It's funny, I know exactly who will read this blog and who probably won't. You know who you are. You, like me, love Laurie Colwin. Yes, her novels and stories were very good but her cookbooks..... well, not really cookbooks, more like cooking essays, are the best. Hands down, the best food writing. Ever. All the newcomers that are on the scene now cannot hold a candle to Laurie Colwin.
When I'm in a funk, when I feel like I need "home" even if I am sitting on my own couch, when I need to be soothed, I read some of her essays. I have given her two books, "Home Cooking" and "More Home Cooking" to several brides-to-be but I am not sure any of them really read these books because they are not the "1 tablespoon of this and a half cup of that and 3 jiggers of something else" kind of cook books. They are the kind of books that make you feel like you know what to do in the kitchen. Her books empower you. Her recipes, if you can call them that, are usually so casual as to make you think you came up with the thing all on your own.
So, in the last few days, I have been re-reading Laurie. She wrote for Gourmet Magazine in the 1980 and '90's, a crucial time for me, food-wise. She was reason to buy the friggin magazine, for goodness sake. She spoke to us. She told us to not be afraid, that simple, good food was the thing. We don't need no fancy food, we need good food. She was ahead of her time and she was right.
"There are times in life - usually after a spate of self-indulgence - when one's soul cries out for minimalist food: clean, plain, and non taxing. ... But there are other times, usually in horrible weather, when one longs for straight-forward, savory, down-home food, and lots of it. This is the sort of cooking people call "heartwarming" and there is no doubt about it - it does cheer people up." How can you argue with any of that?
So, to soothe my ragged soul right now, I am reading Laurie Colwin, yet again. If you have these books, put them by your bedside and read a chapter or two (they are short) before you go to bed. If you don't have these books, take them out of the library.... and then buy them. You will want them. They are like an old teddy bear, or a really good pillow. Reliable, worn in, comfortable and so, so useful.
"It always seems to me that cooking is like love. You don't have to be particularly beautiful or very glamorous, or even very exciting to fall in love. You just have to be interested in it. It's the same thing with food. You do not have to be a genius.You don't have to come from a long culinary tradition. You just have to go to a restaurant and eat a hamburger and say "This particular hamburger tastes swell." And then you have to say, "Could you please tell me what you did?" .... And then you say to yourself, "I will now try to do this in my own kitchen." And you do, and you are happy because you learned something and you cooked it and you made it yours and you moved on.
Oh, Laurie, thank you. You left us too soon but we love you so much.
xoxo
.
Friday, September 26, 2014
Sunday, September 21, 2014
More fucking life lessons
I knew if I put a swear word in the title, you would read it. If I just titled it Life Lessons, NO ONE would read it, how boring is that? But these fucking lessons of life, the ones you keep thinking you already learned? I am tired of them. I am tired of yet another one throwing itself at my face like cold water from a cup. Surprising me, yet again, with what I do not know. About anything.
I have nothing specific in mind here, just the crap we have to learn as new things pop up: what kind of diapers to buy for your parent, how to handle that subject delicately, (which always reminds me of the Wicked Witch in the "Wizard of Oz" saying to Dorothy "...these things must be done Delicately....") how to ask for time off when your job has no time off and how to act grateful when you get it,(without pay, of course, but in July that will be remedied, thanks to Gov. Jerry Brown) and how to grow up. That's the big one. We all think, at this age, we are grown up but I don't think that's the case. I don't think you are grown up until you really, really stare your mortality in its friggin face. And when you do that, well, pretty much you are on your way outta here, so what good did that growing up really do?
More fucking life lessons: thinking about not having enough money for retiring, getting that thing in the mail about fecal samples and pooping on the paper and putting some of it on a stick and mailing it in to see if your colon is working well or sabotaging you as you poop (oh, just you wait, youngsters, til that scenario smacks you in the choppers), listening to your knees crack every morning, having friends die, feeling helpless in your continued journey to old age, sharing grief, sharing despair, sharing depression. Simply acknowledging grief, despair and depression are lessons we learn, over and over, and they are new every fucking time.
But there are good life lessons as well, not to sound like a Hallmark commercial, but there is always hope, there is great joy in sort-of-grandkids ("Julie makes the best ribs" said Sam), the loyalty of dogs, a bit of solitude, of silence. Bach. Aaron Copland. Double rye whiskey, which always surprises me, again and again, thankfully. Kindness. Trader Joe's Coffee Ice Cream. The glorious beauty of the sunrise on an empty stretch of road. I could probably go on and on about these good things longer than the bad. And that's good.
