Foods

Do you ever wonder how in the world people got the idea to eat a thing? Take butternut squash. These are enormous. Maybe 14 inches, nearly impenetrable skin that you have to peel. There is no peeling with this thing. You hack at it until it comes off in chunks, hopefully with not too much of the squash underneath. Then you have to cut it into smaller pieces (this stuff could be used as an adobe substitute), depending on how you are preparing it.

Then there’s artichokes. People love these! I’ve had the so-called hearts in salad, for me they are bitter and fibrous, tough. But I understand a popular way to eat them is to roast the whole choke in the oven till it is softened (?), then serve it with melted butter. You dip the fleshy end of the leaf into the butter and scrape it off with your teeth. When my mother told me this I laughed till I hurt.

Then there’s tropical fruit, like cherimoya or dragon fruit. I wonder how long people thought these were poisonous before they tried it and found out how good it really is. Except cherimoya seeds really are poisonous. So are apple seeds, they have arsenic. I guess a person would have to eat a lot at one time though to do any harm, but dogs that like apples (my husky-mix rescue dog Lily) can’t eat the seeds at all.

Did broccoli or cauliflower or cabbage just grow or were they cultivated? And how do they get that sulfuric component that smells so bad when you steam them? Brussells sprouts are really pretty growing on their stalk but who found these? Were they found in Belgium?

(not my photo)

So I guess I could do research on what plants are indigenous to where and how they came to be, but just look at all the foods in the produce section sometime– star fruit, ugli fruit (like an orange but it looks like a fruit gone very bad), acorn squash which actually does look like a huge acorn without the cap.

Aside from vegetables fish and seafood are another whole area that must have been strange to learn how to eat. I still cannot bring myself to try eel, and octopus I understand just gets bigger in your mouth the more you chew it. Shrimp? If I’d seen this thing alive swimming I doubt I’d have ever tried one. Squid (calimari) is probably fried to the point that whatever is chewy is just completely broken down and it is edible. But lobster? Crabs? Someone must have had to be very hungry to get around those claws the first few times, then found (to some) it is such a delicacy. But puffer fish. Guess you have to be pretty brave to go after that one. Clams, oysters, mussels — thankfully a genius discovered steam would open these, except with some effort and (now) the proper knife oysters aren’t such a problem. Unless there is no “r” in the month you eat them.

The trial-and-error thing early people had to use to find what foods they could eat and what foods would kill them must have been terrifying.

Thank goodness somebody got brave and ate a tomato.

Labyrinth

This is not the same thing as a maze. A maze is an external challenge– can you remember where the dead-ends were in order to find your way back out again. A labyrinth is an internal challenge.

 

As you wend your way through the measured turns of concentricity, you unburden yourself of whatever hindrances block your heart. You reach the center. You have wound your way through the intricacies, the eccentricities, the encumbrances to the essence of you. There is clarity here, and stillness. As you gather these thoughts to begin your return journey you have freedom, a peace.

Some labyrinths are outlined by concrete walls, or patterns on the ground, or small hedges. The labyrinth I walked was planted in wildflowers. It was early morning, before 7, and a heavy dew had fallen during the night…

   

This labyrinth is at a conference center in a small Abbey in rural South Carolina. There is not much interfering noise, only the songs of cicadas, crickets, and far enough from the Cooper River so as not to hear early fishermen on their forays out for the day, just flowers, fox tail, ornamental grasses, the odd dragonfly

     

Beauty.

Layers

Some of us spend our whole lives putting them on only to find at the end of things we never saw what’s true because we couldn’t see through everything we piled on ourselves. Or what we saw was too skewed to perceive reality. Some layers are coping mechanisms, when we’re children for instance. We don’t want to get in trouble so we show polite faces to grown ups and appear agreeable even when it isn’t what we want. Sometimes these mechanisms are unhealthy like when we should be protecting ourselves but in order to prevent someone else’s anger we pretend. Or we use them to manipulate.

I was never very good at this and the older I get the more outspoken and tactless I seem to be. Well maybe not completely tactless, I do care about not hurting others’ feelings, but sometimes my outspokenness gets me into trouble. It happened at work once when a coworker who loved to boss people around (with no authority to do so) got her hooks in me once too many times and I sling-shotted back. That resulted in a session with our supervisor and, even though we smiled and shook hands and she said apology accepted, I received the cold-shoulder from this woman for the duration of my tenure at this particular workplace.

