Nordic Saturday

Good morning, everybody!

That's one of my dud serrano peppers up there.  They are a beautiful shining bright green when they begin to mature, then they get blackish, and at last are a beautiful shining red.  Too bad they are deceivers.  I almost pull the plant out every week, but it is brave as well as blatant and I just let it go. Maybe it will pull itself together and make a pepper of itself.  Not.

Today I am going to lunch at a hotel in Mission Valley, guest of my friend Janet. The luncheon is the Sons of Norway annual luncheon.  Nice to be invited. We got a choice of chicken or fish and I chose fish. It's halibut, and I respect halibut, a good hard-working ocean fish.  It's also Janet's birthday and I am taking a bottle of Canton Ginger Liqueur for her delectation.  I think Janet is seventy two years old, which makes her ten years younger than myself, a fact I never thought much of when I was young--but now, that ten years is looming up as quite a big number.  Is it not? When I was seventy two, I was MUCH younger than I am now.

Yesterday I had a hairdresser appt, lay down to take a little nap or read, slept through the appointment time and never even thought of it until I was eating my dinner.  How could that be?  That's never happened to me before.  My hairdresser, Don, was good enough to take it in stride and let me come in this morning  at nine thirty.  So I am shortly off to get my hair done.  Then rush home to be picked up for the luncheon.  I feel like a queen. YAZZYBEL

Nothing-to-say Friday

Good afternoon!

Well, it isn't flattering, but that is me up there holding a recorder.  I can't really play it, but--I cannot say that I can't, either, because my high school band flute-trained fingers are fairly at home on it.  I need serious companions, and I would play more and really learn now.  One little lone recorder note is not much on its own.

Well, off I went to the Tops and earned another dismal and humiliating descent of my balloon on the chart.  What is the matter with me?  I know. I like ice cream more than I like winning on a chart.  That's basically it.

The trouble with weight problems is that they are really much more important than charts, be they hopping bunnies or soaring (or sinking) balloons.  For all the flip of the birdie that I may give to my chart and my reputation at the Tops Meeting--I really do have a problem with cholesterol.  I am no spring chicken.  I don't want to take medicine, as I have seen first hand some of the results of medicine-taking in my son Gregory's unfortunate case.  So--it's diet or die.  Or both.

One of my sisters who shall be numberless was told by her doctor to stop playing around and stick to 1200 calories a day--and lose weight.  So far, she has had good results.  Maybe I need a doctor to sternly tell me that.  Perhaps I should conjure up an imaginary doctor to tell me that.  Wow--I just did conjure him up! He is wearing a turban and loose pants and a shirt and Asian kind of vest.  There's a pattern of stars there , somewhere, and flowers, and the color of the clothing is purple.  There he was all the time, just waiting to come and tell me how the cow ate the cabbage.  I shall listen to him when I get a mo, and tell you what he said. I promise I will listen.

Today I sold silver after having held SLV for two weeks and made a profit of 8.82%  ....can that be right?  Well, it obligingly went down after I sold it and made me feel like a Wall Street Queen---but who knows what it will do from here? It was that shaky feeling that made me sell it, and I am not sorry.  There is a ton of stuff to buy out there for sure if I want to risk my little Nest Egg once again.  Love to all, YAZZYBEL

Happy Thursday

Good morning!

That's another, perhaps slightly less happy, maguey on the inside of another kitchen cabinet door.  I was going to add a lot of other things onto that one but never yet got around to it.  I may yet do it.

Yesterday when Patricia came to play I made her a light and delicious salad for her lunch.  I used iceberg lettuce (yes, yes I know but I love its crispiness), celery,  thin sliced toasted almonds, and blueberries, with a very light dressing made of raspberry vinegar and safflower oil and salt.  And I tossed in some thin strips of the pork tenderloin we roasted for Easter, plus some thin strips of deli-type ham. It was very good.  As she was going right to the dentist after leaving me, I did not put in any onion or garlic at her request, but then she ate some of Theodore's Havarti and some of his salami!!!

As I made the lunch, Patricia took out her autoharp in the living room and played and sang the song she's going to perform for the talent show at her church this weekend.  Charming.  She's also going to accompany some other people when they sing. I love this kind of music-making. Amateur. (Loving, is the translation.) People who love what they are doing.

This morning Theodore and I are going out to do a little shopping and then we will come home and get to work.  Since we are going to Cedar Rapids on May 21, I am sorting out things to take or not take.  Books are my main thing. I am taking my dream books and my ghost books.  Shall I miss them?  I don't know.  I do know that as I take them from the shelves to put them into boxes, I am constantly interrupted by little reading-sessions.  But, I feel it's time.

We have a beautiful sunny day. I carp so much about the gray cold weather that I feel it's incumbent upon me to say how gorgeous the weather has been lately.  Brilliant yellow sunshine most of the time. Clear air. Birdsong.  The bowwows are cast outside this morning to make their way in the back yard as best they can until we return at lunchtime.
All will be well. YAZZYBEL

Piano Day

Good morning! 

That's another maguey up there, painted on the inside of one of my kitchen cabinets, on the door, rather.  It is good to paint on the insides of cabinets, or closets.  That way your mistakes won't be too obvious, and you'll get a happy surprise when you open the door.  You can do the same--with lemons, say.  They are easy, a bright yellow oblong with brownish stem and bright green leaves.    It is the fashion now to take the doors off cabinets in the kitchen; I have been doing that for years as I like things out where I can see them and grab them easily, but I still have a few doors left to paint on.   I'll be sticking to blue magueys for the sake of unity, (and love), but if I find another door in another room...why not lemons?  Why not olives?  Why not figs?  I'll do it.

Patricia will come today and I will garble through my part in our duets.  I have not touched the piano for many days, except for yesterday when I desperately struggled with some simple familiar Mompou for a few minutes.  My left hand is becoming increasingly weak.  That wrist broke badly a number of years ago, and I think repair now would need an operation.  I thank my stars that it has stayed pretty good as long as it did.  Anyway, not practicing is not the way to fix it, I know.  And now there's a detectable weakness in the whole arm.  Pity.

When I went out to get the paper on Friday morning, I was entertained by a long chain of melody which went on for several phrases without its ever repeating itself. I didn't need to look up on the wire to see who was entertaining the world. Of course, he wasn't thinking about the world, he was thinking of getting a wife. Yes, it was Mr Mockingbird, "The American Nightingale."  He's out there singing away right now. With a voice like that, it's hard to believe he is not already settled down and building a nest with his lady close by to work with him.  YAZZYBEL

Tuesday After Easter

Good morning!  I am going to get my orange juice. That's a maguey of some sort that I painted, there, for you to look at.

Orange juice makes me happy in the morning. I think it's its color.  And I like the taste.

For breakfast I had one frazzled egg (an egg "fried" in spray oil, and slightly broken at the halfway point and turned over).  And one nopal tortilla, heated over the gas flame. I put the egg in the lightly charred tortilla and dot over some Mexi-Pep sauce.   Fold on a paper plate and consume in the hand.

We have awakened to a mild but gray morning.  I remember with longing those April or May or June mornings in Texas  when I'd wake up to Weather.  Sometimes it was a rainshower or a rainstorm, when huge drops the size of fifty-cent pieces pelted the earth and the plants of the garden, who seemed to take it very well and come out shining.

When I was a child there was no air-conditioning.  The windows of the house had to be kept open at all times so that the miracle of  crossdraft cooling could take place.  When there was rain, there was a great fluster of running around the house to close windows, and after the rain, the same hurry to open the windows again because it was so warm that we had to have the breeze.

The Gulf complied with our needs and kept us supplied with a steady supply of pleasant air from the Southeast.  As children we had no realization of the extreme heat of summer (April on) that we were living in.  Our mother suffered extremely in the kitchen, cooking   for her husband, five daughters, and often her parents, and the maid or yard man or anyone else working in the house. My father, in the cotton business, came home for  dinner  at midday, but the traffic on the bridge (his office was in Matamoros) often detained him and Mama would often have to keep dinner on hold until two or two-thirty. By then it was getting really hot!  A dozen pork chops might be fried for an average meal. A plenty of chicken pieces for another.There were always frijoles for the workers, but they were not always on the family table at dinner.  There was always a "sallid," as my mother pronounced it, of iceburg lettuce and tomatoes.  There would have been onions, but my dad would not eat them.  This was an onerous restriction on my mother's culinary inspiration.  But she survived it.  And there were always vegetables, well-cooked thank Goodness, with plenty of salt and pepper and butter to make them good. We never had what I sometimes I saw on the laid tables of my friends, a stack of bread served routinely with a meal.  No habitual rolls.  Everyone was svelte.  We had huge goblets of ice tea with chipped icehouse ice.  We often had tortillas but again they were not there to fill up on.

