Skipping Town

Tomorrow, Andrew and I fly to New Hampshire for our annual Off the Grid week in Cornish. I am extremely excited. Cornish is one of my very favorite places in the world, and since we live in California we only get to go once a year. Unfortunately, I won’t be totally “off the grid” this year—I’ll have to check my email to keep up on a few freelance projects. I’m trying not to be resentful about this. Indeed, I’m trying to remember that it’s a good thing that I have work—a good thing that I have things to keep track of—that I’m lucky , in this economy, to still have work to do. That I’m lucky to have the kind of work where I can track things—or even do things, if need be—in Cornish, or, really, anywhere. As a freelancer, my perspective needs to be “yay, work,” not “oh no, more work.” I am not always successful at this. But I am trying. Though I am excited about going to Cornish, and to spending a week in Connellsville afterward, I am also filled with dread. The problem is that these d...

Last night, I went maternity-clothes shopping at the mall’s only maternity store, seeking a maternity swimsuit. I found one, along with a cute top and a cute dress. A very nice sales associate was helping me find sizes. When I went to check out, I was offered the following: sleeping bras; a subscription to Parenting magazine; on-sale Capri pants; and a credit card linked to a 529 plan. I was also given a bag full of baby-related samples. Andrew was astounded by the level of up-sell that I, as a pregnant woman, was subjected to. But this speaks to a larger state of vulnerability we’ve both found ourselves in. We know nothing about baby stuff—we have, at this point, no way to distinguish between what our baby will actually need and what she won’t. It seems like everything comes with a safety warning, and online reviews are all over the map. Crib mattresses, for example—some were denounced as too soft; others for having a chemical-y smell; some for being too plastic-y; organic ones for b...

We found out last week that the Extended Stay hotel chain has filed for bankruptcy . To that I say--not surprising. Goodbye and good riddance. Longtime readers of "Skipping Town" will remember that Extended Stay America was one of the first places we stayed when we moved to California in 2007. It was so awful, and so depressing, that it nearly sent us packing back East, new job be damned. I was stuck there all day for several days while Andrew was at work, and I can honestly say that had I been forced to stay there any longer, I may have gone off the deep end. I christened it the MDPOE--the Most Depressing Place on Earth. While there, I had one of the most violent and scary dreams I've ever had. There's just something ominous about the place--as soon as you walk in you feel something bad is going to happen. A few months later, we inadvertantly stayed there overnight again thanks to an unwise Priceline bid. Our room had one fork. (These are supposed to be "efficie...

In a desperate race against time—figs ripen fast and do not stay good for very long—Mom and I spent yesterday making a batch of fig jam and a delicious fig cake. Both were highly successful—I can’t stop eating the cake. By the end of the day I felt like I was on a kind of fig high. Next project: fig cookies. And we’ll still leave a treeful behind when we leave for New Hampshire this weekend. Preparing the jam Removing the processed jars Waiting for the lids to pop to see if we were successful

When we returned last night from San Francisco, Andrew and I went out to look at the fig tree—and were shocked to see that the figs had ripened over the weekend and were ready to be picked. Mom and Dad came out, and we all harvested some figs. There are countless more figs still growing, and countless figs we can’t reach at the top of the tree; it is fig bounty. Today Mom and I are going to make fig cookies, cake, and jam (yes, another canning attempt). And there will still be figs. Figs!

Really, really pregnant.

California was true to form this week, giving my visiting parents an accurate glimpse of what our summer life here is like. They arrived last Tuesday evening, and the week quickly grew hot. Making things worse is the fact that the AC in our Volvo is not working; so driving around on Wednesday was uncomfortable to say the least. But I took them to Babies R Us—their first time in the store—and we all got wrapped up in the voluminous world that is baby merchandise. Then they took me shopping for new maternity clothes, as I am now getting very close to being enormous. Dad helpfully calls me “Fatty McFatty,” assuming that I will not suddenly develop a weight complex in my fragile pregnant state. Fortunately, I do not feel a weight complex coming on. Wednesday evening was nice enough for us to cook dinner and eat outside, overlooking the redwood tree. Thursday was brutal. It was in the high-nineties, and even being in our AC’d house was uncomfortable; my pregnant body seems to react to the h...

