January 1, 2010
Matt and I drove straight home from Winston, and made it all the way there in a little more than eleven hours. As nice as it was to get it out of the way in one day, I knew that when I went back by myself (with the pupster) I’d want to break it into a 2 day trip. Fortunately for me, the roads from Pittsford to Winston are littered with far-flung friends and relatives. (I meant littered in the nicest way possible, far flung friends and relatives.) I decided to stop in Fredericksburg overnight, which added an extra hour to both days, but meant that I’d get to stay with my aunt, who is both a gourmet cook, a heavy handed wine pour and a fabulous storyteller. She’s also got two wall-to-wall bookshelves and heavy slant towards cookbooks and food writers (Michael Pollan, Nina Plack, Mark Bittman.) In other words: oasis, much?
I got on the road Wednesday after a late start, delayed by the threat of snow flurries. With Buddy buckled in the back seat, a bag of road trip snacks (grapes, apples, and Wegmans gummis) besides me, and a fully charged iPod we set out. Using a map. That’s right, I decided to forego the all-knowing TomTom, which wanted me to take major highways to F-burg, in favor of the route my Dad highlighted on a map 11 years ago when he first took me down to look at Wake Forest. While you give up 70 mph speed limits, you get New York Finger Lakes, rural farm lands in Pennsylvania and horse country in Virginia in exchange. The 35-mph towns would probably frustrate most people, but I rarely do road trips with a deadline in mind with my propensity to stop for Mt. Dew refills every 2 hours anyways.
I arrived in Fredricksburg after 8 hours on the road, and I was welcomed by my Aunt, her excited Cairn Terrier and her affectionate one-eyed kitty (a rescue from a kitty mill). She poured me a glass of wine, as I hung over the counter in her kitchen and watched her put dinner together – roasted Cornish Game Hen, cranberry rice pilaf and roasted beets and shallots over arugula and goat cheese. (Yes, Mom, I asked if I could help and I did put my dishes in the dishwasher.) After dinner, we curled up near a roaring fire and she entertained me with family stories, including telling me about my Grandparent’s first encounter, first date and marriage proposal. We talked until I had to prop my eyelids up, and then I shuffled off to bed. That night I slept under a quilt made by my grandmother, flanked on either side of me with my own little pup dog and one-eyed Kee Cat.
I barely got on the road the next morning, held up by more ice, more stories from my Aunt and the most delicious latte. I did finally pack up the car and say my good-byes, and got back on the road. Only before I could get to Winston, I had one more pit stop.
When I was reviewing the route with my Dad, I noticed that one of my many options of Fredericksburg to Winston included passing near or through Charlottesville. One cannot travel mere miles from a wino without stopping in to say hello! I pulled off the highway in Charlottesville and zig-zagged through the mountainous streets until I found Jess’s house. As Buddy and Ivy forlicked in the snow (from 2 weeks ago!) in her backyard, Jess and I cuddled up with a cup of coffee – a break from writing her dissertation, a break from the growing monotony of the highway. I could have stayed all day, but I knew I’d regret it as night fell and I was still on the road.
I made it home around 5 that night, road-weary and completely uninterested in anything but eating dinner, taking a shower and going to bed. Sad to admit though, since it was New Year’s Eve! Matt and I cooked dinner together, and toasted to the New Years with Crystal Light, as he prepped to go to work and I was completely wine-d out (what?!) form my week at home. He headed in around 10, and I clicked the lights off at eleven. When the ball dropped on 2010, I was far gone into dreamland, putting another long but lovely journey behind me.
December 30, 2009
Visit to Pittsford, The Highlights:
Seeing Avatar in 3-D. Wearing 3-D glasses the rest of the week, whenever deemed necessary.
Cooking together as a family. Sweet potatoes, which every single person added something to.
My husband added the marshmallows, of course.
Watching the men do the dishes.
Listening to my brother play piano. He is absurdly gifted.
Example: I fell asleep one night listening to him play the most melodious song I think I’ve ever heard. I made a note to ask him what it was, because I wanted to download it on itunes. Turns out he was making it up as he goes along. Insane.
Coffee with my mom. Sitting by the fire with my Daddy-o. I love my parents.
Time with my Grandpa.
Realizing my “little” cousins have become grown up girls.
Christmas Morning.
December 28, 2009
Even though we celebrated Christmas on the 27th, it felt exactly like Christmas with all our regular traditions: open stockings first, then eat sticky buns, then start it on the presents. Dad passes out the presents, which means he always ends up with a huge stash left at the end. Sometime in the midst of present opening, someone starts making Bloody Mary’s or Raspberry Bellini’s. Immediately after opening presents, my brother falls asleep in the wrappings and my parents fix BLT’s or “special eggs.” (I don’t know why we call them that, they’re scrambled eggs with mustard.) Turns out it matters not what the date is, but where you are, who you’re with and what you do. Merry Christmas, ya’ll.
