As ridiculous as it may sound, I’m on the run from our house.  That’s how it feels -  not a place to be but a place to dodge whenever possible.

This feeling is due, of course, to the renovations we voluntarily put in motion at the beginning of January.  In fact, we bought the house knowing full well that life would boing into being pear shaped for a time because of said R-word.

Of what it would be like to live on site while the work went on we had inklings.  People advised us it would be worse than we imagined.  Like worse x 100.  It’s not that we disbelieved them.  Yet, even the most dismal and scary descriptions were more like partial explanations.

Until you experience it firsthand, you can’t quite grasp how COMPLETELY crappy and uncomfortable it is to be in a house where rubble rules…and grit conquers all…and you are left with one room in which to eat, sleep, work, find warmth, regroup, etc…and you have one bathroom you share with the builders.

Not even food lands with its usual levels of solace.  (We don’t really have much of a kitchen anyway, given that half is generally fuzzed with brick dust at any given time.)

Anyhow, this is why I’m on the run from the house even as I spend much of my time in it.  Because we have to be on site even if we don’t want to be, at least at this stage of things.

So, the bedroom that’s become our all-purpose room also has to serve as my growlery*.  Actual growling has happened.  It’s superbly cathartic.  Although the dog is not into hearing me make sounds that are his turf.

And, I’ve stopped trying to look for the upside and the silver lining.  They’re there, but at the moment they’re covered in sand.

And, every morning I get up early – at least an hour before the builders arrive – so that I can have my tea and staring time and free write for at least 10 minutes.

In these free writing sessions, I haven’t been able to detach from what’s going on around me.  It would be nice if I felt called to scribble about warm woolen mittens and cupcakes, but inevitably I circle back to the crusty exposed pipes and cement. As you do.

* “Sit down, my dear,” said Mr. Jarndyce. “This, you must know, is the growlery. When I am out of humour, I come and growl here.”  – From Charles Dickens, Bleak House

For as much as I love puttering in the kitchen, I’m not that good at cooking.

I can easily produce something edible, but it’s rare for me to produce something of plate-licking caliber.  God knows it’s not for lack of trying either.  Edible, however, is what tends to shake out of these kitchen sessions.  There’s no bitterness attached to this statement even though edible just isn’t good enough…if I’m being honest.

It’s obvious I haven’t a latent stash of culinary talent waiting to be coaxed out of hiding, and I can accept that.  Likewise I’ll continue to love my afternoons or evenings consumed by the promise of a new – or even an old -recipe.  But all the while I still have an entrenched faith in dogged persistence, that a sweet, fat payoff awaits:  eventually I’ll progress from mere edibles to delectables.

You have to dream in big, drippy, meaty haunches or you have nothing but watery broth at stake, to guide. And there’s no fun in that, even if you’re a vegetarian and the only haunch you can stomach is of tofu.

I was all set to devote this year to becoming a far better, more skillful, more knowledgeable cook – which sounds sort of haunchy – but as I was writing about that framework I realized that that was not “it”.

No, “it” is thicker than how deftly I can mince shallots, stickier than my defeatist attitude towards cake.  “It” is my lifelong mixed-bag relationship with food, not my aspirations for the making of food, that call out.  We have some rifts to heal and a vision for the future to flesh out, food and I, neither of which will happen if I don’t defrost the freezer they’ve been sitting in.

By chance or luck (whichever you believe in) my quarterly order to Amazon included several books* that touch on different aspects of a food relationship I’ve been quietly or nervously noodling.

There’s the Eat-better-spend-less aspect that drew me to Economy Gastronomy by Allegra McEvedy & Paul Merrett.

There’s the screw restrictive diets/sensible adoration aspect à la Miss Dahl’s Voluptuous Delights by Sophie Dahl.

There’s the global-citizen/huge-swell-of-pride aspect from knowing how to cook both seasonally AND indigenously that spurred me to explore Spanish cuisine via Seasonal Spanish Food by José Pizarro, Culinaria Spain by Marion Trutter, and The Real Taste of Spain by Jenny Chandler.

I’m pleased with these new additions to my food lit library.   I’m not so pleased by the hard stuff that lies ahead and outside their pages.  But now is the time to engage with it, because now is the time.

* Note – These links are indeed Amazon affiliate links.  If you use them to buy something, I receive an affiliate commission.  Thought I should let you know so that you don’t feel mislead.

I don’t do New Year’s resolutions.

In recent years I’ve explored their very opposite by spending January naming what was already good and sound from the year before, a ritual I called the 31 Days of Self-Congratulations.

