I THINK this is Monday

Good afternoon...

I don't like three day holidays.

We are driving to Brownsville to talk to Funerarias El Angel about Greg's former burial place (he's now at St Paul's).  I hope we see sister no. 2 and her husband.  After we get our business conducted, we are going to turn about and meander towards home.

That's assuming that Theo keeps his wits about him.  If he should not, Ben will come and chauffer us if need be, to our Chula Vista home.

We've had an incredible visit with sisters no.'s 3 and 5.  I hope Theodore got the rest he needed and that things work out fairly easily on the trip home. Love to all, YAZZYBEL

TODAY is Sunday

Good morning!

Yesterday I thought it was Sunday when I wrote my blog, but it was Saturday. All the rest was OK.

We went to supper last night at Earl Abel's, a wonderful old San Antonio eatery.  Every time I am there I remember the time I drove alone into San Antonio at eight p.m. in the dark in the driving rain, and was disoriented and didn't know where I was for sure...I saw the lights of Earl Abel's there on my right in its old location, turned in and sat at the counter to eat a wonderful bowl of homemade vegetable soup.  It was heart-warming.

I had a bowl of that selfsame soup last night and I also had a glass of white zinfandel, and some crackers and butter. Nabisco crackers in San Antonio are better than Nabisco crackers in California.  Then I had a huge piece of white cake with white buttercream frosting (half of which is in the refrigerator), and a delicious cup of coffee.

Yesterday sister no. 5 took me to a "Crafts" Mall and I was enchanted even though I am not a crafts person per se.  I bought pot holders, a pillow case, a silver plated pitcher, and a toaster made into a lamp.  Today we'll go back so I can see the rest of the place.  Yahoo.

Theo is feeling better so I don't know what we'll do from here.  Note to remember for the future.  Do not travel or undertake business over the Memorial Day weekend . Hasta manana from YAZZYBEL.

Thump

Good morning!  It's Sunday.

Here we are in San Antonio still, Perched on Bandita and Fred, still.

Last night we were in the ER of Northeast Baptist Hospital for hours and hours (till one a.m.) trying to get Taterton straightened out.  The doctor, a very very young man named Ionnis Berios, was wonderful. He told Theo that he doesn't recommend his driving in a confused state.  We are maybe going to get Ben to fly over to do the honors.  If he can.

Up in Cedar Rapids, our granddaughter Miranda's graduation party goes on today, and her graduation either tonight or tomorrow--I never got it straight. I hope she has a wonderful time.  She already has stars in her eyes and this weekend they should be even starrier.

Thump, indeed. Love to all, YAZZYBEL

May 26 and Days Have Gone By

Good morning from San Antonio, Texas!

This has been a strange journey.  Bet you thought I'd say, "Good morning from Cedar Rapids, Iowa!" That is what I thought I'd be saying.

In the first place, my husband was so ill and goony when we left that I didn't even think we should be making the trip.  I myself felt exhausted.  The first night, when we were going to be cutting off north from Phoenix, we spent in Tucson instead with sister no. 3 and husband.  The next morning we were going to proceed to Las Cruces NM to cut north from there, but about an hour out of Tucson our right rear tire went flat.   We were between Benson and Willcox and the Angel of the AAA came out and changed our tire for the donut. There was no proper tire in Willcox so the advice was to return to Tucson, which we did. Two nights were spent, but on Tuesday we headed out for--San Antonio.  Our exhaustion and his disorientation made me still reluctant to proceed in any direction, but we decided to avoid the 67 tornadoes swirling in the midwest and just come over to Texas to get some business done and to visit sisters nos. 2 and 5.  So here we are.  Theo just took the last of his Cipro, thanks be to Goodness.  Perhaps he will feel better now that the medicine is finished!

We are enjoying the balmy air of San Antonio, and, both here in SA and in Tucson, there were the soft calls of hundreds of mourning doves to listen too in the mornings.  I love the mourning doves.  I love my homeland, I guess everyone does. There's a wonderful aroma of Mexican rice in the air. It's nice  to be here.  YAZZYBEL

TTFN

AUf Wiedersehen---adieu---hasta la vista baby--we are off this morning.  We'll
check in from any stops where they'll let me use their computer...adios, YAZZYBEL

One Day to Go

Good morning!

That's me, last Saturday, taken by my friend Frances when we were lunching at Cafe 21 in North Park.  I wanted to see  how much I've aged in a year.

I look as if I weigh more though I weigh less. It's that short haircut perhaps, though I like the cut.  Well, it is normal  to look a year older. When I was in my mid seventies I thought I looked pretty good and decided that the appearance of old age might not be so bad...now that I am in my early eighties, I realize that nothing is stable.  If I should survive to the age of ninety, I'll look different.  Especially if something drastic happens to my teeth....well, we shall see. I am already planning a new hairdo for 85 and after, if I do not change it before.

Cafe 21 is an adorable little out of the way place somewhere in NP.  I don't remember where because Frances was pointing the way.  Frances knows all the hip places to eat because she has younger relatives that eat out all the time and have introduced her to the finer things of life.  At Cafe 21 Frances had the PLT (P is prosciutto) and I had some good crepes.  All around me people were being served up with delightful presentations.  It was a Saturday morning and very loud as young working people seem to have to drink with brunch on their day off, and it does influence the sound level in a tiny room.

My clothes are packed.  I knocked the whole kaboodle to the floor before closing the top, so can only hope I got everything back in. I have supplementary kits for make up, vitamins, medications of the OTC type for every possible digestive contingency, and the big one that I'll take in at the motels.  I went to the health food store yesterday to look for a small size container of dry skin cream, but all those organic cosmetics were very expensive so I refrained from purchase.  Too bad; my skin is dry as an old blotter. C'est la vie (see paragraph two.)