December 23, 2009
The following criteria deem you “Difficult to Shop For.” If you match at least two of these criteria, you should know that your friends and family are probably talking about you behind your back circa November 25th each year.
1. You say out loud that you want something, and then you go and buy it.
2. You have no poker face when it comes to gifts that do not appeal to you. You have no qualms about asking for a gift receipt for returns.
3. You give few hints or lists around gift giving time.
4. You are astoundingly good at giving presents.
The bad news is my Dad matches all four of those criteria. (Hi Dad. I love you, but yes, you are usually the big question mark on my Christmas Gift.xls sheet.) (Yes, I use an Excel sheet.) (Yes, you can have a template.) (Yes, I am horrifically dorky.) (Yes, I am assuming you’re thinking these questions to yourself.) (Yes, I’ll stop now.)
So here is what my dad DOES like, as far as gift giving goes: gifts that clearly demonstrate your generosity of time and thought. Gah, I mean, what kind of holiday is this? My dad has always been a fan of gifts that we have made: whether it is a photo calendar or a CD of music we think he’ll like, if we made it, he likes. (Although I may have detected a hint of anxiety when I went through my knitting stage that he might be on the receiving end.) And his absolute all time favorite gift? Homemade fudge.
Yes, homemade chocolate fudge is all it takes to make my Dad happy. So when I was home for Christmas, I decided to attempt making it. The recipe comes from my Grandma (his mom) and looked fairly simple. Famous last words.
All was going well through the early stages: scald milk, melt chocolate, add in a few things. But then there was the boiling, and the soft ball stage and the dropping the pan into a sink of ice water. First, my pot was too small.
For the record, it should not be doing this Mount Vesuvius action. That is very, very bad in the making of fudge.
I was so flustered by the gushing chocolate over the sides of the pan that I underestimated the soft ball stage and switched to the ice bath too early. It is supposed to go from a very glossy melt-y chocolate look to the matte look of, well, fudge. This did not happen. Nonetheless, I prayed for the best and poured it in the waiting pan and stuck it in the fridge.
My mom told me to stick it in the fruit drawer, swearing my Dad would never look in the fruit drawer. Later that night, my Dad mused out loud that he wished someone would make him fudge and my mom and I traded conspiratorial glances.
A few minutes later, he was rummaging in the fridge for something when… “WHAT THIS IN HERE?” The jig was up. So much for waiting for Christmas. As my Dad dug the tray out of the fruit drawer, I crossed my fingers and toes that the fudge had set while in the fridge.
For dessert that night, we had vanilla ice cream…. with melty, gooey hot fudge sauce.
December 21, 2009
Figuring out how to balance two family Christmases, separated by 700 miles, is a difficult task to begin with, but the addition of a less than traditional emergency room work schedule adds just another wrinkle. I think it’s safe to say rare will be the year that we actually celebrate Christmas on the 25th, from this point forward. Fortunately, we were able to work out an early Christmas with Matt’s family traveling up to see us on Sunday – which meant, my first time hosting an official holiday! With the in-laws! Ok, I say that as if the underlying message is “pressure’s on!” but truth be told, my fam-in-law are the sweetest, kindest people ever and even if I burnt the entire meal, they’d probably be all “But your napkins rings look perfect!” (And I’m not just saying that because my dad-in-law reads this. Hi Dad!)
I had fun planning the menu, trying to do a fairly traditional holiday dinner, but not get too in over my head. My favorite thing to make was the homemade yeast rolls. They were super easy, but I felt very Pioneer Woman tossing flour all over the place and pounding rolls into little balls to drop into a big ol’ greasy pan. I won’t go all play by play of the food on you here (holding myself back) but the rest of the meal was quite scrumpty too.
Okay, wait indulge me one more… for my male readers… I’ll mention the meat. My first time making a prime rib! It was perfect. I got a little nervous when I realized my meat thermometer, which has worked faithfully for four years, broke. TODAY. Of all days. Couldn’t have broken when it was just me and Matt and I might be worried about a little trichinosis from undercooked bbq, ooooh no, thermometer you had to break on my very first Holiday Dinner with The In Laws. (Well… at least my napkin rings were pretty, right?) Without any other choice, I just followed the timing and temperature in my recipe (from Everyday Food) and prayed for the best. I breathed a sigh of a relief when Matt started carving and the meat was not still moo-ing. Not moo-ing, and very very tasty. Success! Thank you oven gods!
