Hey Pumpkin

Right now it's quiet in all my house, which you won't be surprised to hear is how I like it. I just put a loaf of pumpkin bread in the oven and it smells so good already. Sometimes I do domestic things without feeling the need to apologize for them.

I never did bake that apple pie. Pumpkin bread was far more achievable.

Today I gave up on my plans to make this delicious recipe for Thanksgiving. I really wanted to bring it to my sister's house, present it with an apron-at-the-waist flourish and impress everybody. It probably wouldn't have worked anyway. In general, I find people are far less impressed with me than I'd hoped. Turns out you can't buy pie pumpkins after Halloween, and I know from experience you can't but Emmentaler cheese in Longmont. Which isn't exactly true, you can probably find it at the imported cheese emporium in that office park under the bridge, but I never remember to go there.

Instead we're bringing cheesy apple bake. It's this god-awful unhealthy dish that my mother-in-law made every Thanksgiving. This is difficult to admit: you pour canned apple pie filling into your casserole dish and then you blend Velveeta with white sugar (I died a little, just typing that) and you pour it over the apples and bake. The top gets slightly burnt and crusty and then beneath it is cheesy apple goodness. You have to eat it early if you're dining with my husband's family because the kids eat all the cheese topping off and then you're just left with sad canned apples. To sell this dish to my sister, I called it "Apple Cheese Southern Souffle". If I told her I was bringing sugared-up Velveeta over canned apples she probably would have hung up the phone in order to drive straight to Longmont and slap me. Crisis averred. You gotta know how to work these things.

Today I met up with an old friend from high school. There is nothing like an old friend from high school or a drinking buddy from college. Some bonds are forever, this is why whenever I met a new person I try to get sloppily drunk as quickly as possible.Instant friend for life. (Contrary to what my husband says, crippling social anxiety has nothing to do with it. Who has the psychology degree, Mr. V? NEITHER OF US.) For instance, I hadn't talked to this particular friend in a few months when I sent her this email: "I'm moving to Taos to keep bees. Wanna come?"

"That sounds awesome," she replied. "I'm there."

This is a comfort to me. I can't tell most people when I want to move to Taos, or Paris, or the other day, oddly, Nashville. They start to do calculations and ask me about my life goals and say things like "You don't speak French" or "Do you know how hard it is to get a Visa in a socialist country?" or "It snows in Taos".

Our other plans include moving to Vietnam, wearing the funny hats, and planting flowers/ holding babies in orphanages, as well as spending our golden years traveling the world until we finally go down together in a plane crash.

Maybe because it's Monday, or maybe I'm drunk on the scents of warming nutmeg and cinnamon, or maybe because I'm bringing glucosey plastic cheese to Thanksgiving, but right now, those seem like worthy goals.

But no, I'm not actually moving to Taos.

Not yet.

Comfort Me With Apples

image from here

You get to a point where you find yourself thinking, "Maybe I should make a roast". It's not that you care about the roast, it's just that you'd like to do something, any one thing, that you can see through from start to finish and plus, making roasts comes with a shiny foil sticker on it, the sticker of a good homemaker, the dinner offerings of a Good Mom.

But then you begin to think, not a roast, perhaps. Maybe an apple pie. You're pretty sure no one born after 1981 actually knows what a roast is. Your husband might take a bite, say "Mmm, good steak, honey," and then where would you be? You'd be a stupid woman with curled hair in an overly cheery vintage apron, something with cherries on it or fawns, still on your feet pulling potatoes and onions out of the oven and there, at the table, sits your husband in his work socks, distracted by sports blogs and calling your roast a steak. You don't know what this means, exactly, or signifies--a suburban complacency, a homey resignation that you never even wished for--you just know it isn't good. Plus, chefs make good roasts, and you're not going for "good chef". What you're looking for is something homier, something coated in tinsel and more difficult to describe.

So an apple pie, you think. That. Surely if something can be accomplished, it is a symphony of cinnamon and apples. A love letter wrapped in dough and painted in egg wash. Because there was so much that should have been done, and wasn't. The house that should have been decorated by now. The furniture you should have been able to buy. The dance and piano lessons, all the meals you should have cooked over the stove, working for hours and finished by five, instead of darting back and forth between boiling pasta and your computer, between bits of dialogue and gummy canned sauce. The stories were never the thing to trust. They can be finished, but not achieved.