And there was always dessert.  When my grandmother lived with us, or vice versa, we had wonderful desserts every day.  She loved to bake; it was her biggest creative expression.  Day after day she turned out a pie or cake for us.  Yellow cake with jam in between the layers, and dark chocolate fudge for icing.  Chocolate cake with white icing.  Fruit pies.  Cream pies with meringue. Pecan pie. Osgood pie once in a while (I loved it.). My mother made wonderful custards, both boiled and baked.  Once in a while we had flan.  Mother made the best brownies I have ever eaten, though they were meek compared with modern over-chocolated kinds.  To a fifteen year old they were perfect. She made chocolate pudding which she put into a straight-sided china receptacle with a lid (some isolated canister probably) and kept in the refrigerator cold as ice, so good on a hot day.

We lived in a coastal land that was rich in wild seafood.  Oysters, shrimp, all kinds of fish,  they were all on our table in plenteous bounty.  All the fried shrimp you could eat.  That is a bounty!  Mother floured them and fried them in Crisco. We had frog legs all the time.  Our frog legs were not those huge restaurant ones, but small ones, fresh and good, which she floured and fried in Crisco.  They were delicious. There was a great deal of fresh water and we had lots of freshwater fish.  The men would go fishing and bring home their catch, opaleyes and sunfish. The ladies had to deal with it,  though if their menfolk were considerate the men had done the hard work at the water's edge.  Mother described to me the painstaking lesson she had from a fishing crony of my father's, as he showed her how to recognize and remove the parasites from the fillets she would cook for supper. They were very difficult to differentiate from the fish flesh itself, but it was required that she do it and get them out.  It was a lesson I never cared to learn, nor did I have to...but I now wonder of the supermarket does anywhere near such a thorough nor  concerned job.  YAZZYBEL

Monday After Easter

Good morning! This will be short and sweet as I am busy today.

We have been to Walmart to buy dog food, peanut butter, etc.

Benjamin arrived safely home, as he grouchily informed me when I called him up at crack of dawn.

I slept well last night due to 1/2 tylenol, 1/2 benedryl magic potion.

Food today will be just a description of the delicious pasta that I'm eating up there in my picture. Have I written about it before?  It is basil leaves, garlic, spinach leaves, seasonngs, parmesan cheese and pecans whirled up in the blender or you can chop by hand if you prefer a coarser sauce.  This makes a very pleasing dish, both light and satisfying.  And I see I have a chunk of warm french bread nearby. 

For breakfast I had a deviled egg salad sandwich on a Mexican roll that I got at Gonzalez-Northgate the other day. An appropriate breakfast for a day with Easter in it. A soft glazed roll, rather flat and good for a docile type sandwich such as egg salad.  And with that I had a glass of orange juice.  I'd already had a good cup of coffee earlier.  Seven-11 sells delicious seven=eleven brand coffee now.  Really good.

Did I tell you what I had for breakfast after church yesterday?  A large sugar cooky iced in bright green icing, left over from the Easter Even feast the night before. And a huge perfect strawberry.  And black coffee.  What a delicious breakfast that was.....Until tomorrow....YAZZYBEL

Happy Easter!

Good morning!

I did go to church, Early Service, alone. I just didn't have the heart to wake up Ben to go with me, as I myself was zonked from being awake four hours in the night and didn't decide until the last minute to get dressed and go.  The good thing is that when I did that, I left the guys alone together to make their own breakfast and enjoy some time to themselves.

I leave the house at seven thirty to make it to eight o'clock Eucharist.  The freeway is usually lightly trafficked and untrammeled on Sunday morning and I get up there with the company of Will Shortz and Liane Hansen of PBS, plus some unlucky puzzle-doer.  The people who get drawn to do the puzzle are most often really smart folks who have no trouble. I think I'd get totally tongue-tied and blank if I had to do it, so I would never send in result to the pre-puzzle, even if I thought if I could do it. 

This morning the church was not cold, and was beautifully decorated with last night's Easter lilies all over the place. White flowers look so good with gray.  I wore black pants, black tee with sparkly silver butterfly on the front, and red silk quilted jacket given to me by sister no. 5 after it was given her by sister no. 3. I just love it.  Red and black are my winter colors, ( I still think it's winter, mind you, because it's gray out there)and I love all the reds. This one is a true lipstick red and is cheery.

There was a baptism, touching, of a nine or ten year old boy.  He hung his head over the font and was thoroughly drenched three times.  I was not present at the Catholic baptism of my grandson, but am told that he wept at his baptism as he was so touched.  I like that. I hope he will always have the feelings he had, come what may; they came from some place deeper  than human wisdom and were a gift.

I am making the Easter dinner as I write this.  The appetizer will be a frozen concoction of watermelon, canteloupe and orange juice with a little Grand Marnier thrown in. I also put sugar and lemon juice and it is freezing now. With it I shall serve pepitas (canteloupe seeds) that I have toasted myself in the skillet with a little spray olive oil, and added a bit of salt and cayenne.  That is a very Mexican appetizer.  If we were more sophisticated I would add some tequila or vodka to the blender when I give the frozen mass its final spin. But we aren't and I won't.

For the main course there will be roast pork loin with herbs, red pepper flakes, sale and pepper;  polenta;  and asparagus.

So far there is no dessert.  We try to avoid it and then we are sorry and make up for it with whatever cheap sweet we can grab.  I have some chocolate ice cream in the freezer, but I am sure everyone but me will say, Not for me, thanks.

Then it will be Sunday afternoon, and then evening and Ben will go home. He always plans his trips so that he gets into the Bay Area late at night and is worn out the next day. So we will make it an easy afternoon, playing Boggle or maybe Liverpool Rummy, and I may make mini burgers for  supper just the size of a slice of small tomato and pickle, put together just that way.  Love to all, YAZZYBEL

Saturday to Las Pilitas

Good morning!

That isn't a native plant up above--it's a cultivar.  But I like it, and will put a better picture on later with its name (which I can't instantly call to mind.)

Benjamin had a good idea!  We are driving up to the Escondido area, to go to Las Pilitas Native Plant Nursery.  There are two of those and one of them is in Santa Margarita, and one here.  I'm excited to be going there.

Ben loves and respects the California Native Plants and is trying to have his yard totally landscaped with them.  That is not easy, for most of them are twiggy and scratchy-looking specimens in my view.  And they are erratic and hard-headed as to when (and if) they will burst into bloom, --or even into leaf, some of them. As he is flying, he won't be able to take home anything he finds and wants, but I shall suggest that he bring it here where it will rest comfortably until one of us makes the trip by car.

It is sunny enough outside for us to leave the doggos in the back yard (I'll leave them with an extra food treat to keep their tummies happy) ...but the air is, yes, you guessed it, cold. I am wearing a soft cotton knit jacket but think I'll also take my trusty Eddie Bauer coat that I've had such a long time. It's only cotton poplin lined with fleece, but it is really warm and comes in handy when you need it.

I boiled those little quail eggs that we bought yesterday at the Gonzalez-Northgate, but they seemed so rubbery when I tried to unshell them this morning that they turned me off.  Unappetizing, but I am taking a picture of them in their cute little carton. 

Theo bought me a beautiful Easter lily last night when he and Ben went to the Target. I lazed at home with the dogs. I am not good for much at night any more, but tonight I believe and hope that Ben and I will go to the Easter service at eight p.m., and have a look-in at the reception afterward.  Then tomorrow morning I am exonerated and maybe we can go eat blueberry pancakes somewhere...  Hasta Mañana, everyone, and have a wonderful Easter. YAZZYBEL

Friday con Mucho Mexicano

Good Good  Friday. Today we are going to the airport to pick up our youngest son, Benjamin. We're looking forward to his visit.  (Computer problems, LOL).

Today we went to the Gonzalez-Northgate Market (Gonzalezes bought out the old Northgate chain in LA) (and now it is all Gonzalez and hardly any Northgate, LOL)

I got chiles en adobo in a can to make that sauce from the web I sent my sisters this morning (i think) and canned tomatoes, and came home and made the salsa; it is delicious.  Also got a leaf of nopal to fry with eggs in the morning, and a tiny carton of huevos de codorniz (quails)...they were over due on date but I came home and boiled them anyway for Easter...they are so cute....and lots of pan dulce...it is so fun to shop there, it is huge, and the trumpets are playing Mexican music at full blast the whole time and you feel as you have been in MEXICO....and bought pepitas...I also bought a bottle of Bronco Agave, which is a cough medicine that you take at your own risk but my bronco's need it....and bought watermelon cubes and Mexican Limes and think that we will always go to that market now as the produce is cheap and they have so much stuff you cannot get anywhere else except in the land of La Muerte.. 

That is an excerpt, above, from a letter to my sisters.  I am making a big pot of frijoles.  And have a huge new package of warm green tortillas de maiz y nopal...We are prepared for the holiday! YAZZYBEL

Haiku Monday Extra

Echeverria!
Green chickens with little chicks,
Quieter than most.

