Speaking of Chicken..........

David and I put on our last dinner party performance last night with Will and Lisa playing the part of the guests. We love the ritual of entertaining so much that we wanted to do it once more before David goes back to Florida. Our menu was shrimp coctail followed by roast chicken, cornbread stuffing (I made the cornbread, of course), sausages with apples and onions, potatoes Anna, home-made cranberry sauce, salad, and deep deesh apple pie with ice cream. The pie was a repeat of Christmas because we liked it so much. Although we failed to reach the zenith of organization that we reached at Christmas, we nevertheless orchestrated the day beautifully. An unexpected, though welcome, visit from Greg snagged us up at the last minute and we did not have the final few minutes to regroup before the guests arrived.

Still, the day passed pleasantly with phone calls of respective progress on table linens and pie crusts, cranberry sauce, boiling giblets, and cornbread crumbs. We came together at mid-afternoon, pooling our individual accomplishments and moving ahead in tandem. As for one of my major contributions, suffice it to say that boiled and peeled chestnuts are good, but really not worth the trouble.

From my point of view the one failure on the culinary front were my potatoes Anna. They sounded good in the recipe, but in the end potatoes with butter, salt and pepper are just that. To add insult to injury, I overcooked them in an attempt to keep them warm through the blue martinis and the word crisp fails to adequately describe their tecture. Nevertheless, process definitely outshines product and the meal was a critical success. We passed the evening in easy, amiable social conversation that outshined any that I have recently subjected myself to. It was notable for its lack of controversy and congenial tone. Not once did I have the urge to kill anyone in the room or run screaming from the table. It was what dinner parties should be. I already feel nostalgic about this holiday season when David and I honed our entertaining skills to a fine and glorious point, loving every minute of it. 

Home is the Kayak......

I used to play the recorder four times a week with Toni, whom I met a few years ago through a mutual acquaintance. We played in a group that was very amateurish. As time went on, though, we decided to try duets. Our skill grew until we were both pretty good and really enjoyed the music and our friendship. We ate together on the days that we practiced amd got to know each other fairly well. We both got kayaks and went out together several times. We played on-line scrabble. We went shopping together, and last year she was one of the guests at David's and my Christmas meal.

Well, it came to pass that I didn't want to spend so much time with the recorder. I told Toni that I wanted to take a break. Her response was drastic. She literally begged me to continue, saying that her life would be terrible without our playing sessions. I agreed to play once a week, unable to be deaf to her pleas. We did that for a couple of months, and then she emailed me that once a week wasn't working for her. She insisted that we increase the time we spent or we would lose our expertise and actually lose ground rather than improve. Since I was not even enjoying the once a week, I refused.

From that point on, the situation grew very bizarre. Toni accused me of insulting her, calling her names, and making things up about her. She said I was mentally unbalanced, scary, even, in my delusions. She suggested I "think about that" and get myself together. Her amazingly distorted perception and her condescension angered me to the point that I told her I didn't want to see her at all. After I cooled down, I tried to patch things up through emails, and we corresponded a few times. She insisted that we go over our former emails to each other and respond to actual quotes. Reluctantly, I did this with a few of her letters, then suggested that we stop the "I said, you said" routine and just forget what had happened. I didn't hear from her, even though I had sent her several emails. Then she wrote that she was not opening any more of my correspondence, and if I wanted to apologize, I would have to do so in writing, by mail. I responded by saying I had tried, but I was through.

This is, of course, my view of what happened. Toni would have a different story. She had told me many times of other people who had turned against her and were no longer her friends. Her stories of their abuses used to shock me, and I wondered why people were so mean to her. She claimed she had even been fired from her last teaching job because the entire faculty conspired against her. When I heard these stories, I assumed that as a person form New York City, she was probably misinterpreted by people in Washington County. Since I have a bias that makes me feel that people from big cities are paranoid anyway, I thought that most likely she imagined a lot of the mistreatment she experienced. I nodded in sympathy, though, not really believing or disbelieving what she said. To me she was not a sympathetic person, too quick to complain and blame others for whatever happened to her.

So why am I writing all of this? It's been in the back of my mind for weeks. I am very uncomfortable with all of it. To my knowledge, no one has ever been so angry with me or thought so ill of me. This is unsettling, yet I'm afraid I don't like Toni enough to pursue the matter. That, too, bothers me. Yesterday David and I drove to Pembroke to retrieve my kayak, which was stored at her house. We returned the keyboard she had leant me at the same time. I had called to make an appointment to do this, and I was worried about having to see Toni in person. She must have felt the same way. When we arrived she was gone. She had left us a note telling us where the kayak was and what to do with the keyboad.

