It's the Holidays - and Friends Help

I am buried and overwhelmed and wearing my Don Quixote hat these days when my general outlook is more Sancho Panza on a good day and Aldonza on a bad one.

But I have a friend named Liz. She's a new friend but I met her Doing Things. Things I mean to write about here but keep quiet when push comes to shove because the desire to hide has gotten larger than the desire to share. Doing Things is how I keep it from growing too big.

Liz and Nathan sent me a package in a plain brown wrapper. I have said before that you cannot stop The Taunting, but this year the windmills and the Don Quixote of it all made it very, very close. But here it is the Taunting in it's plain brown wrapper - it followed all the rules - I knew it was coming but I didn't know what it was, it had packages that needed to be opened in order. And shockingly and beautifully it had Poppets. A Poppet. You cannot lie to a Poppet.

One of the Red Poppets came over to help and check out the Paper Poppet. Like all good taunting Packages this one came with instructions. The Paper Poppet is so beautiful and so full of Poppet that it was decided that he was going to have to find a way to be. He has decided that he would like to be a Billboard on a rooftop in Poppetropolis or perhaps a wall mural in the side of a building but he thinks he would prefer the rooftop view.


The Paper Poppet carefully removed himself from his charge much to the delight of the local denziens. The Choco's appeared joyfully on the scene. Not only was it chocolate it was chocolate that they had never tried before! NewThings!

And then they noticed that they needed to call over their friends and shouted across to the circus where the Coffee Poppets had been working out logistics for a food stand.

Because there is very little that makes that particular social circle as happy as things that combine their two passions, and here it was!

In bar form for relatively easy transport!

Plans and recipes were being discussed with logistics being undertaken and plans made to return for the others  . . . which left Red alone until Merri wandered by with her red balloon.

Packages are very exciting. It's all the wondering; "What could it be" and the excitement of red yarn.

Merri helped Red with the package and they spent some time guessing because they knew that Liz is a Maker of Things, and that meant that the inside could be almost any Thing.

And when it was opened the Thing was the best kind of Thing - A Thing from a Friend that could live in Poppetropolis and also BE a Friend!

They have all informed me that her name is Scarlet.

Sunray is looking into a rental for her now.

Sleep, Once having found The Key,

was loathe to leave once established.

Reinforcements have been called in .

It is by Caffeine alone

It begins . . .

It is by Caffeine alone I set my mind in motion.

It is by the Beans of the Java

That the Thoughts acquire Speed

The Hands acquire Shaking

The Shaking becomes a Warning

It is by Caffeine alone I set my mind in motion.

V-Day - The Boy, His Girl and his Coffee Poppet

It started several weeks ago, and became quite epic. As we dug out of the Plethora of Celebrations and Midterms we realized another Holiday was coming. And we checked in with each other to see if anyone at The House was going to do anything about it.

When everything was said and done, someone was indeed going to do something about it.

Last year The Boy and His Girl were a couple and it was their first Valentines Day with each other or anyone else who wasn't related to them. Which was sweet. He got her a Simply Pink Poppet which is not the same as this but it's close.

But he had gotten pretty sick at that time and couldn't do much of anything else for her, so this year he wanted to do something to "make up for it".

This is the point where I need to observe that

a. The Boy is not yet 16 and

b. His Girl didn't feel that way about this year, or last year, at all.

So when asked about plans (as they are a heavily chaperoned pair, and his plans require group arrangements between families) he informed me that he would like to prepare a meal for her. Which was very sweet.

But she was thinking of preparing a meal for him too - So I was starting to envision a kind of Valentine's Potluck - where they split appetizers, main course, dessert and sides . . . and I was secretly thinking "Oi! this could get complicated. "

We gave them another week to figure it out. Some outside things played into their decisions. My Perfectly Normal Husband was going to have to work that day, so I would be available for chaperoning and shlepping if necessary. His Girl and he were deciding where it would be easier to cook and The House was chosen as the more convenient location for they both have Sisters but his is a bit older and hers is good bit younger. While I'm not sure what went into the final decision (since they are chaperoned, not spied upon) it was eventually decided he would make a Valentine's Day Dinner for her.

So it was now 3 weeks before V-Day. He discussed options with me, and chose the menu. All this week I will be posting the recipes he chose and the pictures of him and the Poppets making them, and the stories that go with learning new things. So I will be blogging more about the menu selection later - there are four recipes, plus this. I will post one per day and link back to the previous ones.