After we ate, we gathered together to exchange presents and even Buddy was able to get in the goods. (Look at that tongue… Micah knows the way to a puppy dog’s heart.)
I ran into a little snafu handling Matt’s gift. I had gotten him part of one of those heavy duty Craftsmen tool chest, which was very kindly loaded into *his* trunk by the Sears sales guy. I got home and went to get it out to wrap and it, um, well… looks like I need to go back to doing some 30-Day Shred. Couldn’t even move the darn thing. Soooo I wrapped it right in the trunk and prayed that he would have no reason to go into his trunk for the next 2 days. When it came time for unwrapping his gift, I forced my family to tromp out to the garage together. Nothing like the smell of gasoline to get you in a festive mood, right?
We so enjoyed hosting our family… although I must say, I have a whole new appreciation for all that my grandmothers, aunts and mother who have hosted many a holiday (or other family gathering) have gone through before me. The time it takes to get the meal ready, your house all spiffy and smelling nice, and the insane timing of cooking everything…good grief. It’s enough to make a girl put Papa J’s on her speed dial. So if I haven’t said it before, here’s another resounding thank you to all the “been there, done that” women in my families. But I understand why we do it – it is so worth it to have your family gathered around a meal you made, relaxing in your home that you take care of, and appreciating their time together. Maybe the novelty of this will wear off after I’ve done it year after year, but as for now, as 1950s as this might sound, I truly do enjoy homemaking. (Though I hesitate to put this in print…I have a feeling someone might reference this post when I complain the next time I have to vacuum up dog hair tumbleweeds.)
On that lovely note, I leave you with this… Merry Christmas, from the Cline family. May your meat be cooked, your presents clock in at less than 75 pounds and your family be together this holiday season!
November 30, 2009
What are the holidays for if not shaking the dust off the favorite family traditions? In our family, for instance, a favorite tradition of ours is that someone (Katie*) will always get mad while we’re playing card games and storm off crying. See? Now that’s what family is all about.
This year for Thanksgiving we had some new family traditions brought into the mix, as well as revisiting some old ones. For the first time ever, we didn’t celebrate the holidays at home; my parents and brother actually flew to NC for a below-the-mason-dixon line Thanksgiving. Much to my father’s chagrin, there were no coon skin hats or sawed off shotguns involved.
But despite the new locale, many traditions were kept in place. For instance, Michael turned everyone out and played video games for 12 hours straight and Katie sat on the couch and read. No one said family togetherness had to involve interacting with each other, did they?
My Fam: Social Butterflies.
On Thursday, the family had their “traditional” turkey meal down at Katie’s house in Charlotte while Matt and I spent Thanksgiving with his family in High Point. On Friday, my family descended upon our house for extravagant meal #2. (#3 for Matt + I, if you were counting. My skinny jeans certainly were.) Dad and I went and picked out a tenderloin together, which he and Matt did on the grill. I made a yummy warm spinach salad from Ellie Krieger’s cookbook and stovetop green beans with glazed pecans. Not sure whether those count as Yankee beans or not… stovetop = Yankee, but the involvement of butter + pecans = southern. Could it be that I finally found the green beans that please everyone? We’ll just have to call them Yankee Belle beans. After a near miss when we thought Teeter had run out of canned pumpkins, Dad made his traditional pumpkin pie which coincidentally I am having for breakfast today. Highly nutritious.
I will desperately try to refrain from posting pictures of everything I ate all weekend. I’m prone to do that, you know.
You’ll have spinach and you’ll like it, gosh darn it.
Saturday my mom and I got our hands messy making our family’s traditional cut out Christmas cookies. This is my Grandma Claffey’s recipe that my mom has been making ever since I can remember. However, this year I implemented a new change: I made Mom switch from margarine to butter. I think she was a little nervous, since she’s probably been making them exactly as Grandma’s recipe calls for, oh, 31 years and hey, it would kinda suck to mess up 4 dozen cookies just because I’m a little bit afraid of trans fat. (Ok, a lot bit afraid.) Fortunately, for me and everyone else’s arteries, they were delicious with butter.
I mean, it’s butter. You can’t go wrong, right?
My mom would probably like me to point out that after cutting out the first two dozen, I went and took a nap on the couch while she finished up the last two and then frosted all of them.
Moms are champs, aren’t they?
My brother, Mom and I went to see Precious on Saturday night. (Katie had taken Dad back down to Charlotte for a flight to Florida for a golf trip and Matt was on call.) Precious was INCREDIBLE. I don’t think I can do it justice to describe it, so I’ll just leave at this: go see it. Don’t expect to feel warm n’ fuzzy after leaving it, but expect to be powerfully moved. Maybe the best film I’ve seen in 2009. Don’t tell Edward and Bella.
