The Half-Crazed Hedge Shaman

Cranky Friday

2012-02-17T18:06:00.000-08:00

For a day in which I did little, it was a busy day.

To start the day, I went back to sleep after I woke up, hoping for a nice entertaining dream sequence. The after 6 am until 8 am dreams always seem to be vivid ones, but today was not the case. I dreamt that I was trying to fall asleep, which when it happens, is not only annoying but leaves me tired and cranky.

I fed the dogs and ate a meager breakfast of tomato juice and cottage cheese, preparing myself for the real breakfast of the day: popcorn and Coke. We drove out the road and got eggs, and then were pretty much ready to go see This Means War.

We watched the movie. The review will be on line Monday on the Piker Press, at which point I'll try to remember to link to it.

When we got home, Bernie opted to go to a local park with Alex, the dogs, and the girls (Mei-Mei, Elena, and Lil), while I stayed behind and worked on the cover image for Monday's Press. The picture on the left will be a small part of that illustration.

The Flickr Library of Congress and Smithsonian galleries are loaded with uncopyrighted material, and it was rather fun picking out pictures of people and messing with them in Photoshop. I say "rather" fun because no matter how much I promise myself that I'm going to play at artwork for no particular purpose, every piece of art I do is "for" something, and has no room for all-out disasters. And so until sundown, I worked.

I'm pleased with the finished illustration, and felt it was well worth the effort.

Currently I'm still holed up in our room, because Lillian is watching some anime series on Netflix. Anime makes me want to heave, which I suppose makes me a kind of Philistine. I'd tell you how I really feel, but sometimes it is truly better for me to keep my mouth shut.

Tomorrow is more work on the Press, and church in the evening. Sunday is going to be for nuthin.'

Wild Creatures

2012-02-16T18:49:00.000-08:00

No one planted these cosmos, at least not on purpose.

Their parent plants weren't even in that area -- they were about twenty feet away on the back bank. But seeds were shed onto the pool deck, and subsequently swept, along with redwood needles (top right) and a euonymus leaf (top center) to a plantless little place down at the far end of the pool under the grapevine.

Through the dry autumn and winter, there was nothing growing there. But one rain storm, and here are little survivors venturing into the sun, green and already sending secondary leaves out.

I cleared the weeds in that part of the garden, leaving all the cosmos and all the California poppy sprouts. And I just happen to have a spare emitter from my irrigation system that will reach them.

I can't wait to see them blossom pink above the poppy orange.

Editorial

2012-02-15T18:22:00.000-08:00

In the last week or so, I -- in my capacity as Managing Editor of the Piker Press -- received two very long excerpts of novels.

One submission was double-spaced lines, which I hate reading on the computer. If I'm editing a manuscript for pay, it's fine, it gives me space to write notes or make corrections. But just to read? Ugh. The other was some kind of locked format with a small and fussy-looking font. I had to go to 150% zoom just to read the thing.

Both submissions were over 20,000 words.

I read them both, and then foolishly after the fact Googled the authors. Both stories are already available in ebook formats for Kindle. They're both already published.

Now what did the authors expect from the Piker Press?

I asked both authors that very question, and I must have tapped my inner Swahili, because neither one had a coherent answer for me.

One thought that having me do a review of the book would be wonderful, which seemed odd to me because I told the author up front that although it was a good story idea, the writing was stilted. If I did a review of the book, I'd have to trash it, because I would NOT want to read that kind of dull writing, or put up with all the spelling and typographical errors and grammatical mistakes.

The other author was readable, but answered that the work wasn't available to the Press in its entirety -- just the excerpt, so as to drive sales of the book on Amazon. Hmm. A 20k excerpt would be ... ten weeks of story to get to the end and find ... no ending? And in the publishing of the excerpt, I would edit and correct all the spelling errors and grammar, whereupon an interested reader would buy the book and be annoyed at all the mistakes?

I don't know that I care to correct 20k words for free, if the story itself is too important to publish in the Press.

Live and learn. I've never had this kind of goofiness in a submission before -- maybe it's a new fad. At least the next time, I'll know what questions to ask ahead of time, and save myself some hours of irritating reading.

The pinkish bell? Just a photo I was playing with in Photoshop. Don't worry about it.

Waking and End of the Day

2012-02-11T22:55:00.000-08:00

We've got an enormous window in our bedroom, six feet by five feet, and we normally do not have the blinds drawn down, as we love the view of the back garden and pool.

This morning, I woke to Bernie saying, "There's a hawk in the tree."

The hawk was agreeably inclined to stay there until my eyes were uncrossed. Bern got our binoculars and we observed the unmoving bird for a while. When I was sufficiently awake, I went out with my camera, collecting Lillian along the way, and we went to the end of our little yard to stare up at the red-shouldered hawk.

Now that's the way to start the day.

Most of the day I spent working on getting next Monday's Piker Press ready to turn over, trying to get ahead of the game so that Monday isn't a stress maelstrom for me.

Then was dinner, then was church. Both were wonderful. We went to Mass at St. Stanislaus in Modesto, where Fr. Ramon presided over a most reverential service. Then was home again, and I read the evening news, replied to some emails, and then, opened a file.

It was the second chapter of the semi-named Aser Murder Mystery. I wrote for a while; then handed the laptop to Bernie for approval.

He gave Chapter Two: Storming a Castle a thumbs up. I pretty much love this story, and am really glad that the edit and rewrite are coming along.

Annoying 1 + Annoying 1 = Coolness!

2012-02-10T18:06:00.000-08:00

The white geranium that I planted late last summer has survived the winter. I'm still not sure that a white geranium will look "right" when all the other geraniums are variations of reds, but I'm willing to give it a chance to get four feet tall and six feet across like the old-timer magentas and reds.

Over the geraniums in this wonderfully unseasonally early spring, a cloud of gnats swirls and darts.

I'm not fond of gnats -- like my mother before me, if a gnat decides to have a taste of my skin, days of pain and itching and swelling ensue. And so, seeing the gnats out over the geraniums makes me squint my eyes and wonder where the birds are that are supposed to be eating these buggies.

From inside the house, where Lillian has discovered dancing to XBox360, comes thumping music.

She's enjoying dancing, and that's all to the good. I'd dance, too, if my knee wasn't so painful from the exertion of horsey exercises in the arena yesterday. (Ow, in many muscles as well.) Nevertheless, I'm a quiet old granny who prefers the sound of the wind in the trees or the calls of birds to recorded music, by and large.

We sat on the front porch this evening, watching the sun lower in the sky. Lillian and her friend Megan were dancing to the XBox, and the thumping beat and music filtered out to us. In the glow of the late afternoon sun, the gnats were illuminated in their jittery swarm.

In an astonishing meld of living creatures and electronic music, the annoyances were transformed into an utterly delightful show. The gnats truly looked like they were dancing to the music, and they were very good at it. I could watch gnats dance to those tunes all day.

Go gnats! I can always wear insect repellant.

And Now, More Awesome Crappy Poetry!

2012-02-09T21:30:00.000-08:00

WinterFull Moon

Infreezing silence

theMoon rains down

brightness

Inscorching blue light

theMoon beams down

grinning

Wakeyou from your sleep?

Youbetcha

Dispelall your dreams?

Igot it

In myblinds closing

theMoon triumphs

glowing

In mysleeping late

theMoon snickers

andleaves

Scheduleall thrown off?

Youbetcha

Draggingthrough the day?

Igot it

Inmy dreams tonight

theMoon shrouded --

rainclouds

Inthe rain drop sounds

theMoon hidden

unseen

Foodie Day

2012-02-08T20:24:00.000-08:00

Bernie and John formally approached me the other day and whined that they wanted a ham meat pie. Seriously, it was a concerted, unified, formal whine. They knew that I could not resist such a plea.

And so, the early afternoon found me cutting up ham and potatoes in huge but equal amounts, and rolling out crusts for my biggest baking dish. Served with broth from the cooked ham and taters, and topped with freshly-chopped yellow onions, the ham meat pie was a greatly-appreciated success.

It's an easy dish to make, and since I had no other wrenching demands today, I opted to spend more time in the kitchen. I made more fresh butter and ranch dressing from heavy cream, and because tomorrow I plan on riding, I pushed on and made meatballs and sauce.

This is just one of those things I look at in my life and ask why the hell I never tried to figure out it out before. I remember loving Tony's Cottage Inn and their spaghetti with meatballs since I was a tiny child. Yet it is only in this past year that I attempted to make meatballs, or the accompanying sauce.

Of course Bernie and I have made spaghetti with meat sauce since we were first married. We used hamburger and put tomato sauce, garlic powder, oregano, salt and pepper into it, and we were content. When we could afford it, we went to Tony's for the real deal, though, which wasn't often. Nearly a quarter century has passed since we lived on that side of the continent; I managed one meal of spaghetti with Tony's meatball (one is costly, two is exorbitant) when I was back there five (can it really be five?) years ago.

Meatballs and a good tomato sauce are an investment. The money to fly back East, stay at a hotel, order an entree -- wow. So much more thrifty, especially when I eat whatever is left over from the main meal for breakfasts, delicious meatballs every day, not a single one going to waste.

Right now I'm still making them by eye and smell ... I have no solid measurements yet.

But oh, they're even better than Tony's.

Channel Change

2012-02-04T21:36:00.000-08:00

A week ago, Winter clicked over into Spring.

It's a sweet sensation, feeling the air so abruptly different from one day to the next, from having a chilly tinge that makes you want to put on your coat to the gentle coolness that makes you want to put on shorts. Maybe it's a humidity issue; I don't know.

The birds know what it is, however: there's definite pairing up and struttin' stuff going on, and I've been watching broad V's of geese headed north.

I do believe it's time to plant my onion sets, and buy my tomato seeds.

The picture is an example of random cellular pattern (in an uncreated universe) on a spider plant leaf. This spider plant decided that it wanted a pure white stripe down the middle for no reason at all. How clever an artist!

2012-02-04T21:27:00.000-08:00

It was only about 40 degrees this morning when I got up, so I gulped some breakfast, read the news, and took off for the ranch to ride Dink out in the orchards before the bees were active. There are about thirty blossoms in the local orchards, and about a hundred bazillion bees in their bee boxes, so the little ladies are fair-to-middlin' angry when they go outside and find there isn't anything worth their while. I didn't want to get stung again.

Having scouted a riding route by car, (checking for bee boxes) I called Dink away from his breakfast and off we went. He was quite entertained by the change from the usual roads, and there has been enough work on irrigation systems that what we saw was different from the last time we'd taken those roads. A workout was good for him and good for me; we even did some trotting. He did the trotting, I did the balancing, and though his legs were moving more than mine, I was puffing more than he after the trot-work. Riding properly is exercise.

The other reason I was out there early was to avoid Wonder Woman, who spends hours at the ranch on Saturdays, messing with her horses. (Or maybe they're her clients' horses. Don't know, don't care.) All I know is that early in the day, none of the other boarders are around, and that makes for a quiet prep time, and a relaxing horsey visit.

By the time we got back to the ranch, the temperature was up to 56 degrees, and a bee was determined to land on Dink's face as I fed him his pan of Senior Feed. He was not amused, tossing his head and pinning his ears at the insect, who finally figured out that his white blaze on his face was not an almond blossom. Another bee landed on his rump to check out the white parts of his hide; Dink switched his tail and whacked the bee smartly, which caused the bee to zoom back and forth in tight circles, probably shouting threats and challenges.

Until the blossoms of the orchards explode into a sea of pink and white, Dink and I will probably stick to riding in the arena at the ranch. He hates arena work, and I hate convincing him to work in the arena, but it beats getting stung, for sure.

The birds in the picture are Brewer's blackbirds (I think) and they look very silly in the neighbor's trees. They're ready for Spring, too.

The Jawbone of an Ass

2012-01-30T23:27:00.000-08:00

"That's definitely an abscessed tooth. You've got to get him to the vet and have it removed," Wonder Woman told me, having appeared unasked at my side as I looked at Dink, who had been brought in from his pasture to a little paddock.

"He's got food stuck in his cheek," I said. "This has happened before."

The ranch manager had called me again on Friday, her voice sounding panicky. Dink's face has a big swelling on his jaw, get out here as soon as you can. We'd just got back from the movies, but I swung my purse over my shoulder again and headed out, fairly confident that I knew what it was. About a year ago, I'd found Dink in the pasture with a big ugly bulge on his face. Palpating it had caused him no discomfort, so I'd saddled him up and ridden out through the orchard roads. Even if he did have a problem with a tooth, he needed exercised. By the time we got back to the ranch, the swelling had ... disappeared. He'd had a wad of grass stuck in there.

Back to Friday. Wonder Woman, who is a "trainer" shook her head at me. "It's not food. I stuck my hand in there and it's his gums. There's no food in there."

The ranch manager showed up, and Wonder Woman went on again about abscesses and how she had stuck her thumb into Dink's mouth, and knew that he had a bad tooth, and an infection going on. The ranch manager was freaked out, ready to load Dink into the trailer and cart him back to the vet's again. Her apt reading of Dink's demeanor on Wednesday had probably saved his life, but she really didn't want to save him just to lose him a day or so later. Wonder Woman continued to hold forth on why Dink should be taken to a vet right away, her yammering making my innards churn. There was something familiar in the way she was presenting her argument.

Yeah, that was it. I'd heard the method before. She wanted to induce a panic, make her listeners rely on her "expertise."

He won't eat his food because he's in too much pain. He won't drink water because the cold water will hit the rotten tooth and cause too much pain. He'll just colic again and die.

Fact is, horses' teeth don't have the same kind of nerve system that humans do. That's why, when a vet does a procedure known as "floating," he'll give the horse a dose of drugs to make him dopey and relaxed, and then, with the horse's mouth ratcheted open with a miniature car jack, uses saws and sanders to even out the horse's teeth. The horse's ears might flicker at the noise, but trust me, they don't wince or flinch when their teeth are sawed, sanded, or even yanked out.

And another fact is that you can't stick a thumb all the way back into a horse's cheek unless they're sedated and the mouth jacked open. A horse's teeth, front or back, can cut your fingers off, so that would be a stupid thing to do. Wonder Woman's thumb could not possibly reach the area of swelling.

The ranch manager took Dink's temperature and he was well within normal range. I put a halter on him and walked down the road with him, as much to give the two of us a break from Wonder Woman's hair-on-fire rhetoric as to exercise his roany hide.

We stopped to watch some irrigation system workers installing some kind of solar panel down the road; I let Dink snatch some long green grass recently sprung up from the rain last week. We walked back to the ranch to hear Wonder Woman continuing her "professional" dissertation. "Look at his cheek," I said to the ranch manager.

"There's hardly any swelling there!" she said.

"Same as before," I mentioned. "It's food. It works out."

"No, it's the pressure of the halter on his cheekbone," Wonder Woman stated stridently. "It's pushing the pus out."

"I haven't been hauling on his head," I told her gently. "I don't have to."

"It's the halter right over that spot, breaking the abscess. He has to be on antibiotics and get that tooth removed."

At that point, I pulled out the big guns. She could not accept my assessment of the horse's condition, but there was one thing she could not refute. "Here's the thing," I said to her. "I have NO MONEY LEFT. I could cover this last visit to the vet, but now, I HAVE NO MONEY LEFT. NONE. I can't pay a vet to look at his teeth today."

It was an unheard of argument, I guess. Wonder Woman wandered off to talk to another boarder about why she should or should not exercise her horse in the arena. I told the ranch manager I'd be back on Saturday to check on Dink.

Geeze.

I went back on Saturday with a can of Senior Equine food to tempt Dink's appetite. The ranch manager met me there, still worried, even though Dink had no swelling evident in his face. She'd brought Dink in to feed him in the morning, and dose him with antibiotics, and found that he refused the grassy hay, and the sweet feed with the antibiotics. I groomed the old fuzzy up and rode him out for a ride around the nearest orchard bloc. When we got back, I gave him a bite of an apple, and offered him some feed. He was hungry.

The ranch manager brought the bucket she'd put the antibiotics and feed into. I could tell right away the feed smelled sour -- no wonder Dink didn't want it. Nevertheless, once she went on to deal with other clients -- and no doubt listen to Wonder Woman, who was again on that day holding forth with her wisdom, Dink not only ate all the antibiotics/feed mix as well as my offering of Senior Feed, and in doing so, packed both of his cheeks full like a squirrel.

"Come look at his face," I called to the ranch manager when she passed by.

"Oh my God, what the hell is going on?" she cried, looking at his lumpy face.

"Now look at the other side," I said, pushing his head around. "It's all food."

Wonder Woman, who doesn't share a tack room with the lesser equestrians, just happened to come over to snort in on someone else's horse.

"Look!" the ranch manager cried. "It's all food!"

Wonder Woman had no comment to offer, not a single word.

Today I was out again, and Dink had no swelling of the face at all, and I only offer one comment on Wonder Woman's expertise: the big dappled warmblood horse she trains ... "trains?" ... She can't take him out on the orchard roads because he "doesn't know when to stop."

Long story, this entry. Sorry.

Dink is good.

Look Out, Here He Comes!

2012-01-26T15:43:00.000-08:00

At one this afternoon, the ranch manager and I went to pick Dink up at the vet, after a successful treatment for colic. The ranch manager's first tipoff that Dink was sick yesterday was that he was docile, subdued and polite.

And thus it was wonderful to see him today, head up, ears pricked, looking like he was ready to kick the ass of all and sundry.

"Now that's Dink," the ranch manager said fondly.

Long Afternoon

2012-01-25T21:32:00.000-08:00

I was doing some cooking for Alex's dinner when the phone rang. Not expecting a call, since my hands were gooey from chopping up the remnants of a leg of lamb for Lamb-and-Bean, I let the answering machine pick up -- only to hear the ranch manager's voice saying that Dink was not right. I grabbed a towel and mopped my hands, answered the phone.

Dink was sick, and so I headed out to the ranch. His breathing was too fast, and he was not his usual feisty self. While the ranch manager called a vet, I walked the horse down the road and back, down and back, stopping to listen to his side.

