meals in minutes.

Stuart bought a cookbook recently, "Meals in Minutes," in a new concerted effort to learn to cook.  The selling point of this book is that you can throw together a delicious well-balanced meal quickly.  The intro reads: "Sharing homemade meals is a fading ritual, too often replaced by television or a slice of pizza ... However, you hold in your hands the book that shows you how to create wonderful dishes without a lot of fuss and bother."

On Wednesday night he was going to make some curried chicken with rotini dish.  At two-thirty he was pulling the meat out of the freezer and asked if Mark and I wanted to join the family for dinner. Of course! Well would you mind picking up three more cans of this... he looks at the can... reduced fat Cream of Chicken soup?  I'm on it, I said.

When I brought the soup home the chicken was no longer on the counter-top.  I guess the dinner process was already underway. I put the soup on the counter and left, yelling up the stairs that I would be home by 6:45.  Dinner would be served, I was informed, at 7:15.  Wake Forest would be playing Duke in basketball so we would eat in front of the TV. Please refer back to the Cookbook's tag line.

The smell of something hit me when I walked in the basement door from outside. My apartment has its own entrance and I was surprised to smell dinner all the way downstairs.  Mark arrived and we discussed the wedding over a glass of wine while waiting for dinner.  

Around 7:20 Kim marched down the stairs in her flannel pajama pants and red fleece, classic post-work-I-don't-care-I'm-not-leaving-the-house garb.  

"Time for dinner?" I asked, getting up.

"No." She rolled her eyes with a laughing in them.  "We're having frozen Costco pizza."  Please refer back to Cookbook tag line again.

"What??  What happened to Chicken Curry Cream Pasta thing?  He's been working on it all day!"

"Well, yeah, you know you'd think that you couldn't botch a meal in minutes, wouldn't ya.  Well apparently Stuart added two entire--" making a little hand motion to indicate the two-inch-tall plastic container, searching for the right word "--things of curry powder!  And then, you know, it tastes awful so he keeps adding more milk! I mean he's got about three huge cookers full of this curried milk sauce.  You have to get the milk up to temperature but he got impatient so he turned the heat up under the pot and scalded the milk! So two gallons of milk, all this chicken, curry powder, vegetables... we're throwing it out.  It stinks up there, like something rotting. It's foul."  

Mark and I were laughing at this point. 

"But thanks to Costco we have pizza.  Y'all want some pizza?"

We nodded, my eyebrows raised.

"So what is Stuart doing right now?" I asked.

"Well the Wake Forest game is on now, so he's lost any concern about dinner.  He's up there with a glass of wine and his buddy's here..."

She laughed and tossed her hair back as she turned toward the garage door to get the pizza.  "I swear..."  

Lesson: the only simple thing is spaghetti and meals in minutes don't exist, at least not around these parts.

it's cold here.

It is cold here. Last week the temperatures were down in the "teens" and my car hesitated to start when I tried it for work.  We had two days in the fifties but the cold still felt thick--like maybe it's so far inside of me by this point that the actual temperature doesn't factor in. My bones are in frozen hibernation and the only respite is Florida.

My apartment is a basement and the door to the outside doesn't quite close all the way.  I have a long skinny pillow with a design of row houses painted on it that is meant to be stuffed down at the bottom of the door to prevent the air from wafting in down low to the ground.  This is fairly effective, however there is also a gap between the door and the rest of the door frame. I can look through and see a little line of light.  The little pillow doesn't frame the whole door, dang it.  The thermostat is upstairs so there isn't much I can do about this except to turn on the gas fire place when I'm home for long enough.  Then I wrap myself up in a fleece blanket and sit on the brick fire place to warm up.  I've also resorted to running my hands and feet under scalding water in the sink, wearing five layers, doing the dishes more often by hand and making sure to fold the laundry when it is just out of the dryer.

The low body degree issue is compounded by a few things.  For instance I am addicted to ice water. My cells are probably on the verge of explosion because I drink so much water.  There are these insulated no-sweat plastic cups called Tervis Tumblers and they have straws.  These things go everywhere with me full of ice and water.  I probably drink over 150 ounces of water a day, no joke, and my sister commented on how even when she was 8 months pregnant I peed more than she did. It might be a problem.  So it's freezing cold and then I guzzle cold liquids.  No wonder my guts are frozen.  