On Sunday I took the remainder of the fam back down to Charlotte, and Mom, Katie and I went shopping at Trader Joe’s. Not having a Trader Joe’s is one of two faults I consider Winston-Salem to have. (The other is Willard’s cabs.) I loaded up on Prosecco (duh), dried every-kinda-fruit-imaginable, tons of fish, tubs of hummus and the best roasted balsamic butter veggies in. the. world. Not kidding. (PS, I like food. Did you notice?) The rest of Sunday I spent sitting in traffic on I-85 and that’s all I’m going to say about that.
It was SUCH a great weekend having time to spend with both of our families. My favorite parts of the weekend were having Matt’s family over before we went to the big lunch and just having some quieter time with them, waking up every morning to have coffee with my momma and dragging my sister out to the field behind our house to do a photo shoot so I could practice using different camera settings. (She won’t let me post the pictures, but I might anyways. I’ll wait a day or two to see if she reads this.) The weekend went by so fast, but I have a feeling December is going to slip right on past us and we’ll be packing for Rochester before I know it! The holidays seem to do that to ya – take forever to get here, then just whoosh right on by. What’s with that?
The Holidays: Party Naps Recommended.
November 27, 2009
Nanta sent me outside to take photos of the menfolk. And what Nanta says, you must do.
Even if you feel a bit like Jane Goodall trying to blend in among a foreign species.
(What do you think they are all looking at?)
We had a delightful Thanksgiving day with Matt’s family. We lucked out and Matt ended up having both Thursday and Friday off, so we got to go down to High Point and spend the day with his family. His aunt would make Ina Garten cry into her hand-pressed linen napkins with her hostess and cooking skills. I can only imagine how long she spends getting ready for this flock to descend upon her dining room table.
After doing lunch with the family, we went and put on some pants with elastic waistbands and went over to our friends Matt and Donna for feast #2 with some of our other friends who couldn’t or hadn’t traveled home for the holiday a la intern year schedules. Feast #2 might not have had years of practice, but it was equally as delicious. I thought I was just going to have a bite of dessert, but I found myself ladling up a plate with mashed potatoes and gravy. (Soooo, that’s what happens when one uses real cream and butter eh? Mine are never QUITE like that…)
The night ended with the boys watching football on the couch, and the girls breaking into Donna’s stash of champagne to make impromptu poinsettia and getting irreconcilably giggly.
While my daily list of blessings is often long, it most certainly always includes giggling friends, loving and welcoming family and of course, delicious food. Especially when I don’t have to do the dishes. Happy Thanksgiving, ya’ll.
October 31, 2009
Happy Birthday, sweet Katie. I can’t really believe you’re 25. That sounds so adult. And you can’t possibly be an adult, can you? No, no, that seems impossible. You see, you are still just that little first grader who decided to go by Kathryn for a month, until you realized how much more work it was spelling that out on every school assignment. You are the 7 year old doing handsprings in the side yard under the willow tree, with a fake sprained ankle (a la Kerri Shrug) wrapped in ACE bandages. You are the brave 9 year old, the one who I send over to strangers in bookstore to ask what time it is or to other little girls on the beach to ask if they will be our friend. You are the ten year old who is draped in Mom’s old bridesmaid dresses and shawls, clomping around in too-big heels with your Molly doll tucked under your arm. You are the middle schooler who is scared to be left home alone, who I discover hiding in the closet with your fist closed over a roll of quarters, ready to knock a burglar unconscious. You are the high school freshmen in too-tight black pants with a can of Orange Sunkist, sitting in the commons completely at ease with my friends. You are the twenty one year old, running alongside me at mile twelve and grabbing my hand as we both spot the finish line sign flapping in the Virginia Beach sunlight. You are the graduate with a Master’s degree and a wardrobe of Ann Taylor skirts, ready to write lessons plans and give detention slips. And now somehow, you are the 25 year old, as confident and assured and gracious and gorgeous as any woman could be. I love you, little sister. Happy Birthday.
July 29, 2009
Ohhhh hello, blog. Funny how you just hang out here waiting for me while I go busily about my life in the real world. You knows, interactions that don’t involve a tweet, a status update or a g-chat…
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Dinner for two on the patio. We love appetizers-for-dinners. And wine.My mom was here this week – WEEK – and it was just lovely. It was an exceedingly well-timed visit, as Matt was right into the thick of trauma surgery month and has basically just been sleeping and working, sleeping and working, lather, rinse, repeat. It was nice to have company and break up a long month where I was starting to hold philosophical discussion with my pooch, and I know Mom always feels like she’s stepping on our toes to visit (YOU AREN’T) so I think it was easy for her knowing Matt was MIA and she wasn’t imposing on our quality time together, budding new marriage and all. (2 years, in 2 weeks, yall!)
