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Our water stopped coming again so blase hiked up the line to search for a leak and came back with a heap of huge chantrelles. We put them aside and spent the rest of the day fantasizing about the dinner they would become in just nine hours. Mushroom barley soup with pecorino and carmelized onions OR sauteed chants with garlic, wine, and butter OR enmeshed in sun dried tomatoes and ziti tubes… the fantasies were endless and titillating. It crossed my mind as I perversely peeped at the mushrooms throughout the day that their caps were excessively bumpy and their gills didn’t fade away at their bases as much as I thought they should….but several people assured us that false chantrelles don’t grow out here and my snowballing dinner fantasies drowned out my lingering doubts.
Our friend Jamie came by just before mushroom cleaning time to get a little enraged with me by watching the republican presidential candidate debates. We would then head to dance class to plie and releve our angst away. (Did you know there is a pose in ballet called “attitude“? It’s my favorite) Sometime in the midst of Mitt Romney’s immigrant bashing and Ossian’s strawberry smoothie demands, Jamie glanced at our clutch of wild mushrooms and asked, “are those your chantrelles?”. “Yes”, I replied, mouth wet with anticipation. “Yeah.. those are false chantrelles”, she said. I looked at them more closely… with their textured funnel caps and unfading gills… of course they weren’t chantrelles! And that was it. Thanks to the republican party, Jamie came and saved our lives with a simple string of words. Blase and I nearly killed ourselves – because we were blinded by our rampant addiction to that sexy little wild orange mushroom.
It seems we aren’t the only ones risking life for the taste of a savory fungus. In fact, “the wild mushroom business has also spawned violence. Some wild mushrooms sell for $100 or more a pound, Gecan says, and armed robberies are occurring in the Pacific Northwest, where the combination of heavy-covered forests and moist environment yields a plentiful crop…”(Wild Mushroom Safety). Who knew?!
But would it have been our last supper?? Likely not..but I’ve yet to find definitive information on what does happen to humans who eat Hygrophoropsis aurantiaca. Some say it is just terrible tasting and others insist that it is a highly toxic species. Either way, it’s pasta senza funghi for us.
It’s been 9 days since we said goodbye to Faucet, the world’s longest shepherd.
When we told Ossian that he wasn’t coming home because he was dead, she got really mad and could only growl and stomp her feet. After her wordless rage subsided, she looked up at us and said, “but we love him!”
Two days later, she asked, “but mommy, where is faucet still?” I explained again that he wasn’t alive anymore and she said again, “but we love him!”
Several days passed without mention of Faucet by Ossian again – until yesterday. We were sitting in the plasticine dining area of the Ukiah Marriot Hotel, quietly eating our free continental breakfasts of fruit loops and bear claws when Ossian announced, “my dog isn’t alive anymore.. he went back with the wild things”.
Happy Turkey Day.
Started the day with Sacramento’s “Run to Feed the Hungry” – a hearty fundraiser that drew 50,000 people and raised over $400,000 for their food bank and family services’ programs. All I had to do was show up, accept the pledges of many generous people, and run 10km with my mom – a hard-core, race enthusiast runner. Races are such fun ways to see a new place. The city is yours.. roads are shut down, the routes are flanked with cheering bystanders, and – if you’re lucky – the run is peppered with live music and little snacks. Winding through neighborhoods as part of a mass movement of human energy is an exhilarating experience every time. I talk like I am such a veteran racer. Don’t fall for it.
In 1998, I ran my first “race” with my friend Kim. It was the annual Jingle Bell run and it was exciting and satisfying despite it’s shortness – only 5 k.
My mom sweet talked me into chasing her through my first marathon in 2000. We did the Mohawk Marathon in New York and after the post-run week of black toes, crawling up stairs, and chaffed leg recovery, I vowed never to do another marathon again. I didn’t run for months after that race.
My third race was with Blase in 2001. We went to a party until about midnight and then caught a ferry and drove to the Olympic Peninsula. At 3 am, we finally set up our tent and climbed into to rest before our 9 am Rhody Run in Port Townsend. Largely untrained, we slogged through and happily gulped the free beer at the end. Other runners also partook of the beer stops along the way but we ran past in hopes of actually finishing the 10 k run.
Just before getting pregnant with Nola, I ran the Vancouver half-marathon and saw the brilliance of the half-marathon: a goal to push toward without the torment of it’s 26.4 mile cousin, the body-hammering marathon. The half-marathon was actually fun and pleasant.
Having said that, I am now open to doing another marathon… a flat, slow one.
After this morning’s run, we were rewarded with long, hot showers followed by a day of strenuous eating, drinking, and yapping. A fully enjoyable series of events that took place at my step-brother’s lovely house in Cameron Park.
we are drowning our grief in good food over here… not a bad coping technique when you live in the land of plenty.
