Not Yer Average October

Beautiful!

We should have been seeing this in May, or June, but unexpectedly, our water lily bloomed today.

Wonderful things happen when we least expect them, and I should have kept that in mind before being crabby in previous posts.

What needs to get done will be done, and if not, well, Fate and the angels know what agenda to follow.

Pity you can't eat water lilies. They look absolutely delicious.

Self-Portrait

That's me, contemplating my work load.

Not only am I supposed to exercise the horse three times a week (and those are trail rides, not 45-minute workouts in the arena), and do laundry, and contribute to the household cooking, but also I must do all the correspondence, reading of submissions, art work (except on rare occasions), uploading of acceptable works, yada yada yada for the Piker Press.

I want to take more photos, and upload them to Flickr. I want to draw, and paint in both oils and watercolor, and do papier mache. I want to walk by the river with my husband and my dog. I want to fiddle with my tomatoes' end of season.

And I want to finish my neglected unfinished novels!

Waking in the morning, I feel like there's a pile of rocks hovering over me, waiting to drop. There reside all the things that I have to get done that I haven't got done yet; prioritizing has to become the first thing my muddled mind undertakes.

Ah well. It's better to be busy than bored.

And I'm NOT shaving my legs until I can wear shorts again.

Saturday, Oct 13: Chicken Three Ways

After the morning horse exercising (in which said horse was doing some misbehaving, but that's another post) I came home and confronted food choices for the day.

One family member wanted fried chicken, though he was willing to settle for braised. Bernie and I thought chicken was fine, but we wanted piccata. Another family member craved rosemary chicken.

Rosemary Chicken Person turned traitor at the thought of piccata, but still, when I took over the kitchen, I did some of the chicken so that it could, if RCP wanted, be turned into rosemary chicken.

The chicken was rather fun to do, employing multiple techniques and hogging the stove. The real revelation came with the black rice.

"Forbidden Rice," as this black variety is called, calls for nearly 45 minutes of cooking and resting time. The flavor is faintly nutty, the aroma pleasant but nothing you'd write home about. Nevertheless, it is kickass with piccata sauce and chicken.

Lillian tasted a pea-sized portion, and declined to have more (although she's at a truly picky stage);  I loved the nuttiness and the chewy texture. Bernie liked it with the piccata sauce. Alex thought it was interesting; John chose the path of embracing a bowl of mashed potatoes and gravy with his chicken.

In the end, all the piccata chicken was swallowed; two thighs of braised chicken remained; and one lightly-floured and sauteed slice of chicken breast huddled into storage with the thighs. Good food.

Where's That Razor??

Remember back in the day when in movies or cartoons, a character would lift a skirt above the knee and waggle it to get picked up as a hitch-hiker? (I did not say "she" because Bugs Bunny was known to employ this device.)

This is what happens when the weather turns chilly and I stop shaving my legs.

Unlikely I'll be getting a ride soon.

October Rain

The high today was supposed to be 73 degrees, but I don't think we got there.

Partly cloudy and cool as I prepared to go riding, the weather dictated the first delve into the winter clothes bin for a flannel shirt to wear over a heavy t-shirt. I figured that once I was in the sun and warmed up, I could tie the flannel shirt around my waist and be comfortable.

But by the time we were saddled up, the clouds had moved in, and the air felt chill. By about noon it was 68 degrees, and then it began to drizzle rain and the temps dropped to 63.

This evening I wish I had a long flannel nightgown to wear, but have to content myself with fluffy slippers for my feet, and freshly-cooked chicken wings to warm my belly as I watch very lousy football.

Nitpick Worries

Lots of challenges these days.

Having been officially given ownership of the Piker Press, I find there are a lot of things that ought to be done: revamping of the Forums, a long, cold look at the "Swag" page, a purging of articles that make no sense without the pictures that once accompanied them, back at the very beginning in 2002 and two webhosts ago.

And that's just maintenance. There are submissions to be read, accepted things to edit; there are emails from contributors that need to be answered, and contacts to keep up because I love the authors.

Every contract I mail out costs me at least $1.50; our webhost costs $20/month. Printer cartridges -- well, you know they are not cheap; with no income, every dollar counts, and I wish I had the acumen to make even a teensy profit. But I don't.

Between horse, house, and homelife, and the Piker Press, I don't really have any excess time. (Unless I give up my Sundays and NFL Football, of course, but I think I do need at least one day OFF a week.) That means that the hours for painting, or writing, or the papier mache masks I was poised to do in August ... all fall by the wayside.

I'm not really complaining. It's cool to have all kinds of things to occupy one's time.

It's just ... having no income, and running out of time, daily and in life-span ... why, there's so many things I still wish I could do.

Here in the Central Valley, pansies are winter color. I need to stop clinging to the passing of summer and look forward to the rains of winter. I need to stop worrying about the dollars going out the door and look ahead to a chance to write, paint, draw, create.

Yeah.

Migration Season

 White-crowned sparrows arrived this past week, the first scouts, making sure the winter campgrounds were still available.

I could hear their characteristic "Chip" noises even before I saw them. Tonight, they arrived in full force, and laid claim to the eucalyptus in front of our house with repeated calls of territorial song.

Definitely Autumn.

The almond harvest is almost done, and we are so ready for a rain to knock the dust out of the air. Everything is covered with a fine beige layer -- but we don't have the worst of it, being on the north side of the Central Valley. Alex and John and the girls went to Bakersfield in the south this past weekend, and reported on their return that the air down there was thick and filthy. Yes, with winds out of the northwest, that's where a lot of our almond harvest dust ends up.

We've got our dusty season, our foggy season, our over-the-top pollen season, and then insanely perfect summer ... I love them all; I love California.

Gratuitously Fruitful

Look at the pomegranates on that one!

This year, our pomegranate tree decided to set more fruit on the shaded eastern side than on any other side. Six of them there, hovering about chest-height in front of the gate, making going to and from the back yard from the driveway an obstacle course.

I think I want to eat this squad before Bernie gets into full pomegranate jelly-making mode.

Oh, and though I would not at all want to tread on the NFL's toes by posting  "descriptions of the game," the Jets did not suck as badly against the Texans as they did against the 49er's last week.

Go Jets ... sort of.

Sunday, October 7: Well, That's Different

Only a week ago, the temperature in the afternoon topped 100 degrees.

