Just a couple of minutes ago, I was chatting with my friend S, who lives in New Zealand, and, in the course of the conversation, I apologized for being late back from an away-period, because I’d gotten distracted while making tea. (Or at least, the plan was tea; I’m actually sipping cocoa – it’s the kind of day that REQUIRES chocolate.)

The exchange went like this:

Me: Got distracted while waiting for water to boil – found the Valentine’s Day box.
S: oh?
Me: Must start decorating this weekend.
S: ??? you’re kidding me???
S: Just a few hearts and red candles around the house. Nothing major.
S: *blink* you’re serious
Me: Yeah.
S: *blink* We give cards, and chocolate, we send flowers, we have romantic dinners… well that’s the theory anyhow
Me: Yes, we do that.
S: I’ve never heard of the house being decorated before like a major festive event.

I don’t know when my mother began decorating for Valentine’s day, but the presence of hearts and flowers in the house from late-January to mid-February is one I remember from childhood. For all I know, it may have started with me bringing home red construction-paper hearts. For all I know, it may have been something my grandmother started.

Please understand, it’s not that we decorate for this holiday on the same level as Christmas. Not even close. Yes, I tape a few cupids and hearts to the windows, and bring out red candles, and heart=shaped candles. And yes, I try to have more flowers in the house – but then, I ALWAYS try to have fresh flowers in the house, and even Fuzzy has learned to pick seasonal bouquets if he’s not sure what to buy.

One of the things I love about seasonal decorations is that I tend to forget what I have, from one year to the next. Oh, I remember the big stuff, but, until I opened the box this afternoon, I’d forgotten the candle with candy hearts in the bottom third, or the red heart garland for dressing up the front-door wreath.

Oh, right. The wreath. My pine wreath is still on the front door, just as the pine ring candle holder (adorned with teeny cardinals) is still on the kitchen table. Pine isn’t just for Christmas, but for all of winter, so we leave the wreath up, leave one of the three 2-foot trees up, and leave the candle-holder, and just change the trimmings to heart-themes. (Really, the house is pretty big, so this isn’t a lot of stuff).

I love that the house always feels special, and that things change enough to keep me from getting bored. Fuzzy loves that I change decorations, and not the furniture. Well, not all of the furniture. I did move my desk the other day.

As to the sand in the title of this entry? When I was getting the house ready for my parents, I found the Beach Box my aunt had made for me when I was in South Dakota, and bemoaning the fact that I was in a landlocked state. It was full of shells she’d picked up from the beach near her house in Connecticut – lovely shells, pine cones, feathers, and a bit more beach glass, and so I’ve scattered the shells around the house, where I already had other shells, in jars, or larger shells holding beach glass. (In a mild fit of whimsy, I stacked many of the shells in a fish shaped ceramic dish, which now sits on my hearth).

This is my world for the next month: flowers, candles, hearts, and sand.

I’m out of lemons. I told Fuzzy this as we were en route to the Kinko’s in Arlington, but he didn’t grasp the impact of my announcement. In fact, he still doesn’t really understand why this is a major Thing and not just a fact.

It’s not just that I had to use a tangerine on the Dover sole, tonight (which wasn’t quite the flavor I was going for, but was still tasty), it’s that without lemons, I can’t drink water. I’m bad about drinking water, but an unofficial resolution was to be healthier this year, and water is a key component of my twelve-month plan. Except that I hate it, and it always feels like I’m really drinking lead.

Then, last weekend, I realized that if I pop a slice of lemon in the bottom of one of my pretty bottle-green tumblers (each of which holds 12 ounces of water), and keep refilling the glass, refreshing the lemon every so often, I’m able to drink water all day long – without the lead feeling.

And now we’re out of lemons.

Which, while bad enough, is compounded by the fact that I left my Meyer lemon tree in California, when we moved. (In my own defense, it wouldn’t fit in the car, and a month in storage would have killed it.) And I miss having the delicate scent of lemon blossoms waft up at me whenever I step out the back door, just as I miss the convenience of picking a lemon whenever I want.

I spent some time doing research today, finally figuring out that the DFW region is in USDA’s zone 8, and that lemons and limes can, in fact, be grown here, as long as they’re either protected or brought inside when it gets below freezing.

So now, I’m looking at pictures of lemons, in bowls, on trees, intact, sliced, alone, mixed with other citrus…

I’m having lemon lust.

