Change of Plans

We were planning on taking a road trip to Colorado next month, but for some reason I could not bring myself to sit down and start planning the trip, and every time C and I tried to talk about it, it turned into a big meltdown session about everything that I am feeling frustrated about. Somehow the trip had become a metaphor for my life--a rut I could neither face nor get out of. Finally yesterday morning I called C and instructed him to buy plane tickets. It was like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders...now I could start figuring out what little things we need to do, buy, pack, take care of, before we go.

And now we can spend more time while we're there doing what we want to do and enjoying ourselves, and a lot less time driving across the mind-numbing dead zone known as the heartland of our country (sorry everyone from New Hampshire to Eastern Colorado, but if I'm gonna take a road trip, this is what I really want to see, not cornfields or billboards). My latest meltdown was about how our kids are NEVER going to be able to go ANYWHERE cool because we live at the farthest far corner or nowhere (again, no offense to anyone who lives in, like, the eastern 2/3 of the country).

Anyhoo, I have not solved that problem, except that we'll get to see a bit more cool stuff on our shortened but extended trip, and I have not solved any of my other intractable problems that cause me to press my lips together in a lockjaw-esque death clamp while I drive around (in the rain), at the edge of the middle of nowhere...still entrenched in the life rut, but maybe the release from the vacation rut will provide some relief.

Civics Lessons

Lesson 1: You can make a difference (maybe)

I received a letter from the mayor of Augusta yesterday, in response to my letter regarding the spraying of herbicides in the area where M's summer apprenticeship program met in the mornings. It was both more and less than I expected:

"Dear Ms. Lani:

"Thank you for your letter of July 15, 2009 with respect to herbicide around the flagpole in front of City Center. I am checking into this and appreciate you pointing this out.

"Sincerely yours,

"Roger J. Katz, Mayor"

More, because it sounds like an actual response, instead of a brush-off. Less because it usually takes me several paragraphs to brush someone off when I have to write letters of this nature. Who knows if anything will become of it; I guess I'll have to wait and see if any more pesticide flags pop up on the lawn in front of City Center.

Lesson 2: People suck

Our school union budget failed--again--despite passing overwhelmingly at the interminably long and torturous town meeting I attended two weeks ago. (If you're into pain, read the blow-by-blow of three of the four-and-a-half hour meeting here). There are just some people who don't think they have an obligation to educate children, and many who think they should use our kids to "send a message to the Blain House" that they don't want an RSU. This sort of thing just reduces me to pejoratives about my fellow Mainers like "wh*te tr*sh" and "f*ckers" so I should probably just stop here. B*stards.

Going Crazy

Last week I:

• forgot to pick M up from camp,
• forgot to leave my key when I dropped my car off at the mechanic, and
• ran out of gas on the way home from dinner with a friend.

I need to see some sun right away because the rain in Maine is making me insane!

Poetry Published

Check out my poem, First Practice, on Vox Poetica. It's under Today's Words today (Sunday) and will be archived under poemblog after today.

Cheese and Cake

My brother, being 18 years old and well over six feet tall, eats a lot. He also appreciates food of all types (what a change from preschoolers!). He requested a lot of foods I never got around to making (cinnamon rolls, brownies), but I did do a lot of cooking (and eating, as my rotund middle can attest). One thing he did request, above all others, was cheesecake, and because I've never made a cheesecake before (C doesn't like things with a soft texture, like cheesecake, pudding, custard, whipped cream, etc. Weirdo.) and because I have this bee in my bonnet about making cheese, I decided to go for it.

I found a recipe for ricotta cheesecake that intrigued me--I've never had a ricotta cheesecake before (have you?). First, I had to make the ricotta cheese. But because I decided to make it with the buttermilk method, I had to make the buttermilk first first (this I did on a Thursday night, while at the same time making bread and cookies--one of my rare but insane cook-a-thons--I was up till midnight waiting for the milk to cool down to room temp because I had first heated it up since we use raw milk).

