filling in the blanks

Sometimes people use a template to update readers on their lives (www.picklemethis.com) and I like the idea of filling in the blanks.

1. Cooking: Late last week friends came for lunch and we had coq au vin, potatoes mashed with celeriac, salad, and cherry clafoutis for dessert. It reminded me of the meals we ate in France, enough of everything but not too much, delicious but not too rich.

2. Sipping: I have been enjoying an Australian Pinot Grigio, Tread Softly, which is from a winery devoted to sustainable wine with a slightly lower alcohol level so I can have a couple of glasses and still do what I need to do.

3. Reading: So many books! Last week, Colombe Schneck’s Swimming in Paris, Julia Alvarez’s The Cemetery of Untold Stories, Louise Erdrich’s The Mighty Red, and right now I am finishing The Letters of Oliver Sacks, a wonderful profile, through his correspondence, of an dazzling intelligence. I’ve been waking up around midnight and reading for two hours in the small hours.

4. Thinking: As I swim my slow kilometre each morning, I’ve been thinking my way through a personal conundrum and also thinking my way through a few difficult wrinkles in the novel I keep saying is finished and then revisiting again, after my swim, to tease out a thread, to patch a jagged hole.

5. Remembering: All the Christmas preparations in the years when my children were young. This year, because of the mail strike, I am wondering how much of anything to do.

6. Wishing: See above.

7. Eating: That French lunch, cauliflower cheese from the freezer, reheated with extra aged cheddar and fresh basil, sauteed prawns with lemon and garlic, risotto with sage-roasted squash.

8. Finishing: I finished the first full draft of Easthope the week before last and then I finished the first revisions and am now fiddling with those.

9. Watching: Last week we went into Vancouver for a night, in part to shop, in part to have a little dose of bright lights, and in part to see the Arts Club’s staging of Dolly Parton’s Smoky Mountain Christmas Carol, which was a lot of fun. Also watching the Advent candle burn down to its designated line each day and taking a photograph to send to my family because this year no one got the little treats I bought for the cloth Advent calendars I made the grandchildren years ago. (See 5. for further details.)

10. Wearing: Layers! I have one very worn merino wool long-sleeved undershirt and I’ve been wearing that, holes and all, under a thrift store cashmere turtle-neck, which (it turns out) is the way to stay warm.

11. Loving: The stitching I am doing, in yellow sashiko thread, to quilt the layers of a variable star quilt, pieced together with Japanese print, woad-dyed cotton, dark blue cotton-linen, and backed with some of my indigo-dyed linen. It’s a perfect thing to do by the woodstove when my novel baffles me.

12. Hoping: I have many hopes but not enough faith these days.

13. Enjoying: The Anna’s hummingbirds arriving for their breakfast just beyond the window over my kitchen sink and the Steller’s jays arriving for theirs on the deck=posts on the other side of the kitchen.

14. Appreciating: My husband’s patience and love as I work through my personal conundrum, even to the point of finding a beautiful hotel in Oaxaca for us in Febrruary, with a pool, and not minding my reading light turned on at midnight.