Thursday Dark and Gray

Good morning! 

Here we see my big aloe, the Red Hot Poker.  It did pretty well this year--this picture was taken on the "downside" of the blooming.  It did well because I remembered to put on tons of Osmocote when it was raining in January.  In front of the aloe is a potful of echeverrias, almost my favorite plant because they are blue.

Back in the background is the parent plant of the beautiful plant my sister has grown in San Antonio. I do not know the name of this plant and frankly do not know how to find it out.  I don't know how to describe it on the web.  I do believe the plant is Hawaiian of origin. Maybe I should start there. Yes, I will.

I always like to know the names of plants.  I do not try for the Latin names because the taxonomists are always changing them.  My brain is too cluttered with almost 82 years' worth of shaky facts to try to remember things that may change tomorrow, like the price of silver or the Latin name of a plant.  I became alienated years ago when the Schefflera turned out not to be the Schefflera after all, and now I am a confirmed common name person.

When I first went up to Northern New York State, I'd ask: What's that? And, What's the name of that plant, bush, tree, flower, shrub, weed, wildflower? Nobody ever seemed to know.  I want to know what my trees are, and I want to name names.  They deserve that much respect in a thoughtless world.

Same thing, in South Texas...nobody knew what anything was, much.  Of course, it does depend on whom you're asking.  My family was so-so on the subject. Some things they knew, some things they didn't.  The little pink wildflowers we called "buttercups," are now in seed catalogues as  "Evening Primroses."  And of course everyone knew Bluebonnets and Indian Blankets.  I love all those flowers and am four years old again when I think about them.

The echeverrias, are, of course, Hens and Chickens. There are many variants of those nesting plants and I love 'em all.  I can take some pictures of different kinds in my yard. Some look like red-and-green roses carved out of wood, and the amount of water they are receiving alters their appearance drastically.

Thursday as marked above is indeed dark and gray. Theo has driven off in the gloom to get a heart test.  The biggest challenge in that is getting there in the morning freeway traffic and getting a parking place near enough to the heart testing place that your heart doesn't give out getting in there.  It says we may get rain today but I am afraid we have gotten into the "May Gray" part of our year a bit early, and are now doomed to a series of gray rainless days until June Gloom comes in to take its place.  A bad season for white shorts and capri's, girls.  They just don't look right yet. 

Benjamin my youngest son comes tomorrow to spend Easter with us.  We are planning to move the computer to a spot in the house where my messy conflammeration of papers, notes, gluesticks, pencils, and so forth does not dominate the living room.  It will be a relief, but it may involve a hiatus in the writing of this blog.  I have been good about writing it daily for a person with ADD, you all just don't know.  He comes in the afternoon so I'll be on in the morning...so, HASTA MAñANA, my friends. YAZZYBEL

Oh, My, It's Late!

Good--afternoon!

My sister no. 5 wrote me last night to tell me that the photograph of the Bay and the power plant is ugly, and that I should put on a prettier one. OK, I will be putting on a better one, and more than one, in the future.  But you know what? When I look at that picture I only see the luminosity of the darkening twilight, that night in February.  And the rose colored beauty of the air.

I am late coming on today because I got deflected. My husband had to go to the new heart doctor at the crack of dawn (well, almost) and I was out on the freeway at precisely the time I'd normally be writing.  Then we went to the Iowa Meat Farms and got some first class ground beef.  I hope. I'll pronounce judgment tomorrow about its quality. I am getting to be a very connoiseur of ground beef.

My husband's health report was pretty good, by the way.  He has to have more tests but in general he is doing very well.

When we got home, I went to the room where a guest would sleep if one came, and I have a lot of clearing up to do in there because I am doing the major clear-out in that space too.  The place where the bags and boxes will be culled and re-assembled.  Did I get those five bags of stuff done this past Sunday as I'd planned? NO.  But I did make one and a half, and added to the three bags already waiting, there were five. I'd thought to have eight by now.  Well, slow and steady wins the race.  And I am determined to be steady, for I have a lot of clearing out to do.

Trouble is, if you open up a bin of old letters, it's irresistable to start in reading on them...then you realize how great they were...letters WERE great, my friends.  People wrote on and on at length, in longhand or sometimes in typing, in grammatically correct sentences....and they often had sketches or other bits of interest in them...So I got through one bin today. My goodness, my eldest son had talent.  Talent for writing.  Talent for illustration...really good drawing. And he was prolific and generous with his letters.  He shared his life when he was not around.  My middle son was also a writer.  His sharings are drawings and mostly notes...but there are lots of them. Mostly reminders that, "I love you, Mom," and "Thank you, Mom,..."   they still sit warmly on the heart when you read them.  My youngest has almost no personal correspondence in that pile.  If he wrote letters, even of one page, they have evaporated==and I don't believe that they ever existed in the first place.  He is cautious.  So the intimations of early childhood reverberate still in the status of today.  He is too much like me, I guess.

My sisters, also, show a very different tendency to share themselves, their inner selves, with others.  I have quite a little stack of interesting letters from No. 3, chatty and informative about her life in faraway New York.  I have fewer but even more open letters ( as far as personal and inner self stuff goes) from no. 4.  But from no. 2, little, and from no.3, almost nada.  I myself wrote but little. My letters from my parents plead for more.  I wasn't being mean. I was remote, like my youngest son, in a special way...I did not share myself much.  When I did, I was witty and lively I guess...but it did not happen many times over the years...Yet how I appreciate the wonderful thoughts I got from those who did share.

Nowadays, on the Internet, we all gab away, and sometimes we say too much--my sisters and I, that is.  Prudence is absent when it might most be valuable, but that is the way it is on the Internet.  As for my sons, no. 1 is still quite a writer, but he doesnt have time to write much and I haven't seen a drawing of his for many years.  No 3 is content to send one-word emails. And hasty photos "sent from my IPhone."  And oh, how I do appreciate every scrap I get!!!....... And no 2 can't send me anything now, except once in a while, his presence in a dream. Amen.  Hasta mañana, YAZZYBEL

Where We Live

 

Good morning!

Here is a beautiful scene at sunset, here in Chula Vista.  This was taken at the Sweetwater River ( a crick) estuary, where the river empties into the south part of San Diego Bay.   There's a Marina, where boats can moor, a park to walk in, some restaurants to eat at, and some wonderful views. Mainly, there are lots and lots of birds.  We have enjoyed the birds for years.  A pair or two of nesting herons provides us with  a sense of awe, as they raise their huge chicks in twig nests high up in a couple of pine trees.  Many many little coots live here out on the bay itself or in the more sheltered part of the tidal estuary, where water and mud flats appear in measured intervals.  There are long legged walking birds with long curved beaks too. I love those almost the best.  But when we are down there at winter sunset, as we were when this picture was taken, it's the little coots that catch in my heart as they paddle by in little platoons, brave in the darkening cold waters.

The light is different every night. A few nights before that picture above was taken, we saw such a sunset as I never expect to see again in my lifetime.  A huge panorama of light and cloud built a second seacoast up there in the sky, complete with waves, beach, light, motion, bigger than the one on this earth.  The quiet rosy cold sky above is the exact color that everything was in February 2011. Breathtaking.

That big building is a derelict power plant. That is, I guess it no longer produces any power at all. When I first lived down here twenty or more years ago, I used to call it The Emerald City, for at night it was lighted up by myriad greenish lightbulbs that gave it a weird beauty.  Now, various factions in the city are battling about who's to tear it down.  When that has happened,  a fabulous resort is to be built.  People with lots of money can come and enjoy the area, and what will happen to those birds I do not know.  Nor do I know what will happen to the people who congregate there every evening to watch the sun go down.  A strange hush falls over all those who have attended.  It is the time for meditation, wonder, and exaltation.  It is a powerful ritual, simple and intinctual.  And the little ducks go by as it gets darker and darker, hurrying to their nests in the marsh grass, way back beyond the estuary mud.  YAZZYBEL

Nice Things and Not So Nice

Good morning!

Yes, it seems to be possible to put on more than one photo to the same post.

Up there we see some of my favorite things, a tablecloth  that I bought at Ross Dress for Less (I  call it Ross Dress Por Mas), a charming plate of English origin, a bit of a goblet , a glimpse of the little plates my mother in law gave me, and a pair of salt and peppers in the form of pickle- cucumbers that I loved at a Cedar Rapids antique shop and received from my kids for Christmas.

At this point, I could launch into a tirade about the accumulation of objects, and how they pile up over time and we end up having too many.  But I won't, today. I will just point out how nice those things are up there, and how much pleasure I still receive from them.

I have decided that we are going to have to move to a condo at some point, or an apartment (though I don't like the idea of landlords telling me how to live). So I am going to be sensible and start shaving it all down to the point of condo-capacity. That is way less than I have now. I have given up hoping that my Cedar Rapids kids will come here and relieve me of lots of treasures.  So, I shall relieve them in other ways. We are too aged to start selling and carting stuff around from market to market or mall to mall.  But I am thinking.

