One Tomato at a Time

Apparently, a key to homesteading is being home enough to do it. When I returned to work full-time a year and a half ago, I was able to maintain our gardens, chicken coop and home projects largely on weekends and with a bit of attention during the week. Michael, out of work with an injury, was home more than I, and our shift of most roles happened fairly organically. He's been working more these days, and I've had a bumper crop of freelance work lately, which have had a positive effect on all aspects of our lives except our modest homesteading efforts.

There are cucumbers in the garden bigger than my cats; withered tomato plants have collapsed under the weight of their unpicked fruit. Some tomatoes lay disemboweled on the ground nearby, as if having hurled themselves in protest of the shameful neglect. All will likely be lost to a frost tonight, unless I manage to pick it.

Worst of all, we forgot to close up the coop last night, or maybe the last three, and all that's left of Kiki Jones is enough feathers to know she flapped mightily in alarm before making her great escape, or was mightily shaken by whatever abducted her. Do raccoons eat chickens, or just steal their eggs and scare the feathers off of them? I suspect the hen harasser and a recent home invader may be one and the same.

A couple weeks back I woke up to find muddy paw prints on the kitchen floor, walls and counter that were far larger than those possibly created by any animals supposed to be inside our house. Said creature had also torn open a box of -- wait for it -- animal crackers, ripped the limbs from a decorative, desiccated sea star, and shed longish black hairs on the windowsill below the cat door, its obvious point of entry. Since the door had been set to "in only," I had to assume George or Rosemary Cooney had either 1) jimmied the closure or 2) was still in the house. I hadn't heard a racket in the night ... but I've slept through two fires and a hurricane in my life so that might not be an appropriate measure. No one else heard the rampage, either, and we're all in pretty close proximity to the kitchen.

Then a few nights ago I was up late and heard the bell of a cat collar. As we'd already undressed one of the kitties for the night and left her collar on the windowsill for tomorrow's outing, I knew it was feline #2 coming in for the night, and went to the kitchen to lock the door behind her. Instead, a raccoon had poked its head and front arms through the flap, where it was hanging out, shaking the collar with one paw like a tambourine. "HEY!" I yelled. It looked up at me casually, stared at me for a good 10 seconds while it finished its jam session, then slowly retreated, making off with the rhythm instrument.

We moved the cat door the next day to a less accessible window for those creatures not adept at vertical leaping. The kitties firmly believe they are in this category and loudly complain as they hover on the outside stairway that runs by the kitchen window.

Death, neglect, invasion, protestation...all of a tedious, low-grade variety, with comic relief courtesy of the Cooneys. Frankly, everything feels out of whack right now. Michael and I are tag-team parenting and homemaking, we haven't had a date in...I don't know how long. We're still playing catch-up, barely covering our expenses. As a family we share maybe a meal or two together each week, after years committed to converging nightly at the dining room table. The stepkid's grades are down (but at least this has spurred his dad, he and I to check in on Sunday nights about school and schedules for the week ahead). Stellina has to have oral surgery in two weeks. I can't stand the thought of my five-year-old, with her tiny impacted Chiclets, undergoing general anesthesia followed by a good deal of discomfort. But it's doable. We can do all of this.

The day is predicted to be sunny and in the high 60s before tonight's much lower temps. Michael is working all day. If I opt out of attending the stepkid's football game, my daughter and I just might be able to put the gardens to bed, and attend to the hens, and even play on the trampoline quickly filling with fallen oak leaves.

Show-and-Tell

The UPS man gave props to our chickens the other day. I was going from our backyard to my car, latching the gate and bidding adieu to the biddies, who stampede toward me like paparazzi at every sighting. I know better than to take their apparent adulation personally; I am merely the One Who Fills the Feeder. But I admit: I liked it when the package-delivery guy chuckled at the sight and commented how cool it was to see chickens in the 'burbs. Then I got nervous that they were so visible from the road -- they usually hang out deeper in the yard, out of sight of passers-by. I don't want anyone to harass them. Besides me, that is. I had harassed poor Betty Bock Bock into a wicker picnic basket bedded with straw and brought her to preschool just that morning.

