Thanksgiving 2010

 moving the food out of the kitchen

post dinner lounging

 wild children

the prep crew prepping veggies

The acorn tree

the loooong table

 between the extreme lameness of Blogger, taking 25 minutes to upload ten photos, and my camera's settings being all wonky, making most of the photos blurry, this will be a short post.

We had a big Thanksgiving dinner, with twenty people and lots of crafting on my part.   My name tags were not exactly what I wanted, but they were close.

Thank you  to the fabulous artist, Katherine for helping me realize my vision.

Things went well, the food was great, lots of friends helped and brought things and that made my work pretty simple.

Holidays are always hard for me.

I am childish in my inability to ever get over having my own family of origin being all screwed up and fractured.

It messes with my head and causes me a great deal of pain around times like Thanksgiving.  I wind up feeling a lifetime of loss all over me and it often feels difficult not to cave in or be swept away by those feelings.

Thank goodness I have managed to accumulate a great and amazing body of lovely people that help insulate me from all that pain and make it feel somewhat manageable.

Thank goodness for my husband that totally gets me, and will tolerate me asking a million times "do you love me?" and will answer a million times, "yes I do."

the kid table

twenty people is a LOT! but they look pretty good by candlelight.

the pie and some cakes

the one year old's dad had to sit at the play table, to get her to eat.
It was fun to have a little one around, but she made me tired, just watching.  I am glad my children are bigger these days!

the leaf garland was lovely

the guests watching Maxwell's movie

baby wrangler's doing dishes

the turkey and the ham

Heidi wayyyy out of focus, damn camera

Don and Freyja

I need some inspiration

the stupid living room that I hate,  yes I do need those giant speakers, because I like to listen to records, rather than CDs. 

 Our house is large, which I like, but we have this really stupid living room that is an odd shape with a fire place and big windows, that make furniture placement really hard.
I am not one of those talented design people, either, so that contributes to the problems, as well as a the fact that our furniture is old and funky and shitty and ugly.
The livingroom is making me insane, just bothering the hell out of me every time I walk into the room.  The giant wooden box, with the curtain, is hiding the tv.

The living room  becomes an issue for me every year around this time, when I am about to host people. 

I feel ashamed of our crappy living room, and the shabby furniture and become totally overwhelmed with schemes to make things better.  I have washed all the curtains and slip covers this week, which makes things slightly less dusty, but hardly better looking. 

the sun room, with windows on three sides, and the green sofa that Mark will not let me get rid of, despite the fact that I hate green.  In his defense, I do like to lie on that sofa and read sometimes.

 The living room is attached on one end to what is supposed to be the dinning room, but we use it as a sort of library / playroom for the kids, we use the sun room for our formal dining room, and mostly dine in the dining area in the kitchen.

Freyja and the dog have nothing to do with this post, she is just demanding to be shown, in return for letting me type.

looking into the playroom, and seeing a king's ransom worth of Playmobile houses and castles, people and animals. 
The arch is making the ceiling look low, it is acually a nice high ceiling,
which almost makes up for the lack of decent overhead lighting. 

Some day my children will be older, and I will not have to have toys in the playroom and then perhaps I will use the dining room to dine and the sun room to read and bask in the sun.

another birthday cake

lanterns drying on the "lantern drying racks" AKA bowls

 I am preparing for Thanksgiving, my big holiday, my thing, and this year I am making paper lanterns for the table.  They are simple to make, with tissue paper and glue. 

I forced Mark and Maxwell to help me one evening, and Mark's came out the best.  

Who knew?

the finished product with candles

 I had to do a birthday party for a friend last week.  I made a very fancy complicated dinner, and a very fancy complicated layer cake, with a Bavarian cream filling. 

 It was all going well, until about 30 minutes before dinner, when I peeked in the fridge to check on the cake, only to discover that it has split down the center and had started to list to one side, rather pronouncedly. EEEK! 

A baker's worst nightmare! 

