Avocado orgy

Our first impression as we walk in our door after nine month’s absence is that it is roomy: light and airy. We feel like children on Christmas morning: look! A cat! The bed is huge! We couldn’t stop walking around, touching things and opening cupboards. The larder was quite bare—house sitter? Teenager? And then we noticed the back yard: ack! We need to mow, the gutters need cleaning! The deck needs sweeping! But first, to bed.

Thanks to good friends, we didn’t lift a finger the evening of our arrival: supper and good company was provided and delicious and beds were magically made up. Even breakfast was laid out on the counter (pancakes!) so we didn’t have to deal with shopping right away the next day. We got the car started (second turn of the key!) and ventured out to the farmer’s market (ran into a friend there who did a classic double-take) and the co-op (where we ran into two more friends).

And there they were: those green globes of smooth pleasure. Love pears. Yum with a spoon. Guacamole. Yes, I’m talking about avocados.

I love potatoes, I love a nice roast. Ireland is great on spuds and breakfast. But I love avocados more. There, I’ve said it. I’m a fifth generation Californian, that rarity who knows what the Golden State looked like before Silicon Valley and traffic and sky-high property values. I remember when Ronald Reagan was elected governor. And I remember avocados on the table from day one.

And so, this “staycation” has been an indulgence of the bumpy green fruit. Served with balsamic vinaigrette in the pit hole, squashed up with lime juice and onion (no cilantro, which, by the way, only appeared in Mexican food with the tech boom) and scooped out with glorious tortilla chips, heaped on tostadas, chopped in spinach salads, or spooned out just like that.

We head back to the Emerald Isle next week, where we will resume our earth apple diet. But before we leave, I estimate we will have consumed just over three dozen avocados. I wonder if I can convince our Japanese veg box supplier to make just one exception to her limited food miles policy and get us a few of the green jewels each week.

Princes and kingdoms

This tale starts last December, when a certain little boy wrote an epistle to a certain jolly old elf. The Irish countryside and the tale of the King of Ireland's son had clearly struck the boy, as his only wish in the nefariously intercepted letter was for a castle. This deputy elf's mind was set racing: clearly this wish came from the heart and needed to be acknowledged, and magic dictated that as much as possible that the wish be granted.

Luckily for us, at least one elf had research ability and a decent internet connection, and identified an alternative: spending the night in a castle, rather than all the headaches of ownership. And so it was that we found ourselves entrenched in Ross Castle on the shores of Lough Sheelin in County Meath this weekend.

We occupied the entire tower, which had been reconstructed in the 1850's to undo damage by Cromwell's men ("Is there any castle he didn't destroy?" laments my dear husband). Meter-thick walls and canopy beds offset the sixties-era creative plumbing, and our hosts kept a fire burning in the hearth as well as supplying a passel of their own children to run around with ours.

Of course, we couldn't pass up the opportunity to explore the surrounding area--indeed, it is County Meath that is home to many of Ireland's stately treasures, as its Boyne Valley was chosen by its kings for centuries as home.

The guidebooks lead tourists to Newgrange, a passage grave older than the pyramids in Egypt. Benn there, done that (back when they let you go in); Lesser known is the megalithic cemetery with 20 or so lesser passage graves on the hilltops of Loughcrew, which just happened to be a twenty-minute drive from the castle (did I mention this elf was very good?). Tradition is alive and well here: to view Cairn T (they're named with the letters of the alphabet), one must visit the tea house in a neighboring garden for the key. The keychain made it clear that we were going someplace seriously dark--no electricity on this windswept hillside!

Huffing and puffing after twenty vertical minutes, we wrestled the padlocked gate and let our eyes adjust to the gloom. Just a short passage with side chambers; a bunch of old rocks. But wait, isn't that a spiral? And a flower? Taking turns with the flashlight, we discovered the richness of the 3000-year old decoration. We had an hour with the place to ourselves, one of those jewel-like moments.

Tootling on, we trekked to the town of Kells, whose Heritage Centre now houses some lovely replicas: the famous book (original in Trinity College in Dublin), the Crosier of Kells (original in the National Museum in Dublin), the Market Cross (original in front of said Heritage Centre). After an uninspriring meal in the Smiley Café, we headed over the hills, for one more stop until our castle.