I am so truly depressed by the loss of the dogs that I am glad to get away and think about something else for a while. Don the house- sitter will have almost nothing to do.  But Theo wants him here for a Presence in the neighborhood.  Our house is neighbored on one side by the clinic with come-and-go personnel  but on all the rest we are very vulnerable to  interlopers, should they get it into their heads to interlope.

Today we have a very busy day ahead of us, so shall sign off for now. YAZZYBEL

Thursday May 19

Good morning!  
There is my hosbon (as one of my cousins used to term hers), wearing a cute cap with his name on it that I found at a thrift shop. Turns out "Neff" is a big manufacturer of sports clothing and so forth in the Midwest. 

My husband seems to think he is feeling better; is showering up and getting ready to show me that he is ready to leave on Saturday.  He is going to have to do quite a bit of convincing.  Well, we shall see.  It's the Cipro pushing him forward, but he thinks he feels good.  Maybe we'll go to Tucson first so that if he konks out we can roost there.  My sister and brother in law no. 3 will be surprised.

No, he has this ambitious plan to charge up into Utah and so forth, so that if he (or I, who knows?) should break down we'll be in a conveniently unfamiliar and unattended place.  I have always been okay with letting him do what he will in the long run, so shall let him do as he wants.  This morning though I am going to make one last stab at choosing a flatter more southerly route up to Cedar Rapids...

My bag is not packed but is ready to be packed. The clothes are folded there on the guest bed beside the suitcase.  I have a bag just for the motel nights and drive days on the way over.  The Cedar Rapids clothes are in the suitcase and I have enough for QE's visit to Ireland.  Then after we leave CR, back to the drive clothes and the stuff in the suitcase will go for TX.  Climate differences and changes are a problem.  Ordinarly I'd be able at this time of year to eschew warm clothes, jackets and shoes--but we are not in ordinary times weatherwise.  One has to be prepared for anything on any given day.  It is a problem. Not problematical, just a problem.

I am hearing about possibility of the USA's going on the gold standard again.  A gold-backed currency.  Lord knows we need something stable.  If we should go onto a gold and silver based money system, doesn't that mean that the ounces we already may own will become more valuable still? Or will they be worth less?  I get confused.

For breakfast I had rice chex, blackberries and milk like Flopsy, Mopsy et al.  It is such a delicious treat that it 's a wonder if there is any nutrition to it.  Maybe the nutrition is negative; one's not getting sausage or bacon fat, nor cholesterol of the egg.  Whatever, it was good.  Love to all, YAZZYBEL

Thank God for Music

Good morning!

In the BBC film of Barchester Towers, (or is it the Barchester Chronicles?) the old good priest says that he loves his music because it is the only thing that helps him to make sense of this chaotic unfathomable world.  Me too.

Patricia is coming today and we are making music for a while.  Then I am making tiny turkey hamburgers on slider buns (one each) and a little warm potato salad on the side.  I am using up food that we have on hand and in the freezer.

Last night for dinner I desperately went through the freezer and grabbed a dinosaur boneless chicken breast half and put it on a pan and stuck it into the oven...after some time, it had thawed and  I added flour to the outside of it plus salt and pepper.  It baked on, and about twenty minutes before dinner I cut it in two horizontally.  I was waiting for Theo to come back from errands so went cautiously with the chicken breast...it was tender and looked wonderful.  When he turned up, I added a lot of slices of cheddar cheese on top of his, a little on mine. I boiled up a lot of red chard too.  While the cheese was melting I took a slice of that pineapple you saw yesterday in the picture with the giant artichoke...and put it on the baking tray. I had a small half of the chicken breast with a little cheese and the pineapple on the side (yummo) and Theo had the big half with a lot of melted cheese and no pineapple.  Theo was born in Oklahoma and when he grew up they knew not of the pineapple.  But he takes cholesterol medicine so can eat whatever.
For me, the dish would not have been good without the pineapple.

Just above here is a picture of a black capped night heron.  We found a lot of them snoozing in a tree down at the Marina one spring.  They are very beautiful. Not too big.  They roosted low down and with the morning sun sparkling amongst the leaves you still had to look very hard to find them but we did.

Well, great has been the debate and nagging about the wisdom of our going to Iowa this weekend and 3 weeks following.  I say not now, and he says, YES NOW.  He is running on Cipro and does  not realize that a severe bladder infection accompanied by fever and mental confusion is not to be tampered with.  I wish someone from Kaiser had said: It's not advisable that you drive across country at this time.  He would have listened to them, perhaps.  Perhaps.  If it gets worse I can refuse to go along.  But as it is, we probably shall be pulling out of ye olde Fairway Court at about eight o-clock on Saturday.  I'll keep ya posted. YAZZYBEL

Tuesday, Looking Up, and Around

Good morning!

That picture up there is of the Biggest Artichoke in the World, bought at Henry's Market.  It's what it looked like after I cooked it and spraddled it out on the table attempting to remove the World's Biggest Choke out of it.  It was not just full of meat after all anyway--all leaf and no heart.

It's Tuesday and I realized last night that I was very deeply depressed, due to the exit of the dogs and Theo's mini-crisis of health.

I regard myself as responsible for my own mental health, so have to cheer self up today.  I started with a good breakfast.
one egg-2 points
one toast-2 points
dab marmalade-1 point
one sausage patty-2 points
That's a seven point breakfast. Oh dear, that is depressing.  But it was so delicious eaten as a stack, with a knife and fork, that it may be worth the points. Let's see how long it stays with one.