Corsica, September 2008

That exercise didn’t call to me this time, maybe because it’s a very time-consuming one. Could also be that the year felt like it wound to a close mid-November when our trip to Italy was over.  And the disparities between regular life after enjoying the irregularities of the traveling life were wide and sharp, and it took me a while to recognize that this was strong stuff that would stand between me and my optimistic New Year rituals of the past.  Not to mention the lure of new ones, like the “Best Of” lists that were bell-ringers (unintentional punning) for many bloggers in 2009.

Happily, fortuitously, mercifully, relievedl-y this morning I awoke to the bright penny shine of 2010 before me with my regular life batteries recharged enough that I was thirsty to write again.

Perhaps that’s what a low-key New Year’s Eve spent in the company of your Partner-in-Life, darling dog, roaring fire, a good dinner (lamb shoulder, parsnips and carrots, and mashed spuds with gravy made from the lamb drippings) the last of the excellent box wine from Chateau Peyriac de Mer (it’s the same excellent stuff they bottle, only in a box – trust me), and fireworks we could watch from the roof of our house can accomplish.

I also awoke thinking that a new New Year ritual regarding Determinations (not the R-word nor the I-word) would be better than none.  It’s funny how sometimes with our first blink we have the answers we’ve been gnashing our teeth over for eons.  On the other hand, last night it was very windy.  Window-door rattling windy.  Part of me fancies that overnight the wind swept through me, too, clearing a path to what was so apparent today.  And why not?

1. Utilizing self-discipline some more, at least as Judith Sills defines it:  “acting according to what you think instead of how you feel at the moment. That’s the only way any of us gets ourselves to do the hard stuff.”
2. Remember who I am. One of the sore spots of 2009 was acknowledging the degree that I’d muzzled parts of myself to meet certain expectations coming from outside myself.  One example:  for the sake of giving compassion a larger role, I didn’t speak with the conviction or honesty I felt.  There are times when a soft squeak can’t possibly do the job of a lion’s roar.
3. Thank friends who I’ve leaned on in 2009, and remind them that I’m here for them, too.
4. Enjoy the higher ground…sometimes.
5. Take more walks.
6. Own what I create with pragmatism and fairness – the good, the bad, the so-so…the beautiful, the ugly, the simply plain.
7. Remember that flexibility creates opportunities.
8. To that end let myself imagine big, because holding a bigger vision for my life is not a recipe for disappointment but a recipe for innovation.
9. Since icing is sometimes crucial to a cake, believe big in those imagineerings.
10. And since even sprinkles atop icing can be non-negotiable, believe I can stand on my own two feet.
11. For the next year, write with a sense of purpose.  Even if the purpose is silliness.
12. Face my demons, Temper Temper and Between-Meal Snacks.  Fairly self-explanatory.
13. Engage with the eternal question regarding Happiness…
14. …with inquisitiveness.  Rather than panic or the feeling that the clock is running out.

Best wishes everyone.  Here’s to luck and opportunity for us all.

It’s going down to the 40’s tonight in our part of Spain – verra cold for these parts – and yet the mosquitoes are still actively chomping.  At least me.  I just got bitten, like a minute ago, on the neck…and I’m wearing a turtleneck…and I’m in a bar. (For the free Wifi.  No, really.)  There are four other people in this bar with me.  Is it wrong to hope that the mozzie shares the love with them, too?

I’m afraid that on December 31st when I look back on what I’ve written here in 2009, all I will see is a of gripes about the internet troubles we’ve had in the past few months.  But that has been the case, much to my consternation.  To that end, I just want to send a quick word to the friends of this blog – old and new – that things will probably be quiet here for a little while longer while we we wait for our internet service to be activated.

The alternatives are limited, because we’ll be broke if we go to the internet cafes every day.  Or turn into barflies if we have to keep going to pubs to check emails and write blog posts. Or morph into Wifi trolls.

This last one is a very real possibility.  Tonight we drove around various neighborhoods looking for an unprotected network. (Didn’t find one, arrrrgh.)  How sad is that?  Don’t answer.  Just cross your fingers that Telefónica process our order mucho rápido.  Graçias.

Here’s hoping you stick with me and the better posts to come.  Pinky swear.

I’m trying to sum up three weeks of travel and feather plucking into one tidy post, and I’m not succeeding.  So, I’m going to just let the words roll and see what shows up.

Book Stall in Lucca

Let me start off by saying that our expedition to northern Italy has been fabulous so far.  It’s been chillier than expected, and we’ve had a couple of rain events to contend with, and I’ve come down with a cold, but those aren’t even mild complaints you’re hearing.  I’m loving, loving, loving this time in Italy.  It’s just so beautiful and fascinating and old and modern and everything I hoped it would be. It took me 40 years to get here, but it was entirely worth the wait.

The one bummer bit of the trip is that the gods of internet connections have been showing their trickster sides and having a good belly laugh at the Vodafone dongles supplied for our internet-ing.

