In need of some quiet, reflective time, I spent the last three nights above Boonville, in the Anderson Valley, with my friend Tom in a little rental house. Up on a hill, the house overlooks the entire valley, all the way to the coast. There is nothing else around, no traffic, nothing obstructing the view and there is really nothing to do there except be quiet, read, walk the dogs. It was perfect, although a day or two more would have been better.
Sometimes you can stay at home and relax, do nothing, ignore the dust bunnies, get take-out food and enjoy a few days off that way. I was way past that. Had I simply taken three days off and stayed home, I would have been restless and unable to relax. I don't know why, but I knew enough to get out of town. Being in a different place forces you to have a different routine. It's OK to sleep in. It's OK to not walk the dog four times a day. It's OK to read junky books all day long or watch DVD's or old episodes of "Chopped." We brought up a lot of food and alcohol and we didn't bring much of it back with us. In fact, we brought none of the alcohol home, having consumed it there over the past three evenings.
The place we rented is part of the Sheep Dung Estates properties. We were in the Breezeway, a two bedroom, two bath house with a decent kitchen, living room and a very large fenced yard. Adirondack chairs are perched on the bluff, looking out over the valley. There are two hammocks under the oak tree, perfect for pretending to read while actually napping. The dogs can roam around the yard without fear of encountering the herds of wild boar that are around the area. Connecting one of the bedrooms with the rest of the house is a large, open breezeway where we would sit before dinner and have cocktails, enjoying the warm air and the nice breeze that blew through to keep the temperature moderate. There is a Weber grill which we used every night. It's a good spot, not fancy but the beds are comfy, they have good pillows and each room has its own TV/DVD. Wi-fi and cell phone reception actually are available as well.
It's a 40 minuted drive to the coast, where we went one day and let the dogs run on the beach. Tom and I have perfected the art of not talking a lot. There are no "uncomfortable silences" but there is a lot of silence. Both of us work in the hospitality industry so we are obligated to talk to a lot of people and be nice to them every day. Having a couple of days where we didn't have to talk to anyone except each other (and then only sporadically) was perfect.
Now it's Friday before the big Labor Day holiday, we both are back to work, greeting guests, making breakfast and being nice to strangers. I am grateful for the days off, looking forward to some more once the business slows down, probably around Thanksgiving. The next two months are very busy, there will be little time for solitude and a great deal of being hospitable.
Here is where we were: http://sheepdung.com/top_brtop.htm
And here is a photo of the breezeway, looking over the valley:
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Every town has homeless people, even small, affluent towns. Santa Rosa is not too small and not very affluent and it definitely has its share of homeless folks. Cooper and I walk every morning, usually before 7:00 am. Since we are creatures of habit, we generally walk the same circuit each morning. After months of walking and watching, I now know where many of these homeless people sleep: next to buildings, in doorways, in a corner of a covered walkway near the parking lot, by the church.
The Unitarian Church on Mendocino Avenue has a free breakfast early on Sunday morning and there are always dozens of people there at 7:00, waiting for their eggs and coffee. Most don't pay any attention to me and Cooper as we walk by, their attention is focused on their food. Often I wonder where they get the rest of their meals.
This morning I saw something that hit me as one of the saddest sights in our over-indulgent world. Next to the curb on a side street was a can of corn, plain corn, the lid half-way bent back and a plastic fork sticking out of the can. Was this someone's entire meal? Did some poor person pry open a can of cold corn, sit there on the curb and eat it for dinner? That's it? And where did the can come from? Some food box, or was it found in a garbage can?
While someone sat there, eating from a can of corn, I sat in my small house eating whatever I wanted, a fat, over-fed woman who turns her nose up at canned corn. Where is the justice in that? It simply struck me as incredibly sad.
Ah, yes, not to belabor the issue but it reinforces, once again, the vagaries of life, the unfairness of the world and, at the same time, the luck most of us have had. Were we to have been born in another time and place, we could be the person sitting on the curb, eating out of a can. Makes you really appreciate whatever grace got you to where you are now.
Be kind. Share. Give, give, give.
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My current mantra these days is "Be Kind." In other words, just be nice to people. Let them go first at the stop sign, smile and wave when people smile at you, don't scowl, don't be grumpy. If everyone was kind, the world would be a nicer place, less hostile, less angry. Well, at least that's the theory.