It was an epic dinner. The dessert took three days to make.

As he sat with the cookbooks spread out and listed the things that she liked, one of the things that came up was that she enjoyed cappuccino. He had made a very conscious choice not to get her a material gift so that it would not be "too much". They were still kids after all. But he did have funds saved up and he wanted to use them for the meal. He had mentioned getting a cappuccino machine previously (Which to be honest was a bit of a sore point since he had broken mine when he was a toddler and I hadn't replaced it since.)

I told him that if he wanted, he did have enough money saved up to get a lower end machine if he would like to serve cappuccino in his dessert plan. Then we would have a cappuccino machine here and he would also no longer be held responsible for his wanton act of destruction when he was four - not that I was holding a grudge.

He said it would be nice if we had one and told me to look. I was hoping to find small easily stored one - but was having no luck.

Now we must digress a bit to the way Poppets come into the house. My two Coffee Poppets have been here a while and know their way about, and have created a few new ways of their own. The Taunting brought many other Poppets to the house and The Boy, and The Girl of the House have small populations of their own, usually all of the Poppets get together and integrate pretty quickly, but the Many Holidays were so hectic, that some of the Poppets had barely come out at all.

So it wasn't until all this Cappuccino Conversation that The Boy's Very Own Coffee Poppet who came here by way of Grandma's House popped out of his box and introduced himself to the Highly Caffeinated and Slightly Less Caffeinated Coffee Poppets.

Maybe he was hibernating until he heard about the machine.

The Boy informed us that his name is Cappy.

The Boy and I were unsuccessful in finding the right Cappuccino Solution for The House, but Cappy knew a source, and suggested that the Poppets who ran the Poppet Cafe might be interested in helping.

There was immediate agreement with Cappy's plan. There was a legend of a stovetop steam based cappuccino maker with a Clik-Clak mechanism that helped steam the milk.

It wasn't from around here. They had to go where Steam was very important to get it to the House.

Cappy led the way and the other Coffee Poppets handled the negotiations on my behalf as well.

Dr. Black appreciated the idea of not adding yet another electric appliance to the mix and knew that the proposed machine was smaller. He arranged the transport. All of the steampunk poppets escorted the Bialetti Mukka Express to it's delivery point.

And they left behind some very excited Coffee Poppets.

Cappuccino for Valentine's Day! And Purim! And Mother's Day! And Birthdays! And UnBirthdays! And Days that have "y" in them!

They immediately got The Boy and I away from our computers to observe the wonder and the glory of the New Thing.

Luckily, we were fine with letting them unwrap it - I'm not sure what happens when you get between Coffee Poppets and a new coffee delivery system and I'm not really willing to find out.

Inside the package was a measure, a CD and a booklet. You know how some booklets of instructions have approximately 17 languages in them, but somehow English is always first? This was not one of those booklets. Oh there were a bunch of languages alright. And English was in there but symbolized by a little British Flag, without a US Flag to be seen, and that British Flag only came in after Italian and French.

After looking at the instruction manual we checked out the CD and we were really happy that we did - because I was so NOT kidding about the "Clik Clak" mechanism and I was much happier to see a video demonstrating it. Even knowing what it is and what it does now, it still scares the heck out of me when I hear it. It sounds like the top is going to pop off and there's no way of knowing "when" because it just does it when it's ready.

Now we are thoroughly familiar with the finer points of the Bialetti Mukka Express. Having read that we had to make three cups of espresso and throw them away, we realized we were going to have to get started immediately if we were going to get good at this before Valentine's Day.

The Trio of Coffee Poppets was persistent but we just didn't know when we were going to get that much time. Making the cappucino doesn't take very long but the cleaning and care instructions are very specific and time consuming. Then we got a Blizzard which gave us oodles of free time to perfect our technique and "season" the pot. Which I really think means make sure all of the industrial oils that might remain in the aluminum are gone by the fourth cup.

So here's what the Bialetti Mukka Express looks like before you start.

And then you have to take the whole thing apart.

How much water you put in the bottom portion apparently depends on whether or not you use a gas or electric stovetop. If you do use an electric stove top you should have a ceramic cover, which I happen to have, because I'm a snob who likes evenly distributed heat.