Note: image from iStockPhoto

Onesome: The next- What would be your idea for the next great reality tv show?
Before this month, I’d have said, “Queer Eye” for women, but that exists now. I’d love to see something like “Runway” done with writing, but there’s not much that’s visual about a bunch of people stringing words together. Maybe a behind-the-scenes at a magazine?

Twosome: American- What do you think of as typically American? Mom and apple pie? Afternoons at the ballpark watching baseball?
Lime green polyesther. Seriously, aside from our serious knack for conspicuous consumerism, I’m not sure what qualifies as quintessentially American. Jazz and coffee houses, I guess.

Threesome: Idol- Who’s the one person you admire the most and why?
This changes on a daily basis, but the list generally includes: My mother (really, there’s more to her than the Hurricane Susan persona I complain about), K&L in San Francisco, Liz, my aunt P.

I heard this poem read by Martin Sheen, on a re-run of Inside the Actor’s Studio, and fell in love with it.

Where the mind is without fear and the head held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever-widening thought and action;
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

The poet, Rabindranath Tagore is a Nobel laureate (literature, 1913), and composed the anthem of independent India, among other writings.

Scritture is the Italian word for “writings”…and this is my new collection of them. Scribbles, essays, quotes. It’s part blog, part digital commonplace book, part writing practice…

My “uber-caffeinated” identity just doesn’t fit any more, so I’m trying something new. I accidentally deleted that blog tonight, anyway, so watch here for site-tweakings and some such.

Welcome. Be well.

I’m watching reruns of Rosanne on Nick at Night. I’m actually watching the Pacific feed, and not the Eastern feed (I get both), but it doesn’t really matter. I never liked this show when it was on the air originally, but somehow, lately, I’ve been watching it with the same fascinated horror that I feel when watching American Idol, which we also watched today (but only because Gilmore Girls was a rerun.

Anyway, the episode that just ended featured a guest appearance by Blues Traveller, which band I love. There. Now you know my deepest, darkest secret.

Well, one of them.

* * * * *
Last night, Bravo ran the Inside the Actors Studio Martin Sheen episode. I’ve always known I loved him as a performer, but the glimpse into the person was fascinating. He’s newly-added to my ‘if I could invite a bunch of people to dinner’ list.

He recited the poem “My Country Awake” by Rabindranath Tagore, which was very moving. Isn’t it nice when television actually is educational?

* * * * *

Feeling both hormonal and desperate for chocolate (the latter no doubt caused by the former), I made a bunch of chocolate chip cookies, with walnuts, since Fuzzy had just come back from his DC-trip. It was the first time I’d ever made them with Spelt flour, and the texture is a bit odd – almost as if there’s shredded coconut in the cookies, except there’s not.

I’m not feeling bloggish today. I’m feeling tired, icky, and crabby. So I’m going to go make more mint tea, and curl up with the heating pad.

I don’t generally quote song lyrics in my blog, unless I’m weaving an entry around them. Today, I make an exception, and offer these words, from James Taylor.

Let us turn our thoughts today
To Martin Luther King
And recognize that there are ties between us
All men and women
Living on the earth
Ties of hope and love
Sister and brotherhood
That we are bound together
In our desire to see the world become
A place in which our children
Can grow free and strong
We are bound together
By the task that stands before us
And the road that lies ahead
We are bound and we are bound

There is a feeling like the clenching of a fist
There is a hunger in the center of the chest
There is a passage through the darkness and the mist
And though the body sleeps the heart will never rest

(chorus)
Shed a little light, oh lord
So that we can see
Just a little light, oh lord
Wanna stand it on up
Stand it on up, oh lord
Wanna walk it on down
Shed a little light, oh lord

Can’t get no light from the dollar bill
Don’t give me no light from a tv screen
When I open my eyes
I wanna drink my fill
From the well on the hill

(do you know what I mean? )
– chorus –

There is a feeling like the clenching of a fist
There is a hunger in the center of the chest
There is a passage through the darkness and the mist
And though the body sleeps the heart will never rest

Oh, let us turn our thoughts today
To Martin Luther King
And recognize that there are ties between us
All men and women
Living on the earth
Ties of hope and love
Sister and brotherhood

Peace.

My grandmother once told me she hated Sundays. “No one ever visits,” she told me, the lonliness in her voice becoming a third participant in our conversation. “They’re all home with their own families.” At the time, I was only eighteen or twenty, and had no idea how to answer that, so I changed the subject to something lighter. But her comment has stayed with me, all this time.