However, my attempt at random kindness has been a failed attempt most days. I won't quit the new regime but I am beginning to realize that my kindness isn't going to make a bit of difference in this crazy world. Take today, for example. Just on the drive from Santa Rosa to Healdsburg this afternoon I encountered several acts of down-right mean behavior. There are two lanes for non-carpool drivers. There are two cars, one in each of those lanes, driving ten miles under the speed limit, both side by side, ignoring the increasing back-up behind each of them. Do people never look in their rear view mirrors anymore? Can they not see that they are blocking traffic? Guess not.
At the grocery store, where there are many places to put your grocery cart once you have emptied it, why do people still leave their cart right in the middle of a parking space? If you have the power to push that cart to your car, you most certainly have a little more power to push it to the cart corral, just another ten feet away. And at that same grocery store, if I am slowly pulling out of my parking space, why is it that people ignore my car and zip around me or stop three feet from my car, thus forcing me to pull back into the parking space and wait for them to either park or drive down the aisle? What does this gain anyone?
At the post office, after waiting in line for several minutes, as soon as it was my turn the postal clerk puts the "Closed" sign on his station and walks away. I realize that perhaps he had to use the bathroom or needed a break, but he could have said something like "Sorry, I just need to close for a few minutes." But no, nothing. It was as if I was invisible.
The gas station was the final straw. I pull in, see a spot, maneuver around an aisle and just as I am beginning to pull into the spot to get gas, a guy comes from the other side and takes that spot! OK, he's a jerk, I get that. So I turn around and start to back into another spot, clearly aiming for the gas pumps when a woman zips right in, taking my place at the pump. She knew I was angling for that pump, she just got there first. That was it, I lost my temper. In the privacy of my own car, with the windows up (AC on) I totally swore at her and I hope she could read my lips. The F word is easy to lip-read. Especially when a person says it about ten times.
Oh, yes, I will continue my quest for kindness and I will try not to become jaded or cynical (HA!) or grouchy. If only everyone else would play along, it would be so much easier.
Sigh.
Don't worry, no spoilers here, just a short paragraph. I rarely see movies the week they come out, there are usually too many crowds for me. But Steve convinced me to go and lo! and behold! no crowd!
It's a good action movie. There is the requisite long chase scene with cars and buses and motorcycles. There is a great deal of talk about stuff that seems rather obscure but you don't really have to follow it. A lot of the dialogue seems meant to delineate the bad guys from the good guys, so as long as you get who's who, you're OK. I liked Matt Damon better than Jeffrey Renner, but Renner isn't trying to be Jason Bourne, just a Bourne-like clone-ish guy. (I could say a born-again, clownish guy but that wouldn't be fair and not relevant but I had to throw it in there.) For a Saturday afternoon, it's worth watching.
See, no spoilers.
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On Friday nights I normally don't get home until 6:30 at the earliest which is too late to start making dinner, especially since I must maintain the Friday Night Cocktail tradition that I started dozens of years ago with my friend Tom. Tom may not continue this tradition but I do. So, by the time I get home, make the cocktail and then drink it, it is much too late to do big dinner prep. That's where the grilled cheese sandwich comes into play. Tonight: gruyere, thin ham and fresh tomato on really good bread. Yum....
Grilled cheese. The perfect quick meal. Most of us can agree on that. However, I was reading some food thing today, some health column, and they wrote about a grilled turkey-cheddar-apple sammie. They made it sound really "new" and nontraditional. Yeah, whatever. Apples in grilled cheese, how long has that been going on? There is nothing new there, but I appreciated the promoting of the grilled cheese.
But the clincher for me, the really obvious detail that made me know that they (whoever "they" are) had no idea of what they were talking about was this: "... grill in a pan over medium heat for two minutes per side."
Two minutes per side for a sandwich that, in the photo, had at least an inch of filling? Meat, cheese and whatever. Two minutes? You must be kidding. The bread doesn't even get hot in two minutes, not to mention melting the cheese in two minutes. Well, of course, you can crank that heat up and at medium temp (which is mercurial at best) get the bread nice and brown on each side and the ingredients inside are barely tepid. No melting of cheese happening there.
