It’s no secret that the word “box” is slang for “woman.” (if you are under consenting age and you didn’t know that already, ask you parents why, just for fun.)

So just to make this post an curious mix of boxy entendres, here’s what happened last night.

I had a most pleasant collision of the boxes while attending Fairfield County Green Drinks at the Fairfield Theatre Company. Green Drinks, for me, is a monthly excuse, more than anything, see my far-flung group of busy FFC girlfriends — Katie, Carol, Eileen — shoot the breeze, and convince each other to go for a meal afterwards. The meal is critical: we are all displaced foodies (London, SF, NY, Kansas City) in a search for good restaurants. In FFC, that is definitely a needle/haystack situation.

Colin came along, and the event was different: hosted at Fairfield Theatre Company is Eileen’s home turf and Katie’s weekend home for her farmer’s market.

As for me, I’d hardly been there.

Space matters
It’s impossible to ignore FTC… they are marketing dynamos in the county and they’ve been doing a slamming schedule. Still, it’s a mysterious venue which from the show of hands, many people had not been to before.

Stage One is Black Box. If you never seen a performance or concert in black box before, you are missing it. Black Box is minimal, solid black space, unadorned, simple. From the farthest seat, no doubt, you could still count Shawn Colvin’s freckles. There’s no way to protect the audience from the wash of stage light, so the performers, even under the brightest light cue, can see your face. It’s intimate and personal. Black Box is addictive.

The Boycott
As part of Green Drinks, The Boycott, written and performed by Vermont native Kathryn Blume, was performed at Stage One. Blume tells the story of the First Lady of the United States launching a nationwide sex strike to fight global warming. It’s Hollywood meets Gore, meets grungy coffeehouse rhetoric and Blume’s simplifed concept carried a weight of gravity that defied scientific directives.

We girls, plus Colin and Miles, huddled away from the Green minglers after the performance, preferring somehow our friendship to business hobnobbing. Colin jokes about “girls’ night” and how he is happy to be the token male, but our girls’ gatherings rarely wander off to talk of tampons and gorging on chocolate. We’re women, all right, but we’ve got some things to do as well, that might have more to do with life than just our boxes.

Eating Fish (Naturally)
Dinner was at Fin, an excellent Japanese place on the Post Road in Fairfield. I’d recommend it.

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1. The Black Hole

Waking up to this blanket of snow is as unfamiliar as if I had stepped into a movie scene for White Christmas. This is the winter I imagined. This is what I expected from Connecticut. But we’ve had lovely, undefined days, mostly. The kind that almost ache in their beauty: winter sunshine stretching out as long as it is allowed to through the day, with long, moonbeam nights.

It’s the simplest things that catch you off guard. The slice of a file folder on the side of you thumb. A month of days passing by without permission. Friends having babies on the sly. Our little cat one day huddling in the crawl space rafters, the next day laying on our chests.

Anytime I think I have expectations beaten. Anytime I glance away for a minute. Anytime I think — or don’t think — “I’ll just catch my breath.” A surprise drops like a gentle spider from its candy cane lace.

Today the snow is falling, but my paper cut, I am happy to say, doesn’t hurt anymore.

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Top 10 Reasons to Read a Blog

10. The blogger is funny, but not funny ha-ha… funny hmmmm.

9. You are bored of internet porn… it is so done!

8. Procrastination is nine-tenths of the law.

7. You hate your boss. Your boss wants you to do something other than browse the internet. You fancy yourself defiant.

6. You RSS feed told you to.

5. Your spouse/partner is the author of said blog and if you don’t read it, you’ll lose live sex rights and be forced to go back to internet porn.

4. You are mildly interested in the thoughts/ideas expressed by a stranger.

3. It’s that or run on the treadmill.

2. You gave up on television news and the local paper and you need something to fill useless information void.

The number one reason to read a blog:

1. All the answers in the world await you, if you only keep reading.

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1. Message from the Coffeehouse

Elizabeth rarely goes anywhere without a camera.

As a result, her stories are often illustrated.

If you get bored reading, look here. Click the photo to see more.

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It stands to reasons that a state within smelling distance from NYC, with only two major, parallel, “North-South” roads, 3.5 million residents and acre-sized residential lots, there will be some traffic.

Now, I am not opposed to spending some time in my car. In fact, I adore being alone in my car, despite my green liberal leanings. It gives me time to shout obscenities at strangers who (most of the time) can’t hear me, time to sing at the top of my voice along to “Complicated” by Avril Lavigne whilst fantasizing about a former PF Chang’s bartender I used to have a crush on, and time to make fun and random plans for the weekend, all which will probably be crushed by Colin’s never-ending work schedule.

