Dear Mom and family,
Because my drama club is now scheduled on Monday and Wednesday afternoons, I flew to Berkeley on Thursday, and will fly back today, Sunday. I took an early flight so as to have time to practice music with Oscar before lunch. The terrible fatigue I've had since I had that bout with flu the week before last made the trip more difficult.
You can see how tired I was in this selfie (but color-coordinated!)
Here's Oscar in his music room/study. I like this photo, I like photos of people in their interiors.
It's always the same lunch at Oscar and Paulette's and I always enjoy it.
I refused to give Oscar a hug because I feared I might still be contagious, and he seemed to take it as a personal affront.
I took the BART back to Berkeley and walked to Andronico's as usual. When I finished buying my groceries there, I did not have my usual energy to lug the groceries and my luggage to the bus stop and take the bus up the hill. I called Nancy and she called Sandy, who was down in Berkeley anyway,
You can see how tired I was by this selfie taken in front of Andronico's as I waited.
It was really nice to be able to see Nancy, as she's in Berkeley every Thursday. We chatted about a number of subjects, including the psychological effects of early childhood trauma, whether in abusive homes or in war.
We really had a nice evening, though this photo, unfortunately the only one I took, does not capture that!
I enjoyed chatting with Karina before she left, in the morning. I'm glad that she ended it with the Turkish guy. In the summer she will be going to Croatia for a wedding, a friend of hers who lives her is marrying a Muslim man in the mosque here, then they will go back to Croatia for a church wedding with the girl's family! Something for everyone!
I was rather surprised, shortly thereafter, when Marisa suddenly left. We were just having a pleasant conversation (during which she did mention that she wanted the back door left open because the shampoo and soap I just had used bothered her) when she suddenly entered the kitchen and said she had to go home and get her migraine medicine, and that she didn't know if she would be back.
"Okay", I said, "I'm sorry." I didn't have time to ask her where Mom's glasses were, or where the shampoo and soap I should use were, or anything else.
I was using the same shampoo and conditioner (Pantene) and soap (from the Body Shop, probably is scented but naturally) I've used for years. Next time I'm in Berkeley I plan to buy some shampoo and soap marked "unscented" and use them while I am there.
After cooking the eggs and sausages, which were well-received, I felt so tired I had to lie down on the couch. I sure will be glad when this fatigue, leftover from that virus I had, is done with!
I am disappointed that the vitamins are not being taken, because vitamins are especially important to a body which is going through the healing process. I wonder if it would be possible to find some vitamins which are smaller pills. I myself sometimes have trouble getting the larger pills down, I have to take a huge gulp of water.
Continuing to not take the vitamins will probably be reflected in the bloodwork results, which in turn will result in vitamins being prescribed anyway. Perhaps when and if the vitamins become a doctor's prescription they will be taken seriously.
In the late afternoon, I went through the songs that Oscar and I usually do, and put them in an order where the slow ones were alternated with the faster ones. The faster ones include the fiddle tunes which he does on mandolin while I do rhythm. I also practiced all of the songs. Doing this preparation resulted in a more polished-sounding music session the next day.
In the late evening, Jennie helped me cutting up vegetables for the stew I was making for the tea. I sauteéd the beef, she chopped the onions and sauteéd them, and both went in the crock-pot overnight.
Sandy had purchased the entire last Downton Abbey series, and as I feared I would not reach home Sunday by the time it was aired in Arizona. So I asked to watch it after dinner. Mom said she would like to watch it with me, but her attention wandered some. For those of you who are following this series, they do tie up all the loose ends, it's like 25 little happy endings in program.
Interesting conversation with Jennie before she left, the following morning. I found out that she is hoping to get a job like the one I had, for the school system, and that during the week she volunteers three hours a day in her son's school. She also sells insurance to Spanish-speaking people, during the week.
The rest of her family are all professional people: her father was a school teacher in Peru, her sister is a lawyer, and her brother, if I remember correctly, an accountant. Jennie was the only one of the family who had a very difficult time in school, and needed much tutoring help from her father just to graduate from high school.
Jennie was married for ten years in Oklahoma City, and moved out to be near her parents after that marriage broke up. She had an affair with an accountant (I only surmised this by "reading between the lines") and got pregnant by him although her doctors in Okalahoma City had said she was unable to have children. The accountant had to go back to Peru, because he had been padding his own account with some of the money he got from his clients, who were immigrants. During her pregnancy, her father "helped me so much, I will always be so grateful to him".
As a single mom, she concentrated very hard at saving money, and in three years was able to save enough for a down payment on a house (during the time that housing prices plummeted). When she moved into her second husband's house after marrying him, she rented out the house she was making payments on, at a profit. At the present time she is renting her house to to her lawyer sister, who never saved enough money to buy a house (and who apparently loves to give large parties).
Her son has been raised by her husband since the son was eight months old, and regards his stepfather as his dad. The boy is apparently very intelligent. She has him in an after school program which involves swimming for exercise, and after that educational programs.
Anyway, I found her quite an impressive person!