It was a bit late for a heat wave like that; usually the last of the stinking hot weather arrives in mid-September. Fortunately, it was nice and cool in the mornings, so the oppressive heat only lasted a couple hours each day.

When we woke at 6:30 this morning, we weren't very eager to throw off the blankets, and when we got ready for church, I dug to the bottom of my dresser for my favorite black sweater.

I changed after church -- wouldn't want to glurk green chimichurri down the front of that gorgeous sweater -- into a black t-shirt with a flannel shirt over it.

By three in the afternoon, I was able to lose the flannel shirt.

Which had chimichurri glurked down the front of it.

Saturday, October 6: Noms

About every two weeks, I declare an ironing day.

I can't wear anything with spandex, so my wardrobe is pretty much 100% cotton. That means ironing.

And while I iron, I watch the Food Network. Well, hell, how else can you stay at task with ironing? And thus, when you iron and watch Food Network, you find new recipes you want to try. And when you try new recipes, you come up with something -- if not completely -- different.

Today Bernie and I cooked together. He made a fabulous fruit salad of kiwi, orange, strawberry, pear, and the Holiday variety of grapes you can only get at Bel-Air or Raley's. I whomped up my version of Food Network Giada's pasta dish.

Her dish is good, make no mistake.

However, we like this version better:

8 oz. rotelli pasta
1 and 1/2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil. (1/8 cup.)
10 oz by weight (if not more) of fresh baby spinach, stemmed and chopped a bit
1 HEAPING teaspoon of black pepper
garlic powder
3/4 cup freshly grated pecorino romano cheese
1/2 cup of cream cheese, brought to room temperature

Boil the pasta according to package directions. While that's cooking, heat the olive oil in a LARGE skillet. When the pasta is about 2 minutes away from being done, sizzle the spinach and pepper. The spinach will wilt and reduce in volume; when it begins to wilt, add garlic powder to taste. I use a lot, because we love garlic.

Dip about half a cup of the pasta water out and mix it with the cream cheese.

Remove the skillet from heat. Drain the pasta and add it to the skillet, tossing with the spinach and romano cheese. Gently stir in the cream cheese and water mixture.

Serves four.

I actually served this to our family of five a week or so ago, and it was an adequate side dish, but people were grumpy because they didn't get as much as they wanted. Today Bernie and I were on our own ... there's not a lot left.

Wherefore Art Thou, Cuisinart?

I can't remember how long ago we bought our first Cuisinart food processor.

Neither can I recall why we bought it, as usually we have a specific reason for buying things. Why did we spend the money?

The beast can grate a pound of extra sharp white cheddar in under a minute. In 45 seconds, it can produce perfectly mixed tortilla dough. In less time than it takes to laugh heartily at such a wonder, it can slice a cucumber, or a summer sausage.

With it, we make butter and buttermilk, chimichurri or pesto, pizza dough or whipped cream, banana ice cream or chopped nuts.

It was the chimichurri that ended the life of the bowl this past week. Chimichurri is a paste of parsley, garlic, olive oil, and red wine vinegar that elevates a fine fresh warm loaf of French bread to divine heights. My intention was to make some chimichurri, wash the bowl, and then make some butter and buttermilk from heavy cream to construct a new batch of ranch dressing.

Alas, when I began to dry the washed bowl, its locking mechanism simply fell apart.

Easily enough ordered online, the part shipped today. In the meantime, we missed making pizza dough for Thursday night football, missed shredding block mozzarella cheese for the store-bought pizza dough, the aforementioned heavy cream to buttermilk process ... and the raisin-chopping for oatmeal cookies this morning.

When I was a new wife, I had never heard of a food processor. When I was a wife of 20 years, I would have sneered at the thought of needing a food processor -- because I had no idea how useful a tool it would be. As a wife of 37 years, not having a food processor is like having a bucket over my head in the kitchen; I keep reaching for it, and it's not there.

Store-bought pizza dough ... not bad, but what we can make with the food processor -- priceless, as they say. I hope the USPS hustles that new bowl, or else I will go nuts.

R.I.P. Rusty

I've posted this picture in this blog long ago, but it bears revisiting.

From left to right, there's my horse's butt, me, Dink, Rusty, and Cathy the Mad Horsewoman.

That day we made a ride from the ranch where we boarded our horses all the way to my house in town, where we made Bernie bring us icewater, and let the horses graze on the front lawn.

The horse Rusty died yesterday morning, quite unexpectedly, at the age of 13, which is nothing for a horse. (Dink is currently 22.) No one knows why. He just staggered suddenly and fell; then he got up, had a bit of breakfast -- and fell again, and died within minutes.

Cathy the Mad is devastated, as any rider can understand. Long hours in the saddle make a horse far more than a beast of burden; horse and rider become partners on their travels.

My favorite memory of Rusty is how he felt compelled to stick his head into trash bins and dumpsters to see what was in them. He never took anything out of them, but they were an endless source of fascination for him.

Good night, Rusty.

Damn Right I Love My Dog

Here he is, bemusedly enjoying my new carpet in the studio. Howie, my good little dog.

Yesterday morning I was hosing down the front of the house, and the porch, walk, and driveway, getting the accumulated dust washed away. The dust is from the almond harvest, which begins in August and runs through October. The air is heavy with dust; hanging about fifty feet above the ground is a yellowish curtain that looks like smog, and coats your skin, throat, nose, screens, and everything else around.

Howie helped me with the hose. He bit the jet of water, leaped through it, barked loudly if the water wasn't spraying him. He dove for the jet, roaring a growl, danced when I made the water nip his toes.

I let him play until he started falling down; his hindquarters get tired long before his sense of fun does. After I dried him off (mostly), he plowed onto my new carpet and had a luxurious rub. The amount of exercise he got was sufficient to make him sleepy for the rest of the day.

In the evening, I rubbed along the sides of his spine with a massaging motion. He seemed surprised, and when I stopped, he backed up against my legs for more. How I wish I had thought of doing that before! I'll be glad to massage him again tonight -- anything I can do to alleviate his stiffness is wonderful.

He turned eleven last March. This poem is for him.

This Dog Follows Me

This dog follows me

perfectly at heel

through the whole house

kitchen to bedroom

from breakfast to bedtime

This dog follows me

ears interested

in what I do

front yard to back yard

gardening to sweeping

This dog follows me

with his sharp focus

with friendly smile

eager for kisses

with wide wags of his tail

Will my dog follow

when I leave this earth

will my spirit

find his doggy soul

on life's new next address

This dog follows me

as I carry him

to the next life

this dog is my friend

pressed against me in trust

This dog follows me

his mortal essence

recreated

if I can only

believe God loves me so

Even so much as I love this dog

The Studio Project

There it is, the new carpet, with the pad beneath it. It's not really blue, it's closer to charcoal, with the name "Banker's Soul." Oddly enough, it closely matches the trim on the front of the house, which I did not realize.