I confess: I have been, well, chicken about holding the hens. It doesn't make sense; I've wrangled feral and stray cats; I was a "cat socializer" in a shelter with truly antisocial felines; for years I had a pet-sitting service and confidently cared for typical household critters plus rats and iguanas. I've been bitten, scratched, and dragged once on my ass along icy pavement by a zealous standard poodle puppy. But the hens' skittishness makes me skittish; I jump when they flap. Also, I feel badly about handling an animal that displays such a desperate resistance to being handled. I picked up Captain Pecker once, but she was about to die and gave as much resistance as a supermarket broiler. But I had volunteered Michael to bring a bird in for circle time at Stellina's school and he had to work, and showing up with picture books and a dozen eggs just wouldn't cut it. I gave myself a stern talking to, put on a pair of work gloves that made me feel less vulnerable (vulnerable to what, I don't know. They have no teeth; being pecked is about as painful as being poked with a pair of kid's scissors).

 (Betty, center. Notice the vicious pit bull lounging to the left.)

Betty is a minorca with beautiful blue-black feathers, and truthfully not the quickest of the flock in either acuity or agility. I scooped her up and held her tight, tucking her under my arm. I actually think she liked it -- not getting caught, but being held. She hunkered down in her portable nest and I tried not to think about how many fried-chicken meals may have been transported in that vintage, gingham-lined, ample picnic basket.

Upon our arrival, Stellina's classmates were already seated around the edge of the Earth-motif rug, and teachers Miss Karen and Miss Annie were reminding them that the Montessori ethics of grace and courtesy extend to guest with feathers. Stellina helped me unpack our props -- cartons of eggs, a photo book of unusual chicken breeds, containers of pine shavings and layer pellets, a travel-size waterer -- to which the kids gave a polite, cursory look, but all attention was on the rustling basket. I spread a towel on my lap and made poop jokes, always a guaranteed hit with the 3-to-6-year-old set. And then I acted like I'd held a chicken on my lap more than once (that one time being en route to the vet with a failing Captain Pecker) and Betty seemed calm, like she was a regular attraction on the education circuit. Or she was catatonic. I don't think so...but what do I know of the emotional life and body language of poultry?

The children were quiet and gentle -- all except Stellina, who found it challenging to share a parent and a pet at the same time. In my mind she threw a Tasmanian Devil-caliber tantrum, yet all the while the rest of the kids stroked Betty and asked questions, and her teachers gave me reassuring looks, mouthed "it's okay," and calmly redirected her. As literate as I am of the emotional life and body language of my daughter, she is so central in my consciousness, as symbolized perfectly by her stomping in frustration in the middle of the continental carpet, that I can't possibly see (or hear) her objectively. Miss Annie later assured me that Stellina was composed and cooperative within moments of Betty's and my exit. As for Betty, when I unlatched the basket back at home, she hopped out and joined her flock without incident for a session of bug-hunting among the autumn oak leaves.

Welfare Wedding: Part 1

The real reason the baby daddy and I waited so long to get married was money, or the lack thereof. We nearly headed to town hall and called it a day a while back, just to get the legal deal done, but 1) our Town Hall doesn't officiate marriages, and 2) we have kids who are old enough to both participate in and remember the occasion, which seemed particularly important for my stepson. Let me rephrase that. The only opinion he ever expressed about the wedding was the shrugging of one shoulder, over which he said, "That's cool, whatever," as he headed into his Man, Jr. cave. But the concept of him standing up for his dad and witnessing our community witnessing our commitment to each other and our family...that just felt correct, and solid, and worth a few grand. Because sometimes our family of four still feels ad hoc.