Tamika arrived right on time, with an attractive new hairstyle. I asked her about the expensive Super Bowl party she had gone to right after I saw her last, and she said that it was great, but that she didn't get to see the famous rap artists "50-Cent" and Chris Brown perform, because "my cousin got so lit they made me take her home, saying that 'this wasn't that kind of club, for people who can't hold their liquor.' I was so mad because that was why I went, to see them perform".
The dishwasher repair-main had rescheduled for 9:00 AM Saturday, and with Sandy's assistance, he soon had he problem fixed.
In the early afternoon, we had a very pleasant visit from Pam and Sophia. They ended up helping to create the cruditeés platters, and we had an interesting conversation besides. Olaf, Stephan and other boys fr0m Stephan's film class are having a weekend at Inverness, which involves filming. I am irritated at myself that I forgot to take a photo while Pam and Sophia were here; it was one of the highlights of the day.
About a dozen people showed up for the tea: I have become quite fond of all of the regulars. I thought my "Gypsy Stew" turned out great but there's a lot of it left over, in jars in the freezer at Campus Dr. Sandy made a nice rice dish and some incredibly delicious bruschetta appetizers, and people brought very nice dishes.
This time I finally remembered to take photos of everyone at the tea, and even roped in Paulette to take a photo of Oscar and me playing music together.
The first photo shoes Danielle and her friend (whose name I forget and who has started coming to some of the teas). Danielle teaches French, and her friend makes her living caring for peoples' babies, in her home, and has for years. I learned that Danielle and her sister still own their old family home in Provence, and they rent it out on Air-BnB for only 200 euro a night. Mostly they've had good experiences, except for a group of Romanians who put negative comments on the BnB notice board, and also stole all of the recently-purchased sheets!
Benter was wearing a gorgeous African dress. We had not seen her since she went in October to visit her family in Africa. She spent most of her time "in the village" where they do have electricity but most residents still must haul water, including her relatives.
Benter's brother and husband really laughed when I showed them the photo (found on Google Images) of the Trump piñata. (I had heard about it on NPR.) I know I have posted it on this blog before, but for those who haven't seen it, here it is:
We had quite a discussion about whether we should really be worried about the possibility of Trump being elected.
Nice food. Shown left to right: the cruditeés, the bruschetta, Benter's spinache/arrowroot plate, Danielle's friend's croissants, and my Gypsy Stew. Not shown is Sandy's rice dish.
Here are Paulette, Matti, and Marcia. As most of you know, Matti was Daddy's teaching assistant, Marcia has been friends with mom ever since library school.
Paulette took several photos of Oscar and me, and this one I liked most. I love the surrounding of books.
Love,
Lennie
Hi Mom and family,
It's 4 AM Wednesday morning, a fresh breeze blowing through the window. I love having the security screen on the bedroom window so that I can feel safe about leaving it wide open all night. Ziggy scratched to go out at 3:30 AM, and I couldn't go back to sleep since then. The Siamese cat has come in, jumped up on the high bed, and curled up next to me.Tomorrow very early I will be flying to Oakland.
Monday I woke up absolutely wiped out, albeit with a nice afterglow because the meetup music jam had gone so well. But absolutely wiped out. Which wasn't surprising, after two days of pushing myself to meet my commitments to do, while still feeling such fatigue and lack of endurance from the after-effects of the flu virus. I stayed in bed all morning, dozing, watching movies, and noshing as if I wanted to go back to being forty pounds heavier again.
In the afternoon I forced myself to get up and dressed, and drove to the bank and to make copies needed for the drama club that afternoon. Everything felt as though it took much more concentration and will-power than usual, and it was a grumpy me who pulled into the Boys & Girls Club.
But like the music jam the day before, once I started doing an activity I love, I got caught up in it and forgot how lousy I felt. Funny how our brain/body connection works. It was especially fun because a girl who was in the club last year returned and took part enthusiastically, just as I needed someone to fill a role because two younger gils, much less mature, have stopped taking part due to family problems.
(The family problems were pretty bad, the activities director told me, and another girl whispered that one of their step-brothers was taken away by CPS ---of course I just answered in a monotone that it's not our place to speak of such things.)
Of those two younger girls, one of them, the second-grader, has a real talent for drama and acting, there is even something charismatic about her. I considered going up to the club an additional hour a week to help them with homework, so that I keep the connection with her and make it more likely that she rejoin the club in the future, for her sake as well as mine.
But with less than three weeks to get our place ready for Lyssa and Mike's visit and the inaugural pizza oven party, and the fact that I'm so behind, I had better not take on yet another commitment. I haven't got the tomato plants in either, nor prepared the bed for them.
Besides, the actual time I have to work on getting ready is much less than three weeks. With this four-day weekend to Berkeley, other weekends taken up either with the Renaissance festival or with meetups, plus the weekly afternoon in Tempe for my Arabic lesson, and about five hours of drama club a week, it's actually less than two weeks that I actually have to get the place ready for the party. I do hope that my energy returns!
Yesterday, with the hope of recovering said energy, I spent most of the day in bed watching movies. It's been over a week since I came down with that three-day virus, and the after-effects are going on for a depressingly long time.
