Category: In Retrospect

January 31, 2008, we’d been in Scotland for about 5 months. We were getting a veggie box, which routinely came with odd things in it, such as watercress. We’d never really had any prior to this experience – maybe it was in a sandwich or a salad or something, but we’d never just had it. Cress is dead easy to grow, but you’ve got to be careful to keep the stuff it grows in just wet enough, but not oversaturated… it can smell, oddly, a great deal like wet dog if done wrong. (Bet you wonder how we know that, huh? Hydroponic gardening is kind of an exact science sometimes…)

We were still trying to keep our sourdough bread going, in 2008, with a crock of starter, so our baking was frequent and we’d end up with some interesting creations in an attempt to make use of the sourdough. Onion Caper bread: quite tasty!

A year later, January 31 2009, was a day for T. to paint some glass. These are still with us, somewhere. Many of the painted glass jars ended up being given away in the form of gifts, as we tended to recycle jam jars for bath salts, cookie dough (layered attractively, just add eggs, oil and milk), cocoa mix, and the odd (sometimes VERY odd) experiments in jam making. (Rhubarb does not lend itself easily to much that isn’t strawberry. Unfortunately.) Sometimes we miss doing as many “home living” experiments. One of the nice thing about Scotland was uninterrupted stretches of time when no one wanted us or cared what we were doing (an entire city, largely, happily indifferent to us) and so we could get up to some interesting exploits, like…

Fast forward to 2012 and we’re making aprons for our friend Laura. Somehow or other, a group of us in Chorus bonded over being vegetarians, and got aprons or pins or shirts out of our mutual (to many of our Scottish friends) goofiness. This butternut squash is performing – a lovely alto like our friend Laura – and Veggie Girl is her name in lights on the stage. Don’t even know how we got to discussing, “What vegetable describes your personality?” but T is still bewildered that Margaret believes herself to be Bok Choy… Meanwhile, that same day we took this picture, we went out to Chorus rehearsal – but popped out for a cuppa tea in Merchant City and took what’s turned out to be one of our favorite pictures of a cold night in the Shopping District – the movement and busyness and vitality of Merchant City, captured for all time.

This January 31, we’re spending the day recovering from D’s nose surgery. You don’t want photographs…

-D & T

November 5 is a strange day, in Retrospect. In the UK, it’s Guy Fawkes Night, which means that pretty much anybody with something to burn or explode is out, burning or exploding. Here in California, though, it’s pretty tame, as evinced by the picture of the California hills (2012), which D. took from the car on the way back from a Novato. He took this shot to demonstrate how utterly boring his drive there was. Notice that there’s a small flock of sheep upon the hill. It was quite reminiscent of Scotland, actually.

In 2011, we were living in Hayford Mills / Cambusbarron, outside of Stirling. It was a Saturday, and still a teensy bit sunny, so of course we decided to take advantage of the weather and read outside on the porch. You can see how bright and sunny things are – and also how much insulation was needed to manage being outside!

In 2010 we apparently we had a party of some sort, involving tootsie rolls, tea, and cranberry-orange bread. This was probably in preparation for going out to see fireworks.

2010 Fireworks

And, in 2009 we also went out to see fireworks, down near the People’s Palace, from a bridge over the River Clyde.

2009 Fireworks

2009 Fireworks

2009 Fireworks

Of course, in 2008 we got our first real taste of Guy Fawkes Night by watching the neighborhood hooligans burn things, when we lived on Kent Road. Below is a shot of a mattress and a shopping cart / trolley being burned … on the grass, in the neighborhood park.

Because mattresses and shopping carts need to be burned, apparently.

This November 5 we’ll be … not burning anything, nor watching any fireworks. Perhaps we’ll make some cranberry-orange bread, though, and sit upon the deck, in the sunshine, wrapped up in blankets.

-D & T

Because looking back across the years is A Thing around here, we give you a short video of D. making raisin bagels. Five years ago today, this is what we were doing with our afternoon. (We’ve since decided that poking a hole and stretching the bagel is a better method – but, hey, we were just getting started way back then!) Lately, the siren call of poured fondant is sounding again, and T’s thinking of re-imagining a recipe for Strawberry/Blueberry cheesecake. But, since there are peaches in the house, this might have to wait…

https://www.flickr.com/photos/wishiwerebaking/3663172988/ is the video as hosted on Flickr.

Four years ago today, we were at the American Library Association, in Washington, D.C. for T. to receive an award (the Coretta Scott King Author Honor Award, for Mare’s War). This reminds us of the hundreds of people, and the ease with which we got lost, wandering around the huge conference center. This year, the ALA is in a massive conference center and hotel in Las Vegas… whoever had the idea that people should flock to the Nevada desert in the middle June… should rethink. Next year the ALA Annual meeting is in SF, and T. has decided that sounds much more reasonable.