You can see stuff piled in the driveway, on the worktable, on the lawn. Tomorrow I hope to get things completely squared away. The lawn and driveway stuff are done, at least.

In the shuffling of "stuff" to get the floor of the studio clear, I found two canvases that had been missing, and two very nice glassed frames that would be wonderful for some pastels. Once the weather cools down from our heat wave, I'm going to want to spend some time in this new and improved studio.

Heh!

 Today's cover story for the Piker Press was an anxiety-producing short story called "For Sale."

No you won't see the pic there until next week -- it only appears on the cover until October 8th, then I'll move it to accompany the story in the archives. Hey, I didn't set up the system, I just try to work with it.

Anyway, I took this photo of a for-sale sign, and then brought it home to play with Photoshop.

I changed the colors a tad, adding yellows and dimming agents to the whites, darkening the overall picture a little.

And then I really began to have fun with it -- I erased the logo and real lettering and made up my own stuff to put on the sign.

For several weeks in a row now, I've known in advance what I wanted to do with a cover image, and was able to carry out my plan adequately. That's some progress for me. Having a plan that works shaves some five hours of work off each effort.

I'm feeling a renewed interest in art work -- could it be that the weather is more conducive to hours in the studio? So much more interest is percolating that I wanted to find a carpet for my cement garage studio floor. (Standing on cement kind of gets painful on the old feet.) Today Bernie took me to a flooring liquidation store, and we came home with an inexpensive carpet piece that will be easy to clean and has a carpet pad for added cushioning. I can hardly wait to install it, and see how it changes the look of the studio.

Cheers!

One morning last week I was putting away the dishes, and noted that the light was catching my largest stainless steel bowl -- just so.

I can remember buying it -- it's huge, and I use it when I toss two torn loaves of bread with simmered celery and onions for turkey stuffing; Bernie uses it when he makes meatloaf; we employ it when we pick grapes or pomegranates.

None of those scratches were there when it came to our house. Each silvery line, each dark line represents the touch of a potato masher, a fork, a wide spoon, a mixing blade. Thirty-five years or so of beloved use.

Far from accenting marring marks, the light made the bowl more beautiful, made me remember all the many delightful foods that had collected in its embraces.

All of us, in aging, have these scratches and mars. We get scraped in life, we get used for work at jobs and at home, we sprain muscles and find ourselves so tired some days that we tremble ourselves to sleep.  We think ourselves wretched, but in reality, every wrinkle, age spot, ache and lameness, we're being made into something even more beautiful, more unique, than that spotless stainless steel bowl.

To be useful, to be used for good -- what higher calling could anyone ask?

I want to be like this bowl.

This is not the way a morning in early September is supposed to look in the Central Valley.

Nevertheless, it was highly entertaining to awaken to thunder and a cloud-clotted sky yesterday morning. Howie and I scrambled from the tent, and I shouted for Bernie (who had been up a bit earlier than I) to pull the cover over the mesh roof.

After donning sweaters, we retired with coffee and tea to the garage studio, door open, to watch the lightning and clouds drift across the sky until just before lunchtime.

There was more rain than I thought there would be, but not so much as to endanger local crops. And it was truly a comedy that while rain poured down, and thunder boomed, that the weather service online claimed we had clear skies.

Eyeballs can be good tools when ascertaining the current weather conditions.

Change of Season

Just as in the Spring, before it is nominally Spring, the season clicks over from Winter to Spring, so too has Autumn arrived, even though the calendar doesn't say so.

The light is different, the air is different, and in spite of the late heat wave, the nights are now suddenly CHILLY, as in You need a comforter, dum-dum. Yes, that chilly.

Tonight's low is supposed to be 56 degrees, but as it is already 59, I think that we may see 40's by daybreak, which is good snuggly-together weather, but will stop tomato production in its tracks.

I feel that I'm seeing too many clouds sweeping through at this time of year, as seen in the photo. Makes me uneasy, though God knows we were too dry last year.

May the Life That Guides the World give us what we need this coming Winter season.

Tired But Happy

That's the heat for the coming winter.

My riding buddy, Cathy the Mad Horsewoman, lent me her truck so that we didn't have to use the Vibe and the Corolla to pick up two cords of wood. You can load the two cars with 1/4 cord -- we've done it before, and it's ugly and messy, but do-able. With the truck, it took four trips only.

256 cubic feet of wood.

I stacked a little on Saturday, just to define the length of the stack, Monday Alex stacked some, and then on Tuesday, Alex and I went at it in earnest, working quietly side by side, not too fast, enjoying each little zing of satisfaction when a piece of wood fits just where it should, making an anchor for the chunks around it. Little Joan Maria dozed in her stroller nearby, seemingly soothed by the musical clunks of the wood.

There is no doubt that my arms and back and legs were tired by the time we quit for the morning, but I had no soreness today, and Bernie and I were able to finish stacking the wood by 9am. Work goes a little quicker with him; he's not into the meditative part of wood-stacking, he just wants to get it done. The less-measured pace is more tiring, but the task IS done, which is a good thing.

Here's a detail of the right end, where the wood is carefully built into a structure that keeps the rest of the chunks from tumbling off.

It felt so good to work so hard. I haven't been able to do that in a while, and though some may find it odd, I missed being able to exert myself to the limits of my ability, even though wood-stacking is pretty dirty work. You can shower off the dust and spiders, but nothing is going to wash away the rich feeling of satisfaction. 

Look At the 'Maters on That One!

These Marglobe variety tomatoes are undoubtedly the most beautiful tomatoes I have ever grown.

Far from being in full sunlight, as the seed packet suggests, these have only limited sunlight over the course of a day, a bit in the afternoon, and then shade the rest of the day, morning and evening. Each of these lovelies weighs more than half a pound, with the biggest at .75 pounds.

Marglobes don't have the *BANG!!* taste that the wild tomatoes do -- they're a bit mild. But for consistency of later-producing fruit and prolific production, wow, I love them.

