Month: July 2005 (Page 3 of 4)

Right now, the kitchen table is covered with these:

This was taken over the weekend – now there are 4 huge oversized bowls full of tomatoes, plus two cardboard box lids filled as well. Did you know you can pick your tomatoes as soon as they start to change color? The plant/vine is done with them, and you can bring them inside to safely ripen, away from the Evil Squirrel Conspiracy. As soon as the hue gets a tinge of yellow or pink, pick away. The flavor is unchanged, and you don’t lose as much fruit in the wait!

Yesterday morning, I nearly walloped the SuzyDog – she walked right up to the cherry tomato plant we have in a pot at the entrance to the garden, and snacked herself one right off the vine! OOooooOO! Bad dog! Reminded me though of my black lab Oscar when I was growing up – you’d be picking blackberries at the top of the bush, he’d be stripping an entire lower vine – ripe & unripe alike, plus leaves, thorns, whatever – with his teeth to get himself some berries. Goofball.

James has some serious canning adventures ahead of him today!

Before the van rolls up & bundles me away to a recovery program, I am typing out this blog to you, internet world. For it has been a long two days at work, post-vacation, and while the Air Conditioning (broken on Monday) has been fixed, the Email and the Internet have withered and died. Connections were already sketchy, on Monday, when big happy portals like “Yahoo!” wouldn’t load, but Google would search for me, and sometimes things took an inordinant amount of time, but I kept the faith. Kept it burning, like a candle in the wind. Then on Tuesday, it Was. No. More. The Internet and the Email were dead. DEAD! All incoming and all outgoing – a black hole. Bouncing messages, the only communication was internal. INTERNAL! I had to resort to USING A PHONE to work with the outside world.

I would catch myself, thinking, “Oh, I’ll just Google that & get a phone number!” even turning in my chair, poising my curled speedy fingers over the keys. Then the wave of reality crashed into me, much like the waves in Puerto Vallarta, knocking me down into a wake line of sharp shells. The sting of the salt water in those tiny cuts, just like the pain I felt under the realization, “I have no internet.”

Kristin & I spent our lunch hour shopping the aisles of Office Depot. Like heroin addicts seeking methadone. Searching for supplies, something, anything, to give us purpose and direction and focus for the afternoon. I briefly, blindingly considered buying some sort of adaptor for my PDA, to convert it to a wireless computer. I wouldn’t have a clue where to start, it would be like trying to start a meth lab with some sangria, altoids and some Clorox Clean-Up.

By 4:00, the jonesing really kicked in. All my business contacts’ cards had been organized into a binder containing newly-purchased plastic sleeves, grouped by parent company & media type. As someone who normally deals with piles and chaos all the time, I barely could recognize the level of organization in my office. A quick glance in my pocket mirror confirmed it: a wild & crazed look about me, mascara crumbling under my eyes. I had tried out both kinds of the new pens I’d purchased – cheap fix that they were, they were absolutely delightful, Pentel R.S.V.P., and Pilot razor sharp felt tips (all in a wild colors). My new magnetic clips were lined up on my overhead file cabinet, waiting to clutch a project. My new phone call organizer made me happy, but it was a fleeting sort of happiness. Like drinking non-alcoholic beer. A watery, familiar taste without any of the satisfaction. I inspected my PDA, and did not determine any kind of wireless accessibility. I damn near had the shakes: I was looking to score. I left work.

I drove home & went straight to the computer. Oh sweet internet, you are a cruel bitch monkey on my back and don’t ever leave me again. I had a 30-minute window, before I had to leave & get to a knitting class I was teaching. Speed-reading blogs, email, and news – I cut it close, and with all the construction, showed up a few minutes late (walking in with the first student, however!) The second student was 1/2 an hour late, and all I can say is, they had a much calmer teacher than if I’d just driven straight to the classes.

I’m hoping Wednesday will bring us back the internet, at least in the afternoon. I can only imagine how many work emails are waiting for me. If I start to get glassy-eyed, and begin re-sorting all the business cards, I may have to leave & find an internet cafe.

Hey. At least it’s all LEGAL.

Are dog yawns catchy, too?

