The Lady in the Kitchen

This old house Spirit, imagination, farce, you decide. I’m not taking any chances.

Years ago, we had just moved into our current home, an 1850 fix up. My parents were visiting the house for the first time. My dad, who was already exhibiting the earlier signs of Alzheimer’s (bless his heart) was wandering around the new house a bit.

“There you are.” I said to him as he joined the room, “I was wondering where you were.’

“I was just talking to the nice lady in the kitchen.” he said to us.

As far as I knew the only ones is the house were now all together. We shrugged it off but I was a little excited at the idea of moving in with a ghost.

Ages have since past without any truly mysterious voices, knockings or gauzy sightings but she’s become our excuse for anything odd that occurs, especially in the kitchen (burned dinners included).

This morning I placed my coffee cup down on the island. Brian and I were both in the room, our backs happened to be turned to the cup.

“CLUNK”.

We turned, the mug was laying on its side in a little puddle of leftover coffee.

“What happened,” I asked, “I wasn’t anywhere near it.”

“Neither was I” answered B.

There she goes again. Nice AND naughty. We call her “Sassy”.

- - - David

Travel

It may seem that our travels are all about food

but there’s so much more.

But eating IS necessary

so we might as well eat local

We just returned from diving out to California with the grrrrls.

It started with the Saint Louis Arch (big!) and a homo slur written by some one (small) on our “do not disturb” sign in the same town.

We crossed Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada and on to Palm Springs, California. We stayed at the Coral Sands for a few days and then we started back. Arizona, New Mexico, back through Texas, then Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio and ... HOME.

During the week there, the week back and the week in Palm Springs we were fully occupied with driving, site seeing, snap shot snapping and .... well ... snacking. We saw a lot and yes we ate, only succumbing to the ease of “Fast-Food” very few times. We posted most snaps on face book, and a lot of that was food.

To see our entire California Road trip “Roadfood©“ collection.

Please go to our Apple blog (the 3rd)

http://web.me.com/brockowskiofmichigan/Site/Blog/Blog.html

- - - - David

On the road trip again ... but

Going West

We're about to take off. Brian is jobless but interviewing, I'm, of course, free and the grrls, both young and old, have yet to disagree with the idea. But this time it's a little different. It's all been B's idea.

I'm prying myself off the sofa and just going along.

Yes, I am helping with the planning. I am charting and fine-tuning stop overs, searching for motels that take dogs, alerting far flung friends in our path and piping in with my excellent, if unneeded. opinions but the trip was all Brian's idea. We're taking the dogs and three weeks and crossing to CA and back. But it was his idea. I've just been self-centeredly thinking of my recovering self. Taken down by a simple belly-button-octomy, embarrassing.

Presently we've planned stops in St. Louis, Wichita, Tucumcari, Santa Fe, Monument Valley and Escalante on the way out. A few days with Ruby at the Coral Sands in Palm Springs. The way back is still a work in progress but we know we're seeing family in Phoenix and friends in Albuquerque and Cincinatti.

We're confident that both old Sophie and oozing stroke boy will make it. Cross your fingers, Justin Case.

It all starts this Saturday!

Lets go on with the show

I DO (like London)

Topping off the vacation with a picnic of Neal's Yard Cheddar,

fresh bread and very garlicy cornichon on a bench in Green Park on a sunny December day

There are coffee shops everywhere! (There is also a lot of tea and ale, but never mind). The parks have huge WELL tended plantings of flowers in Mid-December. The museums are also everywhere, spectacular AND FREE (the churches are NOT but just ignore that). The Royal presence is quite subtle. The BBC is live. People here are nice (there are a few loud drunks at night but they're walking [or attempting to] NOT driving). There are all kinds of people, all sorts, different colors, and ALL with English accents.

They all seem to really enjoy Christmas.

I Like London.

- - - David (reporting from the United Kingdom)

A Londony Christmas at last

The preparations continue. We are leaving tomorrow for Jolly Ol' London, the weeks of getting ready are about to crescendo. The suitcase is on the bed and there's actually something in it! Do you think B will notice that I've packed his Cashmere jacket?