There are two other Marglobe plants, seeded at the very same time, in the garden on the north bank. They are weedy and feeble-looking. Unlike the producers of these huge tomatoes, they are in full sun. Will they produce this year? I doubt it very much. My corner garden by the fence is too much full sun, too hot, not enough ventilation.

Live and learn. Next year all my tomatoes will have shade in the afternoon.

"Take It Out and Shoot It," I Instructed.

Last Friday night, my glitzy Bosch high-efficiency washing machine decided it was too good to run spin cycles any more. Apparently it felt that three and a half years was long enough to suffer through the annoyance of wringing dirty water out of clothes.

We called the preferred repairman early Saturday morning, but after looking at the last repair bill for the Bosch dishwasher when it crashed, I had to ask myself: Do I want to spend that much money to repair a machine that I actually hate?

The high-efficiency machine uses less water, they say, and less electricity, making it a bargain in the long run. The high purchase cost will be offset over the life of the machine in energy and water reduction. Indeed, the little tags say that the HE machine costs about $18/year in electricity, while an agitator washer costs about $52.

Yeah, right.

What they didn't bother to mention was that if you don't use a chlorine bleach cycle, your clothes smell like dirty socks after about two weeks of use of the machine. And that if you do use a chlorine bleach cycle (only good for bleachable whites, of course), the wash cycle takes well over an hour.

Now if you don't want to bleach everything, and you don't want your clothes to smell like dirty socks, you have two options: you can use a heavily perfumed detergent (not an option in this household) or you can buy a "high efficiency washer cleaner" to use every three weeks at $8 a box. (A box contains three uses.) So instead of $18/year to use, we're up to $36, or more depending on how many bleach cycles you have to use, and we can now add in the cost of the bleach, because EVERY white load has to be bleached if it isn't going to turn out brownish-gray-tinted.

And even with the "high efficiency washer cleaner," the clothes still don't smell "clean," even if they don't smell like dirty sweaty feet. You wear them half a day, sweat a little, and wow, stinko. Wash the clothes more often, more energy cost.

The Bosch front-loader HE machine also insisted on full loads of clothes. There was no setting for Small, Medium, or Large loads. All of them had to be Big-Ass loads, or else the machine would not spin the water out, requiring extra spin cycles ... at an added energy cost, of course.

So when I saw that a new GE agitator model would cost only about $200 more than a repair of the Bosch (if we were lucky on the Bosch repairs), I poured out my heartfelt venom about the Bosch to Bernie, and we scoped out some reviews, and then went an bought a GE agitator, which matches my GE dryer perfectly, in looks and capacity.

Amazingly, most of the five-out-of-five star reviews of the GE were from people who were replacing their greatly-hated HE machines. When a friend of ours heard that we'd gone back to an agitator, he envied us. "I wish ours (an HE) would break down. I hate it. Nothing ever gets really clean."

Tonight, five days of laundry have been done since the installation of the machine at noon (and that's with time off to sit in the mister for a couple hours.) OMG, every batch smells so good! The basket holds more than the HE did, and I am able to adjust the water level to the size of the loads. The spin cycle drives out MUCH more water than the HE, which reduces drying time.  (Hmm, that's less energy use, isn't it?)

Now I have heard that the top-loader HE machines work much better, but they're fairly pricey, and I'm not willing to take that chance. I do know that the GE agitator model I bought is selling like hotcakes, and serendipitously, Home Depot had a sale on, so I was able to get the machine I wanted for less than I was willing to pay, and got a 4-year warranty for the price of a 2-year plan.

When the delivery man asked me if I wanted him to haul away the Bosch, I said, "I want you to take it out and shoot it somewhere."

I'm a happy little laundress tonight.

Surfing Time's Curl

In the evening sunlight, this year's red dragonfly perches on a bamboo stick over my Goliath tomato.

He doesn't worry about how many days he has left -- by the time winter gets here, he'll be toes up in some shrub, his life drifted away in some shallow respirations at the end of his mating season. He doesn't care. He lives, eats, flies, mates, eats, flies, lands on his stick to survey his kingdom. That's good enough for him.

I know that I don't have all that many years left (or days, truth be told) and I want to get to that dragonfly's mentality.

I don't want to worry about the future; that leads to broken sleep and miserable nights.

And in the time that remains, while the wave is still sweet and strong and carries me and my board to exhilarating speeds, I want to live, write, eat, write some more, play with the Press, and hold my newest grand-daughter. Then write some more.

Yet I see the ceiling of water hovering over me, and fret.

Lord, make for me a dragonfly heart.

The Morning of the Day She Did It

Last Friday, while I sat in the garage studio with the door open, letting the amazingly cool air into the house, I watched Lillian play on the sidewalks.

It was significant: the day before, while I was out at the reservoir riding the horse, Lil took her bike out ... and began to ride it.

She had a teeny bike years ago, tried it, didn't figure out the dynamic, ignored it. Then this bike, a couple years ago, same thing.

I'm not sure what made her leap out in intuition, but she got her bike out and declared she would learn to ride it. And she did.

On Friday morning, she was wheeling it like a scooter up and down the sidewalk, when suddenly I heard her call, "Hah! Gran, I'm riding my bicycle." And so she was.

A bit later, the little girl from next door popped over, and I heard these beautiful words from Lil: "You want to ride bikes together?"

In the course of their morning zooming, they visited a yard sale down the street. Lil, in red, assists Kendra in securing a purchased plush pig to her handlebars.

Bernie thinks that me helping Lil learn to ride Dink made a difference. I think so; riding without stirrups probably helped her gain that sense of balance she needed. And now, riding the bike will help her learn how to adjust for speed when the horse trots.

Truly amazing, truly wonderful.

Lucky

This crawling piece of crap was not on any of my tomato plants, a circumstance for which I am truly grateful. 

Instead, it was on my experimental potato plant in a garbage can -- in the late spring, I'd put several sprouty russet potatoes in a garbage can, covered them with a few inches of dirt, and have been adding decorative bark to the growing stems.

It's a failed experiment -- the stems showed little or no interest in making tubers. I may have started the experiment too late for success. Perhaps I'll try again next year.

Odd that this hornworm chose the potatoes instead of the tomatoes, but I'm glad it did. My ire was much less. How I wished that I had a chicken to eat this bug! But since it was on a worthless potato project, I merely clipped off the stem and put it in the City garden stuff recycle bin, where it can be fertilizer for one of the many excellent City compost utilizations in the future.

Haha, hornworm, you lose.