 I whipped a lot of cream, added some chocolate powder, used it to spackle the crack, then had Rolf hold the cake together, while I tied a grossgrain ribbon around it, to anchor the top layer, and make it look as though I had intended it to be that way... pretty freaking BRILLIANT if I do say so myself.  AND I do.

chocolate Bavarian torte with raspberry sauce

I have a crackling, barking cough. 

I never cough.

I have aches and pains, and the occasional shattering migraine, but never coughs. 

I associate coughing  with weak people, pigeon chested and snot nosed or dirty smokers. 

I think of myself, arrogantly, as strong and tough and free from coughing and sniffling.

Just one more indicator that things are not always as they seem, or as I need them to be.  

I am sitting in the office cruising fabric websites, feeling sick and worrying that my nose might rub right off the next time I blow it, and Freyja walks in wearing an aligator costume...

"Mommy can I ask you (she means tell me) something?"

sure

"I love you & this suit is choking my neck and scratching my neck"

There you go.  Sometimes things make perfect sense. 

just not good enough, I guess

Since November 1st, I have been unsuccessfully trying to login to

Apparently they really, really don't want me. 
I can't get signed in, and when I go through the considerable hassle of getting a new password, I can never get the page to load and finish.  I have wasted a fair amount of time on this, the more I am denied, to more I want it to work. 

Why do I allow something so foolish to annoy me so deeply?

It has been that kind of week. 

Lots of doors slamming in my face, a big dose of betrayal and a stupid head cold to top it off. 

This crappy week of waiting and disappointment reminded me of the very excellent Kevin Gilbert song, Waiting- and wondering what became of the CD the song was on?

I'm waiting for the apple, I'm waiting for the fall
I'm waiting for a renaissance to electrify us all
I'm waiting for the mailman to bring me news of friends
I'm waiting through the middle just to see how it will end

I'm waiting for the confidential files to be released
I'm waiting for the index on my fear to be increased
I'm waiting for the judgment of the living and the dead
I'm waiting for the Pagan times that surely are ahead
I'm waiting for the show to start, the one I paid to see
I'm waiting for the good things that are coming back to me

I'm waiting for the man made gods to do the will of men
I'm waiting for the CIA to cover up again
I'm waiting for the militants to lighten up a bit
I'm waiting for the mafia to make this song a hit

I'm waiting in the shadows with a chain around my wrist
I'm waiting with my best friend held firmly in my fist
I'm waiting for my heroes to tell me what to dream
I'm waiting for my neighbors to tell me what's obscene
I'm waiting for the apple, I'm waiting for the fall
I'm waiting for a renaissance to electrify us all

I'm waiting for love to come
I'm waiting for you to run
and I'm waiting for wonder to return.

Witchy woman

 

Freyja and I getting ready to head out for a cemetery tour at Lone Fir Cemetery. 

The tour turned out to be very cool, despite my nervousness about crowds and lines and my general ongoing social retardation that makes this sort of outing nerve wracking for me. 

Poor Maxwell drew the unfortunate lot of having his outdoor school land on Halloween (I know! What kind of idiot scheduled it?) so it was just the two of us, tagging along with some friends who live in the neighborhood and were gracious enough to invite us along.   

Mark stayed home to man the candy distribution, and keep the cat from harm.

Once again blogger is acting goofy and putting the photos in random order... 

our friends- a witch and a wood nymph, waiting in line for the walk

a good excuse to use that white manic panic powder purchased nearly 20 years ago on impulse.

Freyja and a friend running though the graveyard!

The founder of this cemetery and his wife.

 Along the tour there were actor preforming little vignettes, related to the grave.  This one was a fellow by the name of Mitchell, that was a musician, killed by a speeding horse cart, sometime in the late 1880's.

a lovely house along our trick or treating way.

spooky lights!

home again, for some "mile high apple pie"

and some ginger pear cake too.

Wallpaper

I am obsessed with these Amy Butler wallpapers.  The one on the bottom is the one I like the very best. 
It would be for one wall in what is now Freyja's playroom, but hopefully will someday return to being the second half of the dinning area.

the felt acorn

felted wool acorns

I forced my children to felt wool acorns with me last Tuesday.  

