Making puddings and knitting stockings

In the latest film version of "Jane Eyre" there's just one real character: Jane herself. No one else is on the screen long enough to give us a sense of who they are, not even Mr. Rochester. In the movie Jane is often alone – on the moor, pacing the corridors of Thornfield Hall, staring by the fire in that drafty barn of a house; when other people appear, they behave cruelly towards her (in this film even the Rivers sisters are inadvertently cruel), and then disappear. She is always being left. Jane is sent away; Jane runs away; Jane's only friend dies in her arms. The one time that Jane returns, she finds Thornfield Hall burnt, its occupants scattered. When she finally says "I am come back," she's speaking to a broken, silent, weeping Mr. Rochester sitting alone in a field; they embrace, and poof: the film ends.

*

In the movie Jane stands by a big picture window in Thornfield Hall on a quiet winter day, looking out at its grounds and the hills beyond the grounds, and she says she wishes she were a man so that she might go out into the world. Mrs. Fairfax (who does understand) tells her she just needs exercise and asks her to mail a letter. It's on the walk to the post office that Jane first meets Mr. Rochester.

This is like the book but also not like. In the book Jane does rant about the lot of women, saying, "Women are supposed to be very calm generally; but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a constraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings." But she also explains that it's not so much action that she wants as passion and intellectual challenge. She doesn't want to be wrapped in cotton, safe and dull. "Who blames me? Many, no doubt; and I shall be called discontented. I could not help it; restlessness was in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes. Then my sole relief was to ... open my inward ear to a tale ... my imagination created, and narrated continuously; quickened with all of incident, life, fire, feeling, that I desired and had not in my actual existence."

In the book Jane says over and over how madly she loves Mr. Rochester but the movie is more ambiguous. He loves her; that's obvious; but she's so wary and stoic and young, and he's the first man she's ever met! Who can say how she feels? Maybe he's just her first crush. Maybe she loves that he loves her. Maybe she just doesn't want to leave Thornfield Hall because it's the only place she's ever been safe from abuse. In the book one would never think that but the movie dwells more on the horror in her life. – And then Rochester, like everyone else, breaks her heart. The cad.

When in the movie St. John Rivers offered to take Jane to India as a missionary, my heart leapt for her. India! Finally, Jane, your chance! Your chance to act, to move in the world as you've been longing to do! It's perplexing that she tells him no. It's perplexing that she runs back to Mr. Rochester. Without all the scenes of the two lovers together, without the funny scenes in which she insists Mr. Rochester save his ardor for after the wedding, what St. John offers seems superior. St. John saved her life. He respects her. He's nice to her. Why not take the safe route, free from abuse? Travel, Jane! Adventure! Why run back into the arms of a man already married? For goodness sake.

*

Don't get me wrong: I did enjoy the movie. I especially loved the scenes of Jane on the moor. The cinematography was spectacular. (Some day I'm visiting northern England and Scotland. You can have London; I want to see the moor!) It's been bothering me, though, the way the tone of the movie is so different from the tone of the book; I had to write it down to understand how I felt.

That said...

Updated 4/19.

I do love the iPad. I like to curl up in bed and watch movies on it, just like I'd read a book; or else, curled up all cosy-like, I look at items for sale on Etsy. (I've never bought anything from etsy sellers, but oh, I do love to look at the things people make. Bend is a small town still; it's hard to find anything like what's available in Etsy, especially for clothes. I'd buy this if I could figure out a place to wear it.)

I use the iPad almost exclusively for internet browsing: searches for recipes or summer camps or edible native plants, for example, or reading all y'all's blogs. I check email on it. I check the weather. I check Mt. Bachelor's current conditions. I read the news. I stream podcasts through it when my work gets tedious; I prop it on the windowsill and watch movies while I'm washing dishes. The WebEx app for iPad is better than WebEx on my company-provided laptop, so when I'm not hosting, I often "attend" meetings that way. Sometimes – don't tell! – when I'm on a conference call that turns irrelevant (or, more often, when I'm tempted to say too much and need to hold my tongue) I play Solitaire on it.

I find it miserable to type on, though. Cutting and pasting and backspacing is just painful, and it turns out that even when I compose emails, I do a lot of cutting and pasting and backspacing; so I never compose anything on the iPad. The problem is not really the iPad in itself, but the fact that I'm trained to a keyboard. I'm almost 40. I type 80 words/minute. Using a touchscreen to compose is as slow as ... as ... as writing!

