Wine and Plumbing

 

Today I woke up – and stayed up – at 4:30, thanks to a variety of unhappy joints that now seem to lock up and ache after being immobile overnight. Now I realize the blessing of retirement is so you can fit in an afternoon nap to compensate for the sketchy sleep the night before.

This weekend My Guy and I wandered over to a neighboring small town – even smaller than ours- to check out a winery we’ve passed from time to time. Two years ago, it was a dog kennel, raising German shepherds, but now it’s kind of a trendy spot, offering quite a range of pretty good wine.

 I did a sampler sort of thing, getting small (too small in my greedy opinion) tastings of 5 different ones, while he opted for their Cab. There was soothing live music out on their patio area although we stayed inside with the air conditioning. The place was a pleasant surprise out there in farm country and I picked up some great heirloom tomatoes on the way home.

          I’d spent Saturday morning sorting out what I could of my still-disassembled kitchen, earning that wine in the afternoon, and Sunday continuing the task. There was sawdust and grit inside every one of my lower cupboards, which meant figuring out how to jackknife my body down and into the bottom areas. Another planned change to this kitchen is to install pull-out shelves on the lowest level and this confirmed the need for that. At one point I had to grab the seat from the couch to kneel on. At least I now have clean, better organized shelves.

      

    Today is an interesting mix of electrician at 8:00 (Jump up and move the car so we’re not trapped in the garage by his truck), lunch with a friend at 12:00, then race home for the plumber who’s coming somewhere between 2:00 and 4:00. Betcha can’t guess which end of that time range he’ll arrive at. 

          But it’s worth it. Imagine – a working stovetop and a sink you can actually run water into! There’ve been some close calls when I’ve absentmindedly started to empty my tea down the open hole where it would have landed on the bare wooden shelf below.

Asphalt to Iceberg

 

After a succession of men with measuring tapes last week, and having my kitchen torn apart yesterday, the end is in sight. The new countertops have arrived. Oddly, instead of the linebacker build you’d expect to see, the slim craftsmen hauling, hefting, and positioning these big quartz slabs look more like they were born to ride in the Kentucky Derby.

Beginners and Ageism

 

This morning was another pickleball one. A neighboring senior center offered a clinic two weeks ago in the gym of a defunct school and even though my friend and I have already been playing for a few years, we went to check out the venue and perhaps meet more people to play with.

Hedonism and Reunion

 (Not to leave readers hanging, no - my hair guy is not retiring. He just no longer wanted to pay the fees to the credit card processing service. Phew)

The End is Nigh

 

          Years ago, I did what you’re supposed to do when looking for a hairdresser: I turned to the well-turned out lady in my class at the YMCA and asked her where she got her hair done.

Shopping and heat

        We're having a few things done to the kitchen and in the process I remembered I've always disliked the lights that hang over our kitchen bar. 

Editorial

 

I left my English classroom over a decade ago, but long before that I was feeling the effects of this new-fangled internet.

Back Woes

 

At 3 a.m., after climbing out of bed to slather CBD cream on my right side, while I waited for it to (hopefully) do something, I had time to ponder. Wouldn’t it be nice if our bodies provided some kind of early warning system before misery hits?

Growing and Viewing

 

This fella was outside the window as I wrote.   

Sunday was a bit aimless, although I did get a few things done.

  

        It began with my usual yoga class, which passes in stages - Denial (this is killing my knee, why am I here?), Acceptance (okay, at least this pose doesn’t hurt), Relief (I can do this, glad I came, happy it’s over).

Flowery Fourth

 

The two of us spent the Fourth at our son’s in Providence, R.I.

Independence

 

          Independence is a wonderful thing in its many forms.

There's no place like home

 

In a reversal of the ‘no room at the inn’ motif, My Guy and I booked ourselves into a hotel for the family weekend gathering in New Jersey (which was fabulous, by the way).

Making the moves

 

Tylenol for arthritis – check

CBD cream on my knee – check

A few limbering exercises before I leave – check

 

And I was off to try Tai Chi.

I’m ready to try anything since the Big A has muscled its way into my world this year, bringing all its luggage and showing no inclination to leave.

A History of Heat

 

The heat has finally broken. Not that I’ve been suffering unduly, living as I now do in the blessed world of air conditioning. My Guy and I are endlessly fascinated by recounting to each other all those years we lived without it, and not just in our childhoods. Our first house – a 1920s Dutch colonial – sat under massive oaks in a city lot. They helped a little, I suppose (except for the carpenter ants that fell from them onto our roof), but in the summer I often used to wish the entire back of the house could be hinged up like a dollhouse.