I'd forgotten to buy dog food, and had given Ziggy cat food the night before. Yesterday morning I took pity on him and gave him a couple of chicken breasts left over from the recipe I'd made for the music jam. I was glad that no one had eaten, because the recipe did not turn out well. I went back to the new Joy of Cooking and found that I had not followed the directions correctly. They even warned that chicken breasts cooked on lower heat do not turn out tender.
I did have my computer tutoring session in the early afternoon. While my computer tutor and I were having our session at Starbuck's (we worked on putting my scanned drawings into a "gallery" on the "creativity" page of my personal website) his wife and three little kids were at McDonald's, in the large two-story kids' playroom at the back. I stopped by there on my way home to say hello to his friendly wife, and their three lively kids.
"Grace! Grace! Watch me!" Ava, the three year old kept saying, jumping up and down like a spring. She has inherited her father's height, and is one of those kids who is so tall for her age that people expect her to act like a four-year-old.
Here are photos: of Ava and Oliver on the climbing structure, and one of Juliana, the baby, being held by my computer tutor while she reaches for a baby-sized soft-ice-cream cone and then dissolves it.
I asked them to "save the date" for the pizza party, or rather "save the dates" because I still don't know if the party will be the 15th or the 16th.
When I returned home I really regretted giving Ziggy the chicken breasts; the house smelled of dog diarrhea!
I called Dale Sr. later in the afternoon, to make sure that he was returning today from fishing at Roosevelt Lake, as I am flying out tomorrow. He said yes, and it was obvious that he had remembered. He and Jerry G. haven't caught anything at all, and no other people were out there fishing. It's a month early for the spring fishing, but he had thought because we'd been having such a warm spell that the catfish would be biting already. They haven't.
The usual sign is to wait until the Palo Verde trees start blooming, that's when the catfish start biting. Catfish fishing is mostly done at night.
Love,
Lennie
Hi Mom and Family
It's around 5 AM, and Dale Sr. has left to go fishing at Roosevelt Lake for a couple of days with Jerry Gargalione. It's still dark, but lying in bed with my laptop on my knees, I can see a faint glow of grey dawn, encircled by dark silhouettes of leafy plant fronds, either growing up above the top of the fence and hanging down from the tree.
Saturday morning I had my beading meetup. It seems to be the one of my meetups which reliably draws a comfortable number of people, and people who are come ready to chat and enjoy eachothers' company. It was warm enough that we could have it outside on the large Starbuck's deck.
Here's a photo of the group:
In another couple of months, some of these women will go back to the midwest. They and their husbands pull their Gold Wing motorcycles in trailers behind their motorhomes. Active seniors!
The lady who is coorganizer (and is a year-round resident) will host one (a beading/handwork meetup) in two weeks, which I will not attend. She's going to see about reserving one of the meeting rooms at the library.
She hosted one of the beading meetups on the 5th of February, which was as well-attended as the two which I have hosted. This time, she went around and took full-face photos of all of us, and is going to make name tags with photos on them!
She also put out a plastic cup and encouraged all the women to put a dollar in it, to reimburse me for the $15/month I pay meetup.com for the privilege of the on-line page. (I protested; I have never asked for dues, hosting the meetup is just something I decided I was going to do as a "personal growth sort of thing". But they all said how much they enjoyed it, and they were grateful to me for starting it..)
I'm hoping that I will find someone to be a co-organizer of my music jam meetup also. Having Ann as co-organizer of the travel meetup has been helpful, when I could not be there.
After the meetup, and a short nap at home, I had to go up to the library to adapt and print out a scene for the drama club. I've had two new boys join. I'm excited about having them because they are second generation drama club members! Their mom was in my club when she was in middle school so many years ago! Also, both of the boys have very fun personalities.
For them, I took a short monologue and adapted it for two actors:
On-line at Starbuck's, I applied to join the other guitar meetup, held in Mesa. This group is much larger than mine; the guy charges dues (pretty hefty dues, $5 per person per meeting) and rents a room for the meetup. He posts copies of the songs they will play on the Meetup page. I could learn something from all this organization, though actually I enjoy a smaller group myself.
I was a little nervous that he would not accept me as a member. A lady who came to my group a couple of times told me that she once mentioned my group to his members, and he became angry and told her that if she ever did that again, she could not return to his group. (Since then, I've learned that the other group has changed leaders.)
Actually, in the summer I may go regularly to this other group. I don't usually have meetups in my home during the months that Dale Sr. is gone, anyway. Besides it's too hot for a lot of people, the ones who are used to air-conditioning (I just have evaporative cooling.)
In the evening I was doing some yard work. I unchained the cast metal table and chairs, moved them to an area which I'd mowed, pulled the long grass which had grown up under where they'd been, and ran the hand mower over it.
While I was doing this, Dale Sr. was lighting a small fire in the pizza oven/smoker fireplace, in order to start drying it out. If this is not done, the first large fire will make it develop cracks.
In the actual pizza oven, he lit four tall votive candles that he had bought, to help dry it out in there.