The stepkid came to live with us suddenly and via circumstances that were out of his control, and out of control, in general. He hadn't lived with his dad since he was a baby, but his dad stayed within visiting distance (often walking distance), seeing him on weekends and more if possible. "Possible" depended on the cooperation of, and answering of the telephone by, all parties involved. There's a slew of info that isn't mine to share so I'll stop there. Suffice it to say that when the opportunity -- the imperative -- arose for his son to live with him, it was an answered prayer (despite his avowed atheism).

For our first two years together, we lived around the corner from the stepkid and his mother and baby half-sister. Our relationship -- the stepkid's and mine -- was friendly if distant. I knew from my own childhood experience with steppeople neither to come on too strong nor to infringe on his time with his father. If they invited me to all do something together, great, but I never made that assumption. I certainly never minded when my boyfriend opted for time with his kid over with me. In fact, it would've been a turn-off otherwise; his commitment to his child was one of the first things I loved about him. Let's be honest: I was in the market for a future coparent, and it was assuring to know from the get-go that he was capable of both making a kid and caring about it. I'd also learned from the success of my mother's relationship with my stepmom the importance of cultivating the stepkid's mom's trust and being clear about my role -- particularly that it wasn't hers. This grew complicated when he suddenly lived with me and she was unavailable for a while, and her son was in need of some parenting the likes of which weren't my boyfriend's forte. Like establishing a bedtime and introducing the concept of a "family meal." Don't get me wrong -- this stuff didn't come naturally to me, either. He and I ate dinner, often take-out, at 9pm. We spent our nights at jazz shows and movies, not helping with homework.

The day we found out he was coming to stay, I opened the fridge, surveyed the contents (soy milk and batteries) and wondered what people with kids kept in their pantries. I probably Googled it, then went shopping and hoped for the best. (Beyond the domestic learning curve was the fact that I was vegan at the time and had literally never cooked meat in my life, while he and his dad both liked a side of meat with their meat.)

We had moved to our suburban homestead just three months earlier, a two-flat we cohabitate with my aunt. The idea of an extended-family domicile appealed to us, and afforded us more space and the chance to have a dog after our tiny rental apartment. We were also fairly freaked out by being 30 miles farther from NYC, and homeowners. But the stepkid had his own room, which proved precient when he went from spending four nights a month to moving in. Honestly, we'd picked the location largely with him in mind, whether on a part- or someday full-time basis. The neighborhood is multicultural and mixed-income; the school system is excellent; the town's a few shades more laid back than Greenwich, where he lived at the time, the only kid in his peer group to live in an apartment, a residence the square footage of his best friend's foyer. He was just becoming aware of class difference when I met him. I remember the shock on his face when he learned that most of the world does not, in fact, live in homes with indoor swimming pools. But knowing this is different than experiencing it, and I can't help but think it's more comfortable to now have a group of friends with a true array of cultural and class experiences. Or maybe it just makes me more comfortable...

So, money and marriage. We'd been hobbling along on Michael's carpentry salary plus unemployment  benefits plus some freelance income since our daughter was born (my company had closed shortly beforehand). We could barely cover the bills, never mind fund a wedding, when my mother and grandmother offered us $3,000 toward the cost. Now, I know some brides spend more than that on a gown alone. But my groom and I both agreed that the most -- really, only -- important thing about a wedding gathering was quality eats. And my one Bridezilla demand was a caterer. I'd do everything else myself on the cheap or for free, but if we tried to cook the food or have a potluck I'd either feel stressed out or like a miser. Then we set a date three months out so it would be summer and we could do it outside, before the stepkid's football season and all the back-to-school brouhaha started. Then I booked an ice cream truck. Unsure what to do next, I Googled "how to plan a wedding."

None of the legion of downloadable prenuptial to-do list offered online, however, include "Apply for Food Stamps." But my fiance would soon be out of work for the next three months (and counting) with a back injury-turned-back surgery, following two years of barely scraping by in professions (and hours and paychecks) deeply impacted by the recession.