I submit to you two specific reasons why I believe a conspiracy is being plotted against me on my first day back from vacation:

1. No air conditioning in the office, and
2. Internet access is sporadic and spotty. Blogs? Accessible. Yahoo? No.

I smell a plot, by those who would destroy me, trying to break my spirit! They infiltrated the Ace Hardware over lunch, when I went to buy a fan for Miss K, since she was sweating, too, and I got all the way back here to discover the fan blade was broken.

Now I ask you, and I even called Ace to ask, because it seemed so logical: would you not just accept the broken fan blade, and pull a new one from another box? In my world, when I rule it, you will be able to. But nooooo, not today! I had to take the WHOLE THING back in, even though I was literally just there. So I said “Screw it!” because I was pouring sweat and I had debated on upgrading MY fan to a Vornado, giving the Blue Wind Machine to Kristin, and rather than have to put a fan together, I upgraded, fifteen minutes after buying the cheaper fan. Perhaps the Vornado people are behind the plot.

Well, if they are, they sure make a great fan.

So, it’s ’bout that time again, waving farewell to a week of vacation, over which I accomplished nothing except turning a year older! Woohoo! F the garage and all its contents! F the craft room! F the po-lice (only the ones on motorcycles)! It’s nutters, but I missed work, I missed my daily interactions & brilliant mutterings after I hang up the phone. (“F that stupid sumbitch, whattheHELL?”) But I did enjoy the time off & am already thinking “Self, when we taking more time off?” Guess I’ll have to get some stuff done now, I don’t have the excuse, “I’m on VACATION!”

I did, actually, make one hell of a vat of Sangria last Saturday night. Here’s a picture, in all it’s sparkling glory!

There’s no way to fully recreate it, but here’s what I did:
Started with a bit of simple syrup – about 3/4 cup of water, 1/2 cup sugar, cooked until sugar dissolves & cooled – 4 bottles of cheap red wine – one container raspberry-lemonade concentrate, one can of water – one can of lemon-lime soda – 2/3 bottle peach brandy – huge assortment of cut-up fruit: cherries, oranges, lemons, limes, granny smith apples, peaches, grapes, strawberries – serve very cold over ice, with plenty of fruit & a few pours of lemon-lime soda (for fizz & to lighten it a bit – completely optional). You can add fruit juice, skip the brandy, substitute rum – judging from the 8 bajillion recipes on the internet, there are a LOT of options. If you plan ahead (we didn’t), it’s even better the next day! (The leftovers proved it!)

They are loved dogs, that is for sure. I adore them both, and we take good care of the pooches. Costco has unleashed a whole new line of pet products, including an iron-scroll bed, complete with COIL SPRING MATTRESSES. A raised dog bed bath, capable of supporting 350 pounds, obviously designed by someone who’s never bathed a labrador retriever: I’d love to have the dog fuckin’ ELEVATED so when they inevitably shake, they soak my entire HEAD AND TORSO.

All of that aside, it is a sad day for Polly & Suzy, because I had to break the news to them that they will never get to eat/drink from this:

What is this thing of beauty? Why, it’s the Versace Barocco Pet Bowl, with Gold Leaf Edging – available at Costco.com! It’s porcelain, too, so hopefully your dog’s a delicate, dainty eater. Ours would have it broken within 30 seconds. (That’s the ONLY reason they’re not getting one. Each.)
The Versace Barocco Pet Bowl can be your dog’s diningware, too, for the low, low price of $439.99. Why? Why do they need this? Because the Alpo :tastes: better in Versace.

It should be noted that the price DOES include shipping & handling.

