National Novel Writing Month 2019

I'm not really sure why, really, I'm doing NaNoWriMo this year. I don't have the time to do it, practically speaking, but here I am, on Day 5, with a respectable word count of 9214. I was hoping for 10k, but was easily distracted today by laundry, and an absurd desire to maintain some kind of timeline consistency.

I doubt that any of what I'm writing will be usable in a new novel; maybe some, maybe not any of it. What I do know is that since I started writing again, nightmares have stopped completely. A month of no bad dreams is worth the time eaten up by writing. It's like having a vacation.

The lizard above is one of the MANY we have on the property now. I'm thrilled that the sagebrush lizard population has boomed. They eat ants, says the Internet. Indeed, I am not seeing the swarms of megacolonies of ants that I did a few years ago.

With the time passing into November coolness, the lizards have to sleep most of the time. I get to see them if I head outside around noon, but before that, and after two-thirty or so, it's just too cold for them. Kind of like me, and writing out in the studio.

Liz is saying, "Hey, why does it get so cold when you write?"

Finished Paintings

You know, I can't remember when I started these pictures. It was so long ago that I found them under a pile of papers, having forgotten about them. As I set them out on a work table, I thought "Geeze, why was I so timid about this?"

The limited palette I'd chosen (good thing I wrote it down in a project notebook I found with the preliminary paintings) was Titanium White, Cadmium Orange Medium, Naples Yellow, Alizarin Crimson, and Burnt Sienna.

The inspiration for them was a piece of seashell that I carried with me for a while, calling it a "worry-stone" -- I could find it in a pocket or on my desk and fiddle with it. Turning the shell-shard, I found the lines making strange scenes.

In the third one (on the right) imagine the lines to be stars. I'm pleased with the resulting images, and we're already trying to figure out where to hang them once they are dry.

LG LRE3083SW Range -- Goodbye and Good Riddance

It had a pretty blue enamel interior.
It had a convection oven function.
Mmm, it had a smooth ceramic top.
Self-cleaning.
Warming center on the top.
It was on sale.

Yes, I bought it, and thought it would be the last range I'd ever have to buy, so lovely to look at and play with that it was a trophy stove for my kitchen, even though I do tend to sneer when people make trophy alliances or buy trophy homes or cars.

Serves me right, I guess. The first time I used the self-cleaning function, it did a really crappy job. I mean REALLY. So much so that I went to the store to buy oven cleaner, only to find that you may not use oven cleaner on convection ovens. I was not pleased to discover I'd have to live with a dirty-looking oven. But surely, the industry of oven cleaners would evolve to come up with a solution, sooner or later.

Last spring, we began hearing groaning noises coming from the stove when we used the oven. Intrepidly, Bernie researched and found it it was because the convection fan in the oven was giving out. Repair would be fairly inexpensive, and relatively easy ... so we'd deal with that when we had to.

Labor Day Weekend; a family meal, a big batch of delicious breaded pork chops with mashed potatoes and gravy, and vine-ripened tomatoes and corn on the cob ... WTF, the front burner stopped working and now my chops were sitting in oil instead of frying in oil! Switch to another burner, salvage the rest of the meal, dangit. Well, those burners can be replaced, a bit of a tricky job, true, but not impossible.

The next morning, I turned on the back burner to heat water for my tea. It came on, but so did the big front burner, without me touching its controls. What if I had been using that front burner area like an extra bit of countertop? After all, that's the main reason I like flat ceramic tops, because they can function as additional serving space or work area.

After researching, Bernie found that the likely source of the problem was the control panel. Seriously? For a barely three year old stove?

About $250 for the part alone, not counting the cost of service call and labor if it turned out to be a repair he couldn't do himself.


My turn to do some Googling of stoves. I found a plain old damn electric range at Lowe's for $350, although it wasn't in stock and would take some weeks to get here.

Next best option: get the model that simply upgrades to a self-cleaning oven. $450. In stock. And when we went to look at it, and subsequently buy it, we got $100 off by opening a Lowe's account, which costs us nothing. And there it is, tucked into its spot, looking like it belongs to the kitchen and the dark granite countertops.

It's pretty.
The burners heat up really, really fast.
The controls are simple.
The oven is WAY more even for baking (Bernie made some outstanding zucchini bread)
The oven pre-heats a lot faster.
The burners' temperatures don't fluctuate.

The LG ceramic top stove was probably never meant to be used by people who cook as much as we do. I needed a workhorse, not My Pretty Pony.

I think I've got it.

