perspective
I already know I'm not going to get much sleep tonight. But that doesn't really seem to matter, since I am well fed and relaxed.
I had forgotten how good this feels.
I'm on a bit of a mission to reclaim my weekends. I have two whole days every week that are purely mine... they don't belong to my employer, they don't belong to the government, they are purely and simply mine. I realized the difference in my mental health between when I live week to week as opposed to weekend to weekend is huge. So this weekend, after a bit of an idiotic debacle involving me leaving my credit cards and chequebook at home, I was off to Vermont to take in the fall colours.
My friend Christine and I used to teach sailing together, almost ten years ago (man, time flies). We couldn't really be any more different (me: corporate ladder-climber, her: lives in a van down by the river), but she is a tie to an important part of my life and my identity. Every time I see her we just slide back into the same familiar, comfortable pattern, and even though everything changes, nothing does.
Christine and her old man bought a puppy last year. Her name is Annie. She's a red tick coon hound. She's a pretty rockin dog. I have a tendency, which must be extremely annoying, whenever I meet a dog for the first time to say "hi! Yes, you are a dog! You are! You are a dog!" I don't know why. At least I don't do it in a woodgie-doodgie voice. Anyway, Annie's pretty great; we all made the typical mistake of thinking it's "take a load off, Annie," but turns out it's Fannie who's supposed to be taking the load off. Who knew. But she's Annie after six-gun Annie Oakley. And if you ain't never seen no sharp-shootin dog, you ain't seen nothin'.
I like Christine's old man. He's funny. She was wondering why everyone thinks she looks Sweedish ("is it because I'm tall and blonde?"). His response was, "the only way you could look more Sweedish is if you were wearing a Viking helmet." I don't know if that makes any sense. But it's funny.
It was a good food weekend for me; on Friday I had a gourd (squash, I think) stuffed with gorgonzola cheese, walnuts, and apples. It was amazing. Saturday, we packed up Annie and headed off to pick apples. I haven't been apple picking since I was a kid, and now I wonder what the hell it is I thought I was too cool for. I am now the proud owner of half a bushel of apples. Well, it was half a bushel until I made some badass mamma-jamma applesauce, which I will be eating for lunch tomorrow.
It is a little bit mind-blowing, if you take a step back, to walk around an apple orchard. The apples fall out of the trees and line the ground under them, hundreds of apples, but people still pick them out of the trees. Partially because it's fun. Personally, I didn't pick any apples off the ground after I saw Annie take a piss on a particularly shiny pile. But when you look at the number of people that are starving in this world, and then we're getting to choose between the apples on the tree and the apples on the ground... it makes me sad, and it makes me grateful.
There is a deal at this particular orchard that you can bring a pickup truck and fill the bed with "drops" for $50. Christine immediately started plotting how she could a) get a pickup truck and b) get a cauldron. I may be a bit of an engineer here, but the amount of coring and chopping you'd have to do to turn an entire flatbed full of apples into applesauce is pretty rediculous. But that's what I love about Christine; she thinks it's a perfectly normal thing to do to spend $50 to get, oh, around 2000 apples, and then even more normal to make a cauldron full of applesauce. I promised her that if she got her act together to do this, I'd come chop.
Some of the apples that fell on the ground had gotten really rotten. I discovered that you can wing said rotten apples at other people, and they make a satisfying thwack noise, and leave a little wet spot on their back. It's too bad I have no aim when I throw things. There are no pictures on my flickr set from this weekend (*plug!*) of the apple fight, because I was busy throwing apples. (That's a lie, I was busy getting hit by them.)
So, all this brings me to a question;
What's the last thing you'd expect to find in the middle of an apple orchard in Vermont?
A Japanese drum troupe, perhaps?
Well, you'd be wrong. Because there were not only one, but three Japanese drum troupes hanging out in this orchard. Extremely unexpected and extremely cool. I think I need to join said troupes and will be searching out my local equivalent.
I spent Saturday night in Christine's trailer (yup, she lives in a trailer. I will have to devote a whole entry to her sometime; it's worth it.), which was cold as shit, especially because it snowed in Vermont last night. Yes, snow. An unheated trailer with no running water and no heat is a bit chilly when it's below freezing. But you know what? I feel more relaxed after freezing all my extremities off down there than I would if I had stayed here.
I drove back in the rain, through the firy fall colours this morning, and went on a shopping run. I do have to dress respectably at this job, and I barely made it through last week, so clothes-buying was definately in order. Not my activity of choice, but a necessary evil, I suppose. I felt like I'd tortured myself thoroughly enough, and rewarded my efforts with dinner. Inspired by our success with the applesauce-makin' on Saturday night, I decided to wage war on a pumpkin. I've never cooked raw pumpkin, and now I know why people don't do that very much; a raw pumpkin is a bitch to cook. Hacking off the hard outside without destroying the inner "meaty" part is tough. But I made a pretty money pumpkin curry, and have enough pulp left over to make two pumpkin pies (which I will do tomorrow). The amazing part is, for all this pumpkin-y goodness, I only paid $1.99. I do feel like I deprived some kid of a good carving pumpkin, but I'm going to have to learn to live with the guilt. I also made some more applesauce (yes, this is the theme of the week), and my roommate and I decided on a whim to mull some wine and watch a movie. So I'm relaxing here, feeling very civilized, and also knowing that I'm only going to get about five hours of sleep if I don't shut up and get to bed.
