Guess what? I go on Medicare next month! On November 14 I will hit the magic age of 65, when Uncle Sam takes over the bulk of my health care costs. (Sixty-five???? I am in shock, this is not possible! Remember when you couldn't wait to get older? I was so happy to turn 30, thinking I'd finally "arrived" as an untrustworthy adult! Somehow the current milestone lacks any sort of cachet, to say the least.)

It's almost scary, the way Medicare just appears in your life. A big envelope from the Social Security Administration shows up in your mailbox about 3 months before the magic day. In it are a few boilerplate brochures that purport to explain how it all works, and a flimsy paper thing bigger than any other card you carry, but which happens to be your Medicare card. The idea monetarily flits through that this is just a sample, that a "real" card, made of plastic with a magnetic strip and that will fit with all your other cards, will be arriving, but no. This is the actual card which by necessity must be on your person at all times, or at least close by. If you don't get it laminated or in some other way protect it, it will never last the thirty or so years you intend to use it (if you're lucky).

The Medicare premium for 2010 is $110 a month. It will automatically come out of my monthly Social Security payment. I only net $116 a month from Social Security as it is, since as a career Federal employee the only Social Security-eligible quarters I have come from summer jobs I had when I was a teenager and a few other short-term private-sector occupations I had over the years. I called to ask if my premium could come out of Federal retirement pension instead, but was told that I had no choice in the matter. If you get enough in Social Security payments, your premium comes from them. So, what was once pin money will become--what? Dust money? In practical terms, I will not be aware that my bank account is being enriched by a whopping $6 every month.

As the saying goes, they get you coming and going. Under normal economic conditions, Social Security makes a yearly Cost Of Living Adjustment (COLA) to your monthly stipend. However, the COLA is pegged to inflation, and since OMB has ordained that there has been no inflation for the past two years, there have been no COLAs. There was none for 2010 and there will be none for 2011. But that doesn't stop Medicare from upping its premiums. If I had started with it in 2009, my premium would have been $96 a month and, since there was no COLA for 2010, it would have remained that amount for this year. But somehow, even though there was no COLA, the premium for 2010 is $110 a month. (If I had any sense at all I'd be sorry I'm not a year older, just so I could have saved $9 a month!) As long as there is no COLA, my premium will not go over $110, but that is small comfort.

Oh. And Medicare doesn't cover all of your medical costs. There are still co-pays and some conditions that are not fully covered, and for those costs, you must have a "supplemental" policy. The supplemental payment to a provider combined with whatever Medicare pays should make for no out-of-pocket medical expenses on your part. But the supplemental policies are the same policies that were available to me as a non-Medicare participant, the same array of plans offered under the Federal Employee Health Benefit Plan (FEHBP). And even though I will be using a plan only to supplement Medicare, thereby reducing my cost to it by a great deal, I get no break on my premiums. To put it in a nutshell, when you're on Medicare you end up paying at least two premiums--one to Medicare and one to the supplemental plan. Add to that optional plans, such as "Part D" for prescriptions and separate policies for vision and dental, and you're shelling out more than twice what you were paying just the previous year to keep yourself healthy. And of course, these private supplemental plans are under no constraint to freeze their premiums because there is no COLA. Those payments do come out of my retirement pension, which has also not increased in two years for the same "no inflation" reason. In 2011, I will realize a net loss in income because of all these new medical costs. If this is progress, give me the Dark Ages.

Don't even get me started about Steve's medical situation, the fact that he is now paying for an individual policy, and I can't get him on my plan because Congress refuses to recognize us legally coupled...

Speaking of habits, I've developed one new one that I count as good, but I know not everyone would agree with that assessment. It's Facebook. It has given me contact with wonderful friends I thought I had lost forever; it provides portals to fascinating news stories and new music; it has a couple of Scrabble-type games that I'm addicted to and which don't require you to give up any information about yourself in order to play. (Yes, all this wonderfulness does have the potential to get out of hand, but it can be controlled. More on that later.)

In the "BF era" (Before Facebook), my morning routine was to take a walk, shower, have breakfast, finish the two hours of Morning Edition on NPR (the first having been heard on my walk) and then head to the computer to write something here. Now when I head to the computer I first go to Facebook. I catch up on personal news of friends and interesting tidbits from all manner of media that those friends may share. Of course, I must also check the word games. All that can take long enough. On this particular morning, though, NPR music featured a new album by Bryan Ferry--a rare event by a unique performer whom I like very much. I ended up listening to the whole album. By the time I even started here, then, I'd already been at the computer for well over an hour. That's excessive, I agree, but, it's also rare. Facebook as a part of my morning routine is here to stay.

Facebook naysayers don't like the site because they think it's intrusive. Agreed, it can be, but it doesn't have to be. Common sense in a using a social medium like Facebook is a must. Example: the site is full of fun questionnaires whose purported intent is to analyze certain of your personality traits and how those traits of yours compare with those of others. Don't fall for them. They're likely surveillance tools that transmit what you say about yourself to marketers who will then add targeted spam to your inbox. As to privacy settings: they're what you make them. You don't have to post a profile picture; indeed you don't have to divulge anything at all about yourself except an email address. Once you join, the "friend" database is easily searchable, making it possible for you to reach out only to people with whom you'd like to be in contact--others don't even have to know you're there. It's actually possible to join Facebook and then hide from unwanted attention.

As I mentioned above, Facebook is more than a mere social network; it's a matchless source for information that is either fascinating or important, often both. The Internet already allows us to sample literally any media source in the world. If you come upon a compelling article, you can instantly share it with your friends on Facebook via the link in the article, which these days is provided by all major media outlets. I get important information from publications to which I'd don't subscribe myself--indeed sometimes have never even heard of--and likewise I share articles that I know others would have no chance of seeing otherwise. I find this one of the most valuable aspects of the entire Facebook phenomenon.

Well. I had no idea I'd be going in this direction when I sat down at the keyboard. As some kind friend once told me, "it's your blog, you can write what you damn well please." All this verbiage demonstrates to me just how big a thing Facebook has become in my life. If you haven't tried it, do! We can play a game of Wordscraper!

So I just got an email from an old work friend from whom I hadn't heard in almost two years. The last time I saw him was when I went to his house to collect a good 50 pounds of green tomatoes (he's what you'd call a suburban backyard farmer, and a good one) so Steve could make his mother's green tomato mincemeat pie filling. After that fun visit, there was utter silence. Couldn't imagine what had happened. Lo and behold here's this note today asking me what happened to Days of Transition and telling me he's worried! Who knew he was even reading it??? If I needed a reminder that there are lurkers out there care about me (why, I can't imagine) and were using this blog to keep up, that was it. (You know who you are. An occasional shout-out, even anonymously, would be most welcome, just so I can know you're there. I'm not at all averse to a private email, either, if you care that much about visibility.

I've been working up to starting again, anyway. Most of the heavy move-in projects are done now; Steve's actually dreaming up make-work things to do just to keep his sanity. Can some sort of actual job be on the horizon?

And I've been writing all over people who never asked me to. Long comments on friends' statuses on Facebook. Longer replies to simple emailed greetings. I've been away from this daily exercise for too long and it's showing. I need to write.

I see no need to make any changes here. I'm still transitioning, even though that original, literal transition is now history. I'm still learning about living here in the country, meeting new people, getting new perspectives. Most are good; some are less so. There are plenty of impressions to tell about.

So I hereby promise to make an effort to get back into the daily habit, or at least as close to daily as I can make it. If habits there must be, this one is one worth keeping.

Yes, it's Friday. I know there's supposed to be a recipe here today. Alas, I am not prepared, but I am moved to put finger to keyboard. This is about crabs--so at least we're on the subject of food.

I had thought surely by this time I'd have been able to post a picture of some great crab catch of mine, either a harvest of live blue crabs in their steamer pot staring back at you, or that same harvest freshly steamed, spread out on layers of newspaper, all red and covered with Old Bay, just waiting to be devoured. Alas that hasn't happened.

The waterways around here are a virtual obstacle course of crab traps and gill nets. Local professional watermen know there is bounty in these waters and they actively exploit it. One professional crabber can put out hundreds of crab traps and make a decent seasonal living from what he (they're all "he's" down here) catches. But "professional" is the operative word. There is no acknowledgement whatsoever of the sports fisherman in these parts. From Edenton in the the south to Elizabeth City 30 miles north, there are any number of marinas that will sell you water craft and everything to do with them from cleats to charts, but there is not a single bait and tackle shop. You can't buy a crab trap anywhere, and the only sellers of menhaden, the bony, oily fish caught in the millions off the Delmarva Peninsula and known as ambrosia to crabs, are those who cater to the pros and sell only in 50-lb. lots. If you'd like to try catching a fish for dinner and need a pole and some hooks, Wal-Mart is your only choice. Need bait? Dig your own.

