writing (and on sorrow, of course), I dug into my own notebook and started messing around with a draft. It was a relief to feel my mind return to its private rehearsal room, playground, empty stage, open field.

Yesterday was hot and humid, and the a/c was blasting all...

Yesterday was hot and humid, and the a/c was blasting all day. This morning is cooler, but the air quality isn't great--Canadian smoke, presumably--so I may be closing the windows again shortly. Still, it's pleasant to find myself at Saturday. The past several weeks have been ridiculous--all of that hard conference work, then losing Ruckus, then the trip to Chicago, now this new guy in town . . . highs and lows and highs.

But the new guy is--dare I say it?--nice. I am not used to such a thing. Ruckus had many magnificent characteristics, but nice was not one of them. He bit and scratched; he was packed with grievance and vanity; and while he was an enthusiastic family member, he was, as my son would say, a lot. I'm flummoxed by this new and unfamiliar beast: a sweet-tempered cat. Yesterday I clipped his nails, and he just sat in my lap purring. Ruckus would have removed both of my hands.

The name is still in flux, but we are experimenting with versions of Charles . . . Chuck, Chip, Charlie. Presently he is bouncing around on the couch playing with the string bookmark attached to my notebook, and his ears are draped with spiderwebs from the basement. He's full of beans, a cheerful little busybody, and it's really hard to type when he's around.

I've got no particular plans for the day, other than puttery home stuff. I would like to take a look at a poem blurt; I should harvest chard and sow some fall-crop greens; maybe I'll mow grass or weed, but in this drought neither chore is essential. We really need rain, but that's not in the offing. Meanwhile, I'm getting ready to reread The Scarlet Pimpernel, a ridiculous book that I have loved since childhood. The politics are terrible, the plot is absurd, the characters are stagy and silly, but I enjoy them all so much. It's the book version of an Errol Flynn movie.

This little cat has been in the house for less than 36 ho...

This little cat has been in the house for less than 36 hours, but he has completely settled in. I've never seen a pet acclimate so fast: no slinking under couches, no shyness about strange hands and voices, no litterbox confusion, no pining. He is a comical, cheerful, sweet-tempered little imp, who readily settles down at bedtime and even let me get work done at my desk yesterday.

We still haven't chosen a name, but we're cogitating.

Otherwise, things are quiet around here. I'm back to editing, back to class planning, back to garden and house things. I've been rereading Lampedusa's The Leopard, one of my favorite novels of all time. I went out to write last night and maybe scribbled a blurt worth looking at again. Here's hoping.

Welcome the heir apparent, who arrived last evening to en...

Welcome the heir apparent, who arrived last evening to ensure the line of succession, and may someday even assume the august title king of Maine if he is bossy enough.
He's 12 weeks old, a little busybody, affectionate and sociable, slept all night tucked up under my chin, and is delighted to be here. No name yet, though Tom did refer to him as the Replacement. This led us to thinking about the band known as the Replacements, which unfortunately is full of people who already have our own family names (Tommy, Paul). So the kitty would have to be Bob, which doesn't seem to be sticking so far.
I assumed I'd be up for much of the night with the cat, but magically he slept well and so did I. Presently he's swarming up my shoulder and squirming over the keyboard, and I'm sure I'll be besieged all day. He's got a giant purr and a plaintive squeaky meow and he hurtles around the house like a tiny bumper car, and currently Tom is admonishing him: "You're kind of an attention hog, aren't you?" "Yow," replies the attention hog.

Good morning from chilly Portland, Maine, where the tempe...

Good morning from chilly Portland, Maine, where the temperature is a surprising 55 degrees. After sultry Chicago, the air feels downright cold, though I expect the town will be back to summer again shortly. Clearly not much rain fell while we were gone, but the garden still seems vigorous. I picked two big cucumbers and a handful of green beans, noted a bit of groundhog damage, and wondered what's been eating my blueberries.

I'd planned to go blueberry picking today with friends, but then started to get that sinking post-vacation desperation feeling and knew I'd be better off hunkering down to the editing project and re-learning how to work. Also, I realized I hadn't been alone at all for six days, and possibly my introvert button is flashing. After a week at the conference and then most of another week in Chicago, I seem to be having a solitude attack.

So today I'll walk, and then work at my desk, and then figure out what else needs to be done around here. I am sorry to miss out on the blueberry fun. I am glad to be home.

We're flying back to Portland this morning, after a visit...

We're flying back to Portland this morning, after a visit that has been so exactly what I needed. One of the jokes of the visit has been "why is Dawn falling asleep so much?" because I have been dozing on planes, in cars, on couches; sleeping hard all night and late into the morning. Between times I've been walking, walking, walking for miles through the city; I've been eating and talking and playing games and admiring the lake and peering at tiny museum replicas and talking about cats. But sleep keeps lurking around the corner.