I am also an outdoors person.  We're not talking camping, I don't have any great desire to be rugged. However I have a real need to be outside and in natural light.  In fact I can hardly stand to be inside during the daylight hours.  Windows help, but since I live in the basement the best option for me is to, obviously, go outside.  So I do.  Sometimes I go for a walk around the neighborhood and call my mom to catch up.  Holding the cell phone turns my hands into ice.  Sometimes, though, I just sit outside on the deck and read.  It's thirty-five degrees and my body is shivering with cold, but I have to be outside.  So I sit there as long as I can possibly stand it and read.  Just finished Kite Runner. Had to read the last few chapters inside.  It helped that it was gray out.

Winter is good for Christmas and snow, but I'll be glad to dismiss it come... March?? Please say yes.

january snow.

I recently read an excerpt from a book that said this: "to pray means to wait for the God who comes."  It is in God's identity--One who comes.

Ever since I read that it has remained in my mind, dusting my thoughts like powdery white snow that swirls around on the pavement and only accepts the faintest footprints.  So I guess it was something I had needed to hear.

It seems like this road has been so daggum windy.  I can only see two feet ahead and then the pavement makes another jarred curve and I drive in blind with only minute confidence that there will not be a car, or a herd of grazing water buffalo, in my lane on the other side.  I feel tired because I wait and yet have no idea what is coming.  UNCG would do me a huge service to tell me if they'll take me for their Writing Master's program because the not-knowing is turning me into something of a plastic wind-up duck.  

We've got these married friends who went out on a limb to move down here to North Carolina. They live in an apartment complex.  It's nice, but they decided it was time to move on.  They found a house and jumped through about seventy-five loops, all hung up high in the air, some of them on fire, to buy this house.  And they love it--it's got a big lawn with a slight hill in the back.  There are a few other houses around but everyone is neighborly.  They have two big dogs, a lab and a golden retriever, and my friends just want so badly to live in a place where the dogs can run around and play.  

So they had it all lined up and then they hit a snag.  His company won't write a letter declaring he's got a consistent full-time job, even though he does and has worked there for three months, because they're "working on their budget."  Now they can't close on the house.  They are living out of boxes, borrowing spare bed rooms and using other folks' washers and dryers.  My friend, the girl, who is the most delightful soul, her eyes are turning red with stress and the other night, when I saw her laugh at someone's joke, I realized it was the first time I'd seen a real smile out of her in a good while.   This week all I can say to her is that she has to wait for the God who comes.

That's the catch about God coming-- you have to wait.

On Monday night my almost-husband left late after a movie.  He wasn't gone ten seconds before he busted back through the door, picked me up in my plaid cotton pants and sweatshirt, ran outside and spun me around under the radiant moon.  I laughed and shrieked and gasped... it was snowing.

On Tuesday morning I awoke and when the sun finally rose I, in some bizarre ritual, stepped outside in a tank top.  The street was silent and it the earth was white.  I expected the quiet to linger, as it does on snow mornings, but then I heard the most peculiar sound.  I walked out further and heard my neighbors--a five-year-old and two-year-old toe head--shrieking and calling out, "Dad! See this?!"  It was so early, but the kids ran and laughed and dragged their dad by his gloved hands down into the snow.  

I don't know what it is, between the waiting for this One who does come, the small measure of faith that we cling to, and that sweet soft snow and they way it seemed to cover over a multitude of troubles.  But I think I believe it deep down, that God will come.  

"God is thrust onward by his love, not attracted by our beauty.  He comes even in moments when we have done everything wrong..."

papa introduces Jonathan to Seinfeld.

one night last fall.

It was in the fall, probably November.  He called me to come over--it was 10:00 on Sunday night.  I was tired and already in sweat pants and a rugby shirt I'd inherited from my brother.  But of course I'd go.

When I pulled up he came out, saying, "let's go for a drive."  I almost whined, "but I have to get up early..."  but in some attempt to embrace impulse, didn't.  I held my tongue and decided ah hell, one late night won't kill me.

We got in his car and he looked at me and said, "where should we go?"  I shrugged, a bit confused. "Business 40?" I suggested, "Through downtown?"  There is something about city lights at night--any city.  But the center of Winston-Salem at night is majestic in its isolated height and uncanny quiet.  It is heavenly, and the city charm can make anybody feel dazzling.  It's inviting and warm and sparkling with contrast.  Janitors and night watchmen have keys and they turn on the night lights in the city.

