Special Guests

We ate dinner withTaxi-Man, and his family. There is no experience to compare it too, other than being royalty or something, I guess. (names are in code, BTW)

We arrived in Skye's douar (neighborhood) in the evening. It is a long, long drive from Marrakech. She often referred in her blog of taking the taxi drive to a town in Tiznit province, a nearby city-ish type of community, where the internet cafe is, and better shopping. It's like Skye lives in Smoot and this town is Idaho Falls and there is no Afton. We had stopped in there to get a few vegetables, check her mail and do cyber-cafe, and then we headed up into the hills to her home. I'll have to post some photos when we get back home where I can do it better, so it will be hard to describe her house without them. Most houses there are two-story, with the bottom floor being a large garage, or a place where you can put your shop, or your cow. Then you climb the steep cement stairs up and around to the living quarters. Also cement floors--that's why there are so many lovely rugs in all the shops. Skye's house is, ummm...basic. "But," she revels, "I have a faucet! and my toilet flushes." And she does have a refrigerator and sink, also with faucet. Her toilet is a squat toilet--tiled hole in the floor with places where you place your feet and then--well--squat--then you pour the bucket down it and it goes into a cesspool arrangement under the house. It does not smell, but it takes a little getting used to. But it beats the calf pen in the middle of the milking barn!!

We changed into our long skirts--the girls did--and we drove up to Taxi Man's house. We were met in the front by a neighbor boy who was daring enough to greet us, then several other neighbor women and some children greeted me, but immediately evaporated at the sight of Mustach (Cool Guy's new name in Morocco--all the street vendors call this out to him.) We entered the courtyard of Taxi-Man's house and it was the royal treatment from that moment on.

Grandfather met us--hand kissing, bowing, grandma met me (too shy to greet Cool Guy) handkissing, cheek kissing, bowing, asalaam alaykums all around. The mom met us and kissed cheeks, she was brave enough to greet Cool Guy, the 14 year old daughter, met us, we were invited into the kitchen where she was chopping onions for our tajine dinner. Grandpa went to another room to watch t.v.--loud t.v. because he is mostly deaf--the 7 year old son came into the living room with us, and Skye, Cool Guy, me and Taxi-Man sat on pillows and talked. All through this whole scene of greetings, there was the two year old girl like a little whirlwind zipping around, chattering, greeting, hollering, snatching stuff from people--acting like a two year old!! Once she was showing off a pretty scarf (the mom, grandma and daughter all wore an inside head wrap--it covers your hair but not your face) but Whirlwind doesn't wear anything on her curly black hair that was pulled back into little pigtails. But when she dropped the scarf on the floor near me and I picked it up and started arranging it on my head---THAT was the wrong thing to do. She immediately burst into tears and stood by her dad wailing and pointing, "Whirlwind's (some word in Tashelheit I don't know)!!!" It was a crisis till I gave it back. Whew.

I started blowing bubbles (I brought several bottles) and that smoothed things over a bit. Then Skye spoke for me while I gave Whirlwind a stuffed duck, her brother and cousin (a little cousin from the way outback living with them so he can go to school) and the big sister all got zipper bags with a few pencils, pens, and some stickers and a post-it pad in them. Hugely popular!! Especially with the country cousin who Skye loves and says is so shy and loves every little bitty thing anyone gives him because everything is a novelty.

Then, the ladies brought out the party clothes and Cool Guy and I were dressed in the regalia--silver headwear, necklaces, embroidered skirts and veils, etc. etc. Cool Guy mostly got to wear the long man gown called a jalabba. Then we took photos, and Skye explained how this was the normal dress for the endless stream of special holidays and feasts constantly being held. Taxi-Man pointed out that his wife has embroidered all the fancy work on the clothing and it is yet being embellished as the years go by. It's impressive.

We were first served bread from the clay oven with condiments like honey, oil, and a nutty tasting dip from argon oil and ground nuts. Then we were served tajine---a little clay casserole-like dish with a cover. The onions, peas, tomatoes and other flavors are laid in the bottom, then tiny meatballs were put over that and then the heavy lid is put on it and it is placed in the oven to cook. It was very lean and tasty beef. We ate it by scooping up from our section a mouthful with a little chunk of bread. We were offered citron soda (just like Squirt) or Coke. Skye says this was an ultra-special occasion, she's never been served soda at his house. Desert was slices of melon, or oranges and apples that we cut and peeled ourselves. We were paunched. Mom and sister served us but didn't eat with us, only the one brother. The rest were too shy to eat with Cool Guy and Whirlwind had burned herself into the ground like only a two year can, and was in bed asleep.

We ate sitting on our pillows, from a short round table that afterward was cleaned up and stacked back up in the corner on another one like it. They also have a china cabinet piece of furniture in this room, where mom put away all the fancy clothes, and the serving trays. But the rest of the furnishings are carpets, and pillows with pictures on the wall. One of the pictures is a Muslim representation of the lineage of religion, basically. It is a tree, with the root being Adam, then he read us the names as he pointed up the trunk and out onto the branching limbs. Noah, Moses, Abrahim--then it branched off in a fork--Ishmael and Mohammed are on that side and David, Solomon and Jesus are the other side. All the great prophets from which we can all learn.

Taxi-Man spent a lot of time waxing philosophical about religion, world peace, the brotherhood of mankind, what a wonderful daughter we have, what great parents we are, how welcome we are to come to his home anytime, and if he came to America he was likewise welcomed to our home we assured him. He explained that we had no need to ever worry about Skye, he protected her like his own daughter. (And she concurred.)

We also received two lovely gifts: a beautiful silver tray with little ball feet that is very elaborate with designs and cutwork from the duar association whom Skye has been assisting in their quest to build a community sewer system. They got the grant money and it is being built even as we speak--it more of a large soak basin that will last for many many years and prevent sewage from going into the river, which is a source for many to wash clothes, and bath. The "river" is currently a dry bed right now--no rain this year. This makes the sewage drain basin even more critical, because now the sewage just sits there, instead of being washed down the river and diluted. The other gift was shoes for us---the cool red and yellow Moroccan shoes, mine are even embroidered with elaborate colors. My large American feet defeated this gift...but the shoes will stretch Taxi-Man assured me, and I intend to stretch them because they're pretty cool.

Okay, we finally got all of our greetings accomplished and we left, you can see every star in the sky there---no yard lights! We went back to Skye's house, sat up on the roof for a while and admired the stars and heard the dogs howl and slept until we were awakened by the 4:30 A.M. Call to Prayer at the mosque just down the street. Then the street got very busy with donkey carts, and trucks and taxis because Monday is market day there. Only men go to market, BTW, in this little area. And they sit outside along the street and talk loudly, too. The school is just around the corner from her house and the kids were yelling and playing just like kids do everywhere. So foreign and yet so similar. We packed up and headed back out to the city of Essouraira where we are now---about five hour drive from her place. It's on the ocean and tomorrow we'll go up to Casablanca to get on the plane for Spain.

We're shopping and this afternoon we're going to the public baths. Then, later, the French Organic Restaurant for supper. Periodically I do a reality check---Eek! Morocco!! Like last night when we came out of the restaurant: it was dark, we're in the medina (the old walled city) and so all the doorways are arches. We stepped from the lighted restaurant into the cobble-stone alley and a shadow came along the opposing alley and across that doorway passed a women completely obscurred in veils and wraps. She went by quietly and we kept walking through the walled paths until we came to a large blue door, for which we had the key, and went in to climb four flights of steep brick stairs to the little patio where our rooms are, overlooking a battery of cannons from 1760 lining the wall along the edge of the sea. The surf is crashing in thunderous blows and the wind is blowing, but you can see some stars. Way cool---I'm having a good time.

Traveling Through Morocco

We arrived in Casablanca, late--but Skye wasn't alarmed because in Morocco one doesn't try to hurry things along. It only results in frustration. We got a rental car and drove for about three hours to Marrakech. Lots of farmland, lots of sheep, cows (unbelievably skinny cows) decrepid donkeys-just hairy tractors basically. There were some large well-kept compounds: a ten foot wall surrounding the house and gardens and outbuildings, with the two story cistern. There were rundown tiny little houses/compounds. There are many tractors, plus the donkeys--huge loads of hay passed us continually. I was looking at one side of the road, saying "I don't know what that is..." referring to a plant, and Cool Guy said, pointing the other side of the road, "But you know what THOSE are." A field full of bales!!

The countryside is remarkably like the desert southwest in America. Same geology, same plants, similar topography. The highways here are really modern and well maintained, we traveled part of the way on a new super-connector highway. The city of Marrakech is bustling and the streets are a mishmash of scooters, bicycles, donkey carts, overloaded trucks, taxis and the occasional tourist who foolishly thought they could drive here. Actually, Cool Guy is doing an excellent job--he's been in training for this traffic in Tel Aviv, he says. I just sit with clenched teeth and shallow breathing as the Collision Ballet is performed around me. Amazingly--no one hit anyone, no pedestrians were killed or even bumped. I don't know how!!

We're on our way to Skye's house tonight (been driving all day in succession through twins of:
San Joaquin Valley
Southern Utah
Nevada
Southern Idaho--south of Burley on 84 headed to Utah.

Weird how similar the plants, geology etc. is.) You get the reality check with the road signs in Arabic and French, the overloaded taxis, the gendarmes who stopped us to check us out at an intersection and Skye pretended to not understand their French which was basically an invitation to give them a "little something" for our alleged infraction.

I'll write some more in a couple of days. We're out of tourist land mostly here and so people stare. We're eating with Skye's taxi driver's family tonight. He's been texting her all day on her phone for updates of our progress. She texts him back to be patient and relax, we'll be there when we get there...

Our food so far has been totally delicious--of course, most of it was in nice restaurants in Marrakech--Italian one night and Thai another. But we ate lunch in the souk and it was chwarma--a chicken thing in bread and it was yummy. Cool Guy eats it all the time in Israel and was pleased to find it here, too. Lots of juice and fruit--everything room temp. Ice is not a feature of Morocco.

I'm amazed at how much French I understand. And how readily it comes back to me when I try to speak to people. I can make simple sentences, and have no trouble reading menus and road signs and directions. Cool...Although I did explain in French today to our proprietess as we left our lodging that I enjoyed her riad Mucho...duh...instead of bien. But enough Spanish people come there that she knew what I meant.

Au Revoir for now!!