(They don't actually look like this anymore. Recipients are assigned a discreet debit-type card, much to the ire of conservatives who think people ought to bear a big, scarlet $ sign in the grocery check-out line.)

Let's pause a moment here. Are you as uncomfortable as I am at the mention of welfare? Or of personal finances, in general? Did that $3,000 a couple paragraphs back make you squirm, or is it just me? I get as embarrassed hearing a person's financial specifics as I would the details of their sex life. Wait, that doesn't embarrass me, even a little bit! In fact, nothing feels as private a matter as the state of one's bank statements. Which is why I'm writing this, really. I feel shy discussing money, but I feel shame for being poor, especially poor and a parent. Yet, politically and intellectually, I balk at that reaction. There is nothing shameful with using "the system" as it's intended: a safety net for the welfare, the well-fare, of citizens when they need it. Funds for food have got to be some of our government's most sensibly spent dollars, when one considers illegal wars and bank bailouts and $74k teacups and what have you.

But rest assured, all you critics of the social welfare system: You would totally commend the efforts put forth by the CT Department of Social Services to discourage its use! First, no one answers the phone, ever. There are no hours or directions listed on the website. The area in which it's located would be dangerous if anyone cared enough to commit a crime, but they're too poor and tired to make the effort. Or maybe they're just lazy! Which is how my caseworker likely would have regarded me had I been someone else. But what with my ability to collect and present all relevant forms of ID and paperwork in a neat, labeled file and my Aryan good looks, combined with children to feed and negligible assets with which to do so, procuring food stamps was, all said and done, a snap. And despite opinions to the contrary, I'm thankful, for the stepkid's sake especially, that we can use a card versus Monopoly money at the check-out. He's well aware that times are tight. We've been candid, but with an emphasis on reassurance and sharing with him -- not in detail, but as evidence to that reassurance -- our plan to get outta the hole.  It's so critical to keep the fear and shame shit to our adult selves.

(to be continued...including the Vows-n-Vittles radically transparent budget.)

I ♥ DMV

I'm inspired by a recent Facebook post by Starre Vartan (author, Eco-Chick.com founder, HuffPo blogger, and a global-thinking-Fairfield County-residing embodiment of the LLVS spirit) in which she sang the praises of our local Department of Motor Vehicles. That would be "praise" and "DMV" sharing a rare thought bubble. How rare? Google "I love the DMV." One person in Vermont had a positive DMV experience once. There are a few "I heart DMV" links but I think that stands for the DC-Maryland-Virginia area. Now enter "DMV Sucks." This sentiment has its own website, original anthem, monologues on YouTube, and a poll that 77% of those asked agree with that statement. It's easy to understand why:

Indeed, when it came time to register my car and get a CT license, I readied myself for a day spent maneuvering a fluorescent-lit labyrinth understaffed by civil servants who moved at the can-do clip of barnacles, as had been my experience at every such facility since taking to the road in my '77 orange VW beetle at the age of 16. However, I knew this would be an altogether different encounter even as I pulled into the parking lot and beheld the edifice before me, its facade of windows gleaming in the morning sun.

So my day wouldn't be spent in what resembled a fallout shelter, after all. The door opened from the inside. I stepped aside to let the person through, but he waved me in. "Welcome!" said an elderly gentleman. "Can I help you find the forms you need today?" I looked around, confused. Was this a kindly-yet-addled customer who'd spent so long waiting that he fancied himself an employee? And did I smell coffee brewing? The greeter -- yeah, Fairfield County is so fancy that the DMV has a doorman -- familiarized me with the refreshment cart; the cabinet fully stocked with forms in the cubbies for which they were labeled; a plethora of loose pens and pencils; the waiting room with comfortable-looking cushioned chairs in which people kicked back and read the paper and didn't look a bit irate; and the various, clearly marked stations, each staffed by people who looked as inclined to smile and make eye contact as not. They did both these things; the lines moved steadily; the digital counter on the wall announced at a reasonable pace who's turn was next. Within two hours I was out the door with new plates and a decent driver's license photo, and I had the whole rest of the day to sit in traffic on I-95! I have to renew both my registration and license in August, so we'll see if it's as painless a process again then...

