Making a difference

Frustrated and annoyed with the garbage and dog shit piling up in the alley behind my house, I decided to take action and host a community block clean-up this past Sunday. I was very pleased that two people actually came out to help Jack and I pick up garbage, sweep up broken glass, shovel animal waste and pull up weeds. I honestly didn't expect anyone to show up to help on a sweltering hot August morning.

Even though the army of concerned neighbors I assembled for the clean-up was relatively small, our work made a difference. Not only is our alley in much better shape than it was before, I got to meet a number of my neighbors who may not have helped with the work but did take the time to stop by and introduce themselves to me and thank me for what I was doing.

I started noticing other small changes as soon as one week after I passed out the first flier notifying my neighbors of the clean-up. That very next weekend, I witnessed one neighbor cleaning up her backyard, and the owners of the Highland Clipper Club on the corner of my block finally picked up all the cigarette butts that their patrons had tossed on the sidewalk. Then, last night when I went to bring our trashcan back into our yard, I noticed that three of my neighbors who had previously just tossed bags of garbage into the alley had actually purchased trashcans with lids and even neatly labeled them with their addresses.

If you have been following my blog for a while, you may remember me first talking about hosting a community block clean-up back in May, and you may be thinking, "Gee Mara, I thought you were a go-getter. It took you how many months to pull this together?"

The reason for the delay is that I was trying to get a grant from the City, from a local nonprofit or from an environmental group, to pay for the supplies for the clean-up. No such luck. Most organizations I contacted had no money to give, and those who did have grant programs available said my neighborhood didn't fall into the City's "target areas" (aka my neighborhood isn't ghetto enough to receive assistance).

I was however able to borrow brooms and shovels from the Highlandtown Neighborhood Association. That groups leader, Kevin Berhnard, is awesome! He helped me through the planning process and was even one of the two guys who came out for the clean-up.

The funds for the weedkiller, contractor bags, gloves and drinking water came out of my own pocket. But, you know, it was totally worth it. I am going to do one of these clean-ups every month, with our without the City's help.

Commando

When I first bought my new house in May, I was little-miss-homemaker. The fridge was full of home-cooked meals in neat tupperware containers for the week ahead, the book cases were never dusty, my CDs were alphabetized, the dishes were always clean, the laundry baskets were void of dirty clothes and the carpet was always vacuumed and the floors swept. I even scrubbed smudges from the walls. Weekly.

Now I find myself sitting at work, not wearing any underwear, because I haven't done laundry in a million years. My weekly cleaning habit has become biweekly at best. The dishes pile up, clumps of cat hair blow along the wood floors like tumble weed, the CDs lie in a jumbled heap, dirty laundry covers the bedroom floor and I have resorted to buying lunches in our over-priced-not-very-tasty cafeteria.

I guess the honeymoon is over.

First Thanksgiving in new house

There was nothing traditional about our first Thanksgiving in the new house.

We spent the day with friends instead of family, ate pastel de pollo instead of turkey and there wasn't a pumpkin dish in sight.

I started preparing the filling for the pastel de pollo on Wednesday night, using a hand-written "recipe" on notebook paper that Nany, my madre tica, was kind enough to share with me. I put "recipe" in quotation marks because the instructions leave a lot to the imagination. How much tomatoe paste goes in the filling? To taste, I suppose. Cook it what temperature? I go with 375. And, how long do you cook it? "Hasta que este dorado," of course.

Thanksgiving morning, I was back in the kithchen by 7 a.m. There was a lot to prepare. Our menu included fresh beets with goat cheese and chopped mint; a cheese platter, featuring ricotta salata, manchego and aged gouda cheeses, as well as chunks of fresh baguette and seasoned olive oil; pastel de pollo for the main dish; and bread pudding with a brandy-butter sauce.

Note: I used brandy instead of bourbon because I forgot to buy bourbon when I went to the liquor store that morning. (I must have distracted by the handle of gin I decided to buy.)

Around 7 p.m., our friends Natasha and Steve arrived with a box of booze (best gift a lady could ask for) in-hand.

We had a great time eating, conversing (read: ball-breaking) and drinking. Natasha and Steve were especially entertained by the fact that I force "poor Jack" to smoke outside in the cold.


Did I mention drinking?











It took me a week to write this post, but I figure, it's timely since I'm still eating the leftovers.