Our weather is not contributing to cheer. Yesterday I went out into a sunny yard with a stiff cold wind blowing, and watered a few plants.  The citrus are looking beautiful. My Mexican lime has had a thousand blooms but won't set fruit.  Gotta learn why not but shall wait until after trip to concentrate on it.  The Dwarf Meyer Lemon has lots of small lemons on it but I know from bitter experience that these little hopefuls can turn dark and drop at a moment's notice.  So, I shall water judiciously till I go, and after that it's anyone's guess as to what will happen to them.

I am invested in SLV, and it has plunged.  Well, it advanced far enough for me to skim off enough cream to finance a few improvements around here when I return. The rest of it will sit there until it does it again.  I should be buying GLD but shall wait a bit.  Sumer is a-coomin in, loude sing cuckoo.

Household tip of the day: ladies who are buying plates, cups, silverware, do remember this.  Heft the piece in ye hand before buying.  The FEEL of these things in your hand is important, as you eat, as you serve, lay the silver, wash up, etc.  When I am at the Goodwill, I heft the good-looking pieces of chinaware.  It is easy to tell the things from China.  The Chinese have not yet mastered the weight nor heft nor thinness of English, Italian, or Portuguese soft paste, for they have discovered, alas, that the American public will buy anything that's put out there and called chic.  Some of the designs are great. Pick it up.  No, thanks. Put it down and look for better.  You are not looking for heavy.  You are looking for perfect.

I do not know what to pack for Iowa.  It may be quite warm.  And, as likely as not, it may be quite chilly.  It has been cold of late and in fact I am looking for an email from Alexander to tell me that, alas, he lost his thriving little seedlings and plants last night in the cold.  It was unexpected, but the unexpected is the expected nowadays in weather, it seems. Maybe it was always that way.  Mother Nature is a prankster.  But we love you, Mother.  Say I hastily.

There is the Giant Artichoke before cooking. I should have kept it for an adorno  the kitchen . Cooked it looked as if it belonged in Chluthu...you know...out of HP Lovecraft....

If, as we plan, we go to TX on the way home, it will be warm for sure...I pray to the Lord that it will be raining, for the Texans need rain big time.  And we can stand it.  We like rain.  Whatever comes, we'll enjoy it all. YAZZYBEL

Monday Short and Sweet

Good morning!

The short and sweet of it is that Theo was quite sick last night. The Kaiser telephone nurse tried to make me take him to the ER, but he refused to go. So we went doctorin' this morning.  He turned out to have a severe bladder infection and bad report on his urine sample. He got an antibiotic shot in the rump and a bunch more pills to take.

I am a bit zonked myself so won't write much. I'll leave you with a beautiful photograph....YAZZYBEL--I call that one, The Queen and her Maids-in-Waiting.
Note that bug hole on one large petal; last week I poisoned the daylights out of the rosebuds.  I cannot get perfect roses without it.  On food plants, I eschew poison entirely.  Roses are another matter. YAZZYBEL

Happy Birthday Dear Theodore

Good morning!

It's Theodore's seventy-seventh birthday!  That's him up there wirh Benjamin in a recent photograph.

Everyone wants to know what we'll do to celebrate his birthday, but the truth is, there is nothing to tell.  He says he doesn't want to do anything!

I am sure that way back there , somewhere in his most secret heart, there is something he would like more than anything---if he even knows it.  He can't share it if he doesn't know what it is.

One thing would be that he wants me to get rid of the excess stuff in this house. And I am working on it, I am working on it.  Yesterday I worked on it by buying a Venetian glass chandelier at a garage sale for five dollars.  This enraged him, I fear.  This chandelier is a work of tinkly sparkly beauty, or at least it will be when the encrusted dust of thirty years is cleaned off of it.  It is fine. 

Theodore still bears the bruises and marks from his fall two weeks ago.  His face is remarkably improved. I thought he'd have that blackened and bruised eye for weeks, but it will be gone by the time we get to Cedar Rapids.  But when he went to bed I noticed that his right thigh, which had been inspected more than once by the Kaiser ER as well as myself, is very very bruised in a large area. A huge dark bruise is there now,  where it was not before. Coumadin!  We should be calling the nurse but he won't hear of it. Or anything else.

I guess old gentlemen are like old gladiators.  The only way they choose to celebrate milestones is by counting their wounds and their survivals.  Entonces, que viva Teodoro!     YAZZYBEL

Grief and Grieving and Mourning

Good morning!

That leaf is one of the reasons I love magueyes.  Look at that pink edge--audacious!!

I did not sleep much last night for thinking of Birdy and Listy.  Losing a pet is strange.  One tries to rationalize--they had a good life; we loved them dearly; not once in their lives were they ever mistreated; they were loved by many who came to know them.  It is never enough, is it?  Simply, we miss them.

Today was the first morning for fourteen years that I didn't go out to get the paper with at least one of them.  The last few mornings I had to lift one or both down the two front steps, and give them a boost as they came back up....but they were there. Now they are not with us.  The riddle of death.  My only reconciliation is that, as I am constantly expecting their company with me, their little noises and jingles and taps of their toenails on the hardwood floor, I realize that I am thinking of turning to see a couple of very old and sick little somebodies, which they were at the last.