Heat and upcoming travels

 

The heat got the neighbor's "fried egg" 
tree off to an early start. 

Tuesday was predicted to be the start of mind-searing heat – 100 degrees - and what did I do? I hopped in my car and went off to play golf. Not the smartest thing in the world, but we were out there at 8:30 and rode around in carts.

From hot dogs to toilet plungers

 

         In the interest of continuing to grab the goodness of a Massachusetts summer before the tropical heat had fully gotten its shoes under the bed, we took off for another late lunch.

The Great Outdoors

 

Yesterday was a day to be outside, a day of mid-70s temps and downright dramatic winds. When you put aside the knowledge that those winds were blowing in a sledgehammer heat wave, you could really enjoy it.

Random observations/discoveries

 

Thank heaven I’m a relatively tidy person. Maybe not a dust-the-vents-every-week kind of cleaner, but the bed is always made, towels always hung up.

Running Amok

 

We seem to be entering a new phase.

Last week the grocery store had lobsters on sale. After discussion with My Guy, we decided to go crazy. I called up to order two to be steamed and ready for pick-up. Except at the last minute I had a “what the hell” moment and asked for the poundage above the chicken lobsters.

It all comes together

 

Do you remember ever being very little and squatting by mud, mixing in twigs or leaves to create mud patties?

          I remember being about eight and discovering an old chemistry set in our basement in Virginia. It was pretty sparse, and I have no idea who it once belonged to (a misguided gift for my older sister?), but it did have a few test tubes and mysterious ingredients to mix together. Very cool. Although I never did produce any results, never mind blow up the house.

          Due to general familial disfunction, I never had those Hallmark moments at my mother or grandmother’s elbows in the kitchen, but I’ve always been drawn to cooking. I mean, who wouldn’t be if you can stir up your own chocolate chip cookies?

          As a late teen, while visiting my grandfather after my grandmother had died, I fixed several meals for him. Not that I was exactly accomplished. The baking powder biscuits made with baking soda by mistake, which meant they tasted like soap. My sainted Grampy ate them anyway. Or the scalloped oysters that he said were wonderful. I later learned that he was allergic to oysters.  

          So many cooking stories.

Columbus, Georgia, dead of summer, no AC. My in-laws down from Massachusetts to see my husband of barely a year graduate from Officer’s Candidate School. I made a meatloaf the day before and almost poisoned everyone. Fortunately, as it cooked the smell from the oven made it obvious that we’d better stick to just the vegetables for dinner.

          But the years went by and I did figure out how to cut up a chicken, make bread, roll pie crust.

Last night: pork stroganoff on spinach fettucine

  

        Maybe it’s a control thing. Being able to

  choose anything in the world, combining the

  ingredients, and then a result you can eat.

        What’s not to like?

Egocentricity

 

Today being National Selfish Day, today’s blog is all about ME and what makes ME happy.

Friday

 

Today’s philosophy question:

Is it slothful to make the bed while you’re still in it (you know, straightening the sheet, pulling the bedspread back up to the top as you lie there) or do you get points for being so tidy?

Week in review

 I’m not too sure how this will go - I’m avoiding my laptop due to unfriendly incursions and am writing this on my iPad. 

Last weekend we had an extended family event. One of the great-nephews had his first communion. Since this branch of the family trekked across several states to attend our grandsons’ three separate Bar Mitzvahs, the least My Guy and I could was go to mass a couple of towns over. 

I’m a very lapsed Episcopalian so these milestones have been quite the learning experience.  As I grow older some of these rituals don’t always make sense to me, but the church was pretty. Unfortunately I spent much of my time mulling over the medieval need to bring entertainment to the lower orders with fancy icons and impressive pomp  

On Monday I was waiting for an x-ray on my knee when this notice in the waiting room caught my attention  

Somehow messages warning against “aggressive behavior” make me feel less, not more safe.

And today a friend and I went to a very be-flowered tearoom awash in tablecloths and tea cups. They really get into the spirit, offering a trunk full of hats and fascinators for those who feel the need. 

And I found a new friend.

Peaceful distraction

 

          Gentle yoga went well yesterday, a happy change from last week when my knee was still behaving like one of Satan’s minions. On Monday my doctor suggested the possibility of a damaged meniscus and sent me off for an x-ray. Happily, not only did he give a prescription for a super-duper non-inflammatory med, the x-ray results said it had just been arthritis rearing its ugly head. Less happily, my stomach’s not too sure how it feels about this med so I’m treading carefully with that.