Monday night, around 8pm, Andrew and I decided to make and can a large batch of loquat chutney. We quadrupled the recipe, so preparing the chutney took forever—those loquats are not easy to work with; they have several large seeds and a white membrane around them, all of which must be removed. You get approximately a quarter’s worth of fruit for all that effort. Anyway, we made the chutney and set it on the stove to boil for an hour. We then washed and sterilized the jars and lids Andrew had bought after work. After an hour, the chutney was still very liquidy. At this point it was around 11pm. I was exhausted, and my hips were killing me from standing for so long. We decided the chutney would set as it cooled, and so began the process of filling and sealing and processing the jars. In the morning, the chutney had not set. The jars were simply filled with a vinegary liquid. We wondered if we could simply empty the jars, boil the chutney for another hour, resterilize the jars, and just h...

Every night when we go to bed, Andrew puts his hand or head on my belly, trying to identify signs of a baby inside. Last night, for the very first time, he felt something. I was lying on my side, and I could feel the baby moving around a lot; it almost felt like she was rolling over. Then, in the crease between my stomach and leg, I felt a more insistent movement, almost as though her foot was caught in the crease and she was trying to get it free. When Andrew put his hand right at that spot, he felt a kick. We looked at each other—feeling a little person moving inside my body is just…a little crazy. I felt tired all weekend, so maybe she was having a few days of intense growth, gearing up for those kicks. Or maybe she was expressing her appreciation for the figs I’ve been eating for the past couple of days. That’s my girl!

So I actually did make loquat chutney last week, and it turned out splendidly. I found the recipe on a random person’s blog, and it was delicious—a perfect blend of loquats (which are sort of apricot-like), dried apricots, ginger, apples, mustard seed, cider vinegar, onion, sugar, salt, water, and chile pepper. The extremely vinegary mixture was tamed by over an hour of simmering, and the result is a perfect condiment that we’ve been enjoying with crackers and cheese. It’s so good that we might do a bigger loquat harvest and do some canning. “How can we make sure we have enough of this to last us a year?” Andrew asked after a first taste. We’ve never canned before, but maybe this summer we’ll try our hand at the chutney and some jam. We’ll see. I had to take a picture of the figs we bought at the farmer’s market on Saturday. Soon we’ll have figs of our own, but I was too impatient to wait for them to ripen. I bought a basket to tide me over.

There’s a tree in our backyard that’s overburdened with bunches of fig-shaped orange fruit. We hadn’t paid much attention to the tree until earlier this week, when we arrived home and spotted some people in our backyard, harvesting some of the fruit. They scampered off when they saw us. Curious, we brought a piece of the fruit inside and cut it open, revealing a dark central pit. I Googled “California stone fruits” and eventually found an image of a loquat, which seemed to match the fruit. I called our landlord today, and he confirmed it (he also said he hoped we wouldn’t mind that he’d invited a neighbor to sample some of the fruit—those must have been the interlopers). Faced now with a tree full of loquats—many of which are already shriveled—I’m looking forward to making…chutney. It seems there’s not much to do with loquats except make chutney or jam, so that’s what I’m going to do. Any edible backyard fruit is exciting to me, but I’m most excited about the harvest of figs we’ll have...

Sunday and yesterday, Andrew and I finally dove in and started registering for baby things. It was a haphazard process. We pointed and shot our scanner gun at an eclectic assortment of onesies, bibs, mittens, socks, bottles, and bedding, hoping we were somehow covering our bases. I haven’t counted, but I suspect between Target and Babies R Us we’ve registered for somewhere in the range of fifty onesies, mostly in packs of three; around ten pairs of baby mittens; ten different kinds and sizes of bottles, even though we’re not sure if we’ll even need them; twenty bibs; and five slipcovers for the Bobby nursing pillow. Of everything we registered for, the only things I can actually remember clearly are cute Dwell Studio outfits from Target--the least necessary things of all. This was a far cry from registering for our wedding, when we could accurately assess our level of need. We did not, for example, register for a blender, since I already had one that worked just fine. We do not, this t...