Three years ago, we were in Glasgow, wondering about the Glaswegian version of Mongolian food (and this restaurant’s choice in matchbooks). We’d visited the restaurant during a break before performing Pirates of Penzance (which we blogged about at the time and again back in January, when we found the video footage of the performance).

And today, we’re enjoying the break in the heat, here in California. Even at D’s office, which tends to be twenty degrees warmer than at home, it’s a balmy 25°C/77°F, and at the house it’s 20°C/68°F. The weather has remained mild and breezy for days now, which is really helping the soil to stay moist during our infrequent watering. The strawberries are producing, and the asparagus is …deciding that maybe it will come out of hibernation. Maybe. T. is working on a novel revision, D. is tinkering with things at work (and waiting for his final batch of papers for a course he’s teaching), and life is just moving along. Our worm bins are coming along nicely, we’ve solved the mystery of our birdseed being scattered in piles on the patio (the Blue Jays take turns tipping over the feeder! Politely! We have such odd wildlife around here. Oh. And we’ve been gifted with a mockingbird as well. Nothing like hearing him at 4:30 a.m., staring to greet the dawn with the sound of a cell phone), and in the garden the gourds and squash are limping along as gardens do in their first year (the soil really is horrible, having been neglected for so many years). Ivy is trying to grow through the lawn with the clover…

Just another typically disorganized summer at the Hobbiton. And, how are you?

-D & T

Ahh, 2009. By this date we’d encountered our first Bonfire Night, and the charred circle in the grass – which was a permanent scar and was only camouflaged by the snow a while later – was the aftermath. Bonfire night can be such a fun, neighborhood night; despite frigid temps, cold, and fog, tons of people are out and about, chatting around a bonfire, watching the fireworks, catching up with the neighbors. It’s not always that PG, but we’ll just discard the memories which include herds of thugs, emptied bottles and noisome puddles the morning after…

By 2009, we had been living in the flat on Lynedoch Crescent for about 7 months, and still loved the area. We hadn’t yet had more than a dusting of snow that winter, although the darkness was certainly moving in on us by then. D. was still slaving through his schoolwork and working at Skypark, and encountering many things T. on his walk to/from work that T. wished he wouldn’t photograph (he had an “abandoned mattress” sighting thing going until T. finally convinced him to stop). A strange concept, to American minds, was the concept of delivery people leaving things safe. Apparently to “leave safe” means it’s OK to drop off a delivery next to the door or somewhere out of the way, and some people object to this (as evinced by the sign). We thought many times of putting up just such a sign, since often delivery drivers wouldn’t bother to ring the bell, and instead would just leave boxes outside of the flat…in the rain. Yes. Color us cranky.

(We’re grateful for our covered porch on this date in 2012, because the postman here does the same thing… as we don’t use the front door much, we often miss seeing his little leavings. T. periodically opens the door just to check, and this morning, found a pile of packages on the stairs. Since we have both a cow bell AND a doorbell, T. is wondering how she could have missed him heralding this latest delivery!! :sigh: People are doorbell averse, the world over, it seems. And, apparently also averse to taking just one more step to ensure that the packages are out of the wet. :grump:)

On this date in 2010 we were just getting ready for our first concert in Paisley Abbey. What a phenomenal space! If you have a chance to visit the Abbey grounds someday, do. We recall this concert differently; we sang the Fauré, and T. remembers mainly fretting about the treble pitches (it’s so glorious a sound, in a cathedral with an orchestra, but so easy to hear echoes and go flat). D. recalls it all as wonderful, even though the organist’s wee harmonium kept slipping from him as he pumped the bellows, so he arrived at a space several feet away from where he started by the time the concert was done (that was amusing to watch). We were also, T. recalls, late to the dress rehearsal because we got lost, and both of us were freezing and slightly soppy, on account of the wind and the icy rain (there was sand underfoot, we recall, for the ice). Ah, precious memories. ☺

The past steps into the present — we sang with our church chorus this past weekend – twenty singers vs. the ninety-eight we had at Paisley – and yet, the feeling of being part of something bigger than oneself remains. It’s comforting, that wherever we are, music is the same. In this way, we continue to piece together bits of who we were in the past with who we are now. And the wheel goes ’round again.

-D & T

It’s been a very long while since we’ve done a post “In Retrospect.” Looking back through the pictures taken on November 13, we find … Glasgow.