Enough of nice things in my house. I read of a nice thing today on the web.  Safeway is one of the US's major purchasers of seafood, and they have made a promise to not buy any seafood from the Ross Sea, which surrounds Antartica and is a major ecological area for the fish and creatures there.  Good for Safeway. Sometimes the big guys do something good.

I read in the daily newspaper, however, that penguins are suffering from a shortage of krill.  The krill population is down 70%, apparently, krill being one of those tiny shrimplike animals that sustain life on its most basic level in the ocean.  The paper did not point a finger at Yazzybel, but I do take krill oil capsules.  So do lots of others.  Think of the unswallowed codfish  oil that is in Yazzybel's storeroom.  Fish are endangered too.  I should take those fish oil capsules right now whether I want them or not, and finish the krill, and not buy any more that I am not really committed to taking for my health.

I read in the paper that the Mexican police who were arrested last year on a large scale for colluding with the drug trade have been released from prison.  Does all that mean anything? I see it as game pieces being moved about at random on a large board without clear markings.  All along this border, the economy is totally dependent on the drug trade.  Don't pretend you don't know it.  Supermarkets, clothing stores, real estate bigtime....all those young women driving around with big black SUV's, sunglasses, ponytails cascading out of  billed caps...are not school teachers.  They have Money, and Money along the border is drugs.  All the rest of the "honest" economy is riding on the coattails of the drug economy.  Where are the clear markings on this game board where we live?  Not even the border is a clear marking; it scarcely exists, apparently. It is to laugh.

I am happy because  I am going to fill brown bags with videos, books and clothes. That is my goal for today.  How many bags? Five. That is a lot of stuff.  I already have three, and they are heavy.  Goodwill and DAV and Amvets will be the richer, and we will be eight bags closer to that condominium.  It's a Nice Thing.  YAZZYBEL

And On We Go

Good morning!

It's Palm Sunday!  I got a piece of palm at church this morning.  At some point in the service, we had to hold our palms up and they got asperged. Yes, a priest(ess) came down the aisle with an attendant holding a dish of holy water, and with a leafy twig of olive branch, she dipped the twig into the water and shook it at every aisle in the general direction of the worshippers therein!!  The droplets flew...in a sacred manner of course....Shades of old Rome! It was exciting.  That is what's called asperging the branches.  Bet that is a verb you did not know.  I hear it every year but it is always new.

I came home starving, as we had no Forum today and I did not get my sacred doughnut.  When I came home I cut a banana in two and cut it into nine little rounds.  I put some butter into a frying pan and put the little rounds of banana therein, in three patches. Then I mixed up:

1/2 cup flour
dash(es) of salt
1/2 T sugar
1 egg
1/2 T baking powder
some milk

When this batter was mixed, I  put out three pancakes' worth over the three banana patches, and made three delicious banana pancakes which I ate with maple syrup. YUM YUM YUM.  And Theo had saved me out a half slice of bacon as he sometimes thoughtfully does on Sundays, and that I had with the pancakes. WOW. Good.

The rest of the cathedral is at this moment  parading around the neighborhood of St Pauls, waving palms and led by a bearded young person on a donkey.  I have nothing against that scenario, but do not participate in it.  Too old I guess.

I said yesterday that I was going to write more about the seven things I have not sewn up for this past week, but as I look at them I don't think so.  Tacos, enough; oil, enough; old age, enough; rain, we need it always, enough; marriage, plenty more to say but not today; and weight gain. Weight gain: being off the fast that I was on for the sake of a just budget resolution,(ha), I gained back precisely the 3/4 lb that I lost on the fast.  That was just six things, but they are enough.

Look up above there at that beautiful photograph.  Is she not a lovely lady? She is printed on a kimono that I bought at a thrift shop. Exquisite silk satin.  I am a thrift shopper like my sister no.5, whose finds can be seen on  http://www.bennyedictus.blogspot.com/.  She is really more of a pro at it, as she sells and consigns too.  We both love the way that our homes have been enriched by these one-of-a-kind treasures, and we find it rewarding to go shopping to look for them.  It's a deeply relaxing pastime.

Have a great Sunday, everybody. YAZZYBEL

Sew-it-up Saturday

Good morning!

Oh, how beautiful! I finally got some of my roses on here. Now you see how the beauty of nature can transform a dull pink pink pink tiled bathroom and make of it a place of beauty.

I am going to try to sew up a few loose ends from this week today. I will try to go in reverse order but will probably go in no order at all.

From yesterday,--I was going to talk about oil. Cooking oil. Eating oil.  Ladies and gentlemen, I don't approve of Canola Oil because there are no canolas.  Yes, I know--it is genetically modified rapeseed oil from Canada and perfectly healthy for us.  Not.  Why accept someone's excuse for having conjured it up?  Go for an alternative while you still can.  Number one, rapeseed oil causes blindness. It is or was a huge problem in Mexico as rapeseed or turnipseed oil was often sold as a substitute for sesame seed oil (Mexico's basic oil in the past, not olive oil or manteca as you may have thought.) People bought it thinking it was sesame seed oil (a wonderful oil) and then went blind because they got turnipseed oil instead.  Who could tell the difference? Now, the Powers That Be have genetically modified the oil so it won't cause blindness and put a label on it like Canola Oil and you get to buy it in the supermarket. NO NO NO. Do not use it.

That means, do not use PAM.  Spray oil is a wonderful invention.  But you have to go to a store that sells the Spectrum array of products and buy Grapeseed Oil in a spray can.  I think they also have spray olive oil. Maybe spreay sesame.  And they have spray Canola, but canola is canola is canola. Show me a canola, please. No no no.  I use Spectrum Spray Grapeseed Oil.  I hope and believe that it is healthy.  I am not coocoo about grapeseed oil as it has a distinctive feel and flavor (I recognized it immediately when I ate at Alice Waters'  restaurant in Berkeley.)  I use  safflower oil, a good plain oil;  sunflower oil less frequently;  peanut oil very good unless you are allergic;  wonderful olive oil; and butter, in my cookery.  I love butter.

I do not use corn oil any more as ALL U.S. YELLOW CORN is genetically modified.  I read that on the web and I believe it.  I try to avoid the genetically modified stuff. White corn is not genetically modified so far.  So we buy white corn tortillas. Say, I wonder if those Gonzalez-Northgate tortillas with nopal are of yellow corn??? I must check. So many things to keep track of.

I do not use soy oil as I have a deep mistrust of soy as a foodstuff though tofu is ok if you don't go off the deep end with it.  Tofu  is fermented, and Anne Louise Gittelman says that we girls should not eat unfermented soy.  No oil, and no edamames, girls. 

Now, do me a favor. Go into your kitchen, open up any oil you have, put a bit on your finger and taste....and put your nose down there and inhale.  LEARN to smell and taste oil that is past its prime.  It is a very distinctive smell and should never get to the taste part, actually.  Do the same with peanuts, peanut butter, in fact anything that contains oil.  It has oxidized, turned, and is stale and noxious. NOT GOOD FOR YOU.  I have thrown away many a nearly full bottle of oil as I could tell immediately that it had turned.

That is why I say that the best olive oil is the small  bottle of olive oil. It turns fast, my dears. I buy a store brand of olive oil in the 8 oz. size.  That way I never have it around long enough for it to turn.  And you can keep it in the refrigerator which retards spoilage of course.  Remember I have a very small family of two, only one of whom eats salad dressing.  You will do well with a pint if you feel a few people.

The Spectrum line of products mentioned above are, of course, more expensive than your supermarket line.  In fact, everything is getting very expensive right now but I won't dwell on that.  When we get down to when all we can afford is a plate of frijoles, a tomate and cebolla that we grew ourselves, and a dash of olive oil for our health, let us give thanks for our delicious food and praise the Lord.

Well, sew-it-up Saturday did not sew up very many items. I have seven on my list, left over from the whole week. Tomorrow there is no Borum at church, so perhaps I will tackle the rest of the dangling threads of this week. YAZZYBEL

Delicious Chicken Tacos

Good morning! 

Hooray. I have finally uploaded a picture that's exactly what I want to illustrate today's post.  That's a first. May there be many more.

Up there we see a plate of greenery (and reddery) which will go to ornament the tacos as we build them.  On the plate you will see the leaves of classic shredded iceberg lettuce, shredded green onions, shredded arugula from my garden, a few sage leaves, and the purple flowers of "white sage".  I hope you can see them. They add such visual beauty to a salad plate.  Alas, I did not have any cilantro to put on the tacos.  I also did not make a little plate of acrid dry herbs to add, and that adds plenty on its own.  The acrid dry herbs can be thyme, rosemary, marjoram, dried cilantro ( called dried corander leaves), and they really do add to a taco.  But I did not add them this time, and that is an important thing about home cookery (in my opinion.) You don't get the same thing every time.  Enjoy that fact.  There are also slices of lemon, as my wonderful Mexican lime tree is being withholding right now. (There are lots of blossoms, however.) 