So, nothing here that is profound, remarkable or memorable except that life lessons, as fucked as they often are, are also, now and then, lovely.
Sam, I will grill ribs for you any time, any day, just so you know. Just ask.
xoxo
.
I have nothing specific in mind here, just the crap we have to learn as new things pop up: what kind of diapers to buy for your parent, how to handle that subject delicately, (which always reminds me of the Wicked Witch in the "Wizard of Oz" saying to Dorothy "...these things must be done Delicately....") how to ask for time off when your job has no time off and how to act grateful when you get it,(without pay, of course, but in July that will be remedied, thanks to Gov. Jerry Brown) and how to grow up. That's the big one. We all think, at this age, we are grown up but I don't think that's the case. I don't think you are grown up until you really, really stare your mortality in its friggin face. And when you do that, well, pretty much you are on your way outta here, so what good did that growing up really do?
More fucking life lessons: thinking about not having enough money for retiring, getting that thing in the mail about fecal samples and pooping on the paper and putting some of it on a stick and mailing it in to see if your colon is working well or sabotaging you as you poop (oh, just you wait, youngsters, til that scenario smacks you in the choppers), listening to your knees crack every morning, having friends die, feeling helpless in your continued journey to old age, sharing grief, sharing despair, sharing depression. Simply acknowledging grief, despair and depression are lessons we learn, over and over, and they are new every fucking time.
But there are good life lessons as well, not to sound like a Hallmark commercial, but there is always hope, there is great joy in sort-of-grandkids ("Julie makes the best ribs" said Sam), the loyalty of dogs, a bit of solitude, of silence. Bach. Aaron Copland. Double rye whiskey, which always surprises me, again and again, thankfully. Kindness. Trader Joe's Coffee Ice Cream. The glorious beauty of the sunrise on an empty stretch of road. I could probably go on and on about these good things longer than the bad. And that's good.
So, nothing here that is profound, remarkable or memorable except that life lessons, as fucked as they often are, are also, now and then, lovely.
Sam, I will grill ribs for you any time, any day, just so you know. Just ask.
xoxo
.
Saturday, September 20, 2014
Mom, not dead, getting better, but.....
I realize that not many people want to read about my mother, so feel free to skip this. Today she moved back into her little apartment at the retirement home but we are all on high alert to see what happens, how she does. She is very weak but alert. She is cautiously mobile. She does not want to have another small stroke and hopes that if she has another stroke it takes her out. She is realistic. Sort of.
So much is involved in this process.... not just getting her in and out of the hospital and then the rehab place but getting her back into her apartment, finding a care person to help her a couple of hours a day, convincing her that she has to stop, breathe and wait before moving. And so much more, like finding a place for her here in Sonoma County, which is another kind of chore and journey.
But right now she is OK. She is sort of like the Mom we wished we had as kids. (At least Steve and I think that.) She is sweet and funny and self deprecating and sort of nice to be around for an hour or so. We don't know what will happen, but no one does.
If nothing else, this entire experience has made me really think about life, death and the yawning gap in-between. And about getting old and about not wanting to be in a "place" and the conversation I need to have with my kids (and siblings) about my old age scenario and about theirs. I think about my 4 brothers, three who are not married and no kids in the mix. Who are they going to depend on? But then, I don't want to depend on my kids, so maybe they are better off in that regard. And they (we) are not alone; our Baby Boom Generation has so many unmarried, unattached people who are just now starting to contemplate their old age future. It ain't pretty and as we all, all millions of us, get older and older, it will get even less pretty. The smart thing to do would be to buy a big house somewhere cheap, but close to a hospital, and eventually we could all live there, with a live-in nurse. And a kind, old gentleman like Dr. Kevorkian who would supply us with flavorful Kool-Aid. You know what I mean.
On it goes. But hey, every day I thank my lucky stars I don't live in Gaza or in Syria or in parts of Africa. How is it that some get born here, with perks like water, and so many others get born in terror, poverty, fear and crisis? It's the unanswerable question.
.
So much is involved in this process.... not just getting her in and out of the hospital and then the rehab place but getting her back into her apartment, finding a care person to help her a couple of hours a day, convincing her that she has to stop, breathe and wait before moving. And so much more, like finding a place for her here in Sonoma County, which is another kind of chore and journey.
But right now she is OK. She is sort of like the Mom we wished we had as kids. (At least Steve and I think that.) She is sweet and funny and self deprecating and sort of nice to be around for an hour or so. We don't know what will happen, but no one does.