John Ducette was down here in the Valley today, doing a small remodeling job for the wealthy people whom he does a lot of work for. These people own some large luxury cabins in the mountains which they rent out by the weekend or week, and also have large homes of their own down here. John D. spent the afternoon with Dale Sr. and came and judged that the pizza oven/smoker is dry enough to start building the small fires.
Dale Sr. asked when Lyssa and Mike were coming down, because he and friends are talking about a March fishing trip. I wasn't exactly sure, so we called her. They are doing fine. The wedding they are going to in LA is on March 15th, and plan to drive out here on the following Monday, and only will stay until Wednesday or Thursday.
This means that we will have the party for them on that Tuesday or on Wednesday. On the one hand, fewer of our friends will be able to attend because it's mid-week. On the other hand, the fact that it is mid-week means that Chris and Peter (the glassblowers from the Renaissance) can come. They knew Lyssa well during the years that we had had the dance troupe out there.
I asked her if they were able to buy that piece of land which they were looking at. She said that they were still working on incorporating Mike's business (you may remember that they decided that this should be done before they bought the land, as a liability protection). She said that Tammy, Mike's ex-wife, is having to go through all of the years of paperwork.
I said that I was sorry that Tammy had to do extra work for something which was caused by Mike and Lyssa's buying the land. Lyssa said that Tammy regards the incorporation as something which they should have done long ago, anyway, and has a good attitude about it.
(You may remember that Lyssa's reason for incorporating the business is that in a small town, everyone will know that she and Mike are buying property. If someone sued the pizza restaurant and it is incorporated, that person could only sue for the restaurant and not for the rest of their property, if I remember correctly. I am glad that they are taking this precaution.)
After calling her, I came inside and saute'ed chicken breasts which had been coated in seasoned flour. This was the first part of the chicken parmesana recipe which I was making to serve at the music jam the next day. I was up late washing all of the dishes, and I was a little grumpy because I still didn't have my normal amount of energy back. I realized that I'd forgotten to stop by Safeway on the way from the library/Starbuck's errand, and that I still needed to get beer, and bread to go with the recipe.
Yesterday, I set my alarm for 4:30 AM, as I still had to sweep and tidy the house as well as get ready to go out to the Renaissance Festival.
Once out at the festival site I found that after about an hour of activity, I broke into a sweat and wanted to rest. I was able to do my usual amount of morning singing, but the whole time I was hing to "pushing myself" and didn't enjoy it the way I usually do. I left at noon because I still had to do some things to get ready for the late-afternoon music jam.
It seemed to take all my resolve to make the Safeway run, and sweep the floor, and tidy the patio to get ready for the music jam. I had the feeling of apprehension that because I was so wiped-out and grumpy, it was unlikely that the music jam would go very well.
On the contrary, it was lovely. Two women returned from last time, Laure was able to come in spite of her punishing schedule, another guy showed who had come several times before. We all have about the same taste in songs and the same level of ability. I was especially pleased to see a young man return who only came once before, who plays very beautiful solos. He is nervous around people, actually seemed to let loose a little and enjoy himself. (When I first had met him, he told me that "this is difficult for me because I have social anxiety".)
The other man, an old union guy/Democrat, surprised me when he told us that he was LDS (Mormon). He sang us a song that he "and the guys in the dorm" used to sing in college in Laramie, Wyoming, "Don't send your son to Utah, I'd rather he'd be dead," or something like that. Probably some sort of rivalry song between Laramie and BYU, but it just seemed so funny to me that Mormon college students would sing something like that.
Sorry, I was having too much fun to remember to take any photos!
Have to admit that part of the reason for my verbosity in these blogs is....pure laziness. As long as I'm typing away, I have an excuse not to get up and start getting ready for the day!
Love,
Lennie
Dear Mom and Family,
It's nice to feel a bit better, but my endurance level is still quite far below normal.
Thursday I felt well enough to get up and get dressed. I did some of the dishes which had mounted up, some yard work, and did some errands.
When I went to give the chickens fresh water, I found that one of our chickens had died, the big old Plymouth Rock. (Well, they're all old, as hens go.) I buried her deep in the oleander compost pile. Lyssa had originally brought seven chickens, as pullets, and we lost two of the Amaurcana ones over the years. Now we have four.)
They are laying quite well now that it's warmer, but I know from the last few years that this is just their "first spring flush" of laying. They are really too old to be good layers. Maybe after the Renaissance Festival is over, I'll look around to find a good source for chickens, and put these long-time hens of ours in the stew-pot. (There is a Mexican family on the same street as Dale Sr.'s "man-cave" which sells chickens, but I might want to find some pure-bred ones.)
But they sure still are good at shredding yard waste for compost, and they are great recyclers of kitchen scraps!
We are not allowed to have roosters here, only hens, so our flock does not get constantly replenished like Madelyn's does.
Dale Sr. was doing some clean up of the liquid cemet run-off which had hardened and built up on the ground where the little cement mixer was standing. This involved taking a tamping rod and breaking it up in pieces. He brought the flatbed trailer over and we both loaded it up with some trash from the job, and other trash, and cement pieces.