Gift Shopping

I needed a gift for a two year old who lives in Morocco. I have purchased the older kids' gifts: mostly pencils, stickers, art paper. But the two year old needs a gift, and pencils are just not it.

So, I went to a store I frequent where I could also obtain travel-sized wipes, light bulbs, and some new socks, and wandered through the toy section.

Hmmm...nothing with Dora, Princesses, or Barbie. None of them were wearing headscarves. Playdough? No, the child IS two--duh. Nothing with letters or numbers--wrong alphabet. Cutting food? Might be cool, but I'm restricted by the weight and I don't know if some of the items would be recognized as food...

Stuffed toys? Not the pig. Not the puppies. Do they have pets at all? Lamb? I'm not sure. There is a holiday involving the ceremonial death of a sheep--would a stuffed lamb seem sacreligious?

Finally I settled on a plush duck. It is easily recognized as a duck and I can't think of anything I've ever read that would make it tabu in any way.

Whew.

The Ant and the Grasshopper on Vacation

For thirty-two years, 11 months, and 21 days this marriage has survived the blending of methodical versus whatever. Well, maybe it has been more like, "There's no way that the fan structure of the truck will survive the round trip even if we come up with enough money for the gas," versus "We can leave right after it gets dark and then we'll be through the desert by morning and then...[a miracle happens]....and we successful get home safely in two weeks."

It has been ever thus. I optimistically plan some adventure on a wing and a prayer. Cool Guy frets out all the details--many of which are never needed. Sometimes we need the miracle---like the lady at the grocery store in Bishop CA willing to loan me the gas money to get home before Cool Guy deploys with the Marines to the Middle East, because my wallet/checkbook was misplaced under a motel bed in Reno. Sometimes we needed the details fretted over---He buys me new tires, gets me a membership in AAA. And sometimes it's a combination of both:

We were driving up to Wyoming from Southern California in an ancient vehicle (with a rebuilt engine--ta da) and yet, in icky Baker something was messed up. We pulled into the gas station with the service bay doors locked up for the night and, as I waited in the truck with the sleeping children, Cool Guy starts to unload the trailer to get to his tools. This required rolling out the fancy-schmancy Harley chopper he'd carefully built and was taking north for a fun run with the old pals. As I watched this scene through the review mirror, I see the young kid who's manning the all-night gas station admiring the bike, then SITTING ON THE BIKE, (hmmm...what's up with THAT?), then unlocking the service bay doors and wheeling out the welding equipment---oh, I see! So Cool Guy fixed our problem, loaded up the trailer again, and we had a lovely trip after all, visiting the grandmas and running with the biker buddies. I have the faith, he has the skills.

So we're getting ready for the trip to Morocco. I'm packing up colored pencils and sticker pads to bring to Skye's little friends, Cool Guy is discussing my need to pack one set of spare clothing in my purse in the event of my luggage getting lost. See, I never considered for a minute that my luggage might go somewhere than where I'm headed. But, that's why I have Cool Guy as my adviser. And he has me to sooth him with "It's no problem for me to just wear a scarf on my hair for five days" rather than have him scour the town for a plug adapter for my curling iron---no problem. That' why I have this hair---I'm lazy. Yet--he found the correct adapter. I could yet go with the scarf occasionally, there may not be electricity in some of the places we're visiting.

The point is: he brings the "what if" and I bring the "whatever" and together he keeps my stuff from being lost and I keep him from losing the good time. It's been working so far. This trip ends on our 33rd anniversary. But the collaboration won't end for a looooong, loooong time.

But Who's Counting?

There are only three school days until I will get a three week "track break" from my students. We are out of school May 9-May28. Whew. Being a drill sergeant day in and day out is wearing me down. But it seems to be the only effective method for getting them to sit down, clam up, and not talk back.

One week from today, we will arrive in Morocco. (!!) I am excited to see our daughter who is there in Peace Corps. I am nervous about traveling to a country where I am unable to speak the language. This will be the first stamp my passport has received and it is a little daunting. But, I have the experienced traveler Cool Guy to accompany me, and of course, our daughter who has lived there for a year and does speak in the local tongue.

The real challenge is to pack my suitcase so it will hold the clothes I need for a week there (and not a single extra garment) and the gifts I am bringing to her host family and taxi man's family, as well as the little niceties I usually mail to her at the postage cost of double the value of the items. Peanut butter and Doritos are special gifts to the expatriot.

The only one not excited about it is Kitty Cat. She actually knows what those open suitcases mean now.

Swimwear

Swimwear is on my mind because it was 95 degrees yesterday and I went swimming. It was nice getting in the pool and exercising. I love to swim and I love being able to swim just by walking into my back yard.

Which brings me to swimwear. A month ago Cool Guy and I went on a trip which included staying in a motel a couple of nights, but on the road, I realized I'd forgotten to pack a swimsuit. We always hot tub at motels because it feels nice to soak after traveling. So, we stopped off at a clothing store when we reached our destination and I hurried in to find a suitable suit. I now have three swimming suits, but I don't consider this excessive because I actually do swim quite a bit, and if I swim in the morning, then it is nice to get into a dry suit after lunch to swim again. Plus, if you shop at the stores that sell last season's fashions (Marshalls, T.J. Maxx, etc.) then suits are really inexpensive.

So, I picked out several selections to try on and chose one that is really similiar to a suit I have and like--the front has a sort of wrap over, shirred kind of panel that successfully diverts the eye from the fat layers I've grown on my midsection...It had a bra-like thing in it, but I figured I'd just cut it out like I did the other suits I have because, duh! who wants to swim in a bra??

Later that evening as I put on the suit--over my skin, rather than over my undies as is necessary in the store dressing room--I became aware of lots more than a bra---the interior of the suit was entirely involved in some type of corset-like contraption. Cool Guy saw me puzzling over it and he plucked off this tag, attached to the suit. It describes the thing as a "flexible casing" with a "control panel"--it was built right into the suit. The directions (if you can read them) direct the wearer to "roll on your SHAPE DETECTOR like you would a pair of pantyhose". Egads!! Why would I want all of this in a swimsuit?? Torture devices in which to relax?? Maybe someone does want their suit to lift and separate, but mostly I just want my suit to cover me enough that I can go into public without causing some law enforcement activity. I want to be comfortable when I swim, I don't need to be controlled.

CoolGuy got out his multi-purpose Leatherman device and we used the scissors to snip away the entire inner "flexible casing" (trust me--designed to mold the wearer ala keilbasa) and we finally were able to get on our way to the hot tub. My shape was undetectable. No problem.

Fashion Ick

Message to a lady I saw today:
I know that you didn't want panty lines. But when the fabric of your pants is so thin that a person walking behind you can see the shadow of the crack and the two moles on your left cheek...maybe underwear lines wouldn't be so bad.

The Shortest Summer--coming up

I signed the transfer paper yesterday to move to a different elementary school here. It is a nine month school, in a more middle-class part of town. The students have parents who go to work every day and have future plans for their children and send them to school for an education, not expecting that the teacher will have to do EVERYTHING for their child. It will be a relief.

The only downside: my 12 month school ends Aug. 10. My 9 month school starts Aug 21. And there will be no track breaks, just the usual Thanksgiving, Christmas, Spring breaks. So I'll have a really short "summer break". But, it'll still be worth it.

Am I Out-numbered?

I realized today that I have a skewed outlook on life. Since becoming an adult, I've spent the overwhelming majority of my time in the company of children or teens. As a result I just assume that every other adult lives life with the underlying theme of "How does this affect children?" or "I should be setting a good example, I'm the grown-up" or "Watch out how you speak/act because children are here."

I don't know what made me think of it today, but it struck me that the entire reason for Las Vegas to exist is to indulge the fantasy life of adults. This is the city where people come to act badly--on purpose. And do so loudly and proudly and go home with pictures.

Here I am working every day trying to indoctrinate (yes, I'll admit it) young people to act unselfishly toward others, be kind, work hard for the future, develop social responsibility and enjoy intellectual curiosity. But I'm surrounded by a community that exist to facilitate hedonism and debauchery.

Later I realized that I don't have to live in Las Vegas to be working in a place populated largely by adults that don't value most of the things I'm trying to foster in my students. Hmmm...

Free Ice Cream Day

I just came home from spending two hours trying to convince people that Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream really is free today!! Tonight!! Honest!!

Every year B&J choose a day and have "Free Ice Cream Day"---it's a part of their corporate philosophy. If your group is willing to come to the store and help, then they'll donate the tips and donations to your organization. So, during the day, the Air Force volunteers did the dipping and the staff at my school did the work between 4:00 and 8:00. My job (with several others) was to stand out in the walkway there in the mall at Planet Hollywood and guide people into Ben & Jerry's with little cards that announced Free Cone Day.

Whew...people in Vegas are so jaded what with having to fend off the porn-card pushers and the "let me put this lotion on you" people that it is really hard to give away ice cream!

Most people wouldn't even look at you. If they did, half of those folks didn't speak English! (Lot's of foreign tourists here) Then the rest of those who would give you a glance simply didn't believe! "No really," I'd say, pointing at the shop behind me, "It's free ice cream day! They do it every year!"

Many people did get their free ice cream, and the tip jar was filled at the end of the evening. But it made me appreciate my job of convincing nine year-olds to obey me, and that I'm not one of those unlucky guys passing out those annoying call-girl cards on the Strip. It's hard enough to give away ice-cream!

Dinner with the Mayor

We went to a new restaurant last night in our never-ending quest for yummy food...This is a Thai place we'd read rave reviews about and it definitely earns all the lovely things you want to say. Like many Vegas establishments, it has a wall full of autographed photos of the hosts standing next to celebrities. But, last night, we had our own chance to hob-nob with the famous: We ate dinner with the mayor of Las Vegas, Oscar Goodman and Mrs. Goodman.

Actually it was more like: we were eating dinner, they were eating dinner--different tables, same small room.

We were waiting in the tiny crowded foyer for our (luckily) reserved table when a couple entered and squeezed past us begging to be excused. I immediately recognized his voice from radio and t.v. His Honor stepped right up to the hostess, smiled his greetings, and then turned to go to "their" table over in the corner. A little frission of murmuring followed them across the restaurant because he is a very recognizable figure here in Tinsel Town (go to the link and look at the photos: he's not your ordinary mayor.)

They ate a quiet dinner, picked up their bag of left-overs, and exited, but this time he waved and acknowledged different folks, responding with a "thanks" to called-out congratulations on his re-election this week. Then he and Mrs. Goodman went out to their car and drove away.