If nothing else, this entire experience has made me really think about life, death and the yawning gap in-between. And about getting old and about not wanting to be in a "place" and the conversation I need to have with my kids (and siblings) about my old age scenario and about theirs. I think about my 4 brothers, three who are not married and no kids in the mix. Who are they going to depend on? But then, I don't want to depend on my kids, so maybe they are better off in that regard. And they (we) are not alone; our Baby Boom Generation has so many unmarried, unattached people who are just now starting to contemplate their old age future. It ain't pretty and as we all, all millions of us, get older and older, it will get even less pretty. The smart thing to do would be to buy a big house somewhere cheap, but close to a hospital, and eventually we could all live there, with a live-in nurse. And a kind, old gentleman like Dr. Kevorkian who would supply us with flavorful Kool-Aid. You know what I mean.
On it goes. But hey, every day I thank my lucky stars I don't live in Gaza or in Syria or in parts of Africa. How is it that some get born here, with perks like water, and so many others get born in terror, poverty, fear and crisis? It's the unanswerable question.
.
Friday, September 12, 2014
Lasering People at the Dentist Office
I visited the dentist today to have a small cavity filled. The doctor warned me that he would be using a laser to remove the decayed part and that it would be incredibly dangerous** but he believed the danger was outweighed by the swiftness of the process and the ease of the procedure. Ease for him, of course. Danger for the patient.
So it was with extreme trepidation that I sat down in the chair. He has new offices, obviously paid for by us, the gullible clients. (He calls us "guests" by the way. HA!) Before I could even ask a simple question like "How dangerous is the laser?" he had a swab with some drug on it jammed between my rotting tooth and my gum. Within a minute my gum and tongue were numb. I still was able to ask about the laser and he assured me that yes, he could totally vaporize anything with the laser. The rotting part of the tooth, the entire tooth if he so desired.
Foolishly, now under the influence of gum and mind-numbing drugs delivered on a Q-tip, I asked "Could you vaporize something bigger?" and he replied "Well, yes. Say you had a friend you didn't like anymore, so not really a friend and you wanted him gone, I could make that happen." He proceeded to tell me that he took appointments for very late at night, like midnight and he had a different dental assistant named Vinnie because the work was just too difficult for the girl assistants and that he had a room in the back, lined with plastic, and he could totally vaporize an entire body!
Of course, by this time, I was laughing out loud, with the swab still sticking out of my mouth, and he gave me some nice, salient details that made me laugh more. With a laser, depending on the size, you can cut through anything. Harken back to the movie "Goldfinger" when Bond, James Bond is tied to a metal table and the laser is inching up that table, dissolving it, getting closer and closer to Bond's junk..... that could actually happen and hey, that was like 50 years ago! So prescient, those Bond movies.
But back to today. After about 5 minutes, he shows me the laser and gets to work. It took about 5 minutes for him to laser out the bad part of the decay and he used a drill-like thing to smooth the edges of the cavity ("lasers don't smooth things out. Yet.") He lasered a little more and then he put in some new filling compound and cemented it in with another laser! I did the biting thing a couple of times and Done! The entire process took maybe 15 minutes (not counting the sucking on the drug lollipop which could have gone on for a while since it was obviously affecting my brain as well and I like that sort of thing) and it did not hurt one teeny bit and involved no needles! No shots! And there wasn't that smell you get when they drill and your tooth goes up in smoke. It was amazingly easy and tidy.
We chatted a few more minutes and when I left, the numbness in my tongue and gum were gone. Very, very impressive, especially for someone who has had probably about 80 trips to the dentist in my lifetime, just for fillings.
Along the way, we talked about lots of other things. This is a smart guy. Very into the science of the body, but not in a Sebastopol way, not all "here's what my urine says today" but just tuned into how the body works and how it changes every day. Plus he's as cute as a box of puppies with really good teeth, which never hurts.
So, laughing out loud in the dentist chair, that hasn't happened in a long time and it was greatly appreciated. And my tooth is whole, happy and lasered! I was going to ask for a discount because I avoided the really garlicky meatballs in my fridge last night for the sake of the dentist, but he made me laugh so much I forgot! Nice work, Laser-Man!
** kidding, he never said anything like that and the laser is totally not dangerous unless you aim it at the wrong thing. Like your knee or the window or a person. Just saying......
.
So it was with extreme trepidation that I sat down in the chair. He has new offices, obviously paid for by us, the gullible clients. (He calls us "guests" by the way. HA!) Before I could even ask a simple question like "How dangerous is the laser?" he had a swab with some drug on it jammed between my rotting tooth and my gum. Within a minute my gum and tongue were numb. I still was able to ask about the laser and he assured me that yes, he could totally vaporize anything with the laser. The rotting part of the tooth, the entire tooth if he so desired.