Fore Abbey, one of the seven wonders of Fore, is yet another lovely ruined abbey in a grassy vale. Most notable here was the dovecote and the motte behind. Because there was a wedding in town, it was impossible to park, so we parked on a side lane on the other side of the motte. A motte, as you may recall, is a big steep hill to keep the enemies away. As I was contemplating which side of the motte might provide the shortest route to the abbey, Marcus grinned and said, "let's just go over!" and ran up the hillside. Can't let my kid outgun me--up I went too, to a glorious view of the Abbey and a jumpable fence at the dovecot (pigeonholes are handy for climbing).

Saturday night was a late bedtime, and Sunday breakfast was a slow affair, so we meandered home via Trim Castle: movie buffs would have recognized the grounds where Mel Gibson was hanged, but we've never seen the flick. Guess we should add it to the list. We also tried our luck at four letterboxes ostensibly hidden on Tara Hill, but no luck, just the fairies and the sheep were in residence.

Home, unpack, laundry, showers and haircuts. Our attention now turns to preparing for a much longer trek: to our own Stateside castle, to reconnect and exchange winter coats for summer, and schlepp home excess treasures the princes have collected sofar.

Capitals European

We had a French breakfast this morning, hot chocolate with croissants to dunk, and even had a mini Eiffel tower to put on the table. We had bought the trinket at the newsagent at Charles de Gaulle airport last night while we waited for our flight, which had been delayed by a huge thunderstorm. It was a scary storm with lightning on both sides of the car on the freeway, and we were afraid the hailstones were going to damage the rental car as Alfred gunned it into the parking garage of the 1974 aérogare whose diagonal moving walkways feature in so many contemporary films.

We had seen the beginning of the thunderstorm that drenched us as we ran to the car from the IKEA restaurant, which, like all things French, defies logic in their opening hours: no meatballs after 3 pm. We had of course, arrived an hour too late, after a two hour drive straight through the center of Paris. We had had the choice when leaving our friend Natasha's house near Evry of navigating the maze of freeways that ring Paris, or of simply bisecting the city, enjoying the glimpses of monuments from our car window.

When we left Natasha's medieval digs--during the baby's nap-- it was still over 20 degrees (Celsius!), as it had been throughout our visit. That morning, when we walked through the lovely Waldorf school nestled against the green forest of Verrières-le-Buisson, had been positively cool, and we had slept soundly in our oddly suburban B&B up the road.

We had arrived fairly late, and tired from the long drive from Colmar. We did break up the drive, navigated by our Irish GPS and freebie map from Avis, with a stop at the ever-lovely Notre-Dame-du-Haut at Ronchamp. The last time we were here was shortly before we were wed; we are both showing signs of deferred maintenance, but the essence remains vital.

We had driven south from Colmar, where we visited another Waldorf school there and had spent a warm two hours enjoying the peace and idealistic talk with the fellow who received us. We had woken early to get there on time, but had taken a wrong turn from our host's home in picture-postcard Rosenwiller and arrived later than promised. Graciously, no mention was made of our tardiness.

We rose early for that appointment after a night punctuated by rooster and church bells, one of the hazards of Alsatian country living. The night had been warm enough to sleep with the windows open (still a bit early for mosquitoes, thought the tomatoes were already set out), but the rooster had woken us at 2 a.m. the night before, so we had learned our lesson.

The Colmar Waldorf school was a refreshing contrast to Strasbourg, which we had visited the afternoon before: Colmar was a newer, more open facility with an older, more stable staff; Strasbourg was an older, more urban school (the suburbs had grown to meet it and nearly engulf it), with a much younger teacher's college.

We had taken Monday morning to laze around and enjoy the peaceful surroundings and our big bag of French cheese and bread and pastry as well as our hosts' mini billiard table. We did have to go out to replenish our supply of pain au chocolat, since our boys, with the able assistance of our godson's siblings, had managed to make a clam shell worthy of Costco of 20 pasties disappear during the previous 24 hours.

The pastries had sat on the sideboard of the breakfast room in Freiburg, Black Forest city of our studies and early married life, and it was a fun trip down memory lane to walk around the lake with our old friends and show the kids the student housing where we had lived, as well as ride the trams to the train station to watch high-speed trains and lick ice cream cones (it was warm, right?).

The flaky pastries and smelly cheeses came from our stop at the first supermarket we found after we picked up our rented diesel Mercedes A class; we filled our sacks with all sorts of French provender, along with a few goodies for friends soon to be seen again. The fire station that we passed on the way there was a great place to sit in the sun and munch on them while chatting with sapeurs-pompiers that serve Dreieckland.

We had chuckled at the funny immigration system in the border aiport at Basel-Mulhouse: after deplaning, you had to not only choose which passport line to stand in, but for which country, France or Switzerland, even though both lines re-emerged into the same baggage claim hall.