Other Drivers and their Dogs
However, my time is often marred by the presence of others. And thus, grows my fascination with a never-ending list of oddball events that force people to suddenly brake their cars and drive 22 in a 55-mph zone.

The most recent one — which occured last Friday at 2:30 p.m. in the afternoon on the Merritt Parkway – was pooping dogs.

Now it should be explained that the dogs weren’t pooping ON this beautiful four-laned highway. They, and their owner (a bald, Nissan 4×4-owner wearing khaki shorts, a navy blue polo, sandals and wire rimmed glasses… that’s how slow we were going) were pulled off the side of the highway, COMPLETELY, onto the grassy side. They were so far off the side of the road, I could have pulled up alongside of his car in the space between concrete and vehicle.

His puffy chows (ala Martha Stewart) were on their leashes and doing their business. The man even had a plastic bag on his hand, in order to pick up what they left behind.

Now, I had been listening to the radio. There was mention of an accident slowing traffic down somewhere. In fact, about 10 cars back, and for about 7 miles, a cop with his lights flashing, had been trying to snake his way through the crush, presumably to get to the dying people further along. He wasn’t going anywhere either.

The interesting thing to note about this? Once we passed those dogs — once the oh, so intriguing event of dogs pooping on the roadside — had gone by, the traffic loosened up and I was able to nearly resume my cruising speed. The cop, however, was still buggered behind an oblivious, left-lane driving BMW, the driver who likely hadn’t even left the office yet and was miles away.

 Mother Nature and the Road
Another fascinating travel hazard, apparently, is thunderstorms.

Now, I have been living in England, where these are somewhat rare, so it would be understandable if they distracted me (or other visiting Englanders) on my tootle to the shop. However, I am wondering about the average New Englander. Thunderstorms and nor’easters should be par for the course.

For example.. the other day, I was driving home, minding my business. A storm was brewing and there were a few flashes of lightning. No big whoop. But suddenly, a clap of thunder boomed across the air. And there was another lightning, a different kind. The flash of red brake lights. And just like that, we were all standing still.

No rain yet. No wind yet. Just a thunder.

Hey, I have an idea! Let’s all stop right here, on Interstate 95, and watch the thunder! I hear it’s just recently been invented. Grrr…

Oblivious People on their Car Islands

People do stupid things while driving, far more risky than letting their kids play outside in the yard with a sack full of rusty tools.

One Suburban driving Mom exited onto a clover exit ramp in front of me, then the driver suddenly changed her mind. Slammed on her brakes and stopped, almost completely (I was going about 40 and slowing from 60 on the highway). Then she swerved back onto the highway, in front of another car. She wasn’t a little ways onto the ramp… she was 200 yards down the ramp and had to drive up over unpaved surface to get back on the road. Anyway, thank-the-Jesus-fish she had that sturdy Suburban, for off-road driving.

Why? Maybe it’s because despite the thousands of other cars, drivers feel alone, like they are the only ones around. Maybe, it’s because they think they are invincible. Maybe they are actually singing the Pat Benatar song “Invincible” and they got so shot up with adrenaline it took over their sensible minds. Maybe they too were daydreaming about a redheaded bartender. Who knows?

All I know is, somewhere along the line people seem to have forgotten that even though driving is fun, it’s really more than that: it’s a responsibility and a privilege. Even with all the bells and whistles of safety, we have to take care first by being careful and paying attention.

Otherwise we end up oblivious and wrecked — sheep herd of Paris Hiltons — at a loss for that privilege.

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1. What I am Reading: Wild Dogs

The Best of Connecticut can only be found by leaving the interstate and exploring the winding country roads.A few tips:

• Got a GPS? Good. It makes life that much sweeter.
• Stay in a small town, an hour from the coast, minumum. Nothing is too far to drive to, especially the beaches. The more you avoid I-95, the better you will feel about Connecticut
• Stay in an old bed and breakfast, something the low ceilings, drafty floorboards and fireplaces in every room.
• Don’t overpack. This is civilization after all. You can get anything you need here.
• Don’t expect air conditioning. This is cool, coastal New England.
• Plan on walking… Connecticut has miles of hiking trails, including part of the Appalachian trail. Bring a good backpack, boots (or snowshoes) and hoof it!
• Choose your beach wisely… and find out the parking situation before you go. Nutmeggers are unreasonably greedy about their shoreline: most beaches are private, resident or city beaches with parking for residents only (or very limited parking for guests).
• Everything has its season… be sure you don’t miss the best of all the festivals, fairs and events that go on almost all year long.
• Don’t believe what they tell you: CT=Bedroom state. Connecticut is not an extension of New York City. Less and less people are commuting 1-2 hours into the city and more companies are making their home in Stamford, Hartford and other smaller towns.
• Flying here directly and skipping a trip into the Big Apple? Consider “HPN” in your search. The Westchester commuter airport has equally cheap fares and car rental right in the tiny hub. Plus side: it shaves heaps o’ time and traffic off your drive into Fairfield or New Haven Counties and it can be as cheap as an NYC flight. Con: Don’t bother looking for public transport or reasonable taxis in this posh neck of the upstate NY. This is car in/car out only!