Foolishly, now under the influence of gum and mind-numbing drugs delivered on a Q-tip, I asked "Could you vaporize something bigger?" and he replied "Well, yes. Say you had a friend you didn't like anymore, so not really a friend and you wanted him gone, I could make that happen." He proceeded to tell me that he took appointments for very late at night, like midnight and he had a different dental assistant named Vinnie because the work was just too difficult for the girl assistants and that he had a room in the back, lined with plastic, and he could totally vaporize an entire body!
Of course, by this time, I was laughing out loud, with the swab still sticking out of my mouth, and he gave me some nice, salient details that made me laugh more. With a laser, depending on the size, you can cut through anything. Harken back to the movie "Goldfinger" when Bond, James Bond is tied to a metal table and the laser is inching up that table, dissolving it, getting closer and closer to Bond's junk..... that could actually happen and hey, that was like 50 years ago! So prescient, those Bond movies.
But back to today. After about 5 minutes, he shows me the laser and gets to work. It took about 5 minutes for him to laser out the bad part of the decay and he used a drill-like thing to smooth the edges of the cavity ("lasers don't smooth things out. Yet.") He lasered a little more and then he put in some new filling compound and cemented it in with another laser! I did the biting thing a couple of times and Done! The entire process took maybe 15 minutes (not counting the sucking on the drug lollipop which could have gone on for a while since it was obviously affecting my brain as well and I like that sort of thing) and it did not hurt one teeny bit and involved no needles! No shots! And there wasn't that smell you get when they drill and your tooth goes up in smoke. It was amazingly easy and tidy.
We chatted a few more minutes and when I left, the numbness in my tongue and gum were gone. Very, very impressive, especially for someone who has had probably about 80 trips to the dentist in my lifetime, just for fillings.
Along the way, we talked about lots of other things. This is a smart guy. Very into the science of the body, but not in a Sebastopol way, not all "here's what my urine says today" but just tuned into how the body works and how it changes every day. Plus he's as cute as a box of puppies with really good teeth, which never hurts.
So, laughing out loud in the dentist chair, that hasn't happened in a long time and it was greatly appreciated. And my tooth is whole, happy and lasered! I was going to ask for a discount because I avoided the really garlicky meatballs in my fridge last night for the sake of the dentist, but he made me laugh so much I forgot! Nice work, Laser-Man!
** kidding, he never said anything like that and the laser is totally not dangerous unless you aim it at the wrong thing. Like your knee or the window or a person. Just saying......
.
Friday, September 5, 2014
Come on, is this our future?
ACK! Since I last spoke to you all, and thank you for gathering here today, nothing much has happened to me except the continuing saga of dealing with my Mom. She turned 94 in the middle of August, fell down, was a bit out of it for a few days, then last week fell down again but might have had a little stroke and a little heart attack, and her kidneys weren't functioning well and she was way, way out of it. Spent a week in the hospital, and we all know how hospitals want to discharge you ASAP. Needless to say, I have put many miles on my car driving out to Carmichael and back, checking on Mom and just being there.
Yesterday I was at the hospital and they decided to discharge her, which means you wait around in the hospital room for the entire day until the EMT guys come and take her the three blocks to the new place, a care facility, for a cost of something like $1000 for that 3 block drive and then you wait around for another 2 hours until they can even talk to you about the Mom person and get her settled into this New Place and then you get an hour reprieve to go out with your sister who has handled the force of this situation for weeks and is so exhausted. You both get some alcohol (oh, thank you chemistry, for fermented products such as wine) combined with food because you have not eaten anything except a banana at 10:00 in the morning.
Then you go back to the New Place and you get to deal with Mom who has no idea what year it is or where she is or how she got there. Which is fine, of course, because that's the easy part and she isn't unhappy about it, just confused, and you put an alarm on her so she will be rescued if she tries to get out of bed in the middle of the night and you try to say "goodnight" to her, which she doesn't understand. Then you leave that place and you go to a nice hotel and check in and get couple of inches of Jack Daniels in a nice hotel glass and sit on your bed and call the brothers and fill them in on the details about Mom, while looking out the large window of that lovely hotel room at the freeway and cars going by and the large flag waving in the breeze and feeling the really cold air-conditioned air blowing on you and thinking that this is the best Jack Daniels you have ever tasted. And you get the best sleep, in that hotel bed with that cold air blowing, that you have had in months. You consider staying in that hotel room for another couple of days, just to sleep. Just to sleep and not dream and be quiet. Just to be quiet and have time to think. Or not think, because the thinking makes you sad and you then think that you do NOT want this to happen to you but what control over all of this do we have. So you want to stay in that hotel, it feels safe and far away from those thoughts.