When you come here for the first time, you are struck by the preponderance of water. (It is, of course, what brought us here in the first place.) Five huge rivers that dwarf the Mississippi, in width if not length, run north-to-south along a stretch of about 70 miles of northeastern North Carolina, all feeding Albemarle Sound. The recreational and touristic possibilities would seem to be endless, but there is virtually no nod by the state or any of the local governments in that direction. I've spoken often of the various wonderful surprises we've had down here; this is one of the few disappointing ones. We were so accustomed to hopping in our boat in Delaware and running up to Lewes or down to Oak Orchard for lunch, or setting our crab traps out for two or three days in Herring Creek and getting enough "keepers" to make a few crab cakes. Here, the water distances from point to point are enormous, and if you should actually navigate to a town on the water, and should it even have thought to put up a public dock, there's not much to do once you tie up there. And the crabs? I buy my "bait" at the local grocery store--farm raised croaker meant for human consumption but which I wouldn't put near my mouth, and as cheap as the menhaden were in Delaware. With them I have caught many, many crabs, none of which have been legal keeping size. (We're using the traps we brought with us from Delaware.) Guess all the pros are beating me to the good ones.

A Friday the 13th story: today we decided to try one more time to catch a few crabs. A storm is brewing someplace in the vicinity, causing clouds, a stiff breeze and choppy water. It was to be a quick trip, just long enough to drop our two traps and come back.

The first trap went in just fine. The second one seemed to have got caught on something--turned out it was the engine's propeller. The wind and choppy water sent us right over the trap's rope, which tangled itself into the works of the engine, which in turn ceased running. (First thought: Oh great. A storm is coming and here we sit on the water with a dead engine.) The motor is old--the hydraulic mechanism that tilts the prop up out of the water stopped working a couple of months ago and we decided not to get it fixed, since a new engine is probably in our future next year. Nothing to do, then, but climb into the water to untangle the rope, which Steve, bless him, did. He had to cut the rope. I pulled the trap back into the boat, only to discover that the bait had fallen out of it. We turned around and came back home, then, with one empty, baitless crab trap--luckily it was just the tangled rope that was keeping the motor from running. Steve was able to dry off almost completely in the breeze. We now have one crab trap out there in the Little River, luring crabs with Food Lion croaker. We probably won't catch anything.

You will allow me a bit of a smug, good feeling today. These higher-than-normal highs are always interrupted by life's normal bumps and bruises, so I promise this one won't go to my head. But our inaugural North Carolina party last night was damn good!

Not that some major adjustments didn't become necessary as the hours leading to the event wore on. Early in the morning there was a true disaster: one of the cakes I had made a week or so before and frozen--the chocolate one--slipped out of my hand as I picked it up off the counter and landed, splat, face down, on the floor. Unfortunately, it had thawed out, in all its moist, oil-and-buttermilk richness. Not only did I have a hideous brown-black mess to clean up, but I had to whip up a duplicate and fast--it had been promised as a surprise to mark the birthday of one of the guests. Thank God the day was still young.

The purpose of the party was to show off the new deck, so we were all set up for outside. Zero hour was 4 PM. At 3:30, the heavens opened and a downpour ensued that lasted most of the rest of the evening. As the first drops fell, we switched gears and set up inside, moving the dining room table up against a wall to create buffet space, clearing coffee and end tables of their knick-knacks to make room for plates and cups, and moving chairs to unaccustomed places so lots of people could sit more-or-less convivially.

We learned several useful lessons. One: we will never, ever, plan another outdoor party here for the middle of summer. It's too hot and the weather is too iffy. It's enough like the tropics to expect a thunderstorm in the afternoon, as if it were a "rainy season," but it's still temperate enough not to guarantee such a storm, so you're never really sure what it's going to do before it's done. Two: the house has room for 30+ people to mill about and feel comfortable. As hosts we sometimes had to break up groups who gathered in crucial spots next to the oven, say, or who blocked a thoroughfare, but that was the worst of it. Any more than the number we had would be a bit on the sardine side, but we'll probably never encounter that problem. (And besides, we want to graduate from these cattle-call get-togethers to smaller, more intimate dinners. I take it that isn't done here very much, but I think it's because people have been intimidated by one guy in particular who fancies himself a "gourmet" and apparently has dinner gatherings that include all the starch of a nun's habit. Not fun. I cook good food--sometimes even fancy--but I'm more in the Julia Child tradition. If the soufflé falls I'll serve it, call it a savory pudding, and pass the wine.)

And three, not least: we have some pretty great neighbors. I don't know the religious or political beliefs of a single one of them and I hope it stays that way. Though none of these people are native to the area, they seem to have been infected with the wonderful local habit of smiling and waving first, inviting friendship rather than argument. You quickly grow accustomed to greeting a group of strangers in a waiting room, say, as they look up and smile as you enter. That really is the biggest and most pleasant surprise we've had here--how everyone is just plain nice. It's a quality that makes for a really fun party.

Oh. And the food, especially the pork, was a hit. And that chocolate cake? To quote one guest: "The best chocolate cake I've ever had!" I saw no reason to mention that I'd had extra practice.

SUMMER SQUASH WITH ONION AND BACON

I mentioned last week that I've been learning new things to do with the bounty of produce we find here in this agricultural area, both at the myriad farm stands and, it turns out for us, from our neighbors. A few days ago a neighbor showed up out of the blue with 6 pounds of cucumbers, along with a welcome to whatever else we may want from his garden. And our cross-the-creek neighbors have blessed us with more yellow squash than I ever thought I'd want to see in one place--and a recipe for them that makes all that squash much more welcome.

I've always thought those backyard garden old reliables, yellow squash and zucchini, were fine, in their place. Good sources of fiber and good vehicles for other things, such as a version of moussaka I know, or in vegetable soups and stews. After my first year with a garden, I resolved never to grow them again because they take up enormous space and you get enough of them to feed the surrounding county, and face it, they don't have much flavor on their own, even when consumed as mere infants straight from the vine. But this way of presenting yellow squash is a real winner. You may have heard of it, but it was a revelation to me. Thanks to Paul from across the creek.

(Note: I chop these squash instead of cutting them into the traditional discs. Much easier to get a good mouthful on your fork.)

4 strips bacon3-4 cups yellow squash, cut into bite-size chunks2 medium onions, coarsely choppedSalt and pepper

In a well-seasoned cast-iron skillet or a large non-stick pan, fry bacon until crisp over medium heat. Remove bacon to paper towels to drain; retain rendered fat.

Add squash and onions to hot fat, sprinkle with about a teaspoon of salt and pepper. Fry 4 to 5 minutes without stirring, or until vegetable pieces have begun to brown. Stir well to redistribute vegetables and expose the other sides of the squash to the heat and fry another 5 minutes, again without stirring. Keep this up until veggies are tender (but not squishy) and caramelized to your liking. Remove from heat, check seasoning, crumble bacon over all and serve.

I'm supposed to be pulling weeds today, but it's pouring rain. The new grass and the seed still germinating love it. So does our water bill. (And me, I'm not complaining!)

Today is July 14. Yes, Bastille Day. And Steve's and my anniversary.

We met on a weekend getaway to the Maryland mountains hosted by a mutual friend whose parents opened their doors to us. Of the crowd of people there, we each knew about two, and that did not include each other. I was in one of my starving artist periods, singing all over everybody. Steve liked what he saw. We were both in deep nesting phases. We started dating. A short time later, Steve put it this way: "My lease is about to run out. I have to move and I want you to move with me. If you don't want to, OK. It's been nice." How's that for romantic?

The adventure continues 31 years later. The gifts I have received from Steve are immeasurable and innumerable; I pinch myself at least once a week. Oh, nothing in this world is perfect, least of all human beings. Our relationship has taught us both important lessons in the meaning of true adulthood. If you ask me the secret to a long relationship, that's what I'll tell you: you must be grownups. The relationship itself takes on a life of its own, it's a living creature you both make, and as adults, you both choose to give it paramount importance. Your own childish interests never go away; the trick is in acknowledging that inner baby and even humoring him when you can, but never at the expense of the relationship, the precious thing you have created together.

Is this marriage thing for everybody? Apparently not. But for us it's worked beyond our wildest dreams.

Here's to 31 more.

P.S. Take a look a the new masthead photo. We're almost there.

BLUEBERRY SOUR CREAM ICE CREAM

This is one of several dishes I've learned to make here in this agricultural area that uses the local produce to its most beautiful potential. I bought the berries at "Bright's Delights," a farm stand on US 17, just within the limits of Elizabeth City. These days it is bursting with gorgeous stuff: huge, sweet beefsteak tomatoes, just the right size to cover a slice of bread, at least 10 varieties of sweet corn (I bought bi-color this time, and next will be Silver King), blackberries the size of golf balls, blueberries, just-shelled baby limas for succotash with some of that corn...I could go on. We are in vegetable heaven here.

First things first: thank you to a former work colleague, Sharon Forrence, for giving me the idea for this decadent concoction via her Facebook newsfeed. What she made was blueberry crème fraiche ice cream, and the very idea set my mouth watering. I was determined to make it for myself.