Also on that plate are slices of red and orange and yellow bell pepper, and slices of tomato.  I should have put a hot pepper but as I have mentioned the ones that are burgeoning on my plant right now are the biggest duds you could imagine. All looks and no performance!  Ok, that's the "zacate" plate.  (Zacate is grass.)

Up above in the center of the photo is a pale green disk like a moon.  Can you see it?  Yes, my dears, it is a green tortilla.  I get these tortillas at the Gonzalez-Northgate Mexican supermarket.  They are made by grinding the nixtamal with nopales, the "leaves"  of cactus.  That is why they are green.  Is that not wonderful?  What is nixtamal, you may wonder.  It is the moosh made of the fermenting corn kernels as they are being ground into masa.  Come here for answers. 

In the Mexican department of your local supermarket, which may be threatening to become the whole store, (enjoy), you can find Mexican fresh cheese. Be sure to watch the eat-by dates, and enjoy them. They are made in the USA, land of regulations.  I used a bowl of broken up "Queso Mexicano," I think--there are many to choose from.

The chicken was absolutely delicious. You can see it over there on the right.  Here is how I made it.  Two days before, I made Swiss Steak a la my American Grandmother, by  browning the meat and adding tomatoes, green peppers, and onions, and a little water, before slow cooking it in my handy Sunbeam Fryer for a few hours. Wow, that Swiss Steak was good.  However, after we and the mutts had eaten all the meat, there was a lot of sauce left.  I put it into the refrigerator in one of the ubiquitous glass jars that I have all over the place.  And a couple of days later, I did this with a package of Chicken Tenders, which were really Large Pieces of Chicken Breast.

I turned on the oven, sprayed a pyrex dish with wonderful Spectrum Grapeseed Oil, put in the chicken, and baked the chicken for quite a while. Since I have no temp indicator that works, I can only say that it was cooked but hardly brown. Maybe a little golden.  I cooled them a bit, added the leftover Swiss Steak Sauce (after removing all grease possible with a spoon after taking out of the refrigerator.)  That sauce was rich and flavorful, and before stirring it up with the chicken I added a knife tip of Gebhardt's chile powder and about six grains of dried garlic.  When I say six grains, I mean six tiny little dried pieces. Sometimes less is more, students.  Then I covered the pyrex dish with aluminum foil, as the lid to the dish is lost of course, and baked again gently until the chicken was tender.  Fork-tender and ready, just asking, to be pulled apart.  It was delicious.

I thought that this time (it was Wednesday lunch, when Patricia eats with us after slaving at the piano) I would lightly fry the tortillas, but when I looked I had no safflower oil. And could not find the Spectrum Coconut Oil. So I did what I usually do, I heated the tortillas over a gas flame on top of the stove, and carried them, lightly charred (that's the yummy part) , over to the table one by one.

You'll notice the mention of coconut oil, safflower oil, and grapeseed oil. You'll notice the absence of mention of Canola Oil.  As I do not want to end this post on a negative note, I am postponing my tirade on oils until tomorrow.  Just make the food the way I said it, or, if you have manteca(lard), you can add a little of that as a fat.  So there are  your wonderful chicken tacos, my dears.  If you have no leftover Swiss Steak Gravy, you will improvise with the usual suspects of tomato, chile, green pepper, onion, and (a leetle) garlic until you get a rich taste for your chicken. I leave you to enjoy your dish. YAZZYBEL

Some Days It Ain't Easy

Good morning!!

That's my chihuahua, Listy, up there peeking out of the sofa covers. She is a master of rooting in and cuddling down.   Some days that's the way she'd rather be, now that she is 98 years old. Her twin sister and littermate, Birdy, is a little less compulsive about hunkering down, but she's up there on that sofa too, you can bet.

That's the way I feel today.  I have been dealing, in my mind,  with issues of aging.

What do we do when one horse of this two-horse shay breaks down?  Are we prepared, with a step-by-step earthquake type plan, to launch our little operation into a different mode, and pretty rapidly at that?

Most people think that they will call 911, and that things will proceed from there without our having to "do" anything, make a decision, or think things out.  Not always true, my friends.

Sometimes things go grinding along in a slow, monumental corrosive manner, and gradually we, one or the other or both, get into the state where we both need help, and pretty quick--and neither of us is in condition to deal with our situation. That is quite natural for old age it seems. 

Ideally, we are five sisters and we should all be living within a buggy-ride of each other.  We should be able to arrive with a basket full of good things and all the extra towels and sheets in the house, at the home of the one who needs help.  And take charge when the needy need a rest.  Reality is that we are five sisters who all live very far apart.  This is because we were raised in a home where "the man" decided where we would live..."They had to move because of his (job, family, old home)," and off the woman would go with kids, kits, kats and kittens, and settle down somewhere not necessarily of her first choice. 

Husbands don't necessarily find that an inconvenience.  I think women are more practical. As far as the life view is concerned.  We know we are going to need somebody sometime.  In our case, our family isn't that fertile, and after a lifetime of five girls, we turned out a generation with only two daughters, and even they are far from their parents.  Who is going to help who, when a friend is needed? I have lots of friends in San Diego, but only two people offered again and again to help Theodore and me when we were in our extreme need, (and not the ones who I'd have thought were my closest friends.)

I trust my wonderful daughter-in-law to do her best for me if needed. But she has three children and a job, and lives two thousand miles away from me.  All the best will in the world cannot change that. And my son won't move near here, and my husband will not go to the cold weather. And that's that.  I cannot say to my husband, so long, I'm off to spend my old age far away.  It just isn't done.

I did say to him, yesterday, however, I hope in the kindest possible way: "I want you to know that if you ever need care that is beyond my capability, I will not try to struggle on and wear myself out.  I will see that you go to a nursing home."  Because I am talking about the kind of care that we cannot financially afford at home.  And I said that I want him to do the same for me.

Now it is time for ME to start considering the steps that would have to be taken, that WILL have to be taken by somebody, at some point. I accept the responsibility for my decision.  We are fine, now,  I hasten to add!!  I can still cook up a storm, he can still do a lot of the housework and work in the yard to boot.  But the time will come, and it will come in its own time, and I see it. YAZZYBEL

Sunshine and Rain

Good morning!  

Red Sky at night, sailor's delight...that sky up there is part of my Glorification of Fairway Court Series. We don't live on a beautiful or distinguished street, but quite often, at sunset, God paints  a huge beautiful panorama over our heads if we will but look at it.

This morning in Mutts, my favorite comic, the artist is continuing with this week's theme of "Sun Showers."   Some times when it's raining,   the sun comes out.  Patrick McDonnell, the artist of Mutts, calls this Sun Showers, a beautiful phrase.

My grandmother used to say, when that phenomenon appeared: "The Devil's beating his wife."  We'd say, "What?" and she'd reiterate: "Yes, that's what they say. The Devil's beating his wife."  That was my first remembered introduction to the "They" of life, who said so much in when I was young, less now perhaps.

I didn't like it that that beauty, the sparkling falling drops of rain in sunshine, was significant of so ugly a vision.  How, at four, did I know what a beating was, anyway? The Devil, yes, I knew from my Bible Story book, where he appeared in a black and white line drawing looking like a lizard and certainly bad.  But why such a bad thing should be associated with such beauty? I found it troubling.

Now I know that there are many grumps in life who, unconsciously surely,  like to translate simple joys into negative pictures.  Let's not be that way, and let's not tell our children things like that in the spirit of truth. They believe you.

Akira Kurosawa's film, "Dreams," starts with an unforgettable vision. The whole movie is haunting, being just a series of dreams he's had throughout his life which he chose to make into a film.  The first one is about a little boy looking at a sun shower...His mother tells him,  "These are the times when the foxes have their weddings."  She warns him not to go out into the woods, but of course he goes. There deep in the woods he has a glimpse of a foxes' wedding...gorgeous and bizarre ritual as it is...he is in danger of course....he runs back towards home.

Isn't that a beautiful concept?  Unsettling, yes, but so provocative to introspection to the five-year-old inside us.  It would be interesting to see what different  associations other cultures have made with the sunshine and shower weather phenomenon, wouldn't it?  YAZZYBEL

Swimming

Good morning!!

A friend sent one of those funny commercialized "back in the day" remembrances the other day, and one of the things remembered was that we swam in rivers, creeks, and goodness knows where else without fear of germs.

Oh, that is true, my friends.