A horse's belly should be a chorus of gurgles and squeaks; Dink's left side was completely silent.

The ranch manager thought we should pack him off to the vet, and so she brought her trailer around. Dink was definitely not himself, but he was thrilled with the sight of the trailer, and clambered in with no prompting at all. Off we went in the sundown. The vet stayed after his usual hours to examine the horse, who was in the first stages of colic -- a shutdown of the intestines, possibly brought on by the radically changing weather.

Dink is still there, in a clean stall, where the vet will check on him again tonight. He should be okay, but the vet said he would call if our old horse (22) took a turn for the worse.

Tonight I'm listening for the phone, hoping that it doesn't ring.

Lemons: Crappy Poetry

2012-01-20T21:35:00.000-08:00

Lemons

Lemmings

No swimmings

Yellow

Yeller

So stellar

Winter

Windblown

Go, seeds sown

Bring Spring

Bring rain

O, sweet rain

Weird Experiences

2012-01-19T19:19:00.000-08:00

Unusual in January

My sasanqua camellia is blooming beautifully. The weird thing is that every other year since I brought it home and planted it, it began blooming at Halloween, and was all done by Thanksgiving. This year, it didn't begin blooming until Christmas, and is still going to town with buds to spare, unbothered by the freezing temperatures at night, thanks to the canopy provided by my neighbor's redwoods.

For years, my default salad dressing when eating out has been ranch dressing on the side of my salad. Our son-in-law loves ranch dressing on lasagna, meatloaf, cabbage rolls, tacos ... okay, he loves it on everything. So we buy a goodly amount of Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing on a regular basis.

HOWEVER. Trying to track down what in my diet was causing me health problems, I wanted to eliminate monosodium glutamate as a possible culprit, so ranch dip (alas, so yummy on football nosh veggies) and ranch dressing were right out.

After watching a Food Channel program in which Anne Burrell made a low fat ranch dipping sauce, I thought I might experiment with making my own ranch dressing. I was apprehensive about it, because of the numerous brands of ranch dressing at the store, only Hidden Valley was palatable. I didn't want to make something that would waste our now-meagre funds.

I found this one at About.com, but I really didn't want to run to the store and buy a quart of buttermilk to use 3/4 cup of it. Then I noticed a link for making your own buttermilk.

Weird, I just happened to have a container of heavy cream out in the garage, one I needed to use up. Maybe I bought it for making homemade mac and cheese downright dangerous, or maybe I was going to make a white wine cream sauce. No matter. It was about to become a learning experience.

We had no idea that throwing that heavy cream into a jar and shaking it for 10 minutes would thicken it up so much, or be so tiring. Bernie and I threw it into the food processor, turned that machine on, and watched the thick cream turn into whipped cream, and then, rather suddenly, into butter, which separated from the liquid now known as buttermilk.

Who knew? Not us!

And wow, that butter, once rinsed and lightly salted, superb!

And the ranch dressing, with no chemicals added?

Soooo good. Give me a salad!

A Day Without Wikipedia

2012-01-18T19:27:00.000-08:00

Three things have been nagging at the back of my mind lately.

Yes, I'm active on the internet today, a veritable scab, since so many are boycotting the internet and/or blacking out some or all of their websites. I read some rhetoric today that said that SOPA and PIPA laws, if passed, would "kill" the internet.

"Kill" the internet.

A boycott was called to raise awareness of the issue.

While the acts in question are supposed to combat piracy of copyrighted works, the word "censorship" has been thrown about, for we all know, as freedom-loving Americans, that censorship is A BAD WORD.

Censorship, killing the internet, has been on my mind.

A comic strip, "Between Friends," (which I read in the Houston Chronicle daily) recently has one of the main characters singing the old Helen Reddy song, "I Am Woman" -- with modified lyrics, of course, for the entertainment value. But having the blasted song stick in my head made me remember the line"

"But I'm still an embryo

With a long long way to go"

That song has been on my mind.

And the third thing is the censorship of human beings. If the woman's movement really was an embryo, then the male chauvinist pigs would have had her aborted without a second thought, without any memory of her importance.

The internet doesn't have a heartbeat. An embryo does. Why not let the internet be killed, if a human being, whose only crime is "inconvenience" deserves a death sentence?

Ah, as a freedom-loving American, I should not suggest that if abortion is an okay thing, then every sexually active man and woman ought to watch a film of an actual abortion, to see that the "okay thing" is actually brutal and horrific.

Censorship.

My daughter is being encouraged to have a blood test done to determine whether or not the embryo she carries will have Down Syndrome. Why should she have to know that ahead of time?

Why, silly, so that she can abort the child, already named Jo, and never have to tenderly care for a person with special needs. Not quite perfect? Censor it. Forget it. It wasn't important, anyway.

Right to life is on my mind.

Ice on the Pool Again

2012-01-17T17:08:00.000-08:00

Crispy swimming pool!

I find it interesting that although we all could see the ice on the pool from the windows, we all went outside to peer at it close up. Maybe the windows are lying to us! Maybe it really isn't that cold out and the crystals are an optical illusion!

I also note that not one of us put on a jacket to go out and look at the ice, in spite of it being only 24 degrees.

Maybe we're a little short on sense in the winter!

Winter Day

2012-01-13T17:27:00.000-08:00

Yet ANOTHER day in the 60+ degree range! We went to the hardware store today, and found that they were out of onion sets already -- this crazy warm weather has everyone jumping the gun.

I did have to go up to Manteca for a couple things, so we stopped in The Home Depot and picked up onion sets (they had plenty) and seed potatoes as well. In about two weeks, I'll be ready to plant, I think.

Coffee cans are sitting in the garage, waiting for me to plant Marglobe tomato seeds in them; I'll buy Bernie's Romas and maybe an Early Girl at the hardware. I've got a month and a half before I need to worry about tomatoes, though obviously, I've got them on my mind.

It's nearly time to close up the garage and chase the granddaughter indoors. I smell some fool's fireplace burning even though it's a "No Burn" day. With the warm afternoon, even with the sun going down, the neighborhood boys are playing football across various front yards, and Lil and a couple girls are playing their incomprehensible princess or wizard games. Howie is ready to go indoors where he has a slim chance of someone giving him a tidbit as supper is cooked in the kitchen.

Like the kids, I'm reluctant to admit that a winter evening is calling an end to activities in the open air.

2012-01-12T19:39:00.000-08:00

Ah, another beautiful, warm sunny January day!

Remember last January when I was complaining about fog and damp and cold? Go back in time and tell me to shut the hell up, would you? We are in such desperate need of rain it isn't at all funny.

This is chard in the front planter box, big and tough. I want to do something with it so it has an excuse to put out some sweet tender leaves -- these fiends are thick and tough. I stuck one in the vegetable drawer in the fridge, and it appears to have dehydrated, and looks like it's longing to be made into some kind of fake sushi. But never having eaten sushi, I don't know what flavors one might savor. I do have some frozen catfish nuggets left ...

But today's sweet triumph was (once again) reclaiming my studio. Several sanding projects done in there coated everything in a layer of brownish wood dust. Everything. Yuck. And then this past week, all the recycle stuff got set down out there, too. 'Twas a dump. A good two hours of cleaning, sorting, and putting away left me once again with an inviting haven, and I did some art work on my table-top project (not unveiled yet, except to Lillian) and some scribble-art, which can be seen over at the Resolution Blog. It was fun, and deliciously, just that little bit of mind-->hand work made me itch for the smell of oil paints.

And oh, Lord, help me, Bernie and I took a whack at a Pilates "Beginning Mat Work" video this morning. I was appalled at how flabby, stiff, and weak I've become. It was so difficult for me that I wanted to go back to bed afterwards. It was so humiliating that I know I must persevere and limber and strengthen up.

Humiliation, dirt, art, dreadful warm and balmy weather. Now that's the way to spend a day in January!

Twelve Drummers Drumming

2012-01-05T17:20:00.000-08:00

On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me -- Fine Picnic Weather!

No really, it was. 68 degrees and sunshine, folding sling chairs out on the front yard, soaking in the Vitamin D while dining, for Bernie, on a beef tri-tip and provolone sandwich on fresh French bread, and for me, thin slices of tri-tip seasoned with salt and cumin, and French bread slathered with cream cheese.

Simply bliss.

The geraniums are blooming a moderate number of blossoms, the breeze was light and balmy, and Howie lay in the grass at our feet, watching people walk by, keeping an eye on cats prowling in the neighbor's driveway, nose noting every stray scent to be found.

And of course, instead of drummers, just as loud was the traffic as cars roared up and down the street, not at all at or under the 25 mph limit. Hey! Twelve Speeders Speeding ...!

There. Tomorrow is Epiphany. You can take down your Christmas season tree and lights now. Or, if you have things to do tomorrow, and don't want to miss any of the NFL games over the weekend, Monday is all right, too -- Baptism of the Lord, you know, and the Catholic Church's official end of the Christmas Season.

Merry Christmas, every one. May 2012 bring us all peace in our lands, and happiness in our hearts.

Eleven Pipers Piping

2012-01-04T18:37:00.000-08:00

Pipers makes me think of bagpipes, and bagpipes make me think of kilts. Unfortunately, my eyeballs were once seared by a series of photos sent to me in email of a line of men in uniforms which included kilts, but not always underwear. I deleted the email immediately, but the damage was done. Therefore I will not dwell on pipers, bagpipes, or kilts in this post.

In fact, I'll change the words. On the eleventh day of Christmas, my sweet Howie gave to me:

Eleven Pounds of Dog Hair!

Now why Howie is shedding out his undercoat at this time of year is beyond me. He started letting loose lumps and chunks of fur two weeks ago or more. He's not ill, and now that all that loose stuff is off him, his striped coat is soft and shiny again. It has been abnormally warm -- in the 60's during the day ... but only for a few days.

I'd hazard that it means an early spring, but the horse still looks like a wooly mammoth with no sign of getting rid of extra hair.

This, by the way, is not all the loose hair I could have combed out of his undercoat. I quit because my arms were tired, and static electricity was attracting more hair to my face and nose than I cared to deal with.

We had just finished a short and gentle walk (about 30 minutes) around neighborhood streets and two small blocs of almond orchards, and the brushing was the perfect finale for How. He became a limp dog, and relaxed into a nap.

Maybe my faithful beast just knew I needed something special to take my mind off ... well, never mind.

Ten Lords A-Leaping

2012-01-03T18:52:00.000-08:00

Chessboard Toads

Ever since I was a child, I wondered why you might have ten lords in one spot, and what would cause them to leap. Today, the tenth day of Christmas, I am no wiser.

Were they playing checkers? A lordly tournament? Was there a joust invaded by vermin, which caused them to dance about, hopping high into the air?

Were they at a conference, and disagreements escalated into fierce arguments, with lords leaping out of their chairs to throw pieces of mutton and chicken bones at each other?

Or were they like political candidates I read about, who cannot wait to leap into bed with the latest "politically correct" trend?

Wait! Maybe they weren't really lords at all, but only local tinpot dictators lording their power over people paid less than they, who, upon the visit of the district manager, had to leap to get disgruntled employees scheduled off so as not to appear the fat toads that they really were?

Or none of the above. I don't know. It was a nice day, and a productive tenth day of Christmas.

Nine Ladies Dancing

2012-01-02T18:33:00.000-08:00

More or less. The bee doesn't count, she's working, not dancing.

The ninth day of Christmas was okay, after the Piker Press was up and I was able to stop swearing at my laptop and its penchant for wacking out on me when I'm trying to edit articles.

It starts like this: Grumpy because I've left working on the Press until Monday morning (when I've vowed every Monday afternoon for years that I'm going to get everything ready to roll the Thursday prior to Monday's publishing), I immediately tackle the "difficult" articles first -- the ones that need close attention and editing. An article that has misspellings and punctuation gaffes can take an hour to edit and format, depending on how rough a draft I've been handed, and how many interruptions in the process.

Every link has to be checked, every book that's reviewed has to be available on Amazon (since those links are our only income, piss poor though it is). Every Peek of the Week has to be mined from galleries, examined closely to make sure there is no blur, and on Monday mornings I can barely remember how to button my shirt correctly let alone who all has given me permission to look through their galleries for potential photos.

Halfway through the process, I'm already stiff and itchy, and then the laptop mousepad gets over-sensitive and buggers up lines I've typed. I should know better, yes, it's true. The only thing to do is get up, walk away, and go watch the birds for a while, drink a glass of ice water, run a load of laundry. The madder I get, the more mistakes slow me up. Bleah.

But once the Press was done, the ninth day was fine. Laundry was a-cookin' in the machines, there were plenty of leftovers for lunch; I took a walk around the block, read an uplifting article about liturgical norms, tackled three small sewing projects, and with Bernie's help, sanded off the old finish on the paper towel holder from the kitchen.

I got to thinking about a picture of 'nine ladies dancing' -- and thought of photos of cherry blossoms. So beautiful, and on a day that dawned with thick gray Tule fog, cold and damp, I found myself longing for Spring already.

As I looked through the photos, I spotted something I had missed last Spring: a bug staggering through the photo shoot.

Merry Christmas Season, Bug! You're a star!

Eight Maids A-Milking

2012-01-01T18:05:00.000-08:00

New Year's Day, we woke to a thick sky, full of fog.

We still have no rain since October, when a downpour surprised everyone. Now we're starting to worry. Rain should start in November, or at least December, and so far, we've had none.

Yes, I sang today. And wrote today. And paced back and forth in front of the TV, enough to count as exercise. Come on, New Year's Day is all about the football for me, since we're headed on to losing cable in weeks, as a financial austerity measure. Next season I may have no football at all, except after the fact.

This first day of the new year, I was struck again and again how much I love my husband, and how fortunate I have been in my life, having met him, and having spent 36 New Years with him.

I have no Eights, nor maids, and not one drop of milk in the house, as Lillian, Alex, and I are fair to middlin' allergic to cow juice. We've recently switched to almond milk, which is produced locally, tastes great, has no cholesterol, and is fairly low in carbs.

You're out of work, Maids.

Seven Swans A-Swimming

2011-12-31T20:13:00.000-08:00

On the seventh day of the Christmas season, which is also New Year's Eve, we went to the vigil Mass at sundown. (Not only is tomorrow Sunday, but also the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God.)

Thus I had the opportunity to reflect on the past year, the successes, the failures, the itchies that plagued my skin, the absence of bad colds, the times that made me feel good about myself, the aimless days that made me think I was a waste.

2011 was not the worst year I've ever experienced, by far. But there are things that I could improve upon as regards my own well-being, mentally and physically.

I'm not making a resolution, per se, but rather making an attempt to live a better life. Once again, I want to try to draw or paint something every day. I want to write a little every day, be it on the novels that need to be finished, or short stories, or blog entries (or poetry -- who can resist crappy poetry?) I want to sing something every day, even if it's just an Alleluia from Mass music. I want to exercise five times a week, be it riding my horse, taking a walk, or limping my way through a workout video that has sat unused on the bookcase for five years.

I'd like to do what Bernie has been doing, taking some time each day to read something in a spiritual vein, just a few paragraphs, enough to make thoughts occur that aren't just what I have to do, or what I'm going to eat at the next meal, but things about what is most important and real in life, the relationship with the Most High.

Noting that my voice, as I'm aging, is getting a bit rough and creaky, I'd like to read a paragraph aloud every day. My Pennsylvania accent is overtaking my spoken word, and I don't like that at all.

Finally, because I now have no health insurance and the only thing "wrong" with me is that I'm too fat for my little frame, I want to try to lose about another ten pounds, which means cutting back on carbohydrates -- oh, dear, that means my delicious Almaden Mountain Chablis.

There you go. Seven things, seven beautiful swans on the river of life, bemoaning that most of the time they'll be swimming upstream, hoping that they won't be taken by currents and flung off a precipitous waterfall.

How lovely they look at a distance, but when I approach them closely, will they hiss and bite?

Six Geese A-Laying

2011-12-30T17:03:00.000-08:00

On the sixth day of Christmas, my family pulled an OccupyKitchen until such time as I would make the time-honored dish called, simply enough, Ham Meat Pie.

I grew up not thinking about the name of the dish much. It had ham, which is meat, and it was in a pie. We didn't get it much, because Mom always insisted on cooking her own ham ... and she more or less hated cooking, much less slicing up a hot and sticky ham.

Once I was married, I just bought ham by the thick slice (usually paying too much for it) and we had Ham Meat Pie as a special treat.

My mother also always cooked her ingredients for stew and meat pie separately. She explained that she didn't want potatoes to take on the color or flavor of anything else. She was my teacher in the kitchen, and if I had argued with her about it, I would have been OUT of her kitchen, so I just took her word as law.

I don't do that any more. I cut up my potatoes, cut up my ham (equal heaps of each) and throw them in the pot together to simmer, just covered with water. (I've also found it far more affordable, and convenient, to wait until fully-cooked spiral cut hams are on sale at the holidays, buy them, and freeze them. )

Use a slotted spoon to take the ham and potatoes from the pot when they are done (reserving the juice); they join forces in a pie shell (see that monster casserole dish? That makes about 12 servings) made from Bisquick baking mix and milk. In point of fact, I use the store brand baking mix, but people know what Bisquick is. (Bisquick in bowl, add milk until you've got a workable dough. Roll out on floured rolling board. Easy.)

Make a couple vent cuts in the upper crust, bake at 375 degrees for about 15 minutes, or until the crust is lovely golden brown. Serve with the reserved juice and fresh chopped yellow onions sprinkled on it. Anyone in my family will eat your share if you don't like it.

The red dish of crackers are also Bisquick, the leftover dough rolled out thin, sprayed with olive oil and seasoned with a bit of onion and garlic powders, folded over, cut, and baked on a cookie sheet while the Ham Meat Pie is baking.

Where are the geese, or the eggs? Oh, I have nothing of goosiness in the house. Instead, I have a syllabic stand in:

Six Peeled Potatoes!

Go ahead, sing it. It works.

