Ah, the Vermont Country Store catalog. Its arrival as reassuring as a Norman Rockwell retrospective. Since 1946, the Orton Family has faithfully brought us carefully selected items we have grown up loving. Three pages in, anyone over the age of fifty is positively misty-eyed on this trip down memory lane. Continue
Author: Lisa Piel
If You Teach a Man to Knit
I didn’t know the details. I just knew his dear friend was not doing well, a man whose chemotherapy treatments made him feel cold all the time. And Richard wanted to do something about it. Continue
Bye, Bye Love
I have been cooking dinner seven nights a week for as long as I can remember. From scratch. I enjoy this. Though tested by the vegetarian limitations of my children, the no-carbs, the gluten-free, I am still happy to venture into the kitchen at 6 pm every night and start anew. I work (albeit only part-time, but five days a week) and I do not have a housekeeper, or even a cleaning lady. I have a long-suffering partner who does the dishes in exchange for meals. I go to the grocery store often, because I cook fresh food and like it to start out that way. In an average week, I will visit the organic market, the Middle Eastern one, Asian, Pakistani, the fish market, the deli, and the regular grocery store. I am in between warehouse affiliations at the moment, but soon again that will be another destination. There are at least five different kinds of mustard on the shelf, and that many flavored oils and vinegars as well. Continue
Three Kids One Dog Two Cats and A Hamster
I am sorry if I offend, but among the current fads I don’t love is the collection of vinyl stick figure decals representing one’s brood on the backside of the family tank. To me this advertising of your family census is just icky. But I dislike it mostly because I discovered last week to my dismay that Only Boys Can Be Weight-Lifters and Only Girls Can Cook.
The stick figures representing males all have legs sticking out which end in some sort of masculine footwear. The younger males wear shorts, the older trousers. The females all have little triangular skirts, to be sure we can see their gender immediately. No mistaking Ryan for Ashley, nor Shopping Mom for Barbecue Dad. Continue
Time and Tide
On Saturdays I do the wash. I’m not complaining. Two people do not accumulate a huge amount of dirty clothing. I remember doing laundry twice a day when I had babies, and then again when I had teenagers who changed their clothes five times a day, throwing each change into the hamper even if it was clean. Now it’s usually three loads: one dark, one light, one linens. A warehouse-sized box of detergent can last for six months. The laundry is off the kitchen so there are no precarious trips up and down the basement stairs, and I can work on a soup or bake bread while in earshot of the machines. A nice rhythm to my week, sweetened by the fact that I’d had two kids before enjoying the luxury of machines I did not have to share, nor fill with quarters. Always an urban girl, I did my laundry in the company of strangers and a good book. The first thing I did when I moved into our new home was put in a load of towels and leave the house to do errands… for several hours. A thrill to come home to it still in the washing machine, not a wet pile on a dirty laundromat table. Continue
Closet Case
I first did it around 1970, in Boston. My mother knew about it and was mortified.
My grandmother found out and nearly fainted. Fortunately, my father was
oblivious. Every once in a while I still do it, just for fun. I still get psyched every once in a while, before a big party or a wedding.
My first time was in Kenmore Square, in a funky loft upstairs where with a little
babysitting cash I could pretend I was in Haight-Ashbury or the Village,
not eighth grade. I was hooked. Continue
Not So Much Writing On the Wall
There has been much lament that the art of letter-writing has died, which is not really true. We are probably writing more letters to one another now than ever before. Although they are brief, with much shorthand used, they are still–in a way, letters. But they are not handwritten. In the course of a year, I now receive only a half-dozen pieces of handwritten correspondence. (For those of you who no longer remember what handwritten means, it means written by a human, with a writing implement, in their own individual unique handwriting.) Look at your mail. You’ll see that hardly anyone physically writes anything anymore. Soon the pen aisle at Staples will contain only those with built-in USB drives. A few birthday cards, a holiday card, an invitation or two, but even those are usually done by robot to look like expensive calligraphy. Most package labels are printed on computers, as are address labels. Sorry, but Comic Sans is not handwriting. Continue
Statute of Limitations
As I continue to un-paper my life, there are a few things I am holding on to
without hesitation. My little box of informals is one. I know that in many instances e-thanks are perfectly acceptable, but when I have something to say thank you for,
it goes on an elegant folding note with my name on the front. It has to be short and sweet; a few lines are all that fit. I have a guilty conscience and some baggage about this, so each note I write brings me symbolically that much closer to redemption. Continue
Nearly Naked Girls in Apartment 301
When I wrote recently about culling the recipes that were burying me alive, this provoked several interesting conversations about magazine pack-rats. It seems there are many out there, with collections ranging from American Reciprocating Steam Engines to Zoology in the Western Pampas. More and more confessions have come out since that post – a lot of people seem to have a particular issue with letting years of magazines go. It made me feel better to know it is a common affliction. Continue
Micah Micah Bo Bicah
Now that most of the bank statements and paid bills have gone to recycling heaven, I am moving on to the next collection of paper that MUST LEAVE MY HOME.
The next new pile is from five+ years of teaching ESL to a very diverse group of adults. Korean, Brazilian, Romanian, Ukrainian, Chinese – all extremely bright, funny people desperate most of all to fit in. I did not work on grammar, or rules of speech, but concentrated instead on learning colloquialisms and slang, and often just how to pronounce simple things like the names of towns. One woman lived in Waltham, but could not make her mouth cooperate when you asked her where she lived. She could not do the “TH” because it didn’t exist in her native language.
One of the funniest exercises we did involved a list of currently popular children’s names. Since one Spanish-speaking student was interviewing for nannying jobs, this was of particular interest to her. When we came to the boy’s name Cameron, she pounded her hand down on the table and asked incredulously, “Cameron?” That’s a SHRIMP! How can you name your child Shrimp?”