So, that was our celebrity sighting for the week. Not that we have one commonly. We'd have to go to the shiny part of town for that. Usually I'm just sighting things I wish the city government could fix: trash, homeless people, graffiti. Maybe I should go to Bellagio next weekend and try for another Vegas-moment.

A Portrait

Must share a wonderful gift I received on Friday from a student. I love it! I think it looks quite a bit like me. I had my hair up in a bun, I was wearing dangly earrings and a white blouse with poofy sleeves.

I get a Beavis & Butthead vibe from the nose...and in real life I do have boobs.

But look how skinny she thinks I am!

Happy Easter

Just a cheery salutation for the season from an old friend!

Harvest!

Tonight I ate a delicious salad from my garden: lettuce, basil and radishes to which I added some store tomatoes. But in a few weeks, the tomatoes will be coming from the garden, too! Yum...

Whiner on Vacation

Tuesday I went to Mt. Vernon (home of George and Martha Washington in Virginia) while I was visiting back east. It was a terrific day to be outdoors and even though D.C. is a favorite destination I knew that there would be too many people because of the cherry blossoms and Spring Break. However, lots and lots of them also decided that it was a great day to visit the lovely estate along the Potomac River, too. I've been to Mt. Vernon several times with my fourth grade and twice with visiting relatives. But I love going there, and they've opened a new education center and larger gift shop since my last visit. Going with the kids, I didn't shop at the small one--I just did crowd control. I thought I'd go in the house and then go through the new education center and gift shop.

However--it took over an hour on line to get into the house. I waited, but I'm not sure why, now...I've truly been there and done that. I guess I just didn't think that it would really take an hour--I should have believed a sign they had posted. I ended up not going through the whole education center because it was too near closing time when I finally finished with the house.

Directly in front of me in the endless queue was a large group of 12-14 year old kids from northern San Diego county. Naturally, being me, I struck up a conversation with the adults standing next to me. That's how I found out they were from Escondido. I said how I'd lived in San Diego for many years, many years ago, and how much I loved it. Then I heard from the man, for the next twenty minutes or so how much he doesn't really like living there. He has an avocado farm and he's a plumber and he's lived there for 21 years (I moved away just about 21 years ago) and "if his wife weren't involved," he'd "move back to Missouri in a heart beat." Weird---you live in paradise but would leave in a minute if only your wife were gone? He also complained about the Chilean import business screwing up the American avocado market, his lousy neighbors and their lousy horses that they ride leaving horse poop all over his drive-way/easement road. Then he complained about being on this trip with these dreadful kids. (His wife is a teacher at a private Christian school and that is who sponsored the trip and he came along with her.) Whew...I was relieved when he finally had to go off with a group of the kids to find a restroom and when he came back, he went to a different part of the line. What an unhappy person he seems to be. I wonder if we'd continued to talk if he would have been able to come up with any good things about his life?

Home Again

It was 93 degrees here in my desert home today as I drove around doing errands. Of course, I was in an air-conditioned vehicle and going in and out of air-conditioned buildings. Then I went back home and we grilled a pork loin and ate out on the patio, after dark. It was still 75. Hmmm...in Maryland it 42 degrees. When I was there on Tuesday it was 75. Hmmm....maybe this is an okay place to live after all.

My garden was happy while I was gone. It gets automatically watered since it is strategically located to be in the path of the lawn spigits, so the radishes have gone crazy and the tomatoes have tiny green orbs hiding under several leaves. The spinach and lettuce look great and this afternoon I planted the green bean seeds. It's so exciting to see things growing. I just love to plant seeds and have results!

The Perils of Nomadic Living

We've lived in five different towns since we were married. We've moved within some of those towns so that the number of church congregations we belonged to is higher than five. Those towns have been in four distinctly different regions of the U.S. with correspondingly different eco-systems. And that doesn't count the region where we both were born and raised--again unique from the others in which we've lived since marrying.

This has resulted lately in my developing a sense of not belonging anywhere. I don't belong in the place where I grew up--I've been gone too long and would be unhappy there most of the year because of the harsh winter weather. I can't really go back to California right now because it is prohibitively expensive where I'd like to live, and there aren't openings for generic teachers in the schools where I'd like to teach. I'm living in Las Vegas, but there are at least as many reasons to leave as to stay.

I like my house; I don't like my job.

I like being in a city again; it's a weird city.

I like the weather most of the time; it's colder in the winter than I anticipated.

It's great being close enough to my extended family to participate in family events; 1/2 of my children live in the East.

I love the West; I LOVE Washington D.C. and the surrounding plethora of American history sites.

So, I'm in Maryland for a few days, feeling rather "at home" and yet, I know I don't like the summer weather here, and I am a Western girl. The people at church today are long-time friends and it felt like I'd never left. Hmmm...Cool Guy can work here and come home every night. My Maryland teaching certificate expires in July, but it'd be really easy to renew it.

I don't know where to live. I'll just take down my tent, load up the camels, and be on my way Wednesday, back to the desert for now..

Time Flies When You're Busy

I haven't taken time to blog for a long time because there have been many other things taking up my time:

• My brother-in-law died in a car accident on Mar. 20 and that involved taking off three days from work. Which involved hours of lesson plan writing.
• We traveled to Wyoming to his funeral and spent three days with family visits and a really awesome service presented mainly by his grown grandchildren.
• I returned to school and two days of a vocabulary teaching workshop which meant two more days of a substitute and more hours of lesson plan writing.

So...I've been spending all my creative energy on lesson plans. I'm leaving on Friday to go to Maryland to see my sons and celebrate one's birthday. I'll also go see the cherry blossoms in D.C. and then come on back to Vegas to rest for a day or two before school starts up again after Spring Break.

No, it doesn't leave much time for breathing slowly. So, I hope to do more blogging when I get a moment. There are several subjects about which I need to do some theraputic writing.

I'm Taking a Poll...

I can't decide if I'm just being a sissy, or if this class is really hard. Here are some situations, please (especially other teachers) offer your comments:

a) There are three girls that (independently of one another) will choose to get all sniffy about what they've been assigned to do and push their desks away from the others, and either get all sulky and refuse to function OR flop onto the floor (!!) near the desk or in a corner and refuse to function. One even kicked her feet and yelled briefly one day.

Oh--BTW--this is fourth grade-nine/ten year olds.

b) There is a boy who spends the first hour and the last in a SPED class for reading and math help. The rest of the day he is in my class--tapping, whacking the chair, calling out, making little squeaky sounds, snatching things from his neighbor's desk to create turmoil. When asked to write, do math, anything at all that might be productive he shouts loudly, "That's too hard! I can't! I don't want to !" etc. etc. (And I really try to modify his assignments so he can succeed.)

c) There are two boys who are very bright, and get their assignments done quickly, (but resist in-depth work, rushing through it with poor results) and then get out of their chairs to roam around the room bugging others and talk constantly. The only way to get them to remain seated is constant vigilance and repeated threats/taking away recess. I've called moms---they get reprimanded (even beat, I think) but return to the same behavior immediately the next day.

d) There is a boy who cannot write all the letters in his name, can read about five first grade sight words, and barely speaks English. He moved here two weeks ago. Oh, he can do a little math if the numbers are all under five.

e) There is a sweet girl who was moved to my room in January. She needs glasses, but they're broken, mom's phone numbers are all disconnected when I try to call and find out if I can help with the glasses, or the school can help, or whatever....She cannot read more than 10 sight words, cannot do math even with the words under five. She knows she cannot function and has many coping skills. She is embarrassed by her lack of ability. But there's no way to know if she can even see the letters and numbers I'm trying to drill her on.

f) 2/3 of my class speak Spanish exclusively at home.

g)I've altered my seating arrangement repeatedly in a vain attempt to either break up the little cliques that spend all the live-long day talking or all the live-long day arguing. Sometimes it's the same group. (I'm not going to be your friend...) And no one is shy about expressing their disgust about the person with whom they are seated. Which adds fuel to the fire. (Yo Mama!!!) (He's messin' with my mama!!) (Don't you mess with me!!) etc. etc.

So...each day I go to school optimistic that this is day I will get through my lesson plans as planned---we will have the lesson, we will practice, we will do small groups.

Each day I leave the room exhausted and discouraged wondering how I'm going to survive another day with them.

Any suggestions? No, really---suggest away!!

Backyard Farming

For my birthday I received a lovely empty wooden frame, 10 feet by 4 feet, anchored in the middle of the lawn with pounded pegs. The next weekend I hauled a yard and a half of dirt and shoveled and shoveled and shoveled until voila: a garden bed!! Yeah!! I'm farming again. I'm all fired up to dig up the grass in the immediate vicinity of my now planted garden and put in desert plants and drip irrigation and leave only the grass square under the tree. We need a little something for the small people who come here to play occasionally. The grass under the tree is the only pretty part of the lawn, anyway. It gets protected from the searing Nevada sun.

Plus, now that Cool Guy has assembled my OTHER birthday gift (purchased by and for myself) we have a serious growing environment here. Check this out. I got the middle-sized one. It is now filled with grass clippings and dead leaves from yard trimmings and we're cooking a batch of dirt! With the tomato plants starting to set blossoms, the basil sprouting new leaves, baby spinach seedlings poking through the soil we're on our way to caprezi and pesto in a few weeks. Yum... Now I need to buy some pepper plants so that salsa is in the future, too.

Can You Spell I-D-I-O-T?

It's late, but I'm still puttering around. I put the clothes in the dryer. Then I got in the car to get out some old books I'm giving away when I heard piteous meowing. From where??

I opened the big door, thinking she was outside. No...I re-opened the car door--perhaps she'd climbed in earlier when I was unloading from the store. No...

Piteous meowing again--I look up and up--there, in the rafters of the garage, staring down at me like I am supposed to do something: The Idiot, aka, Kitty Cat.

For a week, whenever I've had the big door open, she's been jumping up on the car roof and gazing longingly up into the rafters of the garage, and meowing at me about...some important cat-thing.

So, evidently tonight, when I was unloading the car, leaving open the big door while I checked the mail, and transferred things from the car to the truck (for my drop-off at the thrift store)she indulged her yen to see just what was in the top of the garage.