Five Golden Rings

2011-12-29T11:47:00.001-08:00

On the Fifth Day of Christmas, I played in the kitchen, tackling a couple dishes that have been on my mind lately.

The first, a vegetable medley in a chickeny-flavored sauce, comprised of sauteed onions, baby portabella mushrooms, steamed kohlrabi, and wilted strips of chard, served over basmati rice. It was pretty tasty, although the next time I want to tone it down to a hint of chicken flavor.

The second was catfish nuggets, breaded and fried. Sounds simple, but I never did it this way before: I used crumbs I made from a stale loaf of French bread, with Italian seasoning, salt, pepper, and a touch of garlic. It was wickedly good, so much so that I need to be careful about how much I make, and how often; I'm having a hard time staying away from the last pieces.

And then there is this duo: a beautiful gray and black doily that my friend Cheryl made for me during NaNoWriMo. We were playing on a forum thread over there, a peculiar role-playing game that involves cooking sherry, macaques, and urinal cakes, and frequently, antimacassars and doilies. Black for my ninja garb in the game, gray to match my imaginary (and always full) tankard. To go with it, I bought myself a new little wine glass, no stemware for me, please, of the perfect heft and capacity.

Though I photographed them on a white background, normally the two accompany me at my chair and shelf in the front room, from which I coach NFL football and advance my intellect with the Food Channel.

Today I also had the now-rare pleasure of chatting online with Lydia Manx, of Piker Press vampire series. Lydia has lost her internet connection at home to alligators disguised as a cable company charging too much for services. I miss our formerly frequent evening chats very much, so being able to catch up on all our newses and opinions was simply wonderful.

Veggie medley, catfish nuggets, a perfect doily, a new wine glass, and a delightful chat with a good friend.

Five Golden Things.

What?

Four Calling Birds

2011-12-28T20:51:00.000-08:00

There are four novels on this laptop that need finishing: Out With the Trash, a Port Laughton novel that semi-parallels Dreamer and Time Traveler (as well as the tedious soap opera Transitions); the semi-titled Aser novel Murder Mystery; a story about a dead woman trying to save her still-living lover, the inaptly named After Life (there are so many books out there with that title it isn't even funny any more); and the current work-in-progress, Loon and Donkey.

I don't count the 100k+ train wreck Going Hungry, because what editing needs to take place in that one should only be done with the back side of a shovel.

Anyway, all four of these books are clamoring for attention. If I have a goal for this coming year, it will be to finish as many of them as I can.

Happy Christmas Season! Today our local grocery store marked down its seasonal display of doggie beds, big poofy, huggable doggy beds, 40" x 50" -- from $39.99 to $10, just as we were going through the checkout line. I've been admiring them since before Thanksgiving, finding the loft of the polyester fill to be seductively luxurious. $10?? I went back through the checkout line with a poofy giant pillow in my arms.

Howie will be most grateful, you think. You are wrong. Howie is an ingrate when it comes to dog furniture. He loves the couch, the loveseat, the chair (if the ottoman is with it), the bed. He rarely has used his blanket on the floor.

However, I am grateful, for this big, poofy dog pillow fits very nicely into my folding quad chair in the bedroom, making it instantly upholstered, and deliciously warm.

I'm in the chair with the dog pillow; Howie is on the bed, his head on my pillow.

Hmm.

Three French Hens

2011-12-27T20:09:00.000-08:00

On the third day of Christmas, I went out to see Dink, with a big, juicy apple for the little horse.

One, I needed to administer wormer to the old dude, which he loathes, but tolerates remarkably well, in a most gentlemanly manner, neither rearing nor biting, even though I'm prepared for both. When I give him the squirty paste worm medicine (all horses need this treatment on a regular basis), I always let the lead rope untied, so that if he wants to throw his head up, he can, without feeling trapped. (My son-in-law, years ago, demonstrated an easy and quick way to do this dosing, which, oddly enough, the so-called professional horsewoman through whom I bought my first horse did not know, she being of a mind that it took two people to dose a horse.) Dink was not thrilled to smell the wormer, but after a bit of lip-clamping, he relented and let me squirt the gunk onto the back of his tongue.

Two, the old gent needed some exercise under the saddle. He's such a good horse, and even though it's been almost a month since I rode, he was as steady and calm as if he was ridden every day. The day was cold, the bit of the bridle was icy cold, yet he still put his head down to take the bit in his mouth. I could tell he didn't like the chill, because he drew his lips back, and picked up the bit in his teeth for a moment before taking it into his mouth, but he did it anyway, because he wanted to go out for a jaunt. I've known horses that threw their heads around in refusal to take a bit, horses who had to be tricked with an apple or honey to reach for a bit, horses who had to have special rigs so that the rest of the bridle was attached and the bit attached at the last in order to get it in the horse's mouth. Not Dink. He knows that if we're to go out, a bit is part of the rig.

Our ride was short, just around one orchard block. It was good; we saw a jackrabbit scooting off through the orchards, and Dink showed no hesitation about us setting off by ourselves without any other horsey companions. Not all horses will do that, and so I appreciate Dink all the more.

Three, I needed the exercise on the saddle. It's too easy to become a couch potato, or a woman who exercises only by walking. But the fact is, I love being on a horse, the feel of the movement beneath my Wintec saddle, the sound of the horse's hooves, the smell of the horse's hide. Every movement has a communique; every tug on the reins sends a message. With legs and hands, I let Dink know what is to be expected; with tons of personality and acknowledgement, Dink does what I ask. I can open and close most gates from his back; he responds to leg and rein and heel cues to such a degree that if I am paying attention to what's about us, I need never be scratched by branches above us, or worry about him accidentally smushing me against something. I can, if my hat is blown off by the wind, use my crop to pick it up from the ground without getting out of the saddle.

Good horse.

Also, he's got the cutest red ears on the ranch.

Two Turtledoves

2011-12-26T20:34:00.000-08:00

On the second day of Christmas, we had ice on the swimming pool again, after the weather reports said we'd be above freezing the last few nights. The birds had to wait until nearly noon for the birdbath to thaw out.

Also on the second day of Christmas, we went to the movies again, this time to see War Horse. We were just at the movies on Friday to see The Adventures of Tintin, I know, and we can't afford to go to the movies twice a week every week -- but I don't think anything cool is coming out this Friday. Both movies were good, but if you have only one movie fare to spend, see Tintin. War Horse review coming out next Monday in the Piker Press.

In writing news, I've caught up with myself in terms of continuity with my current novel (working title Loon and Donkey), and am now moving on with the story. My main characters, however, are very passionate about one another, and it's an ongoing battle with them not to just leap into a sex scene. I have settled on a final scene, more or less, or at least a final sequence. I'm looking forward to getting to the end and splurging on printing the creature out.

A Partidge in a Pear Tree

2011-12-25T17:16:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas!

Here is Howie with his newest toy, having just thrashed and bashed it and thrown it high into the Christmas tree. Today the dogs played tug o' war with Sebastian's new toy, mooched pieces of giblets in the kitchen, and napped after the excitement.

That is, indeed, a wash mitt, purchased in an automotive department. Howie has always loved biting them, shaking them viciously, tearing them to shreds. After he, as a puppy, mangled the one we used for washing the car, we've just bought them for him for Christmas each year.

This year, I put two squeakers (from previous dog toys that Howie and Sebastian destroyed within the first five minutes of receiving them) into a denim sandwich, and put the sewn denim sandwich into the mitt with a double handful of denim cloth scraps, and stitched it closed.

Best toy ever!

Sebastian even envied Howie so much that he stole the mitt for a while, tucking it close to his chest and lying down with his neck covering the toy.

And now for my yearly yip about the Christmas Season.

Contrary to the stores' advertising schedule, tomorrow is NOT Valentine's Day.

The Christmas season is not over when the sun goes down on Christmas Day. Today is the START of the Christmas season, which lasts until Epiphany on January 6th.

Though we have no pear tree, nor partridges in this area, we did have a hermit thrush, bluebirds, finches, two kinds of sparrows, and our scrub jays all in the lemon tree, waiting for their turn in the birdbath.

God bless us, every one.

Portrait

2011-12-24T18:02:00.000-08:00

Yep, that would be me.

I hate having pictures taken of me, have for years, since I quit smoking and got fat and unhealthy back when that jacket was new. But this one says a lot about me, if you know what to look for.

The 20-year-old jacket, for example. I think Alex was about 14 when I got it, on sale at the now-defunct Mervyn's chain of clothing. Alex got one in beige, I got a green one. Thick and oversized, it has five pockets: four on the outside, and a nifty deep pocket on the left inside. No cold foggy weather can touch me in this jacket, and though Alex wore hers to shreds, mine shows wear only on the cuffs. The jacket tells that I prefer utility to looks, and comfort to style. Also that I like pockets. Deep pockets.

That's why I don't wear women's jeans, either. Those baggy beasties are from Target, with nice deep pockets and lots of room where leg meets torso, which an old woman needs when she clambers up on her old horse. Again, utility and comfort.

The deerskin gloves I got at the hardware store, principally for riding, but the original pair is still in use, stained with horse sweat and slobber. This is the backup pair I finally took the tags off to wear on days when the sissy polyester gloves just won't keep out the cold. Men's deerskin gloves. The women's gloves, again, were stitched to make fingers look slender, not to make holding reins, or a dog leash easier. There was a time when I bought only Sullivan gloves, but those sweet babies cost nearly $45 once you pay for shipping, and the hardware deerskin in my portrait only cost $12. Utility and reality.

The sneakers? Well, they actually suck, and I'm still in the market for replacements. They're Payless sneaks, inexpensive ... and menswear again, as the women's athletic shoes just aren't wide enough for my pudding-like feet. It's funny, I can get summer flip-flops wide enough in ladies' wear, but athletic shoes? Forget it. Of course, the spread-out feet are probably a result of refusing to wear anything but flip-flops if the temps are above 60 degrees.

The shaggy gray hair: well, it keeps my head warm without a hat on all but the coldest days, and I don't intend to spend money on having it cut until swimming weather comes around again. My hair won't style, so there's no point in throwing dollars at having some stylist pretend that mop is something it isn't.

So I'm cheap and utilitarian, with a heavy dose of comfort-loving.

And I also get so lost in looking for birds in the trees I don't notice my husband sneaking in a picture of me.

And I love him so much, I'll forgive him for it.

Winter

2011-12-20T16:30:00.000-08:00

Abutilon at Sunrise

Ah, sunrise. How sweetly the sun gives the flower its first kiss of the day...

Guess again. If the sun is kissy at all, it's around three in the afternoon. Until then, the world is gray and white, thickly shrouded in fog, almost colorless.

Tomorrow is the first day of winter, they say, but I've had enough of winter weather already. The heavy fog traps the particulate matter in the air, and so the Valley, from top to bottom, is under a government "No Burn Day" restriction. That means, to keep warm, we have to run the forced-air furnace.

That means: we don't keep warm. The woodstove would heat the mass of the house; the floor and walls would be warm. The furnace heats only the air, and thus everything we touch is cold.

We need the jet stream to swing south and bring us some nice Gulf of Alaska winds with a spin-in of southern moisture, blow some of this junk out of the Valley, drench the air and get the sooty smog to drop out of the sky.

Also, our turnips need a rain.

The Morning of the Day after I Did It

2011-12-07T18:32:00.001-08:00

This was the sight from my pillow when I opened my eyes on November 26.

The dried brown leaves of my neighbor's sycamore were just catching the first rays of sunlight on a day filled with promise. A promise of eating leftover turkey sandwiches for breakfast, of cooking meatballs later in the day, of unhurried folding of clothes in the laundry room ... a promise that I did not have to write one more word on my novel until I felt like writing again, as I had made the requisite fifty thousand words the night before.

This was, to my surprise, one of the easiest NaNoWriMo challenges I've ever done. Through the first weeks of the month, I did not write at all on Sundays -- there were football games that I, as a lazy couch referee, simply had to watch. And usually I didn't write on Monday or Thursday evenings, for the same reason. But when I did write, wow, the words just flew.

How did the story end? In the middle of a sentence, I believe, at a point in which I had paused to check word count, and was surprised to find that I was well over the 50k mark. Well, no, that won't be The End ... and I'm not sure how it will end. My original thought was to kill off one of the main characters, and let tragedy reign. But that's a very simplistic ending; I'm thinking now that the story is more about ramifications of an event, rather than closure.

I've kept on writing a few paragraphs when I get a sense of where the action has to go; I've added a chapter and a half to the interior of the story to slow down the overly-rushed feeling it had.

Yeah. I think this time around, I want to go less for tragedy, and more for redemption.

Redemption.

Yep, that's a fit.

Oh, Neglected Dog!

2011-11-15T21:18:00.001-08:00

There's my boy Howie.

Or I should say, my little old man Howie, as he's all too quickly approaching 77 dog years of age.

He hates NaNoWriMo, having endured ten of them. He sees me with a laptop and doesn't even bother to come and pester me. During football games, he'll pester. He brings his tennis ball and expects me to play Football Ball -- that's when he puts the tennis ball on the foot stool and waits for me to flick it off, over and over again. But when I'm writing, he knows the tennis ball is a lost cause.

My poor boy, so ignored that he is resigned to riding in the car with his Daddy, to the store, to the gas station, or just around the block if the cars need to be moved.

Yes, he hates when I'm writing, but he's all ears like this when I put on my sunglasses and visor and walking sandals.

'Mope' morphs to 'hope;' 'bored' rockets to 'ready to run!'

A brisk walk makes him feel like he's three again, and clears out my dirty dull story cement blocks that inhibit high speed word flow.

Good dog, good walk, good writing to all.

The Writing Habit 2011

2011-11-11T15:59:00.001-08:00

I don't know that it's fair to say that I've developed a healthy writing habit so far this NaNoWriMo.

Yes, I'm writing every day, earlier in the day than was my wont in years past. That's what I hoped to accomplish.

However, it's gone a bit farther than that. I find I'm not really content with just making word count, I want to keep on writing long after I should get my ass out of the studio and take care of laundry, and my actual word count is slackening as I try to find the "proper" words to convey my meaning. I even missed the opening kickoff of the Thursday night NFL game, even though I'd been looking forward to watching it since Sunday.

My studio has become again a place of magic and wonder for me. I'm doing my writing from a folding quad chair (one of those mesh deals that you might take to the beach) and have my little denim footstool to rest my laptop on when I get up to pace or get snacks. Daily writing has sparked a flame of creativity, and I find my eyes resting on unfinished canvases that call to me for completion. It's dang cold out here in the mornings, but I find that if I wear a heavy sweatshirt (the NaNoWriMo one I bought last November, as a matter of fact) and run a space heater, I'm comfortable enough.

Comfortable enough that I don't really want to be any place else in the house.

Unless football is on. I'm not what you'd call an all-out Raiders fan by any means, but it is a fact that I took great satisfaction in watching them kick Chargers ass last night.

Probably helped my writing habit today.

Love on the NovelFront

2011-11-04T21:19:00.000-07:00

Passionflower

I've been crazy in love with writing fiction since 2001.

This past whole year, indeed, since mid-November 2010, I had insisted I would never try to write a 50,000 word novel in November again. I've done it successfully eight times in ten years, and was not about to subject myself to such torture again.

Oh, well, the best laid plans ...

I dragged out a flawed start to a novel from years ago, one that I've intended to write, but was afraid to explore. Nearly 12k into it now, I'm so in love with the story I can hardly stand it.

The characters are unfolding, becoming more and more real. The drama and the revelations are about to blow up. The damage and the rebirth are in the wings.

I know that I can write 2000 words a day, easily. Maybe it's dreck, but I can churn 'em out. This year my love of writing has been renewed by a return to a subject I've neglected. Oh, hell, says NaNoWriMo, just write it, and then if you don't like it, rewrite it later. In November, just go have a 30-day date with your story.

That's what I'm doing, and wow, I can't wait to pick up the date again tomorrow.

Dia de los Muertos 2011

2011-11-02T16:58:00.000-07:00

Ahh, beets.

Alex grew these beets in the planter box on the sunny side of the front yard. They're all prepped and ready for oven-frying.

We peel them and slice them a little less than half an inch thick, then toss the slices with extra virgin olive oil, then once again with garlic powder. Spread out on a cookie sheet, they're lightly sprinkled with sea salt. After 30 - 35 minutes in a 425 degree oven, they're ready to devour.

When Alex decided that she had to plant beets last spring, I didn't dissuade her. Thought she was nuts, but hey, whatever. The front garden boxes were her canvas for experimentation, not mine. When she told me that beet greens make a good salad, I scoffed -- until I pulled off a beet leaf and tasted it. Where had beets as salad greens been all my life? Good thing she planted them thickly: eating the greens in our salads was the perfect way to thin the crop.

I hadn't done much beeting around since we moved to California. They tend to be expensive here, and I'm not often impressed with the quality. Now that Alex has proven herself to be a worthy beet farmer, though, I'm looking forward to greater beetery.

What do beets have to do with Dia de los Muertos, a day for remembering your dead relatives and friends?

When I was in my twenties, I would often mooch jars of pickled beets from my mother. She was picky about her beets, which she bought in quantity. "Lutz is the variety to look for," she lectured me. "Lutz are nice and tender, hold their color, and taste the best of all." And then she would proceed to make the most delectable pickled beets in the entire world. Sweet, flavorful, crisp -- there was never any argument about eating enough beets. We truly could not get enough.

She learned the process of pickling beets from Dad's aunt, who was called "Sis." Mom pretty much learned all her cooking skills from Sis; she told me she pestered Sis to teach her how to cook because Sis was slowly dying, and Mom on her own had almost enough culinary skills to boil eggs. In my turn, I learned from Mom how to make lima bean pot pie, meat pie, pumpkin pie (did we never eat anything but pie?) and macaroni salad, and of course, lots of other things.

But the one thing I didn't learn how to make was pickled beets.

I don't know why I didn't; maybe she didn't have a recipe per se, or maybe Dad refused to eat some. Or maybe some part of me just assumed that Mom would always be there to make them for me. I don't recall her making them in the last 30 years of her life.