We went for walks (lots of walks), we drank lattes (lots of lattes), we drank wine (even more wine), and we talked and talked and talked and talked. My aunt left me a message on my fbook wall asking if her kids will ever MISS her as I posted that I lamented my mother turning left to go north on 52 as I turned right to go south (and go to werk. Meh.) It made me ponder the direction our relationship has turned in, and how it has grown and changed from teenager-hood to semi-adulthood.
I mean, I always LIKED my mom (I mean, loved, duh, but I mean like-like-as-a-person, yanoo?) We never really went through that like, moooommmmmmmm get out of my roooooom stage in high school and I think pretty much immediately upon leaving the nest, I pretty quickly became a thrice-to-cuatro times a week phone caller. This was even when long distance rates still existed! Lurve, right? Well, I have to confess that probably for a good chunk of college I used my mom as my own personal sounding board. I can’t recall that I ever asked her about her day, her job, her worries, her passions, her life.
I guess that’s what being a mom and a kid is all about – the balance is never fully equalized, and I suppose that’s how it’s supposed to be. This morning I was getting ready for work, and my mom noticed my hem needed sewing. As I sat in my undies eating my oatmeal while my mom stitched my skirt back together, I wondered if I was 27 or 7. (Note: semi-adulthood.) But I didn’t care. Taking care of me (all her kids, nay everyone) is what makes my mom the person she is.
But the joy I’ve discovered in having a friendship with her – wanting to know who she IS, not just as a mom, has really brought a new amazing aspect to our relationship. I looked as forward to her visit as I would a week with one of my best girl friends. Maybe even more, because I love mah girls but none have ever stocked my fridge when they visit. Come to think of it, they usually empty … well, never mind.
As much as I still went about my life while she was here – went to work, walked the dog, wiped pee out of the crate, grilled chicken, went running, tweeted, ya know, the basics of life – it felt like a vacation to come home from work every day and just hang out with one of my favorite people. Although I always loved being with my mom, I can see now it was much more selfish in my teen/early 20s – I loved being with my mom because my mom was already there to be with me. To shift things just every so slightly has really just been one of the most wonderful things in my life.
So to my aunt, whose children right now might be door-slammers, or busy themselves with texting when you’re driving them all over the g.forsaken town…. will they come to miss you? Yes, immensely. The secret is they already do, it just takes a few tries of turning your white load pink or figuring out how to cook a pork chop on your own before the gratitude for what you did for them for 18 (erm, 27) years really whaps them upside the head. And once they start realizing that you made pork chops (or spaghetti, or hamburgers, or tuna rice casserole) for five people EVERY SINGLE DAY for LOTS and LOTS of years… then they start wondering how you did it.
And that’s when they start wondering who you are.
Way cool.
Thanks for coming Mom… safe travels!
July 20, 2009
My mom is here! My sister is here! I’m at work!
Which one of those (!) don’t belong? My mom and sister drove down yesterday, arriving at about 6 pm last night. Mom was very excited to meet her grand-doggy and has already decided that she gets to spoil him and give him us much affection as she wants, Cesar’s exercise-discipline-affection structure be damned! (She’s now going to be in charge of cleaning out the pee in the crate then.)
Once I got home from work yesterday (yes, Sad Story but I’m taking Friday off in exchange), I whipped up a delicious, healthy dinner for the road weary travelers who apparently had subsisted their 600 mile journey on Tootsie Rolls and caramels. I made roasted zucchini, a delicious salad with blueberries, apples and almonds, cold rice salad with cilantro and feta and grilled chicken with a marinade of white wine and soy sauce. (Hope my poor husband isn’t reading this who has had a lovely diet of Lean Cuisine, packed lunch or hospital cafeteria meal for nearly 4 weeks!) Promise, honey, it wasn’t that good.
After dinner, we took Budster for a long walk and then we polished off a few glasses of wine just sitting around chatting. I love how easy it is to just curl up in a comfy place and talk to both my mom and my sister, and how the hours disappear as the sunsets with a wine glass in our hand or rises with a coffee mug in our hands, a la 5:30 am this morning. Mom was kind enough to accompany me on Buddy walk #1 of the day.
I am sure this week will fly by, so I’m trying to soak up every minute with my two favorite girls.