Summer in Connecticut

Here’s some links for the best

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Writer Elizabeth Howard has survived life in Iowa, Kansas City, Walt Disney World, Colorado Springs, Long Island and, (most recently) London, to name a few stops on her journeys.

A graduate of the Iowa State University journalism program and the University of Missouri at Kansas City English program, she combats perennial eduational self-esteem issues.

A fan of the earth and humor, she smirks-it-up about the lighter side (mint? celadon?) of the green movement at Honk if You Compost.

When not writing, Elizabeth is probably traveling or taking a photo.

Places she’s seen and photographed (alphabetically):

• Amsterdam
• Brugges
• Brussels
• Cairo
• Colorado
• Domaine de Saint-Apolis, Languedoc
• Edinburgh
• Fairfield Woods (and one Victory Garden)
• Galway City
• Haddam Neck
• Karnak
• Mystic
• The Moray Firth
• Paris
• The Ring of Kerry
• Salzburg
• Windemere and Grasmere

Elizabeth is married to the most adorable, patient Canadian man she could find.

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• Nice people really stand out. Most people are so dull that not even the Royal Navy armed with Brillo could make them shine.
• Everyone that was at my house over the weekend has played a HUGE role in my life and it is so nice to know that they all live nearby (not that I would not travel to visit them in other countries at the drop of a hat, mind you).
• Travel is easy from here and allows me to grow with experience.
• Ability to be anonymous in a crowd of 8,000,000 people.

Reasons that I don’t like living in the UK

• Houses are very small
• People are sooooooo set in their ways
• The government – but then look at the U.S. and South Africa right now

The sun was still bright when we needed to get going Sunday evening. Sean and Paul stretched and raised their hands to say good-bye to Tim and Peter.

“Buy a donkey,” I heard them say to their hosts. Colin and I exchanged incredulous looks. He had heard it too.

“Buy a donkey?!” I exclaimed. I looked around, at the grass in the backyard. Sure, maybe it could use a mow, but wouldn’t a goat be more practical?

Gina laughed. “No… Baie dankie. It means “thanks a lot” in Afrikaans. But, yes, it does sound a lot like “Buy a donkey.”

Tim and I strolled ahead of the rest of the gang on the short walk to the train station. From the platform over the rails, we gazed on fields of grass stretched out, acre after acre, behind their subdivision. Protected land, and beyond, golf courses, green year-round in the cool, wet climate. It would be a happy home for any farm animal, especially a donkey.

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Summer Solstice in the North Atlantic

Weather predicted in London
21 June 2005:
Partly Sunny
Scattered Clouds
High: 75 F

Sunrise: 4:44 a.m. BST
Sunset: 9:22 p.m. BST

Civil Twilight: 10:10 p.m.
Moon: Full tomorrow

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Letter from London…

26 May 2005

Since we met in 2002, Colin and I have been doing something that a lot of heavy-in-love couples do: we surreptitiously compete to see who can give the best Christmas and birthday presents.

The first Christmas, when we had only been together a few months, I gave Colin a series of inexpensive (I was still a grad student) but thoughtful gifts that had something to do with each of our past dates. A stainless steel martini glass from Grand Street Café (engraved), a framed recipe (the first dish he ever cooked for me), a stuffed Hedwig doll (the owl from the Harry Potter movie he saw with me and my girlfriends), etc. He gave me a trip to Jamaica. Although he said he really loved my gifts, I think he won that one.

For his birthday, that year, we were on holiday in Australia with my parents and my brother. So I planned, via long distance e-mail and phone calls, a hot air balloon ride. This was not easy to do. Hot air balloon trips are contingent on weather conditions the morning of the flight. So, while the five of us meandered on Kangaroo Island the day before the planned flight, I had to sneak away, into the bush, to call the company via payphones, for frequent weather reports. Meanwhile, I had to convince Colin to get up at 4 a.m., on his birthday, drive a rental car, in the dark, on the wrong side of the road, to someplace we had never been before, to participate in something he had no idea what it was. Fortunately, as you can see (above), the weather held and we had a glorious sunrise ride over the Barossa Wine Valley, followed by a champagne picnic. Score one for me.