Turns out we have luscious chantrelle mushrooms that have snuck up in the moist and mossy coves of our back yard. After much anxious research with web sources and real live expert humans to confirm that these little treats will thrill us rather than kill us, we sliced them up and licked our chops. First we had them sliced and sauteed in butter, garlic, salt, and pepper and then just tickled them with finely grated pecorino romano. The drool that is escaping my lips as I write this might endanger this computer so I will move on…. but then we had them chopped and sauteed in oil with some chilies and then hugged in a warm corn tortilla topped with oaxaca mama salsa, avocado, and goat cheese… gheez. SO GOOD.
Then, with the 5 gallons of apple juice we recently pressed, I began brewing hard cider. It doesn’t look to pretty now ( as you can see in the photo), but hopefully it will blossom into a delicious, grown-up drink. I say hopefully, because after rampaging into the brewing project with zero understanding of the process, I realize that I’ve made some significant errors. I’ve consulted with the experts, our friends Josie Brown and Justin Horner – both of whom have confirmed that I have, in fact, made some errors. Justin did inform this kuntrywife that what the mixture is doing now is fermenting. Seems like a no brainer, right? It was news to me. So, “if it smells terrible“, said Dr. Horner, “like sulfur or something, don’t drink it.” This is the kind of practical information I need since I seem incapable of finding time to actually read beyond the ingredient list. I recognize that brewing is a science and an art and that what I’m doing is a bit spazzy and fisher-price. But what if it does work????
Did you know that making pasta noodles is super easy and a really fun thing to do with squirmy toddler? Just found that out myself. Trust me, it’s really easy, and just do it:
2 cups flour
2 eggs
2 teaspoons olive oil or water
1/4 teaspoon salt
Before you read further or toss in the towel, just know that all these bullet points say is: mix ingredients together, knead the dough, roll it, cut it, cook it. I swear it only took Osh and I about 35 minutes from beginning to end – this was 16 minutes longer than it could have taken if she’d been willing to stop kneading the dough a little sooner.
- just make a heap with the flour and scoot a little crater our of the top
- put the eggs, oil, and salt in the crater then break the yolks with a fork
- begin pulling in the flour from the sides of the mound
- bring in as much as you can and then knead the dough.
- get it “silky but not sticky… 3-4 minutes” ( if your toddler insists on kneading for 20 minutes, don’t sweat it, turns out that it still works)
- put the dough in a plastic bag for a 10 ish minutes to rest and soften – meanwhile, you can get out a clean pillow case and a rolling pin and any cookie cutters your toddler desires
- break the dough into a few or four pieces, roll into a ball and then flatten
- begin rolling – roll until thin
- cut into noodley strips with a knife or let your toddler go wild with shapes – Ossian chose the star cutter
- then lay the cut pieces on a clean pillow case to dry – takes just a few minutes
- boil up some water and toss your new noodle friends in
- they cook fast so maybe in 4 ish minutes, check them
they are so good, you can just eat them with olive oil and shredded cheese – or if you must, add some frozen peas during the last minute of noodle boiling and squeeze a clove or two of garlic over the whole mess (this is yet another recipe taken from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone and debased by me)
Want to liven them up? Add some chopped rosemary, chili flakes, or pepper to the dough
Then, there was last night’s instant, homemade, irresistible chocolate loaf cake…. should I talk about it or hold off for another post? It is dangerously fast and easy…I’m not kidding.
This is excruciating. I even miss the things that annoyed me about Faucet….nails slipping and scritching on the floor as I was trying to put children to sleep, random barking in the middle of the night, looming around meals, malodorous breath, and muddy paws. He wasn’t curled up outside our bedroom doorway this morning making it hazardous to step over and around him to descend the stairs with arms full of baby. He isn’t here now, crowding my feet with his dense, furry body as I write.
When I think about him, there is a deep, internal wail that shudders through me from a bottomless chasm. After the wail, there is just an achy, empty sadness left in it’s wake. Grief…I haven’t tangled with it in a while. I do remember that it gets quieter with time.
I hope you all will indulge in a ceremonial hamburger, peanut butter cookie, or stick of butter today to celebrate the life of a long, long shepherd who dedicated his time on earth to invasive sniffing, sideways galloping, nervous eating, laborious licking, and unconditional loving.
have you ever nursed a squawking baby while stroking a dying dog? That’s one of the things I did today. Nola and I drove to town with our beloved shepherd, Faucet Lulu Alexander Mumu Briar-Bonpane, and held him while he was put to “sleep”. It’s not really sleep – as we all know.
Ossian doesn’t know yet. She just knows that mommy and daddy were sobbing and then Faucet went in the car with me to go to the doggie doctor…. dot, dot, dot. We haven’t explained that he isn’t alive anymore. We haven’t even grasped it ourselves.