I have lost a son.  He was extremely incapacitated at his ending, and my grief and mourning when he died were for that very handicapped person. Like mourning for a very small child or baby.  And I grieved for him that way.  At some point, the young very physically strong young man he had been took his place, and I had to go through mourning all again, this time, for the young man we had really lost two and  two-thirds year before.  Then the mourning was longer and will never go away, for his funny ways, his wit and wisdom, his problems, his passion for music and seashells and coin collecting, and his help in yard maintainance and gardening will never leave us.  We marveled  at his ability to go walking in all temperatures, in the evenings, and never get cold nor catch a cold.  He was, when not depressed, wonderfully amiable and cheerful to be around.  And loving.  And we mourn and miss him still.

Is it irrelevant or sacriligious to compare mourning for two nutty little chihuahuas (brains the size of a walnut, a friend of ours used to say: it was remarkable what they could do with those little brains) to the loss of one's own child?  No.  It isn't.
Whatever we are, wherever we are, we are all in this together, all part of this inexplicable and not understood medium we call our lives.  We were all together for a while, separated now in a way, and in a way not separated at all.  That is what we have to grasp.  Not separated at all, really.  Still part of the warp and woof.  Say, that's a funny.  Peace to all. Love to all. YAZZYBEL

Friday, Not What I Expected

 Good morning. It's always a good morning, but today it's a sad morning. Our little dogs, Birdy and Listy, had to be put down. 

They had been ill for quite a while. Birdy was ill longer than Listy, and was on prednisone tablets which kept her going for quite a while, but, of late, the effects were as bad as the illness and she was coughing coughing all the while.

Listy got sick more recently, but has been gagging and coughing and gasping uncontrollably and for the last couple of days neither ate nor drank at all.

We had wondered about, when the time came, how either of them might live without the other. They had been together for every moment of their lives on earth.  As it turned out, this eventuality did not have to be dealt with after all.  One wonders if, given the vote, how they would have voted but I think that it's part of being the demigod in the situation,--that it is the human being who has to decide, especially when their daily lives are so full of suffering.  We are going to bury them in the garden, and put four concrete squares over the top of their grave.  Flowers will be strewn.  Tears are being shed.

We are going to miss our most constant companions of the last fourteen years.  They were our closest companions and our very close friends.  We are going to miss their company, and we love them and shall miss them forever.  YAZZYBEL

Thursday, More About Books and or Movies

Good morning!

Theodore is reading me the warnings off the pages from the pharmacist about the medications he has taken for years.  It is difficult to concentrate on writing a blog under these circumstances.  If you are taking Warfarin, do not bleed, is the gist of this one. Hmmmm....who'd- a thought it?

I ordered out the old Jane Eyre from eBay, and it arrived yesterday afternoon.  I watched it immediately due to having eaten a large lunch out with prospect of a free later afternoon when we'd scratch from the refrigerator. 

It is amazing how beautiful this old black and white movie is.  Joan Fontaine is incredible.  She made Rebecca when she was nineteen, so must have made this shortly after, as she was still very young.  And there, dying in the hideous Lowood School, is eight year old Elizabeth Taylor, just as beautiful as ever.  And there, dancing ballet and frisking about charmingly at Thornfield, is very tiny Margaret O'Brien.  Talk about old friends!!!

Mr Rochester in the novel is a dramatic, brooding personage, full of emotion, rage, longing, and as such he is beautifully portrayed by a gloomily lit Orson Welles who did full justice to the role.  The quiet, understated Mr Rochester played by  Michael Fassbender(2011) might be preferable company for spending the rest of your life with--but--nah. We'd rather have the ups and downs of living with a real maniac like Orson Welles.  Certainly we'd rather have the watching of him.  One flaw in the old film (amongst others probably) (I have not watched it critically yet), anyway one flaw is that at the end of the film, blind as a bat, he swoops down and plants a wonderful huge kiss square on the lips of Jane...and you think--good, but...? Or do you think about it or are you just swept away as we ladies can be?

It's funny that Mr Rochester complains about being an innocent lad taken in by a conniving woman--twice.  How often do we need to be taken in before we wake up?  Often, apparantly.  He was taken in by marrying the lady who now resides in the tower...and he was taken in by Adelle's mother, a scheming dancing girl in Paris. He is a person led by his heart, apparently, and it is good that he finally fell in with Jane Eyre. His good luck.  Also good luck, as we learn in the last sentences of the novel and the 1945 film, that his eyesight comes back in time for him to see the huge brilliant eyes of his first son.  I remember reading that book and feeling so much pleasure and gratification when I read those words. Charlotte Bronte granted him and us that favor.

Now to another tack. If you want to read a good book, read Blue Desert by Charles Bowden.  Charles Bowden is an Arizona writer and desert rat sort of person who has written very very well about his beloved southern Arizona deserts and the activities thereon.  He also wrote a sequel to this book and it is good too, but what I remember is the enchantment I felt upon first reading his desert sketches.  I also liked, in the second book (title forgotten), was his description of a conversation with a Mexican lady during which she slowly slowly consumes a plate of enchiladas in bites so tiny he couldn't perceive that she'd ever finish it.  It gave me a heads up, me who is used to thinking of an enchilada as a four-bite item.  American women do eat like wolves, often.  A hearty appetite which is admired in a young girl can get pretty disgusting later on, especially as the eye follows the progression of those bites downward to generous belly and hips. No, the tiny-bite method is best, and, if you are lucky, you won't have time to finish it.

I got a phone call from Benjamin yesterday, from Minneapolis. I thought he was joking as he was supposed to have arrived in Wichita by then. No, there had been a flaw in the plane (that airline that was Northwest) and they were an hour and a half late in leaving SF.  They got to the first stop, Minneapolis, too late to make the connection, so he was hanging around for a ten thirty flight last night for Wichita. I suggested he go out into Minneapolis to get a good dinner somewhere, but he said no way would he leave the secure area and go through entering it again. Gosh, travel is becoming a nightmare. And my scientific son has become a traveling salesman at this time in history and I don't like it. YAZZYBEL

Wednesday Music Day I mean Lunch Day

Good morning!