Thursday was an overcast day with a slight breeze, which made it nice.
It felt good to rake the excess bits of cement from around the pizza oven/smoker, because it's so beautiful. I also repotted a trailing rosemary into a very large pot between the ornamental cement benches around the orange tree.
Repotted rosemary:
In the afternoon I did some errands: I paid both phone bills (as we'd seemed to lose both of them this month), went by the post office, did the most recent blog, checked e-mail, meetup pages, and Facebook group pages at Starbuck's (I've about given up on checking all the regular Facebook messages, it takes so long) and stopped by Safeway for groceries. It felt good to be out and about again, but I still became tired more easily then usual.
I got an e-mail from Cate, the woman who had come to my last music jam "meetup". She pointed out that I'd scheduled my music jam meetup the same time as "the one in Mesa", although she'd asked, and I'd agreed, to schedule them on alternate Sundays. I felt bad about that.
Yesterday I had planned a big list of things to do, because I had meetups scheduled Saturday morning and Sunday afternoon, but planned to be out at the Renaissance Festival Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning. But I found that after a couple of hours of effort, I would need to lie down, feeling sweaty and spent. In other words, not completely better yet! I decided that I might just go out to the Renaissance Festival Sunday morning, but definitely not try to go Saturday afternoon.
I did get a few hours of watering and weeding done in the lot across the street, interspersed with naps. It felt good to be outside, though frustrating that the weeds are starting to get ahead of me.
In the evening I finally finished the hanger for the little Navajo rug which Dale Sr. is giving Dale Jr. and family. I did this while watching/listening to an excellent "American Masters" program about the life of singer-songwriter Carole King. Her songs bring back so many memories!
Photo of Navajo rug with hanger. It's shown stuck into the curtain loops, but we are giving him hooks to hang it from.
Dale Sr. was on a mission to find and buy those long-handled impletments called "pizza peels" which are used to take the pizzas in and out of the pizza oven. He was trying to call the number for Andrews Restaurant Supply, the store he'd always gone to in Mesa, but couldn't get them to answer. He'd tried to go there on Wednesday but found that they had moved, which I could have told him (though I couldn't remember where they had moved to).
I tried calling Lawson, because he always knows everything about local happenings. He said that Andrews had gone out of business, but to give him a couple of minutes and he'd see what he could find. He called back and gave his dad the address of another restaurant supply place.
Dale Sr. returned later that afternoon, mission accomplished: two "pizza peels" and a metal brush, equally long-handled, to use to push coals to the back of the pizza oven. Dale Sr. said that the place was huge, like a Home Depot of restaurant supply stores.
Here's a photo of the two "pizza peels" and the metal brush:
In the morning I had received a call from Cate, the woman who had e-mailed about my scheduling glitch. She said that she'd decided that she would prefer to go to my music jam meetup because "she felt more comfortable" as the people at the other one were so much better musicians than she. I thanked her but encouraged her to go to whichever one she wanted to. I got the name of the other meetup so that I could join it, if only to find out what dates they were scheduling theirs.
In all of this reaching out "beyond my comfort zone" to meet new people through these meetups, I'm finding that the main difficulties arise not from the discomfort with meeting new people (which was expected) but from the complications of keeping different things straight. In that way it's kind of like waitressing, where, similarly, I thought that dealing with the people would be the difficult thing, but found that the difficult thing was keeping all of the orders straight with the different tables.
The difficult thing with waitressing, for me, was the milk! The other drinks were all brought to the table as soon as one turned in the ticket to the cook, but if someone ordered milk, that was supposed to be brought with the food. By the time the food orders were ready to go out to the table, I'd always forget the milk.
Love,
Lennie
Hi Mom and family,
It's 5 AM and still dark. It's chilly enough that I pulled my "Sweet Home Blue Chicago" sweatshirt over my flannel nightgown, and the furry throw is wrapped around my legs and feet. But we haven't needed a fire in the house for some time.
The pushy long-haired Siamese cat has jumped up on my lap and is trying to sit on my arm. I won't het her, so she settles for placing a paw on my forearm while I type.
Sunday morning I got up early, ate a healthy breakfast, wrote my blog, showered, and then felt like going back to sleep! Dale Sr. slept in also, the first day he has been able to do that since the pizza oven project started several weeks ago. John Ducette is back up north doing a job there, while the stucco on the pizza oven dries out for about a week. Dale Sr. is supposed to hose it off a couple of times a day, so that it dries slowly and doesn't crack.
It looks gorgeous!
We sat around drinking coffee and watching "Sunday Morning" which we both enjoy. Then I watered the "baby plants" in the lot across the street, pulling weeds as I did so. I'm behind on the weeding over there, and also on other lot, the one I still call "Gary's".
I had made arranged with my friend Sylvia to meet her at Starbuck's at 1:00 PM. I hadn't seen her for quite a while, and we had our usual great, rapid-fire conversation. I'm so glad that she is loving this year's work situation, the teacher she works for. She finally got a deadbeat tenant out of the other half of her duplex and moved in a friend who really wanted a rental.