Gulf Fritillary in Our Garden

Bernie called me out to the front garden to look at a butterfly he'd never seen before. I hadn't, either, so off to Google Search we went. This is a Gulf Fritillary, usually not seen this far north. But apparently they have been in the Bay Area in ages past, and recently have founded a colony in Sacramento County. Simply beautiful.

Bean Therapy in the 2019 Summer Garden

This has been a year of exploration of peppers, which I never bothered to grow since back in the day when my mother and I would plant tomatoes and peppers to make our own salsa casera. After I moved to California in 1988, I had no need to plant peppers and make the cooking sauce; out here EVERY supermarket has it, unlike rural Pennsylvania.

Last summer I began using peppers in my minestrone recipe, and found that they had become indispensable in my cooking. Box 7 became my pepper nursery, with Anaheim chilis and Italian White Wax peppers. And what the heck, why not plant a pepperoncini and a bell pepper as well?

Having no room set aside for the last two, I just jammed them in with my first planting of wax beans, which I'd started too early and looked like lame weeds. To my surprise, two weeks later, the wax beans had begun to leaf out like crazy, and the bell pepper and the pepperoncini were enormous and covered with blooms, while the Anaheims and Italian White Waxes were less than half the size.

Whaaat? Beans and peppers like each other?

Now back to tomatoes -- which I love like a crazy old cat lady loves kittens. This has been a crummy tomato year in the Pilarski Farmland. Seemed like every time the plants had a wave of flowers, the temperature went over a hundred, which shriveled the buds. And the first nine Shady Lady plants I put in ... they were not thriving. Since peppers and tomatoes are both from the same family, I began planting bean seeds in with the sad tomatoes.

And seeing how pathetic this year's tomatoes were, Bernie told me to go buy more plants, three more Shady Ladies, which I planted into the new bed with beans, not waiting around to see if they needed beanie buddies. This is Box 10, tomatoes planted with beans:

With Beans

You can't even see the beans in there, except on the edges. But boy oh boy, those tomatoes know the nitrogen-fixing beans are partying right along with them.

And then, this poor trio, which were the first plants this spring:

No beans

Admittedly, they're all husky plants, that's why Shady Lady is my go-to producer. But wow, what a difference. Same light, same watering system, same potting soil, same number of plants, same size box. Beans made a huge difference.

Next year, with bean buddies from the beginning, we'll be planting Anaheims again, as they are delicious in a number of dishes, and of course, jalapenos and a bell or two, but the Italian White Wax -- turned out to be so hot that when Bernie nibbled one, I thought he was going to pick up a frying pan and smite himself with it to put himself out of his misery.

They are now compost.

Look at What I Can Do!

I was cleaning up my various email inboxes and came across some Photoshop tutorials that I'd signed up to receive, and of course never looked at because I have no time (sarcasm) to learn anything new. One caught my eye, about being able to use text to reveal an image. I clicked on it, fully expecting jargon I would not understand about functions of Photoshop that don't exist on my ancient version of the program, Photoshop 7. (I have a couple books on how to use Photoshop 7 and can't seem to get through a single chapter without becoming annoyingly confused.)

"HAH!" is what I said when I pressed Ctrl + Alt + G -- and the image you see appeared, with the text revealing the image. I felt like I had just reached into my top hat pulled out a rabbit smoking a cigar. And it was so easy. I made a new file image and filled it with black, put text on a new layer, made another new layer, and pasted the image on it. Then the Ctrl + Alt + G thing ... presto!

The image revealed by the text is of the tomatoes sitting on the counter waiting for someone to eat them. We've had sliced tomatoes, tomato and cucumber sandwiches, salsa, tomato-onion-garlic-basil on pasta, salads with tomato, and we love them all. In fact, I'm going to go pick some more tomatoes right now. Day before yesterday, the total was 21 pounds 5 ounces.

I love tomato season.

Update: After picking the tomatoes, the season harvest so far weighs in at 29 pounds 4 ounces.

Computer User

There he naps, in his sunbeam.

I got a surprise the other evening when I was fiddling with my computer, and Kermit came by to see what I was doing. Suddenly a new window opened, with an advertisement for cat food.

Kermit had seen the image of the cat in the ad on the sidebar of the site I was perusing, and poked it with his nose.

Touchscreen computer = dog friendly. Good thing I wasn't on Amazon.

Yet Another Amenity

A redwood deck in the front yard, nestled among the young podocarpus trees and Swiss chard, seats four comfortably, free wi-fi, pets okay.

Had To Experience It For Myself To Believe It

I'm not a bad housekeeper.

Too true that I'm not good at washing windows, and I don't stress out over dog hair (as long as it isn't in my food or my sheets), but no visitor is going to wind up with food poisoning from a dirty kitchen, or sustain major injuries tripping over stuff left on the floor. But ...