Seeing Alex's harvest of gorgeous beets made Bernie and I remember how good Mom's were, made me remember my mother in a time when Alzheimer's hadn't made her an ill-mannered stranger.

Miss that Mom so much.

Values of America

2011-10-31T23:47:00.000-07:00

I've been watching the news and the votes and the hype and the campaigns ... not a lot, but enough to be disgusted.

Well-loved neighbors moved, putting their house up for sale, because they fell for the scam (and it is a scam, make no mistake) of re-financing their house at the top of the market, just before the crash. They are well-meaning people, but someone lied to them about what the market would do (and Bernie and I are not super-heroes with prophetic powers; we knew the bubble would burst, because it was artificially blown up, and thus so must have our neighbor's lenders) and they succumbed to a false vision of Free Money For All!

Greed.

Every business you see is out for one thing: profit. Every worker you meet is out for one thing: money.

I'm sure there are exceptions. Even among my dearest friends, I can't think of one, though. Get me the money. My boss is crankin' for that bottom line. Yeah, we bought a boat, a time-share, an RV, a rental property, got a gym subscription. But shit damn hell, we may be spending money that we don't have, but it's the bastards that tell us we can do that -- those are the enemy.

Yeah, we can all jump on the bandwagon, or cheer on the OccupyWallStreet movement that rails against that sort of greed. Bleed people dry? Why, you dirty, immoral bastards.

And anyone who is anyone jumps into the children's park sliding board that says: No Sexual Abstinence Allowed. Seriously. You tell your kid to keep his or her pants on, and you are condemned up, down, and sideways. How dare you instruct your children about sexual mores if they are Christian or Islamic or Jewish?? You restrictive, abusive, unenlightened destroyers of pleasure! You should go to jail for having religious beliefs, damn you!

In America, everyone, regardless of age (at least from the youngest age up) should have the right to fuck anyone, regardless of gender (hell, you all know that if it blows up, it will be the older fucker that will get blamed), regardless of their parents' wishes. OMG, let the kiddies fuck -- we've given them contraceptives that imply we know they will, and by all that is "true," we'll make abortions available when the contraceptives fail, as they often do.

Wait, shhhh, we won't show them what an abortion looks like, because it's gruesome beyond words. Tell the kiddies it's okay to fuck, but don't ever show them what it looks like when it all goes wrong. No, no, no, don't show them dead puppies or kitties or torn-up aborted babies. Fuck like an adult, pull your hat down over your eyes like a toddler at a scary movie and don't look at what the consequences of your fucking do to human flesh.

"I love you more than I love life." How many lovers have heard those words? "I love you more than anything."

Do you love him more than you love your orgasm? If no, then, duuhhh, you don't love him more than anything. Do you love him enough to say that you don't care what society thinks, or what your parents thought, for richer or for poorer, in sickness or in health, until death parts you -- even if you don't have the orgasm dimension? Or does Orgasmic Entitlement supercede all that? Are you vowing that as long as you have Orgasm, you agree to all those "marriage" agreements, as long as you both shall live, or at least as long as you both have the capacity for Orgasm?

Wow, there's the two moral constants for America now: Wealth and Orgasm.

That sounds harsh. But just think about it.

I want to be free from debt, with plenty of cash left over. I want to be free to fuck whoever I want, however I want, whenever I want, without physical, economical, or social consequences.

Instead of the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave, we now have the Land of the Grabbers and the Home of the Freedom-Fuckers.

So much for October.

Focus

2011-10-30T18:20:00.000-07:00

In the square of sunlight, appearing white on the floor, is a tennis ball.

A tennis ball is of sublime importance to this dog, Sebastian; half border collie/ half God alone knows what, Sebastian is intent on that tennis ball being kicked, and how he will catch it before it gets past him. There is nothing in his universe apart from this activity. Food? Forget it. Need to relieve himself? Back seat. Invading Visigoths bursting through that front door? Are they going to snatch the ball? Might deal with them then, but otherwise, tell them to get out of the way!

Here comes November, and NaNoWriMo.

On November 1st, a writer opens a document, and sees nothing. The goal is to see 50,000 words appear in that document by November 30th. The key to meeting the challenge is to keep the author's eye on the story. Not so much to keep to an outline, but to keep an eye on the characters, what they wear, what they eat, why they live in Baltimore as opposed to San Diego ... and let them do what they will do. It's great to enter NaNoWriMo with a beginning and an ending, but it's not necessary.

If you think about the people you know, they all have stories behind their lives. You don't know all of those stories intimately. But you could, if you wanted to, speculate upon the facts of their existence, and extrapolate.

Lots of NaNovelists get bogged down by time constraints, and that's totally understandable, as Life is busy for many, many people. The breakdown that saddens me is fear of their own words. Starting to write, the author finds his/her words aren't "good enough" or are "too far outside the box" or perhaps simply not what the author expected to find within him/herself.

NaNoWriMo is just about focusing on word count, and the telling of any story.

Like Sebastian, all of us who sign up for NaNoWriMo have to stay focused, and like Sebastian, it's not the ball, not the words that come out, but something more integral:

in both pictures, Sebastian is not focused on the ball, even though catching the ball is his goal. He's watching that foot, that power that drives the ball.

Writers for NaNoWriMo: Don't watch the words, don't judge the words, they can always be edited. Watch instead the source of the words, and believe that source has lots of power behind it. In your mind, in your heart, there's a story that might want to be told. Give it at least an airing this coming month, and worry about giving it perspective and depth and a makeover ... later.

Here comes the kick!

Simple Things

2011-10-29T23:06:00.000-07:00

We went to the Egg Place to buy eggs today.

Commercial producers of eggs for local markets, Den Dulk also has its own retail outlet a couple miles down the road. We buy our eggs there not only because they are inexpensive, but mostly because they are so fresh and taste sooooooooooo good.

Today, we found that the young hens are still producing a myriad of Medium Brown Organic eggs.

Hot dog, we say, that means we get five dozen eggs for $3 -- beats paying $3.69 or more at the store for Organic Brown Eggs.

When I picked up the flats of eggs, I had a look at them, and said to the cashier, "Wow, these are absolutely beautiful!"

She giggled nervously, and said in an offhand kind of way, "Yeah, uh ... simple pleasures, right?"

Obviously, she didn't think I was serious.

But I was. Look at these eggs. They are works of art. Technically they are all "Medium Brown Eggs" but what a difference in each of them! One such a dark brown; one so light with a dark cloud sketched upon it. Speckles, freckles, on the others, darker, lighter, in a cap-like pattern ...

I really meant it. They are beautiful.

Where Did I Store That Darn Coat?

2011-10-28T18:01:00.000-07:00

Nothing says "Get ready for winter" like sundown at 6pm, with a sudden need for a heavy sweater by 6:30.

I suppose that I'm ready for the season to change; we've got the winter's supply of wood stacked, I brought out the flannel shirts and sweatshirts, and I've got about two-thirds of my winter garden in. (Snow peas and lettuce/spinach mix.)

Still, it seems a bit sad to give orders for the last of the barely-coloring tomatoes to be picked, a few nice green tomatoes to be saved for frying, and the rest to be put into the compost bin. In another week, the perfectly stupid time change will occur, and darkness will fall at suppertime. The weather service's long range forecast suggests it will be raining by then, too.

That will be welcome -- the air quality from the dust of the almond harvest is atrocious. And looking on the bright side of this autumn evening, we're not getting 6 - 10 inches of snow tomorrow like my sister-in-law is back in Pennsylvania.

Maybe I'll call her tomorrow and ask her how she likes it.

The Dog and I

2011-10-26T19:34:00.000-07:00

And here is my little old man, soaking up some Vitamin D, basking in his favorite spot.

He's recovered from his "separation sickness," now that we're home and the first thing he can do in the mornings is come to my side of the bed at and give me kisses and cuddles. He's also mostly recovered from his frolic in the river on Sunday, when he overdid it trying to out-swim and out-race young Sebastian; he stiffened up so he could hardly walk by Sunday nightfall, and was pretty gimpy all day Monday, too.

Today Bernie and John had places to go and things to do, so it was just me and the dogs for a few hours. Sebastian curled up on his Daddy's pillows and kept warm on this chilly autumn day, and I don't count the cat because he sleeps all day in Lillian's bed. Howie, however, followed me from room to room, bouncing his tennis ball off my toes, playing "Make the Bed Ball" (he tosses the ball into the bedding to make me get it) and "Laundry Ball" (he bounces the ball to me as I'm folding clothes so I kick it back to him); while I did my ironing in the garage studio, with the garage door open, he lay patiently on his rug, watching cars and people go by, following me in and out as I put shirts away and got the next batch to iron. While I cooked spaghetti sauce, he puttered around the kitchen, hoping for a sample, but not really mooching -- I think he's figured out that if there's a garlic smell, he's not getting any taste treats. (Fish or chicken or beef being cut up brings both dogs running to watch the cutting board!) Lately he's begun to try to get me to play Kitchen Ball, but I really don't encourage that one. All I need is to have a tennis ball go flying and land in the butter dish.

Tonight, too, we're on our own, as the rest of the household went to a concert. Howie is on the couch, leaning on the pillows, keeping an eye on the front walk through the windows. Now and then he and I look at one another, just making sure we know where the other is.

Lovely Marglobe on My Table

2011-10-25T18:47:00.000-07:00

There is not a single flaw on this tomato.

No bug stung it, no ant chewed at it, no slug slimed and tore at its tender skin.

It ripened perfectly and evenly, with no sunburnt top or dry cracking from irregular watering.

This is a thing of beauty.

However: it is past mid-October, and this is THE. ONE. AND. ONLY. PERFECT. TOMATO this season!!!!

Not fair, not fair at all.

Home, and Howie

2011-10-21T18:55:00.000-07:00

We drove to San Diego this week, as I said in my previous post.

Meeting Lydia Manx and her folks was wonderful. Even if I didn't enjoy Lydia's work in the Piker Press, I'd read it because she is a delightfully alive person, full of humor and sparkle.

Lydia's parents, Phil and Maureen, were so much fun that I wish they would adopt me (me being an orphan now and all). Both of them had me roaring with laughter at their stories and hoping to see them again some day.

Getting to San Diego was a lot more easy than I thought it would be. I was ready to pack sandwiches for the trip, for crying out loud. As it was, we stopped for a little breakfast at the foot of the southern mountains, and in less time than it took to get hungry again, we were there.

We spent Wednesday puttering about Balboa Park, looking at mummies and flowers, and wearing jackets because the marine layer was making everything gray and dim and damp. We toyed with the idea of taking an extra day and wending our way home via Rt. 1 along the edge of the Pacific Coast, but opted to wait for a time when there wasn't quite so much fog.

And well that we did. Howie was so distraught that we left him behind that he worried himself quite sick. I didn't mean for John and Alex to have to care for a hysterically ill dog; future vacations will have to take into account that this little beast has given all the rest of his days to us, No Returns Allowed. My poor boy. We had to run to the store today, and even that separation affected him deeply. When we make our jaunt on Hwy 1, some time in the future, it's going to have to be a dog-friendly trip.

Ready for the Road Again

2011-10-17T20:44:00.000-07:00

Clothes are packed, the maps obtained. Hotel is booked, the laundry nearly done.

The dog knows something is up and is getting a head start on moping.

Tomorrow morning, before it's light outside, we will be setting off for Southern California, to Del Mar, to finally meet up in person with Lydia Manx.

We've known her for years; she's been with the Piker Press since 2004 as our vampire serial fiction writer. Years of staff meeting chat rooms, days of keeping each other company via instant messaging, sharing turmoils in our families' lives ... we've talked on the phone, I know her voice.

It seems odd that we've never looked at each other eye to eye.

Tomorrow, that will change.

Eggplant Gets Ready for Its Date

2011-10-16T17:00:00.000-07:00

Alex left one of her skinny eggplants lying on the counter in the kitchen. And Bernie left his sunglasses nearby. I thought the eggplant ought to have one last chance to look cool before it fulfilled its purpose.

Not to be outdone, on his next pass through the kitchen, Bernie raided the leftover spaghetti and gave the eggplant a more humanistic visage.

Glad someone else is going to eat this eggplant. I can't stand chopping up someone I've spent so much time with.

Suddenly Inundated

2011-10-13T22:51:00.000-07:00

That's three stews' worth of peeled and diced tomatoes, ready to go into the freezer.

Freak weather all this year, not the least freakish of which is weather that is spurring the tomatoes to ripen at an alarming rate in mid-October.

I decided to put this batch up after viewing how many tomatoes are coming ripe on my Marglobe and Bernie's Romas. Oog. I also negotiated with a neighbor to foist off on her the excess we're going to be picking in the next few days.

These are all Romas, firm-fleshed and medium-flavored. I'm thinking about stews with beef, thin slivers of celery, these tomatoes, fresh parsley, some potatoes, and green beans. With a skootch of Louisiana Hot Sauce. And French bread, just baked from the local bakery.

If that doesn't make you wish for December, nothing will, unless you're a kid with a Barbie Jones.

NaNoWriMo 2011

2011-10-12T21:18:00.000-07:00

Last year, by the 20th of November, I was swearing profoundly that I would never do NaNoWriMo again, ever. Nothing would persuade me to put myself through it one more time, neither hot blacksmith tongs nor bribes.

The first time I did it, in 2001, it was high adventure -- write fiction? Me? A whole novel's worth? Preposterous! But wait -- I have an idea! What if I run with it? No one ever has to see it but me! Yahooooooo!

Thanks to Alex and her Piker Press, I kept writing afterwards, regularly, and when NaNo 2002 rolled around, I was ready with the confidence, a premise, filler, and an ending. (It wasn't the right ending, but it was an ending.) I completed the requisite 50,000 words by the 21st of November, feeling like I had been beaten by sticks at the river side and wrung out to dry at the whimsy of the sun.

Again, I kept writing almost every day, for the Press, and when NaNo 2003 rolled around, I was ready for the sprint with a faint outline, and it was easy -- and tons of fun -- to complete my novel.

I spent many mornings the next summer (and yes, I was still writing regularly) chatting with Wendy Robards about character development for NaNo 2004, which made the book a breeze to write.

Then 2005 appeared on the calendar, and I didn't have an idea, and my writing habit had become sporadic. FAIL. 2006 and 2007 I just wrote junk for NaNoWriMo, stuff that needs so much editing to pull out even a couple short stories that it's hardly worth revisiting. 2008, I had a great idea, and by the time I reached 30,000 words, I knew that it was a story that could be really good. 2008 -- BAIL. Not going to ruin this story by rushing it. (Note: this novel is still in progress, still not done, still my favorite of all the stuff I've written so far.)

2009 and 2010 I had a story, but my writing habit had become so non-existent that I hated sitting down in the evenings trying to churn out 2000 words a day.

Why am I even considering NaNoWriMo again this year?

Can it be that I know I need to discover a new writing habit, a new time to turn my mind to creation? With Bernie being out of work -- retired, can we shout Hoorah -- I don't want to spend every evening writing. What if I did it in the morning? Would that work?

Should I give that time a try? Should I give this NaNo 2011 a try?

Great Feeling!

2011-10-12T19:04:00.000-07:00

Very short post, very cool update.

I lost a pants size after having to buy "fat pants" over a year ago.

Autumn Evenings

2011-10-10T20:01:00.000-07:00

Autumn evenings

the temperature drops

from warm to put-on-your-jacket

perfect for watching the sky

for sitting outside

around a little fire

as the fire in the sky dims

Roast some marshmallows

over the firepit

remember the day

whose light has faded

and will never come again

and the sparks fly into the black

becoming invisible

The daylight hours are gone

never to be touched again

memory only imperfectly

preserves it

and like the colored clouds

the taste of sweet char and sight of glowing embers

slips away into the night

Confession, and The River

2011-10-09T17:15:00.000-07:00

One Spring, before temperatures had warmed enough to be snake-worthy, I set off on a quest: to find the Juniata River.

I would have been 10 years old, I think. Surely I wasn't so bold as to try such a stunt at 9, and I know I'd accomplished the feat by the time I was 12. That puts me at 10 or 11.

There was a creek that ran through my parents' property, paralleling the Cedar Spring Road. There were many access points to the creek, but I began my journey at the bottom of Mr. Neff's land, where the creek was narrow enough to jump over if one was lucky, or athletic. (Sometimes I was, sometimes I wasn't.)

Following the little stream along the bank was fine while I traipsed along the edges of peoples' yards, but then the creek widened out, the underbrush got nasty, and I had to wade in the shallow edges, often holding myself steady by the saplings that grew on the immediate bank.

It got interesting as I drew closer to the downtown bridge over the creek; the banks were steep and had functioned for many decades as a kind of landfill. Stepping carefully on bits of cement blocks and bricks, avoiding pipes that stunk of sewage seeping into the creek, (seriously, this was 45 years ago in a rural area -- they were still getting rid of shit by dumping it into the waterways), I edged my way along, now hearing the traffic on the road above and ahead of me.

The creek widened again, over large pebbles, as it went under the bridge, and I was able to wade along the edge, barely able to acknowledge the stonework over my head. I was too far to turn back, but terrified that I would be discovered.

What I was doing had been expressly forbidden by my parents. There was a limited area that I was allowed to roam, and most of the distance I had traversed was not included. And I was never, ever, ever to go to the river on my own. Not only was I just a skinny little girl, but I also could not swim. It was a crazy stunt, sure to get me a beating, sure to get my access to the creek revoked for years.

And yet I felt I had to do it. There was a biological imperative that I could not resist; I was drawn not by disobedience but by the need to see the undiscovered land and the culmination of my speculation. The creek had to end up in the river, but where? What did it look like, and where did it go? My creek, and The River. The intersection would help define my place in the world.

Continued steep banks followed the creek after the bridge, but there was a tiny ledge along the creek, with winter-browned grass overhanging the water. And then trees, and then, the river, murky and dark under the cloudy skies. The creek spread out even more, flattening as it entered the river.

