whennothingworks

All the way home from work, riding the bus, I dug deeper and deeper into negativity. Everything seemed stupid and useless and overwhelming, especially the endless masses and masses of cars going back and forth on four different busy roads. All going nowhere.. I thought of everything that was wrong with my life, that was hopeless and irreparable, all the insurmountable obstacles to overcome…. so bad I started swearing silently to myself, a whole nasty cauldron of inner negativity.

I glanced out the window and saw a car moving alongside the bus. A small compact car. The driver could barely see out the back it was so packed with various envelopes, boxes, stuffed shopping bags, and papers, and what looked like masses of crumpled plastic Jewel bags.. on top of all that an air filter, 20x20x1. Funny to notice that… I always seem to have to change my furnace filter.

As the car whizzed by I glanced inside and couldn’t see the driver as the front passenger seat was also completely stuffed with junk, especially masses of those crumpled plastic bags. Like a homeless stash under Wacker Drive. I wondered if he was homeless and lived in his car. I assumed it was a he, maybe not.

That carload of garbage was like my mind.

The bus was full of sad and depressing looking people, tired, worn out, unattractive and badly dressed. Shame on me!!!! But that is the fact. I am sure I looked the same.

Then someone got on the next stop, and I realized it was the Jamaican woman I befriended a few months ago. She already noticed me as she was getting on struggling with the baby and carriage, but flashed me a big beautiful smile that lit up the whole sad bus interior. I went and helped her and we chatted happily the rest of the way home. I felt cleansed by her very presence.

Home, pulled out various remnants from Thanksgiving: pate, chutney, white bread, cashews, peanuts– too tired to pull out the turkey and veggies and make a decent meal. So much for the uplift. I am so lazy!

Stack of bills and papers piled up on desk to review. Again.

Made tea, took out pumpkin pie from Thanksgiving, took it into the dining room. I brought in the Cyclamen from kitchen and put it on the dining room table where it caught the light. A mass of fiery magenta birds.

The tea hot and cinnamony, the cup deliciously warm in my hands, the tasty pie my darling little sister made with her own little hands. Those precious hands that were almost stilled forever last March. It was a little uncooked in the center but was suave and luxurious in my mouth, the spicing just right. We all like plain pumpkin pie, so she acquiesced, not making the Elizabeth David version with macerated prunes and cognac. Too fussy. She spent four hours making it and rushing to get it done in time. I almost wept eating it.

Then some movement at the window– and I saw some tail feathers, but first I heard some piping like flutes or piccolos, and thought it was the radio. It was a group of birds singing sweetly in the shrubs outside the windows. I went to look and they flew away. Just a touch of their magic but it was enough to make me bright again. Their incredible winter presence. My little ballerinas in the evergreen shrubs.

Sitting here cup in hand, the harsh winter seemed to ease up a bit (actually it has just begun!), and I felt great peace, and realized that it started with the beautiful Jamaican Cindie, and her smile, an angel sent from God.

There are no birds today, or, I was too frustrated, busy and scatterbrained to see them. Did take a quick look out the window when I came home though and they were not in their bird condominium. Birds must be like people, they have things to do, places to go, bird shopping, or bird cocktail parties, or bird baby showers…

Work awful. New job. Everything gone wrong. I-Pad didn’t work. I don’t own one, wasn’t sure how to use one. It’s just like a computer. Got it on and then it didn’t work. We had to do the work on paper. Pen, paper, and pencil felt good. I still got everything wrong. Didn’t understand the instructions, worked too fast too scared and too frustrated and made a mess of things. Women in next booths talked non stop about “Scandal”, “How to Get Away with Murder”, “Breaking Bad” (one said she watched all 60 episodes of “Breaking Bad” in one week……) I tried to just sit and be quiet. Open offices and cubes stink!

Home. House cold and stacks of bills and insurance forms to review. Years of papers to clear and files. Yes, years. One day you suddenly realize you have years of papers and stuff… all useless… weighing you down.. Finally going to throw it all away. House a mess. The house always seems a mess! I can’t think when the house is a mess. I clean it. I still can’t think.

