Pondside Thoughts...

These are a few of my favorite things

A couple of the wondrous, absolutely tickly joys of the new space:

The big patio door to the porch. This is a miracle - lets in bright light and pond breezes, connects the big deck to the kitchen, and offers lovely views of the trees. It replaces the old door that let in almost no light and offered a detailed view of the foundation of the house next door, oppressively  close, at least based on the view from that door. 

The shallow cabinets that cover the brick wall.  They are the perfect size to store all the wine glasses and all the smallish odd shaped pottery things. Lots of them.  It replaces the small cabinet over the giant old refrigerator where these things had been stored before, accessed with a step ladder,a long reach, and a fondness for dust. 

The appliances. All of them. Quiet, spacious, well-designed and -engineered. These replace, well, you know what these replace, and good riddance to the lot of it!

The island. Island living is good, mon.

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

Two giants leaps forward - the floor received its final coat of finish and the electrician returned to complete the electrical work and install the light track and pendants over the island. The kitchen has largely come together and my dream of cooking for friends this week has actually materialized!

While there is a punch list as long as my arm, the basics are in place and I've unpack most of the endless bags and boxes. This turns out to be a huge job. For each item in each box and bag I decide if and where it belongs, arranging, rearranging, giving freedom to a Tourretic process of compulsive repetition. I thought I had been pretty thorough and ruthless when I packed up the kitchen, but apparently there's more ruth to be had. I've amassed two boxes and two bags for Sweet A or Goodwill, and I'm not done yet, no, not nearly. Just to give you an idea of my suffering, here are some of the critical decisions that need to be made.

Large double boiler used about once every two years. Keep or toss? It's very tall and will take up almost half a tall shelf. But what well-equipped kitchen lacks a double boiler, I ask you?

Food mill. Used to make baby food for Lovely L and Sweet A, and gallons of applesauce over the years. Big, awkward thing with a long handle and a crank. Does it get a place in the cabinets, or does it move to the basement where it will NEVER be used or seen again until I leave this house at which time it will be discarded?

Huge decisions. Huge.

Decisions notwithstanding, here's how it's gone, cooking-wise.

First meal

Last minute burgers, salad, and stuffed zucchini (Dear G's) outdoors on the porch.

First breakfast

Onion, Gruyere and heirloom tomato omelets, with sliced ripe, juicy local peaches and coffee, at the island, with Sweet A.

First dinner

Chilled corn soup, lamb/olive/feta burgers, minted yogurt, Moroccan couscous and salad with Ginger peach shortbread and cream, for "The Girls", husbands, and friend Tall T.

Second dinner

Wine and cheese followed by grilled swordfish, fresh salsa, warm potato salad, sliced heirloom tomatoes, and fruit for dessert - cherries, sliced peaches, watermelon, for 12.

Breakfast this morning

Cinnamon vanilla french toast from left over sourdough bread, and strong coffee. All by myself, peaceful, silent, enjoying the space.

Oh, it's been a wonderful week. The kitchen is MINE now, as I have followed the ancient ritual of touching, smudging, dripping and dropping on every surface, running every appliance at least twice, dinging a cabinet, and cleaning up after many good meals. Mine.

Stone Men Return

The cracked base cabinet has been replaced and the Stone Men have returned to install the island countertop. Pumalicious was beside herself with joy, hoping they'd stay this time. But all good things must come to an end, and in fifteen minutes the granite was installed and off went the Stone Men, unbelievably leaving her behind once again. Pumalicious spent the rest of the day curled up on the sofa, sleeping off her disappointment.

Henry is working like crazy to get this kitchen finished so he can move on to his next job fulltime... he is flipping a house in Arlington - a risk-fraught venture these days. The list of remaining work is long - that last 10% that takes as much time as the first 90%. He is optimistic and I am not inclined to disagree with him openly, but I think there are weeks of work remaining and the list is growing faster than he is able to check items off...

As for me, I am itching to move back into my kitchen and cook something REAL.  I arranged two dinner parties for my week off, assuming I would have moved back into the kitchen by now (ha! I must have been smoking crack that day). I've rearranged one and and I'm worried about the second, scheduled for Thursday evening. I've got the menu planned: chilled corn soup to start, grilled lamb/feta/olive/rosemary burgers served open on grilled bread witha minted yogurt sauce, citrus couscous salad, small green salad, and peach and ginger-cream shortcakes for dessert. I've got a bottle of Conundrum white wine chilling (my favorite summer wine) and I'm chomping at the bit. Let me in my kitchen!