I keep expecting him to come lay noisily at my feet, flip his food dishes, chase our reluctant cat, sigh deeply, or curl up on the blanket he knows is for the baby -not for him. We went to the beach tonight and I smiled with anticipation of Faucet running sideways with joy to be running free and fast in and out of the surf with driftwood in his mouth. But he wasn’t there.
One of us is gone. Where is my dog? Even though I participated in the graphic reality of his peacefully gradual death today, it is still largely unreal. He isn’t cleaning up the food I spilled on the wood floor or greeting us exuberantly at the door or making too much noise when the kids are sleeping. He isn’t harrassing Waylon or barking at the wind or twitching with doggie dreams. I miss him.
What will we tell Ossian? she loves that dog like crazy. He’s her dog.
I only hope he is galloping through fields of hamburger, cheese puffs, and chasable sticks. I hope he’s frolicking with kitty, jennie dog, alby, cassie, debbie, rugis, toomie, mergus, lea, sunshine, penelope, legs, jane, tupperperchert, o, big bird, gosee, jitzen, boots, baldwin, lucifer, marta, and easter…just to name a few of the esteemed pets in our lives who have gone before him.
Faucet was so bursting with energy – to see him simply lifeless and terminally still was, and is, unfathomable.
he rests now. we will love him always. Good boy, fossie, good boy.
Enrollment at the high school dropped from 6 to 3 kids this week. That makes for a one to one teacher to student ratio…. it’s got to be the best in the nation. I now have the lightest caseload of any counselor in the entire world. It’s sad for the school since it operates like a little family and now half the members are gone.
On an unrelated note, I have been AWOL from the Bookmobile for some time now. Ever since Ossian misplaced the sing along book we checked out a season ago. I went to return the part of the sing along kit that we did find and our Bookmobile Guy – who knows all our literary transgressions – pulled it out of the return bin that sits conspicuously at his feet and suggested that I should go home and “look for it”. Doesn’t he know that I’ve already done that? The half full ziploc bag was the outcome of exactly the activity he was now suggesting. Kuntrywife couldn’t face disappointing Bookmobile Guy who certainly would not lead a life that allowed for book loss… so I said, ” oh, yeah.. I guess I’ll look” and accepted the rejected return he was handing to me amidst an unblinking stare. I respect the Bookmobile Guy. I love the Bookmobile. One time last winter, I waited outside the store in a storm hoping the Bookmobile would make it despite a blizzard on the Wildcat. He never came… I forgave him and was just grateful my beloved Bookmobile was safe and warm somewhere. It’s so orderly and delicious with choices – not infinite choices due to the mobile nature of the structure – that feel indulgent. I walk in and feel like I’m in a spa.. “I can have any of this for a month”, I think with wonder every time. Except for lately, since I’ve been AWOL. I miss the Bookmobile deeply. I think it’s time to face the quiet disgust I’m sure to meet with when I confess my failure to the Bookmobile Guy.
Just had a little earthquake. It’s been a while since I’ve had a good evening shake. This one was brief but felt a bit stronger than it’s reported 4.1 magnitude. In those humblings moments when the earth and house shake in and around me, I freeze with a flood of conflicting instincts. Do I cover Nola or whisk her with me in to cover sleeping Ossian. Do I whisk them both downstairs to find Blase or just hold still and hope for the best. When they start, you never know how long or raucous the ride will be… how freaked out to get and survivalist to go. Invariably, the shaking stops before I’ve finished reviewing my options. Everyone says that if it’s the BIG one, you won’t be able to do any of that stuff anyway.
Speaking of survival instincts, we’re in our 7th day without hot water. And, in an unrelated water event, our washing machine flooded the floor a week ago and is on sabbatical. Since none of the hoses are leaking, we’ve turned to our beloved Sears repair team. They, however, are somewhat less than enthusiastic about trekking out to Petrolia to fulfill our warranty and liberate us from mountain ranges of soiled clothing, diapers, and dog towels. Obviously, the Sears repair person hasn’t driven an hour and a half with two kids to wash 9 hefty bags of filthy laundry – as I now have. Ignorance is bliss. Hopefully, they’ll make it our here next week.
What is the deal with laundry and kids? They aren’t very big people and it’s not like they are working in the mines or anything – so what’s with the volume and intensity of the dirty laundry? We do an army of laundry many days of the week… where does it come from? It feels too american for my own comfort.
Tomorrow I am doing a career exploration group with the kids at the high school as part of my counseling gig, so I decided it was important to model good employment skills by showering before going to work. This is only noteworthy due to the aforementioned waterlessness in our household and the fact that I haven’t showered for a week. My dirtyness really is harder on other people than it is on me.