But, my head's right. And that feels good.
I had forgotten how good this feels.
I'm on a bit of a mission to reclaim my weekends. I have two whole days every week that are purely mine... they don't belong to my employer, they don't belong to the government, they are purely and simply mine. I realized the difference in my mental health between when I live week to week as opposed to weekend to weekend is huge. So this weekend, after a bit of an idiotic debacle involving me leaving my credit cards and chequebook at home, I was off to Vermont to take in the fall colours.
My friend Christine and I used to teach sailing together, almost ten years ago (man, time flies). We couldn't really be any more different (me: corporate ladder-climber, her: lives in a van down by the river), but she is a tie to an important part of my life and my identity. Every time I see her we just slide back into the same familiar, comfortable pattern, and even though everything changes, nothing does.
Christine and her old man bought a puppy last year. Her name is Annie. She's a red tick coon hound. She's a pretty rockin dog. I have a tendency, which must be extremely annoying, whenever I meet a dog for the first time to say "hi! Yes, you are a dog! You are! You are a dog!" I don't know why. At least I don't do it in a woodgie-doodgie voice. Anyway, Annie's pretty great; we all made the typical mistake of thinking it's "take a load off, Annie," but turns out it's Fannie who's supposed to be taking the load off. Who knew. But she's Annie after six-gun Annie Oakley. And if you ain't never seen no sharp-shootin dog, you ain't seen nothin'.
I like Christine's old man. He's funny. She was wondering why everyone thinks she looks Sweedish ("is it because I'm tall and blonde?"). His response was, "the only way you could look more Sweedish is if you were wearing a Viking helmet." I don't know if that makes any sense. But it's funny.
It was a good food weekend for me; on Friday I had a gourd (squash, I think) stuffed with gorgonzola cheese, walnuts, and apples. It was amazing. Saturday, we packed up Annie and headed off to pick apples. I haven't been apple picking since I was a kid, and now I wonder what the hell it is I thought I was too cool for. I am now the proud owner of half a bushel of apples. Well, it was half a bushel until I made some badass mamma-jamma applesauce, which I will be eating for lunch tomorrow.
It is a little bit mind-blowing, if you take a step back, to walk around an apple orchard. The apples fall out of the trees and line the ground under them, hundreds of apples, but people still pick them out of the trees. Partially because it's fun. Personally, I didn't pick any apples off the ground after I saw Annie take a piss on a particularly shiny pile. But when you look at the number of people that are starving in this world, and then we're getting to choose between the apples on the tree and the apples on the ground... it makes me sad, and it makes me grateful.
There is a deal at this particular orchard that you can bring a pickup truck and fill the bed with "drops" for $50. Christine immediately started plotting how she could a) get a pickup truck and b) get a cauldron. I may be a bit of an engineer here, but the amount of coring and chopping you'd have to do to turn an entire flatbed full of apples into applesauce is pretty rediculous. But that's what I love about Christine; she thinks it's a perfectly normal thing to do to spend $50 to get, oh, around 2000 apples, and then even more normal to make a cauldron full of applesauce. I promised her that if she got her act together to do this, I'd come chop.
Some of the apples that fell on the ground had gotten really rotten. I discovered that you can wing said rotten apples at other people, and they make a satisfying thwack noise, and leave a little wet spot on their back. It's too bad I have no aim when I throw things. There are no pictures on my flickr set from this weekend (*plug!*) of the apple fight, because I was busy throwing apples. (That's a lie, I was busy getting hit by them.)
So, all this brings me to a question;
What's the last thing you'd expect to find in the middle of an apple orchard in Vermont?
A Japanese drum troupe, perhaps?
Well, you'd be wrong. Because there were not only one, but three Japanese drum troupes hanging out in this orchard. Extremely unexpected and extremely cool. I think I need to join said troupes and will be searching out my local equivalent.
I spent Saturday night in Christine's trailer (yup, she lives in a trailer. I will have to devote a whole entry to her sometime; it's worth it.), which was cold as shit, especially because it snowed in Vermont last night. Yes, snow. An unheated trailer with no running water and no heat is a bit chilly when it's below freezing. But you know what? I feel more relaxed after freezing all my extremities off down there than I would if I had stayed here.
I drove back in the rain, through the firy fall colours this morning, and went on a shopping run. I do have to dress respectably at this job, and I barely made it through last week, so clothes-buying was definately in order. Not my activity of choice, but a necessary evil, I suppose. I felt like I'd tortured myself thoroughly enough, and rewarded my efforts with dinner. Inspired by our success with the applesauce-makin' on Saturday night, I decided to wage war on a pumpkin. I've never cooked raw pumpkin, and now I know why people don't do that very much; a raw pumpkin is a bitch to cook. Hacking off the hard outside without destroying the inner "meaty" part is tough. But I made a pretty money pumpkin curry, and have enough pulp left over to make two pumpkin pies (which I will do tomorrow). The amazing part is, for all this pumpkin-y goodness, I only paid $1.99. I do feel like I deprived some kid of a good carving pumpkin, but I'm going to have to learn to live with the guilt. I also made some more applesauce (yes, this is the theme of the week), and my roommate and I decided on a whim to mull some wine and watch a movie. So I'm relaxing here, feeling very civilized, and also knowing that I'm only going to get about five hours of sleep if I don't shut up and get to bed.
But, my head's right. And that feels good.
*bows down at your feet* (Comment this)