They were fighting and snarling and I thought a little sit down with hot soapy water would be just the ticket to settle them down.

Maxwell wound up with two woolen snakes (the boy is simply not crafty!), but  Freyja made some excellent  faux nuts. 

My plan is to hang these and some real,gilded (ok, not really gilded, but spray painted gold) acorns by fishing line, from curly willow branches, as a center piece for Thanksgiving.

I am having an artist friend draw me a line drawing of a goat standing on top of a giant acorn, which I will glue onto old fashioned packing labels and use as name tags for the guests.

filling the house up with junk, or collections, you decide

I like stuff a lot.  

I think I have stated here a number of times how I am far from a minimalist.  I am perhaps a maxamalist, if such a thing exists.  I sometimes feel a little defensive about my love of stuff, of collecting- living in a progressive town like Portland, with a zenned out hippie around every corner, one sometimes grows weary and even a little cranky at the whole minimalist aesthetic you find.    I also work in a setting where there is a very rigid notion of what is beautiful and what is not. 
When I come home, I want to luxuriate in my packed little domain, in my piles of old stuff.  It makes me happy and secure.   I am a happy packrat.

Thank goodness I have a whole host of enablers all around me providing me with fuel for my fire!

Rolf is a chemist, so we have a lot of scientific glassware lying around, so recently I started putting little decorative things into the various  glass containers sitting in the  he basement

I have no idea what their real purpose is. 

The ones with the funny little horns are some kind of vacuum, I know that much. 

I have chosen to fill  one it with an old school Deutsche Mark and the other with a Lira, because the artwork on these bills is beautiful and I have nothing better to do with them, now that the Euro is king.  

I also have a little ceramic bust of my dearly departed poodle Teddy Braun, inside what I believe is some other type of vacuum. 
The columns and flasks are filled with colored water.

The Frigidaire Flair!

1968 Japanese mug

In addition to liking random cool stuff, like scientific glassware, there is my well documented love of mid century pottery and ceramics, not to mention vintage appliances. 
I found this fabulous little mug, in my color scheme at Goodwill last week, for $00.99 and it made me deliriously happy for days.  I am working hard to find a replacement for our "Flair" stove, but if I can't find a good one, I now know there is a man in his late 80's in St. Helens that could repair mine.  Transporting a 350# stove to St. Helens in my station wagon might pose a problem though...

massage

I have had an aching back for as long as I can remember and over the years I have tried every modality of massage and body work out there.  
I have had expensive massages in fancy salons, and freaky massages in dimly lit apartments.

I have been massaged by a blind woman, who burst into song in the middle of my massage, sharing with me later that "singing is her gift to the world".  I can never hear "what's it all about Alfie?" without thinking of Sue.

I once went to the home of a single mama massage therapist for a massage and had her two children burst in and proceed to wrestle underneath the rather rickety old table.

I started my search for the perfect hour free of pain in 1986.

I spent the enormous sum of  $60 on a one hour session with  the fabulous Cynthia Hillis, and it was worth every penny. 
She had a tiny studio in the building over the old Metro on Broadway, that is now Columbia Sportswear's headquarters.  I used to save and save to have a massage with her every six weeks. 

During a long broke spell I lost track of Cynthia and moved on to Toni.  Toni was one of those early 90's riot grrrls, with lots of piercings and a women's study degree. She was very into abdominal massage, which is not really my thing, but I felt like I would be hurting her feelings to say so. 

From Toni, I went to Mary Garvy for transformational massage, which was excellent, until she moved to Beaverton, I would sometimes cheat on Mary with Babbette Perkins, who offered body brushing.  There is really nothing better than body brushing. Sadly she also moved to the westside.

A long string of one massage stands followed through the 90's many excellent therapists and a few nutjobs.
The woman who did bookings for Key Largo, and offered foot massage as a side gig and referred to herself and an empath...
The remarkable fellow who did massage and astrological readings and made house-calls, who always  made me feel like he was vaguely inappropriate.