This kind of thing serves no useful purpose in my mind. Had it been me I would have found some level on which to function with her, not shut her out. All that did was feed the gossip and rumor mills about both of us, our competence or lack thereof and immaturity. It escalated the problem and created an obstructive distraction for others in the department.

It was only at a memorial dinner for my father that she, now long since a former coworker, and whose husband had been a close personal friend of Dad’s, chose to erase the memory. Once more, when greeting her at the dinner I spoke of how sad I was because of my outburst and how inappropriate I knew it to have been and thanked her for joining her husband to honor my dad. She pooh-poohed my concerns leaving me rebuffed yet again.

Well, I did feel some better. I may not completely forget things but I have never been one to hold a grudge. Life can’t happen spontaneously or naturally for those who do I would imagine. You’d keep having to work and rework around that grudge to fan its flames. Which makes one’s life pretty cumbersome and unbalanced. Not to mention hard to keep track of all those subplots.

Too much work.

I guess it’s easy to pontificate now that I am retired. I have peeled off all the work-related layers, those that I chose to carry while I worked. This may well be why I relish being alone, but so far most others I meet, even those retired as I am seem to choose to stay in their costumes, removing and applying them as they see fit to pursue their self-imposed carnival or theater. It must be absolutely exhausting for them!

Not me. Like I said, too much work.

One week

Somewhere I got lost in a readjustment. This week was at least a month long. It used to be that way whenever not much was going on. Boredom stretches days into little eternities but this week was filled with all sorts of things, some planned some not yet instead of speeding by it seems as if it’s been forever since I last did laundry, even though a sock count assures me it was only 6 days.

My rescue dogs, husky-mix Lily and terrier-mix Lulu have no idea what I’m talking about.

I can leave for a 40-minute bike ride and get a greeting as though I’d abandoned them with no food, water or outside relief for weeks. Yet I can go out with friends for lunch or do some volunteering at the library or plant clinic and barely get a notice when I walk in the door.

Well, not exactly, basically it’s the same welcome, but the backdoor rug isn’t as likely to be balled up for a 3 or 4 hour absence as it is for a half an hour.

I wonder what I’d see if I installed security cameras. I don’t have a smart phone so I can’t watch them until I get home. My brother and his family have put a camera on the front of their house so they can see not only the front door but the side door and the driveway. I know this because they showed me a notification from their phone where the UPS guy was filmed bringing a package. I guess they have to call someone to go get the package so it doesn’t just sit there. They can also talk to the guy through their phone. They joked about putting one in the house near their dogs’ crates, but I talked them out of it. How cruel! Talking to the dogs like invisible people. They’d go nuts looking for them.

So Lily and Lulu. Do they go from door to window, all over the house? Do they just wait at whatever door they think I will come through until I do come back? Sometimes I go out the back door and come home through the garage. They are usually waiting for me there, not at the door I left from.

Smart.

The house I moved from I’d had a puppy door installed on the back kitchen door. The yard was fenced in which meant nothing to escape-artist Lily, but even if she escaped the fence she didn’t go anywhere. Sometimes she’d wander across the street to visit the neighbors but generally she just hung out at the front door. This is how I knew she’d got out.

Here, though, the back door is wood-framed glass and goes out to a sun porch. So I’d need 2 puppy doors, or just leave the sun porch door open. Some neighbors had a puppy door custom made and brought theirs to me when they moved because they didn’t want to sell their house with it for some reason and thought I might like to have it. Thoughtful of them but something happened when they removed it and the frame basically was in pieces so for me it was unusable. But I’m not away so much that they’d need a puppy door anyway. Except when the neighbor dogs go outside, then Lulu likes to go to the fence and raise all kinds of noise telling them they’d better not try to go over to her yard.

Still, I’d rather be here than go someplace and spend the whole time worrying about them.

Time

Before I retired when I worked every day there was never enough time. As a single parent I divided time the best way I could but nothing ever seemed to have enough of my attention for me to feel it was fully redeemed. I am certain this is not a peculiarity to me. All the stuff that has to be done… laundry, cleaning, cooking, budgets, school, work, and then somehow play gets left till last.