That is Benjamin walking our two chihuahuas, Birdy and Listy. That picture was taken, I believe, at the Marina here in Chula Vista, where Theo and I used to walk our dogs.  I say used to, because none of the four of us can any longer take a walk of any significance.  There is something rotten in Denmark, my friends, when all four of us suddenly suffer from weakness and lack of muscle strength. With them it is the cheap Chinese dog food.  With us--what?
Well, we shall soldier on.  Today Patricia is coming to play piano, and in honor of Theodore's and my May birthdays, she is taking us out to lunch.  To Zorba's, perhaps, where, instead of zithers, there's a huge and fresh and delicious buffet lunch.  We'll love it and especially love it because there's not a lot of worthless starch. The cold buffet is all kinds of salads, and there 's hot soup: avgolemono, and lentil.  The hot buffet is the danger spot because there is wonderful patstitsio, pasta with tomato sauce.  But there are also fish and chicken, fried and broiled and with sauces.  And that great dish of cheese and spinach in phyllo ; perhaps I can essay a bit of that without getting my yeast cells in a fluster.  I am officially well from my dizziness and fatigue spell of this weekend, but my Purple Doctor is keeping an eye on me. YAZZYBEL

Tuesday, Book Reviews

Good morning!

Those little people were made by Theodore. I think they are adorable and I wish he were still working at woodcraft because he made so many projects that have a true "primitive" charm.  I took them to Alexander a few years ago and I hope he found a good place to put them out.  They really cheer up a window sill!!

I have been mostly in bed for the last few days so have been reading more than usual.  Ben left me two police procedural kinds  of books when he was here at Easter.  I have now read The Sentry by Robert Crais; this one is a Joe Pike book.
Joe Pike is an enigmatic figure, a sort of superhero. I found him a little bit incredible in this book.  And those dark glasses! He wears them day and night and when I read of that, all I can think of is my vision in my old age, when I go from spot to spot to try to concentrate every photon in the atmosphere on my page in order to be able to read it at all.  Dark glasses, indeed. Who needs 'em?

Then I read Michael Connelly's third or fourth Hieronymus Bosch book, The Last Coyote.  Aside from the protagonist's ridiculous name, I like those novels pretty well.  Connelly is a good writer.  So is Crais, for that matter, when it comes to putting sentences together to make some sense.  Connelly is more subtle and goes deeper into his characters somehow.

In The Last Coyote, Bosch goes looking for a killer--the person who killed his mother long ago when he was a kid.  It's an interesting chase.  The people all come to life.  When I thought that at last the story was over, it too had a long extension at the end when the real truth comes out.  In this case, the extension was necessary to the story's ending.  I thought it well written indeed.

I am not devoted to "mystery" novels as a rule. They are too gripping, too easy to read, and even if not too superficial, too light to consider as literature.  You forget them as soon as you put them away.  But Crais and Connelly, in their separate focuses, have one great thing in common: The City of Los Angeles.  We lived in Los Angeles for several months in 1958-9.  Think what it was like then, folks!!  We were seeing the last of an era.  I was fascinated by the place and never saw enough of it.  Since then, the great surge of Hispanic and Asian immigrants has irrevocably changed the face of the place, and we will never see that old Los Angeles again.  Have yall seen Blade Runner, that movie of the future? Those downtown scenes are so close to 21st century reality that it's uncanny, folks.  And Crais and Connelly in their characters of Elvis Cole and Joe Pike and Harry Bosch and the Lincoln Lawyer, and via the Police Department of Los Angeles, are keeping it all alive on the page in front of us. I love that. Love it that when the guys are chasing from freeway to freeway, canyon to canyon, park to park, ravine to ravine, seedy neighborhood to home of palaces, we can follow along and say, "Oh yes! I know that place!" So viva the lot of them. YAZZYBEL

Monday Feeling Better

Good morning! 

I feel better than I did yesterday.  But I think I still have the virus or whatever it was that made me feel so tired, and blue, and dizzy, the last few days of last week. I never think when I feel that way, "Hey--you're sick. You need to go to bed and sleep."  But finally I did and I feel better for it. When I woke up this morning I actually felt like getting up and making breakfast.  Am tired again now already, but that is OK.  It's an improvement and I am going to go back to bed.

I 'll finish reading The Last Coyote, by Michael Connelly.  It's a Hieronymous Bosch book, and I hate serieses..seria...serials...Theo looked it up in the dictionary, series is the plural sez Webster. I don't believe it. Anyway, serial books with serial detectives are so boring...the author assumes you know all the cute quirks of that hero and are going to say (as I say when I see Mrs. Lynde again in the Anne of Green Gables books, "Well, there's good old Mrs. Lynde, chuckle chuckle,")  ,    " Oh goody there it is...that cute quirk. Now I know it's good old (blank)". Grr.  However, M. Connelly is a very good writer and his character, though quirky enough for quite a long series of books, is interesting.

It's a good day to go back to bed. Gray and cold. Duh. I didn't make enough of the beautiful beautiful days we had last week (when I was breathing deeply and taking in viruses)...but they were wonderful.Wonderful not to need warm warm comforters at night, and to be able to wear shorts and short sleeves about the place without getting gooseflesh.  Isn't gooseflesh the most horrible word. (Word for the day.)