One of the most outstanding massage therapists I have ever worked with is Chris Lacey, who I was lucky enough to meet while he was still offering house-calls, and doing some Swedish work.  Chris eventually went to a total Thai massage practice, which is awesome, but not at all relaxing the way traditional massage is.   If you ever find yourself in Portland and want the best Thai massage this side of Thailand, check out Chris.  He takes it all very seriously and spends a good chunk of time, post massage telling your how to fix your posture, and lots of handy exercises you can do to make your back feel better.  All of which I personally chose to ignore.

My go to guy during times when I can't say stand up straight or get out of bed without wincing, is Dave from Morning Star massage.  Dave is kind of scary looking, like a cross between Santa Claus and a Hell's Angel, but he does excellent deep tissue massage on the cheap- what he calls "massage for working people".  Ninety minutes with   Dave is $45 spent very wisely!

My new favorite place to go is the Chinese reflexology clinic  in the Fubonn center on 82nd. 

You can get some Pho, pick up a fabulous Hello Kitty handbag, and have some VERY intense shiatsu done all in the same trip to this remarkable Asian mall. 

The massage is $19.99, with a very strongly suggested $5 "tip". 

Still a huge bargain for an hour massage with foot bath included, and unlike at The Barefoot Sage (where they charge you $50!), they work on you while your feet are soaking. 
When I say work on you, I mean it- they slap, pound, twist and beat the knots out.  It is amazing.
 
The treatment all takes place in big dimly lit room, with five other people getting treated at the same time.  You lie on this sort of Barcalounger/massage table hybrid, with your feet soaking in a big bamboo tub, while they work on your head and shoulders, then they move the tub and do your feet and legs.
Extraordinary! 
Fancy and private it aint, but thorough and intense it is.

 Some of us were VERY excited to carve pumpkins...

 and some of us would have rather been playing video games.

fall cooking

 I have been struggling with blogger a lot.

To the point where I haven't felt like even trying to post, since it takes so long and is so full of frustration.

I was happy to read that other people are experiencing he same issues, since the "improvements" went into effect.

A little bit of  schadenfreude.   

I was buoyed by my discovery of the misery of others decided to bite the bullet and post a few photos of all the cookery that has been going on in the finch haus of late.

 I made a most fabulous carrot soup for Maxwell last Saturday, pureed in honor of his sore mouth.

I didn't expect other people to really eat it, but every last spoonful was devoured by our Saturday night dinner guests! It really was delicious.

I chose to put sour cream on mine.

Carrots, sweet potatoes, caramelized onion, safron, garlic, ginger, vegetable broth, pureed to a velvety texture.

 I had donated a gift certificate for cupcakes, to a school auction, and the recipient called in her marker for a dozen devil's food, with buttercream frosting.  I baked, boxed and delivered 18 nearly perfect cakes, and had a little batter left over to make a tiny bunt cake for the fam.

 I made this pumpkin pie for Maxwell's school lunches, because he thought that pumpkin pie would be soft enough to eat, even with a sore mouth.  My acorn cut outs didn't come out so hot, but the leaves look pretty. 

 Then I made these two pumpkin pies a week later, because the first one was very popular.

 Rolf bought a giant bag of new potatoes at a farm on Sauvie Island, which we celebrated by making scalloped potatoes with a salad of arugula with local hazelnuts, blue cheese, radish, and a pear vinegar dressing.  

I 

Brace Face

Maxwell got braces recently and it has been a bit traumatic.  

His whole face swelled up pretty badly the day after they were put on and he couldn't eat for a whole week.  

He seems to be doing fairly well now though.

I had hoped that my children would inherit my  teeth and my hair, all the rest could come from their dad. Mark had braces and headgear starting in 4thgrade, but Maxwell's teeth were super slow to come in, so we are off to a later start.

 As far as genetics go  Miss F has Marks thin hair and high forehead and Maxwell has his terribly crooked teeth, he did get my big mouth though.