          But. . . much better knee so yoga went well.

          Before class began, a friend and I had a big discussion about arthritis and feet. Aging – flat feet – plantar fasciitis, and in no time the lady in back of us scooted over to show us her “barefoot” sneakers. Turns out she’s a waitress and those + orthotic inserts have saved her life.

          We went through our usual routine- stretching, a little down dog, a few warrior stances, and soon we were in the end of the session rest mode, flat on our mats, eyes closed.  I thought I even heard a quiet snore from my friend to the left.

          We began by visualizing somewhere we felt “happy, safe, and at peace.” I always pick the same place I use when I’m having my blood pressure taken (trying to keep my numbers low). I’m lying on our old swim dock on the lake – I’m alone, the sun is beating down, and the waves are gently rocking me. I could analyze the fact that I’m also isolated from anyone else, but that’s for another day.

           Then we were told to imagine a white light scanning over us, toes to top. This always makes me think creepily of an alien examination, probably not the experience our teacher wanted us to summon.

          The room quieted to almost silence which then was interrupted by pot banging from the caterer next door that rents the kitchen from our YMCA. Silence reigned again, although like waiting for the other shoe to fall, I was listening for the next pot bang.

          A little silence, then along came the train that runs alongside the building, tooting out “shave and a haircut, two bits.”

         

Aroma Travels

 

They say smells are strong memory triggers. For me, there are even some that I can recall without even smelling them, like the chlorine smell of the hospital room when both of my kids were born.

Danger Signals

 

This morning I lay in bed listening to the familiar gobble!gobble!gobble! outside. But then I
heard it followed by a sort of continuous clickclickclickclick.

Was this the mating call of a female turkey? Turns out it was another sort of call.

          I must really need more excitement in my life because I got out of bed to look.

No turkeys, but as I stood at the window a bobcat passed by, about ten feet from my window. I think I’ll be taking a good look and a deep breath before venturing out in the backyard to garden.

         

          I’d received a worrisome email from my bank a couple of days ago, congratulating my on my successful change of password. WHAT????

          I immediately called my good friends at the bank’s fraud division. After two different conversations and much entering and re-entering information I entered another ID and password, re-upped the phone online facial recognition check, and changed the connecting email account from Gmail to Yahoo.

          (Since over the winter we had our Verizon account hacked, our bank accounts – 3 X -, our brokerage account, and My Guy’s computer hacked, we’re old hands at this stuff)

          Well, at 2am that night I received another email from my bank telling me I’d been locked out of the online access and I needed to go back in and change passwords. Hmmm.

1.    Even though it looked legit at first, when we compared it to another message from the bank, it was different.

2.    It was sent to my Gmail account, which was no longer the email on record.

Young Love

 

Tom is outside my window at this very moment, proclaiming to the world that he’s got his woman and no one had better mess with her. Or him.

If he could fling his arm negligently over her shoulder (assuming he had an arm and she had a shoulder) in the style of teenage love everywhere, I bet he’d do it.

The non-stop gobbling is pretty impressive, too.

         Earlier today when I was out gardening he and I almost had our own High Noon moment, staring each other down across the backyard.

I sat very still, thoughts of sharp turkey talons on my mind, but he eventually took a left and cut past the garage.

 

Drips and stretches

 

   

      It arrived this morning at 4:30 a.m., and not on little cat feet. More like stegosaurus stumps.

Boob Tube Times

 

I’m grateful to have grown up in a time period when tv was so new, parents didn’t worry about what it might be doing to their kids. Granted, for me it also helped that I was mildly neglected by my mom and so was pretty much left to my own devices.

Playing in the Mud

 

First, to be clear – I have no, repeat, NO artistic ability. Even my handwriting is so poor that I used to avoid writing on the blackboard when I was a teacher.

But I may have found my medium.

Just as something for fun, a friend and I signed up for a pottery class. Outside of those ashtrays (did teachers in the 1950s think that everyone’s family smoked? Good thing mine did – like chimneys.) that we all made in elementary school, I haven’t willingly put a pinky in mud for the past umpteen years.

But I’m hooked.

We begin with a giant lump of clay. 

Kind of daunting. 

Then I rolled some of it between giant rollers remarkably like a big pasta machine. 

But now what to do with it? 

There was lots of guidance on technique, but we could make anything we wanted. 

After they've been fired in the kiln.

Then dipping in the glazes. 

And after another firing:

Now if I can just find a place for all the results. 

The family had better watch out at Christmas. 