That sunflower was in my garden two years ago. I like the multicolored ones. One year I planted a huge flock of Martha Stewart Italian White sunflowers--my favorites. But the dark ones are very good too.  That bed now has my sages and parsley and thyme and arugula. I also planted chard but think it got washed away when I watered. Should have started it in a pot.  I am wondering if I should turn up a lot of that area and let it rest while I'm gone to Cedar Rapids and points otherwhere. The arugula is tall and bitter and tough.  The sage that bloomed so beautifully should probably be cut back and given a rest...the parsley is going to seed and its leaves are bitter too...needs a haircut and a rest...I have those new tomatoes in pots, lots of flowers, no fruit. Perhaps Don the housesitter will have a nice little bonanza. Or, bonzana, as Greg used to say when he was a little boy.

Off to the tub and the bed and the book. Ahhhhhhh!!! YAZZYBEL

Mothers' Day--I love 'em all!!!

 

Things to Think About

Good morning!

That's my big kalanchoe, up there. It is very tall, way taller than the Yazzybel.
It was given to me as a very small plant by my friend Elaine, who's a wonderful gardener.

That line coming down the left side of the photo is not coming from the kalanchoe; it is coming up from the "reed orchid" and probably eventually got a gorgeous fuschia colored multiple flower head on it. It's an epidendrum, and that is what the flower looks like. Mine are not orange, however. I got that picture from the web. I have true lipstick red ones, and fuschia ones, and one treasured white one which I am trying to keep going.  The fuschia ones are from my friend Frances, who has given me many plants also.  That is the good thing about gardeners; they are very unselfish with their plant progeny.

What I am most thinking about right now is our trip.  We shall have a house-sitter, who has been here a number of times before. His wife used to do it but I don't think she could put up with my slapdash housekeeping.  I like the husband fine, and so do the dogs.

And speaking of dogs, he just may not have any dogs to watch this year.  Both dogs are coughing a lot.  They  have that trachea condition that little dogs get, and they have it badly. The vet is not hopeful.  Birdy is the worst, and as soon as I observe that her quality of life is not worth it, we shall have to say goodbye to her.  Listy coughs too, though.  But I hate to put Birdy down and then have to have Listy try to  get used to single life AND have us gone at the same time, so we are trying to keep old Birdy going.  I notice that my tussin/DM cough syrup seems to do her some good and lets her get some rest.  I put a drop of it in a little cup, add a little water, suck it up with plastic dropper, and zappo!  Down the hatch.  About a tenth of it!!  It seems to calm her down, for when she cannot breathe she gets panicky and gets worse.  As an asthmatic for my entire childhood, I know what it's like. She is at the "whatever works" stage of her life, I guess.

So, we have to get the house cleared out. Got rid of eight bags of "stuffe" last week, and am going for eight more this week as I can.  In the meantime, making boxes and bags of stuff to take to my kids who will never never come to see us and collect it for themselves.  We have three bedrooms, so we always put our private stuff into one of them and lock it away while we are gone.  One trip, we forgot to lock it and left the door open, LOL>  I always wonder if it is a good idea to lock a room, secret files or not.  If there were an emergency, there it would all go in a fire or whatever. Will, poof.  Health directives, poof.  Letters of old, poof. Jewelry, poof.  Decisions, decisions.

And then there's OUR health. Theo is recuperating from the blows to the face he took last weekend when he fell.  He seems to be doing OK. In the meantime, I have my general wooziness and vertigo to contend with.  We need a daughter! Living with us!!  Not gonna happen. So we continue to weed out, creep around, go to the store (our only exercise), and eat as well as possible.  I think being eighty finally caught up to me. I don't know what Taterton's excuse is!!  YAZZYBEL

Friday is the Day

Good midday!!

I frittered my time away today doing things like write email, talk money, and creep around trying not to have the vertigo.

So far the vertigo is not too bad this time. When I got to the TOPS I found that two other women are having it today, confirming my theory that our government, OR El-Qaida, are spreading viruses around for us senior citizens to catch.

When I weighed I had lost a pound, so regaled myself ,when Theo drove me home, with a Long John Silver's lunch--two pieces of fried fish, a few French fries, and two balls of what they call Hush Puppies. The fish--not bad, very crispy and mild tasting. I brought it home and doctored it with lemon juice, catsup with Mexi-Pep added, and sauce tartare (provided by Long John's). And I went to my garden to get a sprig of parsley and served it all up still hot, on a china plate. The ff's were not bad but I never eat very many anyhow as they are not my weakness.  And the Hush Puppies, soi dissant, are just awful.  Took two bites, one as bad as the other.  And the drink was sickeningly sweet Dr Pepper which I dumped and re-placed in a tall glass with ice water.  Not a bad lunch then.

That plant up there is an Angel's Trumpet. I believe it is a member of the Nicotene family and is just beautiful.  I'll never forget the first ones I ever saw, in La Jolla, in my piano teacher's yard. His were white. Those flowers are huge.  My plant has flowers of a yellowish color when they come out, and then they shortly turn to pale apricot pink. They are all droopy and darker by the next day, but they are just stunning. I have two of them, one in a pot that struggles every year, and one that I put into the ground which thrives.

Yesterday son Benjamin sent me flowers for Mother's Day, which he does nearly every year.  He sends them from ProFlowers, and you'd think I'd know the procedure by now: how to open them, prepare them, put them in the water in the vase provided. But I always mix up a bit. Anyway now that they are safely opened and relaxing on the coffee table, they are a charming mix of pinkish red asters, pink carnations, Peruvian lilies in a lavendar shade, and some white snowdrift blossoms.  I took their picture this morning and you shall be seeing them when I get them on the computer. Love, YAZZYBEL

Groan

Good morning!