It’s so strange, having spent 5 years there, to be back in California. It’s particularly strange because most of the photographic documentation we have from our lives comes from being forced to adapt to digital photography. When we got to Scotland, developing film was just so expensive that we didn’t take many pictures, and ended up moving to digital within about 4 months. So, our memories are largely slanted towards what we can see, rather than what we must have been doing in our lives before Scotland.

We both still miss being there, in so many ways, but it’s only made more acute by looking in on “a day” from the past and seeing pictures which don’t include any of that previous history. What were we doing, before this day in 2007? We must have done something, but those records are on paper, packed in a box somewhere, inaccessible to us at the moment (having no bookcases means that the journals are still in boxes).

We can look back at the blog history, and the email, to see that we were preparing for Thanksgivings by baking all sorts of things, but the photographic evidence is somehow more impactive than having to dig through email and blogs to find out what we were doing, back then.

-D & T

It’s been awhile since we’ve done one of our “in retrospect” posts. Actually, it’s been a long while since D. has devoted much attention to doing posts of any sort other than “links” posts for classmates, and we’ve determined that … well, that’s about enough of that. So.

The two photos to the left may or may not have been taken on May 1, but were at least scanned into the photo scanner on May 1, which is close enough. They’re photos from one of our favorite places: Palm Desert. No, not Palm Springs (that derided mecca of matching pastel track suits and golf widows), but of the desert proper. Palm Desert is fantastic because it’s a really small town, stuck way out in the middle of nowhere, and it has a series of hot springs with pools. We love to swim, and are particularly enamored of being able to swim in varying temperatures of mineral water. We have happy memories of this place … including the memory of renting a hotel room which was absolutely saturated with cigarette smoke, and which we fumigated with some absolutely horrible incense (nag champa) in an effort to combat the stench. T. will claim that D. just can’t relax and take a vacation, so awakened them at 3 in the morning to drive back to the Bay Area. This is a lie. It was all about the stench. Truly.

When we first arrived in Glasgow, we discovered Kelvingrove Museum. It’s the second-most-visited museum in all of the United Kingdom, and we really understand why: it’s a fabulous place. Some (*cough*, Mrs. B. *cough*) say that it’s not organized properly, but we’ve found that it’s an enjoyable place to visit, particularly on a rainy day, or on a Sunday when there are organ concerts. We’ve spent many happy hours at Kelvingrove. It encourages you to linger and investigate, to explore and try to understand the past. It has bits which are obviously for children, and is mostly a teaser for history: it says, “there was all of this stuff going on, please continue to investigate.”

The museum used to belong to one guy (Lord Kelvin) and was his town home. It’s very hard to fathom something so immense just being somebody’s house for occasional use, particularly when you consider what’s packed into it today. Its collections far exceed what’s on display, as is the case with so many museums, but if you’re good (and have a silver tongue) you just might manage to work your way behind the scenes and see some of the things which seldom make it to the public eye. It’s not just a museum, is the point: it’s someplace which collects rare items so that they’ll be preserved for further study.

Adjacent to the museum is Kelvingrove Park. We particularly enjoyed wandering through it when we lived in Glasgow, as it’s a great example of an urban park. Fountains, ponds, ducks, roses, and the floral gardens make it memorable for most. Additionally, fabulous views of the University, and a quiet space in the midst of all of the chaos which is Glasgow were what made it a haven for us. Also, the random cat.

Of course, around Glasgow there are any number of interesting (and odd) things to see. 19th century iron cobblers’ forms? Yep. Just hanging out on the side of the road somewhere. Randomly-painted doors? But of course! Antique, blown-glass windows? Certainly! Glasgow is such a hodge-podge of the historic and the modern. We’re glad to be out of the noise, and away from the students (if we never hear someone singing at 2 a.m. again, we’ll be quite happy), but we truly enjoyed “Glesga” while we were there. Glasgow has so much, bodged in randomly amongst the detritus. You just have to really get in there and look to see.

If you ask anyone from around here what they think of Glasgow, they’ll either love it or they’ll hate it, and that love or hate depends upon whether you love it or hate it: everyone seems to have this love/hate relationship with “the filthy city.” It’s huge, it’s a conglomerate of a bunch of neighborhoods, each of which has its own character and history, and it’s truly its own place. Only if you’ve lived there would you be able to truly understand what Glasgow means, which is to say that Glasgow is an unique experience. Neither entirely good, nor entirely bad, Glasgow has been… an experience.

As we prepare to leave this island, we’re looking backward, remembering how we got here, and who we were back then. We’re wondering what it is that we want out of life. We’ve lived in so many places, now, and have found things we love about them all. What is it we’re seeking? As others ask the question we realize that we don’t really know. The next adventure? Just to prove to ourselves that we aren’t going to be so busy working that we forget to live? Just to escape responsibility, in the form of children? ☺ Does anyone, ever, really know what they want out of where they’re going, unless they take the time to stop… and ask themselves?