We drove down the expressway and got off on Cherry Street.  Weaving around down in toward Fourth and Trade, we got mixed up and turned around on one-way streets and turn-abouts.  Fall had come that day, a swift overhaul of any residual summer warmth.  It was eerie the way all the lights were on. Everyone, like aggravated turtles, was tucked up at home to avoid the cold wind.

With wide open parking, Mark pulled up by an apartment complex.  He looked at me and turned off the engine, smirking.  

"But I'm in sweatpants!"  

He just smiled and got out of the car.  

I opened the door and shuddered when the wind diced right through my cotton coverings.  He grabbed a long sleeve shirt from his golf bag in the trunk and threw it to me.  We ventured into a parking deck and came out to the landing which afforded a view of the skyline.  I'm sure I gaped and he, less concerned with city lights, wrapped his arms around me and lifted me up, stretching his neck to place a kiss my jaw bone as I looked at the light pouring out of the tall domed building that you can see from a thousand points around town.

I smiled, a gesture for the stars, as he spun me around.  And then, setting my feet back on the asphalt, he put his hands on my frozen face and I kissed him.

We walked up the street and turned right on Fifth, toward First Baptist, whose stained glass window glowed with colors.  

"We look like we're homeless," I said, flopping the unfilled sleeves of his large men's shirt that draped off the ends of my hands in his face.  

We stopped in front of a mural wall, holding hands, and craned our necks to see the picture.  It was too close so we crossed the ghost street to get a better scope.  

"Weird," he said of the ambiguous figures.  We both laughed.  "I mean really, what is that supposed to be?" 

The traffic lights switched dutifully from green to yellow to red to green again, though in the whole universe there wasn't a car on the road.

almost three years old.

My niece to be, Hannah, took me to the park for an outing this afternoon.  We didn't get out the door until about 4:45 so the sun was already set and it was getting cold.  

Hannah will be three in February but she talks as if she is a twelve-year-old college student.  She is more articulate than most of my peers.  She walked me down the street, instructing me to "hold hands" and "jump on the grass" when cars drove by.  I am baffled by nice family neighborhoods without sidewalks, as is the condition of our neighborhood.  She stopped and sniffed at every little thing that was out of the ordinary for the side of the street.

"This is somebody's pay," she said, pointing to a renegade grocery receipt that was stuck in the mud.

"Do you see this?" she asked me, pointing her toe into a pile of mud.

"Yes," I replied.

"It's dirt. Don't step there, your shoes will track it in the house."

Ten four.

She told me to watch when she ran and to look at her when she jumped up high.  There are days when this sort of dilly-dallying makes me irritated, but today I enjoyed it.  It's really entirely stupid to let myself become annoyed since the purpose of our time together is for her enjoyment and if all it takes is marveling at a lost receipt, then I should really be counting my blessings.  

When we got to the park, we played house for a while and then hit the swings. She had me put her in the swing that has four leg holes and then gave me instructions.

"Aunt Ginny, I want to go super high."

So I pushed her high.  Usually I'd pretend to give a big push but take it easy so that the kid didn't fly out of the swing and hit the wood chips.  But I didn't do that, I really pushed her as hard as I could, and she just soared. For a hot second I thought, "Too hard?"  But she came down laughing and  sputtering like a little monkey.  Precious, so sweet it made me laugh out loud.  And then she just laughed harder, and I pushed her again.  

"The moon is out already," I said.

"Where?" she asked, craning her head on the down swing to find the elusive moon behind her right shoulder.

"Up there," I pointed and she turned and spotted it.  "Where do you suppose the sun went?"

After a brief pause, she said, "He's up there behind the sun."

 

She asked me to stop her so she could look and really see.  I grabbed her little feet and she came to a halt.  With both hands she wiped her blonde hair, all sticky with static, from her face and stared at the moon.

"There's a man on the moon," I said. "Sometimes you can see his face, when it's totally round." 

She looked at me skeptically.

"He makes sure you're okay when you sleep."

She smiled at the thought and then told me that the sun probably sits up with the moon too.  I laughed, and that made her laugh.