Saturday afternoon, I got started on the ricotta. Here are the curds draining:




And this is the cheese after two hours (sorry for the poor lighting--it was pretty late in the evening by now).




All the boys went out to see fireworks (finally) Saturday night in Hallowell, so I was able to work on my writing assignments in between cheesecake-making steps...overall a pleasant and relaxing evening. It turned out I had to make butter for the crust too, because we were out, so it was really and truly a made-from-scratch cake. The one thing I opted to NOT make was candied citrus peel--that's one recipe that seems way more tedious than necessary (and this from a girl who shakes a jar of cream into butter!)--instead I threw in a little lemon zest. I put the cake in the fridge and let it set overnight, and we dug in Sunday night.



The results were less than stellar. The crust was tough (crust is my achilles heel--although it did soften up a bit after a few more days) and the texture was grainy (using fresh whole milk ricotta was supposed to make it less grainy, and using the buttermilk, rather than the vinegar, method was supposed to reduce the grainieness of the ricotta itself). Since I've never had ricotta cheesecake, I don't know how the texture is supposed to feel. The pine nuts the recipe called for were a bit strange (oddly, I really like pine nuts while I'm eating them, but the aftertaste grosses me out a bit). Overall, I'd give it about a 6 or a 7...not bad, but nothing to blog about (ha!)

My brother liked it, though, and so did my kids. And I managed to eat about half of it myself (the last quarted I sliced up and put in the fridge for future sweet-tooth emergencies--made with nearly two gallons of milk, each with about three inches of cream on top, and a cup of butter, it has to have about 800 calories a slice!)

I'm not at all discouraged. Though time-consuming, the cheesemaking was neither difficult nor particularly hands-on (much of the time involves waiting). I used the leftover whey to make rolls, soup and bread. My next cheesemaking plan is mozzarella and, using the whey from the mozzarella, more ricotta, turning it all into a pan of crespelle or a lasagna...mmm, can't wait!

Walkway and Teenage Boys

As I may have mentioned, my 18-year-old brother stayed with us for some time this summer. While he was here I definitely had moments of, "Oh my god--I'm going to have three of these!?!" M, E and Z loved every minute and learned lots of new things--rave dancing, fist bumping, saying "Hi Five" like Borat, phrases like, "what's kicking? chilling hard."

And I got this:



A walkway from my front door to the driveway, which I've been wanting for years. I still have to rake soil between the rocks, encourage moss to grow (apparently this requires a flat beer and a blender), and get rid of the piles of leftover sand, gravel and rocks in the driveway. But, the heavy lifting has been done, and I'm pretty psyched.

It was amusing to hear his regular conversations with our mom ("I'm an adult!") and not so amusing to hear parenting advice (seriously?), and his moping around being bored made me want to scream (yes of course I understand that he's removed from his friends and his usual things to do, and that he didn't have full-time work the whole time he was here, but since every minute of my day is scheduled with more things than I can get to...I found it hard to be sympathetic). A week of roofing with C was a pretty good cure for this syndrome.

I also had to buy and cook about twice as much food, but he did say my cooking is "bomb-digity" (despite the lack of meat), which is praise my own brood would never bestow on me...and he even cooked for us a few times.

I was a senior in high school when this youngest brother was born, then I went away to college and moved to Maine, so I haven't spent a lot of time with him and it was nice to get to know him finally after all these years.

Another Skirt

This is another one I made last summer, from Sew What Skirts. After the experience with the blue one, I went overboard with the ease on this one so it's a bit poofy, but this material (also Kaffe Fasset--all 3 skirts are Kaffe Fasset prints) makes me quite unreasonably happy. The best part is I can wear all three skirts with my lipstick shoes--a pair of "berry" clogs I bought at the Hannah Andersson outlet two years ago against all logic (really, I didn't even own anything magenta at the time).