Past the Hotness

The heat wave has rolled past, off to trouble the Mid-West, no doubt.

Last night, we shivered as the cool night air poured in the bedroom windows, snuggling close to stay warm. The mattress topper and the comforter were stacked by the closet while the hot weather made the nights miserable, but we didn't try to use them because Howie was sleeping on top of them.

"Just tell the damn dog to move," one might say, but Howie isn't a "damn dog." He's a sweet old gent at 11 and we don't want to trouble him. Today I washed the comforter, but wrapped the mattress topper in an old, clean king-sized sheet, and put Howie's clean travel blanket on top of it.

We're not going to need the mattress topper until probably November, so How can rest his creaky old bones on it. He's not a stinky dog, and has no fleas, so no worries.

Tomorrow we go to a family party for a six-year-old (six in the pic, see?) at which there will be limited seating and much heat. I plan on taking a couple of our folding quad chairs and a spray bottle of water to mist myself down at intervals.

The comforter is clean -- I hope tonight is as chilly.

Hundred Degrees Days

When the air outside is as hot as a bad fever, and what you can afford to air condition indoors is still too stuffily hot, and your front lawn (such as it is) is dying from dehydration, The Thing is what you want to efficiently cool your body, gently water your lawn, and make the heat wave a Resort Experience.

It can be a hundred and five, and when that mist hits you, your hair on your arms will stand straight up in total coolness-plus.

You will gasp, and your lawn will thank you.

Why This Blog Is So Sparse These Days

Joan Maria, sleeping in Dziadzy's arms.

Born on June 14, seven pounds, seven ounces, she has a faint drift of reddish-brown hair; her eye color is still indeterminate. She has the most graceful little fingernails I have ever seen.

When she and her mother came home from the hospital, Sebastian was all a-tremble with curiosity and concern. He very carefully had some quality sniffing time -- matching up Joan's scent with the strange smell that had been on John's shirt after his visits to his wife and newborn daughter. Now Sebastian parks himself by the baby's little sling-chair when Alex brings her out to doze among the bustling rest of the family, and he has a different look in his eye than he's had before; I would heartily advise strangers not to approach that baby too flippantly.

Howie was really intrigued by the carefully-held bundle that was brought into his house, too. Did they bring a cat in? Another dog? He sniffed her, and his expression changed from What is this? to what looked like a big goofy grin. Aw, it's a Baby! Howie has explained in no uncertain terms to the cat that The Cat is not allowed near The Baby.

Now while John and Alex have their hours full with Joan's care, and Lillian can hardly bear to be off doing her own thing in favor of helping with the baby, the household is really not all that disrupted. Joan is amazingly peaceful, still mostly eating and sleeping, only squalling when her diaper is changed.

So then, why is this blog so sparsely posted these days?

Simple. My friend Cathy the Mad Horsewoman has got herself a trusty little steed again, so I've been riding with her three times a week, and it's wearing this old woman right out. So much so that as I looked at the weather this morning, and saw that the temperatures for the next three or four days were going to be well over a hundred degrees, I was relieved that it would be too hot for riding.

I can stay home and snuggle the baby!

P.S. "Dziadzy" is Polish for "Grandfather" and is pronounced judgie.

The Thing

Over a decade ago,  I worked at a big hardware; I was rummaging through the hose fittings on my break, looking for a way to make the north side of my house look less like the barren desert that it was. And as it was coming on to summer, I had also in mind the little pvc stand misters that were so wonderful for keeping one's personal space cool on hot dry days.

Then I saw this.

Super-Mister!

After work, I bought it with my employee discount, and took it home to try it out. Unlike the sweet little pvc stand mister, this fiend put out a four-foot high geyser of drenchiness -- too vigorous for the back patio.

But I reasoned that the output might drift along on our prevailing west wind and soften the hardpack clay soil of the north side of the house. Using some wire, a hose, and a tomato cage, I built a rig to float that mist about three feet off the ground.

Unfortunately, the pressure acted like a jet and kept knocking the tomato cage over, and there was the problem with eddies of wind gusting the spray onto the windows (the water is so hard here that water splotches on the windows are verboten.) Also, the dog, though he loved water and being sprayed by the hose, was not at all amused by a high-pressure cloud of soaking mist. Failed experiment.

The Super-Mister Thing was put away in the shed and subsequently lost under piles of junk. I even forgot where I put it, until we had a spate of 100+ degree days last year. I began looking for it as we cleaned the garage, got rid of tools we no longer used, cleaned out the accumulation of dusty junk in the shed ... and there it was, coated by gunk that had leaked out of some can above it. I scrubbed it up and put it away in a safe place, and forgot where that safe place was.

We found it again this spring (it had been carefully tucked into a basket of miscellaneous art supplies,) and when the temps spiraled up to 106, we put that Thing on the end of the hose, draped the hose across the top of our Stanley sawhorse, and put our chairs about twelve feet downwind. While the rest of town roasted in a convection oven climate, we were cool and refreshed -- and the dry spot on the front lawn got some badly-needed water.

Home Depot, Lowes, Ace, Orchard Supply -- none of those hardwares carry it any more. But I did find it here. And I'm not going to misplace the Thing again.

Fly

Although Flickr has entered a sucksome phase, new-and-improving itself into suckicity, I uploaded pictures of flies today.


Fly Portraits (which didn't work as a set in my Flickr gallery because of a lack of instructions for the new-and-improved suckicity) was inspired by Pete McArdle's cover story for the Piker Press this week, "Shoo Fly." I love Pete. He's so warped that my own weird penchants seem mild by comparison.

I don't know why flies are funny. I remember being about giggled to death over Gary Hockenberry's capture of a fly in seventh or eighth grade; he pulled one wing off (not the capital crime it is nowadays) and named the fly "Charley the Diving Fly" because he'd allow the fly to climb up his fingers and then take off, only to land abruptly on the floor by Gary's desk. I think Charley lasted through two classes, both American History and Math.

And of course there was my mother's take on faith formation during the Canon during Mass at church when I was young and impressionable: a fly landed on the pages of our hymnal, and she snapped the book shut on the insect with a loud retort, squishing it between the pages, her facial expression unmoved like a deadpan statue of an Aztec bystander. Did the priest notice the sound, or the tears of hilarity that poured down my face in lieu of laughter? I never knew.