Besides tour books, essential toiletries and that jacket, I'm packing light. I will just head straight to Harrod's for anything else I need. I am happy to live in the jeans in which I'm flying and to live on English shortbread.

I wouldn't mind a bit of Dickens. A little Oliver, a touch of Scrooge. We Americans grow up (and grow old) living in London a bit each Christmas. It may be through someone else's imagination and the accents may be staged but somehow Christmas wouldn't the same without a teeny Tiny Tim and coal on the fire.

Seeing London for ourselves (at last) should put us right in the mood for a bit of flaming pudding in Adrian.

---David

How I lived since my Summer Vacation

On SOME plane going SOMEwhere

I think I may be neglecting the blog.

Do you miss me? Probably not. You must think that I am so busy. Truth is I stay at home, tag along with Brian on trips (which tends not to be as often as I'd like), take a LONG time to do anything "normal" and practice my A.D.D. whenever possible.

Want to do a load of laundry? First I end up doing 100 other extraneous and often unnoticeable chores and somehow the clock has gone from 7 AM to 7PM, I'm exhausted and the laundry is still dirty. FML as the kids would write.

Let's see, since the trip to get the 100 year old mounted Caribou head (still not on the wall) we've
visited friends in Seattle and Chicago,
done the Equality March in DC (visiting friends there too)
had a Birthday (as have many of you)
celebrated Halloween and honored Dios de los Muertos
been on facebook so many times I think I may have an issue

I attempted to go through all the photos and update the iWeb blog but the "Genius" at the Apple store that had the iMac for 2 days (the 1st time) and charged Brian $65 (the 1st time) not only disabled the blog access (along with all sorts of other things including all my flagged email) and screwed up my iTunes, STILL didn't fix my iCal and now I can't Sync my phone. GRRRR as GinGin would "say"
So I was too frustrated and infuriated to be creative. This entry is the result.

Let's just say there are a LOT of great photos and memories of the past few months and let me know if you want more details.

- - - David

Ruffing It with the Grrls

Our room, however temporary, with a view

Tent: Origin Middle English: from Old French tente, based on Latin tent- ‘stretched,’ from the verb tendere. Which looks like tender, as in “showing gentleness and concern or sympathy” HAH I say HAH . . . HAH.

It all began gently enough. Ann had invited us for the weekend to camp in her woods in the Adirondacks. Brian had bought the tent, almost a year ago, in hopes of camping out on the way to our wedding. (It had yet to leave the backyard.) We drove out and in clear PERFECT woodsy weather had pitched the tent on the leafy pine needle ground of the Arcadian, historic, pastoral countryside.

We had dinner, talked and laughed with our gentle hostess and climbed into the spacious accommodations with our two fur coated roommates. The moonlight shone through the diaphanous ceiling, the loons called from the lake, everyone was snug. Then the rain began.

It was gentle enough, some would say sympathetic even. We remembered not to touch the walls lest it encourage a leak, though bug chasing dog noses didn’t heed that rule. The bugs and the noses would “entertain” us for 2 nights.

I kept slipping off the air mattress too. This would be fun for you normal folk. For a dizzy headed do nothing like me, reclining itself is a bit of a challenge. Laying on the ground in the too dim night light of the Coleman lantern was enough. Laying on the ground in a tent in the woods in the rain AND swoon-slipping off the damn thing was a bit much for stroke-boy. But I simply smiled a clenched toothed smirk and threw the f**king thing out of the tent and went to powder my nose in the trees . . . in the rain. This is when the low animalistic growls greeted me mid-powder. Intellectually I knew this was, probably, merely Ann’s aging, cautious Pug snugly calling from her nearby tent. Nonetheless, I reacted like it was a voracious hostile Yogi looking for my picnic basket. Mid-powder I dove into the tent. B diplomatically swallowed any amusement.

We spent the next day in bright sunshine. Touring the grounds, visiting town, brunching at one of the jaw dropping clubhouses, and enjoying a club-wide picnic dinner top off by a pancake dessert. I never knew the rich could be so entertaining. I never knew you could put melted butter, maple syrup AND brown sugar on a pancake.