I was thinking about this as I was puttering around in my kitchen earlier tonight, cleaning up, making meatloaf in celebration of Fuzzy’s early return from DC (he was supposed to be there through this afternoon, but they apparently completed their agenda early, so he got a standby flight back from Dulles to Dallas at eight this morning), and later baking chocolate chip cookies (using spelt flour left over from my mother’s visit, and Deb’s trick for keeping the nuts from burning), and chattering, sequentially, with my mother and aunt on the phone.

I like Sunday evening to be at-home time, us-time. A time when we might watch television together, each of us cuddling a dog, but when there’s an equal possibility that we might NOT. I think it’s important to spend the evening doing restful tasks, winding down from any weekend excitement, and making the mental shift toward the beginning of the work-week.

This evening, we listened to Survival Kit on NPR – it’s a show where literati and other public figures are asked to create a list of essential items to bring to a remote area (mountain cabin, deserted island), and then are interviewed about their selections. On tonight’s show, the choices ranged from spectrometers to foofy fountain pens, manual typewriters to jazz compilations. It was just interesting enough that as we ate, and later as we cleaned the kitchen, we could listen and make comments, but not have to stretch our tired brains to make real conversation.

Later this evening, as Fuzzy was curled on the couch watching tivo’d episodes of Andromeda and Battlestar Galactica, I watched the light playing on his face, and the dog stretched down the length of his leg, and smiled. “I love this,” I told him, feeling disgustingly sappy. “I love Sunday evenings, when we’re home, and everything’s cozy, and we’re together even if we’re not talking much. I love my house, and I love my dogs, and I love you.”

He was watching me, smiling at me in that quasi-flirtatious way he does when he’s affectionately amused by my behavious, and I told him to stop laughing at me.

“I’m not,” he said. “I’m smiling at you cuz I love you. Can’t I smile at you?”

I grinned at that, blew him a kiss, and went to take the first batch of cookies out of the oven. As I stood there, the heat from the oven making my face feel rosey and warm, I thought that if my grandmother was alive, and was somehow able to peek into this moment of my life, she might not hate Sundays, after all.

I say… And you think… ?

1. Yoda:: Weird Al
2. Mensa:: candidate
3. Pink:: pearls
4. Text message:: annoying
5. Galactic:: domination
6. Chicks:: Easter
7. Quesadilla:: pollo
8. Backpack:: Europe
9. Socket:: wrench
10. Compromise:: principles

Like this meme? Play along here.

I’m going to be 35 in seven months.
I say this because it’s relevant to the rest of this entry.

I’ve always maintained that I don’t particularly like writing fiction. (This despite participating in and completing NaNoWriMo two years running.)

I’ve also always complained that there isn’t a genre of light reading for grown-ups that isn’t part of another genre already. I mean, yeah, there are people like Sara Paretsky and Janet Evanovich, but, they write mysteries, and Nora Roberts, addictive as her stories are, is still, fundamentally, a romance writer.

I enjoy the chick-lit genre, because the books are up-beat, funny, topical, and talk about fashion and clothes as much as not. But I don’t really identify with the protagonists created by Sophie Kinsella or Katie Fforde or Jennifer Weiner, because all those women are single and most are younger.

Then the other night, as I was folding laundry (a pathetic, but necessary, way to spend an evening), I caught the first episode (well, really the second, but they call it the first) of Queer Eye for the Straight Girl, and one of the newly-dubbed “gal pals” uttered the buzzphrase, “Thirty is the new twenty.”

Well, that may not be entirely true, but, I found it to be really affirming. And ever since that show, my own buzz-phrase has been needling my consciousness: Thirty-five is the new twenty-one. (I’ve got an entire essay planned on this topic, but it’s not ready yet.)

This morning, as I was waiting for the grocery delivery, I was also looking for something to read. I wanted something with a character I could relate to, but every book I picked up at a character who was single and looking, married and cheating/separated/divorcing, or dying of a dread disease. And I thought, THIS IS WRONG!!!!! (Yes, the five exclamation points were in my thought.)

And so, I began a new story today. I’m not sure how it’ll go…but I’m calling the genre “Chick-Lit for DINKS” – and it will feature characters who are witty and funny, smart, pretty, dieting (or not), working, and not trying desperately to conceive.

I’m really excited about this.
Wish you all could come along for the ride.