Also, I dislike reading books on it. I think again it's a matter of mental models. The Kindle app is intended for reading books, so when I hold the iPad I think: book. But it's not a book. It's a computer. It doesn't provide the same satisfying tactile experience as a book, and it does poorly the few things I need a book to do (which, essentially, provide comforting familiarity. When I read fiction I channel my 12-year-old self). And I don't yet know what it does better than a book.

Movies, on the other hand, I find vastly improved by the iPad. I never have liked going to the movies, not ever in my life; and I don't like TV either. Movies have struck me as loud and obnoxious and too obviously manipulative with that music and faces as big as a house: gah. Watching them on the iPad, though – curled up in my bed, alone, quiet, in control – it's so intimate. It is, actually, just as intimate as reading a great novel. Also I like being able to (as it were) re-read sections that puzzle or intrigue me. It has been a great pleasure to discover movies – in my late 30s!

I still prefer books.

For Maggie.

My son finished books 4 & 5 of the Guardians of Ga'Hoole series in a week so I promised him I'd get 6 & 7 from the library; but when we visited the library, it was closed. Oh, the disappointment! So we walked to the nearest bookstore which, alas, did not have books 6 & 7.

So I did something for him that I'd never have done for myself: I got the Kindle app for iPad and I bought the e-book.

Verdict? Bah.

It's nice that the book only cost $5 and it's nice that I was able to indulge my son's reading habit, which I understand is an unusual one for a 9-year-old boy, but we won't be buying an e-book again soon. It's too annoying. You can't tell where you are. The e-book has no page numbers and no chapter headings and no dog-ears, of course, and no places where the book naturally falls because you bent back the binding. If you touch the wrong part of the screen, going back a chapter or back to the beginning, for example, and you're a certain 9-year-old, you're going to have to yell, "Moooooo-ooom!" and she's going to have to speak in that come-away-from-the-window-ledge voice to keep your fury in check.

I imagine as a reference tool the Kindle for iPad would be useful – with a reference book one would find the search function necessary – but for casual reading, I (we) prefer a printed book.

I'm not wearin' no trousers rolled

The problems which seemed so intractable before I left now seem

really

really

really

small.



That's the main thing.

*

More pics at Tom's blog.

Swoop

Baldface Lodge is primarily known for its excellent tree skiing, but a few glades are wide open. In these open glades we made long, lazy, easy turns: ssswoooooop, sssssswooooop, ssssssswoooooop.

Once in such a glade the snow was so light I couldn't feel my board beneath my feet. No vibration, no hiccup, no pressure on an edge: just a smooth glide through the air.

Like a dolphin leaping into the sunlight.

View through the snowcat window.
We made two runs here, which explains the number of tracks.

Thanks, Mom and Dad

My parents stayed with the children while my husband and I were away. It went brilliantly. Every time I called home I heard laughter, both from my children and my parents; and when I returned, my dad was glowing and the children, they confessed that although they were glad to see me, they'd miss their grandparents.

The kids got to school on time. They did their homework every night. They remembered their library books and they remembered when to wear sneakers.

Also: my parents fixed my toilet. They replaced a broken toilet paper holder. They bought new shoes for Sasha. They cleaned the house, raked the yard and restocked the larder. They washed my car. And then – as Sasha said – "Grandpa couldn't get the TV to work so he bought a new one."

They didn't tell me about any of the work they did; I've been discovering it as I settle back into our routine. Five days later I'm still finding little treats around the house: a bag of white chocolate chips, a book about the fur trade, notes on spice packets saying "the kids liked this." It's like an Easter egg hunt!

Thanks, Mom and Dad.

Lower left corner

Me.

Baldface-English Dictionary

Powder / Pow / Pow Pow: Any depth or quality of snow which has recently fallen and hasn't yet been "tracked," or compressed, either by the weight of a snowcat or a skier/snowboarder.

Snowcat: A truck-like vehicle with tracks instead of tires, like a tank. The cabs of the snowcats at Baldface Lodge sit twelve comfortably.

Fresh tracks / First tracks: Being the first person to lay a track in powder; that is, being the first to ski through an area of newfallen snow. Everyone wants fresh tracks. Riding through powder is so easy and smooth it's like flying.