Lucky thing too, because you're not supposed to put it directly on a heating element and if we had no way to make our cappuccino and we were stuck in the blizzard we would have been very sad humans.

So we poured the water into reservoir tank where what they call a "line" actually is a ridge that looks like part of the construction. We had figured it out but that's one of the places where we were glad they gave us the CD.

And then you put the metal filtery bit on top of the reservoir tank. Cappy discovered it was bouncy.

Then you were supposed to put in your ground espresso roasted coffee. The Boy stopped the process at this point. "But we don't have espresso!" But it just so happened that we did. I picked it up in the pre-blizzard Valentine Shopping. I had thought I had purchased ground espresso. The Highly Caffeinated Poppet however, was happily diving in and out of whole beans like a toddler in a ball pit.

"We shall have to have freshly ground espresso instead!" immediately throwing things out of the cabinet in his rush to the grinder. "Oh how we shall suffer!" He chortled gleefully.

He's really quite excitable. I'm not sure having espresso around him is a good idea.

Oh well.

Now that the beans were ground, (and they did smell delicious, and strong, and fresh - Oh how we suffer!) we moved on to the next step. We are supposed to fill the filtery bit with the grounds and we are NOT supposed to tamp it down. We also have to make sure that all of the ridges around the thing are clear. Because if they aren't the machine creates a lot of pressurized steam that has places to escape and if things don't go boom, they will at least spray hot steam and messy half made espresso everywhere. So we made sure we didn't do it. Much.

See the Ghiardelli Chocolate? That's the base for The Boy's dessert - I'll be writing about making that tomorrow.

To make espresso in the Mukka Express you do everything except add the milk. If you are making cappuccino you have to fill the top part up to the indicator line ( which looks like a ridge) with milk.

And you have to press the button down on the Clik Clak mechanism.

Cappy of course, would not hear of anything else.

You can actually make a latte - or as the British based instructional CD told us a "Simple Delicious Milky Coffee". Which makes me wonder if they don't have lattes in Britain and where the derivation of Latte comes from. Or if it's one of those things that happen when a script goes through a translator before it gets to the voice over talent. It's cafelatte in Italian, Americans call it latte here, but latte by itself means milk, it says "latte" in the English version of the written instructions and "cafelatte" in the Italian version of the written instructions.

So I think that when the translation company got the original Italian script they translated "cafelatte" directly and literally into "milky coffee" not knowing that English had incorrectly borrowed the back half of the compound word. I also wonder if there are confused english speakers in Italy getting milk when they are expecting coffee and confused Italians in Britain getting coffee drinks when they order milk.

Translation for multiple countries of the same material used to be a big part of my job so these things may just be amusing to me. Now American owners of Bialetti Mukka Express may think that the British say "milky coffee" instead of latte. My own experience tells me that the voice over script was probably finalized by the translation service but print materials are usually checked over by native speaker to catch possible problematic nuances.

It kind of makes you wonder how different cultures manage to communicate at all. I think it's kind of awesome that we do - even if we make mistakes sometimes.

To make a latte instead of cappuccino you add much more water and you don't push the button down so it's not pressurized from anything other than the espresso steam.

In any case we were going for cappuccino, so we filled up the upper part with milk to the ridgy line, pushed the button down and waited for the patented Clik-Clak mechanism to do it's thing.

And with a sound that was a lot less subtle than the one in the video, it did indeed do it's thing.

And so we kept making cappuccino until we perfected our technique - The Boy did quite well, but I had one small incident with the upper and lower parts not being completely sealed. . . . everything is fine and cleaned up.

And now we're regularly getting this:

So the first of the new recipes that were being brought out for the Valentine's Day dinner was a success, thanks to the Steampunk and Coffee Poppets and Cappy taking a direct hand on His Boy's behalf.

Tomorrow, will be about the Chocopoppets helping him with the Peanut Butter Chocolate Mousse Terrine. Complete with the actual recipe.

World Fantasy Con - Collaboration Happens

Here is what is now officially titled " The House Where Halloween Things Live When It Isn't Halloween"

This is a picture when it was still in front of Poppetropolis Proper.

(Poppetropolis is the area in NYC where the Embarrassed Embassy is based, it's like Chinatown, or Little Italy but where all the expats from Poppet Planet live).