I figured it would be a pretty tall order to find crème fraiche in these country-and-proud-of-it parts, and a survey of the grocery chains at my disposal--all two of them--proved my suspicion right. So I figured I'd just make my own--there are recipes galore for crème fraiche on the internet, and they're all the same: inoculate warmed heavy cream with some buttermilk and let it ripen. Couldn't be simpler. The catch is that the cream should ideally be fresh from the cow (as it is in less squeamish countries such as France), or, if you don't have a willing cow nearby, the cream can be pasteurized, but not ultra-pasteurized, because that process just doesn't leave enough bacteria for the buttermilk culture to do its magic. Wouldn't you know that the stores here sell only ultra-pasteurized dairy products. What I found interesting, once I was made aware of this pasteurized/ultra-pasteurized distinction, is that the food manufacturers seem quite proud of the ultra-pasteurized state of their milks and creams. It's written in huge print on the packages, obviously a major selling point. The great, lowest-common-denominator American marketplace, with heavy influence from the paranoid FDA, rules. So much for crème fraiche; ergo the sour cream. Having said all that, I can't imagine how the end product could be any richer or more pleasingly tart than this, sour cream, crème fraiche, or whatever.

You'll note that this recipe is heavy on the cholesterol, with all its dairy fat and egg yolks. And it involves a double boiler, the best thing to use if you don't want a scrambled-egg custard. If it all seems like too much work, search out simpler basic vanilla ice cream recipes on your own. They're certainly out there. I just prefer this French custard style for its extreme richness, and figure we have it so seldom it qualifies as an occasional guilty pleasure.

For the berries:

1 pint (2 cups) fresh blueberries1 tablespoon water2 tablespoons sugar

Combine ingredients in a small saucepan over medium heat. When simmering starts, cover and let cook about 10 minutes, until berries soften and begin to burst. Remove from heat, mash berries with a potato masher so that some whole berries remain but the rest is a slurry. Set aside to cool.

For the ice cream:

2 cups half-and-half1 cup granulated sugar (divided)1/2 teaspoon cinnamon1/4 teaspoon salt8 large egg yolks1 teaspoon vanilla1/2 teaspoon ground cinammon1/4 teaspoon salt2 cups sour cream

In a heavy saucepan combine half-and-half and 3/4 cup of the sugar. Cook to scalding (just when bubbles begin to appear around the edges of the milk in the pan) stirring to dissolve sugar. Remove pan from heat. In a large heat-proof bowl, whisk together the egg yolks and remaining sugar, then whisk in the hot half-and-half in a steady stream. Place bowl over boiling water (so it does not touch the water) and stir yolk-cream mixture until it coats the back of the spoon and it reaches 170º F on an instant thermometer. This will take 5 to 7 minutes.

Remove bowl from double boiler and whisk in the vanilla, the cinnamon, and the salt. Mix in the sour cream and reserved blueberry slurry and stir all to combine.

Place blueberry cream in refrigerator for several hours until thoroughly chilled. Process in ice cream maker until thickened, according to manufacturer's directions. (I use a Cuisinart with a removable freezing tub kept in the freezer between uses. It takes about 30 minutes.)

At this stage the ice cream will still be runny, like very soft frozen custard. If you can wait, remove ice cream to a container and freeze until it hardens. (Or if you can't wait, eat it right out of the ice cream maker!)

We seem to be settling into something of a routine that gives me some time to sit here and write. As a matter of principle, I try not to make promises about the future, but I can say that maybe, just maybe, I'll have time to do a little bit more of this now. I actually fulfilled an ambition of over a year this morning and went out for a good walk. I am shamefully out of shape--my legs feel like lead weights now and my heart rate was elevated to true exercise mode in a matter of mere minutes once I set out, but I know these signs of rust will polish away with a little practice.

One year ago today we were in the midst of clearing the property. We'd get here in the cool of the early morning and suit up against chiggers: long pants tucked into our socks, long sleeved shirts, a do-rag for me to keep the sweat pouring off my head out of my eyes, and clouds of Deep Woods Off. It was sheer, unadulterated drudgery, but it didn't last long--we could only work until about noon every day before it got too hot, and our progress in those few hours a day was dramatically visible.

Now, the land is still cleared and my job is to water it. We finally had what we now call our mud flats--the 2 acres or so of land that was cleared to make the septic field in the front, as well as the two side yards and the back--seeded for grass. It's Bermuda grass, the kind that wants to grow here because it loves the heat (the soil temperature must be at least 80F--26C--before Bermuda seed will germinate) and it needs to be wet. So my job these days, while Steve makes sense of his sanctum sanctorum, the garage, is to water.

When the house was built, Gary, the builder, made sure the plumber put standpipe hydrants at various strategic locations around the yard. Now we know why. I water area by area from 6 in the morning until 4 in the afternoon, an hour at a time, using three 100-foot hoses stretched to various spots in the yard. The seed really needs to be saturated, and, in case you haven't heard, we're in the midst of a prolonged heat wave. It's a dry heat, which means the water that lands on places unprotected by any shade, including the vast expanse of septic field where there can be no trees, evaporates quickly. We had a couple of days last week of heavy rain, and that gave everything a jump start. So far, I've been able to keep the ground moist enough to actually look wet, and the work is beginning to pay off. Our yard looks like the beard of a 13-year-old boy. That is to say, spotty. Here is what the back looks like as of today:

It's actually a little better than the front, which has long, narrow stripes of green surrounded by dirt containing various amounts of moisture. This is the three-week point. There are times when we despair of ever getting rid of the dirt and mud, but I strive for faith that these doubts, too, will pass, just as all the others have. A few months ago, when we first moved in and a lawn was still imaginary, a neighbor told us we should just get some sod. They had put down seed, and they'd never do it again. "It was so much work!" she said, and I simply couldn't understand what she was talking about. How much work can there be to turning on a hose and letting it run for an hour? Now I get it. You become obsessed with maintaining an even level of moisture all around. You're governed by the clock, going out to re-position sprinklers every hour. Sometimes the sprinklers get clogged with mud, and a simple operation that should take a few minutes stretches to half an hour or more, as you turn on the hydrant, maybe 100 feet away from the sprinkler, and discover that the sprinkler has become clogged. You turn off the water, walk the hundred feet to the sprinkler, unscrew it from the hose, walk back to the hydrant, turn the water on to clean off the sprinkler and force the clog out, screw the sprinkler back on the hose, put it back in the place you want it 100 feet distant, walk back to the hydrant, turn it on, and hope for the best. You've spent at least a good 20 minutes at this. And then there are the times the only way to move the sprinkler to the next area is to walk over the dirt you've just watered, which has become shoe-sucking mud. Perhaps reading all that is as monotonous as actually doing the work? Good, I've shown you what it feels like! But the photo above makes it all worthwhile. Pretty soon we'll have a lawn.

There are those who would probably love to point out that all this effort to create a "lawn," an artificial meadow, is unnatural, a colossal waste of a precious natural resource--water--and that we are polluting the very creek whose vista we so enjoy with the fertilizer needed to make this artificial meadow green. Carry the argument far enough and you'll have stopped us even from building the house: we should never have had those trees cut down, nor removed that natural thicket of green just to create a view. All I can say in response is, "I know, I know, your arguments are unassailable, and I don't care." I invite the environmentally sensitive among you to pitch a tent in the woods somewhere and be one with nature. Me, I'll take my greensward, my lovely, flat, green meadow, shimmering in the Carolina sun.

Was it really a whole year ago? It still doesn't seem possible.

On June 19, 2009, after nearly two years of preparation and seemingly unending months of anxiety brought on by an unfriendly national economy, Steve and I closed on the sale of our signature house in hyper-urban Arlington, Va., the one we'd spent 27 years re-creating into something that was ours alone. We picked up the cats, the fish, and the plants, and drove six hours straight south into a completely new life in deeply rural North Carolina. All we knew was that we were headed for a rental house and that our landlord would be the builder in whose hands we'd decided to trust the plans for our dream home by the water. Would we feel dislocated? Would we be accepted? Would the Klan burn a cross on our lawn? All of those questions crossed our minds. But we had each other, and we had the knowledge that up to then we'd been able to fit in anywhere. Heck, I'd spent two years of my life in Ghana, West Africa, the equivalent of another planet. If that dislocation didn't do me in, a move to the sticks would be more like re-locating to another house in the same neighborhood. Never did we feel we were making an unwise move. And a year later, we are all the more confident in the wisdom of our decision, and happy about it.

Oh, there have been changes in attitude. In my urban life you wouldn't have caught me dead or alive in a Wal-Mart, unless there was some bargain that simply couldn't go unheeded. Here, the Wal-Mart is the only big-box store for 60 miles in any direction. (There is a Lowe's nearby, thank goodness!) It stands in lonely grandeur on the outskirts of Elizabeth City, awaiting the mixed-use housing planned for its surrounds. It stands shining in the distance along with the strip mall that came with it, which includes a good pet store. Since this is the only such store for miles around, it must be many things to many types of people. It succeeds more than it fails.