This weekend, Andrew and I headed north to Mendocino County, home of our favorite winery, Husch Vineyards. We’re members of the winery (every six months we get a shipment of six wines), and each summer they have a picnic at the vineyard. We had a great time last year and so, Friday night, we made the three-hour drive again. We arrived in Ukiah Friday night, just in time for dinner at the Ukiah Brewing Company, a great little place right on the main street of this very small town. We’ve had dinner here every time we’ve been in Ukiah; we like not only the food (mostly locally grown and organic) but also the off-the-beaten-path blend of aging hippies and hipsters who somehow find a way to make a living in the area. We didn’t stay to hear the live music—I was having an evening of feeling alien to my own body; both my back and my belly had minds of their own that night, and I’d spent the entire drive in a state of supreme discomfort. We retreated to our room at the Days Inn (the cutest Days...

Every week, I become less skeptical and more gung-ho about my prenatal yoga class. Truth be told, I was skeptical only after the first class; now that I’ve been going for a few weeks, I’m won over. First, I’m happy to be able to do yoga at all with a belly. I know there are girls who do regular yoga and Pilates almost the whole way through (I’ve seen them), but I know myself, and I’d be worried the whole time about doing something painful to my round ligament or another tender area. So a lower-stress, lower-intensity class is perfect. Second, the yoga itself, led by a woman who teaches childbirth preparation classes at local hospitals, is supplemented by tons of information about “positive positions” for labor, specific positions you can do for specific types/stages of labor, etc. At first, I couldn’t imagine executing a yoga pose during labor. Now, I’m getting excited about trying to use what I’m learning when the time comes (assuming nothing unexpected happens, which, obviously, isn’...

Two years ago, on June 4, Andrew and I were in between trips to the Costa Brava and Basque Country. Today, Andrew's flying back from a business trip, I'm deep into a massive selection of freelance projects, and I'm preoccupied with wondering if I have time to go to Target to look at baby stuff again. But we're having a baby, and live in a cute house, and are going to wine country this weekend to a picnic at our favorite winery...bright side...bright side...

Saturday was a big day: we bought a dining room table, and we had our first Roseville houseguests. We bought the table at Denio’s, the flea and farmer’s market we’ve been going to every weekend. The table is enormous, with six chairs but room for ten—the wide tabletop has me itching to take on some kind of complex craft project. When we found the table, we asked the seller if he’d deliver it to us. He initially said no, but after realizing we couldn’t buy it otherwise, he changed his mind and said yes. We gave him half the money and our address; I surreptitiously snapped a few pictures of him with my cell phone while Andrew gave him directions. We mused on whether we’d actually see the table later in the day. We did. Beth and Nate and the babies came up from Napa Saturday afternoon, and we had a barbeque in our backyard. It was quite nice to eat outside in the shade of the redwood tree, eating fresh tomatillo salsa and guacamole and strawberry shortcake we’d made with produce we’d gott...

I’m not sure why I thought shopping for baby stuff would be easy and fun. Maybe because baby stuff is cute, and we’re excited about having a baby, and it’s fun to think about actually having the baby in our lives—all good reasons. But the truth is that there is a lot of baby stuff out there, and figuring out what’s what is a lot different than, say, selecting china patterns and towels for the wedding registry. At least we knew what china and towels were , and what their function was, and what made one kind better than another. Friday night, we took the plunge and went to Babies R Us. It seemed like a good place to start. But we wound up strolling the aisles a bit zombie-like, faced with questions we hadn’t even considered: Should a car seat convert to a stroller? Should a stroller convert to a pram? Should a car seat double as a cradle? Does a bouncy swing thing have to look so garish—and am I doing my impressionable, eager-for-sensory-stimulation baby a disservice if I choose one a ...