But you don't. You go back to the New Place, see Mom again in the morning, again with just a banana as breakfast, and then you drive home.
And do it all over again soon.
I must thank my siblings, especially Kate, for what she has done so far. All siblings are coming up to the plate ready to swing and at least get a base hit or a bunt. No one is sitting on the bench. But it isn't enough, of course. It's wait and see right now, to see what happens with Mom.
If you read this far, thank you.
.
Yesterday I was at the hospital and they decided to discharge her, which means you wait around in the hospital room for the entire day until the EMT guys come and take her the three blocks to the new place, a care facility, for a cost of something like $1000 for that 3 block drive and then you wait around for another 2 hours until they can even talk to you about the Mom person and get her settled into this New Place and then you get an hour reprieve to go out with your sister who has handled the force of this situation for weeks and is so exhausted. You both get some alcohol (oh, thank you chemistry, for fermented products such as wine) combined with food because you have not eaten anything except a banana at 10:00 in the morning.
Then you go back to the New Place and you get to deal with Mom who has no idea what year it is or where she is or how she got there. Which is fine, of course, because that's the easy part and she isn't unhappy about it, just confused, and you put an alarm on her so she will be rescued if she tries to get out of bed in the middle of the night and you try to say "goodnight" to her, which she doesn't understand. Then you leave that place and you go to a nice hotel and check in and get couple of inches of Jack Daniels in a nice hotel glass and sit on your bed and call the brothers and fill them in on the details about Mom, while looking out the large window of that lovely hotel room at the freeway and cars going by and the large flag waving in the breeze and feeling the really cold air-conditioned air blowing on you and thinking that this is the best Jack Daniels you have ever tasted. And you get the best sleep, in that hotel bed with that cold air blowing, that you have had in months. You consider staying in that hotel room for another couple of days, just to sleep. Just to sleep and not dream and be quiet. Just to be quiet and have time to think. Or not think, because the thinking makes you sad and you then think that you do NOT want this to happen to you but what control over all of this do we have. So you want to stay in that hotel, it feels safe and far away from those thoughts.
But you don't. You go back to the New Place, see Mom again in the morning, again with just a banana as breakfast, and then you drive home.
And do it all over again soon.
I must thank my siblings, especially Kate, for what she has done so far. All siblings are coming up to the plate ready to swing and at least get a base hit or a bunt. No one is sitting on the bench. But it isn't enough, of course. It's wait and see right now, to see what happens with Mom.
If you read this far, thank you.
.
Monday, September 1, 2014
Are you awake now?
If anyone reads this, and thank you if you do, it has been a tough week. My level of ennui has reached Mt. Everest proportions. My lack of concern about my hotel job has reached levels way below sea level, like Badwater levels in Death Valley. "I don't care" is my new mantra. I don't care, and in the hospitality industry, that is simply not good.
My Mom is in the hospital again. This time it's pretty serious. Problems with her lungs, heart and kidneys. Not sure what's going on and the doctors aren't sure either. But hey, at 94, things fail. Many things fail at once. I wish she would just stroke out or have a bigger heart attack and die simply. The prognosis isn't good and the long term care options are worse. If that sounds callus, so be it. Putting her in a long term "care facility" sounds a lot worse than dying.
Oh, my Baby Boom Generation compatriots, let's take up the flag and opt for a way out! We are huge, this generation, and we should have some clout. It should be easy to drink the Koolaid at some point, to just fade away when it is appropriate. I do not know one person in the age bracket of 50 - 75 who wants to hang on in a fucking nursing home, having someone run an IV line in, have someone spoon gruel and applesauce into one's mouth, have someone change diapers, have someone prop you up in bed.
More on this a little later.
My Mom is in the hospital again. This time it's pretty serious. Problems with her lungs, heart and kidneys. Not sure what's going on and the doctors aren't sure either. But hey, at 94, things fail. Many things fail at once. I wish she would just stroke out or have a bigger heart attack and die simply. The prognosis isn't good and the long term care options are worse. If that sounds callus, so be it. Putting her in a long term "care facility" sounds a lot worse than dying.
Oh, my Baby Boom Generation compatriots, let's take up the flag and opt for a way out! We are huge, this generation, and we should have some clout. It should be easy to drink the Koolaid at some point, to just fade away when it is appropriate. I do not know one person in the age bracket of 50 - 75 who wants to hang on in a fucking nursing home, having someone run an IV line in, have someone spoon gruel and applesauce into one's mouth, have someone change diapers, have someone prop you up in bed.
More on this a little later.
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