Also in my previous life, I used to shop for food à l'européenne, making a daily trip to my beloved Harris-Teeter to be inspired by its gorgeous produce and wonderful meat selection for the day's dinner. Here, you can't go around any corner without running into a Food Lion--truly the Starbucks of the rural North Carolina, making up in utter ubiquity for it's complete lack of corporate style. I admit to an irrational prejudice against the chain, probably because of its name, which I find just stupid, thinking of it as an overgrown country store. (Capers are in the foreign food section, when you can get them. Fresh thyme was an unknown in the produce aisle until I asked for it.) But I shop there because the prices of this most base of basic selection can't be beat. There's a very nice store, a Harris-Teeter ripoff, called Farm Fresh in E. City. I go there for things like copper polish, Swiss chard or fennel bulbs, great cheeses, and my beloved Batampte pickles. I can even pick up kimchee there when my tastebuds so dictate. (And when it comes to produce, in the summer we are abundantly blessed with several farm stands to choose from.)

We do sorely miss a few things about the big city. Bed, Bath and Beyond is a marvelous place that seems downright miraculous upon entering one after a long absence. The occasional foray into Target. A Thai restaurant. (Mexican and Chinese are well represented, and there's even a Caribbean chop bar in Elizabeth City.) A selection of first-run movie theaters--we have to go all the way to the Outer Banks for a multiplex. Netflix has never been so welcome or necessary.

And we miss the proximity of our friends in Washington, but we don't miss the city itself. (Our best friends tend to be scattered all over the country, anyway, so being here doesn't make such big difference.) We miss the funky diversity of our Arlington neighborhood, but little by little we are learning where the weird people are down here--which is most certainly not among our lovely, well-meaning but totally homogeneous neighbors--we are the diversity in this little enclave, and they actually seem grateful for our presence. We are on a search for fellow-travelers and know they are out there. Meanwhile, our pink flamingos and the rainbow flag speak for themselves. What they may say to the literal-minded, camp-challenged locals is another story entirely--("all those flamingos...you guys really like the tropics, huh?") but we are making our statement.

We love looking at "our" creek every day, through the forest of cattails and bog flowers whose lives we made possible through the sweat of our backs. We love the starry nights, where the spilled-milk inspiration for the name of our galaxy is still visible. We love that through the good offices of a couple of very modest but pivotal people in our life here--our real estate agent and our builder--we have access to a network of first-rate craftspeople whose word is so good they don't even require contracts. When they say they will do something, they do it. It's a very high moral standard to live up to, and one reason the recent troubles with the home equity loan (finally resolved) were so distressing--it's not fair to make these good people wait so long for their due, since they have shown you such good faith. Where else could we be honored with such a tender obligation?

Most of all, even though we have not said it in so many words, Steve and I love that we have each other. Each of us made this life-changing adventure possible for the other. Without me, Steve would still be sitting in Arlington, stressing impotently over lost property values. Without Steve, his genius for design and his hands-on skills, my life would be far poorer and less filled with beauty. When it comes right down to it, that might be the best thing of all about this new life. With each other, we've seen without any doubt that we can do just about anything we set our minds to. We're coming up to 31 years next month. May the next 31 be half as good.

The rain that seemed to go on endlessly just a few days ago has indeed ended and given way to bright sunshine, cool morning breezes and a clear blue sky. And that cozy feeling you get when you can sit inside and do not very much because weather won't allow it gives way, in my present circumstances, to feelings of jealousy that Steve can be outside, carrying lumber around as he prepares to make railings for the deck, while I'm still inside relatively immobile. But I can marvel at what Steve has shown me from the outside, and told me about. And yesterday afternoon after the sun had gone behind the house I actually maneuvered myself out to the deck and enjoyed the fragrant air and the evening views up the creek.

We are in the middle of a natural wonderland. Henry the blue heron makes daily, swooping forays up and down he creek, often landing right at the end of our dock to stalk some delicacy he sees in the water. If Henry happens not to show up for a couple of days running, we ask each other where he is. "Where's Henry?" has become one of those comfortable private catch phrases that mean more than they actually say. (We had a "Henry" in Delaware, too. We imagine that he found out where we went and followed us here.)

Yesterday Steve saw two enormous turtles on the wetland fringes of the back yard. One of them left some scratch marks behind--is this egg-laying season for these turtles? What kind are they? We need to find out. A hummingbird hovered over us as we sat on the deck, attracted to the extravagant salmon pink of the kalanchoe I bought to brighten Steve's office over a year ago. The plant has thrived here, as if celebrating Steve's freedom, and the hummingbird's reaction to it suggested the sort of company we may have if we were to plant something with actual nectar, like a trumpet vine. A trumpet vine requires strict, brutal discipline or it will become invasive, but the potential for crowds of hummingbirds may convince us it would be worth the trouble.....

Busy little Carolina chickadees and bluebirds flit and fuss incessantly from tree to tree along the water, and a tiny Carolina wren perches on the railing of our front porch at 4 o'clock every afternoon, like clockwork. He "serenades" us with a teasing, single-note call that is way too big to emit from that afterthought of a body. (The tiniest creatures seem to have been given voices that compensate for their lack of physical stature.) On the other end of the size scale, there are at least a dozen osprey pairs nesting in the tallest of the cypress trees that grace the banks of the Little River, just beyond our creek. At least one of them does graceful reconnaisance over us every afternoon. And then there are the crows, their raucous conversation announcing their arrival like so many ladies who have over-enjoyed a liquid lunch.

There are more wildflowers growing in the wetland than we ever dared hope. I've shown you a picture of the wild iris. They have now been joined by spiky little water hyacinths and a buttercup yellow ground cover whose name we don't yet know. A wetland rose of sharon is growing almost within reach of the dock--we hope it is the scion of a plant whose seeds we collected along the river last fall. It's still sprouting leaves and growing towards its full-season height, too early for blossoms, but the leaves and growth habit are unmistakable.

When I am once again ambulatory I promise to take some pictures of all these wonders and show them to you. Until then, daydream a little....

I was walking yesterday morning, minding my own business, when I tripped on a wire and inflicted more long-term pain upon myself than I have experienced in my life. There are some times when you know you've done something that is potentially serious and will require more intervention than mere first aid. The burning pain at the base of my pelvis was my clue. I had torn the hamstring in my left leg. I "knew" it before I knew it. I just lay there in the dirt for a good half-hour while I tried to figure out some way to drag myself into a chair, using my arms and one leg. I knew I had to get to a hospital, but had no idea how I'd propel myself into the car, much less survive the ride, sitting, due to the nature and location of the nature of the injury, on the tear itself. I felt like a big baby but had to face the fact I needed an ambulance. I called 911, grateful for the system but apologetic at having to bother them with my ridiculous problem.

"Life is what happens when you're making other plans." A rare day off when we were planning to take the boat out and set the first crab pots of the year, and when I had intended to buy a big pork shoulder to try out my never-used smoker, was instead taken up by an ambulance ride to the hospital in Elizabeth City (two firsts: the ambulance and the hospital visit for myself) and then seemingly endless waiting on a bed in the emergency room. At the end of it all I was given confirmation that it was indeed a tear, some pain meds (motrin and percocet, both of which, despite their splendid reputations, are taking their sweet time to kick in), a pair of crutches, and instructions to contact an orthopedist first thing Monday, there being none on duty at the time in the hospital.

Straightening my left leg from anything but a completely prone position is still excruciating, though slightly improved (maybe a 9 instead of a 10 on a 1 to 10 pain scale) over yesterday. The crutches are useless to me because they require me to keep my leg in the only relatively pain-free position I can find, bent at the knee. In a standing position, the remaining muscles in my thigh can't help with that under their own steam--they end up cramping from the strange position, adding to the pain. For locomotion, then, I've taken to crawling around the house like a crab, face up, pulling myself along with my legs, then pushing the rest of my body forward with my arms, dragging my butt on the floor. (The bamboo needed a good scrub anyway!) In this manner I managed to push myself into the shower this morning and cleanse myself for the first time in two hot and dirty days, sitting on the shower floor.

Dear Steve, meanwhile, has been living out the "in sickness and in health" part of the traditional marriage vows. It goes without saying this ordeal would have even more difficult without his patient assistance, waiting on me hand and foot. He's also getting a little insight into the myriad small but vital maintenance chores I carry out in our life together every day, making the engine run smoothly. Not that I needed reminding, but this experience drives home once again how grateful I am to have him in mt life.

Other news: the lien situation drags on. There was indeed a debt against this property, and it was our purchase of the property that erased it. Unfortunately, it's that debt satisfaction that was never recorded. Dealing with bank bureaucracies to get that done is taking forever. There is still light somewhere at the end of the tunnel, progress is being made. But it's glacial.

And now for a crawl to the great room, or maybe to the deck.

We recorded this last night on our deck. You don't know whether to laugh at the comical sounds, be amazed at their volume and variety, or curse the fact that they are keeping you awake. The creatures making these sounds are not 30 feet away from the recorder, and we have no idea what any of them look like, especially those making those "bubbling" noises.

Welcome to the woods! MP3 File

It's a cool, gray morning that promises to evolve into more of the same in the afternoon and evening. We find ourselves with the first day of "nothing to do" in the new house, between projects, or waiting for various stars to align to start some. A very dear friend, an old Peace Corps colleague now living with her partner in Australia, has offered to make us a quilt for the house and deliver it--in person--sometime in 2011. So one thing that has kept me busy this morning is this website which has dazzled me and taught me in one session more about quilts than I ever imagined existed. Steve and I have been tasked with choosing a pattern. Once our choice passes muster with our quilting friend, we will delve into details of color. This promises to be fascinating, an experience topped off with a visit from Roz and Lib, whom we have not seen since our once-in-a-lifetime visit to Australia and New Zealand in 2005. It's one more lovely thing to be grateful for.