Bake sale at church. Pastor sent a reminder to help. Proceeds go to a battered woman’s shelter. Too tired to bake. But I have all the ingredients and the cause is so worthy. Nothing worse than being beaten by your husband or boyfriend or anyone for that matter. A life of fear.

Started the cookies. The kitchen a mess though. The kitchen always seems a mess! Who the hell lives here! There were dandelion greens soaking in the sink. A cutting board with one big mushroom that didn’t make it into the sauce pan, a lot of chopped up garlic sitting there for when I get around to sauteing the greens… I soaked them in three changes of water and they still seem dirty….nothing worse than food with sand in it. I remember a holiday dinner where a cook, very proud of his culinary skills, made a mushroom sauce that was full of sand and grit. I couldn’t eat it, though it was full of expensive exotic mushrooms.

No time to clean the kitchen so made the cookies by pushing the mess to the side of the counter. The only thing I did that was efficient was take out the butter last night so it was soft. But my house is so cold it was still a little firm. I hate baking or cooking when the kitchen is a mess. I think somehow it shows in the final product… you can taste the mess. Oh well.

Flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt (salt makes a cookie extra delicious,tempering whatever sugar, sweet ingredients there are),dried Montmorency cherries (so expensive, but worth it), dried apricots,pecans.
Bittersweet chocolate. Two eggs. Light brown sugar and plain sugar. I always use less sugar.

Forgot what a mess cutting chocolate with a knife is, especially dull knife. Need to sharpen knives! I used to break apart the chocolate with fingers– but that gets hard and my fingers feel like they will crack. I found a big cleaver still sharp. Chocolate powder over everything! Mix it all up. Forget how heavy this cookie dough is. Also, the counters in my house too high for me; my back hurts when I stir. The dough which is already very stiff, is so full of chocolate chunks, thick apricots, cherries and pecans. It’s like mixing a bucket of concrete with a teaspoon.

I try to mix the batter with a big wooden spoon and still too hard,then try another, then two others, then three, then I just use some old fashioned silver soup spoons from Germany. Spoons all over the counters. The dough still not stirred enough, the cherries and apricots all in big clumps in the dough, the chocolate not evenly distributed… my back is killing me. Finally I hop on the kitchen stool and kneel over the bowl to stir it up feeling like the witches in “Hamlet” over their cauldrons. Except they were neater.

Finally done mixing but the dough is so stiff it’s hard to get it on the measuring spoon and onto the cookie sheets. Recipe said use heaping tablespoons of batter…. the measuring spoons are too little and too deep. I use two soup spoons, one to scoop it up and one to scrape it off and onto the cookie sheet. Some cookies are too small, some are too big, I take pieces of cookie dough off with my hands (they are clean!) and reform the cookies.

J is picking them up in an hour or so– they still have to bake, then cool in sheets on racks, then cool on rack… then box them, label them..

I should not have had those two glasses of wine at lunch…and I’m listening to Leonard Cohen sing “Everybody Knows”… it’s distracting me from task. Actually I have been listening to him all week… he’s addictive and the words permanently etched into my brain.. “..everybody knows the dice is loaded, everybody rolls with their fingers crossed, everybody knows that the war is over, everybody knows that the good guys lost… Everybody knows…… everybody knows that you love me baby, give or take a few…..and. . you were so discreet…. everybody knows…but there were so many people that you had to meet…. without your clothes…. everybody knows……”

Cookies finally out of oven. Didn’t burn them. The house smells like heaven… Cookies cooling.. One fell onto the floor, I picked it up and ate it hot. Kitchen a mess again, dirty bowls, dirty spoons, sugar on the counter, sugar on the floor, baking pans and spatulas sitting on the chairs and garbage can. That’s what happens when you’re in a hurry and not organized.

Head full of Leonard Cohen and bad news on the radio, back hurts, tired, that awful Holiday brain turmoil mess everyone gets in this time of year
is setting in.. The problem is on top of the holiday business, there are always end of the year doctor and dentist appt. insurance and mortgage and tax reviews…cleaning up garden, cleaning up the house, cleaning the garage, checking the furnace, the chimneys, the gutters…

Phone rings, cookies not done yet and I answer.