The Embarrassed Embassy is not yet a year old - but it's 1st anniversary will be soon. Like many construction projects in many cities, it has undergone some changed scope and is behind schedule. It is part and parcel of my reaction to Lisa's art. Lisa and others have told me that my reaction to her work is art. I'm still struggling a little with that.

But it is what it is.

In September, when she asked if I would do something with her for Halloween, I said yes. I had an idea that didn't belong to Poppetropolis and it would be more fun to do it with her. Then later we decided to bring it to the World Fantasy Convention and debut it there. Which is really grand but a little scary because we hadn't met in the Meatworld.

And so we got to explore a little of the surreality of our relationship and reaction to each other. There is no question that we had a relationship, but it was in the new ether of the internet, which is not the same as in person. We were now collaborating cross country, but the first voice contact we had was a phone call to let her know I was at the hotel.

We had emailed and shipped and consulted, and had pictures of each other and, I think a place in each other's lives, ( unbalanced, but equally real) and yet we were still introducing ourselves to each other, but we do know things.

One of the things we knew, is that we were both people who had been involved with conventions before. This ended up being a very useful thing over the weekend. I helped with the set up, I was very happy to be useful. I am always happier when I'm useful.

We set up the art show together and talked while we did. Here are the pictures of most of it without the bid sheets - for posterity . .

The sculpture in the center of this shot is called Blackbirds, and I believe Lisa will be making an 8ft version of it in the next year.

I was not the only person who travelled from distant coasts however, Lisa met with a Poppet Collector from Australia, who asked for a picture of the Poppet that Has Travelled to Australia and Back and the Creator of Poppets.

She is a wonderful lady and an excellent dinner companion. She was actually Queen of Australia and New Zealand, so I was honored by her Poppet's acceptance of an invitation to visit The House Where Halloween Things Live. This marks the first Visiting Poppet to that House.

He is an Outside Steampunk Poppet.

Here he is being greeted by Elul, who made the trip out to show off the House along with two of the Jackos and about 10 other East Coast Expats.

The Australian Outside Steampunk Poppet converses with the Raven and peruses the House Where Halloween Things Live Library.

Of course there was Poe. The book on the table is The Purloined Letter.

Many things happened at World Fantasy Con, I'm still sorting a bunch of it out. I'll write about it while I'm processing it. I have funny anecdotes, and weird ones, and serious ones. I will probably not tell them all. I have anecdotes that involve food:

Anecdotes of Lisa and the Poppet who lives on her desk.

Our mutual love of coffee.

and what it means when people ask you questions like "What do you do?" or "Don't I know you" or "What do you want out of this."

And of course the big one "Why are you doing this"

I think I have begun to have an answer for that last one -

I used to process all the things I couldn't say through words, but I put the words aside. It stopped being safe.

I used to use all the things I felt to communicate, when I was wearing the skin of someone else, so the personal could become universal. It was like breathing, but I learned how to hold my breath and now I cannot exhale.

I used to build things to create small worlds or hold other worlds at bay. I'm still doing that.

The words are too complex, the feelings are too deep to show in someone else's skin, I may have spent to much time trapped in my own. I can't use the older tools I have to process what happens to me when I react to Lisa's art. So I'm building things to help me understand my own reactions. I'm building things to share and show what's going on on the inside.

I'm having trouble telling the story, so I'm building it instead.

It's a stealth story, I've hidden it inside things you might use to tell your own.

And if you see or play with something I've built, then you're wearing my skin, sharing my world which is all ajumble and full of art. So it shouldn't surprise me at all that there are Poppets there.

I am just a little (very!) surprised that other people like it too.

The thing is, I would make it anyway. I don't think I could not make it.

Maybe that makes it art after all.

What I Did on My Summer Vacation - Table of Contents

Vacation

This puts the What I Did on My Summer Vacation series links in chronological order so that you can read it like a story.

Also it allow you to find the Mushroom Soup recipe really quickly . . . .

1. The First Cup of Vacation

2. Coffee and the Beach

3. Drinne's Big Adventure

4. Vacation Soup - The Longwood Gardens Mushroom Kind

5. Vacation as Inverted by the Go-Gos

6. The Last Cup of Vacation

The First Cup of Vacation

It will come as no surprise to anyone who has been reading lately that I need a vacation.

We are on vacation.

It's the kind of vacation where you change your location but not necessarily your chores, responsibilities or company.

You change your pace, you change all your colors.

You change the how you do things.

And see different things until you see with different eyes.

