Hillery Occasionally

I am so righteously tired. It is because I’ve worked my ass off all day that I can say this.

Okay, wait, I must interrupt myself. It is snowing. Correction: It’s FUCKING snowing! It happened a couple of times after the thaw and, now, every day for the last week. It doesn’t stick and more and more of the snow actually on the ground disappears daily, but it is fucking snowing on a daily basis when I need to be transplanting seedlings because, hello, April is tomorrow. April is tomorrow and it’s, “April showers bring May flowers,” not April fucking snow.

I’m definitely getting drunk tonight.

This is not my usual post, as you can tell, dear reader. All I can tell you is I am not my usual me. You knew me. I was this pensive, passionate New Yorker who worked nights in a restaurant and spent my days jogging and pursuing my literary, well, pursuits. I made damned good short ribs and pasta primavera.

No longer.

As David Sedaris so clearly put it, quoting his infamous and fabulous mother, "You meet a guy, relinquish a tiny bit of control, and the next thing you know, you’re eating a different part of the pig." I finally met The Man, put almost everything else aside, and ended up in the middle of fucking nowhere. I thought I’d have more time to write. I harbored a lot of naïve delusions about country life. I was wrong.

This is not to say I’ve been unhappy here or with him. As Mary J. says, it ain’t all roses. But, I’m hooked. Not just on The Man, but the place…the no place.

Today is, incidentally, a good example of what I do here. He wakes up first. He makes a fire and then coffee and quietly answers his emails downstairs (he got high-speed just before I arrived…do you even remember dial-up?!). I arise and consult him on our intentions for the day. I have finally trained him to give me things to do that overwhelm him rather than huffing about them until his need for assistance becomes untenable. He gives me three rather tedious chores that, while they’ve been floating around in his head for days, now must be taken care of immediately. Contrary to my conditioning, I say, “I just wonder what you did with yourself before I got here.” (Honestly, he used to go to a computer guru the next town over every time he wanted to download pictures from the internet.) He, good-naturedly, says, “I was fuckered.”

Usually I make breakfast, but I’m feeling peckish and wait him out. He poaches eggs served on toast with grated Parmesan and wilted spinach. No one is starving here. I unload the dishwasher and reload it, scrub down the kitchen countertops, load in firewood,
and sweep the floor. I must constantly check the fire lest he unintentionally let it go out. The coffee is weak and I remind myself to send loads of WholeFoods coffee beans when we get back to New York. I spend my morning sending emails to gallery people and art writers that would take seconds to send at home, but his wacky internet set up requires me to send all emails through webmail and that limits the size of pictures of paintings and…oh let’s just kill ourselves and get it over with!

We go out around lunchtime to visit the post office, the local gardening retailer, and to get lunch at one of two area eateries; not the Cedar Creek Café but Sleep is for Sissies (open ‘till 8 PM). The joint is, unexpectedly to us both, jumpin’. We spy Sophia, the local real estate legend whose saucy headshot graces so many for sale signs on our back road. She has a passable streaky blond dye-job and a matching set of four or five pink pens. Not being in any position to judge as I did not even apply eyebrows this morning and mostly for the sake of alliteration, I call her the slut. As in, “Look, it’s the slut. For real!” The Man is less amused than I am. He is greeted by locals on our way out. They fall into two categories, those I am introduced to and those near whom I linger hopefully…I’m sorry, I mean, those whose names he remembers and those whose names he cannot place, even remotely.

He was painting in the morning and, this afternoon, while things dry in the studio he helps me get started with my gardening work. I think I mentioned, a few weeks ago, I was starting an herb garden. Think exponentially.

I’ve had a hard time getting down to business in the wilderness. My previous lifestyle simply will not translate to this setting and, in such a case, what can you do but reinvent yourself from top to bottom? That is to say, it’s been hard for me to write here because I’m not completely at home in the place and I realize I’m not exactly visiting either. The Man and I, we’re carefully and quietly working on making a life together. And while that is simultaneously my dream come true and the scariest thing to happen to me ever, it is not the tranquil background of that which I know well and can tune out when I need and want to concentrate on…my pursuits.

So, I’ve been working on not only making myself feel more at home here, but also bringing something to the table in our partnership. I’ve given up my income to live here with him, so I’m doing my best to fill the gaps in other ways. Hence helping The Man with his business and…my putative garden.

It all started when the local greenmarket, with the ironic subtitle Whole Foods, didn’t have fresh thyme. I remembered planting a windowsill herb garden in Brooklyn and wouldn’t it be nice to have fresh herbs whenever we needed them? Spring was just around the corner, after all. I started a mini-greenhouse, pod-type seedbed. You saw a picture of the starter set of seeds.  All good!

The escalating enthusiasm that followed absolutely mystified The Man, bless him. He couldn’t understand why I wasn’t upstairs writing in the sunroom rather than planting scads and scads more seeds. It’s a full on obsession now and with four days to go before we depart for civilization, I need to fill my planters!

And the snow will NOT stop.