Over the Summer Bridge

My home is picturesque. I eat very well. I have adventurous interactions with quaint and rustic town folk. I drink a lot of good wine. I am humbled by the changing seasons, unusual wild life I encounter on early morning walks, and the challenge of fixing things that break around the house. My life is truly enviable. Did I mention that I eat very well?

If you've ever read A Year in Provence or Under the Tuscan Sun or similar memoirs (or watched Martha Stewart), you know all about the exploits of expatriates or urban refugees who transplant themselves into rustic rural settings. Close your eyes...smell the discarded must of the vendange (grape harvest) rotting on the side of the road?...taste the freshly harvested eggplant roasting on the grill...imagine the colorful locals mocking the poor foreigner who doesn't know how to dig a well...

And then, if you're me, you stop to think and the word, "Yuck!" comes to mind. What a bunch of pompous narcissists crying out for attention. Look at my fabulous life! Why don't you make your own boar sausage and goat cheese?!! Why do you still buy frozen spinach?!!

Years ago, when we were in the midst of building Ridgeback Mountain I played around with the idea of a counter-memoir, a tongue in cheek response to Peter Mayle that would document my life in Cloverdale entitled, Over the Summer Bridge. Through the years, I've never gotten around to it. And recently I've figured out why. Cookinginthebathroom is actually the most sustained writing project I've ever engaged in. Good stories need conflict and struggle. Trying to cook dinner 18 inches from a toilet is filled with struggle. On the other hand, while life in Ridgeback Mountain is hard work, it's also blissful. It's even blissful when we find rattlesnakes in the bedroom.

So I'm ambivalent. I want to tell you about picking, hand-stemming and foot stomping seven buckets of grenache noir. I want to share with you the experience of firing up our new brick pizza oven. I want to report the story of Guy the toothless landscape supply guy. But I don't want to sound like a pompous narcissist or some kind of Martha Stewart want-to-be.

Odds are I won't be able to help myself. When it's time to make kumquat jelly again, I'll be letting you know about it (even if I don't make it in the bathroom).