I don't yet know how I feel now that everything has been tidied up and there is nothing left to tie us together. I do know that I put my kayak in the cellar with some glee, feeling that it finally belonged to me, that I was free to use it whenever and wherever I wanted, that my life with it now was independent of Toni, and that because of that, my enjoyment of it had just begun.

Yarn and Birthday

After two days of work, this is the state of my knitted sock project. Why does expensive yarn not come in pull skeins like cheap yarn? I bought this 100% hand-washable wool at the new Wooly Moose downtown. It cost $5.00 compared with what I normally buy at Walmart for $2.00. When I released it from the one strand of yarn that held it in an attractive twisted roll, it fell into a gigantic tangle that only became worse as I tried to roll it into a ball. I began the de-snarling yesterday, then put in three more hours today. When I finally managed to unravel the mess, I photographed the moment. Since I worked from both ends of the continuous strand, I ended up with two balls joined by a single cord, like the twins I sometimes see in utero on Discovery Health Channel. I have not separated them yet, preferring to let them rest in mute testimony to my apparently limitless patience, my dogged determination. Knitting the socks will be anti-climactic.

What possessed me to do this is vague in my mind. Lisa wanted to learn to make socks(her yarn was relatively more compliant than mine), and I agreed to help her. A quick project would give me relief from the never-ending afghan I started last winter, and I do like to make socks. But why did I buy new yarn when I have many skeins of perfectly good acrylic (i.e. cheap and machine washable) left from other projects? Well, I don't know. When they are done, I will have the most expensive and time-consuming pair of socks I ever owned, and I will wear them once. I must pick the occasion carefully.

In other news, my sixty-first birthday came and went with a moderate amount of fanfare. Two cakes were made by Judy and Sydney for our art group to share. Two different people (Judy and Elizabeth H.) called and sang Happy Birthday to me over the phone. Alice and Ann both wished me Happy Birthday in messages. Carrie called, though I wasn't home. David took me out to dinner. Linda gave me a hand painted silk scarf, and David bought me my own domain name. Elizabeth, born on January 5, has planned a Capricorn dinner for Saturday at the Loca. As always, it was wonderful to be remembered, and I warmed to the attention. 

New Year

The holidays run together and New Year's Eve seems almost like the tail of Christmas. There's not really any sense of one being the end of the year and the other the beginning. The two of them split time like the gap in an adjustable bracelet, breaking the circle into a measurable distance. We take time out to notice that the number of years since our birth climbs higher. The new year brings into our consciousness the concept of beginning and end apon which we humans build our lives. Despite the fact that every day is the end of the past and the beginning of the future, we chose this one to pay attention and celebrate. In Eastport there is the usual quirky take on tradition. As on any special occasion, there are goings on. Our gallery opened up for one final evening before closing for the rest of the winter. June and I got the place ready by six, but the streets were mostly empty. I began to have visions of closing and freezing all the food and drink we had for the next occasion. At eight o'clock, though, people started to wander in. Before long the usual party took shape and we found ourselves dragging out more and more chairs to accommodate those who waited out the evening there. At eleven o'clock we all migrated out to Bank Square to watch a huge Maple leaf made of lights descend from the top of the Tides Institute to recognize the arrival of the new year in Canada, one hour ahead of us. Those who knew the words joined in with a recording of "O Canada." A respectable crowd gathered to support our neighbors across the bay. After about a half hour of warming up at the gallery, we put on our coats and hats and gloves again and ventured out for the main event. A huge clock was projected on the side of the Tides building, counting down the minutes. A large, blue, contstructed fish, trying to be a sardine to symbolize Eastport's past, began to slowly creep downward from the top of the building. There was a ball of lights at its mouth. The crowd pointed and grinned, clapping and cheering. As the clock's second hand headed for midnight, we all shouted the traditional 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, ....... The sardine hit the street at the right moment and a small brass band broke into strains of Auld Lang Zein. Everyone sang and hugged and wished their neighbors happy new year. A sign appeared in the window of the Tides Institute proclaiming 2006. Horns honked. Times Square may be bigger, but certainly no more enthusiastic. The celebration went on with a party and breakfast at the Sardina Loca, but David, Diana, and I went back to clean up the gallery, drink a toast with Will and Lisa, and go home. It was quintessential Eastport, the greatest place on earth.