The River. The "blue" Juniata River. I had reached my goal. After nodding in satisfaction, I began to retrace my steps, doubly cautious not to fall into the creek or wade too deep for my rubber boots. More time had passed than I could account for if I had wet sneakers, and I knew I had barely enough time to get back before Mom came looking for me. I went straight home after reaching my starting point, and never told my parents that I succeeded in my crazy stunt until I was in my 40s.

And I never offered to guide friends down the creek to repeat the feat. Through the adventure, I understood that it was dangerous, with unacceptable risks, that my parents had been right to forbid it. Digusted by the sewage being dumped into the creek didn't thrill me, either; as a teen not so many years later, I was delighted to hear that the local government had mandated connection to the city sewer line for all residences.

I would have planted a flag if I had one, and if it wasn't so important to keep the event secret.

Happy

2011-10-08T09:36:00.000-07:00

Many houses on this street have only a small tree in their front yards (the original landscaping included ornamental pear trees) and so the strong sunlight of the afternoons makes the people who live in them close their blinds and curtains, cutting themselves off from the outdoors.

We planted a dwarf bush blue gum in place of the ornamental pear, and instead of hot sun, we get dappled shadows on the interior walls, and our windows are all uncovered.

Each evening, unless there are clouds, a new work of art is displayed, and when the wind blows, the shadows dance gracefully.

I like it here.

Sleepy Boy

2011-10-06T17:53:00.000-07:00

After an unusual prolonged downpour this morning, we took the dogs for a walk.

All went well, until ...

The field we were walking beside just got irrigated a couple days ago, and with the additional water from the sky, well, it was a vast stewpot of mud, which we hadn't realized until Howie leaped into it and sunk six inches deep. He got a rapturous expression on his face and began bounding across the muck.

Sebastian joined him, and the two of them went nuts, plunging into still deeper mud, racing shoulder to shoulder.

And of course, Howie the Boss knew just which part of the field still held standing water, so he waded right in.

Sebastian at least had the decency not to lie down in the soupy mud and wallow himself in like a pig.

Doggie baths later, Howie is more than willing to sleep off what had to be tremendous effort galloping through that stuff. And you know, not two minutes before the mud games began, I said to Bernie, "Poor Howie is finally starting to slow down a little."

Guess not.

Tasted So Good!

2011-10-05T19:26:00.000-07:00

Breakfast of taters and eggs.

We buy our eggs from a poultry farm out the road, usually five dozen at a time, not only because they are less expensive than in the stores, but also because they are so fresh and delicious.

They've just switched over to a batch of young hens, and the young ladies are not producing "large" eggs. They're producing lots of "mediums" just yet, but the demand is for "Large." Large gets shipped to the stores first, and then what is left is being snapped up by local customers before noon.

Now the big fat old hens are still laying plenty of eggs ... but they're the wrong size, too. They're laying "jumbo" and "super-jumbo." In fact, they're laying so many Super Jumbos that the poultry farm was selling the Super Jumbos at half-price.

Super Jumbos are too big to go through the scrubbing and candling machine, so they're a bit dirty, and they're not guaranteed to be perfectly pretty inside. Still, getting two flats of Super Jumbos meant I got three dozen eggs for $2.50, and I don't mind washing them. Indeed, it's kind of fun to do the candling, holding the clean egg next to a bright flashlight to view the yolk within.

These eggs are HUGE. And every single one of them is a double-yolker. That's ... six dozen eggs for that price, how's that for a bargain?

Marglobe

2011-10-04T20:10:00.000-07:00

Unbelievable, that our tomato harvest starts at the end of September and early October.

Freakish chilly weather in May halted tomato plant development, then a tragically hot week cooked most of the tender unripe fruit on the stems. My primary producers, Better Girl and Shady Lady, went into shock and produced little to nothing this summer.

However, I did have a seedling or two sprout from some old Marglobe seeds. That would be the tomato on the left, keeping company with a Roma on the right.

Marglobe -- it's a name from my distant past, when I might have been four or five years old, and Mom was just starting her greenhouse business. I remember her talking about starting Big Boy tomatoes instead of Marglobes, even though most people in the neighborhood preferred the Marglobes. She ever after only grew Big Boy tomatoes, or Burpee varieties with the "Big Boy taste."

But knowing my mother's penchant for being contrary to what everyone else in the world considered the norm, I wondered about the choice. Did she really find Big Boy tomatoes to be superior to Marglobes, or did she veer from Marglobes just to be following her own solitary journey? I bought a packet of Marglobe seed and this year had a couple of late seedlings survive ... and finally produce a ripe fruit this week.

With great ceremony, I tasted the first vine-ripened Marglobe.

The skin was tender, the flesh delicate, the flavor ... very delicate. As in ... am I eating a tomato at all?

Just to reassure myself that I wasn't imagining things, I had a wild tomato, fresh off the volunteer vines, small thing that it was. The flavor about blasted me off the porch.

Mom was right.

Tomatoes, Wild, Tame, and Old

2011-09-30T21:04:00.000-07:00

Today was a tomato harvest day.

The ones in the big clear glass dish are cultivated tomatoes. The ones in the smaller containers are all wild, that is, their parent plants sprouted from seeds germinating from last year's wild plants, "volunteers," if you prefer the term.

The cultivated tomatoes are the first decent ones we've had this summer; the oblong ones are Roma, the round one is Marglobe. An apple babysits them, hoping to get them to ripen to full redness.

I have never seen a shittier year for tomatoes than this one. The late coldness into the first week of June was followed by a hot snap that literally cooked the tops of tomatoes on the vine, and damaged the vines themselves, burning them yellow. My Shady Lady and Better Girl plants were stunted by the horrid heat, and their sun-baked fruit rotted on their stems.

We planted two Roma plants late, and I had a couple Marglobe plants come up from old seeds I had in the garage. These all set fruit, but it's a race against time for them to ripen. In the clear glass dish, on the right, is a Marglobe tomato, the only one to turn color so far.

Wild tomatoes have supplied our table, and I have to admit, they are truly tasty. 2011 has been Hunter-Gatherer Tomato Year.

The Legacy of Lima Bean Pot Pie

2011-09-28T18:30:00.000-07:00

Last week, Bernie asked me if I would make Lima Bean Pot Pie. I agreed to do so, recognizing the great power that I have, and wishing to use that power in a kindly manner.

You see, I could hold the pot pie hostage, demanding some sort of ransom, as in "Certainly I will make pot pie for you, Darling, but first you have to take me on a cruise to Hawaii" or even "You'll get the pot pie when I see the fall garden beds tilled."

Or cruelty, I could use cruelty -- "You think all you have to do is ask for pot pie, and you'll get it? Go on, go find some other woman who knows how to make it!"

But no, I do not. If I hadn't ever wanted to be asked to make pot pie, I never would have introduced the dish to him in the first place. Because most people who have this thick, creamy, delicious, hammy and noodly confection once fall madly in love with it. Lima bean pot pie is right up there with fried chicken and macaroni and cheese in the Comfort Zone of food.

Sadly, by the time my generation is gone, pot pie may be extinct as well.

Even by the time I was in grade school, none of my classmates knew what "lima bean pot pie" was. They had already been afflicted by little green baby limas, the scourge of childhood. The big, soft mature bean -- butter beans -- were unknown to them. None of my friends' mothers made this dish; the closest anyone got to it was the chicken pot pie made with bow-tie noodles (store-bought) and sacrilegious chunks of carrot and potato. Horrid.

My mother was my heroine: she could make pot pie.

Now she wasn't above holding it hostage: she might ransom the food for chores to be done in return. And if she was in a bad mood, forget about it -- refusal to make pot pie was a mighty weapon.

My only recourse was to learn how to make it myself, and she was gracious enough to coach me, so long as she didn't have to do the work. Fair enough.

I thought about my father's grandmother today while I was rolling out the noodles, the woman who would have taught his Aunt Viola Quay how to cook. (Not his mother, she was too flighty to stay in the kitchen.) I also have Dad's grandmother's ironing board, and a wooden bowl and chopper that must have been hers. I think I have a few pictures of her, one as a young girl, and a couple as an older woman, but I know little about her. Still, working in the kitchen to make this simple bit of heaven, I think she and I would have had more in common than her grandson's mother or her grandson's wife. They found cooking a chore. Great-grandmother, at least, would have been fascinated by my Cuisinart, which makes the dough in 45 seconds, my tempered glass rolling board that cleans up like a dream, and my ceramic-top stove. And I think she might have sputtered with disgusted jealousy at the pre-cooked, spiral-sliced ham I dragged out of the freezer, but one thing I know for certain:

She would have loved this batch of pot pie.

Oracle

2011-09-23T19:56:00.000-07:00

In those days

at the equinox of the Late Summer Year

the heat rose again as in July

and the people did once again

dip in their swimming pools in luxury

and lament the waning hours of daylight

Two months of summerlike weather

did the people lose that year

two months of gardens growing

two months of sending children outdoors

their tans were lousy

unless they went to a tanning salon

Summer dresses and sandals

tank tops and shorts

the people wore them even though

the sun and the earth declared autumn

"No, Summer will not end!" they cried

"Extend it the two lost months!"

"This cannot be done," said the Lord.

"The sun and the earth have their own agenda

as they must

for the sake of the rest of the world

yet I will help your acceptance blossom

and feed the nimble-tongued toad as well

Thus the Lord

allowed the flies of September to flourish

in their hundreds, in their thousands

flies which knew that Summer ended

and which coveted the houses

and the dinners of mankind

Like a second job

the people took up fly swatting

massing mounds of carcasses

in their kitchens and their porches

in their bathrooms and their dens

and turning their many minds

And so the people stopped their whining

heaved sighs of relief at early sunset

they looked to the skies for tell-tale hints of rain

and began to hunger for the chilly nights

the wearing of sweaters

and the demise of all the filthy, bloated, obnoxious and frantic flies.

The flower in the picture is cyclamen, which is winter color around here. It's begun blooming early, for reasons I don't know. We got two decent tomatoes from cultivated plants, finally, and while I welcome our current hot spell, I have indeed begun to wish for real autumn weather to slow down all these damned flies. They hang on the doors and sail in any time someone comes through; they ride on people's backs like they were on a bus and enter the kitchen to wallow on counter and dishcloth and mashed potatoes.

Ripening tomatoes, or the demise of flies? Well ...

Works in Progress

2011-09-09T22:56:00.000-07:00

The last few days I've been fiddling with three canvases, all very small, all very simplistic.

The first one is in the center, three hills and three towers. The second is the trees against the sky on the left. The third is the farmstead and fields.

None of them are done. They need finesse-ing -- and I don't mean detailing, I mean addition of highlights and dark contrasts, a little fine-tuning. But the good news is, I was actually out in the studio for hours, painting!

After seeing my post-it note on my desk with the ideas and the inspiration for the works, Bernie began nagging me to start work on them. It worked: I went out to the studio to avoid his prodding, set up for the project, and got after it.

This is my worry-stone, a piece of seashell. Was it from Cape Hatteras, where I long to be every day? Or was it something I found on the beach at Santa Cruz, wandering along and thinking of my Port Laughton novels? I don't remember. It's just been on my desk or in my jewelry box forever.

One day, I thumbed it, and was struck by the suggestion of towers on a hilltop, against a russet sky. And then I turned it, and and saw a forest, with odd constellations in a sky. One more turn (imagine 90 degrees to the left) and visualized a barn, and farmhouse, with fields.

Yeah.

It's art, if not "good" art, and I let my imagination run with a limited palette of oils: Naples Yellow, Burnt Sienna, and Cadmium Orange.

The undercoat of the three little canvases was a leftover from a semi-fictional painting of Mission Buenaventura, an undercoating that was so richly orange that I fell in love with it. I had just enough for three 10 x 8 canvases ... just enough. That was two? Three years ago?

No matter, I feel that I'm off and running with these three little abstracts. I want to add touches of Titanium White and evilly dark Alizarin Crimson to each painting to complete them. The tree-picture will have constellations in its sky to correspond (approximately) to the dots on the shell ... but everything has to dry a bit before I go on. Wet on wet oil is fun only up to a certain point.

I'm thrilled to be painting again, and bemused to find that the paintings I enjoy the most are abstracts.

Art Will Cost You, You Poor Bastards: I

2011-09-04T23:03:00.000-07:00

A bit of an eye-opener today.

The family went to the Haggin Museum in Stockton to see a Salvador Dali display of his illustrations of Dante's Divine Comedy, and a display of native plants that native Americans ate -- in this area. Now, I admire Dali for his bravado and willingness to follow his own drum-beat, but I was most interested in edible plants in Central Valley California, as I live here, and God alone knows when the other shoe is going to fall and people are going to have to figure out ways to eat that are not dependent on SafeWay.

We started with the Dali display, and I pulled out my trusty camera with its low-light settings, and took about four pictures of the most interesting paintings ... and then a docent (museum employee) came up to me and said, "You're not allowed to take pictures in this exhibit."

Well, I knew that flash pics were prohibited throughout the museum, but no one had told me that any photos were not to be taken. But I was fine with that, I guess, and we deleted my pics from my camera while the docent looked on, and was satisfied. "You can buy a book of these paintings," she told me. "And if you want to take pictures of the other displays in the museum, you can sign a release form."

Now, the last time I was in the Haggin Museum, I took pics of the art, and so did numerous other patrons, many of whom used the forbidden flash in spite of the big sign at the entrance that said, "NO FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY." So this was a surprise to me. But hey, it was an important exhibition of an important work, so whatever ...

The display of native foods ... salmon, acorns, some flower bulbs, elderberries -- those were off-limits for photographs also, as you could buy a book about them downstairs. There were tablets of native food recipes for free hanging on the walls between photos of native Americans plying their cooking skills, but no photos of acorns or baskets or mussel shells were allowed.

"It's because someone might see your pictures and profit from downloading them," a docent told me, after suggesting I sign a release form that would permit me to take pictures of other things in the Haggin. "They might download them, and then sell those images for a profit. So you can't upload your pictures to any online site where other people might see them, not even just your friends."

WTF?

Salvador Dali's works should never be seen unless someone pays airfare to come to Stockton in the next month, or to New Mexico, where the paintings are based, or they can cough up $299 to buy the book?

What does that say about art? Hey, Shithead, unless you can come up with airfare or big bucks, you can't see these drawings/paintings. That's ridiculous. Here, have a look at what you can already find online, you don't have to rely on some poor-ass tourist's photos:

http://www.lockportstreetgallery.com/DivineComedy.htm

I have more to say about free art, but that would make this post way too long.

More on this tomorrow.

Ahhhhhh

2011-09-03T18:36:00.000-07:00

This was my view today as I floated on my raft in the pool today.

The sun was quite hot, the temps around 97; the water of the pool has already taken on that September chill that bit by bit cuts back on our swimming. My only agenda for today was to get as much floating/tanning time as possible.

The sky was utterly cloudless.

After about an hour and a half, the hamburgers and hotdogs were off the grill, and I came inside to eat. This may have been my last pool float of the year.

Order

2011-09-01T17:29:00.000-07:00

It's been nearly 25 years since we last grew onions from onion sets.

At the top of my yard back East, I had a little garden for onions and zucchini. When summer was about done, and the tops of the onions began to wither, I'd dig them all out, dry them on a sweater rack, and then braid them into long strips. They would subsequently hang from hooks in my cellar stairway, looking lovely, nicely convenient to my kitchen.

Never having done onion sets before, Alex was sparing with how many onions she planted, but it was a pleasure to stand in the morning coolness today, letting my hands remember how to braid their dried tops together. Maybe the richness of this sight will encourage her to plant more next year.

My friend Cathy the Mad Horsewoman let us borrow her pickup truck this past week, and thus we got the winter's supply of wood in, too.

There is a strong satisfaction in putting things in order like this. Although stacking wood is hard work for my lazy shoulders, I love seeing the pieces fit together, examining each chunk to see the planes and twists, feeling the solidity of the properly done stack; greedily I still insist on being The Stacker, though I admit I'm glad I'm not the Loader or the Hauler any more. It does go much more quickly when Bernie and John and Alex are there to take up the wheelbarrowing.

In the same way, taking a pile of tangled, dried onions and making them into a neat cluster is heartening, watching the dirty outer skin slough away to reveal shades of shining brown and gold, feeling the strength of the braid holding together like magic.

Although a woodstack or an onion braid aren't great art, they are still creations of the hands that planted and hauled and braided and stacked. There is a part of me in this stockpile, in this onion braid -- part of Alex and John and Bernie, too, which makes these works so beautiful. The good will that went into the work infuses them with love, elevates them beyond just Vegetables or Wood.

I'll remember this when we taste black bean chili, or stand by the wood stove to warm up this winter.

The New Book

2011-08-24T20:13:00.000-07:00

Last year the half-wine barrel under the Japanese maple had begonias in it after the freesias were done. This year I dumped a bunch of packets of old seeds I found in the garage into it, and this one nasturtium came up, the last growth that the disintegrating barrel will sustain. At the end of the season, the barrel will become kindling, if it doesn't fall apart first.

One nasturtium -- what a laugh! The plant took over the whole planter and is sending out tendrils, hoping to conquer the planet. In spite of the shady location, this sun-loving creature is thriving, and gracing the landscape with a whole new look from begonias.

The crispness of the reddish-orange spots on the petals astounds me. How does it happen that such perfect designs appear on a lowly vine? It's a mystery, one that I never tire of seeing.

Yesterday, my friend Cathy -- Cathy the Mad Horsewoman -- officially gave up on rehabilitating her big horse Rusty. Years ago, when Cathy and I first rode together, Rusty was perfect, trusting Cathy to tell him what to do, completely in sync with his rider. They were amazing together. Then she had to go to work full-time, and gradually, when they rode out, his demeanor changed. He decided he was the one who had to be in charge.

He became so willful that when she tried to remind him of his station as mount, he threw himself around so violently that Cathy flew off the saddle and nearly had him fall on her as he flung himself to the ground. Her left wrist and arm shattered, along with her faith in her beloved horse.