This year, London was the theme for my birthday. Colin took me to high tea at the Ritz, then to a play starring Kim Cattrall (Samantha from “Sex and the City”). It wasn’t planned, but I did get to say hello to her afterwards. So, as the months passed, between February and May, I was gnawing my nails off, trying to plan his birthday. I was gun-shy: the credit card security vultures had spoiled my Christmas surprise –a limo ride from work with our friends to a martini bar, and dinner at four-star restaurant– by calling him and asking if the charges I had made were valid. In the past five months, we had been to Egypt and Brussels and the States, drinking fantastic beer, standing at the feet wonders of the ancient world, swimming in clear blue water. What could top it? So much time together, I thought, maybe he needed a little time away, a time to reconnect with nature and himself. So I started trying to arrange something special, just for him.

Colin, when he young and wild, used have long, curly hair. He rode his bicycle from the hills in North Vancouver to work at National Research Council at the University of British Columbia. In Ottawa, when he attended Carlton University, he ice skated on frozen canals from his apartment to class. He has skied black diamonds at Whistler. He climbed the Squamish Chief. When we packed our 300-square-feet of belongings to move to a flat in London, his climbing gear came with us. Last summer, when we visited Ottawa, he and his brother, Duane, cooed over Duane’s rock wall, built in his two-story garage. I was mildly interested, but bothered that my athletic husband had been stranded in the obese flatlands of Kansas the last five years and hadn’t had much use for ascenders and pitons and belay devices. He hadn’t been skiing, or cycling, or skating. Instead, in Overland Park, Kansas, people in beefed up SUVs hollered mockeries at Colin and I as we walked the three blocks from his apartment to a nearby restaurant. “Get a car!”

I tried to plan it, a rock climbing getaway for Colin, in Spain or Northern Italy or Wales. I called, e-mailed, tried to ask Colin hooded questions about his skills, his gear, without giving anything away. Finally, I realized I could not give him this gift without his help. I needed too much information to just surprise him. I told him my plan.

“Actually, honey,” he said, “I think that might be too much right now. Besides, I’d rather spend my birthday with you.”

Well. If you know me, you would know that what I heard wasn’t my sweet husband expressing his preferences, telling me he wanted to be with me. What I heard, instead, was rejection. I was upset. I had spent weeks thinking about this trip, trying to plan it, making calls. All I needed was for him to say “Wow! Elizabeth, that is SO great! Oh, I can’t wait! You are so thoughtful.” And, after all, after a year, of marriage and close quarters, of piles of stress, I sort of thought he deserved a little space away from me.

Colin told me he had been thinking about going to Scotland, to visit his cousin Glenise and her husband, Mick. Maybe play some golf. That was what he was thinking about doing for his birthday.

I was still very upset. He got to plan my birthday! Why should he get to plan his own as well? Why did we haul all that damn gear to England, just to let it sit in a bag forever? I was crazed. But, if you know me, well, you know that isn’t anything new. It didn’t last. Colin talked me down (he didn’t need his gear for that) and we planned a weekend in Scotland.

Not quite ready to get back into the rock climbing, he really just itched to get out on the links with the only other woman in his life: Great Big Bertha.

Mick and Glenise picked us up at the Aberdeen airport, smiled at us and said “Hello!” as if they had known us all our lives. Now, with all the available transport available in our modern world— taxis, rental cars, buses, and, in the case of Egypt, horse-drawn caleches or donkey carts— there is nothing better than being met at an airport. The idea of it: one person in the world, set down here, waiting for one other person to arrive, to carry them to their final destination, always charms me.

Mick advises Colin on pin location at Peterhead

But it is more than that, even a greater miracle, to be met by a couple: fused, once-strangers who have hitched their lives onto one another and made a family from it. Whenever I meet a married couple, or any pair of long-time partners, I look at them: once alone, two, independent entities walking on the ground. I picture them younger. I imagine the most beautiful versions of themselves, the image they carry of themself, inside. They are looking up and seeing each other, for the first time. I love to watch a couple look at each other, to notice the small ways they interact, the pattern of their lives together. Mick made coffee for Glen. Glen called Mick “Sephie,” an abbreviation of their surname. It is easy to feel the eternity of my own marriage when I see others, hauling the long line of partnership, up hills, over rocks, into the warm crevices, and against the wind.