That's my hair up there seen from the back in August '09.  Since they stopped dying their hair my sisters have (nearly) all been taking pictures of the backs of their heads to show how beautiful silver can be. Of course, I never colored mine.  My hair grows too fast and I am thrrrrrifty and wouldnt want to do it as often as necessary.

I put Groan as the title to this posting because, as I woke up this morning, I felt that loony blissful feeling that accompanied my bad vertigo attack two years ago this past February.  I was in Brownville lying in bed in the Rose Garden Motel, turned over, and immediately seemed to be floating over backwards on a huge -scale turn. This was very frightening as I'd never had any such feelings before.  I could not raise my head all day.  It got better as time went by, but the vertigo did not completely go away until seven months later when I signed up for a Yoga class. After the first session, the vertigo was gone, never to return, I hoped.

I know now that it's possible it will return, that it is already lurking inside my head waiting to revive itself to its fullest power.  I did some simple body twists upon arising (in a seated position) and seem to have staved off the worst for now.  We shall see.

Today we are going to Kaiser nearby to get glasses for the Taterton. (Glasses smashed due to Saturday's fall.)  I need an eye exam too but think I may just wait till after Cedar Rapids; glasses could not be made in time even if the appointment were today and that is very unlikely.

Everyone I know is a little bit under the weather. I think the government is spraying germs out of planes or hitting us with electronic beams from HAARP up in Alaska.  There's just too much of it going around.  If it were only we wrinklies who were showing the effects I'd think it natural. But I can't tell you how many younger (age of my kids) people who have said to me recently that they are having (memory, balance, recall, strength,sleep, general health) (pick one) (or two) issues.  How can this be explained, other than something in the air?  In the water? In our food?  Is it the telly? I dont watch that much. The internet? I do watch too much Internet; I simply love it.  But gotta ration it for a while, says the Purple-Garbed Physician.  I'll try.  I'll try. YAZZYBEL

Wednesday Music Day

Good morning!

Don't I wish that tomato above was growing in my garden right now!  That's an immature Brandywine as you can tell be the shape.  That was my best tomato year so far, and it was about three years ago.  But it is too early here for tomatoes that big.  They are all blooming away and I am probably not going to get fruit-set until we are gone on our trip.  I must warn the housesitter to keep an eye out.

I read that tomatoes need nights above forty five degrees in order to set fruit.  We have perhaps had a few of those lately due to our very warm days--but maybe not. Those covers still feel very good at night as they do all year and that's why we like to live in California.  Thank you, Pacific Ocean.

Well, I face another playing day without an ounce of practice.  I shall pay for it but the bad part is that P. must pay for it too.  She is very active musically, playing with and for people all the time at her church, so she comes with an enormous backlog of preparation that I frankly am just not matching these days.  Not anywhere near it.

Yesterday I guess I did not listen to my purple-garbed Inner Physician, for I must have just eaten too much all day.  By bedtime I felt miserable, hot and fat.  I was dragging.

 I think I will try that minimal diet that I have a hard time keeping to:
Bkfst is one egg , one toast, one orange, black coffee.
Lunch is clear consomme, a salad with no oil, one toast and a glass of skim milk
Dinner is: 4 oz protein, carrots, green beans, diet jello, and a glass of skim milk.
I can keep to that for about 2 days but on day 3 am starving. But my P-G Dr is staring me in the eye and I think I'd better try.

I have ordered The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock from Amazon dot com. I am sure I have it around here somewhere but have reached the point where it's easier to order it out for one cent than try to find it.  I think the book club might be ready to do some poetry, In fact, it would have been a good summer choice...all the books or assignments(!) for summer would be poetry.  Last  year it was detective stories but I didnt like that although I like some of them.  Once when it was my turn I prescribed that everyone bring a short poem and tell about it...I thought it was interesting and went very well, but nobody has asked for a rerun of it.

Well, now that I have rambled long I must take my bathy and wait for Patricia to come, full of hope that the playing will go well. Ah, well. YAZZYBEL

Tuesday After Book Club

Good morning!

There's Taterton, standing on the steps that he built about two years ago, down to the Lower Forty. We really needed them, for as you can see the yard is deep and steep at that point.

Did I tell you that he fell in the front yard on Saturday?  Well, he did. He hit his face, literally, on a brick planter bed, so got a serious smashing of his glasses into the skin of his face in a circle around the left eye.  I have a picture of it but I think I will spare my readership.  Of course, he would not go to the ER either on Saturday or Sunday, but by yesterday I had finally nagged him into going to the small walk-in clinic that Kaiser runs down here at Otay.  That was our undoing, for once we got into calling about it we got shuffled off to a triage nurse on the phone who after some probing heard the word "Coumadin," and sent us to Kaiser Emergency at the hospital at Zion ( a street, not a place==though it is a place).  That's another story. Long drive, difficult parking, long wait, long treatment session, long long long drive home.  We left at two thirty, walked in the door at home at five thirty.  Not too bad.  And his results were good; he got lots of positive attention and a good pronouncement as to his injuries.

The main thing he was asked, several times, was: Did you trip, or just fall down?
And, did you black out?  They want to make sure he did not have a stroke.  I think he did not. He had cat scan, heart tests, blood test.... He just goes out onto the uneven ground of our territory and takes tumbles.  So do I.  The dogs don't walk well now either. In their case I attribute it to Chinese dog food.  In ours--I don't know what, as we eat two distinct diets mostly.  Ah well, he looks better yet this morning so I see nothing but steady improvement from here out. (Except that he's going out to work in the yard later today.)