The LLVS Manifesto

This spring marks my 10th year living in Fairfield County, Connecticut. I ended up here as much by accident as someone can. I lived in western MA but had spent most of the previous two years in NYC going to acting school. I was now ready to relocate to the city for real, having gotten a few-years' fill of bucolic college town life (which I might add is a pretty awesome combo: country-n-culture!) after a stint in San Francisco. However, in looking for a place to rent in NY, I quickly realized my temporary loft-share in Tribeca had been a fluke of the finest kind--living on the cheap with an insta-soulmate whom I'd known at a distance in SF in an incredible, huge loft her dad had rented since the 70s.

After an earnest eight-month search of Manhattan, the boroughs and beyond (including, significantly, a quick drive through downtown Westport, CT, in search of coffee. My then-partner and I took note of the sea of luxury SUVs in the Starbucks parking lot--and the tiny blonds with the shake-n-bake tans wearing diamonds and tennis whites who drove them--and laughed at the preposterous notion of spending more than a hot-latte-minute in Stepford. I try to remember that sense of culture shock but can't quite summon it anymore. Those ladies are my peeps now, yo. Well, maybe not my BFFs, but I've been in their houses. When working as a cater-waiter.) Our norm at the time was lesbian families in vintage Volvos, hippie farmers and hipster musicians all coexisting in damn-near liberal bliss...and before that, San Francisco in all its tattooed freaky technicolor greatness.

I grew up working class in MA; I went to a monied school, but the college campus was common ground--I never visited the homes or witnessed the worlds from which my friends and classmates came. Any wealthy friends I had in SF were secretly, scruffily wealthy. So maybe I'd been in money's midst before, but never in the sort of ostentatious, "yeah, we're loaded and want you to know it" way of the Gold Coast, the 30-mile beachfront corridor of Connecticut from Fairfield to Greenwich) we signed a five-year lease on an industrial live-work loft on the Brooklyn/Queens line. The catch was it wasn't yet built, so we gave up our place in Northampton, put our stuff in storage and stayed with friends. And stayed, and stayed...our move-in date got pushed back; there were plumbing problems, then permit problems, then the landlord stopped taking our calls altogether. It was March, it was snowing, we'd spent the last year looking for a decent place to live and now this, and we (and our 3 cats) were wearing out our welcome.

So we called a psychic. Or tried to, anyway. But the psychic's ex-boyfriend no longer had her number, but DID know of an open apartment next door to his office, right across the street from the train into NYC, so maybe we could rent it temporarily (no lease required) and get on with our big-city lives while finding a place in the big city to actually live. So we checked it out. The landlady was 97 years old, owned a goodly amount of the town's commercial properties, said we could move in whenever we wanted and gave us a key, never asking our last names. The rent was inexplicably low for that zip code...or any zip code this side of Iowa. (We soon realized this was because neither the plumbing nor the wiring had been upgraded since the 1940s, but as long as we didn't plug in more than one item requiring electric current at a time, we were fine.) It was a mile from the beach and a short walk from a video store, cafe, grocery store, dive bar, a river, a dive bar on the river, several restaurants, a public park, a post office, and so close to the train we could watch it pull in from the living room window and still make it aboard. The apartment itself was adorable: an oddly shaped, slope-eaved cozy abode above an antique book store, ill-tended enough that we could have several cats and create art and not worry about making a mess, yet well-enough maintained for habitation (if one maintained a loose definition of "habitable.") Compared to a pup tent or a prison cell, it was luxe. And it was, of course, in Westport, Connecticut.

