Home Improve­ment 101

What lux­u­ry, on the one hand, this week has been with no more press­ing respon­si­bil­i­ties than to set­tle in to Red Gate Farm, fix the lit­tle bits and pieces that have gone astray in our six months’ absence. But how lone­ly on the oth­er hand, with no Avery! We’re look­ing for­ward to get­ting her back tomor­row, and then Mon­day we’ll have her part­ners in crime as well, Anna and Ellie, to wreak hav­oc and eat us out of house and home, I hope.

We have turned quite the Home Improve­ment Team, with John wak­ing up super ear­ly filled with ideas on how we can try to stem the tide of dis­in­te­gra­tion here, and gen­er­al­ly make things more liv­able. To that end, we spent all of Mon­day switch­ing the din­ing room and entrance halls with each oth­er. Why have we spent all these years with the din­ing table and all its many chairs (and there­fore guests) crammed into the small­est room in the house, just because it was pre­sent­ed to us as the “din­ing room”? And equal­ly, why did we leave the largest room in the house as the entry way, used only for the Christ­mas tree, since every­one who comes over comes in the back door? It was but the work of a moment (well, a back-break­ing day) to swap them around, pure and simple.

But as Oscar Wilde said, things are nev­er pure, and rarely sim­ple, so in point of fact it was a mas­sive under­tak­ing. The din­ing table would not, of course, fit through the door­way between the din­ing room and the entrance hall and so had to be car­ried out the back door, down the ter­race steps and all the way around the house. Keep in mind, now, that I’m 5′6″, my stal­wart hus­band is 6′2″. We are not, there­fore, the best of part­ners to be car­ry­ing enor­mous­ly heavy fur­ni­ture around half of the state of Con­necti­cut. “Keep your end up! Don’t let the leg scratch the door­way! Come around the cor­ner a bit faster!” he adjured me, and I was well tempt­ed to point out that the world was filled with many wives who would refuse point-blank to play Hap­py Movers, but I held my tongue, and we got it done.

Equal­ly, how­somev­er, the Shak­er desk that we thought would look so much nicer in the din­ing-room-turned-library would not… fit through the door­way, so around the house we went again. We decid­ed that in order to count as a library, the room need­ed more book­shelves, and if there is one thing this crazy house has, it’s book­shelves and the books to go in them, so back to the nasty room off the kitchen that we’ve always euphemisti­cal­ly referred to as the “pantry,” con­tain­ing as it does the mice-eat­en rem­nants of pack­ets of wild rice, flour and crack­ers from pre­vi­ous sea­sons. In that room were lan­guish­ing a gor­geous book­shelf from Scott Jor­dan, fur­ni­ture pur­vey­or to our new­ly­wed days in SoHo, and a Vic­to­ri­an shelf from much the same peri­od in our lives, dusty and neglect­ed both of them.

Out they came, we man­aged to throw away near­ly every­thing that had lived on their sur­faces, I wiped them down with fur­ni­ture pol­ish (and a tooth­brush for the curlicued carved orna­men­ta­tion on the Vic­to­ri­an piece!), and we car­ried them (through the door­way, bless their leg­less hearts!) through to the new­ly-arranged rooms. And then, my friends, the real work began.

Because guess what’s in the big red barn? In addi­tion to bats and Rol­lie’s sec­ond-hand trac­tor parts and the shut­ters that should adorn our house? Books, my dears, hun­dreds and hun­dreds of books that for some rea­son we left here dur­ing the big move to Lon­don. I made the exec­u­tive deci­sion to leave my art his­tor­i­cal past behind me, and so I marked out dozens of box­es, imper­fect­ly labelled to be sure, as “art his­to­ry books,” and the long-suf­fer­ing movers sim­ply dumped them in the barn, where­upon we cov­ered them with big blue tarps and looked upon them no more.

Well, Mon­day was their big come­back day. I dug into box after box after box, dis­cov­er­ing many trea­sures of fic­tion, Avery’s pic­ture books that some­how had­n’t made it to cousin Jane’s book­shelf, cook­books and biogra­phies, and final­ly, yes, some art his­to­ry. All told, I car­ried in about 300 books, dis­trib­ut­ing them in that Quixot­ic way all book col­lec­tors will under­stand: not accord­ing to sub­ject but accord­ing to how tall they are. For this rea­son “Great Paint­ings From the Her­mitage” rubs shoul­ders with “Mor­ro­can Bar­be­cue” and “Amelia Earhart’s Adven­tures.” No Dewey Dec­i­mal Sys­tem for me, that’s for sure. But it’s all col­or­ful and pret­ty and there’s noth­ing to bring back mem­o­ries like shelves full of beloved books. I even found my under­grad­u­ate the­sis, “Michelan­gel’s Neo­pla­ton­ic Sculp­ture and Poet­ry”! What on earth was it doing in my big red barn?