When my parents decided that it was time to put no. 2 and myself into swimming lessons, they decided upon the instruction of Miss Margaret Monroe, a small tough lady who taught PE in the schools of Brownsville.  Miss Monroe had chosen, bought, and improved a section of wild resaca out in the brush near town.  She improved the area by grooming the bank and having a lot of clean sand laid down on the bottom of the area she planned to use for swimming lessons. She came around every morning in a little truck and picked up her aspirants to take them out to the country.

 A resaca  is a stretch of slowly moving water where the river "used to flow". In other words, I guess the main part of the river had veered off on its own, leaving a part behind to be tranquil and placid and green.  Brownsville, Texas, was the home of many a long, twisting and turning resaca, some of them fresh and clear, and some dark and murky.  In any case, the bottom of the resaca was soft and very gooey, as we found to our dismay when our feet sometimes found the part where Mis Monroe's sand had not been applied.  And we were surrounded by real wilderness, my dears. The "brush", the wild scrub that covered the land, had not been cleared away by lovers of mesquite bar-be-cuing.  We had ANIMALS!  We had boars and tortoises and snakes of all kinds.  And Alligator GARS! They are real! The resacas were full of cotton-mouthed moccasins and other more benign water snakes, all undistinguishable and all frightening.  Miss Monroe's re-furbishments must have turned the serpent world away, or it might have been the gosh awful noise of twenty or more youngsters all yelling and splashing at once, for I remember seeing only one snake that summer, far out in the resaca where the timorous beginners of Miss Monroe's early  class dared not go.

After we learned to trust Miss Monroe, we were put through the paces, from lying back on the water with the hand supporting us, to the gradual disappearance of the hand and the miraculous discovery that we were floating!  From that, we became invincible and no. 2 and I became swimmers.  Both of us enjoy  the water mightily to this day.  My parents could not swim, either one of them, and they marveled that we had learnt so easily.  All it takes is lessons, folks, and I surely take this opportunity to thank my parents for being willing to put their kids beyond their scope of expertise in that department, at least.

After the lesson  was over, Miss Monroe would put us all back into her truck and off we'd go to home, after which she drove around town picking up her intermediate or expert pupils.  Gosh, that was fun! Nice!  Let's swim! YAZZYBEL

Why is the Married Estate so Vexing?

Good morning!!

 Before I launch into my pleito, (esp. for "plaint,") let me present, above, my son Benjamin and my husband Theodore.  I am still darting in and out of a huge cavernous photo file to get out things to present to you, so that is what I got for today!  Maybe later I will find more pictures to put on.

Now, let us assume one thing before we go on.  I am a nice person.  Cranky, yes, because I have an Asthmatic Personality. LOL. I am not too feisty and I am basically sweet.  But yesterday I got really mad. Really, really mad.

Some things in my life-view are sacrosanct. One of those things  is cooking, mealtime, and respect for the cook.  And appreciation, as a matter of course. Every day of his married life, my Southerner grandfather Temple rose from the table and thanked his wife for the meal.  He complimented her, and he thanked her for preparing it so well.  Now, I don't know that I'd have to have that after every meal and by no means that my own meals would have deserved it every time, but it's a standard, is it not?

Yesterday after I got home from church and wrote my blog, I decided to take it easy. I really dont like rising in the dark (though I have cheerfully done it for most of my life)==but now, things are different. Maybe age has made me less spry to spring out of bed.  Some Sundays, I wish I could turn over and go back to sleep instead of getting up and out in a chilly dawn and go to a chilly church and a chilly and drafty Great Hall for a few hours.  But I want to go, too. So I do.  But I thought, if we could not go for a long Sunday ride (something else I love), I just might undress and get back into bed for a few hours.  But, with one thing and another, after I drank the Smoothie of yesterday, I took the puzzle and lay down for awhile.  Guess it was about two and a half, maybe...and I drowsed, watched TV and worked on The Brain of Will Shortz One Week Late (that is when we get the NYT puzzle) for several hours...when I am lying stretched out on our bed, I can see the bathroom clock (of course I planned it that way; I am a clock freak like the kid in that psycho teen  movie)...and I worked and worked and snoozed and snoozed and got that puzzle nearly done...the clock seemed to be creeping past four...I thought I might get up and see if Theo were hungry but just kept working.

I forgot to mention that before I lay down, I got out the Sunbeam fryer that I use as a slow-cooker, and browned a couple of pieces of steak, added tomato, onion and green pepper and a ton of water, and put on the lid after setting it at the "r" of "simmer."  So I knew that dinner was "done," so to speak.  Only had to do a vegetable or two, which I had plenty of.

Well, Theo came in at one point, as I was racing for the post in the puzzle horse-race , and asked me, "Are you OK?" I said, yes, I was just working on the puzzle, and thought he was nice to be concerned about me. I hardly ever lie in for such a long time.  Finally I decided to abandon ship (mixing metaphors, here) and go to the kitchen, and when I went into the living room, he said, "I've already eaten!" Just imagine my vexation, dear reader. What he had eaten was a bunch of cheese, after his lunch of salami and cheese, oh so unhealthy, but what can I do? He was adamant.  Would not eat the dinner I was preparing, was not hungry.  I blew up. Turns out it was later than I thought (I'd misread the clock) and was now five fifteen, not four fifteen as I thought.  ANYWAY, what made me so mad was that he had come back not for solicitation of my wellbeing, but because he was wondering why I wan't fixing his dinner!!!  I pointed out to him that the dinner was all prepared in the pot, and why had he not noticed nor realized that, and all heck broke loose as he said that he hadn't noticed, had thought that I was not going to make dinner.  AND WHY COULD HE NOT HAVE MENTIONED THAT FACT WHEN HE CAME CREEPING BACK TO TAKE A LOOK AT ME?  Oh I was mad.  And he felt very sorry for himself. (But he deserved it.)

So, all was finally taken care of. I cooled off the dinner and put it away for tonight, and I micro'ed myself the leftovers of chicken enchilada for my dinner. And made him take me for a ride so I could buy myself a chocolate ice cream cone, single dip.  But he was still miffy and I was still puzzled. How is it that simple communication can be too hard?  "It's supper time and I'm hungry," would have been sufficient. "It's after five...," would have brought me up like a shot.  "Let's eat!" would have been understandable.  Why is the married estate so vexing? YAZZYBEL 

Drinking a Smoothie Even As We Speak

Good Morning!

Well, try as I would, I could not get a picture from my files to jump over to the blog. So, that lets us know that we are not perfect after all.

Funny thing happened this morning.  I wrote to my family that I'd had chicken enchiladas (Enchiladas Suizas) at the Jalisco Restaurant in Bonita last evening. As I opened emails, one was from son Alexander with a new Youtube music piece, "Chicken Tacos," and another was from sister no. 3 who said she'd made Chicken Tacos for supper last night.  So chicken was in the air.

The Jalisco Cafe or Restaurant is in Bonita, which is Chula Vista's version of La Jolla.  Or Rancho Santa Fe.  An enclave, it is horsy and well-to-do.  I chose the Jalisco last night because I told Theo that I wanted an American Mexican Restaurant...(as opposed to the ones that are strictly Mexico meaning all the food is slanted to Oaxacans)...Turned out it was not American that much, but anyway, it was pretty nice. 
HOWEVER.  And I always have a however.  Enchiladas Suizas in this case was a large fat stuffed corn tortilla, stuffed with shredded chicken.  Over the prepared enchilada goes a delicious green sauce made of tomatillos.  And on the side you get cheese or sour cream or hot sauce as an accompaniment.  However, you don't, in my opinion, just put in a lot of plain boiled chicken and call it at stuffing. That filling has to have plenty of flavor.  In the good old days when chickens were real, a plate of plain shredded chicken could have  a lot of flavor just on its own, what with the fat and skin that got into the somewhat flavorful meat (dark and light).  Now, they boil up a bunch of chicken breast fillets I think, and pull apart the results and that's it. For goodness' sake, cooks dear, at least put in some salt and pepper. Bo-ring.  I dumped the residue of the ubiquitous little bowl of "hot sauce" over it all but it still was not very tasty.  Wholesome, but dull. 

On the side of the plate there were beans (cheese on top) and rice (restaurant Mexican rice, which to me means that there was no comino within a country mile of it).  They were very edible.  I brought home one enchilada and most of the rice and beans in a box. Theo had a steak and a salad and we brought home most of his rice and beans and a tortilla in a box.  I will have all that for supper while he has his meat patty-with-cheese tonight.  I also had a slice of flan,which was not worth writing about.  Flan can be so good, so good.