As our plane swept over tidy green fields dotted with red tile roofs, we were only just recovering from our mad dash for our plane, which was of course at the farthest gate from security on the day the lines were the longest and slowest we’ve ever experienced. And of course, we were late getting to the checkpoint because Mr Murphy himself saw to it that we not only drew the farthest spot (Area Z) in the long-term parking, but missed the shuttle to the terminal by seconds. We would have been earlier, but we had just learned that it is more difficult to move a 14-year old than an 8-year old at four in the morning.

Which is how we come to have a little Eiffel tower on the table, along with a mountain of laundry and email to sort through.

Close to home

We hear about them regrettably regularly: A shooting on a university campus, the person targeted not the only one to draw fire, families of both victims and perpetrators torn apart irreparably. But last week, as I prepared to travel to Alexandria, Virginia for my American Translators Association meeting, news came in that one of those people was someone know to me. I came to know Ben Teague, a great gentle man, in the hallways at ATA conferences and online. He took particular interest and care with newcomers to the industry, as I was then, and gave us such pearls of wisdom as "avoid prison" (pay your taxes), "all decisions are business decisions," and my personal favorite, "don’t do laundry" (working at home require discipline). I did not know at the time that he had been president of the same association that I now have the privilege of serving, nor that someone would deprive us all of his collective wisdom.

We read about them in the newspaper often: small groups of landowners up in arms about proposed landfills, power plants or overhead transmission lines. These "NIMBYs" and the object of the objections have become such a part of our landscape that we don't see them anymore, but when it comes time to buy our home, we make sure we're far away from whatever is built in spite of their efforts. As I returned to Ireland, my jet-lagged head chock full of thoughts from my board meeting, I was greeted by a panicky email from my mother. It seems she had received a certified letter informing her that the public comment period for the proposed TANC Transmission Project that affects her property ("affects" in this case means cutting down every last tree), had been extended. The kicker was that this was the first she had ever heard of it, and her sole opportunity to comment ends in less than a month. If that's not close enough to home, consider that this land contains hundreds of trees, among them 50 Douglas fir trees hand-planted and hand-watered by my father, whose ashes are now scattered among their roots. All for a power line that connects Southern California to non-existent power sources near the Nevada border. Oh, and did I mention I own the adjacent parcel? My certified letter arrived only yesterday.

We see them increasingly these days: another round of layoffs, blame it on the economy. We dodged the bullet yet again this week, but not all our friends have been so fortunate: new friends here and old friends at home are all dealing with the upheaval of the main breadwinner losing their jobs. While we have an income through the autumn, it is increasingly unclear whether they have kept a spot for us in Redmond given the present climate. Our future looks increasingly fuzzy, no matter how hard we rub our crystal ball.

It is easy to feel dragged down by all this, feeling sorry for ourselves and stressed by uncertainty. It makes us more prone to snap at the ones we love and to toss and turn at night. And so it is that the bright spots that punctuate the gloom seem even brighter than usual.

A short text message on a mobile phone, an everyday occurrence, and yet, it seems it should be accompanied by trumpets heralding our neighbor's news: "Baby Girl 6lbs.2Oz both well. @ 2:38pm" Little Emily Jane, who came home yesterday after a civilized three days in the hospital, is as adorable as her name sounds, and both parents truly do look well. It is a joy to place making a big pot of hearty soup for the new family on my to do list.

Every week, the big kid and I trek over the hills to Dunlavin, to play traditional music with a tiny group of giggly tweens. We're starting to sound pretty good, and it's always worth the effort to drag ourselves out for yet another evening. After an hour of music-making and a thunderous hailstorm, Phil, our mild-mannered leader, mentions to me that if I'm not in a hurry this evening, they're "playing some tunes in town at the pub." I'm not sure what to make of it, but as I drive home, I realize that he's talking about the elusive sesiún. I drop off boy-o and fiddle (I figure I can't keep up) and pick up husband, telling him that whatever his computer seems to want doesn't matter, we're going out. I buy him a pint, and we sit and listen for a couple of hours, until our eyelids start fluttering. Time for bed.

I fall asleep, finally, to the gentle snores of the man next to me, and the rain pounding at the window. That the window keeps the rain out and the man is next to me are very comforting in and of themselves. There is an amazing joy in waking the next morning to a crystal blue sky with blindingly bright green leaves freshly sprung on the trees. We are amazed how many different outfits the hills outside our window seem to have in their wardrobe.