I also read the online version of the Washington Post, something I try to do fairly regularly, if I can stand yet more reports of the ever deepening chasm between viewpoints in this country, and the lunatics who really do threaten to take over the asylum. I saw that the IMF has prescribed a remedy for our current international economic ills: somehow getting the "developed world" to scale back its consumption and, concomitantly, its relatively luxe way of life. The dollar must lower in value or the Chinese must raise the value of their currency. Either way, it would mean that Steve and I may no longer be able to go to Ollie's overstock outlet and pay cents on the dollar for a dining room rug, say, or buy cheap nuts and bolts for our new deck. Such prospects bring home for me one more time how incredibly lucky we have been in so many ways, for so many years. When I say "we" I speak specifically of Steve and me, but the good luck has applied to countless of our contemporaries who happened to find themselves making their lives in Washington, DC, and other big cities, during the past few decades, riding the gravy train of good salaries that higher education could command, and not really too long ago. In Steve's and my immediate case, we decided what had to come next, got out while the getting was good, and had the means to build, literally, our future. Yes, we were smart enough to make plans. But we were just plain lucky to be able to realize them.

There is one gift from my time on the planet that just keeps on giving, and that is my time spent in a poor country with the Peace Corps. It continues to remind me to take none of the good life I have for granted. I know that there are people elsewhere who are exactly like me except for the opportunities that are my birthright, and from that difference flow so many others. "There but for fortune go I" is an old saying I became familiar with when Phil Ochs worked it into a song in the 1960s. Never a day goes by that I don't remember it, especially now, during such personal good times. Steve and I may have been smart. But we had a huge, undeserved and completely accidental leg up along the way.

BAKED PORK AND NOODLES

This one is so easy I can't believe I never ran across it before, and even though a big part of is it is a couple of canned soups, I'm not proud, if it tastes good.

What I was really looking for was a way to make what my mother called "pork and noodles"--a good name, really, because that's all it was, plus some onion. Somehow she could boil egg noodles, pork chops and onions together and make it come out a rich, delicious wonder instead of a gluey mess. It can't have cooked for a very long time--the noodles take only 10 minutes to boil--and the pork not much longer. Anyway, I never found a recipe for boiling pork and noodles together, but I found a slew of them for baking them, all about this simple. Pork in North Carolina is a delicious and cheap protein, and I'm looking for more ways to use it. But you don't have to live in the Tarheel State to enjoy this.

Just one warning: give yourself some time. I takes 1 1/2 hours to cook.

6 country-style pork ribssalt and pepper to taste1 can cream of mushroom soup1 can French onion soup8 oz. uncooked egg noodles1 medium onion, sliced

Preheat oven to 250 degrees F.

Pat meat dry, sprinkle with a little salt and pepper, and brown thoroughly in bottom of a Dutch oven. Remove meat from pan and set aside.

Mix soups together (do not dilute) and pour into Dutch oven. Raise heat to a boil and deglaze bottom of Dutch oven with the soups.

Distribute uncooked noodles evenly through soup mixture, making sure they are submerged, then nestle browned pork among the noodles. Separate onion slices into rings and distribute evenly over all.

Cover tightly and bake for 1 1/2 hours, until meat is fork tender. Serve with salad or your choice of vegetable. Yum!

Please forgive me for the longer-than-usual hiatus--I'm dropping just a few lines now because some friends have expressed concern that there may be something amiss, especially since I mentioned that pain-in-the-ass lien in the last post. Really sorry to have given you reason to worry--there's enough of that already in all of our lives....

There is no excuse for my not writing more other than the usual one: it's busy around here and seems to have become moreso, if that's possible, since we moved into the place. We settled in and set ourselves up in record time--by the time we'd been here a month it looked like we'd lived here all our lives--but that's because we're both freaks about living out of boxes. We must have order in whatever passes for home or we go nuts. And once all was in order on the inside, we started with a vengeance on the outside. Now we're finally getting to build the deck, and I must say I'm surprising myself at the hammering skills--and general coping skills--I'm developing through the process. I generally hate construction. You have to hit things hard and half the time what you plan doesn't pan out the first time--something doesn't fit, or nails miss their mark, or I have to bend this ungainly body into positions I was never meant to assume. But today I did a pretty good job of some pretty hard stuff involving all of the above: pieces that didn't fit, nails that didn't go through, and positions I needed aspirin simply to get into.

The lien: I finally did what I should have done from the beginning. I called the law office that handled the closing on this land purchase. They were able to solve the problem literally overnight. Turned out our purchase enabled the seller to retire his debt, which he did, but nobody bothered to tell the county about it. We are simply awaiting the paperwork from the seller's lending bank certifying the payoff, which I will then hand carry to the county here to have registered. We have a month for all this to happen before our loan application would have to be re-done, so we're not worried.

Thanks for your kind wishes and your expressions of solicitude. If you want to know what's up on a more regular basis, I'm a lot more present on Facebook these days than here, simply because Facebook requires less of a time commitment. Join me there--I love friends! And I promise to try to do better here.

I set out on a real post yesterday, and then the phone rang all hell broke loose (I'll explain later) when I was mid-way through it and I had to quit. I looked back at it again just now and realized it was just a meandering recount of all the work we've done since we moved in March 19. Not to minimize, it was a lot of work. The retrieval from Delaware of all the things we had left there meant another whole moving-in, this time of well-loved but admittedly too numerous things we "de-cluttered" from the house in Arlington as we readied it for market, not to mention all the things we had collected for the Delaware trailer itself over the four summers we enjoyed it. In a nutshell, we consolidated three dwellings into this one, and in the process filled thrift stores and giveaway bins with several trips' worth of usable but extraneous stuff, both here and in Delaware. I think we can safely say all the jigsaw pieces that had been scattered around the mid-Atlantic are under one roof. We're moved in, and now we can start on the list of projects that will lend completion to the home. That list is endless, of course, and it's just the things we know about and can plan on! (People have told us that the house looks so complete they'd think we've been living here for years. The truth is, we'd imagined most settings for months and it was a mere case of putting things where we knew they belonged. The hardest part of the job was hauling it all in.)

The hell that broke loose yesterday concerns a home equity line of credit we are applying for. We want to take advantage of our excellent credit ratings and of the fact that we own our house free and clear. The application process, however, has taken on the potential to turn into a nightmare because a very sizable lien was found on the property--a lien that supposedly has existed since 2005 but did not show up in the title search when we made our purchase in March, 2009. Some title company, either the one that did the original search for our purchase or the one working for our lending bank, has made a big mistake. There are myriad things to ponder and worry about in such a situation--my initial inquiries following yesterday's phone call from the bank led me to inexplicable dealings in the next county. All we can do is wait for the thing to play itself out, and that's frustrating for a born "fixer" like me. We should have more details, and maybe a resolution (for good or ill) next week. At least one thing has come out of this: now we know what title insurance is for!

The house may be looking lovely on the inside, (today's photo is of my favorite vista) but outside we're still all dust or mud, depending on the weather. Dwayne, the landscaper, doesn't want to do anything until Joe, the the bulkhead guy, puts in a retaining wall next to the wetlands on the side of the house. Joe can't start on our project until he's done with the job he's on now, and of course last night's soaking rain didn't help matters anywhere heavy machinery is needed. Landscaping will be an ongoing saga. I did plant a couple of trees yesterday where no machines will have to go.

The pollen you have either been reading about or contending with personally over the past few days hit us like a yellow nor'easter. It's record-breaking in these parts (we seem to have arrived here during a time when records were scheduled to be broken)--the air itself was a greenish-yellow fog as we drove on US 17 yesterday. We left the cars outside the garage last night for the express purpose of allowing the rain to relieve them of their dusty burdens. According to local authorities, most of the pollen we're seeing here is from loblolly pines, which the wooded part of our property is full of. We thought the oak and maple pollen in Arlington were bad, but we've never seen anything like this.

We got the boat running yesterday for the first time this season. Took about a half-hour of repeated attempts, but the old bucket of bolts finally kicked into life and purred like a kitten. We saw on our short boat ride that here in early April the Little River is already an obstacle course of crab pots. I bought some crab bait yesterday. Can't wait to start hauling in a few of my own!

Finally: Kat's recent fatal run-in with the copyright police has led me to a decision not to post music anymore, at least not in the MP3 format from my own collection as had been my pleasurable practice heretofore. I will miss the exercise because choosing the songs forced me into my library to refresh my memory of what I have, and gave me many hours of joy as I sampled and chose. But I dare not lose my space on Blogger, and truth to tell I no longer have the hours needed to luxuriate in my music collection. I may decide to go the Youtube route, as many of my friends do.

Tomorrow we take possession of this magical house that we've been dreaming about since I started writing to you here. March 19 is 9 months to the day from when we closed in Arlington and moved here to this little rental house to begin this adventure. (How's that for hitting you over the head with symbolism? But really, this moment has been much longer a-borning, as most of you know.)

