Nov

09

The chickens are all “WTF?” about snow.

What, what, WHAT?

Today is the first snow of the new winter. It’s all sparkly and sunny, and the fresh coat of white makes me think of how nice it’ll be to kick back and enjoy the holidays. Unlike last year, when I was sweating the deadline for Running Away to Home, among other things.

In addition, today is the very first snow of the chickens’ lives.

And they are freaking out.

I let them roam the yard during the day, so they’re used to getting out in the morning after I drop off the kids. I like them outside rather than in the coop, though it means I spend a significant portion of each afternoon hosing off things the chickens have pooped upon. My theory: Happy chickens, yummy eggs. We’ll see if this theory holds true when they start producing within the next few months.

So anyway, yesterday it was all rainy and gross and I didn’t let them out. They really complained when I closed the coop after freshening the food and water, rather than standing back so they can show off for me and fly a few feet on their way out for the day. Chicken bitching sounds a little like saying the word “berk” in a really low voice, without moving your lips.

Try it now.

Yeah, kind of like that.

Today, it was snowy, but my friend Eve assured me that chickens can walk in snow. I did the food and water and stood back. They started to fly out, then, upon landing in snow, they began screaming. Chicken screaming sounds like saying the word “mack” in a really high-pitched voice, without moving your lips.

Uh huh. Like that.

The Ameraucanas, who are by far the biggest show-offs (though a little standoffish), flew too far and got stranded by the fence.

Save us from the white devil carpet!

They were so frozen in fear that they even let me pick them up and return them to the flock, which had returned to the coop in a panic.

They’ve been standing at the coop’s threshold ever since.

I felt pretty bad for them, because try as I might, I can’t talk to the chickens and explain snow. So I tossed them a bunch of old bread from the book-signing at Eden the other night. Carbs are soothing, right?

Plus, I know how they feel. Everything involved with this first book experience feels so fresh and fascinating (and sometimes terrifying). I’m kinda standing here at the threshold, too, digesting the past month.

Thanks to you, my earliest and best readers, for tossing out those soothing carbs—the many private notes of encouragement and shared excitement, the public words of affection for the book and me. It’s all made this brand-new experience less intimidating and more like a monthlong party.

Hey, I’m going to go see if the chickens are still standing in the same spot. It’s been 3 hours now.

Yep. They are. I’m sure they’ll get used to it all soon enough, and barrel into the next new thing.

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Oct

31

Interview this author

Tomorrow I’m diving into my first Tweet chat. It’s basically an interview with the author, but you do it on Twitter, and anyone who wants to ask me a question about Running Away to Home can do it. It’s crazy how readers can connect in so many ways with authors now, and I’m glad to be part of the era. Just today, I tweeted Michael Ruhlman, and he Tweeted back. Twice! I’ve always liked Ruhlman, whose quiet Midwestern seething makes his friend Anthony Bourdain look like a chipper dandy. Jim says: “He’d make a better Bourdain, and I like Bourdain a lot.” Jim’s even bought kitchen product from Ruhlman, and Jim hasn’t even bought a new shirt in the past year that I know of.

So please join me out there in the social media ether for the Running Away to Home author interview, brought to you by the fine folkstress at Biblio-Files. Ask me whatever you want, really. What does sheep brain taste like? Does Jim have an older brother? Did I really end up liking Mrkopalj? I shall be candid.

You can find the full invitation here, including instructions on how to do it. E-see you tomorrow night at 7 p.m. Central Standard Time!

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Oct

26

Love on the radio.


Nerdy! And proud. Photo by John Pemble.

It’s been pretty cool telling people about Running Away to Home over the course of the past few weeks. I’m really proud of my book. In it, I got a chance to tell a story the way I’ve always wanted to: As if I were speaking, relatively unedited, to a good friend. That’s some fortunate stuff for a writer.

During the publicity blitz, I got a chance to be on public radio. When I was in high school, I was a weekend disc jockey for local Big Band radio station, KCOB/KLVN Newton. I really loved that job, even though the kid got all the crappy hours, eating a Big Mac on Christmas Day in the control room, trying really hard not to feel sorry for myself as the Andrews Sisters sang in the background. I loved reading the news. I loved announcing the weather. I loved telling what little history I knew about the music — “Too Fat Polka” was my favorite song. Maybe a Croatian thing?

I loved working on the radio so much that I would clean the whole first floor of the station during my shift, just so they’d want to keep me there until I left for college.

