What have I been doing with myself?

Two months?  TWO MONTHS and then some?  WHAT HAVE I BEEN DOING WITH MYSELF?  Here's a synopsis for the curious:

September was an odd conglomeration of responsibilities and the lack thereof:  sunny carless days, a long weekend along the northerly stretch of the Long Trail, kicking up my heels but dragging my feet at the prospect of regular employment, so I began picking grapes.  The vineyard is only two miles south of my house, the easiest commute I’ve ever had; it’s a good job when the weather is good and earns me next to no money.  I've learned lots of little things I never would have otherwise:  the difference between good rot and bad rot, how certain varieties can be trained to grow higher up than others, that too much water in the ground drastically reduces yields, that red grapes are far easier to harvest than white ones because the white ones camouflage themselves among the leaves, and that frogs, mice, birds, and snakes all like to make their homes in the vines.  I've also come to the conclusion that I'd rather get paid less to work outdoors and close to where I live than get paid slightly more to commute and work indoors. 

The grapes are just about done now, so I’m supplementing as best I can by substitute teaching every now and then.  Subbing is peculiar since it means going back to my old elementary school, the school I ditched at age twelve in pursuit of a more "progressive" and "rigorous" education.  Being back there now, a decade later, makes me realize how much of a bedroom community this town has become.  These kids feel infinitely more urbanized, or at least suburbanized, than the kids with whom I started school.  Maybe that's just the nature of our ever more technologically homogenized world:  everyone carrying the latest ipod and a glitzier cellphone than I will ever own.

But they're still kids:  they make noise in the hallways, fall off their chairs, draw on their hands with markers, beg for ten minutes of free choice at the end of French class so they can build houses out of playing cards.  Let me just say, the stuff kids draw on their hands is WAY more creative than the coloring worksheets we give them.  You should have seen the little finger-puppets the kindergarteners were drawing onto themselves last week!  And any kid who asks me if she can have a blank piece of paper instead of a coloring sheet gets a definite YES.  And stacking cards?  The skills those sixth-grade boys are exercising when they build card-houses (coordination, fine motor, spatial reasoning) are at least as important as whatever skills they would gain from actually playing Milles Bornes or French Uno (now if I can just get them practicing their French while they stack!).

In other news, I have a peck of Northern Spy apples just begging to be made into something delicious.  (Did I mention I've developed a localvore vegan apple crisp recipe?  It converts pretty easily into an apple tart, too, and involves cornmeal.  If I ever bother figuring out the measurements, I'll post it.)  I also have a whole pile of red cabbages (gleaned from my uncle's abandoned garden) that should get turned into kimchi and sauerkraut; I wonder where my mason jars are...

Meet Magda!

Several weeks ago, a posting on craigslist appeared ad- vertising a "stylish baby blue grease- beater benz."  We're talking a 1978 Mercedes Benz 240-D (that's diesel) with a professional Greasecar conversion so that she runs on regular diesel or waste veggie oil (the kind you can get for free from fast-food joints and other restaurants that fry things).  Hot, no?

I replied to the post, and toyed with going down to and making an offer, but the $700 asking price seemed a bit too much.  So I put it out of my mind.  Then, last week, an email showed up in my box.  Apparently, the Benz was still without a home, and the owner needed it off her hands by the end of the weekend.  "First offer takes it!"  Saturday, I made the hour-long trek in my grandmother's dinky Mazda, through torrential rains and gusting winds, to Waitsfield to check out this beast.  The test-drive was a blast; since it was pouring I got to experience first hand the leaky trunk (she comes with a complimentary bilge pump!), the hole in the passenger-side floor (to accommodate the grease system), and the overall awesomeness of this vehicle.  The driver-side seat belt buckle doesn't really work.  "I never bother with it," the former owner told me, "but you could just use the passenger buckle."  It takes a bit of coaxing to get her started, especially if she's cold from sitting still, and sometimes she prefers starting in neutral instead of in park.  So, I put the Benz through her paces, convinced her to haul us up a steep gravelly hill, and got her going 55 on Route 17.  I was beginning to understand why no one had made an offer, and I was in love.  

The girl selling the Benz was headed down to work on a farm in Costa Rica on Monday, so she was about the most motivated (read: desperate) seller one could ever hope to find.  "If you don't take it," she admitted, "I'm bringing it to the scrap yard."  So I gave her $200 and told her I'd be back to pick up my new baby blue beater as soon as my boyfriend had a day off.  Gabe and I planned on going down Sunday before Magda's former owner took off for warmer climes.  When I tried to call her to figure out where to meet, her phone told me it had been disconnected.  Hmm.  I started to envision myself wandering around Waitsfield like a private eye, going up to locals and saying, "Have you seen this vehicle?"  Or else I'd end up on Judge Judy with this chick, being all like, "I gave her $200 for this car, and then the bitch took it to the junkyard anyway!"  But none of that was to be.  She called me back the next day, and promised to leave the car at Full Circle, the auto place in Waitsfield that specializes in WVO conversions.

