Erka+Days

Dear Mr. MY Boomba,
Sorry that I had to go so soon today. Just wanted to let you know that
you are the most handsome little boy this side of the Adriatic. Stay
away from those with snot and crabbiness so you do not get ill again.
I am saving my coffee money ($16.45 per week x 52 weeks) towards my next plane
ticket to see you when you turn 1 year old. Please note in your
calendar that I will be arriving sometime in late December and staying
through the new year… My plans are between you and I since your
Nonno thinks I should travel in the spring time. He has another thing
comin…..
Okay. Sleep good. Baci Ciao.
Love, your erkanonna

Watching The Inauguration of Barak Hussein Obama and his family put a spell on us. An absolute thrum of emotion, anticipation, expectation and excitement surrounded my office. I watched in tears, as voice, music, and sheer mass of humanity emanated through my monitor and speakers. We sang with Aretha, spoke our vows, and prayed with Reverend Lowery. Can I get one more Amen somebody!

My feet rest on a mat of plastic so that my chair has the ability to go. My feet sit in uber ugly old person clogs so that I have shoes on. My feet are cold. I sit up beside a wall of windows designed and built in the late 40′s. I sit up against this wall of windows to combat monitor glare and feng shui back to the crowd no no voodoo. I can feel the cold side of my body and the warm side. My left foot is cooler than my right as is my left thigh, and tummy… I contend with this push me pull you of warm cold every work day. It is my penance. I have poo-pooed the mighty space heater for years, as inefficient and for sissies. I am now officially a sissy.

Grilled cheese sandwiches graced our plates this evening, a request made by the Pop. I sliced cheddar, taleggio and another unnamed soft goat cheese. I seared onion slices. A bit of chicken breast. I stacked things up and then buttered the other side of the bread with left over ravioli filling of ricotta, parmigiano and parsley. Grilled to oozing a golden brown.

Knitting the zoo llama sweater sleeves at lunch and after dinner. I have begun the decreases and I am glad I remembered them.

Saab has returned from the vet with a functioning drivers side door handle. I no longer have to climb across to get in. Right hand fog lamp is replaced, sunroof has been tightened. Oil has been changed. 237,000,000 plus miles.
SO okay, I forgot to mention that my seat no longer heats.

I spoke to Veda Rose, she did the inauguration, walked ten miles, watched from the Washington monument, she signed off exhausted and exhilarated.

Another day slips by. A momentus one.

Saturday was ….  house cleaning, library visitation and grocery shopping. Semolina, olive oil, eggs, salt, and kneading love makes for the pasta dough. The long thin yellow counter becomes the work place, a cutting board held to the counter with a huge clamp, the pasta machine in turn clamped to the wooden board. One person feeds the machine with lovely golden dough, the other tends to the filling and sealing, finally plopping ravioli onto a floured cookie sheet. We laugh, we cross arms and bump heads as we do the kitchen dance, wine glasses in hand, flour dusted. Sage butter sauce and or pomodoro. Sausage and onions, or shirmp creates the menu. A champagne toast to the new year, to a perfect intelligent new/old girl friend for my muffin, a new president and the new thrum of society feeling the love, learning to say it loud, we are proud to be alive in this moment.

I decided to make Zuppa di Garno Cuturru for Sunday dinner. I cooked after spending the entire day in and out of the range of the couch reading  and knitting cardigan sleeves (that I ripped out), petting cats and listening to the radio. I cried as the sweet chemical reaction of cut onion hit my face. I cried as I listened to the elderly african american tell his story. A story that includes me and you. I am a child of the 60′s I grew up in a city exercising its rights in racial turmoil, the burning of the Motor city, I watched the tanks lumber up and down scared, listened to the rhetoric and walked the walk of a white girl in a predominantly african american school. I was sheltered by my race but not to the extent of the masses that insisted on leaving the city of Detroit high and dry, without a tax base, their lily white tails between their legs. Either way, I am a better person from the experience. Just sayin’.

I have been reconnected with old friends via facebook. I have looked at my older face in the mirror and wondered what will come next. I have skyped with Moo and Giovanni in Rome and smiled. I have to locate a changing table and a bedtime for the boy, when he arrives he must sleep in style. I have watched the snow fall and the sun shine. Neen is in his element in Mexico, slathering his language skills with masa and pork, cilantro and chile, the hues of the town he is in will put him over his edge in the end I just know it. Returning to the states with its brown and gray and the occasional pale yellow homes will slay his aesthetic.

We watched Darjeeling Limited as we slurped our zuppa. I am reading the gurnsey potato peel pie society and behind the scenes at the museum.

I knit the sleeves to a fair thee well on the Llama sweater, and then I ripped them out to begin the shaping process again. I could not just leave them in such a sad ass state. It was not possible to sigh and keep going.

I wached the birds all day on the feeders. It was definately a laid back sort of day to be experienced on the hog. Not with out it’s quilts but traveled through anyway.

Glimpses of my everyday prompt me to write it down some days.