That night, like clockwork, the rain began the moment we bedded down in the tent. This time we were entertained by bug chasing, nose pokes AND supernatural uninhibited rolling thunder. (We thought the loons had been loud.) And I refrained, despite my engaging needs, from taking a powder.

Monday dawned pastorally and B packed up the tent, loaded the Caribou onto the roof while I busied myself snapping pics on my iPhone (someone has to attend to the art) . . . and off we went.

Happy, grateful, still full of pancakes, and ecstatic that we have a tent in the storm.

- - - David

A Little About the Camp at Little Moose Lake

Looking-out for the Little Moose

So, we drive all the way to the mid-Upstate NY with two dogs mainly to pick up a 100 year old Caribou head but that’s not the whole story. What is a nice girl from Graaaand Rapids doing in the Adirondacks, and inviting people such as us to visit? Let me give you a brief history.

Ann and I moved to NYC in 1979 after graduating from the U of M (I did live in LA for half a year then I graduated, I changed my mind about locations, she graduated and we went). We lived on the upper East Side in a nice “garden” apartment, actually I lived there twice. After I met Michael there and moved out, about ’84, Ann met and married Milo Williams in ’89. He was a descendant of one of the founders of Sherwin-Williams, which was started by Henry Sherwin and Edward Williams in 1866. The Adirondeck League Club was founded as a hunting and fishing camp and became a get-away for many. I don’t know when the venerable Williams clan built their “camp” at the ALC but I think it was right around then.

I was at Ann and Milo’s wedding in 1989 at the “boathouse” of the “Summer Lodge” at the ALC. I was shot in the heart by the rustic beauty of the “camp”, the lodge and the 50,000+ acres of American history. If you’ve ever been enchanted by the beauty of an Adirondack chair or the magic of the Adirondack “style”, imagine being surrounded by the real thing. Back when it was founded the privileged families (at first the men only) took trains up to Saratoga (where the tracks stopped) and then barged, boated, horsed and hiked to these elaborate compounds (at first just the lodges) in their victorian versions of L.L.Bean.

The architecture is mainly brown with green highlights, wooden and timbered. The furniture is twiggy, rustic, Stickley, Mission, with a smattering of refined period but not purist. The people are upper crusty and very nice and extremely friendly. What’s a Polish boy from Motown, HIS husband and their Non-hunting-hunting dogs doing at a place like this? They’re guests, just visiting, and extremely lucky.

Back to the story. Milo and his siblings inherit the camp, and the dues. Life and League revelry continue, Ann and Milo have a child, buy their own smaller house at the Club. Milo suddenly dies. Morgan, Ann’s son, inherits property, Ann gets the membership, and the dues. Years later, Ann and Morgan are fixtures at the League. This year, Ann & Son decide to sell property, finance Morgan’s college, store a lot of the furniture, boats and accumulated hunting trophies, leave the Caribou to us, and keep the Club membership, all for now.

What will the future bring to our friends, to the property and it’s artifacts, indeed to the bucolic environment? Can we ever know the future?

I do know that we were very fortunate to be able to visit that long weekend in August, to have such friends, to meet such people, to be able to experience those places.

The Caribou? An amazing souvenir

- - - David

Coming soon: Camping it up

Getting There

It all started with this photo on facebook.

So, why would anyone load a tent and two big dogs into the car and drive eleven hours each way to spend two nights in the Adirondack woods? One with BEARS? Let me tell you our story.

Late last month Ann, a friend from college, (YES, I went), posted a photo of this caribou head on facebook saying she had put it on craigslist on a whim, saying ”I don't think it will sell. I will probably have to give it away.”

Nobody would want it? Was she nuts?

Let me explain. I’m the type of guy who loves animals, feels guilty about eating meat and loving it, even hates to kill a fly (I’ll comically karmically capture and release) and has always had this fanatic fascination with taxidermy. I know, it’s sick. I’ve always wanted to collect heads (be warned). So when the opportunity arose, I fired off an email offering WHATEVER she wanted: it’s a good thing I don’t have a first born.

The head was at her camp. See, Ann was married to this guy who came from the kind of family who had long ago (late 1800’s?) built this “camp” in the woods of the Adirondacks. All rough twigs and logs, rustic, hunt and gamey, vernacular and compound-y and very, very cool. She had her wedding there in the boathouse of ONE of the lodges in the late 80’s. I attended. I fell in love with the buildings, and all 50,000+ park-like acres of it. But more on the camp later. We decided to go again. The Caribou was the door prize.