Leap forward thirty years, and imagine with me the flies of Manteca, California, where we lived for eleven years. I swear to you, and don't even care if you believe it, the flies in that area would land in front of you, and do this really rude hoocha-hoocha thing with their legs, rising and falling in a dance that never failed to enrage my emotions. Why did they make me so angry? Why did they dance like that when the flies we have here in Ripon, only six miles south, do not?

I had as much fun photographing flies on the back patio as I did snapping pics of "Things on the back of trucks."

Yes. I am easily amused at times.

Crammed Days

John and Alex put together Joan's crib today. It's lovely, and soon it will be inhabited by a howling Joan-like creature.

I have fabric (a dusty blue flannel and a light cotton beige floral) cut and washed for baby blankets -- tomorrow or Monday I want to sew their hems and have them ready.

Time is so compressed -- Alex is scheduled for a C-section next Thursday, but from her energetic cleaning the last couple days, I would not be surprised if she went a few days early.

A friend of hers offered a loan of a baby swing (you can see the stable legs of it in the pic), a carseat, a baby bathtub, some baby gym equipment, and many other things that poor Alex didn't have the advantage of when she was born 36 years ago. (Alex had to tough it out and listen to me read to her, rocked in my dad's best friend's grandmother's rocker. No wonder she turned out odd.)

Between digging up the potatoes (OMG they are so tasty) and exercising the horse, and keeping up with the laundry and the Piker Press, days have been nuts.

Wasn't I supposed to have two novels done by this time?

This Story Begins --"It Was a Dark and Culinary Day..."

We woke to forming clouds this morning. By the time breakfast was ready, it was already overcast, and the temperature was dropping. We didn't much care, as the eggs from the commercial egg place out the road were surprisingly all double-yolkers and the bacon was "ends and pieces" scored from a supermarket in Modesto -- with the best flavor we've found in years at half the price of name brands.

By ten, it was raining, and CHILLY! Freakish weather for June here, and lending itself to indoor pursuits. Alex pulled out a lemon granita experiment for a brunchy snack ... it was heavenly. Shaved ice, melt in your mouth, not too sweet, deliciously flavored by our own lemons. Score!

Bernie worked his lunchtime magic with the griddle and a cabbage,  making us juicy hamburgers and home-made cole slaw. The temperature outside was dropping steadily, and we'd all donned sweatshirts and long pants, and closed the windows as the wind rose. "Do you want me to make a fire in the woodstove, too?" he asked.

When I was done putting up the Piker Press for this week's issue, I printed out Lydia Manx's recipe for spanakopitas, a kind of Greek spinach pie. She's got an article on it for next week's Press, and when she was telling about it at staff meeting, Cheryl raved about the dish and how good it was. I just happened to have an extra bag of spinach in the fridge, and it was still overcast and cold, so what better way to heat up the kitchen than with an oven-baked project?

Instead of using a baking dish, however, I played with another method and made little phyllo triangles stuffed with the spinach/feta cheese/onion/garlic mixture, baked on a cookie sheet. They are dangerously tasty, if a bit time-consuming to make for a novice.

Bernie once again before nightfall charged into the kitchen and made a whipped cream cheese/herb spread for crackers that kicks the ass off the store-bought stuff for about 1/3 the cost.

Seriously, we are going to hurt ourselves.

You Did Not!

At the supermarket, Bernie guided me to the outdoor racks of vegetable plants. He did this.

We picked out a six-pack of Hungarian wax peppers, and then Bernie called my attention to a sign that said all the plants had been reduced in price, and to a gnarly-looking shelf of unwanted tomatoes. "Look at them," he cooed. "Aren't they cute? They want to go home with you!"

"I suppose they have cute little black toes and adorable spots on their bellies," I replied, picking up a six-pack of Big Pinks to look at them more closely. They all had thick stems, but were plainly rootbound and looked like they'd been beat up a bit with last weekend's weather. "Fine. I'll find a place for them."

I'm still finding a place. Two of them went in near Alex's eggplants and my onions; the other four are still in their pack. Two more will go in beside my Marglobes out in front of the house (That's going to be a jungle!) and the other two ... I'll find a place for them. I will.

Bernie thinks my tomato-collecting is funny.

He's an enabler.

Eclipse and Storm

Not being particularly astronomical in nature, I didn't make it a point to note the time of the solar eclipse the other day. In the back of my mind, I suppose, I figured I'd know it if I saw it.

The evening of said eclipse, we were watching TV (the ever-engrossing Food Channel) when I noticed that the light outside had gone a bit odd. I grabbed a piece of cardstock from the studio, punched a hole in it with a pencil, and ran outside. My pinhole was really ragged, so I punched another (that's why there are two images in the shadow.)

Having been followed outside by most of the rest of the family, I was able to take advantage of Lillian's wits, as she recommended I use the garage door as my "screen." There it was, the eclipse, imaged.

Our neighbors across the street, who were also viewing the eclipse, ran over with some amazing filtered "glasses" with which one could look directly at the sun and see the eclipse. They have been cleverly spending time at our local branch library, where the librarians were giving out these paper-and-plastic eyeglasses for free. It was truly amazing technology, and I wish everyone had access to it.

And then, yesterday, which was the date of my father's birthday, just two weeks before my own, we had a thunderstorm with about 40 minutes of pouring rain. This may not seem like much, but we can go for years here in the Central Valley without seeing a thunderstorm, and certainly any rain at all after March and before November is unusual.

Bernie and I sat in the garage with the door open and watched the weather come through, the ominous dark clouds, the dancing rain, listening to the peals of thunder.

The very first instance in my life that I began to lose my fear of thunderstorms, my dad was standing out on the front porch, watching the lightning and the rain. I hovered at the front door, wanting to be with him, in terror of the loudness of the thunder. My love and belief in him won out, and I crept to his side, seeing how he reveled in the power of the storm.

From then on, I was a storm fanatic, and have loved them so much that a mere peal of thunder during the day draws me to a window to watch the wonder, dropping everything else, and at night, sends me into a deep and peaceful sleep.

So hey, Dad, happy birthday, and though it was two weeks in advance, I'll accept that storm as being my birthday gift, too, and nothing pleases me more.

Something So Simple

When I was working on a cover image for the Press this morning, I looked at images of fishing boats and rowboats for about an hour, not seeing anything that I could use.

Finally I gave up and drew my own sketch with graphite pencil (deliciously soft and intense).

The sketch and scan and upload took about 15 minutes.

I like the way it turned out, although I treated it in Photoshop for the cover, making a mirror image of it and then filtering it with "colored pencil."

