Happy Thanksgiving!

MP3 File

Thanksgiving truly is the most American of holidays. This is just a stock photo. It's not my table and not yours, but it's a safe bet that each and every one of us will be sitting down to a table loaded with pretty much the same things you see here. There are individual variations, for sure (wouldn't be America without them!), but the menu for all of us is pretty much the same.

The menu also includes family and its dynamics. There are usually reasons we don't see some of these people more often...as a good friend of mine says, "you can choose your friends, but you're stuck with your family." I know we'll all enjoy ourselves, if not entirely during the get-together, then by all means telling stories about it afterwards. I love the grand messiness of these human encounters.

Today's music is a personal favorite, and I'm grateful for this seasonal opportunity to share it. It's the traditional Christian benediction, "The Lord Bless You And Keep You," put to music by Peter Lutkin. I've known it since high school, when it was a favorite of my singing group. Our repertoire was mostly madrigals, but during any get together we were sure to sing this because it's so pretty, and those soaring "amens" at the end are so much fun.

I'll probably be silent for the next few days, which means there should be plenty to talk about on Monday. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Back in re-mo mode

Greetings from the basement. Well, as you can see from the photo above, it's more than just a basement. It's the den/office/TV room where we do most of our living. My little operation (a slice of which is just visible in the right foreground) was moved down here so that my room can get The Treatment. Wallpaper is coming down, chinks and dinks in the ceiling and walls are being filled, and soon inviting, buyer-friendly colors will be up. Furniture will be switched around to create an illusion of more space. I'll have a new room to enjoy until it becomes someone else's. Sorry I have no "before" picture to show. Completely slipped my mind as we started moving things Saturday. I'll show the "after" when it's done.

Our goal is to have the house on the market by February, March at the latest. We want to be among the first that cabin-feverish house shoppers will see as they break outdoors, the holiday crush behind them. The inside work should be do-able in that time frame. Outside, a few slats of siding need to be replaced, and the old siding really needs a powerwash. I guess we'll have to hope for a freakish warm day to get that accomplished. Also, to show the house that early, we'll have to find a place to park the plants, which are now stuffed next to any window that provides some light. (Very few in this north-facing house.) We'll figure that out. If we have to, can even use my sister's east-Jesus house if we can renew our passports to get that far out into Vuh-gin-yuh.

It'll be a truncated week, with all of T-day being spent at my niece's house. (She lives even further out than my sister.) It'll be the first time she's hosted Thanksgiving for the family, and we'll be rooting for her. She wants to do all the courses herself, so I was doubly flattered that she asked me to bring my Pumpkin Custard and Green Tomato Mincemeat pies. (I know all anybody needs is another pumpkin pie recipe, but I'll share it anyway 'cause it's good. I don't think mincemeat is popular enough for anyone to be interested in....)

Friday we head to Delaware for just the day to get a few things left in the trailer.

And off we go. I'm headed out for some paint. Benjamin Moore's "Fresh Air."

Food Friday....not!

Sorry, folks, no recipe today. Since I haven't been doing much cooking in the past couple of weeks, and I don't have anything in the wings waiting to be featured, there's nothing to feed the foodie in us today. I promise to get back on track next week.

It appears that I now have a new venue for my writing jones to express itself: I've been invited to write a monthly column for a new online publication called Peace Corps World. The first issue is scheduled to go out in January, and, depending on if the thing takes off, I might even get paid for it. It's all very informal so far, no contracts or legal agreements are involved. The publisher is an old Peace Corps colleague with deep roots in the New York publishing scene (and a published novelist himself) with whom I've maintained occasional contact. His idea is to cover topics of interest to the entire Peace Corps community, current and former volunteers and staff alike. He wants me to talk about gay stuff, but I think I'll be able to branch out a bit from that rather limited track. (How would you like to have to write about just "straight stuff"?) We'll see. Anyway, that's where I was yesterday. He asked for two submissions by December 1, and I was working on the first.

On the house front: there is some good news to add to the otherwise still-troublesome mix. The Realtor told us that if we continue with the cosmetic work on the house, we should be able to ask for even more than we were hoping. In the process, he made it clear that this property is too special, and the market too crazy, to show it in anything less than perfect condition. So our work is cut out for us. We could save time by marketing the house "as-is," but we'd be shooting ourselves in the foot if we did. Which leads to the "troublesome mix" part: the clock is ticking. Between the time limits on the bank's commitment and Steve's job, we have a fairly small window in which to get this house sold. The Realtor recommended putting it up for sale in February, to catch the first people with post-holiday cabin fever out looking. Given all we have to do, February is just too fast, but we will bust butt to make it in March. Then it'll be up to the market place.

We were very impressed with the Realtor. He knows this area like the back of his hand. Before he gave us any numbers, he put our sale in context with the entire market in Arlington to show us the conditions we are working in. (One astounding fact: while Arlington as a whole has fared better than most of the rest of the country through the real estate downturn, 50% of the sales in our Zip code in the past 12 months have been foreclosures. Half!! Those distressed prices bring all the rest down, and that's just a reality we must contend with.)