Color Wars

Remember when colors were easy? In the real world there lived purple, red and pink, blue and green, yellow, orange, and plaid.  Colors like periwinkle, bittersweet, thistle, and carnation pink lived only in the magic kingdom of the 64-crayon Crayola box with the flip top lid that held them safe and separate from the simply colored world outside.

When I was ten we moved from our apartment in the Bronx to a small house in Mineola, tearing me away from my best friend and breaking my heart.  I threatened to run away and I would have, had the new house not held two irresistible seductions; a room of my own and permission to paint it any color I wanted. While I continued to threaten to run, in my heart I knew I'd stay - to live in a purple room with ballerina curtains.  

Mom sent Dad out to buy purple paint.  Dad brought home purple paint.  Unlike today's American homeowner, Dad did not bring home 50 strips of graduated shades of orchid, purple easter egg, bunny nose pink, sweet naivete, and macerated eggplant, nor did he purchase 7 individually tinted quarts at 12 bucks a pop to sample a variety of shades on the wall, enabling us to see how the color looks as the light changes throughout the day, as well as under artificial light in the evening. No, Dad painted the room purple, ceiling, woodwork and all, Mom made the purple curtains with ballerinas and I was in heaven. I have clear memories of lying in bed gazing at the purple air around me and feeling like the luckiest kid in the world.

Well, that ain't the way it goes down now.

I am deep in the rich and special hell of choosing colors for the kitchen walls. Each day I fan out the Benjamin Moore color preview wheel, A 4 inch stack of paint sample strips 2 inches wide and 8 inches tall, each strip containing  seven shades of paint color. All unique. One thousand five hundred of them in total. Please don't ask how I know. 

And I can't find the color I need to complete this room.

It's been days. Lots of them. And a dozen or more samples painted on the wall, each on three separate walls to make sure I get the whole color gestalt. The more colors I look at the more paralyzed and incompetent I become. I need color therapy.  But I have not succumbed to the temptation to hire a color consultant, no not me. I'll be damned if I have to hire someone to pick out a color for me. No, I'll just try a few more. I have six new shades in mind. I know I'm close. Probably.

Stone Men

 Granite weights about 168 pounds per cubic foot. There are approximately 54 square feet of counters in my kitchen. At a thickness of 3" about 2200 pounds of stone arrived in three major pieces on the back of a small flatbed truck. And two men. The Stone Men. They are happy and smiling as they spend their days delivering beautiful things to people who have been waiting with drooling anticipation. They know they've got me before hello. The first says, "We bring-a you some-a beautiful granite. You happy, no?"  The second just smiles, knowing the answer. The happiness of their work must lighten their load as they slide the granite out of it's frame and off the back of the truck with only moderate effort. They are a good team and the strain shows on their faces only for a moment when the full weight of the stone is taken in their hands. Then their faces lighten and together they walk the stone in with little apparent effort. They chat as they walk, make jokes, take the front porch stairs, navigate around the tight spot without grunts or groans and place the first piece so gently I don't hear it touch down. They both go out to the truck for a small piece and I can't keep from attempting to lift a corner of the granite to see if it is really Styrofoam cleverly masquerading as stone. Couldn't budge it. At all. 

They are fast, tidy, and oh so very skilled as they place the sink under the perfectly cut hole, drill new holes for the faucet, fit the pieces together like a jigsaw puzzle, caulk with maybe four difference substances, smoothing and polishing as they go.  They settle for nothing less than perfection and in under 3 hours it is done. They roll up their tarps and I ask them if anyone is ever unhappy with their granite. They laugh and the talkative one says, "No, everyone love-a this stone. Is beautiful!"  Puma the Wonder Dog has fallen in love with the Stone Men. She repeatedly brings them her favorite toys to lay at their feet and I chase her out of the kitchen a dozen times. The Stone Men laugh.  As they leave, the quiet one turns to Puma and grins "You gonna miss me". Puma whimpers, speaking for both of us.