God sent an angel! D on phone saying my name in his clear melodic tenor. Laughing when I tell him I am knee deep in cookies and messes. An unlikely friendship. He brilliant, funny, gorgeous, happy, smiling, talented, creative, … has one of those faces that lights up a room, a cliché yes, but his really lights up the room, because he is also a good person, with a good heart, and he works very very hard (something I should learn to do). He makes me laugh always. I feel like I am ten years old blowing bubbles with my friends in the backyard.

My back is killing me. The kitchen not quite as messy, sugar still on floor dishes almost done, a few cookies left for me as a present to myself. Oh these cookies! The tart cherries smelling of late summer in the garden, the apricots suave and soft, faintly perfumed, the bittersweet chocolate slightly melted, pecans smelling of Georgia, reminding me of Truman Capote’s baking fruitcakes story…. what was the name of it, Geraldine Page was in the TV version…. And the salt, the salt of the earth tempering them to give them a slightly savory bread like quality….

Think to myself what these cookies are going for. To help women. Women in need, who are battered and scared and damaged physically and mentally, many with small children.

Here I am in a home filled with cookie smells, no one bad here to hurt me and I just spoke to an angel.

Thank you God.

It snowed last night. Jane said it would snow but I didn’t pay attention, I was fussing with putting out the cake and getting ready for service. Then woke this morning and white all over. Thin layer but a fine dusting, enough to make the evergreens beautiful and give everything that dreamlike quality. But it’s so early for snow! Made me shudder and dread tomorrow morning and freezing all the way to the bus stop.

Felt cold and tired and listless again. Baked an enormous chocolate layer cake for church yesterday. Chocolate with vanilla essence and coffee flavors. Thick, creamy, mocha buttercream frosting. It cut beautifully and was layered perfectly with even rows of cake and frosting. A deep cocoa flavor, slightly powdery yet moist. Everyone loved it and I was so glad. I love baking for people who enjoy it. It makes all the work worthwhile.

But the kitchen was a mess. I managed to wash the floor, splattered with frosting and dusted with powdered sugar and flour. The counter and sink full of dirty bowls and spatulas, spoons and knives and a pot that held the melted chocolate now hardened, the spoons and knives stuck into it. I put it in the fridge so the ants wouldn’t get it. I still see an ant from time to time! No matter how organized and neat I try to be the kitchen is always a mess after baking.

Then I fried some chicken when I came home. Stomach queasy after just eating that cake for dinner after church service. We always have sweets after service and then everyone goes home starving in a near coma from the sugar and coffee….. The chicken grease had splattered all over the stove and the floor around the stove.

I read that you can fry chicken and actually cover the pan while frying– then it cooks all the way through and you don’t have crispy outside and raw inside. I tried it and it worked. Though I didn’t cover it until more than half way into the frying and the floors already splattered with grease. You cover the frying chicken for a few minutes and then uncover it at the end to get it crispy again.

Looked outside. The garden a mess. Falling snow covering all the things I need to put away. The terra-cotta pots. The urns. The turquoise garden hose, coiled like a big snake near the garage. I didn’t rake all the leaves. I didn’t even put the hanging pots in garage. God!

This happened last year too, but then it snowed in October. You always have to do everything on time, just like mom always said. Do it, do it early. I didn’t even shut off the outside water yet. Last year the faucet froze shut and I worried all winter that I would have major leaking, but miraculously didn’t. I couldn’t get the faucets to budge until this spring. I suppose I could have called some big hulking overpriced handyman and he could have helped…. at least to shut the water off….

My gardener never called back with the estimate for fall cleanup. Darn him. He does this every year, than calls late and the estimate is sky-high and I pay him because I can’t stand the mess, the untidiness of it all. When I do the math he ends up charging me way over $100/hour for labor. I once told him that he charges more than a lawyer and he just stared vacantly into space… he knows I need him more than a lawyer…

Looked out and wondered about the birds. Where are they? Yesterday, which was also a cold day, I went out several times and put water in the bird bath. Immediately a bird flew towards it and drank. Then another and another, and a cardinal flew in and just sat in the cold water for a while. The whole top of the bird bath was a chunk of ice but it loosened and I tossed it aside and filled it with fresh water. More birds came. Then they disappeared suddenly from the face of the earth. They do that, just vanish suddenly.