The past year has been difficult; Cathy tried riding her other horse, old Peanut, but was so fearful of another incident that trail rides were fraught with tension; then old Peanut died, nearly 30 years old. Under intensive training, Rusty seemed to improve, only to revert to Mr. Nut Case again two weeks ago. It broke her heart, for she really loved that horse.

Yesterday she threw in the towel, and accepted another horse, on lease. His name is Chip, and I met him today. He's adorable, a short horse with a big body, a well-shaped head, and a friendly demeanor. (If I was in the market for another horse, I'd have bought him in a minute.) She's ridden him a couple times, and they seem to work well together.

It's a new volume for her, a whole new story on riding and horsey relationships. Her story with Rusty, her story with Peanut -- time to close the book on those years and begin a new one.

Maybe that's what life is all about in our late fifties: new stories, new books, close down the pages that went before. What's up next? Who knows where the new horse will carry us all.

Toad in Luxury

2011-08-12T20:06:00.000-07:00

Before the sun hit the pool in the morning, this little chappie was on Lillian's pink inner tube floatie, surveying his resort.

Does he eat bugs off the surface of the pool? Are the mangled snail shells we find on the patio the remains of his escargot? Where does the toad reside during the hot summer days?

We don't know, and Toad is not disclosing.

Oh, Toad, remind me that floating on the surface of a cool pool is a worthy occupation.

You Toad, inspire me to find savor in humble foods.

Oh, Toad, your saggy and spotty skin are so beautiful. When I look in the mirror and see sags and spots, help me to remember that God thinks I'm beautiful, too.

2011-08-10T18:56:00.000-07:00

We were sitting out on the back patio (this is an activity that happens fairly often) one day this past week when we heard something new: a bird call that we had not heard before.

Yes, we know our birds; sparrows, white-crowned sparrows, hummingbirds, finches, flickers, mockingbirds, and especially the jays -- but this call was very different, loud and shrill, and coming from several directions! More than one strange visitor!

We grabbed our birding binoculars and circled the pool, watching a pair of birds zooming through the sky at high speed, calling out their panicky-sounding cry. One of them plummeted into our neighbor's sycamore, and we carefully approached, hoping for a glimpse of the new bird. I snapped a shot up into the branches, hoping to be able to see in an enlarged photo what we had been hearing.

Before we put the camera away, though, we did spot the bird in the tree. It was a gray cockatiel.

We counted four locations for the source of the calls, and after a few minutes in the sycamore tree, our perched subject took off, joined the others, and was gone.

I sincerely hope that those birds found their way home. We haven't heard them since that evening, so maybe they aren't lost any more.

Either that or they're touring the almond and apple orchards, stuffing themselves on nuts and fruit.

If, when cooler weather hits, we spot a cockatiel the size of a turkey, we'll know he found the vineyards and the orchards for sure.

Veins of Writing

2011-08-03T21:10:00.000-07:00

Each vein has connections in this grape leaf, from the big structures to the little bitty increments.

This past week, I was asked if I imagined/wrote backstory on the characters in my fiction. Why yes, I do, at least for the novel-length fiction. Not as deeply for the short fiction, but there is still some time spent in thought about the characters, why they do what they do, and where they came from, and ... what do they like to wear as clothing and what do they like to eat and how do they talk to their friends?

You have to track those characters down and follow them to know about them, follow the veins and see who they've contacted, examine those contacts to see where they have been and what they are bringing to a story -- and write it down. Remember it in notebooks and in your heart. Don't fall into the pit of "Yeah, tomorrow I'll start to write this story" -- by tomorrow it will be diluted in your memory. WRITE IT DOWN, NOW. Or start typing and save the idea in a .doc file.

When your network of characters begins to link up, and the story takes off, the feeling is like that of riding a jet-ski into the sparkling waters of a summer morning. Kick it into high gear, and let your characters fly!

And you know, if you never get published, you still have the pleasure -- and it is a pleasure -- of following your characters into their stories.

No one in the world gives a crap about whether the leaf in the picture is part of a plant that bears award-winning grapes, or whether it is destined for a Greek dish, or is simply a backyard topiary. But the fact is, it grows, all the same, and it's beautiful.

Let your writing grow.

Mid-Leap

2011-07-27T18:22:00.000-07:00

You have to have health insurance.

You have to have health insurance.

You have to have health insurance!

Well, I'm screwed, in that case. Because I take medication for high cholesterol, have been taking a tiny dose of medication for high blood pressure, and have a herniated disc in my spine, I am considered "high risk," and health insurance companies want nothing to do with me. This is in spite of the fact that I haven't been sick at all for several years.

When I got the notice, I was very depressed by the news. The proud little striving straight-A teenager inside me felt I'd been given a failing grade. And the paranoid Type A control freak who lives in there, too, was running around flipping switches in the laboratory, ordering flunkies to find a solution, "Now! Now! NOW!" all the while running possible scenarios of disaster over and over again. But then the shaman, who drifts around looking at bugs and dirt muttered, "You know, you're going to get yourself so worked up over this you'll make yourself sick and it will serve you right. There's nothing you can do today, just chill. Pet your dog. Trim your fingernails, they look like you're trying out for the Mandarin Squad."

The next day I dragged them all to Mass, and went into church a bit early to go over this disaster with God. Yes, I do that. In fact, when I open my heart to God, and the realm of the Unseen, things seem to make a lot more sense.

Why do you want health insurance? Because if I become catastrophically ill, I'll need hospitalization, and we all know how expensive that is -- we'd be on the street in about six months with nothing at all. (At this point, I am glad that I can't hear God laugh, because I KNOW, God doesn't deal in coinage.) All right, fine, Lord, I shouldn't worry about that. And what happens to people with no money who get catastrophically ill? THEY DIE! OR THEY BECOME INCAPACITATED! BED-RIDDEN! AND THEN DIE! Hmm. But if they have health insurance, then what happens? They go to the hospital, of course, and are treated for their illness...

How? Visions of IV's, catheters, stomach tubes, medications upon medications, hospital rooms flashed through my head. You ... want that? Yikes!

I thought about my Dad's last months. Yes, x-ray treatment and chemotherapy did slow the progression of the cancer in his body, but his doctors had to know that the disease had gone too far for a cure. Realistically, I mean. Pill after pill, side effect after side effect, finally being tied down in a hospital bed so that he couldn't pull out the feeding tube that prolonged his failing life in misery. What would Dad have wanted instead? I know that answer: total honesty, and his own bed at home, with cigarettes and the occasional beer to pass the last hours.

And my mom ... yes, hospitalization and massive treatments gave her a chance for some more years of life ... so that she could die alone, in the dark cut-off corners of her brain, with Alzheimer's. What would she have wanted if she knew what her end would be? I think know the answer to that, too.

What it boiled down to, and I know I've said this before, is that I had succumbed to advertising hype on a most basic level. When was the last time I was hospitalized? When I gave birth. The last time I had to visit an emergency room was for a sprained ankle, which they x-rayed and then sent me home to recover for six weeks, with no further medical treatment. Technically, I didn't need the hospital then, either.

Howie is aging, too, but he doesn't give a damn. He leaps into the pool over and over for the sheer joy of fulfilling a basic drive to chase the ball. He doesn't worry about his form in the leap, or if he'll unexpectedly forget how to swim when he hits the water. He is disgusted when we make him slow down and rest; he doesn't complain later when he stiffens up and limps. The next day he is ready to make the leap again. I think I can understand that a little better now.

And you know, there's not a thing I can do about the herniated disc -- it doesn't bother me a lot at all. As to the other "pre-existing conditions"... well, if I'm really worried about my health, I could lose weight and exercise more, now couldn't I?

The skinny hedge-shaman in my head thinks that realization is really, really funny.

Summer Afternoon Cat

2011-07-21T19:14:00.000-07:00

The temperature is still hovering around 97 as afternoon fades.

Even in the shade, it's hot. The hose leads to a mister, which keeps us humans cool, but who knows what Fourmyle had in mind when he decided to use the hose as a pillow?

Potatoes and Dog

2011-07-20T04:48:00.000-07:00

For the last two days, we've been feasting on potatoes -- from our own garden.

As with many veggies, what comes out of our own ground is so far superior in taste than the stuff from the store that we have to wonder just what the heck producers do to their product to make their fruit so bland.

The ones in the picture are the last from the real seed potatoes planted in late spring. The trick seems to be catching the harvest at the exact right point: if the plants are in blossom, you can get tiny (but delicious) "new potatoes," but if you let the plants wither, the potatoes instantly start to re-sprout, and look a bit gnarly. We're still learning potatoes in California. Back East, we planted Kennebec potatoes in the spring, harvested them in late summer, and had enough to last us through most of the winter.

Learning is fun. I have a batch of bastard potatoes drying on the rack in the back yard -- I'm going to try for one more harvest this year, with store-bought potatoes that are shriveled and sprouting. Who knows?

And then there's the milestone of July 19th. Ten years ago on that date, I thought to myself in bemusement, "For my mother's birthday, I went out and bought myself a dog."

Howie was about four months old when I brought him home from Delta Humane Society. The night of July 19th, he slept beside me, tethered to my wrist on a leash. (I slept on the floor in the kitchen with him.)

Happy birthday, Mom, wherever you are. I miss the woman that you were in that all-too-short time when we were fishing buddies and mischief-makers. Thanks for teaching me how to pick and train a good dog. And you're welcome, for me teaching you how to grow Kennebecs.

Happy anniversary, Howie... best dog I've ever known.

The Old Dog

2011-07-18T21:28:00.000-07:00

We've had a change in policy recently.

Howie is no longer allowed to play "ball" in the pool with his younger buddy Sebastian.

Six years younger, Sebastian combines all the verve of a younger dog with the obsessive need to rule of his border collie daddy. Howie has herding instincts, too, and Order hard-wiring from his Queensland heeler ancestry ... but keeping up with his brother pup is a problem.

A couple weeks ago, skidding on the concrete, trying to keep up with Sebastian, Howie ripped up one of his hind feet pretty severely. It's just now healing up.

Yesterday, we let the dogs out to play in the pool and Howie fell twice as he was racing around the pool deck. Bad falls, not stumbles.

Today we had How chase the tennis ball in the pool without Sebastian's competition. Howie leapt into the pool ten feet at a time, over and over, while Seb was in the house. Howie had good exercise, but didn't have to be competitive.

I know Howie loves to best the pup, but the fact is, the pup outweighs him by 25 pounds, and is 6 years younger.

When the time for pool play was past, Howie was ready to rest on one of the chairs on the back patio, just hangin' with his Daddy.

And It Also Makes a Great Rolling Board

2011-07-14T16:00:00.000-07:00

Today Bernie asked me to make tacos.

It was the first time since before we started all this deconstruction and reconstruction that I was called upon to make tortillas. Back when we had the tall tiled bar attached to the kitchen island, I would put the griddle on top of the bar, and my rolling "board" (a large tempered glass cutting surface) on the counter beside the sink.

But now, the bar being GONE, how would I arrange the work space?

Like a dream, the griddle sits on the island, and because of the extra half foot of surface, there was plenty of room to roll out tortillas -- right on the perfectly polished granite surface.

Want to give them a try yourself? Here's my cousin Ramona's -- and my -- tortilla recipe.

Lovely Things!

2011-07-07T19:22:00.000-07:00

Bernie called my attention this morning to some rose petals that had fallen on the new granite counter top.

Beautiful petals, beautiful stone, rich in color. Nothing would do but a photo shoot, and I decided to include the little antique, because it looks so perfect on the granite.

Alex was fascinated with the antique honey-server when she was a toddler. She was drawn almost hypnotically to its bee hive sides, even though the images of the bees in the glass frightened her. At three years old, Alex was precocious, but not infallible. One afternoon she clandestinely lifted the glass lid ... and fumbled it in fear of the bees. To her tiny life's credit, she owned up to the broken lid immediately.

Even intact, I had nothing I could really use a honey server for -- I don't serve honeycombs, like my mother before me rarely served honeycombs. A couple weeks ago I came across the little dish in the back of the top shelf of the laundry room, dusty and hidden behind cleaning supplies and sponges. I brought it out and washed it up, and found that it was the PERFECT holder for our salt and pepper shakers, accommodating the collection as though it was made for that purpose.

So Alex, had you never broken the lid, we wouldn't have thought of using the Bee Dish, and it would have lived out its days gathering dust and nothing more.

Here's another Lovely Thing: I decided today to help Lillian put her art work (at least some of it) up on my Resolution Every Day blog. She and I will share that space, and perhaps it will encourage us both to be more creative.

P.S. I figured out how to get rid of the pinstripes and get back to black. Hee!

"Change is good."

2011-07-04T18:36:00.000-07:00

Back in 1995, when I worked in the vault room of a big hardware store, one of my predecessors had taped a paper sign to the little money window. It said, "No change."

One of the managers, getting ready to leave our store for another (they got moved around regularly, I think to keep them from being murdered by employees) would say to me every morning by way of a warning that he was leaving, "Change is good."

Each time he said that, I replied, "No change."

I liked him as a boss. I liked my job a lot less when he went off to his next assignment.

A couple days ago I was tinkering with this blog, and noted that I could "upgrade" my blog template. Bernie has the new template format and he can do a lot more with his blog than I can. What the heck! I upgraded ... and lost the black background that I liked so much. It was so madly me ... and now it's gone, replaced by pansy-assed pinstripes. Also all my blog links are gone, and I have to re-learn how to put them in.

I should have said, "No change."

Well, I'll learn from this experience, although at this point in my life I'm feeling a bit weathered, like the fence above, and more like a canvas for shadows than for great art. Just a bit. But perhaps what my former boss said to me will be true this time.

I'll let you know when I stop swearing about the "New and Improved" look for my blog.

Bored? Can I Schedule Time for That?

2011-07-02T20:41:00.000-07:00

Recently I met a former co-worker in the hardware store in which I used to work.

She had come out of retirement, and re-applied at the hardware (at the minimum hiring wage) part-time. No benefits. "I got bored at home," she told me with a rueful twist to her mouth.

Bored. BORED? How the heck did she have the leisure to get BORED?

Amid my consternation at her answer, all I could mumble was, "I haven't got to that point yet."

BORED?????

Still Testing After What Seems Like Years

2011-07-02T19:28:00.001-07:00

Still trying to find a way to make my posts appear without spamming all the posts of the last infinitive years ...

The Pet in John's Garden

2011-07-02T18:47:00.000-07:00

John calls this plant a she, and hadn't the heart to eat the artichokes, so he let them bloom.

At least he didn't get another cat.

Delicious Kitchen

2011-07-02T18:20:00.000-07:00

Absolutely I love how this is looking.

The granite counter tops were installed yesterday. I chose a dark granite, nearly black, because the white and black combos are echoed throughout the kitchen. The stove is white with a black ceramic top; the dishwasher and the fridge are black; the walls and the marble tiles of the fireplace are white. The luscious white overmount Kohler sink sits upon the dark stone like a gem.

The construction that will hide the plumbing will be white, matching the walls, also.

Not apparent in these photos is the area right under the counter top where the granite sits on the plywood, but in a week or so, there will be a band of trim stained the same color as I used on my now-hidden plywood. It's going to provide a range of color that will simply kick butt with the slate tile floor later this year.

There's a strangely different "feel" to the granite compared to the tile ... call me a half-crazed hedge shaman, I don't care, but it's like you can sense the naturalness of the rock (and it was also obvious with the homely plywood we made do with) compared to the white ceramic tile.

Raggedy plywood, stained and polyurethaned over tile, yes, yes. But the granite is better ... I'm still not over the yearning to just stay in the kitchen and polish it all over and over again.

So far, so good.

Be Nice

2011-06-30T18:50:00.000-07:00

I deleted the last post I wrote.

It was a book review; and although I don't do book reviews very often, I was moved to explain at length just how stupid the book was, how valueless the characters, how insulting the supporting cast were to my experience of life, how shoddy the editing, and how I had to presume the author had had good connections that enabled her to get this piece of garbage into print publication.

Before hitting the "Publish Post" button, however, I decided to wait a day and re-read the post before making it public. I'm glad I did, and that review has been deleted.

There are TONS of really crappy books in print nowadays, just as there are TONS of really well-written stories that do not make it into print due to various reasons -- Barry Kirwan's story "Writerholics Anonymous" explains this perfectly, and with good humor.

My good humor had evaporated because I had spent too many hours reading what was billed as a "fun read" but what wasn't, not really. (I am truly trying not to go off on another rant here.) My time is limited; I read a lot of submissions for the Piker Press. Some are good, some are mediocre, some are god-awful, some are brilliant. That's my "job," to read them. And so reading something that was supposed to have been vetted and pronounced worthwhile -- and clearly wasn't -- aggravated me.

Eh. An acquaintance of mine has recently become very critical of people, and Bernie explained to me that the man simply was getting "Crotchety Old Man Syndrome."

As far as reading "popular" fiction goes, maybe "Crotchety Old Woman Syndrome" is catching up with me, too.

My mother used to say, "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all."

At least in this situation I'll follow her advice.

The Humble Man

2011-06-24T18:55:00.000-07:00

My husband is the greatest.

Not only has he endured long, long hours in every job he had since we were married in 1975, and uncomplainingly underwent major cancer treatment at the end of that same year, and has never been mean to anyone in all the years that I've known him, but in his retirement, he has turned his intellect into $$$ saved for us.

He fixed three windows that were falling apart. I was sure that we'd have to replace them, but he took out their guts, got new working parts for a few dollars, and put them back together again.

He put extra shelving in my linen cabinet, one in our bedroom, and six in Lillian's bedroom corners.

He repaired the ice-maker in the fridge, without spending a dollar. Had we called a service-man, it would easily have cost us over $200.

He built five beautiful redwood raised planters for our front yard, and a masonry one for the avocado tree.

He repaired and renovated our wrought iron patio gate to the pool area.

He refinished a living room end table, and a dresser in the bedroom.

His work is beautiful, from the cute little wooden feet he made for my footstool project, to the once-again functional sink in the under-construction kitchen.

