Buying the Farm

It was not uncommon at my first cooking job to chop up hundreds of chicken breasts a day. Lemon chicken, sesame chicken, chicken almond salad, all were staples on the menu of that catering and carry-out establishment. Over the years that was a lot of chickens sent to their demise for one small business. No wonder the classic Far Side cartoon made us laugh.

These days, we run a mostly vegan household, but that sensibility sure doesn't extend to our pets. They eat a pound of raw meat a day. They also enjoy an assortment of treats also animal-based. Beef trachea, kangaroo jerky, various tendons, they are all stowed away in our cupboard. Recently we came into a windfall of freeze-dried duck feet-- a friend with four dogs bought them in bulk and found that her hounds easily tired of those particular poultry parts. As a result we have a hundred of them in the larder, which just makes me picture 50 ducks bobbing rudderless on an idyllic lake down on the Footless Duck Farm.

A Deep Bench

When I was little we had a set of Corning nesting bowls. Turquoise and white with a ring of farmers and roosters, the three of them were in heavy rotation in our kitchen. To us kids, the largest one was most notably the popcorn bowl, the medium one was the salad bowl, and the small one was often used for scrambling eggs.

The ones we had are long gone, replaced in my own kitchen by much more practical stainless steel, but several years back, I got a replacement set of the rooster bowls for Christmas, and I treasure them, even though I don't use them often, because there are certain times when those shelf-warmers are indispensable.

And on a snow day like today, when corn popped on the fire and Sally Lunn rising in the kitchen warmed us up after shoveling and sledding,, they were starters

Presidents Day Present

Historically, it seems that Presidents Day is the most likely time in our area for a big storm. '79, '03, and the Snowmeggedon/Snoverkill of 2010 delivered us multiple days of digging in and digging out right in the middle of February. And now this year, just when we thought that winter would leave us without a significant snowfall, we find ourselves at the end of three-day weekend contemplating a little more time away from work. And although our district hasn't called it yet, I've got my

fingers crossed,

because,

y'know,

I think the Presidents would want it that way.

Resolution

For me, it can be difficult to set school work aside, even on a three day weekend. For example, in my English classes right now, my students and I are focusing on the elements of fiction and plot structure, and so this afternoon when I was watching Marion Cotillard's Oscar-nominated performance in the French-language film Two Days, One Night, I was all about how that story of a woman who was forced to lobby her co-workers to give up their bonuses to save her job was being shaped.

At first, I found that I was a little confused at the lack of exposition, but also drawn in by the same, and then I noticed that I was marking events as they unfolded as "rising action". And when it came to a scene in the hospital that was clearly not the "climax", if one defined the conflict as the character of Sandra trying to get her job back, but was obviously the pivotal event of the movie, I had a true a-ha moment: in addition to realizing the central conflict was internal, not external, I also recognized that those little zig-zag diagrams can really be helpful!

Old Married Couple

At 6 o'clock on Valentine's Day the grocery store was not exactly deserted, but rather patronized by a few single shoppers and several families. The bitter cold of yesterday had subsided and our coats were unzipped when we stopped on our way home from the movies to get the final ingredients for our traditional heart-shaped pizzas. To our surprise, giant snowflakes filled the sky as we exited through the double doors. It was too warm for them to stick, but Heidi and I turned to each other at the same moment.

"Remember that time we went to the movies?" I started

"and when we came out it was snowing?" Heidi continued.

"then we went to the Japanese steakhouse for dinner, and after that? It was really coming down," I added.

"and we didn't have school for a week!" Heidi finished.

"That was fun!" we said together, and we climbed into our car to drive home.

Microaggression

We had our dog to the vet this afternoon for a minor procedure: it was time for an icky wart on her back to be excised. There were a lot of other dogs when we arrived, but ours was too busy quivering to pay any attention to them. The same could not be said for a persistent little black poodle mix about half her size.

All the while his owner was settling up at the front counter, he was at the end of his leash straining toward Isabel, nose high, tail swaggering. At last his owner finished and turned toward us. "Is your dog friendly?" she asked, intoning the tribal greeting of urban dog owners. Because I said yes, the two of us were obliged to make small talk in the minutes it took for our dogs to sniff each other. Generally that takes the form of asking about each other's dogs, and that's what happened this time, too.

"Half poodle, half golden retriever," I said.

"Schnoodle," she told me. "His father was an apricot poodle. Can you believe it?"

I looked at the cast iron tint of her pup, and shook my head.

"All the rest of his litter mates were orange," she continued, "But we wanted a black dog."

I nodded politely. She shrugged.

"Especially since we got him on Martin Luther King's birthday."

Breathing Room

With a special activity and early release for students tomorrow as well as a holiday on Monday, I found myself with a rare feeling this afternoon around 3 PM. There was nothing that I had to do RIGHT AWAY. I surveyed my empty classroom. The custodian had already been through, but the books and papers cluttering my desk and shelves were not her responsibility. I took a deep breath and moved several stacks of stuff to an empty table, where I spent the next hour or so sorting, filing, shelving, stacking, and recycling. For the first time in a while, a sliver of the blond veneer of my desk top was actually visible. With satisfaction I packed my things to leave for the day, and as I closed the door behind me, the afternoon sun shone brightly on the vigorous fronds of my spider plant and illuminated the orderly room beyond.