Today I read that birds do get water from snow. It doesn’t kill them but it is not good for them because it takes too much energy for them to drink cold water. They need to conserve their energy to stay warm.

I also read that if you have water in the bird bath the birds might splash around in there, or take a bath, and then if it is a very cold day their feathers will freeze! The feathers need to be pliable because fluffing them out keeps them warm. You can put big rocks in the bird bath to prevent them from bathing. Then of course you can help birds by feeding them. During snowy winters if there’s too much snow, they can’t get at the seeds and things still in the ground. So you need feeders also and you need to keep putting out the food as they start to expect it. Or, you can clear a path in a garden and create a shelter and toss out the seeds in the clearing. They also like peanut butter, the fat is good for them. Then bird shelters….God, all these bird things to worry about… I had no idea, I thought God made them so they could fend for themselves ……

Then of course, there’s that neighbor’s big fat black and white cat that roams around everyone’s garden. I read that cats kill millions of songbirds each year…. millions? Keep your cat in! Of course they kill the mice that could get into your basement… that cat chased a mouse into my basement last year. Scared it half to death and it ran into the crack in the tornado shelter door…. For fifteen years I never had a mouse in there…. then it disappeared… it scared me half to death when I saw it scurrying around in there… then I scared it half to death when I ran around screaming at it to leave….

I opened the front shutter in the dining room window, it looks right into a big fat yew in front of the house (actually covering some of the windows so the house is darker inside)… there they were… the birds. Small sparrows just sitting there like I sit in my living room, some fluffed up and silent like little buddhas, another one moving its head up and down and side to side with that weird little jerking movement birds have. What are they looking at? Do they think? It’s like a bird condominium outside my window. The yews are wide and have many branches with thick growth so it provides a nice shelter for the birds. Last year on a very cold and snowy day I saw dozens of them in the yews.

A lot of people cut down these yews, that were planted years ago in front of small Cape Cods and bungalows like mine. I can’t bring myself to do it. The birds love them and sometimes they sing in there and twitter away like children, and when I walk up to the front door it fills me with joy. Sometimes during my winter walks I pass yews or other evergreens on a busy street or residential area, and the whole shrub is literally throbbing with birdsong. A magical moment when you pass.

Went to tackle the dishes, and the greasy frying pan from the chicken. Hungry, not that much food in the house. Didn’t feel like oatmeal. Wanted some bacon, eggs, potatoes, pancakes and waffles and fried onions. I always have the appetite of a lumberjack! I noticed that parts of the frying pan were covered with tiny, almost burnt, crispy little pieces of chicken. I scrapped one off with my finger and ate it. God… it was unbelievably delicious. I felt ashamed doing that for some reason,  but then scraped off one more and ate it, then another and another. The pan was full of these crispy nubs and they were more and more stuck in the pan and I furiously scraped them off and ate them like a starving person. Salt, fat, caramelized, chickeny tasting. Disgusting, but I couldn’t stop eating them and was hovering over the pan like a maniac.  I closed the blind in case my neighbors could see.  It was all I could do to stop licking the entire pan.   Enough already, just wash the pan!

Fat, I too need this fat like the birds need the peanut butter or oils from seeds and nuts. I too am like a bird or a bear hovering here in my cold kitchen getting ready for the great freeze and snow and winds.

Washing the dishes finally glad of the hot water. If you feel cold, wash the dishes! Watching the garden from the kitchen window transforming from the falling snow, softening and growing with delicate white flowers. The sudden quiet it brings when you watch the flakes falling from the million mile high sky. The sadness sometimes when you look out and it’s all gray and cold and barren.

But, look closely, and the falling flakes are dancing, twirling, falling so lightly, so gently, covering finally all the mess that can wait until spring.