There are a couple of plywood sheets across some of the rafters where we store some luggage and an assortment of other infrequently used items. And maybe there is a colony of mice, or rabbits, or birds. Or maybe it is just a dark hole that has been whispering to the Kitty Cat: explore me, explore me--you still have a couple of lives left--you can't be killed by your curiosity...yet.

Suffering for Being Cool

Remember when you were a teenager and you wanted to be cool? And someone, probably your mother, warned that sometimes being cool would lead to you having some big problem, or some other vague pain in the future?

It is now the future. I'm suffering.

Today, there was no substitute for the absent P.E. teacher, so--per the policy of this school district--I got no planning period. I will be paid the hourly rate for this sacrifice--not the actual amount that losing my 50 minutes of time-with-no-students is worth, mind you--since there is not enough money in Vegas to compensate. BUT--I digress. The result of this is that I took my class out to the playground for a while to decompress, run and scream, etc.

Some boys were doing chin-ups on the monkey bars and challenged me to do one. Duh--I cannot pull up this body--no way. So they had another idea: hang up-side down! One of them showed me how he did it: you grab the overhead bar, you walk your feet up the support post and then fling them over the bar between your hands.

TA DA!! To everyone's amazement (including mine) I did it!! Yeah, cheering, huzzahs---Mrs. [EarthSignMama], the coolest teacher in the world!! Wow!! Do it again---she did!! Yeah!! Everyone look!!

Now it is eight hours later. I will hobble to the pool controls, turn on the hot tub, and as it heats, I will dig out my bottle of 800 mg. ibuprofen and take one. Then I will soak until I turn to a prune and fall (gently) into bed.

But, I was cool for a little while!!

The Nasty Habit That Turns Off Men

Tonight in the grocery store I was reading Cosmo to find out what was “The Nasty Habit That Turns Off Men”. (March 2007) It turns out to be: dissing guys. That fun thing that women like to do as a major recreational pastime: bad-mouthing the male gender.

Except that I learned a really long time ago not to do it. Mostly because I am married to a rather great husband, and so I didn’t need to trash talk about him. In fact, I usually told stories about his amazing-ness. I remember one time when I was teaching Relief Society and, I forget now the topic, but one lady's comment was something along these lines, “But Sister [EarthSignMama], you’re married to a wonderful, competent man who can do [whatever the topic was]—you’ve told us.” And I felt very proud of myself for being known as the wife who compliments her husband in public.

It just struck me as I read that article because there is so much trashing of men---ads on t.v. feature the stupid guy who must be saved by the female. Sitcoms commonly have the Stupid Old Dad/Husband who is treated horribly by the wife and kids. YOU KNOW there is no way that anyone would dare make a show about the Stupid Old Wife.

So anyway---be nice out there ladies. Go get Cosmo (or at least read pg. 142 in the grocery store line) and learn how this habit negatively affects our relationships. eg: if you're willing to talk badly about former boyfriends/ex-husbands to your current Amour, then how can he avoid thinking "Hmmm...when is she going to start applying this to me?? How am I screwing up?? When will I be the topic of tirade??"

"I want to be kind to everyone,
For that is right, you see.
So I say to myself,
Remember this:
KINDNESS BEGINS WITH ME."

And, Cool Guy, in case I haven't said it lately, "Thanks for all your Amazing-ness!"

Visual DNA--Cool Thing!

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

Something You DO Want to Hear on a Job Interview

Interviewer picks up the phone and dials the main office:

"Hello, [secretary's name] can I fill out a transfer paper right now, or am I just supposed to give my recommendations to [principal]? I want her here--she is number one on my list."

Fifty Fascinating Things About EarthSignMama

Some of the family bloggers have written "100 Fascinating Things..." but I'm such a blabber-mouth that I doubt there are 100 things I could write that you don't already know. At least things I'm willing to reveal, anyway. So, here goes:

1. I loved to eat sour cream herring when I was pregnant--but only then.

2. My ring size is 9 1/4; I didn't need to put tape on it when a boy gave me his class ring in high school.

3. I've always been afraid of the dark.

4. I took piano lessons from second grade until I was a sophomore in high school. I'm really good at hymns and that's about it.

5. One of my goals until about 10 years ago was to climb the Matterhorn in France.

6. I don't like anchovies.

7. I'm deathly afraid of snakes.

8. My horse (when I was a teenager) never, ever tried to buck me off. He did buck off everyone else who got on him. At least once.

9. The only broken bone I've had was in a finger that I smashed trying to unhook two shopping carts. I didn't know it had broken until months later when a doctor x-rayed my hand for something else and pointed out a healed fracture.

10. Um...does the knuckle I disintegrated with a 22 caliber bullet count as a "broken bone"?

11. The first time I swam in the ocean I was knocked flat by a strong wave that shoved me all the way up the beach and pulled my suit half-way off.

12. In third grade, I pooped my pants on the playground.

13. I've had a letter to the editor published in the paper in every city we've lived.

14. One summer, I was interviewed for a t.v. news report, a radio show, and something I wrote was printed in the newspaper--in just two months.

15. I learned to bake cookies when I was eight years old.

16. I interviewed for a job as a "receptionist" at a company that turned out to be a call-girl place. I didn't take the job.

17. I got to meet Pres. Harold B. Lee at the restaurant where I worked in the summer during college. He was really, really nice.

18. Even though it was against the dress code, I often wore jeans to class at BYU in 1971.

19. Never ever bring an insect or pet rat to me and thrust it into my face saying "Look at this!" Warn me first, please.

20. I always chewed off the erasers and then chewed the wood until the paint came off of my pencils in elementary school.

21. I've never habitually chewed my nails.

22. I sucked my thumb until I was almost 12.

23. I love to rub cold ear lobes between my fingers.

24. I wore orthodpedic shoes 6th--8th grades trying to help my hopelessly pronated, flat feet. They had no effect on my feet, but completely destroyed my ego.

25. The only foreign country I've been to is Mexico, just over the border a few miles.

26. I have been to 31 states, however.

27. I have a current teaching certificate for Maryland, California, and Nevada.

28. I've never been arrested, but once a cop threatened to do so if I wouldn't rat out my neighbor. I still didn't cooperate with him. He was bluffing.

29. I picked up brocolli off the side of the road once when several just-picked bunches fell off a big truck I was following.

30. My least favorite housekeeping jobs are cleaning the fridge and scrubbing the floor.

31. I'm very skilled at candling eggs.

32. I have made tofu from scratch. I don't recommend it. I had to throw away the pan.

33. I won the "Best Actress" award in my high school in 1970.

34. In my senior year of high school I was the FFA queen. (That's Future Farmers of America for those of you who have never watched Napoleon Dynamite---all 2 of you.)

35. I was also chosen the "Betty Crocker Homemaker" of SVHS in 1971. I just missed getting the scholarship money for the state of Wyoming because I came in 4th over all and they only awarded the money to the top three winners. (You took a test.)

36. I did win the money on Password Plus in 1979. I was champion for a week. It was a blast.

37. I also appeared on two other t.v. game shows. As the loser.

38. When we played grown-ups as little kids, my name was always "Judy Hill" and I was always a secretary. Then I started wanting to be a scientist.

39. For two summers, my cousin and I pretended to be nuns on a mission to the Indians. We sewed habits, had rosaries we made, and called each other by our "sister" names except at Primary. We had a cool playhouse with a fireplace we build fires in and roasted corncakes we made from corn we poached out of the cow's grain and then ground on a rock into meal.

40. One of my jobs as a pre-teen was to sweep out my dad's schoolbus every night after he finished his route.

41. I always ate lunch in our school cafeteria instead of going across the street to the hamburger store where many people ate, because I too afraid of looking dumb at not knowing how to order there, or what it would cost. Plus the guy who ran it scared me.

42. The only lab I did poorly on in college biology was the human reproductive system. I confused the female hormone cycle. Which probably is related to my giving birth five times in eight years...there's never a "safe" night.

43. I've been on the "Powdered Wig Tour." In which you visit the historic homes of T. Jefferson, G. Washington, J. Madison, and J. Monroe which are all within about 40 miles of one another in Northern Virginia. I didn't go on one day. But you could.

44. I can start a fire in a wood stove with one match.

45. I have a tiny cup of sand topped with a seashell that is scooped from the hoofprint of a wild pony from Assateague Island, VA.

46. I also have an autographed copy of "Misty, of Chincoteague" and have read the book (not necessarily that copy) at least 15 times.

47. One summer my sister and I started to count the haybales we hauled, but were so appalled when we got to 18,000 and weren't finished, that we quit keeping track.

48. I've seen the thermometer at -42 degrees, and still had to go outside and milk the cows.

49. I've never had to change any of the flat tires I've had.

50. I once replaced the air conditioner compressor in a 1967 Chrysler New Yorker-I only had access to Cool Guy on the phone-he walked me through it.

The Tangine Experience

I found this interesting recipe in Sunset Magazine for tangine, a food that my daughter eats often in Morocco. It is made with chicken, and many, many spices, as well as quite a bit of dried fruit--apricots and prunes. It was somewhat labor intensive to make: brown the chicken, then remove it and saute the onions and garlic and ginger. Then you add the spices and stir them a little in the oil to warm up and release all their aroma. Then you add chicken broth and return the chicken thighs to the pan, put in the dried fruit pieces, the chopped parsley and cover and cook. It is served on couscous, which is easy to prepare, adding toasted pine nuts and more chopped parsley. Some of the spices were quite pricey, too. Look in the Mexican food section and you can get some of them much cheaper than than on the spice aisle.

I followed the recipe faithfully since this was the first time I made it. And it was superb! Delicious! "More-ish" as my mother would have said. So we both had two servings and the next day, I ate the remaining large left-over serving. Ymm....

However--I do not recommend pigging out on this dish in the manner in which I did. You see, all that dried fruit...and the whole chopped onion and the four cloves of minced garlic...whew. It really promotes "digestion" if you know what I mean. If you choose to cook this recipe, just plan stay at home for a couple of days after you eat it, or at least if you can't stay home, be sure you know where all the bathrooms are in your immediate vicinity and make sure you can access them readily.

So, don't be afraid of tangine---it's delicious! But next time--I think I'll put in fewer pieces of dried fruit than the recipe calls for, or perhaps just limit myself to one serving.

Why Do You Think He Had The Crutches?

Tonight, we were driving on one of the major north/south arteries of the Big City. It has three lanes in each direction, with a concrete median most of the way. It was packed with cars and they clip along at a fevered pace. About half-way through one block, I noticed a person waiting on the median for a break in the traffic to jay-walk to the west side of this street. HE WAS ON CRUTCHES. Do ya think he's tried this before? Hmmm...slow learner, maybe?