With connections as slow as dial-up, until today I haven’t been able to upload even thumbnails and emails can take five minutes to send.  So, my intention to blog at least in brilliant snippets, decent photos included, was shanghaied.  That is…until we scored access to a Wifi setup at a cafe here in Argegno, a village on the western shore of Lake Como, thus restoring some normalcy to our technology oriented lives.  (Mwahahaha, internet gods, I’ve snagged some of your golden apples and I’m baking them into a fruit turnover not wholly unlike what you’d find at a McDonalds, and you can’t do jack about it!)

Big bowl of cheese.

We have to be careful about how much time we spend in this cafe and when we go, because they do this daily happy hour thing whereby they offer free eats – cheeses and coppa and salami and pizza slices and bruschetta and these delicious cheese/rice balls rolled in bread crumbs which are deep fried and to die for…I believe the need for boundaries with regard to said cafe is obvious.  Their vino rosso della casa is nothing to sneeze at, either.  (We’ve already broken the rule imposed yesterday which was that we wouldn’t come here too close to dinner, because we’re weak-willed people who can’t seem to say no to free nibbles.)

Anyhow, in between sight-seeings and experiencing and feasting on some of the best pasta and non-pasta dishes on the planet, I’ve had a couple of burning learnings on this trip that I’m capturing here for posterity.

Uno – My Internet-centricity Is Serious Stuff
I’ve noted and and noodled upon this topic quite a bit in the past three weeks, mainly because it seems that since mid-September I’ve had one internet connection problem after another.  Which is inconceivable to me given that it’s year nine of the 21st century, and I live in Western Europe.

Not being able to blog regularly has been a stretch.  Actually, it’s been a royal pain and a messer-upper of my creative equilibrium.  Actually, at times it’s felt like an amputation.  Something integral – a limb called ADSL – has been lopped off.  More than once.  And the loss of that limb has been both discombobulating and isolating and confusing.  My creative medium has been compromised, and I’ve struggled to adjust.

Call me a product of my time, call me an internet junkie, whatever -  I like being connected to the wider world…at least through broadband.  And I don’t like for my connection to be limited to three hours a day and at speeds reminiscent of the internet’s woolly mammoth days.  I want high speed access.  24/7.  The strength of which not subject to normal weather events like bog standard rain showers.   Am I asking too much?  No, I isn’t.

Anyhoo…there’s been a silver lining, too, with not being online so much, one that I’m duly noting and noodling about.

Apparently, not reading about the amazing feats and ideas that others are blogging about has given my whirring brain a chance to consider a few very interesting ideas of my own.  They’re still in the toddler stage, these ideas, so I couldn’t dish coherently about them even if I wanted to.  But I know they’re growing, cutting teeth and crawling towards the next phase of maturity.  Never in a million years would I have connected the dots of “no internet” and “flash of insight”, possibly because so many of mine from the past have come from rabbit holes I’ve found online.  Yet, there you have it.

So, what’s the takeaway from this that I can carry forward?  Well, a) disconnecting from the world is conducive to creativity.  That’s hardly a new concept, but one I’m experiencing firsthand for the first time and in such a positive way.  b)  I’d like to be the one who pulls the plug on the router.  Forced marches are not fun, and neither are forced internet absence.  Or abstinence. Whichever word best applies.  Both do, frankly.

Due – Not Being Bizzy and Not Feeling Guilty

The impossible has taken place – I’ve barely thought about work on this trip, but that’s not the impossible dream – I haven’t felt an iota of guilt about it.  Not a jot.

Instead, I’ve totally savored our days spent walking around towns full of amazing buildings, churches, frescoes, gardens and eats. I’ve set my watch by the 4 PM ritual of a latte rather than an email inbox review.  Rather than mulling new service offerings for 2010, I’ve mulled over whether I want pasta for dinner or some other savory treat.  That’s been the nature of my to-do’s.  Yeah, there’s been some stuff to take care regarding the tree that fell on our house, but for the most part I’ve been focused on where I am in the here and now and not someone who feigns to be engaged with her surroundings but is really fretting about all the marketing she ought to be doing or all the appointments that ought to be on the calendar.

Now and again I get a biz-related twitch, but I’m letting it fizzle rather than fester.  What’s helping me do this is a thought I keep looping back to:  I may never again have this opportunity to be so unbizzy, to be exactly where we are at this place and time.

I mean, I hope I get to come back to Italy.  In fact, I think I will pine for it.  But that’s not something I can fully predict or control.  I can only grab hold of the here and now, and be guided by it.  That’s what’s tangible.  So, why the hell not?

Exactly.

Wrapping Up

Now, it wouldn’t be at all fair for me to rattle on about the beauty of what we’ve seen without providing a glimpse. In fact, it would be rude.  So, here’s a Flickr album I’ve put together for your viewing pleasure. (Link included here just in case you didn’t catch it at the beginning.)