I can't really explain what happened next. What didn't happen is we didn't move to NY. I continued acting classes but got rapidly disenchanted with the whole breaking-into-showbiz thing. I liked the craft of acting but not the profession of it. I was catering to pay the bills when someone suggested I give proofreading a try. I'm a nit-picking Virgo and lived within walking distance of the marketing company that was hiring, so just as haphazardly as I'd stumbled into my new locale I began a career in editorial services. (I'd done a bunch of editing- and writing-type stuff since high school but hadn't circled back to it as a profession. Not that I considered proofreading copyright lines on beer posters a "profession" until I found I'd been doing it for, well, going on a decade. The material has changed, but I still wield a red pen for a living.)

Here's the other thing that didn't happen: We didn't gentrify a neighborhood, or contribute to its future gentrification, by moving there. The same week we landed in Westport there was a spate of break-ins and violence in what would have been our new hood in Queens. In SF I'd lived in the only neighborhoods I could afford but where my presence was clearly not appreciated. And I get it: First come the artists, then comes Starbucks, there goes the reasonable rent for working-class people of color. In contrast, we kind of livened up our new setting. We were (and still are) white, but were enthusiastically tattooed and drove a 20-year-old shit box of a car and were pretty obviously girlfriends. In a town with zero visible gay presence, holding hands at the library garnered the equivalent raised-eyebrow response as an orgy might in San Francisco.

Time passed and relationships changed and three years ago my boyfriend (did you catch that?) and I were faced with the decision to either stay in Connecticut or leave. Head to Brooklyn, perhaps. (Other spots we fancied, Vancouver or Seattle or either of the Portlands, were out for now; our radius needed to stay small in order to see his son on weekends.)

So we bought a house, and we got a dog, and because we got a dog we built a fence. And within 4 months his 9-year-old son came to live with us, and 4 months after that I got knocked up. I went from a shack on the tracks full of lezzies and cats to a mortgage with a man and a white picket fence; from midnight jazz shows and tattoo conventions to parent-teacher conferences, diapers and family dinners.

I went into total despair. I felt homesick but didn't know where home was. I loved my family but couldn't shake the sensation that they were somebody else's. What had started a decade ago as an odd and temporary change of address had become a lifestyle, and not an alternative one. And I felt ashamed and petty, ungrateful for this beautiful life I had in fact created. Not just the baby, but all of it.

So I decided to live here. Not just dwell, but live. Let my freak flag fly, as they say, and still love what the burbs have to offer rather than pine for the mythic thing I'm missing out on. We're still near the beach. My stepkid can walk there with his friends. He goes to an excellent, safe, surprisingly diverse middle school. I've found my peeps, finally -- other new parents and transplants and artists and artists at heart who still feel like they're playing grown-up. I have a yard to garden and a multi-culti neighborhood; locking the car is optional even if owning a car isn't; the air's fairly clean (when the wind's right I can smell both the ocean and Pepe's pizza from my front steps) and the downtown is downright pristine. And for golly's sake, I'm only an hour and change on the train from NY, even if it sometimes seems a world away.

What does Livin' La Vida Suburbia mean? Taking full advantage of and joy in where it is my mail's delivered, every day. Finding the humor in it, too, because it's a crazy-funny place. But not in the way I did before. No eye-rolling, no hating on the well-to-do for sport allowed.


Living in suburbia is purchasing a pedigree dog; Livin' La Vida Suburbia is adopting a multiple-pedigree dog from the Bronx.

Living in suburbia is a matching patio set from Pottery Barn; Livin' La Vida Suburbia is a kids plastic picnic table retrofitted with an umbrella advertising Hot Italian Sausages, both procured from the town dump.

Living in suburbia is wearing Lilly Pulitzer; Livin' La Vida Suburbia is wearing Lilly Pulitzer to clean the chicken coop.

I'd love to hear the ways in which you, my burb-dwelling brethren, are LLVS. Please do share!