Foods of Our Father

Today is the anniversary of my dad's birth. He would be 84 if he hadn't died twenty-three years ago. In honor of his birthday I thought I'd write about his favorite food.

This blog could be summed up thusly: if my mother cooked it, it was his favorite. I honestly don't recall him complaining ever about anything she made. Once he made mention of not wanting much "rabbit food" referring to salad. But he'd always eat it.

He loved oyster stew for supper. (We ate farm meals: breakfast, dinner, supper.) After preparing full-on balanced sit-down meals for 8-10 at breakfast and dinner, my mother did supper in shifts. Little kids ate while the milking was being done and then they went to bed. The milking crew came in and foraged for ourselves or ate our helping of what she'd made earlier, and then, either she made daddy his supper or he'd make his own depending on when he finally got in.

Oyster stew was made by heating milk and butter with salt and pepper in a pan. Then he'd open the can of Standard oysters (don't EVEN think about buying Geisha brand...) and pour in the liquid, then gently slide the oysters in to warm up. By now, I have left the room--the smell was enough. But the sight of those icky things was the last straw. Weird how much I love them now...He could easily eat the whole pan by himself, crumbling up crackers into the bowl and slurping up the last drops.

Another standard supper was Bread and Milk. This is made by filling a tall glass with milk. Next, take a slice of my mother's homemade bread and break it into pieces into the milk, stuffing the glass full. Then you top the whole thing with a large spoonful of honey which is stirred in a little. It is then eaten with a spoon and a side order of sliced cheese. Another totally yucky concept to me as a child: soggy bread. I've never tried it, but Daddy ate this at least every day, I swear. A variation on this is Milk Toast. Make the mama-bread into toast. Heat milk on the stove in a pan. Place buttered toast in a soup bowl. Pour over it the heated milk. Eat. I didn't eat this food either. But I did love another Toast Specialty: Creamed Tuna Over Toast. We ate this for supper quite often, I've fed it to my children, and Cool-Guy and I will still occasionally have this for our dinner (city supper).

Cheese: ambrosia for the dairy farmer set. We did not have a day or a meal that didn't include cheese of some type. I was carefully indoctrinated. When we very first began to keep house together, Cool Guy and I both acknowledged that if we didn't have cheese, then it felt like we didn't have food. My dad is also of this school of thought. A favorite supper of his was Bread and Milk and melted cheese. This is prepared by lining a metal pie plate with thickish slices of cheese, and then sticking this pan under the broiler till the cheese bubbled. Then you ate it by sticking a fork into the gooey mass and twirling up a portion of it and sticking it into your mouth. Ymmmmm. Melted cheese sandwiches were another supper staple: spread Miracle Whip onto mama-bread, lay slices of cheese on it, slide under the broiler until bubbling. Sprinkle salt and pepper on top (and sometimes he'd even sprinkle vinegar too) and eat. With a glass of milk of course.

Afternoon snacks: he'd open the lid of the Karo syrup bottle and swig down a couple of chugs. He'd eat five hot cookies and a glass of milk. (yes, someone was always making cookies.) A dish of peaches with bread and butter. Bread and butter and raspberry jam (naturally made by my mother from berries she'd picked.) Root beer floats made with homemade root beer. Snack time was that starving time right before milking when we'd all need a little kick to get through the day.

Here's some really weird foods:
Headcheese--I remember being just the right height to stare a pig head in the snout as it sat in a pan on the kitchen table prior to my mother turning it into headcheese: boil the pig head till the meat falls off. Reduce the broth till it becomes a jello-like substance when chilled. Chop up the bits of meat, season with sage and salt and pepper and stuff, then combine the broth, and seasoned meat into a loaf pan, refrigerate until it is totally chilled and solid. Slice off pieces and serve on bread and butter. I recall it fondly. But when I got some from a deli once as an adult it was unbelievably nasty tasting...not my mother's recipe. My dad loved it! I don't know how often she made it, it seems like a lot of work.
Poached Egg Sacs: About every three/four years we'd have to kill all the laying hens because they'd quit laying. During one of these chicken killing extravaganzas (which lasted about three days what with the cleaning, cooking, bottling of the meat) my dad saved some of the egg sacs (basically the chicken fallopian tubes) that still contained the developing yolks from the one or two hens that hadn't quite come to the end of their cycle of productivity. He remembered our grandmother poaching these and eating them for supper when he was a boy---it would just a be a white-less egg with some organ meat around it. So, my mom brought them in and washed them and poached them for dinner that day. I'll never forget--#1 the icky smell of them, and #2 their even ickier appearance--all gray and shriveled laying on his plate. But he ate them and claimed they were tasty and my mom agreed. We had a whole other dinner, these egg sacs were just a little side item, but my appetite was totally ruined.
Jerky: Daddy was born in the wrong century. He'd have been completely content living as his grandfather had lived--up in the hills, trapping, hunting, fishing. Every year Daddy went hunting and usually got us a deer and an elk. It was fortunate that he enjoyed hunting, it enabled my mom to have meat to prepare for meals for the entire year. He used the deer mostly for jerky. Deer hamburger is okay, and deer liver is quite yummy, and one meal of little deer steaks is plenty for most. So the rest of the animal went for jerky. Again...I didn't like jerky. I still don't like jerky. Bleh.

I'll bet there are lots of other things my dad ate that stand out to my brothers and sisters. I hope they'll be inspired to write and tell me! In the meantime...happy birthday to Lynn Ray Welch--go out and have a chocolate covered orange stick in his memory.

Attention Husbands: Here's How to Do It

Cool Guy got home last night after a couple of weeks' absence. He noted my attire--all black--and asked if I were doing the Bohemian look today. I replied that, no I had been wearing a sweater, but it got hot.

"Well, I'm sure it did. I don't know why ALL your clothes don't just burst into flames everyday--you're such a hottie!"

There you go. Use this tutorial to your advantage.

Then it was accented today by the long-stemmed red roses delivered to the school where I work. This is all good.

School Improvement Day

In a district that my children attended for several years in California, the official term for the in-service days (when the teachers attended for training but the children stayed home) was a SIP day: School Improvement Day. It was named after the ubiquitous School Improvement Plans that all districts are required to write and implement. Every district is mandated by the various levels of government to have on-going teacher training.

But, one of my friends used to laugh and say, "Sure, what better way to improve the school than to have all the students stay home!"

We had a SIP day today...they don't call it that here in Nevada. But the effect is the same when the teachers are all there, but the students stay home! But, seriously, we had a training day, and the presentations were uncharacteristically useful and interesting. It was a good way to end my four week track break. I even had a chance to reorganize my room and revise my lesson plans before diving back into the whole wild scene--that'll happen Monday when the students return. Tomorrow--another IMPROVED DAY!!!

A Defense of February Written Five Years Ago--Still True

I read another querulous quip maligning the second month recently. The writer muttered something about the dank, dismal slushiness and, as usual, sighed that “at least it is a short month.” But I, apparently alone, feel joy when January’s page can at last be torn away, revealing the freshness of February.
“Sure,” people say, “It’s your birthday this month; of course you like it. But wait till you’re old, then you’ll sing a different song…” Ah, but I am old, relatively. And my heart still leaps lightly when I staple those hot pink hearts on my classroom calendar poster, replacing the somber snowflakes of January. Besides, my birthday was never a solo event. It came at the end of an almost exhausting week of festive feasting at our house. First, on the seventeenth, we celebrate my dad. Birthday cake, new gloves, homemade cards, chocolate-covered orange sticks—one year my mom gave him a surprise party. It was an effort to dispel the tragic gloom that had descended in October after our neighbor’s accidental death. I don’t think it worked. But the birthday worked the year I was a senior in high school, and they’d been not speaking for several weeks after a big blow-up over some money problem, and my sister and I were worried. My dad had actually been sleeping in the spare bed upstairs. I think they were both sorry, but didn’t know how to end it, and on the morning of his birthday, my mom went about the day as birthdays were always done: presents on your breakfast plate, the cheery song, greetings from the whole family. By evening, the cake and ice cream had been consumed and a different atmosphere was in the house. The next morning, we noticed the spare bed had not been used. Whew…
The next event, just four days after daddy’s big day, is my little sister’s birthday. She was born the year of my seventh birthday, two days before. One of my aunts appeared bearing an elaborate confection of a doll whose enormous hoop skirts were formed from a cake all carefully ruffled with icing. Another aunt made me a new jumper and blouse—all mine—not handed-down—new! My just-about teen-aged sisters threw me a party after school. The living room was filled with little girls, and I got cool presents like a tiny bottle of Jergen’s hand lotion and costume jewelry. But my most vivid memory is standing with my forehead pressed against the cupboard under the wall phone, crying while I spoke to mom who’d called from the hospital to see how the party was going, and wish me a happy birthday. But all I really wanted was her to be home, where she usually was, and not gone, leaving our house bereft of heart and soul. Not even a party could make up for that. But that was the only crummy birthday my sister had. Usually, I loved her birthday. She was so sweet and cute. Also, it left only one more holiday before my Big Day.
You see, not only could my mother make angel food cake--(which was the birthday cake of choice), she was the queen of pies. So how could we possibly allow George Washington’s birthday to pass without a cherry pie? This of course was served on the REAL date—not that mushy “President’s Day” which tends to obscure the glory of the Father of Our Country. Yes, we ate two birthday cakes and a cherry pie, a la mode, all in four days. Which was followed by…yet another birthday cake!!
My birthday for many years has been a solo event, a day in which I decide to have a wonderful time, regardless of what anyone else may do. I pick a gift for myself, I bring treats to my students, I bake myself a cake. I celebrate me. Then, if anyone else remembers (and they always do—I have a terrific assortment of relatives and friends) it is like gravy. I already have the meat and potatoes and the smooth shiny flow of their good wishes just floods around me as an extra serving of yum.
But birthdays and food aren’t the only reasons to love February. In the Wyoming of my childhood, January was consistently the coldest month of the year. You could count on at least a week where the HIGH was –20. This cold drag (you can’t call something that lasted so long a “snap”) would torture us for an extended period causing the cows and chickens to consume extra food and still diminish their productive output simply because all their energy went into staying warm. The entire world became brittle. My dad would plug in the engine block heater of his school bus with a thick orange extension cord trailing from the house so that he could start the motor in the indescribably sharp morning air. People would never speak while outside because then the icy air would go directly to your shocked lungs without the brief warming when you breathed it into your nose first. January was every bit of 31 days long when your weather choices were blizzard or brittle.
But something else happened in February. One morning, you’d look out and the snow looked softer. And you stepped out of the porch encased in the many layers of milking clothes, and realize that you could breath without pain. The air was warmer. It was softer. A thaw was happening. During the day, the snow around the edges of the sidewalk would melt away, exposing a tiny edge of grass. You could smell the change in the atmosphere. The animals moved differently. The cows spent time standing in the sun chewing their cuds. The cats would lie at the opening of the hay loft and bask in the warm rays. You didn’t need to huddle. Coats went unzipped. With a bare sidewalk, you could get away with regular shoes. The eaves dripped loudly all day, and icicles fell to the ground in sudden startling explosions that woke up the drowsing students in the late afternoon. Of course, March always came, and the thaw was over and blizzards raged, again. But that little respite in February helped you to keep alive the hope that winter would eventually give way.
February is larded with the riches of famous people’s birthdays. Longfellow, Langston Hughes, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Rosa Parks. Edison, Lindberg, Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron. Four presidents: William Henry Harrison, and Ronald Reagan along with the celebrated births of Lincoln and Washington. Artist Grant Wood, musician Jascha Heifetz, singer Leontyne Price, and actor Jack Benny. There are so many more. I realize that everyone has to born sometime, and you can probably get into a contest with me over your favorite month’s famous. But there was something going on in our home town. In my high school class over one third of our 130 students were born in February. It probably had everything to do with the month that occurs nine months previous: May. Spring, at last…
But, seriously, who can hate a month with a great holiday like Ground Hog’s Day?? And I realize that Valentine’s Day is a relationship mine-field for adults, but school children still love folding and cutting those perfect little hearts from colored paper to decorate their bags and then the thrilling moment of examining their cards to see who gave who what. And the cards I receive as the teacher show careful thought: I always got the Steve Young cards and the Harley Davidson cards. It is the official holiday of chocolate: ‘nough said.
Yes, February is difficult to spell, and in many parts of the world it is slushy and grim. But it is short, and filled with celebrations if you care to look for them. And in San Diego, it is the month the jacaranda trees start to bloom. So, here’s to my favorite month, when you can really tell the days are getting longer, and every four years, you get an extra day to enjoy.