Sometimes I frustrate myself, wasting so much time looking for someone else's work to use, having so little confidence in my own.

Topsoil in the Wind

I dodged a bullet today with minutes to spare.

The morning was rather cloudy, not bad at all, and I was scheduled to give a horsey lesson at ten. As Providence would have it, the mom called and said they couldn't be out there until noon. No way am I going to blunder around a hot and dusty arena in full heat, so I told her I'd catch up with them next week.

Then I zoomed to the ranch, dusted off the horse, flung the saddle on, and off we went for a short ride around one block of orchard. He was his usual perfect self (even when we inspected a new ditch dug to repair a leaky irrigation pump) and I was on my way home by 11 am.

How fortunate for me! The wind began to rise before I was even out of the shower and was a dirt-laden roaring hell. Lots of plowing being done; lots of dust being hurled.

Just going from the movie theater to the car got me coughing; the mountains are invisible, and you can feel the dirt on your skin in a matter of seconds. A very good day today for seeing The Avengers for the second time.

Hope the wind calms in time for us to open up the house tonight.

Did You Hear a Cat?

On the bank in back of our house, nestled between the branches of the overgrown lemon tree and a fat euonymus, is a graceful shrub, nandina domesticus, or "heavenly bamboo."

This is one of its children; the other one isn't in this picture but is nearby. We were able to dig them up from under the parent branches and transplant them to the south side of the house, where, it is hoped, they will flourish and provide a nice background to the huge window in the living room.

We were hugely pleased when the nandina-child accepted its new home; we even used some of Alex's compost to fill in some of the gaps in the heavy clay soil around it.

Yes, the same batch of compost one heard about in this post.

This morning, Bernie called me out of the studio, where I had gone to read the morning comics in the cool and quiet. "You've got tomatoes growing under the nandina," he told me. As I exclaimed in delight over the healthy little plants, he said kindly, "As I recall, those wild tomatoes are small but have great flavor, right?"

Such is his acceptance of my fascination with tomatoes that he never suggested that I already have too many plants ... indeed, instead he spent some time looking up recipes for the insane amount of tomatoes he expects that we will have in July.

That Glorious Aaaah Moment

No worries this evening; the Piker Press is back up, and so quickly that there were only a few schedule tweakings that needed to be done. This morning I switched the cover stories, in line with my goals for the Anniversary Issues. On Wednesday, perhaps KK Brown's wistful story about Africa will appear on the cover.

The first few years of the Piker Press, I knew that the ezine was important because it was my venue for writing, my excuse for continuing to come up with the tongue-in-cheek Aser stories. After I took over the management of the site, I wondered if I was just wasting my time, but I loved meeting new authors, and reading some really, really good writing every week. Sometimes, however, I wondered if I was the only one in the world who loved the Press, and would anyone care if it ended, as so many online ezines do.

This past week, I found out the truth. Other people care. They cared enough to get the Piker Press through this disaster. And I found out that I care more deeply than I thought about the people behind the stories in the Press. It would have been a loss for everyone not to have those wonderful words available; it would have been a greater loss to lose track of the wonderful people I've come to know.

I try to be altruistic, and look at the bigger picture.

Still, I'm human, and I love our authors and readers deeply.

For both aspects of the Press, I thank our donors once again.

UP AND RUNNING!

Thanks to the pledges and donations we've received, we were able to push on with getting the Press back up and running, in a much shorter span of time than we had anticipated.

Seriously, thank you, donors, for all your kindness. With the promise of funds, we set the wheels in motion and are back on track, only a week behind schedule.

My dears, how good it feels to see that old familiar lizard on the banner, and see the luscious front cover again!

Train Wreck

The Piker Press is currently unavailable.

At 12:01 am, May 1st, the Piker Press and its attendant satellites (forums, email, archives) crashed. As in a train derailment, something unexpected was left on our track, and that was that. We didn't see it coming at all.

Well, can't we fix it? The answer is yes, but it's going to take a month or so (we hope) and then we'll be up and running again. And yes, we could fix it sooner (48 hours) but the quick fix only happens to the tune of about $300 -- a sum that I simply don't have on hand, given that neither my husband nor I have a job, and aren't old enough for Social Security. We're living on savings, with food and housing being the priorities.

And so we wait, hoping that the problem will resolve easily as the situation changes. It is my intention to keep publishing the Press for as long as I can keep my wits about me, God willing and the creek don't rise, and the Mayans weren't right about the end of time coming up.

Is irony what this is? The Piker Press goes kaflooey less than 10 hours after the Grand Finale Anniversary Issue goes up. It's kind of like a giant meteorite hitting New Orleans during Mardi Gras. What a damn shame, as it was a great issue, and the month-long Tenth Anniversary celebration was glorious, with so many brilliant contributions.

Anyway, we'll see.

The published and penciled-in schedules are going to be bumped back four to six weeks, depending on the amount of damage control we have to do. There may be some hooching around with stories and their schedules. I'm so sorry that this happened, but as my husband told me this morning, "Sometimes businesses burn down. Rebuilding them takes time." I only wish it made me feel all better, but it doesn't.

I will be sending out my working email address to all the authors and submitters that I can for correspondence. And if you want to hear the latest news, this blog is where you'll hear it first.

My final comment is that during the hub-bub of the April issues, with all its work on formatting and illustrations, I mumbled a lot about looking forward to May when I wouldn't be so busy and could get back to work on my novels.

Damn, be careful what you wish for.

I think I've learned how to add a donate button ...

 These teenies are a new variety of tomato for me: Burpee's Big Daddy.

Billed as bearing fruit with the classic Big Boy taste (arguably the best flavor) but with built-in disease resistance, they're just this year being offered as seed. Well, I've given them a try.

I have a thing about tomato plants: I love the smell of them, the fruit of them, the crazy exuberant growth of them. I could no more resist growing tomato plants than I could stop making my own tortillas. What would my yard be like without tomato plants? A wasteland, that's what. Tomatoes are a must-have.

The problem I have with tomatoes is this: I can't resist them. As a result, I usually end up with more tomato plants than I actually should have, but as that number is not fixed ... well, how many cats should a crazy cat-lady have in her house, anyway? Fifty is certainly too many, but four -- is that too high a number? What about six, if she keeps the catbox clean?