Well, that was the ear­ly part of our week. Every­thing has tak­en on that newish feel­ing, as objects do when you move them out of their accus­tomed places. Art from my old gallery that we had just propped up on flat sur­faces got hung on the walls, mer­cury glass can­dle­sticks that had become invis­i­ble on a desk here or man­tel­piece there were put in new places and sud­den­ly shone. It’s all real­ly love­ly, and I have the sore mus­cles and bruis­es march­ing up and down my inner arms to show for it. And guess what: the barn is STILL full of books. I did­n’t even scratch the sur­face. We found one more book­shelf out there, but with­out the shelves or the pegs to lay them on. Hmmm. Food for thought.

This project com­plete­ly exceed­ed my inter­est in home dec­o­rat­ing, so we moved on to oth­er things, like greet­ing our dear neigh­bors Kon­nie and Mark, here to deal with the hors­es they board in our back mead­ow. At some point they’ll mosey over with their near­ly four-year-old daugh­ter Stephanie, so I’d bet­ter get some cook­ies and be ready. And just as I was get­ting my baby-back ribs under some bar­be­cue sauce and the corn on the cob OFF the cob and under some cream and gar­lic, Jill, Joel, Jane and Mol­ly arrived! Jill and Joel were as hand­some and chip­per as ever, Jane as full of con­ver­sa­tion and bounce, but lit­tle Mol­ly has been com­plete­ly trans­formed from slight­ly wob­bly Christ­mas baby to a bun­dle of real per­son: bright eyes and placid gur­gling, com­plete­ly hap­py and con­tent. She allowed me to car­ry her around, but she saved her real enthu­si­asm for John, who always looks much taller and big­ger all around when he holds a baby.

Jane enter­tained us all with the recount­ing of sev­er­al intri­cate pic­ture book plots, we all tucked into bar­be­cued ribs and scal­loped corn, and gen­er­al­ly basked in the lux­u­ry of being reunit­ed. It’s always the same, every sum­mer: stand­ing the chil­dren up care­ful­ly in the door­way to the laun­dry room to put the lat­est mea­sur­ing marks up: this sum­mer Avery has grown two inch­es since Christ­mas, and Jane near­ly as much. I sug­gest­ed we prop Mol­ly up for her first mea­sur­ing, but I don’t think any­one lis­tened to me.

The next day brought us the first vis­it and ram­bling account of local events from Farmer Rol­lie, pulling up in his bat­tered blue Ford truck, smil­ing on us benev­o­lent­ly, declin­ing to shake hands because he’d got his fin­ger­nail torn off the night before by a “cow who’d gone down.” “She whipped her head around and caught me, just like that, so it was off to the emer­gency room…” We are now com­plete­ly caught up on South­bury gos­sip, of the sort, that is, that inter­ests Rol­lie, name­ly sec­ond-hand farm equip­ment and its pric­ing meth­ods. He report­ed glee­ful­ly to John, “Got some real­ly good milk­ing equip­ment last week, did­n’t cost me more than 10 cents on the dol­lar, because I got it from a local guy who got arrest­ed for run­ning a crys­tal meth lab.”

Life has not been with­out its typ­i­cal Con­necti­cut encoun­ters, to be sure. It’s hard to define, but there is such a thing as a Typ­i­cal Con­necti­cut Encounter, espe­cial­ly with a mem­ber of the sales com­mu­ni­ty. Final­ly exas­per­at­ed beyond tol­er­ance by our drip­ping kitchen tap, we took our­selves off to the ven­er­a­ble Allen’s Plumb­ing in near­by Sey­mour. Defec­tive cylin­der in hand, Pete behind the counter turned the pages of the cylin­der hand­book with a well-licked thumb and motioned to a pile of flu­o­res­cent papers to his right. “Fill one of those out, if you have a mind to,” and we picked up the “Entry for Free and Dis­count Propane Con­test.” Hmm. “What if I did­n’t want any propane, but I won the con­test. What else would you give me?” John asks. “But you DO want propane, we have a propane grill,” I object on the grounds of truth­ful­ness, and John replies placid­ly, “I’m just ask­ing. What else could I have? How about this Dis­ney key­chain?” “Don’t know as we could do that, Dis­ney’s my nick­name,” says Pete equal­ly placid­ly. “Now, we could do you for some of this here Nat­ur­al All-Pur­pose Clean­er.” “How about Squidge-Free Drain Unclog­ger?” John per­sists. Pete con­sid­ers, then shakes his head. “Don’t think that’s included.”

As we drove home along the old Oxford Road, John laughed sud­den­ly. “Lookee over there, there’s a cop parked by the side of the road, with an actu­al Dunkin Donut and a cup of cof­fee. That’s what we come home for.”

And then there are the inevitable strip malls lin­ing the road, count­less nail salons and pack­age liquor stores, pizze­rias and mort­gage bro­kers, piano tuners and day-care cen­ters. But my favorite is the lit­tle series of shops with “Inter­nal Med­i­cine” sand­wiched between “Grand Prix Cig­ars” and “Pets ‘n More.” I just don’t think I’d be com­fort­able hav­ing my kid­neys exam­ined in between peo­ple pric­ing out sto­gies and clump­ing cat lit­ter, call me a snob.