A Good Time of Year

Today, I went outside at 5:30 P.M. and---drumroll----it was not dark yet! Yeah! I love this time of year! I always feel so claustrophobic when it gets dark at 5:00 P.M. I would definitely not do well near the Arctic Circle. I will revel in this increasing amount of sunlight until June and then, by August it will be possible to notice the decrease again...Nature...it's so predictable.

Jerk Meter

How high on the Jerk Meter would you put him?

Today, on the way back from Yuma, I stopped in Lake Havasu City at a park that, according to the signs, was a "view area" in my attempt to view the London Bridge that someone imported there. I parked and walked all around, but obviously not enough "all around" because I didn't see the bridge from there. (I did see it later from another place...) BUT...I was in a park that had a fenced off area clearly labeled Dog Park and there were lots of people and their dogs there cavorting around and having a lovely late afternoon time. Outside the fence there were many offical signs stating "No Dogs Here" with the drawing of a dog covered in the red/slashed circle. It was really obvious. As I walked back up the rise from the river's edge toward my car, I stopped to photograph a huge flock of birds (at least 100) that were on the lawn busily eating. They were coots, about the size of chickens, really going to town on the bugs in the grass or the grass itself. It was remarkable because it was such a lot of birds altogether with identical behavior.

From the opposite side of the park, about 100 yards away, came a tall, buff, shaved head white dude with a lovely blonde woman accompanying him, and he leaned down, and unleashed his dog, I didn't recognize the breed--about boxer sized with pointy ears--and sicced the dog on the birds. And laughed uproariously as the dog went into the huge flock of oblivious birds chasing them into the water. (They're swimmers.) The dog turned and the guy sicced him on the rest of the birds that hadn't responded to the first group's frightened rush. The guy praised his dog and laughed loudly again and they kept walking toward a set of playground equipment covered with kids and the guy started hollering, to no avail, for the dog to come to him. They went around the corner of the hill and I didn't see if he ever got the dog to come back nor if he put it back on the leash.

You all would have been really proud of me for keeping my mouth shut. I was close enough to shout out "Hey---***hole! This is the NO DOGS part of the park!" And it took every fiber of self-control in my body to resist. But...I don't need the bad kharma.

But...I found myself thinking: I hope they never have children. I don't want to have kids raised by him (or her) in my class, ever.

How to Feel Young

I'm visiting Cool Guy in Yuma where he spending a couple of weeks at the flight range test-flying the little airplane. I came down for the weekend because I could. Most of the time when he is gone from home it is too far away to go for a weekend, but Yuma is close enough to Vegas, Baby, that I just drove down here on Friday night and had a nice day basking in the sun here in the land of the snowbirds.

Lots of RV's and lots of mobile homes here for the people who don't want to live in their snowy homes during the winter. If you're feeling old...then, all you need to do is visit Yuma, or Quartzsite, Arizona and you'll be a whippersnapper if you're under 60.

Cool...I like being the youngster.

A Comparison

Tonight at the market, I heard the ladies in front of me discussing a soap opera and how annoyed they were over some plot development. It reminded me of a talk show I heard once nearly 20 years ago that made an interesting point.

The comparison: soap operas on t.v. give women something similar to what men get from pornography. Now, keep reading. The premise of the program was that men and women have different needs. The soap operas were a fantasy for women in that the men in the shows were attentive, talked a lot about their feelings, brought flowers and jewelry to the women, took the women out to parties and dinners.

In pornography the women were fantasy creatures for the men. The men didn't need to talk to them, bring them stuff, take them out or have any emotional relationship. The purpose of the association was sexual and the men didn't have to be involved on any other level.

The people on the talk show went on to discuss how women who spent a great deal of time involved with a soap opera often began to expect the real men in their lives to behave like the fantasy men on the show. There were various speakers: a psychologist, an actress who was quite famous back then from a soap, and a woman who had actually divorced her husband for failing to be more like the character she'd developed a fixation for on her soap. Realizing that they all had a point to make, I watched the show with some skepticism.

But as the divorced woman spoke, I got uncomfortable as I recognized some of what she said was relevant in my own life. I had a favorite show and I thought of the times I'd changed an appointment or put off my kids just so that I'd be home and undisturbed to watch the show. It was aggravating to watch it---plot developments took weeks and weeks to come to a climax. The writers had the ability to postpone the revelations and keep the bombshell from exploding day after day after day. I had started substitute teaching about then and many days in a row I'd miss the show because I was working. Then when I'd have a chance to catch up on it, N O T H I N G had happened!

Then I watched this show. And I saw myself in these people. I had begun to feel annoyed at my husband because he wasn't like the bad/cool guy on the show--why not? They both wore leather jackets and had long hair?? Why didn't my husband take me in his arms that way and bring me flowers and tell me all that mushy stuff?? And take me to a ball?? ummmm...because he was a REAL PERSON who had to work every night and sleep days and we had a houseful of kids and bills to pay and a car to keep working and he was usually exhausted and I had PMS and...and...

I decided right then to never watch that dopey show again. And I didn't. Months later, we moved to a new town and the local paper had a synopsis of the soaps every week. So I read it to see what had been happening since I'd quit cold turkey.

N O T H I N G had happened! The Big Secret had still not been revealed, the devastating effects on the heroine's relationship had still not occured. Blah, blah, blah...I realized I'd been freed from a bad relationship and I hadn't even missed them. And my REAL relationship with my REAL guy had dramatically improved because he was no longer in a losing competition with a fake guy.

So, the moral to the story is: don't watch soaps and don't look at pornography---they'll both screw up your real life.

The Secret of Grandparents

The reason grandparenting is so great was revealed to me this week on a visit to my daughter's family.

The grown child that you are visiting is still beloved entirely by you both. She's your child! Just because she grew to adulthood, and married and produced off-spring doesn't diminish your love. Then, there is the off-spring. This child is at the stage your brain remembers the now-adult child, so you get to experience all the joyful parts of her life again! At the same time you're enjoying the grown-child-parent still---the relationship is different, but the love is still the same. And you get to re-live the exhuberance of childhood with a littler version of her, sort of. This little kid just thinks you are the Coolest Thing Ever, too, dropping in occasionally with new books, new socks, and trips in the car without Mommy or Daddy that involve lemonade and licorice!

All the joy and love again---but this time you're not in charge of the drudgery!

Fitting In

In Seattle, I kept seeing a "type" of woman and I started evaluating myself to see if I'd fit in here.

comfy clogs from LLBean or Bjorn? Check!
jeans or other easy-wearing pants? Check!
fleece vest? Check!
cotton knit shirt under the vest? Check!
little or no make-up? Check!
sensible hairdo? oops...I don't think long, multi-colored (well, the top half is gray and the bottom half is dark blonde) fits into the "type"...bummer.

But I'll keep looking around in different parts of town. Maybe there's an old lady-with-the-long gray-braid part of town here somewhere.

They All Look Alike to Me

I went to a mall today to return some clothing and after I'd walked around a couple of circuits and hadn't located the store, I found the mall directory to discover that the store from which I bought these items isn't in this mall. Hmm...where was I when I bought them, then? A phone call to Cool Guy at home to Google for me, then he read off the locations and, SLAP MY FOREHEAD, that's right. I remember now...duh. Malls are really so much alike---the little kiosks with the graspy people trying to apply lotion or sell you some over-priced object, the food court, the shoe stores for someone who can actually walk in high heels.

"Never mind", I thought in my Emily Litella voice as I drove out of the parking lot.

The Pleasures of a Small Improvement

Tonight at the gym I walked vigorously on the treadmill for thirty minutes and felt energized after I finished. Instead of winded, sweaty and discouraged. I didn't expect to make a gain in stamina in only a couple of weeks. Cool!! Tomorrow I'll walk a little faster and little longer.

Where is Kitty?