The Marglobe Ladies

From seed, I have some of the Big Daddy plants, and some Marglobes (they produced so nicely late last year); I have a bush Goliath tomato in a half-wine barrel (it has six tomatoes on it already); I bought two Romas for Bernie (he eats tomatoes now, after 58 years of hating them!).

But we were at the supermarket last week, and there on the shelf was a tall and rather straggly-looking beast called "Steak Sandwich." I walked away from it, knowing that I had enough plants.

Two days later I refrained from going back over to the store to buy it, but it was preying on my mind. Day before yesterday, we went to the store to pick up a few things, and I was drawn to the shelf of tomatoes. There it was, the very plant, unbought by any discerning shopper.

I rode home, the Steak Sandwich on my lap.

I knew it was an excessive number of plants for our gardens, but I could not pass up the chance. "It was meowing at me," I told the family.

Late yesterday, Alex and I discovered a horde of volunteer tomato plants coming up in the front yard planters, from compost which had junk seeds in it.

With a big grin, I turned to Alex and said, "Look! Kittens! Aren't they adorable?"

Seriously, I have to be done adopting tomatoes.

Volunteers

 This happy face was the first of the cosmos to bloom.

None of these plants were planted; they came up on their own from their parents' cast seeds or bulbs.

The cosmos' parents were from a six-pack that our local hardware was giving away last May; every Thursday, any woman shopping there could have a free six-pack of flower plants. I chose cosmos one week, and their seeds fell to the deck around the pool and were subsequently swept by Bernie to the no-man's land beneath the grape vine. This spring, the cosmos children leaped up in joy to have their own planting in the earth.

I gathered all the freesia bulbs from the disintegrated wine barrel that used to sit under the Japanese maple ... but missed some seed that opted to grow. Who could bear to tear them out? If they proliferate,  I can't deny them. One tiny stalk, yet they perfume the air around for ten feet or more.

 This creature is the image of its parent plant from last year, which was in itself a volunteer. I love nasturtiums, with their zesty smell (and you can eat them in salads) and bright colors, but they can get out of hand in their second and third generations. Red Splotch here has already traveled six feet in multiple directions, looking for optimum sunshine. I do admire its purposefulness and ingenuity, but am keeping a close eye on it so that it doesn't kill the Japanese maple or rip out the foundations of the house.

Life, in its beauty, does not have to be ordered, or orderly. Sometimes it is crazy productive, other times just has a little stage time to wave, do its tiny dance, and be  gone, committed to memory by a few fortunate admirers.

I try to remember that I'm one of those volunteers of the earth, too, that I was not cultivated to specially produce great super-market sized fruit or florist-quality proliferation of out-sized blooms. (Maybe my mother would stamp a foot in her failure to make me an astronaut, a neurosurgeon, or a Nobel Prize winner, but oh, well, Mom, I didn't want to sit in the fertilizer in the hothouse, after all.)

These poppies, which I never planted, but were on this land before I bought it, survive and grace our Springs each year with their gaiety, their color, and their will to survive, year after year. They produce seeds, and let them go; they don't worry about whether the seeds will get to the big garden, or just sprout from cracks in the brick deck.  I love them, and take heart in them, and call them sisters;  no one knew what I would become in my life, and maybe what I have become is simply a drifting volunteer, changing from season to season, what the climate decides is right.

My volunteers shout to me not to worry about the future, because what will grow in the earth next season is likely to have some tremendous beauty in it.

Sometimes you just point the camera and click -- and hope for a usable photo. This was one.

That dang warbler was singing up a storm, but of probably ten clicks, this was the only one that revealed the bird, as it has a habit of moving to a different branch every three seconds. (This is a trait that helps the bird be safe from hawks, foxes, snakes, and soul-sucking photographers.)

There are a number of warblers in this area, and I was not readily able to identify the name of this one. The bird book I have, rather after the fact, noted that the various species do interbreed, sometimes making identification difficult. Perhaps this specimen is the offspring of star-crossed lovers, wishing for rusty stripes on his chest or screaming yellow patches beneath his wings and on his rump, one or the other, giving him a solid identity.

And in the mean time, both Bernie and I fell ill of a damned cold, which lays one low and makes one wish for death to visit soon; in addition, the Tenth Anniversary Issues of the Piker Press (what the hell was I thinking, inviting former contributors to rise to the occasion and submit again?) are crushing me with the work load; and the horse had to be exercised to offset the chance of colic ... let's add to that the furniture being rearranged due to Joan Maria's arrival in seven weeks, and a sudden scooty urge to refinish a coffee table (it's looking great, pics soon) and polyurethane three art boards, three coats apiece, and the gardens -- my cukes are up! My volunteer cosmos are opening their first buds! -- the days have flown by wickedly quickedly.

My novels screech at me for attention, my dog needs a severe brushing and a bath, and my toenails must obtain a trimming before Mass tomorrow. How the hell am I supposed to find my way to boredom as a Senior Citizen?

Cheryl, I know you're out there; I read a first chapter on an essential watercolor technique book that says the first thing you have to apprehend is the stretching of paper. Soak it, flatten it on a waterproof surface (hence my polyurethaning the boards) and then tape it up for work. I'm not convinced of all this, but I shall give it a crack in weeks to come.

In the mean time, I had hoped that I would not have to take cold medication tonight, but my sinuses have cast their ballots against my plans, and their proponents have lit bonfires and staged protests.

Drugs it is.

Try To Pick One Thing ...

... Of all that has happened since the last post.

How to proceed?

There's been the insanity of trying to keep up with the Piker Press 10th Anniversary issues and their glorious presentation of many talented authors, the wild and wooly weather that has given us flooded gardens and a much-needed boost to the Sierra snowpack, a new movie to review, major furniture movement in the house, a potato orchard, new submissions to the Press over and beyond the Anniversary issues, a 37th wedding anniversary, a shivering traumatized dog after thunderstorms ...

Oh yes, and then add in cooking and laundry and exercise and scoping out bits of Modesto as I researched old St. Stan's church so as to move on to the next phase of Loon and Donkey, one of the novels I'm working on.

Today was allegedly the last day of crazy rain, hail, thunder and lightning (and unbelievably, snow, on the topmost peaks of our mountains to the west) ... I know we could use still more snow in the mountains to the East, but I (and my tomato kittens) would prefer some clement weather until next November.

Tomorrow, Bernie and I embark upon a tour of artists' studios in this area. I'm looking forward to this event very much, but find myself resenting the time that will be taken from working on the Press.

It will all work out.