Last, but certainly not least, he figured out that our old router and the automatically-connected server hated each other's guts when Google tested its IPV6 junk a couple weeks ago, leaving us unable to use any search engines, or blog, or comment on other people's blogs. And then, because he is so clever, he figured out a way to fix it.

Maybe he wasn't completely humble on that last fix ... when his solution worked, he did let out a roar of triumphant laughter that sounded much like what you might hear from a super-villain who has just figured out how to conquer the world.

Here's to Bernie, my hero. Cheers!

Demolition and Reconstruction

2011-06-22T18:48:00.000-07:00

In an earlier post, I described how we took out the bar connected to our kitchen sink island. Demolition of that bar was easy, and gave us great hopes for the rest of the project.

Indeed, the next step -- one that the salesman at Lowes suggested, was to take out the edge pieces of the tile prior to the "formal" measurement by the counter top company. This was also amusingly easy.

But do you see what's under that tile? Concrete, reinforced with chicken wire.

How does one remove it? One bashes with a hammer and wrecking bar. We had to do the sink island next, and this is what it looks like when "done."

Beneath that cement layer is raw plywood, which has been so dehydrated by its 18 years of neighborliness with the concrete that it sucks the moisture out of your hands when you touch it. As we say around this house, "DEES-gusting!!"

And then, if ripping out reinforced cement wasn't bad enough, (and it was) we embarked upon a day of frustration and aggravation. Papa Jim of the Haverim returned, and we exposed the plumbing, right down to the concrete slab, encountering shocking mistakes and sloppiness by the original installers. Jim and Bernie pounded down through the slab around the pipes and dug a small cavern, in which Jim cut and pieced a cracked pipe (what a wonderful revelation that our drain had been seeping into the ground underneath the house) and re-routed things for the new configuration of the island. (The poor sink was lying on the stones out by the back patio by this time.)

The long and sweaty, frustrating day was nearly at an end when we all figured out that our shut-off valve to the house is faulty, and that we had to turn off the water to the house at the city's street connection. Then the copper pipes' solders finally set. We sent Jim home.

As luck would have it, Monday, when we were to finish up the plumbing, Jim was sick as hell. We waited until later in the week, and then pitched into the construction on our own. We manfully ripped out the rest of the tiled counters (as the counter top people told me we'd have to do) and let me tell you that swinging a hammer all damn day is exhausting.

While Bernie worked on the lower copper lines and the box that holds the pipes, I was seized by loathing of the cement-dust flavored counters. I scrubbed them down, and when they were dry, I stained them with this cool wood stain by Varathane, which comes in a tube and wipes on with a rag. The next day I put two coats of polyurethane finish on them.

I did the ABS (black drain pipes) and Bernie completed the copper water lines to the sink so that we could move the island cabinet back into place. Again, it took all day both days, with solders that wouldn't stop leaking, wood that would not remain bolted into the concrete, and pieces missing necessary for the functioning of the sink.

When Bernie at last could hook up the sink, all of us were so relieved that we couldn't wait one minute before washing the day's accumulated dishes, in a celebratory mood, all standing around admiring the running water, the scrubbing clean, the luxury of a kitchen with a semblance of order.

Here you can see my stained plywood countertops. Pitted though they may be, I can sanitize them with soap and water, which is important to me as it will be a good two weeks and more before the real deal is installed. I suppose I could have just polyurethaned over the raw plywood, but this looks prettier, and for $7, I think it was worth it.

You can also see my long-unused wallboard repair skills where the backsplash used to be. When we ripped off the tiles back there, the wallboard came along with them!

Papa Jim was able to return to help us Monday, and hooked up the electric and made some adjustments to our work. You have no idea how big a difference moving that island out a foot made on our kitchen traffic. What was before a cramped area that allowed two people to work in it -- and only if they were on very warm and cuddly terms -- now accommodates us all so that we can work as a team, even if the dogs decide to wander through.

The refrigerator belongs in that nook at the far end, but we're not moving it back until the new counter is installed.

And oddly, we like the fridge where it sits right now. Maybe if we had known this ahead of time, we'd have taken out the window behind it, and just added more cabinet and countertop in the nook.

We're thrilled so far.

And so, so happy to have a functional kitchen again.

57 Years

2011-06-08T19:16:00.000-07:00

What did you do special for your birthday?

Why, I did something I've been wanting to do for years -- I took a masonry chisel and a hammer and took the first rows of tile off the island/sink in the kitchen. The activity was very satisfying, indeed.

The birthday was an incidental kind of experience; maybe I used the birthday idea to allow myself the gratification of taking more tiles off the kitchen countertops, though certainly I enjoyed the nice wishes so many people sent me.

June 8 fell in a hugely busy time in my mother's household back when I was a kid. Her greenhouse and nursery were burgeoning from mid-May until July with sales, and frankly, from mid-March with necessary duties, as she started a lot of her own plants from seed.

Dad's birthday was May 25, just two weeks before mine, so we tended to defer all birthdays until July, and just have a celebration day when we might have cake (banana cake, always the favorite) or a barbecue, or just a favorite meal. (Sauerkraut and dumplings, pot pie, a turkey with stuffing). So celebrating a birthday on a particular day still seems a bit odd to me.

When I woke up this morning, I was glad to see sun; I remembered that it was my birthday but had to pause to do the math to remember just how old I was. Do I feel 57?

How would I know, I've never been 57 before. Ask me in six months, then I might have some idea.

Communication

2011-06-02T19:49:00.000-07:00

This morning my cell phone rang.

I answered it, and subsequently had a long, enjoyable conversation with my sister-in-law, the first since last summer.

This afternoon, I was the contact for the dude who showed up to give us the estimate for the countertops from Lowes. I talked to him and told him what we wanted for countertops (scrumptious granite, have I mentioned that before?) while Howie woofed and Sebastian panted, showing many teeth from outside the patio door.

Later, early in the evening, I called the good friend who had cared for my mother until she needed more intimate care. From the time my dad died, Lonz helped my mom manage her property, visited her, helped her -- she loved him as though he was her son, and the amazing thing to me was that she LET him help her, which she would never let me --or anyone else -- do. I called him because his mother died yesterday, and I wanted to let him know that he was still important to me, that I felt his loss as he had felt mine.

Then he handed the phone off to his wife, with whom I've been friends since seventh grade. Deb and I yakked for a long time, about chickens, gardens, family -- punctuated by laughter, Deb's trademark.

It was odd, being so vocally in touch with the world.

I'm exhausted.

Happy and pleased, but exhausted.

Wrecking the Kitchen

2011-06-01T19:53:00.000-07:00

When we got up this morning, that space was filled with a white ceramic tile-topped bar.

The bar-island dominated the kitchen, blocking the view of the back door to the patio, collecting sunglasses, cookbooks, spare change, vegetables, mail, dirty dishes, grade school homework, stuff that was supposed to be taken to the garage, wallets ... yeah, it was a bar junk yard that once a quarter or so was cleared to put noshes on when the Haverim came over for pot luck.

'Tis gone now. Jim of the Haverim stopped by this morning to consult with us how to change the face and utility of the kitchen. After Bernie made him Grandma May's biscuits and gravy, Jim and I thought that starting the procedure NOW was a good idea. (Too early in the day for wine -- don't blame it on that!)

Bernie started chipping tiles carefully ... and that was too much for Jim. He took a hammer and a pry bar and showed us how to get work done QUICKLY. Dang, that man can deconstruct!

This afternoon, Bernie and I went to Lowe's and bought my new sink and picked out counter material. Tomorrow we have an initial measurement being taken for an estimate. After that, it is up to Bernie and me to take out all the rest of the tile in the kitchen, down to the cabinets.

Man, I hope this turns out okay. For the first time in my life, I'm going to have a kitchen that has not only a great sink, but also the counter top material of my dreams -- rich, gleaming granite.

More on this as wrecking continues.

Autobiographical: Miss You, Dad

2011-05-28T22:25:00.000-07:00

Not much of my writing is actually autobiographical; I use snippets from here and there in my past life and in the lives of others. But in my book Dreamer, there was one bit that was written from life:

'One January Sunday, after a long thaw had melted the snow, and a hard freeze followed, he took me for a long walk with him along the north side of a mountain. (I was about eleven at the time, I think, and Jesse was still too little for a long hike.) The oak leaves, where they collected in little ravines and stream beds, were thick and brown and crunchy, and we avoided stepping into them. We tried to keep to rocky ground to minimize our noise, hoping to come upon a herd of does, or maybe even a buck who had lasted through the hunting season. Mountain laurel bushes made little canopies over flat places on the side of the ridge, where the ground had been scraped bare and worn smooth by the sleeping bodies of the deer. Beside the game trails grew mosses in a mosaic of greens, some moss deep and feathery, a dark green with tiny brown tendrils raised above it, some the palest minty green with a short, tough feel, and every green color in between. Tall oaks rose above the laurel, still holding onto this year's brown leaves. The beeches were not so tall, and the few leaves that clung to them rattled and scraped with the breeze that now and then moved the chill air. We stopped and caught our breath every fifty yards or so, listening for the scuffle-scuffle sound that would betray a deer's approach, and turning our heads to try to track the gray squirrels that scritched through the trees to keep an eye on us. The clouds of our breath gave us grey haloes around our orange furry hunter's hats.

'If I had been by myself, I would have crept under the sloping branches of the evergreen hemlocks and curled up on their deep, soft carpet of needles to dream of living in the forest. I loved the hemlocks with their dark, flat, shiny needle-leaves in tiny rows along the twigs. Unlike the spruces and pines, the hemlock was gentle and soft, not resinous and prickly. The hemlocks grew apart from the laurels, in their own communities where the ground dipped into bowls and you could frequently find little mountain springs.

'We paused for a breather in a cluster of young white pines. They have long needles with characteristic white stripe (I peered at them to see the mark of their breed, amazed as always that any natural stripe could be that thin and fine) giving them a hazy, relaxed look. The wind obligingly picked up a little so that we could savor the sound of the pines swishing, like the sound of the surf before you get over the top of the dunes at the beach. Then Dad led on, downwards now, to a wondrous sight in a scooped out section on the side of the mountain, a little dell, the floor of which was almost level.

'The gray rocks that we'd used as step stones were still scattered on the hillside, and the moss and the laurel and the oaks, but added to the landscape were boulders higher than our heads. They were like planets, like monuments, and we walked between them, Dad admiring them, I in utter wonder. So still and cold. So inanimate, and yet ... there was something about them that spoke of a deep, long life beside which our little lives seemed like the quick hum of a mosquito, there and gone in an instant, while these monoliths watched and listened through the centuries. I pulled off a glove and laid my hand against the stone, to try to feel that deeper life, and snatched my hand back, so cold it felt burned. On the north side of a ridge, not much sunlight would warm these rocks in the winter. Their inner life would be one of cold and darkness and silence. "These are the bones of the earth, Sully," my father said, his voice barely above a whisper. And we moved slowly on, down through this hollow, between the great boulders, looking up to see their profiles against the pewter winter sky, gray upon gray, until we reached the lower shoulder of the mountain, where the trees grew thicker, and the laurel was replaced by bramble. We turned away west again, and as the afternoon grew late, we struck our original path and headed for the car.

'As a teen I was too busy to try to pester Dad to take us back there (Jesse never did get to go), and then we moved to California. I asked Dad once or twice when I visited him and Mom where that place with the huge boulders was. He gave the name of some remote valley or other, but it was no name that I could recognize. He hedged a bit, saying that they were always changing the names of those valleys depending on who you talked to, anyway. And now he was gone, and the secret place might as well have disappeared with him. But I remember him best gliding silently in long steps amid the oaks and laurel, standing quietly at peace beside the bones of the earth, like they were old friends.'

There really was such a place. Wednesday was my dad's birthday, May 25th, and I've been thinking about him a lot the last couple days. He was a big man, six foot two, but not bulky. He could slink along in the woods like a ghost, making almost no sound at all, in contrast to his laughter, which exploded in eldritch cackles, sometimes making his dentures slide loose.

One of the things that made him laugh helplessly over and over again was reading Thorne Smith's book Turnabout. Dad loved the turns of phrase and stretches of language in it. I loved them, too, still do, and have been re-reading the novel the last few days since I found it online.

The river picture? That's the Juniata River in central Pennsylvania. My dad swam in it, waded in it, fished in it -- it was a part of his life when he was young, not as a sportsman, but as a youth for whom the river was part of the medium of life.

The older I get, the more things I wish that I could talk about with him. I dream about him now and then, and I'm always madly happy to see him when I do.

No tears here ... just a big grin remembering him.

Hola, Coyote!

2011-05-21T17:39:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I accompanied Kathy the Mad Horsewoman to her English riding lesson. I listen to her lesson, and the instructor's voice helps me to remember what I learned long ago, and have more or less forgotten over the years.

Dink and I mostly go out alone these days. No one else at the ranch rides when we do, and that's okay. He and I know what we're doing with each other; it's a kind of riding partnership. But after so many years, we're both so comfortable with ambling along in the orchards that both of us are out of shape.

Kathy the Mad's instructor was talking about physical condition, saying that no other exercise exercises all the muscle groups at the same time like riding does. Wow, I thought, she's right.

Lower legs, thighs, back, abdomen, shoulders, arms -- if you ride properly, all of them are engaged, and you can't just Zen out while doing it -- riding a 1000-pound animal whose brain is the size of a walnut and whose main survival skill is to buck and run, why, you need to keep your wits about you.

My goal this morning was to ride properly, making use of all those muscle groups, instead of just sitting on the stinky Dink and floating along. We were only a about 50 yards out on the road when we met the first challenge that required that proper ride: three yapping little dogs from a neighboring ranch decided to give chase.

These dogs have been troubling one of the other riders out at the ranch, and you know, seeing other people afraid just makes me crazy. I turned Dink around and started walking back along the road, giving the dogs an added impetus to rush us. When the closest yapper was about to set foot on the road, I sat deep and forward (like if you were riding a crotch-rocket motorcycle) and sent Dink after the dog. He started forward in a lunge, and that damn dog ran back out into the field with his little tail between his legs.

We had to stop -- charging through a planted field is a big no-no.

Back to the ride. We turned off the usual route to see where the other rider had been exiting the orchard road, putting herself in those dogs' reach. In among the trees, I saw another canid shape -- coyote! Once again, I used good rider muscles to urge Dink forward at a faster pace. We caught up, and saw the coyote slink away into the trees. I found where Ms. Rider had made her passage: naughty, naughty, she has been cutting across the corner of the farmer's field.

Back to the ride again, and we spotted our coyote trotting a little ahead of us, to the right about three lanes into the orchard. We followed at a brisk walk.

Then the reward of the day: the coyote stopped and waited between the rows of trees to have a good look at us. I stopped Dink and turned him to face the coyote.

For a long minute, we looked at each other. "Hola, Coyote," I said, and admired his huge ears and richly bushy tail. A few seconds more, and then Coyote went on his way. We followed, and finished our ride.

Tonight, I can feel that I exercised all those muscle groups, and Kathy the Mad's instructor is right -- it is better than going to a gym.

Little Things

2011-05-20T21:15:00.000-07:00

Just for the record, the folks at Google have new and improved Blogger past my comfort zone. I'm just a blogger, no big deal -- but I shouldn't have to go into and edit HTML every fucking time I save a blog draft.

At this time, I cannot make the photo appear at the upper left corner of the blog. That's just ridiculous, because I've done so for just about every picture that has ever appeared in this blog.

Ah, there, I did it, but only by adding a space after I'd typed a few paragraphs. It shouldn't have to be that difficult.

The picture is of a weed called "speedwell." Its blue and white flowers are no more than 3/8 of an inch across. Prolific and widespread, it can make a lovely little free-hanging plant in a planter, or it can take over your garden in a matter of days. I love it, and I also mercilessly remove it from the vegetable plantings.

Commas are little things, too. But unlike speedwell, it seems that some modern writers have forgotten that commas need to separate clauses in compound sentences; they have forgotten that the eye as well as the ear needs to take a break while assimilating information in a story. Most of what I edit in the Piker Press is addition of commas.

I just finished editing a manuscript for an aspiring writer. Almost on every page, I marked up where commas were needed in compound sentences. Bottom line: if you don't want to use commas, break up your long sentences into shorter ones. Think about what you want to say in a paragraph before you write it ... or go back and re-think it after you do. Use the damn comma key, it's not that hard to find with your fingers. Mutter your sentences aloud as you write, and wherever you need to stop and take a breath, or pause to see if your audience hears you, add punctuation.

Yes, some writers can get away with run-on sentences and lack of punctuation, I do agree to that. But most can't.

Here's another little thing: Lillian was at a party this afternoon. At some point, she went to the hostess and asked if she could help in setting out noshes and napkins and things for the guests. The hostess was stunned, and called the congregation of party-ers to note Lil's little offer to help.

Add your commas to your sentences, and teach your kids how to be polite.

Little things mean a lot.

Howie the Wowie

2011-05-19T18:49:00.000-07:00

Yesterday the swelling on Howie's jaw was worse, so much so that we called the vet and asked if she wanted us to bring him in for an x-ray. The vet didn't get back to us until this morning, by which time the swelling had amazingly reduced, and Howie was able to almost get out a full yawn to say "Good morning." (He yawns and vocalizes, saying "Haaoww" -- almost certainly why the workers at Delta Humane Shelter named him "Howie.")

Today Bernie spoke with the vet (I was out exercising the horse) and they decided to have him in for an x-ray next Wednesday if the lump is still there. In the meantime, Howie is tolerating the anti-inflammatory pills and the antibiotics very well; indeed, he got the crazies and galloped all over the house, roaring and leaping like a maniac when we returned from an outing with friends this evening. We think that tomorrow, in all likelihood, we'll take him for a gentle run and let him blow off some of the nasties that being out of sorts brings.

The vet says that if he's still got the swelling, they'll do the x-ray, and if it is a tooth problem, they'll just go ahead and do it while he's knocked out. She doesn't think it is, though. We'll see. Howie let me run a gentle finger back to his last teeth on the other side of his mouth yesterday; I think a little bit of cheddar cheese training might convince him to allow me to feel the sore side of his mouth tomorrow afternoon. He was too ouchy to allow a full examination on Monday at the vet's.