Not fair.

Play needs to be an integral part of life. Not to the exclusion of other important things but as important. Playing gives more room. More breathing space. Makes time stand still.

This past week I truly enjoyed 4 days with my brother and his family. Unfortunately my son did not join us, but we had that many days of incredibly pretty weather– sun, soft, puffy clouds, sparkling ocean and bright blue sky. The International Space Station even made an appearance a couple of nights for a few minutes.

I love mornings at the ocean….

look to the west and there’s this, just where the moon has set–

and you meet the most interesting characters….

or others, not quite so frightened but part of the peaceful beauty of the sunrise-

 

Time. Everything else is so still no matter how much time passes. Thank you.

 

Separation anxiety

webmd.com defines this on a broad spectrum for dogs: anything from pacing to panting anxiously, barking, howling or chewing, to  escaping (or gnawing on their own feet– my experience with a border collie).

For me it begins as soon as I take my babies to be boarded. Oh, I’m sure they are just fine. They have an air conditioned run, scheduled playtime with other new friends, regular feeding times, their bed and blanket.

I am the one with separation anxiety. For me this runs from crying, to guilt, worry, anger that I took them before I actually needed to take them as though I could not wait to be rid of them, and then there is the not with them emptiness. Something dire is missing. The life around my ankles has suddenly gone still.

So I begin counting minutes until I will see them again. This might be allayed somewhat once I get to whatever place of doom that won’t allow me to bring them, or not. It’s not incumbent upon anyone with whom I will be while away to alleviate this stress for me, either, but the fact remains I will have some degree of stress until I am reunited with these babies.

I don’t go away often. This was not a trip I actually intended to make. It’s a trip I have taken with my brother and his family, occasionally my son joined the party, for about 7 or 8 years. Last year after my little Murphy died I worried so much about rescue dog Lily I found a cottage up the beach from where they stayed that would allow me to bring her. In fact, they allow 2 dogs so I could have even stayed there and brought Lily and her new little rescue sister Lulu. But time got away from me this year and I did not have a space anywhere so decided it was just as well and I would not go at all. That is until my sister-in-law checked this place’s reservations availability and found part of their week open. So I was confirmed into that reservation.

But I did not have to take Lily and Lulu to their boarding facility until 4. So why did I take them at noon?? Where I am staying has set meal times. The evening meal is at 6. It takes roughly 2 to 2 and 1/2 hours to drive to the place and the doggie inn is open Saturdays from 8-noon, then 4-6. I had made my reservation to arrive for the supper meal but I didn’t have to! I could have changed it, it’s not like I can’t miss a meal.

Because of all this stress, whether I know it now or not I will be glad to see my brother and his family. I only see them otherwise once a year so it’s important to me. For that I am grateful to my sister-in-law for spotting a space. My son is detained by work so I will not get to see him.

But those dogs! And when we were almost to where they are staying Lulu nearly jumped out the window! I yelled and scared her to pieces. When we got there I hugged her and told her I was sorry, what a good girl she is and petted her. She seemed to feel better but I didn’t. Some decisions I make I will never understand. So I am sitting here, by myself right now writing this blog feeling completely empty inside. Seriously! They are that big a part of me. I will miss those little bundles until I return home. I hope they will forgive me!

 

Finicky eaters

When I was young I had a thyroid imbalance. Hyper actually, so much so that my mom told doctors she thought I was having seizures. No idea how she got seizure out of hyperkinetic (maybe hyperkinetic hadn’t been thought of then), but nevertheless the doctors believed her (no one really ever disbelieved my formidable Mother), so they prescribed what was then an experimental drug for epilepsy.

It nearly killed me.

After my severe reaction which included hospitalization with a very high fever, terrible rash and blisters all over me the size of box turtles which later burst and the skin on my entire body peeled it was determined I was not epileptic. Warned that unless I wanted instant death I must never take even one dose of that medicine (why would I), the doctors still had no idea what the problem was. I was happy because, at 5 feet 7 inches I weighed a lithe 115 pounds. Mainly because I had no appetite for anything much except what causes everyone else to pack on the pounds: potato chips, cookies, ice cream. I had a wonder metabolism.