My great-grandmother Hattie (on my Mom’s side) was the only great-grandparent I ever knew. She lived to be 97, never let the sun touch her face, and died a redhead. It took me years to figure out it wasn’t her natural haircolor. When she made dinner rolls, she made 90 at a time. Because if she was going to make one batch, she might as well make three & freeze some. She fed cats outside her back door, every day. Her skin was milky porcelain her whole life, and she never slept in her bed after her husband died. She instead slept on the couch, adjacent to her bedroom. She would wake us up with a warbling “Yoo Hoo!” from the bottom of the stairs, and proceed to feed us a breakfast designed to nourish us for a long day in the fields: oatmeal (with sugar & cream, of course), toast, eggs, bacon, sausage, milk, juice. (Never mind there wasn’t a long day in the fields on our agenda.) I loved going there because I actually didn’t starve, even under the eagle-eye of my mother. When she was 92, she wanted her house painted. Her son & grandsons delayed and put it off, and so she finally propped a ladder up (on the road side of the house) and began to paint. Grandpa (her son) just about had a heart attack when he drove by. Her house was painted within a week.
When she wrote us letters, she would run out of room, and her signature and final thoughts curled up around the side of the paper. She refused to stop driving, and I’ve never seen my father so afraid, when she gunned the car in reverse out of her garage. It still makes me giggle in high hysterics. She put jars of water in her garden to ward off rabbits, so they would “see their shadow” (she meant reflection). She was the bright spot of generous love in a family of hard Danish/Germans who retreated inside themselves, finding it safer to lash out or cut off. She worked hard her whole life, and she loved to watch Lawrence Welk. She made the greatest chocolate chip cookies, EVER. And of course, she made a gazillion dozen at a time.

My favorite, most favorite memory of her was when she came and stayed with us for a week one summer. We were still living in the dome home, and my father had accrued a large pile of fairly expensive, heavy-duty wool socks, that had holes worn into them on the heels. He was going to throw them out, but GGM Hattie would hear nothing of it. They could be darned, and she would teach me how. So up in the oversized loft that was my bedroom, Hattie rocked in the big wicker rocking chair, and I sat at her feet, and I learned how to curl my hand into the sole of the sock, and weave the wool back and forth with my darning needle, restoring the socks to new life. She showed me how to make my woven fabric dense, and we spent hours together, quietly, working on the pile of socks, until they were all done. It was satisfying, it was productive, but most of all, it was something she and I, and she and I alone, had shared together. I was only 11, but it meant so much to me. I remember my father remarking on it later, after she had died, fondly remembering how we’d darned all his socks together, and I realized I had been given such a gift, to share and learn with her, without distraction or interruption.

It’s probably one of the many reasons I love knitting with friends, even when it grows quiet. There is a conviviality of spirit, of focus on the needles, the yarn, the process, the product, and the shared experience. I hope I can give our nieces that same kind of memory and connection to me someday.

I am on vacation this week, it has been quite wonderful, very mellow, but with fun things dotting the calendar, just about every day. I’ve gotten a little bit done, not loads, but again, it’s vacation, and all the other days get spent scurrying & racing so it’s been nice to feel like things are moving more on Jamaican time than BusyBee time.

What does astound me, out there in the world that IS working this week, is just how much people don’t listen. Before I left work, it took me three tries, but I recorded a voicemail greeting that stated I was on vacation & returning on July 11th. They could leave me a voicemail, or if it was hair-on-fire urgent, they could press “0” and talk to the extremely capable & efficient Kristin.

Now, I said I was gonna do it, that-which-violates-the-code-of-vacation, and I have. I have downloaded email remotely & listened to my voicemails. And I am stunned at just how many people leave me a message AS THOUGH I AM IN THE OFFICE and one person even mentioned that they were going to call back and page me. Huh. Wonder how well that worked for them? Fortunately the person who answers our phones is always patient, waiting instead until she is far from the phone to emit a disillusioned, eye-rolling sigh of exasperation. But I was reminded again, of how I will sometimes say to James, “LISTEN WITH YOUR EARS” which with him is more for a humorous effect, but still, it fits in this situation. These people are going so fast, wanting to get everything done whack-a-mole style, go, go go go GO GO GO that they’re not hearing information.

I guess it means everyone could probably use a little slowing down. Even if you don’t think you do, give it a try. Just listen & breathe & let some of it go. Unless you’ve got your hands in someone’s chest cavity, trying to save their life? Most of this stuff you & I do each day is not critical or crucial, we’ve just artificially made it that way, and every year it feels like we crank the ratchet handle just a little tighter, but it doesn’t make life better, it just makes life tighter. It doesn’t mean our work isn’t worthwhile, I just think we’d all do a better job at it if we didn’t have a cell phone in one ear, a work phone in another, one hand typing an email while the other spills Diet Coke all over the desk…..