That's the thing about grilled cheese sammies. Like scrambled eggs ** grilled cheese needs to be slow and low. Use whatever bread or cheese or anything else, but you have to use low heat to get all the stuff hot and you need to cook it slowly. You need to turn it a time or two for the same reason. You need to have some oil or butter on the bread to get that toasty goodness. Perhaps if you use skinny white bread and American cheese (gasp!) it can be finished in a couple of minutes but not if you put good stuff inside. Ham, cheese, tomato, green onion, chicken, left over steak...... the possibilities are endless. A smear of mayonnaise on the inside is always a good thing but not always necessary. (Hmm. To me it is.) But even just ordinary cheese on good bread and nothing much more than that will give you a satisfactory grilled cheese sammie. A quick grind of pepper on top of the cheese will make it a dozen times better.
I could go on but this is not a cooking blog so I won't. Rest assured that a good grilled cheese sandwich means cheese is melted, a little runny. Everything inside is hot. Bread is toasty, golden brown. It should rest a minute before you cut it. And then: goodness. On good bread, with decent cheese and a slice of tomato, a little mayo inside... well, let's just say that I was surprised when my daughter-in-law Annie, a petite, smart, discerning food woman once said "yes, please" to the query of "do you want another one?" It was a sandwich of simple cheddar cheese, a thin slice of tomato on honey-wheatberry bread. Nothing fancy, but it was the first grilled cheese sammie I had made for her and she loved it. Just saying, keep it simple, keep it slow and let it do its thing and it will reward you with deliciousness.
It should, of course, look close to this:
Go forth and grill a cheese sammie. Don't blame me if you get addicted to their goodness and to their simplicity.
** thanks for the compliment on my eggs last Sunday, Jenn!
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In 2002 on one random afternoon, I met my daughter in San Rafael at Book Passage bookstore for coffee and a chat. I am not sure where she was living at that time, could have been Utah, could have been SF, but we needed a place in the middle to talk. And we did. And we realized that we also had time to see a movie. Whipping out the current Pacific Sun (which is now, sadly, gone) we checked movie times and dashed into San Rafael proper to the Rafael theater to see "Heaven." As I recall, I had read some good things about the movie but we really went in blind.
We came out of the theater almost speechless with awe. (If you know me and Jenn in even the smallest, slightest way, you know that is rather remarkable.) The movie is almost perfect in its encrypted and yet obvious allegorical poetic, realistic, human drama. All those adjectives in that last sentence do not do it justice. It is an enigma but at the same time so "in your face" that at the end you just want to watch it all over again, from the beginning. It sort of ends right where it began (another allegory, or metaphor, not sure which) and yet it encompasses everything, from death to life, to love, through understanding and deceit and on to possible salvation or possible annihilation .... and so much in between.
It is, in the end, a movie about hope and love, justice and the honest belief in justice, life and faith, and I wish I could figure out all the allegories and the metaphors. See it, it is on Netfix streaming, obviously on DVD. It starts out in Italian but goes to English, so don't let that put you off if you hate foreign films. Cate Blanchett and Giovanni Ribisi (first movie I remember him in and he looks like an angel) are wonderful. Do yourself a favor and check it out. When you are ready to watch it, you need to actually pay attention to it. It's not a movie to have on while you clean the house. It is much too subtle and too intense. "Heaven" is a beautiful movie.
Two thumbs up.
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The Memorial for my most excellent friend Martha was this past Saturday, August 11, at St. Ignatius Church on Parker. Beautiful church, it once was the largest church west of the Mississippi. The Memorial was lovely. Sad, happy, heartfelt. People laughed, they cried, they connected. About ten people spoke about Martha and her influence on them and on the world. Some prayers were said, God was invoked, ashes were blessed. There were some stellar moments, some surprises, some great food for thought.
We then went to Gabe and Annie's house for an after-memorial gathering, a wake of sorts, especially since Martha was mostly Irish and the Irish (and Italians) have that tradition of gathering and eating and drinking. Everyone did both. We told stories, learned more about each other, had tons of delicious food (thanks to me and Jenn and my friend Pat and Gabe and Annie) and even more delicious wine. It went on for a long time, too long actually, but that's OK.