I know this blog is called "Days of Transition" and it's meant to document what we go through as we try to move. But I didn't know how hard it would be, and how boring and depressing (to me, anyway) this "woe is us!" trope would become. I had decided not to go into the Realtor story and just let it lie, but people actually emailed me wanting to know what happened, so here we are. I appreciate your interest and your good wishes. But I hope you'll understand if sometimes it just feels like too much and I need a rest from it. It takes time to put these words together and that means time thinking about the situation, analyzing, prognosticting, guessing, worrying. For my own mental health I'll lay off house stuff until some major milestone is reached. (Or at least I'll try!)

The prodigal returns

Our little family is complete once again. Steve dragged himself home last night from the business trip from hell in Florida. After getting off the plane he still had to go to the office for some end-of-day rituals that must be observed, so he showed up here at 6, ate some dinner, then took a pill and went to bed. Slept for 12 hours straight. He's still tired and is feeling congested--not surprising he should come down with something. If he can get through this week he can just veg this weekend and gradually regain his equilibrium.

As glamorous as "career at the Peace Corps" may sound, I confess that whatever travel was part of my responsibilities was something I endured rather than relished. I'm a creature of routine and find long periods living out of a suitcase and a different hotel room every night enervating. And my Peace Corps trips were more like forced marches than merry jaunts through the countryside. Yes, I saw things and places most people never do, but the cost in discomfort and strain was high. One of my "trips" was actually a 4-week stay in Praia, the capital of Cape Verde, where I served as interim director while the Peace Corps hired a permanent replacement. That was actually somewhat enjoyable. At least I could stay in one spot for a bit and explore at my own pace. But four weeks away was a long time and I was anxious to get back home.

Having said that, another two-year stint in the Peace Corps is not an idea I dismiss out-of-hand--although it'll never happen because the Peace Corps, subject to Uncle Sam's outdated policies, doesn't accept "unmarried couples" who want to serve together (how's that for a catch-22 for gay people?). But if I could join, and I knew I'd have something productive to do and could be in a place long enough to call it home, then I know I'd find the experience as exciting as it was the first time around; perhaps even better because I'm a lot smarter now and less of a hormone-driven brute. It's just the idea of being on the move constantly and at the whim of whomever your host is for the day that I don't find appealing. I empathize completely with how Steve is feeling now. If it had been me, I might fare even worse!

Big Week

We've made an appointment with a real estate agent this week (I believe Realtor ® is the preferred designation--great excuse to make that "®" sign!) to come and tell us our bottom line: what is the top dollar amount we can expect for this house if we put it on the market now, as-is, still needing some cosmetic repairs and paint? And how much more will we get if we wait until those repairs are done? We'll be talking to a guy who lives in our Zip code and has been doing business in it for nearly 20 years. His name is on virutally every For Sale sign around here. If he can't give us the real 4-1-1, nobody can.

You may wonder why we hadn't taken this step earlier. Honestly, we didn't think we had to yet. The shock we had a week ago today, to which I've only alluded because I was still absorbing it, was that the bank doing the construction loan suddenly pulled the plug. Unbeknownst to us, our mortgage broker wasn't being straight with them, or with us. As settlement day approached and we were learning more details about the documentation the bank required to process the loan, we realized we were coming up short. We had no signed builder's contract, for one thing, and no "draw schedule"--an agreement between the bank and the builder as to how and when funds would be used. Our plans were nebulous because we knew we had to wait until this house sold before we could start building the new one, and the broker had led us to believe that the bank would roll with that ambiguity. Well, no.

An unrelated phone call I made to the bank, which led to a few questions from them I found odd, thinking the bank should already have those answers from the broker, made it clear that the broker was treading a fine line just this side of fraud. When the broker started telling us, "Don't worry!" but was foggy on details, that's when we should have started worrying. She was building a house of cards that was bound to collapse, and the one thing we're grateful for is that the inevitable happened before we were all seated at the settlement table and thousands of dollars had been committed.....

Anyway, this setback has forced us to re-group and take some logical steps we now see we should have taken earlier. The commitment letter we have from the bank is good for six months, or until the first week in May. We know what our window looks like now and have our marching orders. Ergo, the question: will we get enough for the house now, showing it "as-is," or do we wait and do the repairs? Given the time frame, the quicker we can sell, the better. But given our needs, the more we can get for the house, the better. This week, we hope to learn in which direction those marching orders will be sending us.

Living on the edge. I thought I'd left that behind when I turned 26 and could no longer be drafted. Well, at least it's a familiar feeling!

Quiet

It's a schizophrenic mid-November day. The temperature is 72, and the warmth has driven me into a pair of shorts instead of the usual heavy denim uniform. I've opened the windows of the house to release the energy-efficient closeness and allow in some fresh air. In the midst of all this unaccustomed warmth, my Thanksgiving cacti are doing their thing more-or-less on schedule. I love this unusual golden one and have been waiting for a chance to show it to you. The enormous fuschia-colored one will come next, a true Christmas cactus. (I also have cacti that flower in the Spring. I've named them after Easter. All I need is one for the Fourth of July!)