We are packing in earnest, and as we make progress, it's dawning on both of us that we're only moving 25 miles this time, not 500. All weekend, we'll be able to take things to the house ahead of the movers, who will come Monday. I remember the day we moved here, trying to put things away in the kitchen during the chaos of having furniture moved in, balancing intricate placement decisions in the kitchen and big ones about furniture at the same time. This move should be much, much easier. We can hang towels, put rugs on the floor, and, best of all, I can get the kitchen mostly put away over the weekend and concentrate on other things on the "official" moving day. (Of course, another "moving day" is also on the near horizon: the week after next we head for Delaware to bring all the things we thought we would be using there. That's a pretty substantial load, since as we consolidated the rooms in Arlington and moved furniture out to show the house, we took all of those things to Delaware. There are two large china cabinets, to begin with. And there are things we bought in Delaware that we want here, a rowboat, picnic table......Oh, we won't be finished moving in by a long shot when we clear out this house.)

So busy days are ahead. We'll arrange the inside, then get to work on the outside, mostly finishing the deck and landscaping. Still, I intend to make every effort to inject some discipline into my life once I'm under my own roof again. I can't wait to start my daily walks. And I do mean to write more regularly here. Connection speeds will probably be a bit better, making music less frustrating to upload. We all know what they say about good intentions, but I promise to do my best. I really do miss this wonderful part of my life.

There will probably be another long silence after this as we get through the nitty-gritty of moving in. But I hope I can start plumbing my brain once again for things other than the minutiae of changing residence. See you soon!

CHICKEN AND BROCCOLI CASSEROLE

"Well," you must be saying (if you even still bother to subscribe), "look what the cat dragged in!" (And I don't mean the food!) I actually have the chance this rainy afternoon to get this recipe written down for you (and for myself, actually), and I'm glad. We are still commuting every day to the new place, if not to do anything specific, then to watch final preparations being made. Shelves are being hung, mirrors and towel bars put in place, and construction of the deck is beginning. And we are beginning our move in small pieces. The weather has warmed enough for the houseplants to stay outside, so we moved them all from here to the yard at the new place. I have heeled in all the iris and peonies that we brought with us from Arlington, letting them get used to conditions there. (They'll be moved once again once we decide on a landscaping design.) This weekend we travel to Raleigh to help a friend hang pictures in her new place, then we begin packing in earnest, preparing for the movers, who will be here early Monday, the 21st of March. Does all this sound familiar? It does to us, too!

I made up this recipe all by my lonesome after overhearing a woman in a hardware store the other day tell her friend that she was making "chicken and broccoli casserole" for dinner that night. It's one of those dishes we've all heard of and maybe even made--well, I'd heard of it, but never made it because I imagined most recipes probably called for a can of soup or two, and it didn't seem very inspiring. But this time I thought a good version, made more-or-less from scratch, should be delicious. I was in the mood for something new, so I whipped this up. The binder is a cheddar cheese sauce flavored with the broccoli stems that I cooked along with the florets and then puréed, and I took a shortcut and used a pre-cooked rotisserie chicken. While eating those overcooked supermarket birds by themselves can be a terrible experience, their meat really isn't bad if it's mixed into something else. This is a quick and easy weeknight meal that I'm going to make a permanent part of the repertoire. Hope you like it!

3 broccoli crowns (about a pound), florets cut from stems

1 medium onion, chopped fine

1 large clove garlic, minced

1/4 cup unsalted butter

1/4 cup all-purpose flour

2 1/2 cups scalded milk

1 12-oz.can mushroom pieces and stems, drained

2 cups grated sharp cheddar cheese

1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

Salt and pepper

1 store-bought rotisserie chicken

Juice 1/2 medium lemon.

10 oz. short pasta, such as radiatore. (Elbow macaroni will do.)

1/4 cup shredded Parmesan cheese.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Cook pasta according to package directions.

Remove meat from chicken, discarding skin and carcass. Tear breast meat into bite-size pieces--you should have about 2 cups of meat. Reserve legs and wings for another use.

Steam broccoli florets and stems together. Remove florets to a bowl and set aside after about 10 minutes. Continue cooking stems for another 10 minutes or until soft. Put stem pieces into bowl of food processor and purée.

Melt butter in large saucepan over medium heat, taking care not to let butter brown. Add onion and cook until just soft but not brown, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and stir until fragrant. Sprinkle flour over melted butter and and onions, and combine well, cooking until bubbling subsides and no flour lumps remain. Slowly pour in scalded milk, whisking or stirring constantly. Turn heat to medium high, continue stirring or whisking until sauce bubbles and starts to thicken. Add drained mushrooms, 1 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon pepper and Worcestershire sauce, stir to combine. Add all the cheddar and stir until the cheese is completely melted and incorporated into the sauce. Stir in chicken breast meat, heat everything through. Off heat, stir in lemon juice. Check seasoning and adjust if necessary.

Pour sauce over cooked pasta and mix well. Grease a casserole with cooking spray and add chicken-pasta mixture, smoothing top so it is evenly distributed. Sprinkle Parmesan evenly over all. Bake, uncovered, until bubbly and browned on top, 30-35 minutes. Remove from oven to cooling rack and let rest 10 minutes. Serve.

We take possession of the new house Friday March 19. We'll install the window treatments over that weekend and move in Monday, March 21.

The 19th of March, 2010, is 1 year, 1 month and 5 days after our first drive down here, when we found the property that has been at the core of our life ever since.

More later.

It may not look like much, but that trench with the pipe in it is important. A guy was finally able to drive his heavy tractor over that rain-drenched fill yesterday and not sink to his axles as he dug a place for a drain pipe to run from the house to the septic tank. At last, if we bring water into the house, there's a place for it to go when it leaves. The last structural hurdle has been passed. We are celebrating our ability to dispose of our sewage. Who knew????

Detail work on the inside is becoming finer and finer. The wood floors are all in; carpets are now being laid. Trim details are being looked after, as are a couple of small projects that had to wait for this stage in construction. A "preliminary final inspection" will be made this week; after that the electricity will be turned on and the house will be heated. Protective covering from the finished floors will be removed, so we can enjoy that golden bamboo in all its glory. The process begun nearly 18 months ago with the removal of the first strip of paper from a wall in Arlington, this obsession with real estate and houses, builders and yes, sewage pipes, will soon be over. We will occupy our new house within three weeks!

I have no idea what this new life, so long anticipated, will really be like, but I can barely wait to start living it in what I know will be gorgeous surroundings. It's not time to write a valedictory to our current limbo existence, not just yet. Rest assured, though, ideas are percolating. We have been given much. We've experienced abysmal lows that have made subsequent highs seem stratospheric; we have made the happy acquaintance of people in places and walks of life we'd never have imagined, and we have learned.

As long as we are transitioning, that's what I'll continue to report on. Soon, though, it will be time for reflection and just plain enjoyment.

Onward.

What you see above is a fish tank, but it's not just any fish tank. It's actually an old apothecary jar for which Steve's mother macraméed that hanger more than 30 years ago, back when macramé was all the rage, and which has been hosting a fish ever since. If you look closely, you can see Tiny, our bumblebee cichlid, swimming at the top.

In the house in Arlington, Tiny and his cool house were seldom seen because they hung upstairs in the "private" part of the house--few guests ever went up there. In the new house down here, however, he'll be on regular display, hung dramatically in the great room on a 30-foot chain from the vaulted ceiling. He'll be right next to the fireplace, the first thing you see as you look straight ahead upon entering the front door.

One of the many wonderful people we've met through our home-building adventure here is a guy named Richard, who works as a handyman for Gary, our builder. He came here to the rental last summer to do some work on the floors, and the first thing he noticed was the fish tank. Turns out he loves pet fish, has had a sideline for years building unique wood stands for standard aquariums, and happens to have a larger apothecary jar (the one above is 5 gallons; his is 10) that he's been wondering what to do with. At the time, he said he'd give the jar to us when we got settled into the new place, and there the matter lay.

Now Richard is the one putting the stain on all the oak woodwork in the new place, and we've caught up with him as we're there painting while he does his staining work. Yesterday he mentioned our fish tank again, and was excited when we told him where it would hang in the great room. He told us he'd bring his 10-gallon jar to us whenever we were ready for it--and he also wants to give us some cichlids! (We discovered that Tiny doesn't appreciate company in his 5-gallon quarters: he ate the roommate with whom he came to us within a day of their arrival. Maybe he'll do better in larger accommodations.) These jars are not inexpensive and they are hard to find. This is a true gift, one of the many that have come to us unbidden in this new place.

So now Steve has another project on his list: replace the macramé hanger, which is starting to dry-rot and won't hold a larger jar anyway. I tried macramé--it didn't work for me. Steve enjoys doing it just because he likes it, and it's also a way of honoring his mother. It's wonderful to be able to surround yourself with things that are not only beautiful but have such great backstories. You don't just admire them; you love them.

Update: the neighbor cabinet-maker came in with a price we can live with, especially considering that armoires for today's wide-screen TVs are not yet being manufactured for the mass market. So we'll have a truly unique and distinctive piece of furniture as a focal point in the room instead of an ugly TV screen.