I just spent the last two hours worrying. I had been in the garage and saw the kitty out there, but then I haven't been able to find her since then. She wasn't sleeping on my bed--per usual. She wasn't on a dining room chair asleep. She wasn't locked in the garage or the car (I'd been getting something from the car, and hey...you never know. One morning I was fixing my lunch and the lower cupboard door was moving slightly and I could hear meowing--she'd climbed inside where the dishes are when I'd opened it to get a cereal dish and I hadn't seen her when I shut it...duh.) She wasn't under the couch, under the bed, on the spare room bed, in the closet where I'd put away the ironing board. She wasn't in any of the cupboards (yes, I looked). She wasn't coming when I called out the back door, or out the front door. She wasn't on the piano bench, or in the office chair. I could imagine myself still looking tomorrow and having to tell Cool Guy at the airport that she had disappeared and how sad he'd be. I could hardly imagine sleeping tonight without her curled up next to me. TWO HOURS I'VE BEEN FRETTING.

She just strolled across the living room floor--from where?? She's not telling.

Not Neil Diamond...Again

When we were high school seniors, Cool Guy and I (and the whole rest of our class) had a Senior Trip scheduled to Salt Lake City. We would go down on one day and do some stuff, stay overnight, and return the next day after doing some more stuff--like the big amusement park, some kind of entertainment, etc. For 33 years this trip has been a head-slapper for Cool Guy. Don't get him started... I barely remember it for some reason. In fact, until it came up the first time after we were married, I'd forgotten about the trip. Also, I don't recall the whole controversy that occured at the time.

See, apparently the choices for the entertainment on that trip were:

1. go see Neil Diamond perform
2. go to the Ice Capades

Now you're saying to yourself: Duh? Seniors in high school were being asked if they wanted to go to the stupid Ice Capades over Neil Diamond?? In 1971, when he was totally famous, young, wild, top of the charts?? Who would possibly vote for Ice Capades in our class?? Probably a couple of people did. I don't remember being given the choice. Really, I don't.

But, our advisor didn't want to go to Neil Diamond and, according to Cool Guy, lobbied heavily for Ice Capades. The reasons he says she gave are now lost to our memories, but when he first discussed this topic with me, he could remember them all, and I believe most of them were just old fogey vs young people and involved a lot of cane-waving.

But, ultimately, we went to the Ice Capades...I have a vague memory of sitting up in the nose-bleed section of the Salt Palace and there are little twirling people down on the floor. Weird...It is amazing to me that a grown woman could be so oblivious to the lives of teenagers.

The weird thing is that just a year later, I did go to a Neil Diamond concert at college and he was AWESOME!! And then ten years later, I got to see him in concert again with my girlfriend and he was still AWESOME!! Poor Cool Guy---he was right.

Anyway, why did this come up? Tomorrow I get to chaperone a group of students from our school to see Disney on Ice. We received 40 free tickets and the lucky ones were the kids who had the highest points accrued through our reading incentive program (read certain books, and then take a comprehension test on the computer for points). Four of my students won from fourth grade and the VP asked if I'd like to go too. I'm so excited for my students: they really earned it and I'm thrilled they get an extra reward (above the obvious one of being motivated readers).

This is the age group that wants to see an ice show. NOT Seniors in high school who are going to the Big City for some fun. Ice Capades, indeed---may I never get that old.

A Couple of Boys I've Loved Before; The Finale

I realized that the first section was WAY too long. I'll try to be succinct here. The eighth grade introduced me to another Really Cute Guy, who weirdly turned out to be a life-long friend of Brown-Eyes, but went to a different elementary school than us. He was very cool and I spent the next two years trying to get either of them to be my boyfriend. We were in most of our classes together because our school not-so-subtley tracked us by academic ability and we had many fun times--including almost flunking world history our sophomore year because we knew more about it than our doofus teacher so we mostly ignored him. He retaliated on our report cards. Then, the two of them started to "go steady" with two really awesome girls that completely eclipsed me so I surrendered to fate. I gave up pursuing either of them.

There were several fun crushes in the ensuing years:

• the boy from another town I met while riding my horse around the county fair
• the summer of the Student Body President dating me, then dumping me
• the guy who worked at a restaurant with my sister
• the guy who came up to Wyoming to spend the summer on his grandpa's ranch
• the guy who supposedly was tutoring me in geometry but mostly we'd just make out and then we decided it was ruining a perfectly good friendship and went back to just math

I dated a guy my whole senior year just because I needed a date for a number of functions due to my involvement in school government/clubs and he had a really cool car. He was very nice, and fun and I respected him, but he was not talented academically and I was a horrible snob about that.

I went off to BYU and found that only certain freshman girls get pursued by the RM's. I was not one of them. But as a sophomore somehow I was introduced to an RM who really liked me and dated me often, came home to meet my family (I was so oblivious to the ramifications of this--I was just proudly showing off my farm and my beautiful valley). He invited me to spend Thanksgiving with his family at Lake Mead (he was from California). I agreed, but then overheard my roommates discussing excitedly (thinking I was asleep) about me returning from Thanksgiving with a diamond and I suddenly realized that I was definitely not at the same stage of the relationship as the guy. So I just got a ride home to my parents for Thanksgiving without telling Mr. California that I was leaving town NOT with him. I was a really rude, inconsiderate person. But he was NOT The One.

Guess where I found The One? Sixth grade, it turns out. I did go to California the following year but it was to live with a girlfriend, who, like me, was flunking out of college. We moved there to be wild. It worked. We were. I dated the Really Cute Guy from world history for a few months since he was in the Navy there. And since Brown Eyes was also in the Navy there, and the two of them were inseparable, it was the three of us going to the movies, eating out, them rebuilding their motorcycles in a rented garage, me sitting around watching after I got off work. It soon became clear that World History Guy was in love with someone else--I was just the girl in town--and Brown Eyes' girlfriend of four years got engaged to someone else for Christmas....and soooo

Thirty-three years later we're still married and I have forgiven him for making me cry in Science. And he's really sorry for it, too. (Even though he has absolutely no recollection of doing it--nor of any of the other momentuous occasions I recorded in my diary. But, they didn't happen to him. So why would he?)

I'm An Old Lady Too, But...

...I would never flop myself down in a movie seat next to Someone and whack them with my purse, and then put my drink in the armrest that the Someone clearly has her arm resting on. And then proceed to eat my popcorn in the noisiest, most bag-rustling fashion, CHEWING WITH MY MOUTH OPEN, talking to my companions in a full voice even after the movie started.

So SOMEONE finally got totally fed up and ten minutes into the movie just stood up and apologized profusely to the two gentlemen to the right of her as she climbed over them to another seat so she didn't suddenly have to shout at the person to the left to KNOCK IT OFF ALREADY.

The movie was very lovely after that and was so engrossing that finally Someone rarely noticed the chewing/talking that continued and could be heard from four seats away.

A Couple of the Boys I've Loved Before

There's been a rash of True Confessions on the family blogs here and there so I thought I'd talk about puppy love for a bit. In third grade there was a guy who bought me a cookie while we were on a field trip at the bakery, and then in fourth grade, he chose me to be his folk-dance partner for a program on a day when I was absent. I was very flattered. I liked him because he was cute and he was kind of naughty. Hmmm...Another boy in elementary school I liked was his good buddy and taller than me, and that was his main attribute. He was really nice too, but tallness was an asset. The tall one eventually married a good friend of mine from high school and we are all still great friends, and we sometimes laugh about grade school. There weren't very many boys to have crushes on: there were only 17 kids in my school. We were the odd class they didn't have room for in the "town" school, so for K-5, I attended a one room school out in the farm area with these same kids. We changed teachers every year, and we moved up to the next grade together, but we mostly we were alone in the little building built by the WPA in 1939.

Then, for sixth grade, the little schools were all closed because the bigger one was completed in town, and for the first time I had more than 17 kids in my school. (Now, cue the slow-motion video, and the dramatic music...) there, in my classroom, sitting to the left of me, was a Really Cute Guy. He had sensational brown eyes, an awesome smile and--he read the dictionary for fun! Sadly, I was invisible. Actually, it wasn't so much that I was invisible as that I was somewhat out of sight, because he rarely had the occasion to tip his head back that far to look waaaayy up and see me there, towering over him. Our class photo shows me standing on the back row, a full head taller than the teacher, with him sitting on the front row, feet dangling above the floor without touching. I was a flagpole in sixth grade, and he hadn't started the growth spurt thing yet.

It didn't keep me from admiring his vocabulary or impressive manners, however. And every fact I thought I had exclusive rights to (from reading a large range of esoteric materials) seemed to be at his command. Hmmm...Plus he was really wild--he had a dirt bike! And he skiied. And he had amazing self-confidence and lots of friends. He also read naughty joke books, tucked into his lap, disguised by his social studies text propped up in front of him.

Naturally, I had none of these qualities, including the friends. Sixth grade was a tough year. I hadn't really had any friends in little school--lots of the girls there were related to each other, or were neighbors and I wasn't in the clique. But, I was determined to just join right in and make some friends in this new environment. I remember one snowy day when we had to stay inside for recess and I saw a group of girls over by the bookshelves chatting away, and I headed over to join in. As I approached, I heard them say, "Now, only girls who live on [a street near the school] can be our friends, except for Patty, cause she just moved, but she used to live there." So, I quickly pretended that my real errand was to pick out a dictionary just to the right of them. Not only did I NOT live on that street---I didn't even live in town. I lived seven miles south of town on a farm. Talk about wrong side of the tracks---I was on the wrong side of the barnyard.

But, there were two boys in our class with whom I developed awesome friendships, and they stayed my loyal friends for years after high school. Brown-eyes wasn't one of them. But did I let that deter my devotion? Of course not! I continued my outrageous campaign for his acknowledgement of my existence throughout junior high. I made friends with all of his girl friends, I made friends with all of his buddies. Actually, my friendships with the boys was independent of their association with him. These guys were just fun and, somehow, I always had more friends that were boys than I had friends that were girls. I was much more comfortable with boys. I think it was because at the time, I was living more like a boy than a girl. At home, I milked the cows twice a day, fed cattle, cleaned the barn, and in the summers hauled hay with my sisters. When I was 13 my dad gave me the colt born that spring and I spent two years training him. So, maybe I felt more compatible with boys because I wasn't doing my nails and hair and talking on the phone at home every night.

Except that I did use the phone to sigh and discuss Brown-Eyes with whichever sort-of "girlfriend" of his I'd befriended at the time. I really did like these girls. They turned out to be great friends, each one of them, and when his attention wandered off (as is the way of 14 year old boys) we remained good friends and so I did gain that benefit from my unrequited love.