The Kate Clinton gig was just what the doctor ordered last night: shamelessly politically partisan, hilarious, brainy fun, the gleeful irreverence Jon Stewart brings to his nightly observations, but on steroids, if you can imagine such a thing. I can only remember one of the fast-and-furious gags: "The economy is so bad! I went out to buy a toaster and they offered me a bank!" but we were all rolling in the aisles. And it was a wonderful time out, seeing old and treasured friends and catching up. The only thing missing was Steve.

Today it's deathly quiet around here. This is one of extremely few weekends, no more than 10, in nearly 29 years that Steve and I have not been within shouting distance of each other. He's supposed to be here, restless to start some project (and there are plenty) and goading me on in the same direction. Instead, I'm dawdling at my own contemplative pace. I read two newspapers this morning, and then caught up with all the blogs I'd missed during the two days I was buried in my mp3s. (You guys are a prolific, thought-provoking bunch, each fascinating in your own way. It was fun to dive into one big dose.)

Steve will be home, completely worn out from this business trip from hell, on Tuesday. We thought we would be going to Delaware Thursday to sign the contract with the builder (that's a major milestone, folks!) but now Dale tells us the contract won't be ready for another couple of weeks. We'll still have to go, but perhaps for a shorter stay, to close the trailer down, empty the fridge, and get things ready for winter. (And of all goes as we hope and we can finally finish business with the bank, we'll go back to finish emptying the trailer completely to prepare it for demolition. But we'll cross that bridge when it comes, after we find out for sure what we can get for this house. We have an appointment with a Realtor next week that should shed some light in that corner.)

There I go again, talking about houses, trailers, demolitions, builders, money real estate! Aarrgghh.... THERE IS MORE TO LIFE!!!!!

I'll now return to my mental vacation....

FOOD FRIDAY!

ASIAN-STYLE SLOW COOKER PORK

It's good to be back among the living and reading. I spent the entire day yesterday and all of this morning, until now, submerged in the most minute of minutiae, my 7000+ mp3 files. It is a long and really boring story, the kernel of which is that one of the Elbow albums I purchased from Itunes Wednesday plays just fine on my computer (thus I was able to share from it), but will not play on my ipod. I went to the local Apple Store and got some advice and followed it. One of the things they suggested I do was "restore" my ipod. That involves dumping and then re-installing all of its files. Sounds simple enough, except I had those mp3s stored in several different folders, some on my hard drive, most on my external drive. There were copies of copies of copies. Where is what? Search, download, overload hard drive and nearly crash in the process, find and eliminate duplicates, and repeat. Over and over and over. The hell of it is, I'm good at that kind of mindless activity! I don't really like it, but when something tedious like that has to be done, I'll bend to the task just to get it overwith.

So it's done now. My mp3s are all in in one place and cleaned up. And that Elbow album? Still doesn't play! I've now resorted to purchasing an actual CD (at a discount price), which I will load onto my computer. If that doesn't work, I give up.

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Here's a dish inspired by the lovely Cuidado, who mentioned something like it at her place not too long ago. I think she called it "pork with peanuts and peppers." I went googling and found a recipe, which I fooled around with and came up with this result. It's really delicious and about as easy as it gets since it uses a slow cooker. (There are a few last-minute preparations but 'tis nothing.) The mix of flavors is delicious!

(I don't know why the typeface changes below. Blogger's in a mood.)

2 to 2 1/2 pounds pork loin roast, cut in 4 or 5 pieces

¼ cup teriyaki sauce

2 tablespoons rice vinegar

1 teaspoon crushed red pepper

2 garlic cloves (or to taste) minced

1 cup red bell pepper strips

1 cup fresh green beans, cut into uniform 2-inch lengths

1/4 cup creamy peanut butter

1 medium red bell pepper, cut into strips

1 pound fresh green beans, cut into uniform 2-inch lengths

6 cups hot cooked basmati rice

1/2 cup chopped green onions

3 tablespoons chopped, dry-roasted peanuts

Trim fat from pork loin. Place pork, teriyaki sauce, vinegar, red pepper, and garlic in slow cooker. Cover and cook on LOW for 8 hours. Remove pork and chop.

Add the peanut butter to liquid in slow cooker; stir until well blended. Stir in the chopped pork. Set aside.

Place green beans in microwave-safe dish, Add 1 tablespoon water, cover, and steam on at high power until beans are crisp-tender, about 5 minutes. Remove from microwave and uncover.

Meanwhile, heat 1 tablespoon vegetable oil in wok or large non-stick skillet. Add pepper strips and stir-fry until crisp-tender.

Add beans and peppers to meat in slow cooker, then transfer all to large serving dish

Serve over rice, garnished with green onions and peanuts