So being on Iowa Public Radio was a return to this thing that I forgot how much I loved. Have you ever done that? Loved something when you were young, then just sort of forgot it as the years passed by? I loved that hot, close control room. I loved taking a real quick sip of coffee during breaks. (I stole the mug. Sorry IPR.) I didn’t feel awkward or self-conscious–which is always the sign that you’re doing something right. I’ve never succeeded in a job or a friendship or a relationship of any kind when I felt overly aware of my shortcomings.

Good friendships, good love, and good job fits always seem to have that sense of ease about them, even though you’re working your heart out underneath it all.

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Oct

22

(Not) making moonshine.

We're using these to make apple vinegar. Or apple cake. Maybe applesauce.

There’s a passage in the book where I try desperately to get the village recipe for rakija, the clear-as-water Mrkopalj moonshine that, toward the end of our stay, kick-started my days with my neighbor ladies. (Don’t judge. It’s purely a digestive.)

No one would give me that recipe. And seriously? We talked about everything together. Everything–except for that recipe. I only knew that in Mrkopalj, it was made from apples. And it tasted like fruity paint thinner. And, as Baka Ana assured me, “Rakija helps a mother through the days.”

So, it’s been driving me nuts, during peak apple season here in Iowa, that I don’t have that rakija recipe.

But there sure is a lot of information on the Internet about making fruit brandy.

It’s really not all that hard.

Though, it being a federal offense at all, I would certainly not make it.

Still, it gets a woman wondering. And there sure are a lot of apples around here. …

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Oct

10

I’ll be around.

the baka

 

Well, tomorrow is the big day. The book is finally out, and copies will be propped on bookstore shelves or sent in the mail.

Stephen King, in his awesome book On Writing, calls the reading of a book a particular form of magic. I mean, tomorrow if you get your copy, you will travel through time. You will return to October 2008 when Jim and I first started batting around this idea to walk away from everything we knew, and return to something we’d always known. You will then follow me around Mrkopalj, Croatia, without ever leaving your reading nook, or your lawnchair at soccer practice, or the confines of your bathroom. It really is a pretty amazing thing, when you think about it.

Hopefully, you’ll want to talk about the book when you finish it. Maybe tell your friends. Suggest it to your book club. Or maybe just shoot me a note, and ask me a question. I hope that you do any of these. And if you want to chat in person, I’ve got a few events coming up. You can take a look at my events calendar on this website to see when you can get a signed copy of Running Away to Home, or maybe just ask me that burning question: What did a sheep brain taste like? Because I will tell you that. Maybe you’ll even meet Jeem and the kids.

But starting tomorrow, you’ll definitely get to meet some of the best people ever. Robert, whom most early readers love the best so far. Stefanija, my steady guide and savvy friend. Pasha, the tough guy with the big heart. Marijan, the voice of gold. Jasminka and Mario, our first neighbors and parents of the hottest Olympian I know. Pavice and Manda and Viktor and Zeljko and Anjelka and all our family in the village.

Hold on, friends. And enjoy the trip!

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Sep

29

And now I have chopped down a tree.

Okay, fine, to be totally honest, my buddy Inman did much of the chopping, and it was his chainsaw, too. But I couldn’t help clapping my hands in glee when that first dead birch tree came crashing down in my yard.

In Mrkopalj, you could tell a lot about people by how they stacked their wood, and wood was the sustaining force of the village. (Wood, and the hard-working women.) When my woodpile outside was getting low, Inman offered to help me take down some dead trees in the yard to re-fill it. And yes, we still have a real fireplace. No, I have no intentions of retiring it because it’s not supposed to be eco-friendly. I drive a Prius to justify that refusal.

I went wood-chopping with my dad when I was a kid, and I spent the majority of my winter nights in childhood lying on the stone hearth in front of our fire. The stone would warm up as the night went on, and I read “like a wolf eats,” to quote Gary Paulsen, author of Hatchet, which we just read to the kids, and which is also celebratory about fire and the making of it. (Best read-aloud ever, by the way.)

So I associate fire with happiness and warmth and reading myself into another world, and the way my dad could split wood like Paul Bunyan. I pride myself on once starting a fire with one match at Camp Buckskin in northern Minnesota (never happened again, by the way). Last winter, Jim and I liked to wear all our sweaters from the time we spent in Mrkopalj, and point out the burn marks from the wood burning stove there.