Interesting factoid. Gold weighs almost 8 times what granite weighs. One cubic foot of gold weighs 1,204 pounds. My counters in solid 24k gold would weigh over 19,000 pounds. Those Pharaohs had them some Stone Men.

Chaos Theory

Life moves ahead in spirals and circles, patterns repeating over and over. The excruciating anticipation I felt just before the start of the kitchen renovation is back again, here in the mid stage.  The cabinets and appliances slid into place and now we await the delivery of the countertop. The electrical and plumbing work can't be completed until the countertop is installed. So the lovely refrigerator, oven, dishwasher, microwave, all sit there unused, quiet, shiny robots not yet endowed with anima or animus. I wait for them to hum with life, to breathe.

Given the wait for countertops, Henry can't keep busy at my site alone.  So he is now working on his other projects, as anyone would. This means that even the work that can get done doesn't. The kitchen remains in a state of near suspended animation. Tiny signs of progress, barely worthy of mention, appear some days and do not on others. A bit of plaster here, a tad more finish there, just barely inching forward. You'd need to hold the mirror very close to this patient's nose to detect life.

And so, as ever, the closer to the return of activity, the more burdensome its absence feels.  The granite counters must now be installed in two parts as one of the base cabinets of the "island" is cracked and must be rebuilt and replaced. Instead of delaying the whole job while we wait for cabinets, I've decided to have the counters around the perimeter of the room installed first, and then when the cracked cabinet is replaced Stone One will come back and install the beautiful piece of granite that will top the island.  This means that with the first part of the granite arriving tomorrow, by the weekend I should have running water, electricity, and humming appliances. Oh joy! (But nothing covering the open island cabinets, no tile backsplash, no paint, bathroom in a very rough state, etc.)

How little it takes to fill my heart with joy. How pitiful that sounds. I've reserved the last week in August for a vacation at home. I remain optimistic that I will by then be able to move back into the kitchen and cook yummy meals and treats for family and friends. Yes, hope springs eternal.

Bliss on Jacob's Pillow

Sweet A and I spent the weekend in The Berkshires, attending two performances at the amazing annual Dance Festival at Jacob's Pillow, and visiting with Fun Cousins G&J.  We started the day with a delightful dim sum breakfast to celebrate Dear G's birthday, and then the three of us - Sweet A, Pumalicious, and I - headed out for what should have been a leisurely drive to the Berkshire Mountains, Becket, and the Pillow.

But traffic doing what traffic does, we ended up in a mad panic (driving cautiously, with two wheels on the ground at all times) racing westward the last hundred miles, having crawled the first fifty or so. The original plan was to bring Pumalicious to Fun Cousins G&J and head over to the Pillow for the afternoon show, rejoining G&J for a relaxing dinner and returning altogether for the evening performance. 

We were so late, I gave up all hope of seeing the afternoon performance myself, figuring we'd drive directly to the theater, drop off Sweet A just in time, and I'd take Pumalicious for a long walk and pick up Sweet A in an hour. And out of the blue, our dear friends, the Amazing C&P, saved the day when they offered to babysit Pumalicious so that Sweet A and I could see the performance together. Yay!!!  How wonderful that was! C&P live just minutes from the Pillow on the bank of a huge lake, so up the mountain, down the mountain, wild hare ride to the banks of Yokum Pond, where Puma had a delightfully cool swim and watery stick chase for a couple hours while Sweet A and I made it to the show about 10 minutes late, suffered the look of rueful disappointment from the pipsqueak ticket window child/woman and slid into our seats to have our breath taken away by Conne Janssen's Danst group:

We returned to Yokum Pond, hung with C&P while Pumalicious gnawed what looked like a tasty barbecued brontosaurus bone - one of a dozen or so, casually stored in C&P's freezer.  On to Fun Cousins G&J for a brief visit with Cute Cousin A and a fantastic dinner made by mad skilled Cousin J. Back to the Pillow - this time with four wheels on the road - a tad boring - and the visual feast of Alonzo King's Lines Ballet:

Sunday was sleeping late, peaceful chatter, NYT crossword, jigsaw puzzle, laughter, dishing, and the lovingly comfortable conversation of family. Healing and utterly relaxing. We felt as if we'd had a week's vacation.

Except when I woke up Monday morning and realized it was back to W-O-R-K. A cruel trick and undeserved.