Being home for the sum­mer always arous­es in me a latent junk-food­ie. I fill the cup­board with Dori­tos and Chee­tos, the freez­er with some sort of shred­ded pota­toes that I am con­vinced, each sum­mer, will be just as good as the hashed browns at the near­by Lau­rel Din­er (but they nev­er are, prob­a­bly because I don’t cook them with a pound of but­ter each time). But this sum­mer I drew the line at one of my child­hood favorites, because it’s always so dis­ap­point­ing: Rice Pilaf, in a boil-in-the-bag. Things boiled in bags were a sta­ple of my moth­er’s kitchen when I was a child, and the sight of the lit­tle Birds-Eye box­es in the freez­er sec­tion always sends me into a mild nos­tal­gic fren­zy. But some­how the Shoepeg White Corn in But­ter Sauce and yes, the Rice Pilaf With Mush­rooms and Green Beans nev­er taste as yum­my as I remem­ber them. So this sum­mer I decid­ed to make my own. And you know what? It’s just as good as I remembered.

Rice Pilaf with Mush­rooms, Green Beans and Garlic
(serves 4 as a side dish)

1 cup mixed white grain and wild rice
2 cups chick­en broth
3 tbsps butter
3 cloves gar­lic, minced
6 white mush­rooms, chopped roughly
1 cup green beans, sliced roughly
sea­son­ing to taste

Sim­ply steam the rice care­ful­ly (do not boil dry!) in the broth in a cov­ered saucepan for 50 min­utes. Then take off the heat, still with the lid on, and leave aside while you saute the gar­lic, mush­rooms and green beans in the but­ter. Then toss all togeth­er, salt and pep­per to taste. LOVELY.

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With this we grilled some mar­vel­lous­ly fresh tuna steaks, mar­i­nat­ed as I’ve described before in every­thing under the sun: chives, gar­lic, cilantro, sesame oil, lime zest, you name it. I could­n’t find any lemon­grass here, so I sub­sti­tut­ed even more lime zest than my orig­i­nal recipe called for. And for lunch the next day? The tuna sal­ad of your life, quite sim­ply the most lux­u­ri­ous tuna sal­ad you will ever have.

Grilled Tuna Salad
(serves 4 as a lun­cheon dish)

2 grilled (left­over!) tuna steaks
2 tbsps mayonnaise
1 tbsp chili sauce
2 stalks cel­ery, split in three and minced
1 small cucum­ber, deseed­ed and sliced thin
1/2 red onion, minced
juice if 1/2 lime or lemon
fresh ground pepper

Pull the tuna apart into bite-size pieces with your hands, or I sup­pose you could cut it with a knife if you were feel­ing all neat and tidy. Then gen­tly mix all the oth­er ingre­di­ents with the tuna, and serve with toast or Triscuits or Ryvi­ta, and a sliced avo­ca­do on the side.

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Well, our ter­race has been enlivened with sev­er­al flow­er­ing plants in bas­kets, deliv­ered by Rol­lie, along with a blue­ber­ry pound cake from his wife Judy, which I prompt­ly put in the freez­er to be part of the menu at Camp Avery next week, when we have three lit­tle girls to feed. John was tak­ing a nap when Rol­lie arrived, so we sat togeth­er on the stones of the ter­race, look­ing out over the peace­ful after­noon land­scape, some­times chat­ting, some­times silent. I enquired stern­ly if he had been tak­ing prop­er care of his injured fin­ger and he allowed as how he’d soaked it the night before and tak­en off all the dress­ings, which I’m sure the hos­pi­tal staff did not intend him to do. Final­ly he said, “Well, I’d bet­ter mosey along, although if the boys catch sight of me they’ll have a whole list of stuff I should do, so maybe I’d bet­ter not go home…”

This after­noon will bring, we hope, the deliv­ery of a whole batch of ten­nis rack­ets from an inter­net scheme: you get to try out a whole lot of them, and just send back the ones you don’t want! Since I’ve become rather a bet­ter ten­nis play­er than I was last sum­mer (as in, I don’t com­plete­ly suck all the time), John feels I deserve a bet­ter rack­et than the one I’ve cur­rent­ly got, which has a nasty habit of sort of grab­bing at the ball and send­ing it all over king­dom come. Yes­ter­day we actu­al­ly played twice, feel­ing ambi­tious! We arrived in the ear­ly evening for our sec­ond game and there, slight­ly awk­ward­ly for me, was Val, my teacher of last sum­mer, who in com­par­i­son with Wacky Roc­co in Lon­don sim­ply did not teach me any­thing. I had won­dered what I would say when I saw Val, since I haven’t signed up for lessons this sum­mer, but I soon saw I had no rea­son for qualms. Ful­ly the entire female pop­u­la­tion under 45 of my lit­tle town lined them­selves up for an enor­mous group les­son! All high­light­ed blondes of a cer­tain age, dressed in fan­cy lit­tle out­fits (I sim­ply must rise above my bor­ing shorts and t‑shirts!), bran­dish­ing fan­cy rack­ets and toss­ing their hair: Val won’t miss me at all!