I received a diary for my 13th birthday and faithfully wrote in it for a year. There are entries recounting every moment our lives intersected. Once, I recorded, that I got to write my name on a library card under his. Once, I sat behind him in an assembly that was a movie, so the room was darkened---ooohh---almost romantic. One extremely memorable time was dance class that was in lieu of gym every Wednesday in seventh grade. We usually learned folk dances like "Oh, Johnny, Oh" and square dances. I really liked dance class because the dances were fun. I'd learned most of them from my fourth grade teacher in the little school because she put on a full-blown program for every holiday--even Columbus Day--with singing, dancing, recitations, and costumes. (Good grief---I grew up as Laura Ingalls Wilder...)

Anyway...dance class in gym. Four girls formed each square. The boy foursomes rotated with each chorus to the next group of four girls. My failure to be in any obvious clique resulted in my being one of the leftovers and I was grouped with three other oddball girls, so that, by contrast, I was the "cool" one. Sigh...junior high is a cruel, cruel environment. When Brown-eyes and his three friends saw that we were next, they all got down in a track stance, for the "race" to be my partner. Brown-eyes won the race (I can still picture this) and grabbed me by the waist and twirled me around saying "I got you, my love!" Which, interpreted that day meant, "Whew....I don't have to dance with [the girl whose mother made her wear little zipped up overshoes with furry tops] or [the fat one who has bad skin and squinty eyes and weird hair] or....you get it. BUT...despite my understanding the hyperbole of his exclamation, it meant everything to me that, for four minutes, I could hold his hand and do-si-do and bow next to him. They raced off to the next square with just as much enthusiasm.

He was the perpetrator of my Most Humilating Moment of Science Class that year, too. We had science first period and he and my So-Called friends snatched my purse off my desk and went up to the front of the room to dump it out and investigate the contents. There wasn't much to see: Avon lipstick samples, a comb, some Certs and---my Little Book from Health Class. Which he immediately opened and pretended to read, saying with each page, "Oh, this is interesting, oh, look at this, oh, really, hmmm...."

I tried snatching the purse back, but one of the friends was even taller than me (a miracle) and held it over his head, and after they dumped it out, I didn't think I'd be able to go on living because of the mortification at having the Little Book being displayed for all to see. At that point in life I had not yet started needing any of the Kimberly-Clark products they discussed in the Little Book, but the mere fact of them displaying to all the world, or at least my Science class, that I was an actual girl with a uterus and a vagina as illustrated was so embarrassing I can't believe I didn't die. I did start to cry however, and asked the science teacher (one of my mother's many, many cousins) to make them give back my things. Which of course he did. As the years go by, I realize now that I was probably the last to know, in that group of kids (including the boys) that I possessed a uterus and a vagina and why.

Hot Dog-O-Rama

Thursday Menu: Two grilled hotdogs w/yellow mustard and bread and butter pickles, macaroni & cheese; glass of milk

Friday Menu: organic brown rice, groat sprouts, glass of wheat-grass juice

YA THINK???

NOT a Health Food Diet

Did you ever get a food craving? On Monday night I left the gym and there was Der Weinerschnitzel. I love their food. Periodically. Ever since I first ran across DW in San Diego many, many moons ago, I occasionally get a serious need for a hot dog and they have a couple I just love. But on Monday, I successfully resisted the urge to drive through. Instead, I went to the grocery store and bought a pack of Ballpark Franks and a package of buns.

Monday Menu: Two hot dogs, smothered in canned chili and grated cheese; glass of milk

Tuesday Menu: Two hot dogs, covered with grilled [sauteed] red peppers and sliced onions; glass of milk

Wednesday Menu: Two hot dogs, toasted bun layered with alfalfa sprouts, avocado slices and brown mustard; glass of milk

Thursday Menu: stayed tuned!! There are still two hot dogs in the fridge!!

Law & Order: Grammar Police

I walked into Walmart tonight to pick up some eyeglasses we'd ordered, and there was a handwritten sign posted at the doorway saying,

"Sorry, are WIC machine is broken today. "

Ooooh...

I was buying pens anyway. You KNOW what happens next. Yes, of course I scribbled out the wrong word and put in the right word. Duh.

Desert Trek: Part Two--The Indulgence

So on Saturday we headed west for the border again. We stopped in Tecopa. No, I'd never heard of it either before we drove through it last week. I lived in California for twenty years and drove north across the Mohave many, many times on the way to the Grandmas in Wyoming, but somehow this town escaped my attention. It isn't exactly on the beaten path...but many people do find their way there to soak in the mineral springs. Tecopa isn't a spa a la Palm Springs or La Costa. It's a little desert kind of place where snowbirds hook up their travel trailers to the electricity in the campground across the street from the hots springs buildings, and then walk over in their bathrobes and sandals, with towels draped over their arms.

So, we parked and went in and paid our ten dollars each and went out back to jiggle door handles to find an empty bath. There are several little rooms where you go in, lock the door, take off your clothes, hang them up and then step down into the pool that is about 10 feet square. You are NOT allowed to wear a suit because it could contaminate the mineral water with residue or whatever. The water is about 104 degrees--we only heat our hottub to 100, so this is quite a bit hotter. You'll only last about 20 minutes. But, unless there is a crowd waiting for the tubs, you can go back in again after you cool off a bit.

There is no ceiling in this little "room", it is open to the sky, and the water is just continually dribbling in through a pipe coming through the wall. It smells lovely (unlike the faint chlorine smell of our hottub) and the feel of the water on your skin is soft and silky because of the mineral content. When I get out of our hottub, I always hurry right in for the lotion to soak up my feet and hands. Many times, I'll jump in the shower to rinse off the chlorinated water. But this mineral water just felt wonderful on my skin and I didn't need to slather myself with lotion.

But I got slathered...during the massage I had after the soak. There is a little courtyard in the middle of the soaking rooms, and one of the doorways has a sign identifying this room as the office of a massusse. So I went in and signed up for one hour. If you've never had a massage, then RIGHT NOW google your area and find a theraputic massage office and book yourself an hour of bliss. Ahhhhh....ooohhhhh....ahhhhh. That's all I can say. Someone rubbing your tired old muscles with warm cream while you lay silently on a soft table listening to new age-groovy wah music. OOhhhh....ahhhh. Doing this right after you have soaked yourself into a state of relaxed bliss in a hot mineral spring adds a fillip of decadence. Now, go---google!

Pant, pant, pant

This is the third day that Cool Guy and I have GONE TO THE GYM---yes...and walked vigorously on treadmills. We printed off a 10 day pass and then tonight we actually dived right in and bought the ID cards. We're hoping to stave off decrepidness for a few more years. It's actually quite envigorating and I'm sure my calf muscles will sign on to this program soon.

A Trek in the Desert

We went for a drive on Saturday, headed for Death Valley, but we didn't quite get there. Unlike the classic cartoon of the skeleton in the desert, we were just distracted by a detour. We headed straight west from Las Vegas and after crossing a small but beautiful mountain pass watched over by a big horn sheep perched on an impossibly pointy chunk of rock, we descended into an enormous valley just over the California border that stretched to the horizon in every direction. If you looked up "gawd-forsaken" in the dictionary, it would be a photo of this place. There were no curves in the road--not needed--no obstacles to this highway. Around the rim of the valley to the south were some mountains, so we turned left at that intersection (passing up the chance to buy "elk, bison or beef jerky--FRESH!!") to head over to China Ranch.

The desert is actually quite beautiful in its own way. It is so completely different from the other places I've lived---hardwood forested east-coast; chapparal/beach west-coast; alpine forest Rocky Mountain valley. In the desert you get geology--unfiltered. The variations of the earth's plates are all thrust up and exposed. It is so obvious where each layer begins and ends and sometimes a hill right next to another hill has its layers moving in a completely opposite direction and you hope that God has an IMAX so when you get to heaven you can watch the tectonic wrestling match that must have caused this.

And the colors!! There are some canyons on the west side of Vegas that have the most precise stripes of startling red sandwiched in the layers of beige and brown and tan. It's like Mother Nature made a delicious PBJ and then Father Nature accidently sat on it, curving it around with all the colored layers.

Desert plants are no less amazing. You're gazing out on a scene so stark you'd think it was the moon, when you realize that the sides of these mounds of fossilized gargantuan elephant dung(actually...hills)are dotted with tiny little bushes. The leaves are the size of a piece of oatmeal and there are teeny little flowers in the center of each leaf group just blooming away. What pollinates these flowers? How can they grow in this hill that is just a huge lump of tiny rocks cemented in place by hard pan dirt?

As we go further down the canyon between these giant dung heaps we pass by fenced-off areas with stark red warning signs to stay out of the abandoned gypsum mines that are dug out under these hills. You can see the old timbers supporting the edges of the openings that are cut way back under these mounds. Now you know why the shape of these hills is so unique---they are just huge repositories of this mineral formed under prehistoric Lake Bonneville. As the water evaporated, it left behind these lumps and gradually the desert wind blew in enough soil to form a little eco-system with the essentials to support those tiny plants able to thrive on top of a pile of gypsum. Cool.

Then we turned a corner on this road that had narrowed and become a gravel path and voila! An oasis of date palms and bamboo appears like a mirage! (A cliche--but you can see why the old prospectors had to rub their eyes in disbelief after passing through the miles of moonscape to come upon lush greens and water.)

According to the sign a Chinese man started a farm here at these springs in the 1800's and sold food to nearby mining camps. He "mysteriously" disappeared and someone else took over the property and finally in the 1980's the most recent owners have planted date palms and have a little Bed and Breakfast. The property is only about 50 acres, tops, but it is thick with trees and a couple of ramshackle buildings. A small stream runs through it that is completely obscured by reeds and cottonwoods and apparently just disappears into the ground right outside the hills of this tiny valley. The owners pipe the spring water into their orchard and use drip irrigation to keep their trees alive. They make a living, and it is a lovely place to walk around and smell the moisture and marvel that anyone stayed alive in their trek through the surrounding deserts to find it in the first place.

I found myself thinking that I was grateful my ancestors were cow milkers and chose a remote, high mountain valley that is exquisitely beautiful to establish their dynasty of genteel poverty from which I could descend. I don't think I'd have liked growing up the progeny of hard-scrabble miners in the tiny dry villages that dot this area of no-man's land on the border of California and Nevada. But, many people living here are the off-spring of those crusty old loners, and wouldn't have it any other way.