Mother did everything she could to interest me in good food, especially breakfast foods: she made scrambled eggs sound wonderful. She plied me with cinnamon toast and crispy French toast dripping with butter and syrup. She offered any sort of cereal brand I would eat. I was having none of it. So she caved and said whatever I would eat for breakfast she would let me eat.

This included vegetable soup and ice cream.

Ultimately this fantasy life didn’t last and my poor little thyroid gave out, underproducing but it took a specialist friend Mother had in New York city to diagnose it. Then endocrinologists which helped put the thing back in balance.

All well and good, but what do I do with 2 dogs with very different eating habits? Husky-mix rescue dog Lily eats everything in sight, and retains it. No thyroid problem for her, she just stays stocky. New little terrier-mix rescue dog Lulu won’t eat for days. Especially not in thunder storms, or anything that sounds like one. Since I live where I do there are 2 large army bases nearby and we often get F-15s on flyovers, or Air Force 2 doing touch-and-gos with the fighter jets clearing airspace before and after. Then there are the military helicopters.

Lulu did eat well when we first adopted her. I would put her bowl down and she’d clean it about as fast as sister Lily. Then she wasn’t so interested, so I dressed it up with Parmesan cheese. She soon bored of that so I added some chicken broth. No good after a couple of days so I switched to shredded cheddar cheese. Now pretty much nothing but stark hunger works. So I look at Lulu wistfully watching Lily wolf down her bowl of food, snubbing her own. And I wrap it up waiting for a time when she is hungry enough to eat it. But Lulu loves rotisserie chicken, only right after I bring it home from the store. If it’s been in the refrigerator a day or two, no good.

I am out of ideas.

“Now, where did I hide that rawhide bone…. ”

 

 

Fledge

It looked just like a fallen pine cone or a leaf, or a piece of bark off a tree.

I slowed my bicycle because often things are never as they seem.

A tiny puff of grey feathers turned its carrot billed head just as I passed. So I stopped. It was a dangerous place for a tiny fledgeling. The edge of a busy asphalt pathway around a sparkling blue pond. It was early yet, but curiosity would get the best of some would-be fishers of the under-12 variety on this catch-and-release lake.

So I parked my bike and walked slowly back to where the little birdlet still sat, waiting for parental assistance. As I got closer two very disturbed cardinal parents swooped beside me. Warning shot across my bow, no doubt. I assured them in human words I meant no harm but that did not convince them. Holding both hands, palms out toward the little bird I moved slowly closer to encourage it to go back into the safer undergrowth, praying for no snakes. It lifted like a butterfly and fluttered forward an inch or two.

Both parents now watching a safe distance, still chirruping to assure their tiny one they were close enough.

I moved again toward the feather pile, again it responded, this time hanging a wing over a blade of grass, quickly adjusting so it was on more solid footing. The parents moved in closer, I walked back to my bicycle to continue my ride.

Cardinals mate for life and are devoted to their offspring. If something fatal happens to one or both parents a literal village of the bright red birds moves in to help raise the orphans. They are territorial but only in habitat, not combatively.

Another blogger I followed used to say that if your parents have passed on and you see a cardinal near you it is a parent watching over you.

Lovely to think so.

When my ex-husband and I separated I lived with my parents for a few weeks. Seemed to make sense since I’d gone back to work at my dad’s company, but one evening before dinner Mother, Dad and I were sitting in the den. Still reeling from trying to accept that my happily-ever-after had turned into an extra-marital nightmare I heard my dad casually say to Mom, “Don’t eagles kick their young out of the nest?”

So human fledging isn’t always as genteel as cardinal fledging I guess. At any rate Mother and I pored over the classified ads for a condo, which we found, to my lawyer’s disapproval. Had to be. My parents were ready for their chick to leave the nest. Again.

I continued working for my dad for a few years, and my son and I lived in the condo Mom and I found for 15 years after. I suppose Dad felt somewhat chagrined because all those years later he generously helped me purchase the first house I ever owned and lived in on my own. Well, with my son of course but he was soon bound for college and life on his own.

So eaglets, even human ones bounced out of the nest do survive. And thrive.