Gabe and I drove down after work on Monday afternoon and had to cruise up and down Main Street for a while figuring out just where Full Circle is.  Found the greasebeater, sat for ten minutes or so warming up the glow plugs (and finding the e-brake), and we were off!  Right now, she's running on regular diesel until I put in a new Fleetguard filter for the veggie. For a car that's eight years older than I am, Magda drives impressively.  She is a true German tank, heavier, I think, than my Audi wagon was--you can feel it when she barrels down hills.  She's inspected through next June, and the only real issue that might keep her from passing is the rust. Her previous owner gave me the contact of the shop she'd been going to for inspection:  "He doesn't really care as long as all your lights work.  Also, the rear bumper is a 4-by-4.  He told me, 'That's not really legal; you might want to spray paint it black.'"  So that's the plan:  Bondo the rust and spray paint the bumper (and probably the rest of the car while I'm at it).

Now, I know I said I wasn't going to own a car again anytime soon, but you know what?  I feel better, from an ethical perspective, owning the hottest veggie-beater on the East Coast than I did bumming other people's cars on a regular basis.  Also, my car insurance is now cheaper than it was as just "named-insured" driver insurance, so Progressive is actually sending me money!  Ah, the joys of a car worth nothing.  Did I mention the tax and registration cost me more than the car itself did? 

A note on naming:  I believe in naming.  Rather, I believe in naming everything that shares a large part of one's life.  I had planned on not getting too excited about this car, but the pride I feel toward this vehicle borders on parental.  My first Audi, the first car I ever really loved, came with the name Veronica.  In keeping with the tradition, I named my second Audi Archie.  I toyed with calling the Benz Betty, but there are enough real-life human Bettys in my life that it would be a little weird.  I also wanted the name to have the letter G in it.  I don't know why.  Gabe was pushing for Gunter, but as soon as you get behind the wheel it's clear that the beater is a girl:  stubborn and finicky and way too sexy to be a male automobile.  Naming is not a democratic process.  The name imposes itself and there is no way to refuse it.  Personally, I was leaning toward something very period, very 70s, like Donna or Aretha.  I really liked the sound of Jackie O.  But Magda kept pushing, so Magda it is.  It's got a good German ring, which is important for a German car.  And it's strong.  "It's a strong name," just happens to be my mother's justification for naming me Kate.  I never bought that argument, but here I am.  I guess Magda and I will just have to be strong together.  With our powers combined...

Limping Along, Figuratively

A lame dog, an old friend in the hospital, oh-so-marginally employed, and staring down the barrel of four months of student teaching (that’s an UNPAID full-time internship), but on the rosy side, I’m in love. My writing has dried up the past month or so. Writing has devolved into that purely utilitarian act of putting down on paper what is necessary to complete this particular phase: emails, resumes, applications, a four-inch-thick portfolio to prove I’m ready for student teaching. (No matter that no amount of reading or writing prepares one for even a day in a classroom.) There is no poetry in any of this. I’m leaning on poems from six months ago like a crutch, my words these days are so stilted and stocky, so ho-hum and hokey. So lame. Worry about everything perpetually and experience ends up muffled. I live through a scarf wrapped around my senses, a thick dull blanket. I can’t breathe as deep as I’d like to. I’m crippling myself with worry—not walking nearly as much as I’d like. The mountains feel far away. The days are only getting shorter. It’s one thing to do absolutely nothing in the summer; the sun and swelter are justification enough. But September is long gone and everyone is buckling down, battening down, or just down. If I could, I would hibernate through the next six months.

So why am I writing? Why now? Why not a month ago, two months ago? The obvious answer would be release, relief: things have gotten too heavy, and I’m here to lighten my load. But I’m too much of a Brechtian to believe wholeheartedly in catharsis. In fact, I sincerely hope I don’t spend every subsequent post unburdening myself to the virtual public. What I want to do here is write about anything I don’t have room for in my school papers. Blame it, ironically, on writer’s block: I’ve been sitting in front of my computer on and off all weekend, struggling to write about curriculum design for high school English classes, and I keep getting stuck. I get up, I make tea, I bake, I walk, I chip away at what needs to be done in the garden before winter sets in for real, and all the while wisps and scraps of poems push themselves up through the rubble. I want to give those scraps a space. My paper journal has been given over to notes on books, important phone numbers, and infinite to-do lists. I’ve stopped bothering to write about the first frost, new music, the comings and goings of people, of migratory birds, how the lake is getting lower, what I had for breakfast. These things go unrecorded and my life fades out of my own consciousness. The details of the past weeks are more or less lost. I’d like to correct this tendency before the weeks become years. So I’m going to write. Whatever it takes. That’s why I’m back. This is an attempt to exercise some discipline, some authority. I have to remind myself that I matter. I have to bring myself back from the margins of my own writing, push myself back to the center. I’m not letting any more words go to waste.