Colin had not seen Glenise, his paternal first cousin, since he was 11. I had never met either Mick or Glen before. Coming to England, for Colin, has been partially about reconnecting with his father’s family. Henry Phillips, the youngest of 8 children, was born in London. He and his siblings, whom Colin and I are slowly meeting, can remember being evacuated during the second world war, carrying a box that held their gas masks. Henry joined the merchant marines when he was still a teenager and eventually landed in Canada.

In Peterhead, the little town north of Aberdeen, Mick and Glen had plenty of room for us. One night, we ate dinner at a restaurant in a converted barn, three miles from the nearest town. Afterward, we drove past the ExxonMobil gas refinery where Mick works. At night, against a rural black sky, the complex glowed, blinked, hummed, blue lights heaving, an industrial Auroa Borealis.

In the day, we played golf while cows looked on– now in the rain, now in the sun– along the North Sea. The fairways and greens shifted and undulated, their roots in sand dunes. One morning, Glen drove us into the hills, the highlands, in the heart of northern Scotland.The land fell away from the road. Sheep and lambs, fluorescent green numbers spray-painted on their fleece, lazed in the field. Scorching rushes of rape seed in garish shades of yellow cut the green landscape in the distance. Highland cattle dragged their long locks and heavy horns in dirt barnyards. Colin navigated from the back seat and Glen drove. I stared out the window and looked at the land, the stone walls rambling across acres of green. Here, there, and again, huge gashes carved out in the forest: Norwegian pines gutted from the land to make room for native plants. A quick turn around a bend and a soaring point stabbed the sky, an ancient stone church in the distance, in nowhere, in a field, it seemed.

Glenise steered the car and told us about their years living in Hong Kong. I felt it, saw it in my mind’s eye: the moist heat, the bamboo matting, the pushy maid, and the garden snakes. In my mind, I felt the hot breezes in the palm trees. Outside, Scottish clouds churned and climbed in front of us. A few raindrops spattered on the windscreen. The sun cut into the backseat window, chased us, then disappeared.

At the Glenfiddich Distillery in Dufftown, we stopped and parked. We let young, freckled Sarah lead us through the stillhouse. We inhaled the vapors, watched the mash spin, then burble with the yeast. Sarah spieled on about barley and Roobie Dhu Spring water and bourbon and port-wood finished barrels. We tasted 12-year-old scotch whisky on empty stomachs at the tasting room. The day fell open on itself. Glen drove us on. We ate lunch in a bar, hundreds of single malt whiskys surrounding us in rank and file , in hotel next to the Spey River. It was cold. I pulled my jacket around me.

On the way home, we stopped at Craigellachie, on the Moray Firth. Warm winds pulled, miraculously, into this far-flung area of the North Atlantic. The days were so much longer in northern Scotland. At 3:30, we teed off hole one to play 18. We finished before dark.

Glen and I outside the original stone buildings,
Glenfiddich, Dufftown

We ate seafood, drank scotch, and wished we could stay longer. On Sunday afternoon, before we had to go back to the airport, Glen served us sweets with our tea and told us the story about “a fine piece.” I don’t remember how it went exactly, but it was something like this:

“When we first moved to the other house, the one we lived in before this,” she said, “a neighbor came by. I invited her in for tea. She sat and we drank a cup of tea and talked, as you do. Well, a few days later, she came by with a huge tray of cakes. She said they were for me, seeing as I didn’t have any. Well, I was surprised and maybe a bit put off because I just don’t eat them. I thought it was strange, but all right. I thanked her and took them anyway.

“Well, come to find out, in these parts of Scotland, you just don’t sit down to tea without a “piece”: be it a bit of cake, biscuit, some kind of sandwich. And if they serve something really nice, well then it is a fine piece. Well, of course, I didn’t know that! We had just moved here. But in the end, what must that poor woman have thought? I think they must have thought we were the poorest wretches around, not even a biscuit on hand. Just a poor cup of tea!”

Glenise served us tea, with a right fine piece of chocolate that afternoon, then drove us back to Aberdeen to catch our flight. Mick was at work, but bid us a warm good-bye and “hurry back” the night before.

We do not get to choose our families. There are so many sad, broken families in the world, pillars of lonely and angry people. I get frustrated, I get worried, but, in the morning, at night, I remember what I have, and where I came from. It is something special when your family– cousins, siblings, in-laws– are the kind of people you would choose, after all. It is part hard work, of course, and part benediction. But, for me, it is a simple frame of reference. Colin and I both love each other’s families. We are both so grateful for that.

“Write down the words of sadness
burn them in a cup;
write down the things you’ve wanted
throw them to the wind that’s soaring up to heaven.”

Jann Arden
Waiting in Canada

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