And hopefully with your different eyes you can find the pieces of yourself that you scattered about or ignored.

That's only when you let yourself relax into it. It doesn't work if you let the responsibility part overwhelm the change part.

I made some important decisions this year, because I need to recharge this time.

Decision the first: I took the train. Travelling in the car is stressful for me. I am not fond of cars, driving is not freedom for me. I am from a city where the transit system works and I am a child of an era where independence was expected. A bus pass is freedom - driving is responsibility.

You had to wait for a license and be able to afford a car - a bus pass took you all the way from Ancient Egypt to Post Modern before third grade.

So the train took away a great deal of the stress.

Decision the second: A long vacation. The problems with a "quick trip" or a multiple stop trip - there is no unwinding, you are always preparing to go to the next place - the extended family, the vacation spot, home. Day 1 travel, Day 2 recover from travel, Day 3 relax, Day 4 anticipate leaving, Day 5 travel.

Ridiculous - Silly Humans thinking that is anything like a vacation.

12 days - with no long drives. Much better.

And I am back in the real Northeast, with my Dearest Friend and My Perfectly Normal Husband. The Boy and His Girl, and The Girl of the House.

And some Poppets.

How does this go? I packed quickly due a change in circumstances that said "If you really want enough time you need to be on a train in three hours" and I told those circumstances "Damn Straight!" and in packing surveyed the Poppets to ask who would like to come to Massachusetts with us. To my surprise the Coffee Poppets said that they would like to go.

I didn't know they travelled.

They do now. Winter and the Most Adventurous Red are with me too, but the Coffee Poppets have understood the nature of this very necessary vacation best. They saw the change in light, they assessed the situation and determined that yes, it was a very good place to relax and do the things they liked to do in a slightly different way. And you might well remember that they are quite opinionated about what should be done. They were very pleased that the local establishment provided the necessary tools with a great deal of local flavor.

Organic? Of course! Free Trade? Of course!

Unpretentious Name? Excellent - very different from home - no need to put on airs here. It will do.

They took the beans to the grinder.

They wondered why we do not have purples in our packaging at home. They came up with a theory that salespeople were afraid that we might not recognize coffee beans if the bags aren't coffee colored and determined that they thought the purple was cheery.

Coffee should be cheery. And Mandatory.

The grinder was the same manufacturer as the one at home but quite different in form and function.

How wonderful! We can learn a new grinder! What a great vacation.

This grinder is far more Poppet Friendly than the one at home. There is a balcony to watch the beans on their transformation to become coffee.

It's like when Humans get to watch a hibachi chef prepare their meals.

There is pleasure in watching the process.

The coffee maker is much different than the one at home. It is larger.

Here in Massachusetts we use a reusable gold filter. Others humans drink coffee here - so I do not drink alone.

They make a note to try harder to find a gold filter for home.

This machine is also more Poppet friendly and they measure themselves against their favorite kind of ruler.

They are five and a half cups tall.

The selection of mug is terribly important for taste and temperature.

It affects the coffee.

Sometimes containers are as important as content.

The cups and creamers are an amalgam of people and places literally over one hundred years. The house we are in is the house of a shipwright, the wood from a beloved ship involving the member of the Very Dearest Friend's family. The house was built by an Auntie.

Probably the cups are not the age of the house, but they do span the decades and have an appropriately rustic feel.

The Highly Caffeinated Coffee Poppet finds a mug that is reminiscent of the china at home that we use for High Tea. However like the house itself it is somewhat softer, older and gentler.

Still this is not the right mug for the first cup of Vacation Coffee

This one is promising, it looks very peaceful.

Vacation mornings should be peaceful.

A vacation mug should hold coffee for a long period of lingering over breakfast conversation with one's Very Dearest Friend.

Yes this will do.

It's vacation, use half and half instead of skim.

Look local Peach Bread!

They discus the possibility of having Peach Bread at the Poppet Cafe.

In order to determine that we should actually examine the Peach Bread.

It seems like it might like to be toasted, very, very, lightly.

OK .

Ready.

Start your Vacation.

Peach Bread is excellent when lightly toasted.

The light here is different.

It has a brighter, bluer quality.

Today we will do familiar things differently.

Tomorrow we will do new things comfortably.

Coffee Poppets apparently travel well and make excellent vacation companions.

I will work on seeing with different eyes.