Anita Zifer is a fantastic vet, btw. She has a confidence about her that envelops our dogs and puts them at ease. I was first impressed with her when she did an exam on Babe, our beloved German shepherd, handling him with care and delight, and referring to him as "my little man." She was firm and steady with him, and he knew that she respected him and meant him no harm. With Howie, who has a far more timid spirit, she was patient and nurturing and understanding. She even sat on the floor to do his exam, putting herself at his eye height. He growled at her a little when she looked in his ears and stuck a finger in his lips, but not so much. I was impressed at her bravery.

Currently Howie is pressed up against the bed, asleep, as Bernie is sprawled, asleep. Both of them look hugely comfortable, and so I think it is time for me to snug in as well.

Bleahhhh

2011-05-17T17:07:00.000-07:00

It was a dark and dreary day.

20 degrees below normal.

It rained yesterday.

It rained last night.

It's going to rain again this evening.

It was so chilly in the house that Sebastian wouldn't lie on the floor. He curled up in Bernie's chair and went back to bed.

And so did Howie.

PS. Howie let me examine his gums -- not a sign on swelling or tenderness. Who knows? I'm just glad he's okay.

Howie Update

2011-05-15T17:30:00.000-07:00

Today I had to search to find the lump site on Howie's jaw, so that's pretty good news, I think.

He's back to yawning widely, as well as stealing Sebastian's favorite stick and tearing it to bits. He also gave Sebastian a sound beating today, able to grab Sebastian by the neck or elbow and pretend to bite him savagely.

His energy level is terrific. Yesterday we took the dogs for a walk by the orchards, and to everyone's delight, the orchards were getting water. The sound of gushing water coming up from the great valves made the dogs crazy, and they splashed and ran from one irrigation inlet to the next, grinning as happy dogs ought.

Seeing how well Howie was able to crunch on Sebastian's stick today leads me to believe he doesn't really need to be eating canned food twice a day. Tomorrow, if all is still well, I'll begin the transition back to his own food, though I'll probably soak it to make it easy on him for a while. I think I'll keep on feeding him the extra meal at midday, though. We're heading into swimming season and he'll need the extra calories.

Storm Chasing

2011-05-15T16:58:00.000-07:00

There is a spot out the road where the sky is wide, and this is where we go to view weather.

Bernie woke me one night and dragged me here in the car to watch an amazing sight -- a dry lightning storm fracturing the darkness with bolt after bolt onto the distant Altamont Mountain Range. Today we were curious about what the sky would hold, as the early morning forecast was for showers, thundershowers, funnel clouds and possible tornadoes!

There was no doubt at all that the sky was unsettled; we could see isolated showers to the left and to the right. However, the only really freakish thing about the weather was that it was January weather in mid-May.

We went to Mass last night so that we could stay home and watch the craziness. I even declared today a junk food day so that we wouldn't have to be distracted from oohing and aahing at the dangerous clouds, the laundry room ready to shelter us if a tornado did decide to show up.

Well, we had some interesting clouds ... and one soaking rain shower JUST when I had decided to pick some alstromeria and clean up their stems outside, but other than that, we've had sun, and the forecasters are all looking sideways pretending not to have predicted a disaster.

The junk food was delicious -- homemade chicken wings, sliced summer sausage, Irish extra sharp cheddar cheese, cold shrimp, green olives, pizza, strawberries ...

And now the freak weather can take a hike. It's time for us to leave January behind and find California sunshine waiting for us every day until say, the end of October.

Waning Years

2011-05-09T21:25:00.000-07:00

Yesterday when I crawled out of bed, Howie came to me for his morning smoochies.

A lump had come up on his right lower jaw, and when he tried to say his trademark sound, "HOWwww" -- he couldn't. I tried to have a look down his throat, but he couldn't stand having his jaws opened.

Aside: I've taught all my dogs to allow me to open their jaws to a wide angle, so that I can check their throats or give them pills as necessary. At the cue of me grasping their muzzles, they would open wide, anticipating a treat after their cooperation.

The lump swelled for a few hours, then subsided at the end of the day; Howie ate his food comfortably, though he did have some reluctant effort with a crunchy bread crust that I gave him as a treat.

This morning there was edema under his jaw, so I took him to the vet.

Like most medical concerns I've had in my life, for myself and my animals, it was: Answer hazy, ask again later.

Howie is on antibiotics and an anti-inflammatory pain-killer (and such is the advance of veterinary medicine that there is no trauma in giving them to him) ... if that clears things up, great. If not, well, he'll need an X-ray to see what is happening in his jaw and a biopsy.

He's chowing down his food like a real dog, drinking well, and is spritely in his movement, so I guess I shouldn't be too worried. But of course I am, as he's the best dog I've ever had. He's my How. I don't want to say good-bye to him just yet.

I took his picture (above) with a usual photographer's glitch: he had just blinked.

Ock, Ook, Why Wind?

2011-05-07T20:43:00.000-07:00

The wind is back.

It was chilly enough today that when we went out to the store, I wore an undershirt beneath a flannel shirt, and long jeans.

The sky looks like trouble, and the sound of the wind in the trees is somehow chilling.

It's not that cold, but it sure doesn't feel like Spring.

Shadows Are Only There Because Light Was There First

2011-05-06T19:48:00.000-07:00

Standing in the kitchen this morning, waiting for my rotini to finish cooking, I looked out the back door and saw Bernie sitting on the patio, his legs on one of the footstools I made this past year, his hands gracefully wrapped around his Bible, a blue scrub jay standing in his lap.

The morning was so sweetly quiet, without the thrash of horrid winds or the intrusive blare of lawn equipment. There were the sounds of birds, and of the click and bubble of macaroni salad being prepared for the afternoon meal.

My husband was near at hand, his face glowing with peace, communing with the Word of God and nature.

There is no amount of money that can buy the richness of joy that I felt watching him, knowing he would be here all day, knowing that he wasn't going to have to risk his life and our happiness in that damnable Mad Max melee of his former commute to the Bay Area.

We believe we have the monies available to live comfortably into our 80's without us having to take a crack at re-employment. Probably we have enough to live austerely into our 90's. Wow. Real retirement is really here.

I'm glad he's home for good. There was not a single day in 36 years that I wished he would get his ass off to work and get out of my hair. NOT ONE.

The only darkness that whispers evil in my ear is the voice that says, "What about health insurance? You can't afford much any more ... you are going to die if you don't have health insurance!"

An icy dagger stabs at me. I'm going to die if I don't have health insurance! This is when I realize that against my rational will, against my determination not to become a witless consumer led by the nose by advertising, I have indeed been indoctrinated by this media society to believe that Blue Cross, Health Net, Kaiser Permanente, whatever -- will make me immortal and I won't die.

It's not that I'm against health insurance intellectually; it was a great idea for two barely-twenty-somethings back in the day when health insurance was affordable. But now -- good Lord, the premiums are obscene! One month's health insurance = three months of groceries for the whole family.

In spite of the commercials and the hype, none of those health insurances mean that I won't drop dead in my tracks tonight, or tomorrow, or next week, or five years from now. It's a gambling game, not a guarantee. And if there's one thing that has been a tenet of my whole life, it is that I will never bet on anything but a sure thing.

Here's the sure thing: I am not immortal; I am going to die. I can bet on that.

What do I have to ante up to win that bet? Why, nothing at all.

If that is a darkness in my life, I have to remember the God Who illuminates each day, and Who promises that the life after this one will be even better. I have to remember that this life is practically an illusion of Life.

The shadows must remind me that the Light was there first, and that when all shadows are gone, the Light will still be endless.

Come Home, California!

2011-05-01T20:34:00.000-07:00

Perfect, perfect, perfect.

That was today's blissful real California weather. After church, Bernie and I sat in the sun long enough to garner teeny sunburns, waded in the still-icy pool, sputtered when our backs touched the suddenly hot cushions of our patio chairs. Yes. That is how it should be ... well, mostly, as we should have been able to dunk briefly in the swimming pool to cool off.

Most of the icebergs have disappeared.

Also wonderful is that we're nearing the end of the citrus bloom, which will help my sinuses immensely. This lemon blossom caught my eye today, because of its star-like perfection.

Oh, I want these perfect days to run on until the end of October.

So nice to be warm again ...

Roadkill?

2011-04-28T17:04:00.000-07:00

No, of course it isn't. Sure looks like roadkill, though, doesn't he?

Our weather forecast was for more filthy, hateful wind, but sunrise came calmly. Bernie and I took the dogs and trudged me around a couple blocks to break up the rust in my joints, and then we sat in the sun on the brick patio out back.

In the shade, we needed sweatshirts over our shirts and undershirts, but in the sun ... we shucked down to our undershirts and basked. I went to the garage to get something, and outside the garage door, in the dirtiest dirt around, found Fourmyle sacked out on his back in the sun himself.

When I got back with the camera, he hadn't moved a fraction of an inch, though I had watched to make sure he was breathing before I left him the first time.

The weather forecast was correct; the wind is so nasty out there that the gusts make the garage door bend inwards (I'm in the studio today) with loud creaks and pops and "Wooooooooo!" sounds in the tiny gaps. Nevertheless, I remember the sweetness of drinking in the sunlight this morning ... and so does Fourmyle.

An Unusual Treat

2011-04-27T19:39:00.000-07:00

I happened to wander into the kitchen while Alex was practicing music for the choir this evening.

She invited me to sing with her, which is a treat -- I don't sing nearly enough these days. Ignoring the croaky nature of my allergy-laden vocal cords, she encouraged me to sing a song that I've known for a long time, and then to learn a new one that she's fallen in love with.

It was fun, it was beautiful!

I'm task-driven, she's goal-oriented (which is not to say that she doesn't do tasks well, or that I don't achieve goals); she exults in new projects and skills, I prefer to do what I have proven I can do and get-offa-my-back-about-new-stuff.

But in a song, we have the same path, the same notes, the same goal. Our melody is the same, and the sweetness of the sound of our voices together reminds me of how I felt about her when I carried her with me before she was born, that sense of accord and harmony. Our notes are the same, and our voices strengthen each other's and make something bigger and more encompassing -- like the structure of this household, two families united to make a fortress against the insanity of the world.

I think that if we can sing more, singularly or together, all of us will begin to sprout new spring shoots and grow in the time to come.

Sing on!

The Day in the Kitchen

2011-04-27T18:04:00.000-07:00

Before it was barely light, the sound of the wind thrashing the trees in the neighborhood infiltrated my dreams, making me image wild surf and seascapes.

The wind, along with the high pollen count from the citrus, the walnuts, the locust, and the weeds, is hurtful. Without the wind, it would be aggravating, but with the wind -- oh, noes, time to stay indoors.

And so it was an indoor day, a day for the kitchen, which we needed, after all.

Orange season is at its end, so we had bought cheap navel oranges in big bags to grind into juice. That's how the morning began. Bernie got more than two big jars of sweet, rich juice from his market harvest.

Then it was my turn, when I brought home my 40 Super-Jumbo eggs from the egg plant down the road. Super-Jumbo eggs are incredibly large, and can't be automatically processed at the egg-plant. They don't get candled there, and they're too big to go through the auto-wash. So we washed them carefully, all 40 of them, and I candled each with a flashlight to make sure they didn't have any dark streaks in them. (One was revealed to be a big double-yolker, which absolutely astonished Lillian, who had never even heard of such a thing!)

When my eggs were done, Bernie came back on shift to juice lemons from our tree, making lemon juice cubes to give us lemonade all summer long. (Lemons are a winter fruit.)

When the lemons' juice was all put away in ice cube trays, we cut up a large banana squash and cooked it in the pressure cookers. This is for pumpkin pies, a bright and rich-tasting confection. Then it was time for lunch, while the squash/pumpkin cooled.

In the afternoon, I piled the cooked squash into the Cuisinart (I love this technological marvel) and whirred it until it was creamily crushed. In my mother's time, we would put squash/pumpkin into a ricer and hand-grind it into palatability, leaving behind the fibrous bits. With the Cuisinart, the fibrous stuff gets chopped into oblivion, yet still remains as fiber in the mix, thus adding healthy stuff. The harvest was five pies' worth of pumpkin, a real treasure.

It was Real Life. We harvested, we processed, we preserved, all for our own survival, and pleasure.

As I gently washed the eggs, I had a strong sense of the blessing of food. They came directly from the chicken; no machinery was involved. This was REAL food, and we cared for it and prepared it for consumption ourselves. It was not an automated event, far removed from our refrigerator. It was not a detached event; what I was carefully cleaning was also what would nourish my family, bringing to the task a tenderness, a love.

When I measured the pumpkin into containers for freezing, I had a sense of the future, when the pies made from this effort would bring smiles and good feelings to those who ate them.

I have a strong sense that this is what life is supposed to be about, not about hurrying to make money or meet deadlines, but to attend to the basic stuff of existence, the food, the provision, the love. The society we live in has put those things on a back burner, or a side burner at best. We've lost so much beauty and peace in that.

Retirement has honestly been a bounty of blessings.

The Conspiracy of Spring

2011-04-25T20:03:00.000-07:00

The very top of the eucalyptus in the back yard thrashes back and forth.

The coconut wind chimes on the front porch sound like a bongo player on cocaine.

The pollen from the blooming walnut trees and weeds, citrus bloom and snowy white locust blossoms swirls madly, filling every ounce of air with sinus-abrading particles.

The slight crack in the window makes an eerie howling sound, and in counterpoint, the branches of the trees make crashing sounds like a demented surf.

I went to the grocery store today. It was my only trip outside. From the house to the car, from the car to the store, from the store to the car, from the car to the house. Presto! Swollen sinuses, post-nasal drip, racking cough. How I hate the wind. Isn't that what Marvin the Robot sang in Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe?

No wonder I identify with him so much.

Why does Spring want me to stay indoors?

Rest in Peace

2011-04-24T00:46:00.000-07:00

Last night, peacefully in her sleep, my mother-in-law passed away.

If asked about her relationship with me, she would have assured one and all that we loved each other. ... Well, if that was how she actually felt about me, why, then, by a law of equality, that was how I actually felt about her, too.

Something about this orchid reminds me of her. Frilly, openly lovely, and yet somehow scary. A hothouse flower with a demeanor like something out of a nightmare.

Regina terrorized every one of her daughters-in-law -- and her two older sons had multiple marriages -- with equal venom. After years of persecution, when we wives of her sons compared notes, we finally realized that it wasn't personal, it was just how she felt about anyone who had the gall to marry one of her sons. A couple of us learned never to answer any question in any other way than what she wanted to hear, and learned to live with the tension and question-dodging. She would have told you that she treated us all like gold, and she believed it to the core of her heart. It was just that they were her sons first, last, and in-between. Law # 1: Don't get between Mother and Son, mentally, physically, or emotionally. Period.

Regina didn't believe in friendships, church work, hobbies, pets, or donations to worthy causes. In her view, the woman of the house belonged to the husband, and her whole waking day and her whole sleeping night was supposed to be about that, even though she complained bitterly about her marriage all the time I knew her. Some of our worst conflicts stemmed from my work with the church, my penchant for cats and dogs, my art, our charity, and especially my having the temerity to have friends with whom I walked or shopped or fished or chatted on the phone. She lived in Lewistown (having moved there from Pittsburgh) for more than 30 years, and never made even one chum to go have tea with. Family was everything to her, and she thought every other person in the world should be that way.

Regina believed in hierarchy, and so there was no question of ever calling her by her name. A few years ago, I asked how her twin Edna was doing, and she pointedly stopped the conversation to correct me to say "Cioci Edna" (pronounced Tcho-chi), even though Edna is not my aunt, and why would you expect a fifty-year-old woman to use a title instead of a name, anyway? Well, Regina, here I am, calling you Regina. Regina, Regina, Regina. So there.

Lord, don't let her haunt me for that.

And yet, this bitter, vain, and domineering woman came to my rescue when times were tough, and my mother was sinking dangerously into the mire of Alzheimer's. When my mother didn't recognize me in those horrible days when we were trying to save my sister, Regina came with us and Mom did recognize Regina, and made the terrible situation a lot less awful than it might have been. In the days of Mom's decline, until Mom could no longer have a conversation on the phone, Regina called her every day, sometimes twice a day, to help keep her tethered to a real existence.

My mom didn't believe in friends, either ... except that maybe, though neither one would have admitted it, they were friends.

Thank you, Regina, for being a friend to my mother when she had so few left.

Thank you, Regina, for running interference and offering support when my sister and I needed it so badly.

For that alone, I will be eternally grateful

Good night, Regina, and may your journey be fruitful, and lead you to everlasting joy.

Lent, and What It Tells Me

2011-04-22T19:09:00.000-07:00

I have frequently heard it said that if you do not have some way to prepare for the Easter celebration during Lent, God will provide one for you.

(If you do not believe in God, or religious seasons, or spiritual exercise, please forgive me for speaking my mind.)

This year, my Lent was overshadowed by the visceral panic proceeding a routine colonoscopy. I knew it was on its way before Lent; I had about half a plan for a spiritual exercise, but when it came down to a day to day discipline, I could not follow it because I was so lost in horror. I tried to redirect by reading the Seven Penitential Psalms from the Bible each day, but the effort was hollow, and my Lenten resolve was pointless.

Nevertheless, it has been a good Lent. I would have preferred to have done something positive, but failing to do so, my lot has been to have trials of fear set before me, so that my only recourse was to throw myself on the mercy of God. The outburst of painful itchies as a result of my fear has shown me how frail my faith in God really is, how flabby my spirituality has become. And the cold that kept me from being the best song-leader in the parish -- well, I suspect my ego needed taken down a peg or two.

Not introspective by nature, I find that Lent provides me with a time to examine my way of interacting with the world, inspecting my nature in the light of the infinite goodness of Creation; Lent calls me to shed my self-sufficiency and immerse myself in how much I need the people around me, how much sustenance I need to seek in God's grace.

Lent's message to me? I've got a long way to go. Let's get crackin'.