The smoothie mentioned above in the subject line has now been consumed and I gave Theodore the other half.  Even he liked it. I got the idea for it on the Internet, as I read the confessions of some man who had lost 140 lbs in a year.  His lunch was a home-concocted smoothie made of odds and ends of veggies and fruits, all thrown in together and blended in the blender.  Here's what was in mine today:

2 green onions, the white part
2 leaves of ordinary lettuce
3 leaves of spinach
about 3 T. chopped tomato
about 3 T. chopped green pepper
2 large strawberries
2 large chunks of canteloupe
2 large grapes
1 large chunk of honeydew (those fruits are from one of those supermarket salads)
1/2 avocado
slice of lemon
4 oz. "tomato sauce" from a can
4 oz. water

It's necessary to have the liquid to make it blend properly.  Some conscientious blending gave me a smoothie of pleasant texture, appalling color, and delicious flavor. I added some salt as I am a salt-lover.  Taterton had his plain.  The man in the Internet article said, "I got all my day's vegetables at once."  True, folks.  That is a very healthy recipe up there, not to mention all the oranges, apples, celery, pecans, cabbage, broccoli, ad infinitum that you could put in there. YUMMY. Try it! 

Today at church, the Forum finished off with a flourish as the team presented their ideas of  the meaning of Atonement.  I can't say that I understand it, but I am now glad that we don't have to have that poor Goat in the picture.  The Parable of the Prodigal Son was presented as the perfect picture of how we are to understand God's love--beautifully spoken by the young preacher, an astounding revelation. (Although he pronounced the Prodigal Son and his brother both, "assholes", lol). Wow, I love being an Episcopalian and hearing it like it is.  YAZZYBEL

Pictures Galore

Good morning!

I am figuring out  more and more how to put on pictures. Thank you thank you thank you to baby sister no. 5, the only one in the family with a brain. (Due to her age, no doubt.)

That's me up there with Sharkey, the most beautiful kitty ever. Sharkey died of old age complicated I am sure by foreign  cat food, last summer. She was old, but, I am now sure, not to herself!   I sat out in the garage with her as she lay dying, and bore out with her for the whole thing.  We buried her out in the yard.  We have a lot of yard what with the Lower Forty and the whole thing. Now I will be able to show you the Lower Forty in pictures, now that I have the Capability.

Oh, yes: the fast.  Well, last night the country did not shut down because a compromise bill was "reached" and things will go forward (badly).  It all sounds fishy to me. Well, I stuck to my plan for eight or nine days, however long it was.   But I guess my obligation to fast is completed as far as politics goes. I will be glad to tone down on the fasting because I felt terrible yesterday afternoon and can't blame it all on the cold and rainy weather. I love rain. (Don't love cold though.)

Some time I will write my colyum about Rains I Have Known.  Paeans, all.  I love rain, I tell you.  We are having alternating rain showers and patches of sun.  Keeps it interesting. I was awakened night before last by a spate of rain on the windows and roof; it just lasted a minute or two, and there was wind.  Driving to my weight loss group yesterday I  drove from my sunny yard, a few blocks later to very wet streets and recent puddling..and arrived at my destination with a few drops from a retreating rainshower still falling on the unwary head.  Interesting.  Oh, and did that eight or nine days of severe (I thought) partial fast produce any weight loss?  Three quarters of one pound.  That's all.  Isn't that strange?  YAZZYBEL

I have been fasting for a week (partial fast)

Wow...that's my daughter in law, Lesa, walking the dog Zero up there in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.  Not what I expected to put on this post, but a beautiful photo of a good-looking gal, so I am glad for you to get to see it.  We'll be getting to see them in a little more than a month, as Alex and Lesa's daughter Miranda is graduating from high school and we plan to be there.  There will be a monumental automobile trip (four to five days each way) which will require some time off from this blog as we make it all happen....I am looking forward to it!!

Zero, there, is not too fond of me. (I hope Lesa is.)  Zero growls and bares her teeth at me whenever she sees me.  Two years ago when I house-sat for them, Zero slept snuggled up with me for two weeks, happy as a clam.  The moment the famiy walked in from their vacation, Zero deserted me and never looked back.  Except to bare those teeth.  How treacherous can you be?

We are beginning to make our first tentative plans about how to spend our time from May 21 to June 11.  Our house sitter, a tough Navy veteran, will be keeping an eye on our own concerns here at home.  So all we have to worry about is ourselves--and at our age, that's plenty.  Birdy and Listy the chihuahua twins, Freckles the Surviving Cat, and Pink-Nose the interloper cat who comes twice a day to scavenge food, will all be left behind with nothing to do but watch TV or lie out in the sun.  Well, that's about all they get to do now.  They seem OK with it. I just hope that the weather improves and warms up so that they can be comfy outside. The girls turn 14 this summer, I think.  That's 98 in dog years.  They have issues, and when you think of it they bear up bravely with the problems they have. They are amazing.

The weather is not likely to warm up while we are gone on our trip, thanks to May Gray and June Gloom.  Our weather during those two months gets very dark and gray, even colder than it is at this moment (which is danged chilly) and misty-moisty.  "Once in San Diego's spring, in misty-moisty weather....," chanted Mother Goose once upon a time.  Actually, she didn't know San Diego, poor old gal, but she knew misty-moisty.  Someone (probably weather-casters on the TV) coined the phrases May Gray and June Gloom (irritating, that latter one).  And they stuck, because it's true--the sun does not appear for days at a time except for some golden rays about sunset time.  All the Zonies who come over from Arizona shiver and shake on the beaches in their colorful bikinis, and wish they'd listened to Yazzybel and postponed their vacations till late July or August or September, when it's logical to leave AZ anyway.

Back up to the topic up there--Yes! It is more than a week that I've been fasting from  breakfast until dinner or four o'clock if I cannot last longer. So far I have done fine as we eat at five p.m.   It does not get any easier. The hard part is when one's out in late morning or lunchtime, and the tummy, slave to custom, smells all that good Mexican food frying out there and just screams for attention.  Well, too bad. I have found that I can do it.  I do not need to eat all day long.  I know that the healthy way is to eat a small amount at regular intervals, but I am doing this for political reasons right now and think I'll be OK. I don't think I've lost any weight so far, strange though it may seem.  But I have the old-lady metabolism and obviously don't really need most of the food I regularly consume.  Perhaps I am just making up for my calorie content by a larger supper.  I'll know today, when I weigh at my weight-loss club.  And I'll let you know tomorrow for sure. YAZZYBEL

Timorous Thursday

Good morning!

Well, I am still trying to load a photo, but now that I have started writing I won't try further on this one. My sister no. 5 is coaching me from afar, but so far there have been no positive results.

 Wow--my sister told me how to do this again, I tried again for the trillionth time, and THERE is Taterton eating his lunch!!!  WOW..it worked. Now --will it work again?

And there below is a wonderful plant that I got from my sister no. 3 in Arizona, where it was growing as a "baby" beside the big one in her front yard.  It is still surviving here with me in moist cold Southern  California, though not doing its best.

In that pot there are some fossils found by Theodore here in Chula Vista in years past.  Developers have pretty well demolished some of the most accessible fossil beds that could exist.  There's a snail--see it?  And some other piece of animal.  We have sharks' teeth too.

I am thrilled.  The photos it gives me as a selection when I hit "browse" is very limited.  The one of the plants in front of the garage wall is not on there, that I can find. But, now encouraged, I shall keep trying.  Thank you, birthday sister no. 5. I really appreciate your persistence in spite of your calling me a nitwit. (Mild, in comparison to the usual family epithets.)  Love to ALL, YAZZYBEL

Music, Again?

Good morning!

Know what? I just wrote a whole posting and blew it away while trying to add a photograph.

I am crushed; may come on later and write more again.  It will be different though; I don't do well with rewrites. YAZZYBEL

Tuesday with Little to Say

Good morning! 

That title should be a relief after my long posts of the last few days.  But yesterday was  a busy day though nothing big happened with the exception of my husband's return in late morning with his TROPHY--his renewed driver's license!  That was a big thing for him and of course really for me, because things are really different around a household when only one person is able to drive.

Last night was the book club, and Theo dropped me there at seven thirty.  It was nice to see my old friends, and now I'm afraid I do mean my old friends.  Everyone was perfectly charming and sociable as usual, and we sank our teeth into some delicious candies and nuts as we waiting for the serious work to begin.  Lee N. did a wonderful job of laying out all the necessary info about a book that I can only describe as "difficult."  Some people apparently think that Michael Ondaatje is a wonderful writer, and perhaps he is. His main work is poetry and he should stick to that.  Turns out that his novel is deliberately spotty and sketchy, a "pastiche,"  a "collage," because he likes that style of tormenting the reader. (My interpretation , those last few words.)  Cats do the same with mice, and I will do with Mr. Ondaatje's work what I would do with the cat, were I a mouse--avoid it if possible. Theodore picked me up and brought me home and I got to sleep about eleven o'clock, late for me!! And him!!

Book for next time is The Old School by  Tobias Wolff.   I think I'll like it if it's not too clubby, and in any case  I shall read every word because this is getting embarrassing.  Belonging to a book club and not reading the books.  More than embarrassing, disgraceful.

