Holy hell, there's a table in here

The main living area of my sister's house is designed with the "great room concept" in mind. While the kitchen cabinetry jacks up your view of the rest of the house while you're cooking, there's this awesome vaulted ceiling over the living and dining areas, and the room either is or just looks huge. 

Well, it does now. Pat and I have cleared the clutter, taken the leaf out of the dining room table, arranged the furniture and now we have this vast space. Space! The room looks huge.

Gone are the stacking plastic chairs, the bags of clothing and the stacks of (for lack of a better term) shit. In their place? A couch. Two chairs. A piano. And a dining room table. Yes, you heard it here first, ladies and gentlemen. We have a dining room!

It hasn't been used in years, but we're about to change that. So, when are you joining us for dinner?

My cat pukes on someone else's floor

Probably the toughest adjustment I've had to make since the Big Move is realizing that the stuff that happens in the house doesn't just effect me. I'm living in someone else's space, so when life happens, it's not just my problem. It becomes Pat's, too.

So when my cat got sick and started puking, well ... that sucked. Not only does she (Pat, not the cat) have new carpet, she also is not a champion at cleaning up after bodily malfunctions (despite having raised a son). Lucky me; I got to worry about the cat, the carpet and my sister. I did not want her to have to take care of Benld and his oopsies!

Thankfully, it seems to have passed and Pat, trouper that she is, weathered the storm as well as if not better than Benld. But it sure is a different perspective, having to think about how stuff effects someone else. It's been a long time since I've had to take someone else into consideration; it's going to take a little time to get this right.

-Maggie

Market to table

Sunday morning at Camp Clovertree found us heading to Geneva for the French Market. On good authority (our sister Jenn), we heard that the produce (not to mention the pretzel rolls) were worth the trip. Of course, just being in Geneva is worth the trip as far as we're concerned; this charming little town is a delight for all the senses.

We wandered into the market with a list of produce needed, and a recipe for dinner: Spice Roasted Pork Chops with Chanterelles and Blackberries. Pat had taken a pork loin out of the freezer to replace the chops, and we needed pretty much everything else. The market was the ideal place to find fresh blackberries, and though we hoped to find chanterelles, we settled for cremini mushrooms. We also tasted frozen blueberries with aged peach balsamic vinegar and absolutely fell in love with the flavor. Incredibly delicious ... which explains why there are blueberries in the freezer and a new bottle of balsamic in the cupboard. You should stop by; this stuff is incredible. But I digress.

Our Sunday dinner was going to be Spice Roasted Pork Loin with Sweet Corn and Couscous. At 5:30, it was time to start dinner prep. I cleaned the mushrooms and washed the berries while Pat got the pork ready. The rub - made up of brown sugar and spices - filled the kitchen with an incredible aroma that made us both hungry in an instant.

Clockwise from the top: fresh blackberries, spice rub, mushrooms.

The pork loin (or chops, according to the recipe) was to be coated in the rub and then seared in an herb-infused olive oil. The combination of oil, rosemary, thyme and garlic, along with the spice rub on the pork, smelled too good for explanation; I truly wish your monitor was scratch and sniff.

 Delicious pork loin, hanging out with its friend Rosemary.

Pat seared the pork on all sides while I sliced the mushrooms and halved the blackberries. Pat had to finish halving the blackberries because I was crying from dicing a shallot. Oh, shut up. I'm a delicate flower.

Once the pork came out of the pan, the rosemary and thyme sprigs went into the trash but the rest of the tasty bits stayed in the pan to become part of the amazing sauce. Shallots, mushrooms and blackberries all got to hang out in the pan, along with some sweet white wine. Again with the smell; so good!

Soon the sauce was reduced by half and it was time to add the butter. Oh joy of joys! Then ... we ate. Holy crap it was good.

 Dinner is served.

And, like a good sister, I made dessert from scratch ... by which I mean I bought two slices of cheesecake at the Cheesecake Factory the night before. Heaven = pineapple upside down cheesecake. For real. (Pat's was key lime; it was also perfect.)

 Perfectly pineapple.

I would say our first adventure in the kitchen was a resounding success. I would also say we will definitely make this recipe again!

Two week progress report

As of last Saturday, I've lived at Camp Clovertree for two weeks. It is oddly beginning to feel like home. (If "home" means you know where the boxes are and you're willing to maneuver around them.)

I feel like this place - my sister's house - is slowly becoming my home. We'll spend a day or two working on something, and next thing you know, it looks completely different. Like real people with actual taste live there.

Take, for example, the kitchen. We made significant headway in there over the weekend. There are actual countertops! And the cupboards ... the cupboards are a thing of beauty. The spice cupboard also holds a plethora of cake/cookie decorating schmutz. Expect treats over the holidays.

We also managed to find homes for a lot of the stuff in boxes on the kitchen floor, which allowed us to finally reach the sliding glass door in there, take down the (hideous eyesore) vertical blinds and put up a new curtain rod and new (to us) curtains. What a difference a few bits of fabric make!