How do you measure the success of a story? You sell it. It is read and admired, or misunderstood and ignored. Either way, it sits on a shelf, tangible evidence that you have done something, that all these hours haven't been for naught, that something that once did not exist now does and you are responsible for that. But none of that is up to you. None of that a thing you can control. You measure the success of a story by waiting for others to nod, to sneeze, to bless their agreement: here is a thing, and it is done.

How do you measure the success an apple pie? You finish it. You might burn the top. You might over sweeten the apples. It doesn't matter because in the end, a timer goes off--a buzzer, alas, and not a decision in your head, murky and intangible. Something that is up to minutes, clocks, to the ticking of the sun and not, for once, up to your own instinct and intuition. You cannot trust yourself, but a kitchen timer is a thing you can live by. The end of the path is clear, it is fragrant with the fruits of the earth and the bounties of your labor. Unlike stories, unlike wishes, the end here is succulent, toothsome, complete. The timer buzzes, it declares for you: you have formed a thing with your own hands. Your work is good.

Your work is done.

*The title of this post was taken from the book by Ruth Reichel.

Love / Money

May I be honest for a moment? I can't decide which is more important to me: Following your dreams, or making money.

Everyone out there is telling us to do what we love and the money will follow. But no one has instructions on how to carry on when 'what you love' turns out to be writing and brewing beer. If you want to make money, you know what you don't be? A writer or a brewer. It turns out that no money follows. At all. Unless you count free beer (I do, but only a little).These are probably two of the most unlucrative (nonlucrative?) careers out there. Because guess what? There is one J.K Rowling and one Adolph Coors and we are not them.

We made this move, this 'career-change' as I am fond of calling it because I imagine it makes me sound less insane, almost exactly a year ago. And while I wish I could sing to you ballads of our triumph and bravery now at the first annual, I knew all along that wouldn't be the case.

I'm not complaining. I went into this with both eyes open. We did this because we believe in dreams, we believe in risks, and we didn't want Mr.V to work for a few more years at a job he hated and then one day wake up and we own a house and two cars and are used to living in a level of comfort that we would have been much, much more hesitant to leave.

O magazine lands in my mailbox every month telling me to follow my north star, or my bliss, or my passions. And it's not just the big O telling me this--it's our entire culture. The Dream Machine. Heavy in the ether is the idea that if you are brave enough to do what you truly, truly love--happiness will follow.

I'm not saying that isn't true. It's still too soon to tell.

But there we were, my husband and I, walking to the car after our first 'date' in months. The date was going around to breweries where they feed us free beer because we bring it to them in return. And it hit me that I just don't know if it's worth it.

I really don't. I'm saying this to offer it up for your consideration. There is another side to all this. I believe you should follow your dreams but what if your dreams are careers that earn basically no money? Mr. V has traded in that awful soul-sucking job for one he enjoys. But it has been a huge, huge sacrifice and I'm not saying it isn't worth it. I'm just telling you, I don't know yet.

There are times I wonder if we should throw in the towel and go take the highest paying jobs we can find. Work up from there.

All of this may never, ever pay off.

But you see, it might. And so I just keep going.

I am Vesuvius, and I will trade you beer for sweaters.

Dear May

Thank you for:

The pink flowers

The crane at the park

The sweet smell in the air

Beautiful harvests of green and fragrant and nourishing things

Blue skies with the white clouds

The world all lit up green beneath the evening sun

Cafe Rio and goat cheese and avocados and wheat beer

The iced mochas and the time to write; the sun on my skin, those dark gray clouds and the sunset lighting up the trees all golden against them

The good ripe earth

Please bring:

Sunny mornings and warm afternoons

A house

A job

Pretty things

Margaritas on the Cinco

More of my daughters reenacting Ophelia's watery death in the backyard


Please don't:

Kill my Mojito Mint plant. I named it Hemingway.


Maybe next year,

I will remember to celebrate May Day by leaving blossoms on doorsteps. But this was not that year.

I love you May. I have high hopes for you. Don't let me down.

(those were the manipulation skills I've learned from being a mom).

Love,

Vesuvius