Oh goody! I have a rare hour or so of isolation while Steve goes to a physical therapist to learn some exercises for his shoulder, which has been afflicted with bursitis because of some of the heavier-than-usual lifting we've both been doing in the past couple of months. I'm interested in whatever routines he's sent home with, because I've had the same problem, just not to the extent he has. With all the walking I've done all my life, my lower body is in fine shape. But I've neglected maintenance of the scaffolding and infrastructure above the waist, and it shows. I guess carrying occasional heavy grocery and trash bags does represent a minimum of upkeep, but I could use more....

Today should interesting. We've been looking at (and buying) some of the furniture the new house is going to need: a couple of love seats for the great room, tables, dressers, pictures, etc. I've mentioned before that the main TV, a 48-inch flat screen, is going to be in the great room in this house. It's an arrangement neither of us is fond of--we don't like making a huge TV screen the focal point of an area meant for conversation--but it's what the space configuration of the house permits. (In the old place, we converted the basement to a media room, problem solved. No basement here.) The solution is an armoire that will stand alone as a piece of furniture when we are having people over, hiding the TV screen while at the same time allowing access to other techie components, such as a good mp3 player. Armoires for today's huge screens, however, are hard to find in most furniture showrooms.

We know North Carolina is renowned for its furniture industry, and have been contemplating a foray to the furniture outlets in the western part of the state to see what we can find. But such an outing has seemed daunting, frankly. We can both get overwhelemed by too much choice, and what we've learned about these furniture outlets is that they are basically a series of airplane-hangar sized buidlings crammed with every style of furnture imaginable. My first impulse upon entering such a place would be to run back out, screaming. Enter Creswell Furniture.

Creswell is a little town about 30 minutes south of us. The furniture store there had an inventory sale last fall which we decided to check out. We were delighted to find beautiful stuff at good prices, and ended up buying almost everything there, thus making the awful trip out west less necessary. Needless to say, we and our furniture dollars have become "best friends" with the manager there, and we mentioned our armoire conundrum to her. It turns out she had exactly the same problem, for the same aesthetic reasons, when she built her house a few years ago, and she found a cabinet maker who happens to live right in Hertford, where we're building. She praised his craftsmanship, as well as his reasonable prices, so we gave him a call. Lo and behold, it turns out he's actually building a house right across the creek from us. All we need to do is bring him a picture of the type of piece we want, and he can make it, adding the custom touches that we'll need. We'll be meeting him today--he'll even be able to come to our house and actually see the space the armoire will occupy.

An armoire is a massive piece of furniture any way you slice it, and it should be fun to play with design details. It will be placed in the part of the room that is under the highest part of the vaulted ceiling, thus making the big size appropriate. We've never had that kind of space to play with, so we're looking forward to what we can do with it. Don't worry, pics will be forthcoming when it all becomes a reality!

We're expecting another major storm this weekend--thank you, El Niño, for creating storms that make mudslides in California and then travel our way to create huge nor'easters. All the rain we've been having is starting to interfere with our house construction. Rain makes mud--too much of it for a heavy machine to be able to dig the 50-foot trench for the main drainpipe that will carry waste from the house to the septic tank. No drain means no water hookup; no water hookup means no installation of indoor faucets, showers, toilets, etc. Now is the time all that should be happening, and it can't. Other interior work is continuing, and Gary is still talking about an end-of-February occupancy. He's been known to have a rabbit hidden under his hat in the past--we're hoping he does now!

Here we are in the last week of January of the new year, and I've written nothing at all for the entire month. I hope you can forgive my negligence; my absence hasn't been for lack of desire. (I feel the loss more now that so many of you have told me you enjoy these meanderings and miss them when new ones aren't around. The conscience is a bit easier on you when you think nobody's paying attention.)

Coming down the homestretch of house construction is a busy time. Since so much detail work is being done now, we are needed on hand to decide what pieces of trim go where, how high bathroom lights need to be, etc., etc. It's all the little things in a home that you take entirely for granted in daily life, mainly because they work. Well, they work for a reason. There's an art to the placement of mirrors and lights.

We've also been busy with more clearing, this time of the waterfront. That job has been especially satisfying because the water view was what brought us to the property in the first place. By now we've cut everything down that needed to be, so that when the water returns to the beach we will have only cat tails and native aquatic flowers to look at. Not bad for a few hours' slogging through the mud. If you're interested, here are the pictures of the waterfront (you only need to look at the last 20 or so), and these are of the construction. (Don't let those 300+ construction photos scare you away. Just go immediately to the last page to see the latest.)

For once, I'm thinking today of something that has nothing to do with housing. It was planted in my mind by an encounter with one of our neighbors-to-be, though, so it is a result of our being here.

It has been dawning on me over the past while that we early Boomers, as much as we'd like to think we changed the world back in the 60s, were really not the monolithic presence we were given to believe by all those Time and Newsweek covers that etched themselves into our brains. The times, our laureate told us, they were a-changin'. The girl pleading for help as she knelt by her injured compatriot at Kent State was a symbol for all of us righteously angry young folk.

But take a look at the reality of 2010. Have the times really "a-changed"? It doesn't seem to me that they have, or if change has occurred, it isn't the kind I, for one, had in mind. We may have created a temporary craze for bellbottoms in crazy colors and loosened the nation's sexual and drug mores. We and those just before us, those born in the late '30s to early '40s, also produced incredibly good music, both lyrically and musically. The Age of Aquarius definitely dawned, but sunset came early. The wonderful new world we thought we were creating has not appeared.

What happened?

I'm beginning to think maybe our number wasn't so great, after all. True, the politically liberal among us were the ones who garnered all the attention back in the day. (The outrageous always steal headlines from the run-of-the-mill.) It could very well be that the media made us legends in our own minds and no one else's. Others of our cohort, the quieter ones, were busy doing what 20-somethings usually do: getting married and having children, maintsreaming themselves. They were taking their places in suburbia, identifying with their elders. The politically active among them joined YAF (Young Americans for Freedom), wore coats and ties to class and kept their hair short. They saw what was happening on their campuses and in their streets and were either unfazed by all the hoopla, or angered by it, or just didn't understand it. Their own worlds were as fine as they'd hoped they would be; they were following the paths set down by generations before them, and they weren't interested in anything else. To make a gross generalization, they are now the Boomers who are fine, thanks, with their own health care and therefore see no reason to change anything for anyone else. They are today's Republicans. Which brings me back to our new neighbors.

The overriding impression we have had of the people among whom we will be soon be living is that they are as nice and as kind as the day is long, but not very interesting. They're all about our age, but seem older--I'm 64 and I liken them mentally to my parents. They are all white, all straight and all in late middle-age. At a Christmas party, Steve and I fell into a conversation about movies with one of the women from the neighborhood. She mentioned that she had just discovered "a movie called Harold and...and..." ...she couldn't remember the whole name. "Maude! Harold and Maude! I love that movie," Steve and I both exclaimed simultaneously. And at the same time we were saying how much we liked the movie, she was saying how weird she thought it was, how she just didn't understand it at all. It was a bit awkward. This nice lady, with whom I'm sure I'll be exchanging recipes, is my age or younger, and had never heard of "Harold and Maude," a movie iconic of its time. Moreover, once she finally saw it, she quit it mid-way because she didn't get it and evidently had no desire to. This is a reaction I would have expected from either one of my parents, who were born during the first decade of the 20th century. It was something of a comeuppance, however, to see someone of my own generation reacting in the same way.

We've been aware for a while now that we will have to make it a special project to find people who are like us as friends once we are settled down here, and, ironically, that the phrase "like us" really means "nothing like us." As a couple, Steve and I have never lived in such homogeneous surroundings. Our little street in Arlington, Virginia, was a cross-section of that diverse county. We were one of two long-settled gay couples. There were young and older straight married couples who were American black, Hispanic, and African. Columbia Pike, a 5-minute stroll away, offers literally a world of food, almost too much choice. While I lived in Arlington, I worked at the Peace Corps, the most comfortably liberal sliver of the federal government that could be imagined, even when run my conservative administrations. All those years, I was content to believe I was in the mainstream. Now, however, I'm beginning to believe it may have been nothing more than an echo chamber. I was happily surrounded by people who thought the same way I did, and extrapolated my cozy little world to the bigger one at-large.

Now I look at the current American political scene, at Massachusetts replacing a Kennedy of 40 years' standing in the Senate with a Republican, and I look at my kind-as-can-be new neighbors and I have to wonder. Did so many of my fellow 60s idealists backslide? Have they been bought out by middle class prosperity? Or were there just fewer of us than I thought?

OK. But believe it or not, Saint-Tropez itself once looked just like this. It's a start!

We end the year 2009 doing what we've been wanting to do since we bought this little piece of watery paradise in North Carolina last February: clearing the waterfront so we can enjoy the view. Why did we wait until now? Because winter brings winds out of the north and winds out of the north blow the water out of the creek so we can walk on the beach. We have wind tides here, not lunar ones. When the cold north wind is blowing, we know we can once again take up a task we've become very, very adept at in 2009: clearing brush.

