Laptop Story Board

I'm lame. Pathetic. Bored with sorting through the scraps of 2009. How do they do it? The CPAs? Stay focused? Over and over and over. Miss entire calendar months year after deadly year. Thank god for their patience, their perseverance. Mine the size of a pea. Dwindling as each hour passes. My green eyeshades askew.

Piss-poor light burns, blurs my vision gluing contact lenses to my eyeballs. The dimmer switch on the vintage ceiling fixture purely for low wattage ambiance. Holiday cocktail party mood lighting. Up and down. Up and down. I wander around looking for busy work. Anything. Yesterday I dusted each and every liquor bottle on the 19th century tea trolley masquerading as a bar. Unscrewed the caps to get every speck.

So I did what any respectable, out of ideas, bored spitless, brain dead warrior would ... unplugged my laptop, grabbed my tax stuff and retreated upstairs to the plush white coolness of my bedroom. Plopped myself in the middle of my queen bed, spread the necessary papers to either side and leaned cozy into a deep banking of pillows. My legs tucked Indian-style, my lapboard across my knees. Ah. Ready. Familiar. My comfort zone. Tens of thousands of hours typing classwork on a Smith Corona, calculating thirteen column spreadsheets with my trusty HP and preparing dense business presentations as college melted into grad school and my MBA program into banking, consulting, board work.

Home base. My laptop centered on my lapboard. My ever-faithful lapboard purchased in the early 1970s at Charette's on Route 128 outside Boston when computer start-ups sprang like mushrooms along the first high tech corridor. Computers the size of my kitchen would have eaten my lapboard. My portable desk splattered with graffiti ramblings, notes and scribbles penned over the years with whatever occupied my writings or analyses. Three and a half decades imprinted on the rough, splintering, unvarnished wood held together by clear packing tape.

My lapboard not only indelibly recounts the story of my adult life, but frames the evolution of the writing implement at the latter part of the twentieth century. Who knew that my lowly lapboard hidden on the dusty floor under my Queen Anne slant front desk would chronicle the history of assorted and sundry pens, pencils and markers while memorializing events, pop stars ... even autographs and missives from former loves? A veritable Rosetta stone.

Bic ballpoints blob faded purplish-blue ink in pop art lettering the names of pets, years lived in various towns across the country, telephone numbers of plumbers and friends forgotten. Extra fine Pilot Razor Points tallied broadcast deals funded replete with debt-equity ratios. Pentel .5mm mechanical pencil lead with removable end caps doodled calculations hastily.

Vestiges of a life lived. Not unlike the bits of paper piled into neat categories on my dining table. Recorded moments in time. The story detailed. An accounting.

An accounting! Geesh. I haven't strayed far. Finish the tax prep already!

Cheers, if you are not snoozing! Apologies, if you are.

Pumpkin Squash Soup and Blueberry Buckle

You guessed it! This is a concerted effort specifically intended to further delay attacking the mess on my dining room table. To finish. Hell, I have to begin first. But voila ... more distractions from the task at hand! Thought you might enjoy the recipes for the sweet and savory concoctions I whipped up yesterday. Both are easy, easy, easy. And oh so delish.

Pumpkin Squash Soup

• In a stock pot over low heat gently saute 1 finely chopped onion with 3 cloves of finely chopped garlic, 1/2 cup finely shredded carrots and 1 finely diced green apple (or Bosc pear) in 1/2 cup chicken broth from a 32 ounce container.
• Add 2 tablespoons sliced crystallized ginger and 1/3 cup peanut butter.
• When onions are translucent, add 1 large can of pumpkin, 1 butternut squash cubed plus 2 cups of the chicken broth.
• Turn heat to medium allowing squash to cook.
• Add pepper to taste, 1 teaspoon curry powder, 1/2 teaspoon cumin and dash of salt.
• Mash squash when softened. then add remaining chicken broth.
• Let simmer over medium low heat for at least 30 minutes.
• Correct seasoning.
• Serve hot with a dollop of sour cream, warm crusty baguette and a salade verte.