I was open to taking a cold shower but there isn’t enough pressure to get the shower to work at all, either. Come to think of it, the toilets aren’t flushing and the sink just trickles…thus, the heap of crusty dishes. So, all told, it’s a bit of a mess around here. Anyway, back to my hygiene mandate. I resorted to a lovely, bare essentials rinse via a pot of water boiled on the stove. It reminded me of “toilettas” which is what my mom fondly called our version of a shower on the boat when I was a kid. We spent several months sailing each year when I was growing up. Though we did hit the coin operated marina showers from time to time, the onboard “toiletta” was our mainstay. It involved boiling water in a teapot on the kerosine stove, mixing it with cold water pumped by hand from the tank and pouring it on yourself with a little cup while standing in a dishpan in the galley. In warmer weather, we had the luxury of an above deck sun shower. This allowed for more of a shower-like experience from a plastic, water filled bladder – a hydro bagpipe of sorts – that we left on the deck to sun all day before hoisting it up in the rigging so we could stand beneath it, soap in hand. The downside of the sun shower was the lack of privacy… when we were anchored in the middle of nowhere with no other boats, it was not an issue. But in a busy anchorage, it made for a bit of a show. My favorite bathing method while sailing was the salt swim. We had a floating bottle of salt water soap which we’d take with us as we dove from the deck into the sometimes frigid waters. In rare warm waters like those of desolation sound, this was heaven.
My writing of this post was interrupted by the squawk of an awoken baby… so I ran upstairs to quiet the little one in hopes that she wouldn’t wake the bigger little one. Mission accomplished. The water, however, has taken a turn for the worse. Our trickle has gone dry. We are waterless but not humorless. I can only hope that our highly anticipated and very loved houseguests-to-be this weekend can find it all amusing, too. Justin, Amy, and Violet – bring your own water, it’ll be a real weekend in the kuntry.
Look at this photo.
The sign reads, ” No Adults Allowed Unless Accompamied By Children.” It’s a sideways twist on the usual, “no children allowed without adult supervision.”
Somehow, I’d never noticed this placard at schools and playgrounds before. During our recent trip to San Francisco, it caught my eye. My first response was demoralized horror. I read the sign, and the penal code 653g that it cited, to be a deterrent to child molesters. My horror was quickly tempered by appreciation for the attention to child victimization that this legislation represented.
It never dawned on me that penal code 653g was not intended just for would-be child molestors until a explored it a bit. Perhaps my lens is skewed because I have spent so many years working with abused children, including two years as an evaluator and therapist for sexually abused kids. Scratch that, of course my lens is skewed – to put it lightly. The abuses against children that I’ve seen and heard over the years are challenging to balance with my desire to raise my kids without excessive fear. The line between proactive prevention and paranoia can be tenuous and is an elusive one to navigate.
Conservatively, one in three girls and one in four boys are sexually abused in childhood. In the vast majority of cases, the offender is a friend of the family, trusted adult, or relative. We can’t evaporate this unfortunate fact but we can make preventive choices as parents while teaching our kids about safe adults, how to handle uncomfortable or innappropriate behavior by others, what parts of their bodies are private, and who to tell if something is going on. When do we start this?
I recently began this conversation with Ossian, now 2 1/2. Ideally, it’s just information and discussion…like any other important thing we talk about… like how to deal with fear of the older kids at school, what to do when you’re mad, how to tell someone when you don’t like how treating you, what to do when you want the same toy someone else is using, etc. Talking about these things with as little emotional charge as possible seems to help. Otherwise, if I’m stressed out, upset, or worried, Ossian picks up on that and it teaches her something I hadn’t intended. I don’t want to teach fear or overwhelm… I’d rather teach caution, communication, safety, courage, and healthy, prosocial behaviors.
Anyway, good ol’ penal code 653g isn’t just for child molesters after all. It’s widely used as anti-gang measure by schools. I also found some discussion of its use by schools to discourage and punish political demonstrations by students on school grounds. Though it is used to reign in molesters, that’s not it’s only flavor.
The sign next to PC 653g in the photo is arguably an easier topic to grapple with as a parent, just “don’t feed the pigeons – please.” Have you talked to your kids about the dangers of playground pigeons today???
Our friends just got a brand new tractor. It’s exciting for everyone. Just to have a good enough reason to buy a burly orange tractor is exciting enough but to actually get one, that’s icing on the cake. This tractor has a long list of work to do – tear out the scotchbroom, move a concrete filled garbage can, till the garden, move more heavy stuff, tear out other stuff, etc. Modern tractors apparently have beverage holders and reclining seats with armrests. Pretty sweet… I remember my granfather’s old John Deere. I loved riding on that tractor. It was noisy, bumpy, rugged, and raw – but with that tractory cuteness.
life on the lost coast 
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