This job is a little different from the summer version we learned in July and August. It's colder, for an obvious start. More significant: that's mud you're walking on, "walk" being chosen politely and advisedly; it's really more of a slog. If you're lucky you only sink to your ankles, and you don't know where the weaker spots are, where you sink to the tops of your boots, until you're standing on/in them. And then there are all those little pointy things sticking out all over the place. They are cypress knees, federally protected. Between them and the occasional mud hole, you're lucky to remain upright as you drag your felled wax myrtle across the mucky obstacle course to the pile you're creating (seen right foreground) to be burned later. (Yesterday I fell once and I'm sure it won't be the only time. It's OK. Everything is washable.)

But picture this same scene in the summer. The mud will once again be under 2 or 3 feet of water. Cattails, wild irises and roses of Sharon will grow. Those old cypress trees will be full of green needles and hung with limpid Spanish moss. It'll be idyllic. And that's the whole point. Break an egg, make an omelet.

We knew 2009 would be a life-changing year--a challenge we prepared ourselves for and indeed were ready to take on as circumstances around us crumbled. January was bleak; we found ourselves strangling on a dream gone bad in Delaware and faced with Steve's imminent unemplyoment. The instinct for survival kicked in: we took control of our own destiny, and once we did that, things happened fast. By sheer grace, we were able to sell that gorgeous Delaware albatross for almost what we paid for it four years earlier, despite a tanked market. We settled that sale on the first weekend in February; the following weekend we came here to North Carolina for our first and only foray into real estate shopping, and just like that found that door that always opens when another one closes. In the ensuing months we worked hard, but we also had equal measures of good luck never expected and help never asked for, given by more big-hearted people than we ever knew existed. Once we finally settle, we have a lifetime of cheerful paybacks to perform. Not a bad thing to look forward to, and we can look back proudly on a big accomplishment. When both your future and your immediate past are pleasant vistas, you're in a pretty good place. I'm not complaining.

Thank you for being with me through all of this--your support and interest have contributed not a little to making this journey worthwhile. "Transition," indeed!

One of my real hopes for 2010 is that I will be able to get back to more regular visits. I do miss those empty morning hours in Arlington that gave me the time for them, but by now that feels like a former life, not to be retrieved. A new life is on its way--we're officially told by our builder that move-in will be late February or early March, about a year after all this started. We'll still be busy with flesh and blood life, but I'll also still be here, I hope on a more predictable schedule.

Happy New Year.

I'm on something of an enforced vacation these days. Current work at the property (fooling around with the boat, removing old seats and carpets to make way for new) is of the type that doesn't require two. Steve says when I'm along on a job like that all I do is "hover," and it's true. There's nothing worse than somebody standing around just watching, hoping to be useful. So this week my mornings are at home. Yesterday I intended to use the down time to play around in the blogosphere. I got waylaid.

When I booted up my computer yesterday morning my McAfee security app notified me that my subscription, which had been free to me as a Comcast customer, had expired. Since the Comcast freebie was a vestige of Arlington and the relationship no longer exists, that meant the time had come to take advantage of another free McAfee promotion, this time through my bank. It was a simple enough operation on the face of it: uninstall the old Comcast McAfee so that a new download wouldn't recognize a twinned image of itself and abort, go to the McAfee site and establish a new account via my bank, and then download and install the new virus protection. Even at my middling wireless speeds the operation would take an hour at most.

Wrong.

The McAfee installation refused to finish. It would go through every slow-as-molasses step, checking my computer for old versions and viruses, downloading the six components of the "security suite," and then trying to install them. Always, at the very end of the process, the word "failed" would appear.

I made my first call to McAfee tech support at around 10 am. I would make 5 more such calls over the course of the day. Until 6 pm I was mostly sitting in front of this screen, either explaining my situation to unfailingly courteous Indian citizens whose accents ranged from Simpsons Apu-esque, fun and totally understandable, to the utterly incomprehensible, or watching the slo-mo progress of another ultimately failed installation. At the end of the most frustrating phone session--the one with the diligent and hardworking man 95% of whose words escaped me--I thanked him for his hard work, congratulated him on his knowledge and his seriousness, and urged him to get training in American English if he intended to stay with McAfee so that all that knowledge could be put to its intended use.

In the end it turned out that somehow my computer had become infected with Trojan horses, applications that appeared normal to a virus scanner but were really spyware, and that my Windows security settings were wrong. These discoveries were made when I turned over control of my computer to the technician on the phone with me in India. I watched as the cursor drilled into the nether regions of this piece of machinery I so take for granted and discovered rafts of stuff that shouldn't have been there. It was an eye-opener to learn that even though I may be conscientious about scheduling regular virus scans and emptying temporary files, the control a lay user really has is limited. I always wondered why so many temp files remained after I "emptied" the folder. Still don't know why, but the removal yesterday of all of them doesn't seem to have hurt my computer.

It was on one of the earlier phone calls that I had the fear of God struck into me about using Firefox. The fact that I was trying to download through Firefox was the first theory about why installation was failing. McAfee, I was told in no uncertain terms, does not like Firefox. I dutifully uninstalled Firefox and worked all day only through Internet Explorer, which only added to the fun--IE is exponentially slower on this computer than Firefox. It was a relief to put Explorer back to bed and welcome Firefox back as my default browser.

How's that for a boring day? Geeze, we can blog about anything, can't we? For relief I put up a picture I took a couple of months ago of the beautiful Perquimans (rhymes with "persimmon") River, one of the great, completely unheard-of streams that water this part of the country. It's brackish, doesn't taste salty but has enough salt to support a very healthy population of fish and blue crabs. The picture looks south, towards the river's mouth (not visible) at the Albemarle Sound. We make this crossing every day on our way to the property.

Steve just called to tell me the electricians are back, putting in light fixtures and switches. One more step. Electricity to the house can't be too far behind....

BRAISED BEEF SHORT RIBS

Here's yet another recipe from Cooks Illustrated that must be shared. It's a perfect meal for a cold day, with its lengthy braise creating wonderful aromas through the house, and a stick-to-your-ribs (no pun intended) finish. I offer the recipe here exactly as it appears in the magazine. Unflavored gelatin is called for because no bones are used in this recipe; therefore the thickening effect of the natural gelatin found in bones is lost. I didn't have any gelatin on hand, so I skipped that step to no noticeable detriment. The sauce is already so rich and delicious (and yet so simple--it's all about reduction and strengthening flavors) that the additional unctuousness of gelatin would be a cherry on an already over-the-top cake. (You can use bone-on ribs if you want, but they take up a lot of room in the pan and produce at least six times the fat as their boned counterparts. Substitute 7 pounds of bone-on ribs with at least an inch of meat on the top.)

I used rice as a starch to carry the sauce just because we were mashed potatoed-out after Thanksgiving. The peas added sweetness to the whole. But accompaniments, of course, are up to you.

3 1/2 pounds meaty boneless short ribs, at least 4 inches long and 1 inch thick, trimmed of excess fat

Kosher salt and ground black pepper

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

2 large onions , peeled and sliced thin from pole to pole (about 4 cups)

1 tablespoon tomato paste

6 medium garlic cloves , peeled

2 cups hearty red wine such as cabernet

1 cup beef broth

4 large carrots , peeled and cut crosswise into 2-inch pieces

4 sprigs fresh thyme

1 bay leaf

1/4 cup cold water

1/2 teaspoon unflavored powdered gelatin

Instructions

Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and heat oven to 300 degrees. Pat beef dry with paper towels and season with 2 teaspoons salt and 1 teaspoon pepper. Heat 1 tablespoon oil in large heavy-bottomed Dutch oven over medium-high heat until smoking. Add half of beef and cook, without moving, until well browned, 4 to 6 minutes. Turn beef and continue to cook on second side until well browned, 4 to 6 minutes longer, reducing heat if fat begins to smoke. Transfer beef to medium bowl. Repeat with remaining tablespoon oil and meat.

Reduce heat to medium, add onions, and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened and beginning to brown, 12 to 15 minutes. (If onions begin to darken too quickly, add 1 to 2 tablespoons water to pan.) Add tomato paste and cook, stirring constantly, until it browns on sides and bottom of pan, about 2 minutes. Add garlic and cook until aromatic, about 30 seconds. Increase heat to medium-high, add wine and simmer, scraping bottom of pan with wooden spoon to loosen browned bits, until reduced by half, 8 to 10 minutes. Add broth, carrots, thyme, and bay leaf. Add beef and any accumulated juices to pot; cover and bring to simmer. Transfer pot to oven and cook, using tongs to turn meat twice during cooking, until fork slips easily in and out of meat, 2 to 2½ hours.

Place water in small bowl and sprinkle gelatin on top; let stand at least 5 minutes. Using tongs, transfer meat and carrots to serving platter and tent with foil. Strain cooking liquid through fine-mesh strainer into fat separator or bowl, pressing on solids to extract as much liquid as possible; discard solids. Allow liquid to settle about 5 minutes and strain off fat. Return cooking liquid to Dutch oven and cook over medium heat until reduced to 1 cup, 5 to 10 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in gelatin mixture; season with salt and pepper. Pour sauce over meat and serve.