After we got home, the issue of book club came up.  My friend offered to bring me home, or for someone to come down and pick me up.  This is no small issue, folks. It involves adding a half hour each way onto someone's trip home after the book club.  Theo seemed to feel so much better that we agreed that he'd take me up, and somebody would bring me home.  Very kind on both parts.

So I went to the book club and we heard an excellent presentation by Phyllis.  And then we chose a date and meeting place for the next meeting.  July 11, folks. We shall skip June because we expect to be on our Cedar Rapids trip somewhere along the way. And others will be gone too.  And the book--Anna Karenina!!!  There is a newer translation which I'll try to get as it looks interesting.  Of course we have done AK before (I think). I know I have read it and love  it though it rends my heart.

Then we had the best dessert I've ever had at the book club. Maureen had made a wonderful cold mango mousse. She served it in small cold cups with a dab of whipped cream topped with a flake of candied lemon peel.  And on the side, a madeleine she made herself.  Wow.  It was perfect.  She made the madeleines in the hope that we'd be celebrating the choice of Swann's Way for our next book, but it was not to be.  Conscienceless, we gobbled them up anyway.

And the book, Old School, by Tobias Wolff?  Well, I for one had figured out the name of the nameless hero--Tobias.  But I'm cynical.  It was a good book anyway, in its parts.  Lee brought me home and we talked and talked.  I am lucky to have such very good and nice friends. YAZZYBEL 

Monday after George

Good morning!

That is the beginning of a sketch of crotons I made on the computer. I don't know why  I never finished or refined it.  I love crotons now. 

When I was a child, I hated all red or multi-colored leaved plants. I don't know why but the deep peace of green leaves really soothed my soul.  Now, I love colored leaves and the grayish plants, that stand out in three-D in a landscape, are favorites.  I have another croton sketch that will turn up sometime. It's also unfinished but more refined than that one above. I did it with paints.

Well, I did not go to St George's.  I have rarely skipped it over the years, but yesterday I was feeling fatigued so I made the last of my sandwiches, took them up to the church, and said adios.  Theodore and I went to Anderson's Nursery, where I looked for the tomatoes "Caspian Pink" and "Mortgage Buster" which were touted by the paper on Saturday.  I found neither one but did buy "German Johnson,"  hoping that German means pink, and "Fireball," which I hope is the tomato brought to me by a friend some years ago--huge and red and very tasty.

I decided that my purple-attired mystical doctor is telling me: Eat Less. So I did, was good all day until eating ice cream after dinner.  But did feel somewhat less fatigued from eating small amounts of food during the day.  It is nine thirty now and I just had a half of red grapefruit sweetened with a little maple syrup, so I hope that keeps me from feeling famished at midday and tempted to eat too much.

Last night Osama Bin Laden, the famous, was captured and killed in that order,(I guess) and dumped into the sea.  All that is very mysterious.  When I hear an announcement like that with all the newscasters jumping for very joy, I wonder at many things. The timing. The circumstances.  The details: why buried at sea, of all things?

When things are going on: the shuttle launch, the royal wedding, with all their hullabaloo which is mysterious enough in itself--I always think : There's another thing. There will be a third thing that is now hidden. I could not imagine what it would be. Now I know, it was the capture and killing of Osama. You know they've known where he was for ages. Come on.

Perhaps I am too big for my britches, commenting on national affairs.  That's OK, you may tell me so. YAZZYBEL

Sunday, May 1st

Good morning!

It's May Day!!!  Here at St Paul's, it's also St George's Day!!

I am not attending services but am going up to church to take the numerous small sandwiches I have made for the celebration of St George this afternoon. I made cheese and butter (freezable) , peanut butter and honey (freezable), and chicken salad with mayo, green and red pepper bits, and decorations of nasturtium leaves and baby aragula  and parsley. (Not freezable so I made them this morning.) I always like to make some decorated sandwiches because they look so pretty on the table.

After church we are going to drop by Anderson's nursery where I shall look for my two choice tomato plants that I'll coddle along and hope the housesitter will coddle, hoping for some great tomatoes after we get back from Cedar Rapids in mid-June.  I have two names from the paper that I am looking for. We have the best garden section in our paper and I just love it.  The two tomatoes that catch my fancy are Mortgage Lifter and Caspian Pink.  Since they are heirlooms, Anderson's may not have them--but they may.  I love pink tomatoes above all others, and at the bottom of my list are grape tomatoes with cherry tomatoes a bit above. I like cherry tomatoes but only if already cut in two.

Yesterday, the Sons of Norway luncheon with my friend Janet and her son Will, and hundreds of other Norwegians, was just lovely. In a beautiful room, the Trellises Room at the Town and Country, set in a beautiful garden, we were served a really delicious halibut plate.  Fillet of halibut perfectly grilled set upon a trio of asparagus tips, set upon quarters of roasted red-skinned potatoes. We also got wine, and a dessert of chocolate mousse cake which I unwisely ate. It was good, though.  Folk songs of Norway and the US were sung. These are the nicest people you could ever meet, so friendly and welcoming.  A good time was had by all.

While I was wining and dining, my husband Theodore took a tumble in the front yard, falling straight to the ground and badly striking his upper face and glasses into the ground and a flower pot, and some part of his thigh on another flower pot.  He says he lay there for fifteen minutes waiting to get the strength to get up. The place where he fell is in our little secluded spot under trees and sheltered from the street and neighbors...not too wise I guess.  Anyway, he looked horrible when I got home and would not go to the ER.  Who could blame him?  I doctored him up a bit and he still looks bad today but no worse. His whole eye area is swollen up and he has a black eye kind of. Otherwise, he will survive.  Thank goodness. YAZZYBEL