Duff: Very cold, light powder – too cold to pack into a snowball – which flies up into a snowboarder's face as she rides through it.

The white room: When a snowboarder slashes through duff in such a way that the spray encloses her completely and she can't see in front of her, she's said to be "in the white room."

Shred it / Slay it / Rip it up / Kill it: To make turns in powder on a snowboard. The terms sound aggressive and are usually said with aggression but they really just refer to the tracks a snowboarder leaves behind her in the snow: like a long, lazy "S" traced in butter.

Moving sidewalk: An easy run.

Snowboarder pile-up: In the trees when the terrain flattens out, snowboarders wary of tree wells tend to follow each other's lines. If one person falls and the way is too tight or it happens too suddenly, the others will pile up behind him.

Tree well: When snow falls in a forest it catches on the trees' limbs. This creates a depression, or well, around the trunk of a tree. Tree wells can be five feet deep or more.

SFD: Straight fuckin' down. An answer to the question, "Which way from here?"

Chinese downhill: Usually we dropped in one at a time or in pairs, which means we had to negotiate the order of descent; but when the run was wide open and the avalanche danger low, the guide would declare a Chinese downhill (c.f. Hot Dog): everyone dropping in at the same time in a glorious mess.

A good husband raises your game

On a ridge of wind-rippled snow the lead guide asked the skiers to follow him in breaking trail for us snowboarders (ski poles being a useful invention after all). My husband, who had stayed by my side all day, glanced at me. I waved him on. "Go ahead," I said. "Just remember: if I fall off this ridge, tell the kids I love them!"

The second guide, who stood nearby nonchalantly checking the air temperature with this odd red thermometer – the second guide called to my husband, "Tell them mommy died doing something she loves!"

And everybody laughed, even me, perched light-hearted and exuberant on a snowy ridge in the sunlight.

The view from our chalet, 3/31

Training runs

ThirdCat asked if we still have snow. Yep, we do. Photos from today.

At the top of the northwest chair looking toward Sparks Lake.

Searching for untracked snow. There's a turn or two here!

I got a little lost when I ducked into the trees, thinking that I was a few turns from the run when in fact I was a lot further. I stopped to take this picture when I knew I'd found the run again. That's it, that bright patch of snow up ahead.

Headin' back up.

A case of nerves

Every day for a week I've woken up feeling nauseous. I'm jittery, shivering and nauseous.

It's nerves.

When I was a girl – about my son's age – and started traveling for gymnastics competitions, I'd wake up nauseous like this. I never could eat any breakfast; and then my nerves acting on an empty stomach would cause dry heaves. Once I nearly puked the whole drive from Hazelton to Philadelphia. My poor father.

I thought I'd outgrown this tendency. I haven't felt morning nausea since I was 14.

Turns out I just haven't been doing things that make me nervous.

We've going backcountry skiing. My husband and me. Next Wednesday we're driving 10 hours to Nelson, BC, where we'll catch a helicopter to a mountain-top resort. For three days, all day, we'll ride the powder in the interior mountains of British Columbia. We travel by snowcat...

I'm really nervous.

It's the claustrophobia. I get panicky in deep snow. Also I broke my arm once crashing into a tree and I really, really do not want to do that again... Luckily for the last few weeks we've had a fair bit of powder at Mt. Bachelor – two Fridays ago was epic – so I've been addressing my fear: taunting it: daring it. I snowboarded in three feet of new snow (the snow that Ullr brought) with my daughter, who got stuck three times; I had to unclip from my board and wade through it to rescue her. I snowboarded in eight surprise inches of new snow with my son, who got himself stuck once in a tree well and once in a wave; I had to unclip from my board and wade through the snow to rescue him. I haven't gotten myself stuck, but I have been riding as much as I can through the trees, searching out untracked bits, meandering, playing. If I feel I may be too close to a tree I throw myself into the snow, poof! and then have to figure out how to get back up and going again.

It hasn't helped. I'm still nervous. Mt. Bachelor just cannot replicate for even ten turns the untracked powder in the interior mountains of BC.

EEEEK!

How to tell a story

Some of the world's best storytellers – the folks at This American Life and Planet Money – discuss how to make a story interesting at transom.org. If you're interested in communication, go read this stuff. (Juliane, I'm talking to you!) Here's another good one.