Before she could move the friend in, she had to scrub it down and using two coats of "Kils" to get the cigarette smell out of the supposed "non-smoking" apartment. Routinely between tenants, she rips out carpet, puts in new carpet or tile, etc.
She always hires a teenager she knows (she seems to find a different one each year) to help her with the work that must be done on each apartment when the tenants change.
Sylvia with a photo on her phone of her new, and fourth, dog:
After she left I spent about an hour on the internet, mostly with the blog about the weekend. It took a long time because I hadn't posted for several days. Then it was time to rush home, as Dale Sr. and I had plans to go for an early dinner and then to go hear one of the guys who came to my last music jam perform.
We ended up eating chili cheese-burgers at a place we'd seen for years but never tried. The restaurants we like were all too full to get in and out of in a reasonable time, I should have remembered that it would be like that on Valentine's Day.
I hadn't been in a "regular old bar" for quite some time, and the "Dog Run Saloon" was not the coolest place. The waitress had on a lot of eye-makeup and dirty hair, not a winning combination, and most of the people in there, she included, looked and acted like a large part of their non-working hours were mostly spent drinking. There was a native American woman who brought in a tray of fake diamond jewelry to sell, and lots of loud raucous formulaic joking going on.
Dale Sr. ordered "cheese curds" as an appetizer. We both ordered chili cheeseburgers, which turned out to be huge, and large draft beers.
I got out my phone and "apped" in everything in, as my friend Laure had shown me, including the large beer. "Wham-bam", I was 2013 calories over my daily calorie goal though I'd entered the place 500 calories under, and only eating half of the huge chili cheeseburger.
(It was a good lesson to me. )
When we came out of there, the sunset was beautiful:
Then we went to the retirement trailer park to hear the two guys who had come to my music jam meetup. Here we are entering the "clubhouse":
It turned out to be rather disappointing musically, but rather sweet. The guy who invited us leads a group at that huge "travel trailer resort", and this group of several guitarists and about ten singers had been practicing their program for a while. (These people are all what we call "winter visitors" if being polite, and "snowbirds" if not.)
(The guy who invited us, an excellent musician himself, is just to the right of the accordionist.)
Different people got up to sing, and some of the singing was off key, but some of it was charming. (What was not charming was that the sound system kept making strange noises. Kathy, remember that guy who fixed the sound system at the BHS reunion? There was no one like him at this event.)
The large audience, who had all been encouraged to wear red if they had any, were hugely enthusiastic as they all knew the performers socially. The accordionist doubled as announcer and recited a hokey, practiced schpiel between each number. A couple of the men who sang romantic songs invited their wives to stand up on stage with them while they sang to them. I could see that mid-westerners and Canadadians of rural upbringing seem less leery of open sentimentality than Arizonans or Californians!
(The only downside is that I still can't get that maudlin song, "I'll Give You a Daisy a Day, Dear", out of my mind!)
It did make me feel a little weird to realize that I was the same age as most of these "snowbirds".
I came home and watched both Downton Abbey and Mercy Stree, even though the dishes weren't done and the house untidy.
Monday morning I felt a little bit tired and grumpy, I almost wished I did not have to get to the Renaissance Festival that morning. I felt more tired than usual that morning, and my voice was a little scratchy when singing.
By the time I had gone back to the glassblower's courtyard to take my usual mid day nap, I knew that I did not feel well and all I could think of was to get home and crawl into bed. Headache, muscle aches, some extra congestion, mostly just fatigue. Happily,I didn't have Drama Club scheduled anyway because the schools were closed for Presidents' Day.
I was in bed all day Tuesday, watching my favorite old movies and not even feeling up to washing any of the dishes or even showering. Dale made an omelet for breakfast, and I had a quarter of it left for lunch, and I still had some leftover diet soup to have for dinner. In the late afternoon, I forced myself to get up and call my Arabic tutor to cancelled my lesson (I always go Wednesday) and also called the Boys & Girls Club to cancel the Wednesday evening Drama club session.
Yesterday, Wednesday, was much the same, except that I didnt feel as achey, nor sleep as much. I would get up from time to time and wash a few dishes, tidy up a bit, and wash out some clothes by hand, which made for a somewhat less chaotic living environment at the end of the day.
Even when sick, I contniued using the app "Losing it" quite conscientiously. Except for that disastrous chile cheese burger & large draft beer calorie binge at the "Dog Run Saloon" on Sunday evening, I have kept under my 1,323 calorie daily goal. If you get some exercise and enter it in, the "app" automatically gives you more calories you can eat, which is pretty cool. Of course, being sick, I haven't gotten any exercise.
An example of how the app helps in weight control is that it stopped me from having a second glass of wine last night, because I was already 24 calories over my daily goal.
Love,
Lennie
It's 4:30 AM, Sunday morning. Even through the closed patio door I can hear Mexican music from next door, the desultory last traces of a rousing birthday party for a seven year old child. (As Dale Sr. found out when he parted the oleanders, he said, and looked through to see what was going on over there.)