In the interim of answering some of life’s deeper questions, we have a short-term plan: we’ll be living in Kilsyth, the town that introduced curling to Scotland (what a claim to fame!) for a few weeks, and will stay there until our passports finally make their way back from the UK Borders Agency (they told us this morning FOURTEEN WEEKS. They had better be exaggerating. If we have to miss niecelet’s graduation…). At that point, we’ll pin down our plane tickets and will return to California for a break of several weeks. We’re still awaiting a job offer from the company based in the Dutch Antilles (and will update you as we know details), but fully expect them to come back with something which means we’ll presently find ourselves on yet another island – this one much more like Arizona, but surrounded by the blue Caribbean. The vast majority of our belongings will eventually make their way to California and go into storage until we send for them, and we’ll be living out of 4 suitcases for the foreseeable future.

Life remains undefined, at this moment. The past holds countless gems which we treasure. We can now put them away, knowing that the future will hold even more.

-D & T

February 7, 2007, found us deep into the renovation of our condo in Benicia, picking out cabinets and fittings. The floors had been torn out and had begun being replaced, the place was in chaos, yet we were honestly thinking that we’d be there forever … or, at least another few years, to enjoy living through all of the dust! D. was working as a technical instructor, teaching people various programming languages. T. was busily writing, trapped in a single room away from the builders. That month also saw us finishing up some interesting knitting projects, such as this yellow hat … which was made for an adult who begged and pleaded with D. to make her one. It’s a baby hat, but she just had to have one for herself.

Two years later (2009) found us living in Glasgow, Scotland, making Tacos. Between the two points, we’d finished the remodel, rented out the condo, sold everything else we owned, and moved to Glasgow. D. had finished another Master’s degree and had embarked on a PhD. A La Carte had been published, and Mare’s War was four months from being released. We were living in a converted church, a block from the largest reference library in Europe, with no idea where we’d be in two years.

Flash forward another two years to today, and the end of the PhD is in sight, we’re contemplating selling everything yet again, and moving … again. And contemplating buying stock in a box company…!

A scientific fact – recently humorously discussed on NPR – is that human beings can’t go from Point A to Point B in a straight line. Unlike birds, with their magnetic senses, blindfolded, a human being makes a staggering line of loops and circles. That has some parallel to how we live our lives. In many ways, not being able to see what’s coming next feels like being blindfolded, but the good news is that even as we’re making crooked loops, we’re circling our goal… and eventually, we end up safely where we started from. We don’t believe we’ll do that geographically, as there will be transportation involved with people who actually can see where they’re going, but we do live in faith that metaphorically, at least, this will work to our advantage. A person walking blindfolded eventually circles and ends up back where they started from, and so we, too, will find our way “home,” where ever that will mean next.

-D & T

Not much to photograph here in gray Glasgow, just the heel-end of the year, with short, dark days, brief, public spats from the packs of feral children roaming the neighborhood who have been out of school for far too long, and finally, at long last, the end of the ice.

…let the people rejoice.

Not the type of folk who make resolutions spanning more than a single day, we nonetheless are looking behind, to the past few years in Glasgow, and looking ahead, knowing that our time here is ticking down. T. has finished reading for her award and is in the process of clearing the living room of an excess of several hundred books, so that we have fewer to pack when we go. The question of “where to next” is a pulsing throb in our bloodstreams, as D. prepares to buckle down for that last dissertation (or, thesis, if you’re British) push, and then the mind-boggling task of networking, interviewing, and hoping to find degree-related employment. (There are no guarantees on this.) We are relishing these last days of laziness before we straighten up and get serious again.

‘Tis the season… and we kind of hate to turn on the TV or the computer, there are so many ads this time of year for …regret. Regret about what we’ve eaten during the holidays, what we’ve purchased, or where we’ve gone or what we’ve done. (They’re called something else – fitness center ads and all kinds of sales, generally.) It’s strange to be part of a society so highly motivated by guilt and regret. This time of year especially, it’s easy to get wrapped up with what went wrong in the last twelve months — and God knows, there was a lot — but one of the nicest things about us leaving our safety net back home and moving is that, whatever else goes wrong, we know we at least took a chance… took a leap, and did entirely what we wanted to do. So, in the name of getting a fresh start in a new year, we wish you hope and courage for new beginnings. We hope you claim the promise of the unspoiled shine of a brand new year — and do something with it. Take a chance. Take a step.

Onward.

Happy New Year.