This afternoon I'll  slowly reinsert myself into my workaday life . . . garden, laundry, house. And then, within the next few days, I'll take my first steps toward getting a new cat. That's another thing this visit has made clear: I'm ready.

Yesterday we went to the Art Institute of Chicago, where ...

Yesterday we went to the Art Institute of Chicago, where I saw, for the first time, the permanent collection known as the Thorne Miniature Rooms. The link will tell you more about these displays, but essentially they are miniature replicas of period rooms representing various eras in (mostly) European and American history. Each is displayed as a glass-fronted box slid into the wall, allowing you to peer into into a dollhouse-sized, incredibly detailed room, with glimpses of linked rooms and gardens and street scenes beyond the room's windows. If you are a lover of the children's book The Borrowers, you will adore these rooms. I was entranced.

The photos on the website don't quite give the flavor of the effect of these rooms, partly because they simply look like photos of human-sized period replicas. In fact, most of the rooms are only about a foot square, but they have real parquet floors and actual little desks that lock and unlock and delicate curtains and perfectly turned staircases. Each space is filled with human presence, but there are no replicas of people, and that is part of the charm. They are spaces for imagining the story.

Yesterday was our big trip to Milwaukee to meet H's paren...

Yesterday was our big trip to Milwaukee to meet H's parents. Originally we'd planned to stay overnight, but hotel prices were too high, so we made a day of it instead--early lunch at a barbecue place, then a walk downtown along the river to look at the Fonzie statue, and finally a very amusing time mini-bowling at a neighborhood dive bar. It was the perfect way to meet new people--light-hearted and simple: the kind of arrangement that J is brilliant at. I don't know how he learned to be so excellently sociable; clearly not from his parents. But we are grateful for his sure touch.

No particular plans for today yet. At the moment I am the only person awake, though the cats are circling like sharks. We may end up at the Art Institute. We may check out the kids' wedding venue--an architectural restoration store that also hosts events. We may grill fish in the courtyard and play some more boardgames. I'm pretty sure we will not track down affordable tickets to the Sox-Cubs game. At the moment the locust trees beyond the alley are twitching in a steady breeze, and the sky is low and gray and rain-gloomy, though no rain is falling.

In the meantime I will sit here alone (except for ravenous cats) with nothing to do but half-doze, glance out the window at pigeons and trees, and read my book. A challenging schedule but I will persevere.

***

Oh, and today is our 34th wedding anniversary. The sentimental storylines are rife.

Good morning from Pilsen. From my window I am looking do...

 Good morning from Pilsen. From my window I am looking down over the alley behind my son's building--a clutter of tall weeds, garages, fences, power poles, garbage cans . . . what Dickens calls a mews in his novels. Rock doves coo in a local gutter. Massive fringed locust trees line the street beyond the alley. Most of the buildings around here are brick--some red, some yellow, and often exuding a rundown European flare, given that the majority date from the early twentieth century, when Pilsen was a Czech enclave. Since then, demographics have switched to mostly Michoacan Mexican, and many of these old Eastern European-style buildings are painted with murals depicting Mexican American history and culture. The effect is jaunty.

Yesterday J, T, and I went to the Lincoln Park zoo and saw some excellent giraffes and a green broadbill that might be the greenest thing I have ever witnessed. 

Then we walked to the lakefront and drank beer and ate loaded fries in a silly beach bar and stared out at the umbrellas and the volleyball players and the jet skiers and the lifeguards and the splashers and the sandcastle makers before wending back to Pilsen for afternoon naps.

J owns a tiny compound composed of a building with two rental apartments on the street side, the carriage house where he lives on the alley side, and a little plant-festooned concrete and decking oasis between them, like a snug secret garden. In the evening we sat around in the courtyard until we got hungry, then strolled down the street to a tent where a man was cooking tacos and ordered a dozen to carry back to the house. The air was soft and pleasant, cicadas buzzing and humming in the locust trees. Our tacos were a sort of heaven, and then we played a board game, and eased our way into sleep.
This visit to Chicago has been exactly what we needed . . . lots of wandering, lots of idle talk, little responsibility. Today we are going on an adventure to Milwaukee to meet H's parents. It seems that Milwaukee is full of strange and varied bowling alleys, and J has reserved us a lane at a tiny place with actual live pinsetters. I am quite looking forward to it.

Our plane was delayed in Portland so we didn't get into C...

Our plane was delayed in Portland so we didn't get into Chicago till after 11, which was midnight eastern time. And then we stayed up to eat dinner and visit with the kids, so that accounts for why I'm only waking up now. House is already busy and chattery, so writing is hard. Talk to you tomorrow!