Claustrophobia

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, I learned to scuba dive in Lake Cayuga: a long, cold, muddy-bottomed lake near Ithaca, New York.

I learned to scuba dive in Lake Cayuga because my dad wanted to take us all vacationing in Belize. If I learned in Ithaca and my sister learned in Rhode Island and my little sister, mother and father learned in Pennsylvania, he said, then when we gathered in Belize would could all dive together, being at the same skill level.

That is so my dad.

Anyway. On our first day at the lake, bare trees waved in a strong wind, small branches tearing off and falling to the ground; the grass was brown, dead; picnic tables sat forlorn. We dozen students stood in the dirt at water's edge, shivering in black wet suits and flippers like so many displaced Antarctic penguins.

The instructor told us what to do, pausing every few minutes to remind us that this was a means to an end, that in Belize or the Bahamas or Florida everything would be different. There it would be hot! The water would be clear! It would be blue and alive! You'll see fish there, he said. It won't be like this.

So we girded our loins¹ and flopped into the lake. We tread water. We practiced breathing through our tanks at the surface. We swam out a little ways. Then twelve scuba newbies attempted to dive down through six feet of murk, struggling and splashing, utterly ridiculous. We could not control our buoyancy. Some people sunk, plunk, onto the bottom and then kicked their legs to come up a bit – and their flippers stirred the mud until I could see nothing.

Nothing.

My hands disappeared. My classmates disappeared. I kicked and kicked in a panic, searching for the surface and finding only brown – I did not know where I was, I did not know where anyone else was – I kicked and kicked and imagined I'd reached the center of the lake, where no one would ever find me except Nessie... Finally in exhaustion I stopped fighting and lo, I did float to the surface.

Yeah. Lost in six feet of water.

*

I took that class 20 years ago, so I don't honestly remember some of the details I included here, like tree branches being blown down in the wind. However I will never forget how I panicked.

I am easily claustrophobic now: in the children's tent; in a cave; or on the mountain in a storm when I've fallen and have to unclip from my board, struggling through waist-deep snow to reach a steeper pitch, and then clip in again and struggle to get upright, my hand sinking in the snow and my board sinking, too. At such moments I want to rip off my helmet and goggles and breathe, breathe, breathe.

*

Now see, I think a lot of blog posts read as if they were about something else. As if they were code.

No?

¹I had to look up that phrase. In totally unrelated wondering: how is it we still use a phrase that originated more than 1000 years ago?

6% moisture content

Last night my father-in-law called us to get the number for Mt. Bachelor's weather report. It was just an excuse. I mean, he did want to know that phone number but of course he could have looked it up himself; his call was an excuse to talk with his son about the storm.

I never knew any family so aware of the weather. During last month's dismayingly dry, warm spell my husband, his sister and his brother all explained to me – independently – that winter was being kept at bay by a high-pressure front off the Pacific coast. (I think it was a high-pressure zone. Maybe it was a low-pressure zone. I never listen to their words; I listen to the tone in their voices.) At any given moment my sister-in-law can tell me where the clouds are on a weather map and what it means for us; and any of them can discuss the current situation on the mountain passes.

It matters, they tell me. Here in Oregon the weather is changeable, and it matters.

Oh, I know. I check Mt. Bachelor's report on weekends, too. But still. This hyper-awareness of the weather is a continual reminder to me that Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore.

My husband was not able to take a call from his father last night because on Wednesdays he goes out with the boys. They skin up the Cinder Cone after work. Last month Wednesdays were miserable for them because the weather remained so warm and dry, but last week! and last night! Last night they skied in a storm, windy and very cold with poor visibility, relying on headlamps rather than the moon – but the snow, my husband told me, was so incredibly beautifully light: six percent moisture content, he said.

So I talked with my father-in-law instead. He told me about the situation on the Santiam Pass and I told him it was snowing lightly at our house, which is at a higher elevation than his house, and he said he'd call his son in the morning to hear a report on Mt. Bachelor's conditions.

Then I hung up and stood at the window awhile watching the snow fall.

Penny for your thoughts

We brainstormed different projects she could do for her 100 Days¹ celebration. She could draw a picture of 10 dragons and photocopy it 10 times. She could draw a picture of five dragons and photocopy it 20 times. She could draw five mamas and five babies and photocopy that 10 times... She could count out 100 beads, grouping them by color or shape, and string a necklace. She could make a pattern of 100 perler beads which I could iron into one object.