Friday, after catching up with the dishes and tidying, I resolved to walk my eight miles. (My goal is to do four hikes of eight miles each this month, four of nine miles each in March, and four of ten miles each in April. The long hike is in May.)
I went to Starbuck's and brought up Google Maps. I was hoping that the Recycling parking lot was four miles from the restaurant I wanted to eat lunch at, but it was only 2.3 miles. I kept trying different things until I found a large parking lot which was 4 miles from the Thai House.
I drove to McKellips Road via Signal Butte, so that I could drive through some desert. The scenery was beautiful, and I was amazed at some of the huge mansions which have been built on the north side of the little chain of mountains which runs east-west between Brown Road and McKellips. All of them are in desert colors with rockwork (or rock veneer).
I parked in the far corner of the large parking lot at McKellips and Power Road, which is back in the populated area. (There's a Safeway, several restaurants, and other small storefronts of various businesses.) I locked the car and started walking South.
The first couple of miles were pleasant and pretty, with nice landscaping treatments against the walls of housing developments.
Looking into one of the ritzy "gated communities" (no iffy-looking people walking up and down the road here!)
This church is pretty tech-savy:
Actually I've been inside there, when I went to hear my piano tuner sing. It's a Lutheran church. There are quite a few Lutheran churches in this area because of the large population of retired people from the Great Lakes States, whose ancestry is Scandinavian or German. They have this horse-shoe shaped kneeling bar around the pastor's pulpit, where people take turns coming up to kneel at the end of the service, rather like Catholics taking communion except that they don't get the wafer and the wine.
I liked this ocotillo shadow:
Around Main St./Apache Trail, the traffic started getting thicker:
About two thirds of the way, at Broadway and Power, I photographed these phone towers disguised as palm trees, at the entrance of a golf resort:
I was so glad to get to my destination, and I ordered their wonderful green curry. I had told myself that because the walk was so long, I would allow myself to eat the entire meal (their bowls of curry are twice the amount of calories which it's reasonable to eat, so I usually eat half of it) but I found I could eat only half of it anyway.
(I couldn't carry home the rest, of course, because I still had to walk the four miles back, and the food would have had to sit too long at a tepid temperature.)
While I was eating, I chatted with a young woman who worked from home as a project manager for a chain of ATM machines. About half the time, she said, she had to be traveling, but when she did work from home she always walked to a restaurant for lunch, to get out of the house. She was Thai, as it happens.
I started walking back and stopped again after a mile, to get on the internet at Starbuck's.
The last three miles were pretty much of a tired trudge. I was glad that I'd devised the scheme which forced me to finish the eight miles in order to get to my car.
It was a really nice time of day to view some of the desert plants in the landscaping of some of the housing developments:
A chuparosa:
A "pink fairy duster" (I've planted six of these, but they are still very tiny.)
Palo Verde, "Desert Spoons", and "desert sage"
By the time I did get to that parking lot at McKellips and Power, it was five PM.
I had planned to get some stuff done at home in the evening, but found, not surprisingly, that I was too tired to do anything but drink a couple of beers, eat some of the take-out barbecue, and read! I was pleased with myself for accomplishing the eight miles, though.
Yesterday, Saturday, was a long, busy day. I had to drive down to the bank where my savings account is, and withdraw some money to help several people who are having problems. On the way to a get-together in north, north Phoenix with my travel club friends, there was a scary near-miss on the freeway. In the evening I had a visit with Laure, whom I have not been able to see for a month because she's been so busy with the combination of work and interning.
In the morning, Dale Sr. and John Ducette were starting to put the stucco on the pizza oven. It was beautiful to see how smoothly and professionally John D. applies that stucco:
Through the oleanders you could see the bright colors of of a rented "bouncy house" for kids. You could see that our Mexican neighbors must be preparing for a birthday fiesta.
After my bank errand, I bought gas at the Shell station which is owned by the nice Nepali family. He told me that he has finished his ten-year contract with Shell and will be entering into a ten-year contract with a cheaper kind of gas. Since the Circle K station moved in across from him, he gets so many complaints that his Shell gas is too expensive. The new company will replace the gas pumps, re-paint, "everything new".
I wished him the best of luck with all of this, and will continue to buy gas there, though the quality of the gas will not be so good (it will be similar to the quality of the gas at Circle K, he said).
A few years ago when the big new Circle K moved in across the street, the nice Nepali guy was so upset. It was the only time I ever heard him use bad language ("How can I compete with their f-ckin' prices?") And he still had to finish out his Shell contract.
Before I left the station I did something I have been meaning to do for awhile, air up my tires. As I suspected, they were all around ten pounds low on pressure. As it turned out, it was a very good thing that I did!
I was going to the home of one of the long-time members of my travel club, Nancy A. She's a very independent 65-year-old with a hilarious sense of humor, who lives an hour away from me, in north north Phoenix.
We usually meet at a restaurant, and the meetings are scheduled on-line through "meetup.com".
At last month's meeting, the five of us long-time regulars were left sitting there after the other members left. One of the regulars suggested closing down the public group, now that we had all met through it, and continuing to meet on our own. (This is the first year that we have experienced a member..."the talker"...who wasn't completely likeable.) I pointed out that we wouldn't have met each other if the group hadn't been public, and that there might be other wonderful people we could get to know if we kept the club open to new people.