This winter, I will associate fire with the warm fall night Inman came over, and we made firewood that the kids hauled and stacked, with Zadie so pumped from the work of it that she asked when we were all finished and way sweaty: “Anything else you’d like me to do, Mom?”

She’ll remember last night the way I remember chopping wood with my Dad, I’m betting.

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Sep

15

The cat, he waits.

El Presidente on the hunt.

Tomorrow morning I leave for the Austin City Limits Music Festival, where my friend Holli and I will be rocking out for a few days.

There’s an unadulterated joy in this idea, that my only job for the weekend will be to catch all the bands I can (and avoid Coldplay). That’s some awesome blossoms. Is that a phrase? It should be a phrase.

But here’s the part that always blows my mind: Part of me will also remain here, with my family, in spirit. Hoping the kids have fun at their soccer games, worrying that they’ll not have their mom to talk to at night, hoping I got all the logistics in order before I left. It’s like the umbilical cords were never fully severed or something. I’m gone, but I’m not.

It makes me think of the cat, actually. I tried to get Bill Clinton (a/k/a El Presidente) to acclimate to the chickens. He should like them, after all, because they keep Willa busy, as she is staring at them all the time. This means Willa spends significantly less time chasing El Presidente, tackling him, and pretend-killing him.

Though the cat acted all cool for awhile, the minute I’m not paying attention, he literally pounces on a chicken. It’s happened twice now, and so he has to go inside when the chickens are out. I can try all I want to foster a friendly, Disney version of animal life in my yard, but that business ain’t happening. El Presidente wants to eat him a chicken. It’s just his nature. He’s part housecat, part jaguar from way back.

And though Austin (and its 98-degree heat) will be a fantatic weekend, no doubt, there’s still going to be a part of me that never leaves the ground here in Iowa. I can take a little break, but I’ll always be the mom. It’s just my nature.

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Sep

12

Let’s hope.

I found it very reassuring that the green roof on the chicken coop sprouted on September 11.

With clear intentions and hard work, good things rise up from the dirt.

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Sep

08

Fish and chicken.

Look at 'em sitting so nice.

I’ve been hinting to Jim that I’d like assistance with the addition of both a second lock and a roost in the chicken coop.

Apparently, this sitting-upon-a-bar business is very important to a chicken. It’s like their version of an easy chair, or leather interiors. The second lock was just for my own peace of mind—having been nearly physically assaulted by a raccoon on a camping trip in Maine many moons ago, I know that a raccoon will stop at nothing when it comes to food. (Nothing except the giant hiking boot of an angry Iowa girl. I’m lucky I got out of that one without rabies.)

By Sunday, with Jim hip-deep in a repair job on the front porch, I got the picture that the lock and the roost were going to have to be my deal. I got that picture because Jim handed me a tiny Japanese saw (for the dowel I was carrying around) and his drill set (for the lock I was carrying around).

“I’m going to teach you to fish,” he said.

I got the quick one-two on changing out drill bits, and then he helped me with the first few screws. I’ve used a drill before, but the changing out of bits is more intricate than this generalist goes for. It only took us a few minutes in the end. I could do it myself next time. And probably will, when it comes to making laying boxes.

Adding the roost was just a matter of finding the handle of an old rake laying around, then measuring it and cutting it to fit across the coop. Couple of nails to keep it from rolling around.

Seriously small potatoes, when it comes to handyman stuff. But every time I go out to that coop to do the chicken chores, and see them roosting, safe from raccons for now, I feel pretty studly.

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Sep

06

Free kids.

What's better than tree-climbing on a nice day? Nuthin.

You know what amazes me? That you can go to a library and take a big pile of books (as many as you want!) and it doesn’t cost you a penny. And that some guys stop by and pick up my trash every Friday. And it really amazes me that there are giant tracts of attractive land set aside for the sole purpose of our enjoyment. With picnic benches and trails and everything!

I know none of these things are technically free. I pay for the trash and recycling to go away. As for parks and libraries, we still pay for them through taxes, no matter how hard those Tea Partiers party. But still. They’re amazingly nice amenities in life, aren’t they?

We did all our weekend work on Sunday, so yesterday we were free as birds. We went to one of those nearby state parks, just to spend the day running around in the open. I spent the whole day tossing a softball and eating cheese and watching the kids goof off and drinking pop and riding a bike with Kelly and feeling happy. Ended the day with a Little Caesar’s Hot n Ready (for $5; that’s also amazing).

I know it’s a cliche to say that the best things in life are free. But they’re probably cliches because they’re true.

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