"I want to count 100 pennies," she said. "I want to tape them to posterboard."

One hundred pennies on posterboard will be really heavy, I told her.

"I can carry it," she said.

We don't have enough tape, I told her.

"We can use glue," she said.

Finally I blurted: Pennies are boring!

That gave her pause; but then she insisted, "Pennies aren't boring."

So my daughter spent an hour attaching 100 pennies to posterboard with 100 pieces of tape, proudly labeling it, "100 pennys on poster bord." She also wrote three questions about her project across the back, quizzing my husband and my son and myself repeatedly.

It's actually not that heavy. She folded it in half and carried it to class herself.

***

When you're six, posterboard is not boring. Pennies are not boring. In fact both pennies and posterboard are rare objects when you're six; it's only in high school, I think, that a person learns to groan over such stock in trade.

***

Over dinner we talked about how 100 pennies equals a dollar, my husband and I joking about what they might say at the grocery store if handed 100 pieces of posterboard with 100 pennies taped to each. (This idea astonished the children, who hadn't really understood that a dollar bill and a hundred pennies are equal.) I should take a picture of that posterboard, I said, and email it to Planet Money².

¹ 100th day of school. Apparently people celebrate this day across the U.S. I'd never heard of it before.

² I am totally in love with Planet Money. If you aren't listening, GO LISTEN.

Snnnnnnnnnnowwwwwwwwww!

That's better.

Ski report today:
18" in 12 hours | 20" in 24 hours | 23" in 72 hours: "Holy Cow - we got dumped on overnight! Today's going to be a good one, start coming up with a good idea to get out of work and come play in the Powder at Mt. Bachelor!"

School report today:
Two hour delay.

Um.

Can we?

Anticipation

Y'all have been drowning in snow but we haven't. Snow hasn't fallen here for weeks and weeks. It's been relentlessly dry and warm. On Mt. Bachelor the slopes have been icy, and the snowpack is so reduced that lava rock juts out of the ridges.

That's about to change.

Saturday night some friends hosted their fourth annual Ullr Pray for Snow party, in which everyone dressed like the Norse God/dess of Snow (or an 80s ski bum) and sacrificed items on a bonfire. No snow fell that night and it was still warm — but the wind picked up. The wind howled. Sparks from the fire flew up into the darkness, up toward the stars. After every excessive gust people cheered and our hosts cried, "Ullr is breathing!"

Here it town, two days later, it's still warm and still dry but the wind, I tell you, the wind has not ceased. It's blown shingles off my house. It's blown pine tree debris everywhere. For awhile I thought a tree or at least a large limb might fall onto the house and crush me.

Ullr is breathing.

In a ski town like this, a strong winter wind stirs the populace. We're eager for the storm. We're all anticipation: skis waxed and sharpened, gear pre-loaded, car full of gas: all ready for the winds to slacken just enough that we can ride.

Workspaces

When I visited Portland this week, my co-workers asked about my home office. Here it is. You can see the remains of my lunch today: previously frozen chicken nuggets, plus almonds, water and coffee. Also, printed reading material: 1 brochure (work-related), 1 local newspaper (peripherally work-related) and 1 70-year-old edition of Wuthering Heights (for perspective on work).

Every evening I put it all away, because this is my bedroom.

Well, that was embarrassing

When the doorbell rang, I was placing halibut on the counter to thaw – some of the wild halibut my parents caught in Alaska last year – in anticipation of tonight's stir-fry.

"Oh!" I said. "Heidi!" I'd forgotten I'd placed an order with her, but I was pleased to see her; she's an interesting woman, German I think; she's running a farm out in Tumalo. She'd brought me two dozen eggs & a bunch of fresh-cut thyme,* and we chatted a bit. I gave her the empty egg cartons and two clamshells I'd saved for her. (Deschutes County doesn't recycle clamshell plastic.)

Just as she was leaving, the Schwan's delivery man appeared. With four boxes of frozen food.

Oop.

Well! But! They were small boxes! and I'll be out of town next week, and my husband is too out-of-practice to work a full day, supervise the kids' homework, do the bedtime routine and cook a Michael Pollan-approved meal...

Yes. It was embarrassing.

_

What about you? Do you sometimes rely on instant meals?

*It's 55 degrees here. Her greenhouse is thriving. Go figure.