Hanging art makes a huge impact. I put up one of my favorite pictures in the den; it's of a girl seated by water, reading a book. It was a gift from Amber for my birthday a few years back, and now it hangs by the "reading chair" in an awesome space. It also manages to make it obvious that the other walls need love, too; we'll get to that soon enough, I'm sure.

And in my room, this happened:

That fabric is from a muu muu my mom had back in the day, stretched over canvas. They surround an antique mirror given to me by a friend. That wall makes a serene statement, and I love it.

So, bit by bit ... one cupboard, one wall, one room at a time, Pat and I are creating a haven. I love it. It makes me happy.
-Maggie

The coffee's good. The bike trail's awesome. The timer doesn't work.

It's been over a week, and both my sister and I remain alive and well.

It has not, however, been without mishap. I discovered cat puke on the kitchen floor one morning. (I was secretly grateful that Catface deposited that little bundle of joy on the ugly tile in the kitchen, rather than on the new carpet. Seriously.) I can't find the box with my first aid kit in it. And possibly my worst New Roomie faux pas to date - last night, I left the dryer on.

My sister Pat has a great laundry room. To me, what makes it great is that it doesn't have coin slots. Doing laundry FOR FREE on ANY NIGHT I CHOOSE is a super cool perk, after having a designated day (Friday) and a cost per load ($2.50) for the past six years. So one would think that the fact that the timer on the dryer is on the fritz would be easy enough to deal with. Set the timer on my phone, or on the stove, and hustle my bunskis down to the basement so the dryer didn't continue running unnecessarily.

One would think. 

One, it turns out, would be wrong.

I had just one more load to dry. My white clothes; underwear, t-shirts, that sort of thing. By the time I got home Sunday night, I must have been more tired (tireder?) than I realized. I put my clothes in the dryer, and came upstairs to make lunches. I got into my jammies and settled in, and then completely forgot about the dryer. 

I tried to watch TV, but within 10 minutes, I was out like a light.

It wasn't until this morning, when I read the text from Pat ("Brought up your laundry ... couldn't figure out what the noise was and you were sound asleep") that I realized what a buffoon I am.

Don't worry, I apologized. And I will take steps (um, something simple like setting a timer would do it, fool) to make sure it doesn't happen again. 

But that's really it for the bumps in the road. For the most part, living with my sister is like living alone, but with someone else in a strange place. I have all my stuff (though I don't always know where it is) and I have someone to talk to. (And it hasn't escaped either of us that it takes no longer to prepare a meal for two than it does to prepare a meal for one.) The cat seems to love having someone who is home more than I ever was (though he still doesn't come running when Pat comes home) and between the two of us, we have three coffeemakers. I have a super easy ride (1.5 miles) to a gorgeous bike trail, and I run into random friends at the grocery store. So, seriously, no complaints. 

Although if any of you wanted to come unpack the rest of my boxes, that'd be fine.

-Maggie

Moving in, moving on

My sister Pat lives in this great little house on the far west side of town. It happens to be on Clovertree Court. I don't know when and I can't recall why, but somewhere along the line, we started calling her house Camp Clovertree. She's lived there for about 20 years.

And now, I live there, too.

Back in May of this year, I started a new job. The day I got called for the interview, I called my sister Jenn and said, "I have an interview for my dream job." I was that sure, even in those early stages, that this was the job for me. There was only one problem: geography. Joliet Junior College - site of the dream job - sits about 53 miles away from my home in Arlington Heights. So I started thinking through all the possibilities of how I could make it work. 

There was talk of moving in with Dad, or staying where I was but having a roommate to help defray the costs. But the perfect solution didn't emerge until Pat mentioned wanting to get her house in order so that I would have a place to stay.

And everything started to make sense.

That was May; this is August. Sometimes, pieces take their own sweet time falling into place. 

We have had a great time preparing Camp Clovertree for a new camper. With the help of The Foreman (our dad), we have cleaned and painted and cleaned and thrown stuff out and cleaned. What remains is a house that is rapidly becoming my home, too. 

There are still boxes to go through, furniture to place and a lot more tidying up to do. And there is a goal in mind; a big one. My intent is that in about two years time, I will look for a place of my own. A little condo in a sweet downtown area is where my heart is, so that's what I'll be looking for. I think. Heck, I have two years; a lot can happen in two years! But between now and then, I'll be saving money, using my head and enjoying the proximity of family - something I haven't had in about eight years. 

I'm not kidding myself; it won't always be fun, and it won't always be easy. Pat and I will likely knock heads from time to time, and we'll have to figure out a way to navigate disagreements without either of us becoming doormats or blowing our cool. I don't think that will be terribly difficult; we have a long history of not killing each other. So welcome aboard; let's see where we go from here.

-Maggie