Bees, bicycles and banalities

Sometimes the mundane takes precedence in life. Sometimes we are so sure seeking mountaintop experiences is the end-all and be-all we are struck dumb when we tumble back down to earth.

I am, anyway.

Not that I was on a spectacularly high mountain but at my age anything much above sea level is exciting.

Like finding fewer dust bunnies –a clear indicator that husky-mix rescue dog Lily isn’t shedding as much. Or mowing the lawn and not having to remow over those strips of lawn I missed when the sweat dripped into my eyes. Or actually getting the tomatoes before the phantom biter takes a chunk out of them overnight. Things like that.

So when the microwave repairman (who is actually a refrigerator repairman) tells me what’s wrong with the microwave, yes he can fix it but no, he doesn’t have the parts and it’s another week before it’s fixed, or the car behind me as I am riding my bicycle gets closer and finally runs me into a mailbox that breaks and I now have to pay for, or the plumber who tells me what is making the toilet run constantly and yes it can be fixed but (again) no he doesn’t have the part, things begin to frustrate me.

It could be worse. It could be the day I cut the grass and ran over the yellow-jacket nest by the driveway. I knew there was one only it was under the crape myrtle last year. Who would guess they would move to newer accommodations? So 2 cans of wasp spray, one at point-blank range took those out but I had no idea how those stings would itch!

I ordered my own parts for the toilet and replaced the problem part only to find it still leaking the next day. So I took it apart and reassembled it again. It isn’t leaking now. Let’s hope this one fixed it.

And my neighbor late on a Friday afternoon when nothing can be done lets me know that the dead limb on my pine tree that hangs over a corner of his yard and has done for many years finally bothers him and it’s time to do something about it. So I left a message with a tree service hoping to get on their schedule sometime in the not-so-distant future to take care of this.

I think now would be a good time for some chocolate.

 

Holding back

There’s a lot to be said for self-control, tact, mincing words, thinking before you speak. The tongue, the Bible tells us, has the power to encourage or destroy. Words have power. Restraint is a sign of a wise person.

I have never had much restraint.

These days I tell others since I hit middle age my filters have worn out. I speak my mind. I am getting better but it’s taking a lot of work. Somehow it seems there is so much that needs to be said and, face it. None of us knows how much time we’ve got.

My son and I used to use movie lines to describe feelings or circumstances in any situation. Something was confusing, we quoted from “Fletch!” (1985 based on Gregory McDonald’s novel), Chevy Chase as Fletch: “Well, there we’re in sort of a grey area.”

His editor: “Ok, how grey?”

Fletch: “Charcoal.”

Or from “The Princess Bride” (1987 William Goldman screenplay), Westley says to Buttercup in the fireswamp: “Well, I wouldn’t want to build a summer home here but the trees are quite lovely.”

Somehow the combination of movie lines from films that made us laugh and not having to use our own words would lighten any situation.

Oliver Platt to Meryl Streep in Carrie Fisher’s “Postcards from the Edge” (1990, novel of the same name): “You’re holding something back…”

Well, sometimes it’s called for. Other times, no. We can’t pull any punches though. We have to air things out. Otherwise the truth stays buried and everybody continues along in a fantasy parallel universe where no one is accountable, nothing matters except what we decide matters, even if it’s not truth. Since we’ve created some sort of reality to accommodate how we want things to be then we make it up as we go along. Like Jim Carrey’s “The Truman Show” (which I never saw… too depressing). Only by the time we run out of imaginary reality discourses and come out of our self-made tunnel we find reality has continued and we may be so out of touch we never catch up. Or get it, or catch on.

So it helps to stay close to truth. It’s essential, actually, for our own sanity.

The hardest part is holding to truth when someone close to you is living a fantasy, even a partial one. For all intents and purposes it looks like reality but it’s so far skewed from your reality that you either have to drop everything you know is truth and real to stay with them, or let it all go, keeping a distant watch to see where things go, or if the fantasy comes to an end. When paradise becomes rotten it’s hard to make it paradise again.

Especially when it’s all in your mind.

So, either have plans B, C, D, ad infinitum, ad nauseum, or be prepared to bite the bullet when it’s over and move on.

If this makes no sense to anybody, it’s ok. Lily and Lulu, my rescue dogs have been following along with me. It’s hard sometimes, to keep up without a score card.