Blueberry Buckle

• Beat 1 egg and 2/3 cup sugar well.
• Sift together 1 1/2 cups flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder and 1/2 teaspoon salt and set aside.
• Mix together 1/3 cup milk, 3 tablespoons vegetable oil and 1 teaspoon vanilla and set aside.
• Alternate adding dry and wet ingredients to the egg/sugar mixture, mixing continuously. Mixture will be thick.
• Fold in 1 cup blueberries very lightly so as not to break them.
• Pour in greased 8 or 9 inch round pan. Sprinkle top with blend of 1/3 cup sugar, 1/3 cup brown sugar, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon and 1/4 cup sliced almonds (optional).
• Bake at 365 degrees for 35 to 40 minutes.
• Serve warm with clotted cream or ice cream.

Mmmmm. Nums. Enjoy!

Okay. Okay. I am standing up slowly from the rattan french bistro armchair at my desk, rub Bailey's ruffled tummy on my way, reluctantly, through the sun drenched kitchen, past my comfortable, overstuffed study and into the dining room.

Cheers ... cocktails all around ... but not until tomorrow!

The Tax Man Cometh

Distractions. Lack of focus. Dread. My annual day-after ritual. Post birthday, that is. Those unavoidable, mandatory, all encompassing tax preparations. Time suck required. Now. I know. I know. April 15th is still months away. Early bird discount. The deep deuce if in my accountant's hands before Valentine's Day. His gift to me. Sealed with a kiss? Hardly.

So my gorgeous double banded mahogany dining table with acanthus carved pedestal legs has been requisitioned to serve as ground zero. Mission central. Morphed into a duty not befitting its stature. Piled high with reddish-brown pressboard accordion files, strewn with odd-sized bits of paper in all colors notes scribbled in red and marked with a circled 'T'. Like steer branded for slaughter. Receipts for meals eaten, flights flown, books read and medicine taken are commingled with assorted and sundry pens, pencils, paper clips, staplers and my trusty HP-12C. Difficult to navigate. A jumbled mess.

Post-It notes stick to the precious veneer labeling soon-to-be sections where category organization will take root. Charitable contributions, here. CCG company receipts from a deflating economy as clients bailed and deals unwound, there. An oversize Topsider shoe box for Charlie's giant boat shoes stuffed, the giant rubber band from Staples taut, containing a year's worth of American Express, MasterCard and utility bills paid up to the final moment -- when champagne corks popped and 2009 became a blurry memory.

Faced with the hum-drum minutia and the mind numbing organization of my tax stuff I have been a maelstrom of activity. A goddam marvel. A whirling dervish filing and arranging ancient bank statements tossed haphazardly on the shelf in the back of a downstairs closet into 3 inch black plastic binders preferring the painful finger pinch of the giant d-rings to my dining room table. Doing anything, but.

Procrastination as an art form. Perfected. Better to take an unpleasant stroll through the village neighborhood with Bailey in frigid 20 degree snowy wind than confront the quagmire in my dining room. All I want to do is skirt the piles and jolly-off.

I head straight to my ochre French Provencal kitchen to bake something scrumptious ... blueberry confections and a savory pumpkin soup. Who needs paper cuts from rummaging through the shoe box and accordion files holding receipt from last year? Or, arms elbow deep in a gaggle of papers? Not me. Not today.

Shaking my dry martini like a maraca, ice clinking like a steel drum ... I float away from the mundane task facing me tomorrow. Cheers!

Lettuce Cake and Carrot Candles

The Groundhog has spoken! Puxatawney Phil emerged from his burrow this morning in Pennsylvania and saw his shadow. I saw mine, too. We proclaim that winter will last another six weeks. Up here in a frigid snowy Maine that's an early spring. March 15th. Not bad at all. One or two more snowstorms then *poof* gone. Longer days. Brighter sun. Spring.

And I have more time to lighten up. Fit slimmingly into capris and skimmer flats. When I return home from southern California in mid-March crocus will be peeking purple blooms through the frozen earth under the Rhododendrons on either side of the stone steps leading to my home. Ah... spring.

But first I have some celebrating to do. Today. Cheers! Happy birthday to me! One year to my big 6-0.

Pedal to the Metal

My warm up is complete. I am limber. Ready to go. A full month under my belt. Tomorrow, Groundhog's Day, the road trip to my big 6-0 kicks into gear.

My E-Z Pass flashes at the toll gate as I glance over my shoulder at oncoming traffic. Flicking the left blinker, I point my chassis onto ramp. My foot steadily increases its pressure. With a whoosh I pull into the traffic and ease into the fast lane. Accelerating. The needle of my speedometer inches up. I am zooming to sixty.

Fasten your seat belts! Cheers until tomorrow ...