I am sticking to the fast pretty well. Yesterday I had a breakfast of flakes, almonds, almond milk and sliced banana.  I really suffered when we went shopping because it seemed that every place in the world was frying chicken or fish, baking breads, and otherwise making wonderful and piquant odors of savory food.  Fasting makes one realize how much of one's eating is impulse-born.

 But I endured until dinner when I found that I could not eat all my salad, beans, and PB sandwich so I put the rest of the  veges and beans away till next day's soup. Ate three small cookies with glass of milk, and that was the end of supper though I had given myself an extension of dinner for the sake of the book club's eats. But I was good there, ate few snacks, drank water and a dab of wine, and a very very small piece of cake with a very small 2 spoonsful of vanilla ice cream.  And no coffee.  This morning,   I have had one scrambled egg and salsa on green corn-nopal tortilla, coffee, and orange juice.  So now, to endure today, on a few sips of leftover coffee until dinner time. YAZZYBEL

Even As We Speak....

Good morning!  It's Monday, and I think I'll get a few Monday things off my mind for today.  There's lots to think about and say.  Taterton is off to the San Diego Department of Motor Vehicles, hoping to breeze through his driver's license renewal more easily there than in Chula Vista. I wish him the best and hope he is made happy by the experience.  (It becomes more worrisome as we age, my children.)

An important part of my Monday morning experience is always looking in on the blog of James Howard Kunstler's blog, Clushterfuck Nation.  Kunstler, a denizen of Saratoga area, New York state, is a very smart man who is writer, social commentator, urban architecture critic, wit, wonderful painter, and you should go to his site, http://www.kunstler.com/, and click on all the links. I haven't checked the paintings for a while, but they are wonderful and perfectly evocative of the fading buildings and the terrain surrounding that northern New York area.  He write this blog every Monday morning and in this particular part of his interest and expertise, he concentrates on Peak Oil and the repercussions to our lives as oil peaks and fails.  Which he has absolutely no doubt that it's doing.  Today's link touches on the subject of renewal and refurbishing and rebuilding of our nation's passenger train service, and I couldn't agree more that it needs to be done NOW.  Whenever the subject comes up in the papers, it's slid into "fast rail"...NO, we need to fix up our intercontinental SLOW RAIL and get it on the tracks.  As a lover of trains and train travel, I feel that it is so important.  One of these days, it may be the only way to get from San Diego to, say, Iowa...and it needs to be humanly feasible.  Comfortable seats built to a human scale, reasonable and nourishing food, good scheduling and planning.  Why is this not being done?  Only last year, when I was in Cedar Rapids, I read of a plan to run a train from Chicago to eastern Iowa...which was being turned down. Why?  "Well, we already have a perfectly good bus system, " puffed some presumably red-faced politco of Iowa...Hello, Iowa!  You don't! You are not even on the Greyhound grid. I have never known a place that was so hard to get into and out of as Iowa.  And if what Kunstler (and others) are predicting comes true pretty soon, there won't be gasoline for those fabled buses anyway. WE NEED TRAINS, SLOW TRAINS, FAST TRAINS, LITTLE TRAINS, BIG TRAINS. WAKE UP IOWA and everybody else. Fix up those ancient tracks. Make more engines that will run on coal, which at least we shall have after petroleum is gone, for a while.

Enough of that, and I will now slide into finishing up yesterday's story about one trip I made to Iowa.  After I went into that railway station, I consolidated my ticket and made sure I had a sleeper into Omaha. And I went to the phone and called my friend from high school who lives in Denver. Always a wonderful idea, my dears, to call that friend.  She came to pick me up and took me too her house for the few hours'wait for the train to Omaha. She gave me a sandwich and a drink.  She brought out her husband whom I hadn't seen for many years and we had a nice visit. She went into the basement and gave me  the walker belonging to her mother, Mrs Longnecker of beloved memory, which had been stored there since the older lady's decease. That walker came in so handy!!! It walked me all the way into San Diego some weekslater.

When I got into Omaha the following morning, I was greeted by my cheery forty five year old lad of a son, who was his same funny disrespectful self as he mocked, "Hobble, hobble, hobble," when I was trying to keep up with him in the gravelly rail-yards of Omaha.  When we'd made the forty-five mile drive to Walnut, Iowa, my wonderful  daughter-in-law took one look at my twisted ankle and made me be driven by her to the hospital in Atlantic IA, some twenty five miles in the other direction, where I was x-rayed and pronounced to have a fractured fibula and put into a stiff boot.  Lucky. At Kaiser I would have been in an immobilizing cast.  Then home to the family and the wonderful grandkids.

Thanks to the boot and walker, I got around well in Walnut, IA, for a few days before another incident put me into the emergency room in that aforementioned hospital and into enforced rest for several days.  Without detail, I needed that time.  So, when I got back to the house at Walnut, my stay had to be extended for a week, and the kids and I put it to good use playing cards and games. Though I like to say with glee that I gave my kids the "mother in law visit from hell," I have never had a better time than that lovely extra week in Walnut with my loved ones.  Then I boarded the plane in Omaha and hobbled in with Mrs Longnecker's walker to my husband in San Diego. YAZZYBEL

A Different Sunday, but Yet the Same

Good afternoon!!

My breakfast was eaten out to day, late, after church and the Forum.

I met a long ago friend after church and we went to a Mexican restaurant across the street from St Paul's...it's a new rather upscale place called Barrio Star. I had the Breakfast Tamal plate...they called it Tamale Plate ;  I hate to be the one to tell them that one is a tamal, not a tamale. It was a fresh corn tamal and it was just delicious.  There was that, a large serving of black beans, grrr, with sticky mozzarella  cheese that I can't swallow (but I did, just was careful to cut tiny little portions)grrrr, and a good salsa, and a huge serving of good scrambled eggs that I could not finish.  Then he showed me a large collection of old family photographs which he's formatted and gotten ready to give to some members of his extended family's younger generation, so they could see people and pets and houses that they might not have known.  That is a very considerate thing for him to have done, I thought.

The Forum today was about the Atonement, again, and  I found it a very difficult topic to comprehend.  Next week is the wrap-up, at which time we are promised some clue to this very hard study.  As that is not the end of Lent, I don't know what will happen to the rest of the time--well, Passion Sunday, Palm Sunday, and I guess that does indeed bring us to Easter.

Today at church I had a revelation, and came up with a timely thought of whom I wanted to pray for. I think I 've mentioned that I get to church, and when the time comes to mention the sick, or the dead, or people in difficult situations, -- my mind gets blocked and I can't think of the names  I need to think of.  But in the middle of the night last night  I'd gotten to thinking of a young man I have been wanting to thank.

I have a confession to make about a failing of mine: I like to take bus trips, and have taken many, far and near.  Several years  ago I was traveling toward Iowa on the Greyhound on my way to Denver to catch the Amtrak into Omaha.  In the middle of the night, I was awakened as we stopped at a little restaurant in the wilds of Utah...Everyone got out. It was about two or two thirty a.m.  I thought about staying on, as I was not hungry, but then decided that it might be more healthful to stretch my legs a bit and move around.  Wrong decision.  No sooner had I gotten off into the pitch dark than I fell descending an invisible step in the sidewalk as I approached the cafe.  My whole left leg collapsed under me and my left ankle turned in very awkwardly.  I fell to the ground.  By this time, many of the cohorts from the bus were sitting around on a low wall along the sidewalk,  and a young Mexican man came running up to me and helped me up and stood me on my feet.  I was able to get about awkwardly and I thanked him and made my way back to my seat on the bus before we took off.  My left ankle hurt a lot all the next morning and I thought it was a pretty bad sprain.  The same young man, who was truly one of the kindest and most compassionate people I have ever met, one of those people who are Good in the inimitable Mexican way, was my close nursemaid and companion.  He gave me a clean black sock to bind about my foot and ankle, without which I could not have functioned. Oh, and about dawn, some really bad and rowdy young men of the criminal type had boarded and were seated about close by as well. Well, most of the people were apparently on their way to Beyo, Colorado, to make their fortunes (test of your Spanish: of what Colorado town am I speaking?), but when we got to Denver I asked the driver if he would let me off at the railroad station before getting to the bus station where everyone would transfer.  That way I could get off near the door..but I still couldn't handle my baggage into the station, so I tucked a twenty dollar bill into my pocket to give to my kind friend when he took the bags in for me...But, when the moment came, one of the CROOKS pushed himself forward, made a big show to help me, and shoved the good young man back. (Note to all:  This is where sins of omission start.  Where you should have spoken up for the good guy and not let the crook get away with a show of helping.)
But I was tired and in pain and the bus driver was impatient--you know how it is with sinning--and the crook took my stuff in for me and I gave him the twenty dollars.  I have grieved for this ever since.  I think about that good young man and pray that he has gotten the work and opportunity he so much deserved there in the ski capital of Beyo, and I wish he could know that I will never forget him. So that's who I prayed for today.  Him. And me, of course. YAZZYBEL