Now that it's over, I feel much better, like a load of heavy, wet newspapers has been lifted off my shoulders. Not that there was a lot of "closure," to use an oft repeated word, but at least it's finished, all the planning is over and the healing from the wounds of sudden tragedy can really begin. In all darkness there is the possibility of lightness occurring and some glimmers of that seem relatively close, at least for me. I can't speak for my brother Steve, who has the greatest loss to endure. I only hope it gets easier for him and I know it will take a long time for that to happen.
Martha was extraordinary, not because she died but because she lived. It's too bad we don't appreciate the extraordinary people in our lives when they are here. We should. If Martha was anywhere near us on Saturday, she had to be laughing, she had to be happy that we all love her so much. And always will.
Today was the first day in weeks that I didn't have to be at the inn to make breakfast so I was looking forward to actually sleeping in past 6:15. At 5:57 the garage door, which is right next to my bed, was thrown open, waking me up. Seconds later the washing machine in that garage was turned on. Now, that washing machine is about 12 inches from my pillow and that is NOT conducive to sleeping in. Not to mention that being jolted out of sleep is not conducive to falling back asleep. I bolted up, and swore, loudly. I reached for the window shade, pulled it up and yelled out the open window "Can you please wait and do laundry later?" My question was greeted with "Huh?" Again, I asked "Can you please do laundry later, this is the only day I don't have to get up at 6:00." The response was "Oh, OK."
Sigh. Now fully awake, I toyed with the idea of just getting out of bed and getting on with the day. But I didn't. I stayed in bed for another hour, not really sleeping but not really awake either. Too bad, I was looking forward to waking when my body wanted, not when the forces around me insisted. It appears that next week there is a morning that doesn't require me to be at the inn (unless more bookings come in) so I will be prepared, I will leave a note on the garage and ask them to please do laundry later.
In all fairness, the youngsters in the front house don't normally do laundry at 5:57. Just today. Oh well.
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At the end of this week my lovely daughter will be in California and that will make everything all better. I am in serious need of a kid fix, so having her and Gabe in the same place at the same time will cure that need. Hurray!
The memorial for Martha is this coming Saturday. Who knew there was so much to do? Not only shopping and cooking food for 100 people, figuring out what to eat and drink and where these people will all fit, but designing and getting printed all sorts of stuff for the service. My mind is on over-drive, just whizzing around, trying to remember things and not succeeding all the time. Need to get this thing, can't forget that thing, must tend to that need, must look up some other thing....... and at the same time working seven days a week at the inn. I wake up in the middle of the night makings lists of things that I then forget when I get out of bed in the morning. Ah, it will all be over soon.
I'm not complaining, mind you, just a little overloaded. People say "is there anything I can do to help?" and I wish I could say "yes, you can take this list here and do everything on it and then call me when you are finished and thank you so much!" But with a few friends and my kids at the end of the week, we will punch it out, get it all done and if 50 people show up for the after memorial reception, we will have lots of leftovers. If 80 show up, we will have plenty of food. If it gets over 100, well, when the food is gone, it's gone. We can send someone to the market for bags of Pepperidge Farm Goldfish crackers and call it good.
OK, it's time for Cooper to have his pre-dinner stroll. Sometimes, yes, he is the boss of me.
I took the dog for a thirty minute walk this morning and I found a $5 bill! If that isn't a good sign, I don't know what is. It would have been an even better sign if it had been a $20 or $100 bill but I am willing to start small, to accept the small signs and hope for bigger ones along the way.
At the inn now, waiting to make breakfast for guests and then I have a meeting with the bosses later this morning. How exciting is that! Perhaps a commendation is in store for me! Perhaps not. But it's something different than my normal day so I am accepting it as another good sign until proven otherwise.
Finally, I might have dinner with my pal Tom this evening and that would be another good thing. But I might not have dinner with him and that would be OK too. If that's the case, then I will walk into Santa Rosa and check out the Wednesday Farmer's Market and Street Fair that happens in the summer. So no matter which way the chips fall, my evening will be eventful.
Good things. Small things. We have to take pleasure in all of them. Sunshine or rain, baked or fried, opened or closed. As Gabe said, "...the roller coaster continues, but how else are we supposed to enjoy the view."
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