I have taken a huge break from doing so after online journaling for ten years plus. 1997-2007. What stopped me from writing….? my website just dissapeared in the midst of three family deaths and I never noticed until it was too late… The computer was stolen, knitting, spinning, unpleasant readership and ten years plus, pushed me over the edge. I have most of my entries, though I lost the last ones. The ones I wrote about three familly deaths and a wedding. I cried so much while writing them that I am sad that they are gone. Stains of my life erased.

Yesterday I saw icicles in the small stairway window through stained glass art and I felt a huge write it down surge.

There is a whole lot of news to expound on. Moo carried and birthed a baby boy born December 2, 2008. I am a Nonna. Erkanonna to be precise. I have just returned from a three week adventure in Italy trying out my Nonnahood. Papa and La Mamma are adjusting and loving their boy. Me, I am still speechless. Pop is aglow with GrandPoppyhood. Moo is getting along well speaking Italian, living Italian.

Neen is boasting another 4.0 and about to leave on an abroad program south of the border. Neen is excited to speak Spanish and think Spanish and breath Spanish and perhaps dream Spanish. He is leaving with instructions from me to pay close attention to recipes, and ingredients. His host family lists the simple fact that they eat together as a family. Need I say more? Neen has been writing proposals for summer internships at Berkeley and Wisconsin and Chicago. Send him good acceptance vibes please.

Miss Beth sent us a painting of Alex. I have not cried yet but, give me some time. It will hit me one day as I come around the corner and see Daddy looking down at me. We placed him on the wall above Hugh. She sent my Ma three small paintings of Alex framed. I do not have the heart to ask about a mary painting. But I think the honor must be done.

I did not plant garlic this fall. I will regret that in mid summer. I think I have enough from this past summers harvest to last that long. Our roof is leaking. Our chimney is cleaned, but we have no firewood. Both Saab and Saturn are still running, knock wood. Gray Gray and Stripe-o are still miffed at us being gone so long and have taken to stalking the mice they can hear in the wall near the book case. Buddy the dog is still alive but barely, he still begs for vegetable scraps, so he can’t be too far gone. Can he?

I am knitting a sweater out of the last of the Zoo llama wool blend, a top down raglan cardigan. Spinning up a pound of fiber from Spinners Hill, Wool-Mohair-Silk-Alpaca, in brown with some red and orange bursts.
The sun is out bright as can be this afternoon, green glows through my geranium leaves.

A look back at January of 1998 MotherDays….

We are in the middle of spastic winter…13 degrees one day, and then 55 the next , el nino.

John was walking around in a daze this morning getting ready for the first day of school after a lengthy winter holiday. He was looking for the hair brush. We are a family of four and never have more than one brush to our collective names. Meghan bless her soul calls out “here it is, I was sleeping with it.” go figure……

GoodLuck is bestowed to those that gathered my Kwanzaa font offering, NiaShani. NiaShani went out to folks all over the world. We are off to bigger and better things, back to work, back to school, back to procrastination and normal life endurances.

aging parents are a bain this day to my existance…somebody slap me.

Things that made the Mojo List. Malls and mall parking. Not making things by hand anymore. Not taking time. not having a desk all my own. not playing music. not loosing weight. not exercising. being crabby. not being able to put a book down and play with my kids. being selfish. using up all my energy at work and coming home with none. being empty. frustrated. freaked.

John ran in and told me that he chopped the celery just like I do, I use nice juicy french knifes. I believe the kid has the makings of top chef.. He was walking through the kitchen while I was talking to gramma mary about who was gonna cook what for dinner that evening and John hollared “I’ll make the salad” Ya gotta love that. He is also these days into making scrambled eggs for himself in the morning. This past sunday he figured out that you can add vegetables to the scramble.

I just wrote my old friend lisa doughty a long letter, she has readjusted her name to Alyiah…i guess i’ll think of her now as alyiahlisa, had to trerain an old dog new tricks.

Meghan has returned from Katrina’s birthday sleep over at wheels inn, in ontario she is still asleep (it is 1:30pm) and at 3:30p she will cross the street to lizzies 13th birthday sleep over. I wonder how long they will stay up tonight.

e have settled on a new home on a ridge overlooking 4.77 acres of woods, wetlands and various humps and bumps. We will be the third owners of a home built in 1945.

Meghan is now awake and when i asked if i could make her and eggy she said ” no i want smashed potatoes.” So, i made the spoiled chaild of the universe smashed potatos.

we got some snow!

Those gals stayed up til 7:00 am at lizzies 13th birthday sleepover.

we had a Bucko dinner last night. Crab and fried chicken caesar salad and potatoe salad. yum.

Atiba and his friend Ode came to visit. We hung out and got to know Ode some.

we have had a nuthatch vsit the yard. all month.

We got some snow action here in the motor city. Winter without snow in Michigan is rather lame. We are watching some backyard art happen this winter. John John has the picnic table propped up at one end on a sawhorse with a ladder up the back and a piece of plywood at the front end completing the sledding hill. The sledders patiently scoop fresh snow on the hill and then slide all afternoon. Then they hang out under the hill in the club house. The dog used to get up on top of the picnic table to prominently display his need to come in the house. Now he has to climb up the hill, which he finally figured out how to do. So he stands on the hill with his paws on the top of the ladder and looks in.

Amen