However, I did suggest that for March, the five of us could just meet privately, and Nancy A. invited us to the gathering I was going to today.
So, there I was, on the 202 freeway, in the far right lane because the junction with the 51 North was only a couple of exits away. There was not much traffic, everyone going at the limit or faster. I was coming up over a slight rise when suddenly the traffic came to a complete stop! I absolutely slammed on my breaks with all my strength, and came within a foot of hitting the car in front of me! The car behind me likewise came to a stop, as close to me as I was to the car before me.
My heart was pounding so hard in my chest. Now, at the top of the rise, I could see that the entire freeway, all lanes of traffic, was stopped.
The lane I was in started to move a bit, because people were able to take the exit (the one I'd been aiming for anyway). I was soon on the 51 north, where it passes through the beautiful desert mountains of the "dreamy draw" which lead to the far north of Phoenix:
I felt extraordinarily glad that I had aired up my tires, extraordinarily glad that I had not been looking momentarily at the scenery, and extraordinarily glad that the person behind me had been paying attention also!
The gathering was really nice, extraordinarily nice. We all agreed that we have all had an effect on each other's lives, and they all thanked me for starting the club. I thanked Ann (2nd from left in the second photo) because until she joined, no one came more than once (in other words, I had the initial idea, but not the personality needed to make people want to return). Nancy A. (on the left in both photos below) had a nice salad meal for us and we all chatted "a mile a minute" for around three hours.
Nancy A., divorced and retired from a career with one of the airlines, deliberately minimalized her household in order to be freer to travel. The condo is tiny and she got it at a very low price when the former buyers defaulted. She sold and gave away more than half of her possessions and has spent some money and time fixing up the condo apartment, which is on the ground floor with a shady north-facing outlook, a little polished jewel.
She spends about a third of the year at her son's in upstate New York, helping to baby-sit his new baby. She's happily single, "At my age, all they're interested in is 'a nurse or a purse'." She also has a handicapped son (Down's Syndrome) whom she visits for several long visits a year, at a facility in Florida.
Ann has just returned from a "hospitalero" training session in California. This will enable her to serve as a volunteer at one of the "auberges" on the Camino de Santiago pilgrim trail in Spain. The usual volunteer session is two weeks. Ann is also the one with whom I'm doing the "Migrant Trail" hike in Mexico, this May. Ann has done this hike for the last two years. (There will be a large group going, and support vehicles as well).
In October, I may join Nancy A. and two friends (one in his eighties!) in Berlin and Prague. We will probably sightsee separately and get together for dinner each evening. She says the train trip to Prague is easy. I've never been to Berlin, would love to return to Prague, and I'm excited about doing the train trip between the two cities.
(I had decided not to go to MCC this fall to have time to work on the Democratic presidential campaign; if I go to the Berlin/Prague trip it is true that I will miss a week of campaign volunteering at a crucial time.)
We also discussed the pluses and minuses of renting a car in Europe, as Diane and her partner Dan are planning a trip to Provence and Italy. Ann knew of someone who received an expensive and confusing traffic ticket from some city in Europe, months after she returned home. It was decided that renting a car in the countryside made sense, but not in congested areas.
We also all exchanged phone numbers and e-mail addresses.
By the time I got back to the East Valley there was only a half hour remaining until I was supposed to be at Laure's house. I bought a tuna sandwich at a Quick Stop, pleased that it was under 500 calories and that it was on firm wheat bread (a whole step up from the ones you buy at Circle K) I got to Laure's neighborhood around fifteen minutes early, so drove a little ways to pull over and make a phone call I had to make.
Now there was desert on both sides, and it was dark except for a low line of red and orange in the west. I delighted to hear coyotes, their erie calls coming from both sides. After my short phone call, I sat a few minutes just enjoying this wild atmosphere so close to the town.
It was good to visit with Laure, I hadn't seen her for so long. She's still doing the punishing schedule of work plus evenings interning as a counselor in at the Phoenix office of Jewish Family and Children Services.
She has a new dog, some sort of "Hairless American Terrier".
She showed me an "app" called "Lose It" which you can use to track your calories and exercise. As a beginner on the "app" it took me much longer than it would to just jot down on the same thing on pencil and paper! But she pointed out that this would be a good way for me to start getting used to using "apps", and that eventually it would be fast.
The app says that if I continue on a 1323 calorie/per day I can lose forty pounds by August 16th of this year, sooner if I add exercise.
When I got home, the Mexican music from the kids' birthday party was audible throughout the house. I just thought it was delightful. You could hear about a dozen kids yelling, "Go Jo-sie, Go Jo-sie, etc." probably the piñata being hit. Nice to hear the happy sounds.
"Lucky I like Mexican music!" I said to Dale Sr. He didn't seem to mind it that much either. The music was recorded but didn't sound that professionally done, perhaps it was some small town band from their home town who made their own CD.
We did close the window in the bedroom.
Love,
Lennie