We got the interior of the house painted this past year, and had scrumptious carpeting put down in the bedrooms and hallway, and as a result, I had to delve into closets and corners and clean up enough for work to proceed. More than once I had to say to myself, Good grief, how long has that been in there?

Also in the past year, Bernie found an article on the web that talked about this Japanese woman, Marie Kondo, who specialized in teaching people how to "tidy up." There was a book by her:


 ... and so we ordered it from the library and read it. Most of it, anyway.

The result was that Bernie and I cut the amount of clothing in our closets by more than half. The process was easy -- take every article of clothing out of the closet and pile it on the bed. Then pick up each piece and ask yourself,  Do I love it? Really love it? If yes, then it goes back in the closet. If not, it goes, to trash or donation bag.

A couple days ago, Bernie and I found a Netflix series on the same subject, and since, having cleaned our closets, we felt like experts, we condescendingly decided to watch it.

The 40 minute show took us nearly two hours to watch, as it sparked so much conversation about how we do things and think about our household. Yow.

One of the bits that I hadn't read in the book was about arranging drawers in baths, bedrooms, and kitchens. "Stay out of my drawers" was a statement my mother taught me from childhood. However, watching the TV series, I realized that I had not only underestimated the importance of drawers and organization, I had missed out most of my life a truly lovely and uplifting -- prayer-like -- experience of bringing order and finding joy in it.

I'm not going to show a picture of my lingerie drawer, but it turned out great;  the kitchen drawer that houses dishcloths, dish towels, potholders, and a couple miscellaneous things, and that USED TO BE a veritable rats-nest of tangled fabric and buried kitchen linens now looks like this:

This thing was overflowing when I unloaded it onto the counter. I threw nothing out, but now, orderly, there is room to spare and I can see at a glance what all is in there.

The handling and folding of the individual pieces was the most surprising part of it. In taking time to do so in a certain pattern allowed me to appreciate each towel, respecting its nature and its purpose.

 And oddly enough, I think that the process has made me a better woman.

The Wild Tree

My little almond tree on the north side of the house has clusters of beautiful blossoms. Last year it had only two, and they were pretty ratty-looking. This spring, the tree had a better idea of what to do.

Perfectly placed, the tree is not too close to the fence, and Joma can see it from her bedroom window. The scrub jay who planted it did a great job.

Leftovers: Golumpki Meatballs

So you open the fridge and there is a pound package of hamburger that's a couple days old. Oxidation has begun to make it look less appealing ...

Hmm. There's the leftover rice from two days ago when you made chicken piccata. Half a yellow onion lingers in a storage bag. Out in the garden, the stumps of three harvested cabbages still have big blue leaves living and waiting for someone to love them.

A couple months ago, I watched a food show in which some man threw his meatloaf ingredients into a stand mixer. Why not let the Red Lady Kitchen Aid stand mixer do all the dirty work? Throwing the meat, an egg, and the rice into the mixing bowl, I flipped the switch, and off she went, effortlessly and evenly mixing the ingredients. Why did I never think of this before?

Salt, pepper, onion powder, garlic powder.

The big blue leaves of the cabbage -- and a few outer leaves from a Napa cabbage in the back yard planting -- got wilted in a frying pan filled with boiling water. Into the Cuisinart food processor those leaves went, with the leftover yellow onion and a couple cloves of garlic left over from a salsa construction the day before. (Shh, I stole about three heaping tablespoons of Bernie's salsa and threw that in with the meat, egg, and rice mixture, too.) Having chopped to hell and back the cabbage leaves, onion, and garlic, I mixed those in with the rest. Go Red Lady, go.

I could have cooked the meatballs in the oven for three hours, but instead I placed them into a pressure cooker, with a can of tomato sauce dumped over them: 8 minutes at 15 pounds pressure. Cool off the burner for five more minutes, then cool the pressure cooker until the lid is safe to open under cool running water.

Then I walked away until later in the evening, when I carefully scooped the meatballs out and put them in storage containers for today's meal. Not only do they taste better the second day, but they're a lot easier to handle when they're cool. When they're hot, they fall apart. All the liquid from the pressure cooker went into a separate container.

That was yesterday. Today, I gently reheated the meatballs in the microwave on a low setting while I made fresh potatoes for mashed potatoes, and heated the reserved juice after adding a tablespoon of corn starch to thicken it just a little. (Flour works, too.)

Oh, yeah. Who'd have thought leftovers and discards could taste so good?

P.S. Don't forget the ketchup drizzled across the meatballs. You just would not believe how good that is.