We left last Friday afternoon, heading due south to the turnpike. I drove but don’t let the picture of me an Lucy fool you. Brian soon tired of my speed limit “speed” and got behind the wheel at the 1st opportunity in Ohio and we continued to head east. Making good time despite a stand still near Cleveland.

I love the north east coast of our country. It’s all mossy and historical. (Laugh all you want Europeans, smirk-on Westerners, I love it.) The further East, the older it seems to get. We were headed into Buffalo that night, and hopefully Frank & Teressa’s Anchor Bar, and the 1930’s and the 60’s

Teressa is credited with the invention of Buffalo Wings one late Friday night in 1964, for her bar tending son Dominic’s ravenous friends.

We checked into the Motel 6 and made it to the Anchor before it closed, we ordered the wings, we thanked Teressa.

The place was a great big. friendly. noisy. aging, paneled NE bar. I loved it, loved the wings, loved the company, loved that our waitress told me I could keep the menu. Face it, we’re Road Food-y kind of guys. Hope that’s alright.

- - - David

My summer "vacation"

Don’t let that pretty friend
or that dentally clasped daisy fool you,
that guy’s on pain pills

Less than a week after our return from hot humid heavenly NOLA I was being wheeled in for a little surgical tune-up. The umbilical hernia that was protruding from my abdomen for so long it had earned the nickname “my little alien” had been recently joined with one a little above it and another a little “below” it. This unknown doctor had been recommended by my new not much better known GP who had been “pin the tail on the donkey” chosen from a three page list provided by my beloved but retiring OLD GP.

Because I had had two previous laparoscopic hernia surgeries I was both optimistic and no longer a candidate for yet more. This procedure would have to be the old fashioned, hands on (in), scalpel cutting kind. Still I was optimistically expecting a few days of recovery. WRONG

This one seemed to get worse, not better, with the passing of time. This time I REFILLED the prescription pain killer TWICE and the doctor eventually threw in some antibiotics too (for the infection that set in). I’m not complaining, I survived. It’s just that a month+ of my summer has been spent on shuffling, house-bound, couch sitting solitude. AGAIN. A month of “Hey Gods, I just did this a few months ago!” feeling tired, mopey, grumpy and sorry for myself.

There’s an upside though. All this concentrating on the leaking incisions, taped gauze and a different sort of pill collection has taken my mind off the stroke. I was able to trick myself with this diversionary tactic from the tedious relearning and therapeutic remastering of simple BORING tasks. Walking slowly down the hall I was thinking about the belly NOT the wobbling.

Looking back, this was quite enjoyable. Surely there’s a suitable parable for this. Like “Don’t count your chickens in one silver basket” or something. This muddled brain can’t think of one so please provide a suitable one of your own. Perhaps you could email it to me?

I was ALSO grateful for the immediate visitation/diversion of my new friends Wendy and her family (Greg and [the most adorable] Sophia) in the days immediately after the “procedure”. They stopped by on their way from Taos NM to Costa Rica. (I didn’t even know we were on that route). They were joyous/joyful/a joy. I am SO grateful they came (AND to B for making us a pile of my favorite Overnight Waffles).

Following on their heals was our Seattle pal Calyn. Who graciously made her way to our door for an overnight after visiting family in Okemos before she made a journey to her Ol’ Kentucky home.

Seeing the C after all these years was a godsend, a blessing and even MORE sheer joy for this patient and his caretaker. The brief hours spent touring Hidden Lake Garden, visiting Ann Arbor, shopping for scooters, having (a recession improved?) fine dinner at Evan’s Street or just couch potato-ing and schmoozing was the best medicine I could request. The memory of her smile AND the thrill of her laughter AND the glowing warmth of her presence may have dimmed but now I clearly recalled the love she radiates so freely.

Look for the silver lining kids, that golden cup of nectar from the gods, it’s there somewhere. You may need it when you’re on the sofa, staring at your toes, realizing how easily the world goes on without you.

- - - David