The Girls

 Zoom call at 5:00 last night, as I kept repeating to myself all day, lest I forget.

I also kept checking email, because our organizer, Christine, still hadn’t sent the link. By 4:00, what with packing to head back to Massachusetts and cleaning and doing laundry, I’d forgotten. So at 4:45 I was out in the garage sorting the car and gathering up the DampRid (moisture-gathering bags to hang in closets) I’d stored there.

By the I’d wandered inside it was 5:15 and I had a text reminding me to join the gang. I had of course just turned off my computer, so I revved that up, checked its camera to see if I could be seen, and clicked “join Zoom”.

It was another of the every-few-months-or-so gatherings of my girl friends from Washington-Lee High School in Arlington, Va. No particular agenda, just a chance to catch up. The players are pretty diverse.

We know me – Massachusetts resident, visitor to Florida, retired teacher, writer, grandma of 5.

Chris – Maryland retired college prof and historian, so Irish her mom had had a faint brogue, Catholic elementary school and then enthusiastic convert to Judaism after marriage, Bat Mitzvah and all.

Sheila – West Virginian resident in a small art-colony sort of town, stained glass artist who has had one of her works on the White House Christmas tree, three husbands in the rear view mirror, and now barely eking out a living and on Medicare.

Andrea – Hawaii, resident of Lahaina, whose home thankfully sat above the August 2023 wildfires, former tv producer, and who looks very tired, likely from caring for a husband who recently turned 101.

          The conversation ran through politics – we’re all unabashedly liberal; travel – some of us can, some of us now can’t; watching old musicals with granddaughters; health (inevitably); and oddly, no reminiscences about the past.

          There may be time for that yet, because by the close of the call we’d vowed to each other to meet in person. We made plans to get together next fall, in California to simplify travel for Andrea, with the subtext that Chris and I would do whatever it took to get Sheila there, too.

          Exciting!!

Splurging

 

I figured one last indulgence before we leave would be a shopping trip. Florida clothes are different, and with all their bejeweling and glitter not the sort of thing that a Northerner like me would usually wear. Except for the fabrics. At home the tee shirts are heavier, thicker, and when Massachusetts hits the 90s, as it often does, it would be good to have something to cover as much of me as possible without buckling under the heat.

If I only had a brain

 

One small benefit of a bum knee and being unable to play pickleball is that I now lounge in the mornings instead of bounding onto the court at 8:30 a.m.

Knees and Hair

 

Today should have been a pickleball day but my knee is on the fritz. It’s been acting up since last Monday’s session and I finally realized that if I’m going to do my part in the roughly 1,500 mile road trip home, I’d better be sensible.

Bikes not Buggies

 

When we bought our home here in Venice years ago, I knew it wasn’t like Miami or any of the other party-central places on the east coast of Florida. Thank heaven. But it’s also far less glitzy than the big city of Sarasota just down the road.

          The area also has unexpected things like the equestrian center, with its jumping
competitions involving people from all over the country, that I could easily walk to from my place.

  

        And if you see someone on an adult tricycle wearing suspenders and a straw hat, they’re likely from Pinecraft, an Amish community on the outskirts of Sarasota, only 30 minutes from Venice.

          Yes, even some of the Plain people are snowbirds. I’ve even seen a few on the beach.

      

   In fact, in February they held their 7^th annual Seniors Softball
Showdown between Amish and Mennonite players versus non-Amish locals. 

    There were three competing teams, coming from Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Indiana. And no real need for uniforms, since you can differentiate the teams by who’s wearing suspenders.

          There’s been an Amish and Mennonite community in Pinecraft since the 1920s. While there are a few year-round residents, many of the houses are rented out for short-term visits by the thousands of Amish that come from all over the country.

 It’s a destination for older folks, honeymooners, and some younger Amish come for seasonal work. Generally, though, the visitors come from more business-oriented locations in the mid-west.

          It can get iffy, though, because the more traditional communities would frown upon the use of electricity in the homes here, although apparently this is often allowed for temporary stays. And there does seem to be a range of observances of tradition. One Saturday, when My Guy and I were breakfasting on a patio next to a parking lot, I saw two women in long print skirts arrive in an SUV, pop on their bonnets and go in for some pastry.

Mama Maneuvers

 

It was just to be a small walk around our complex.

Pioneer Skills

 

When we had friends over the other night, I brought out a bottle of a wine I’d enjoyed at someone else’s house and I bought a bottle of my own for that evening.

We opened it up, poured a small taste, and then collectively reeled back.

          It was awful. It smelled ghastly and our one brave taste confirmed it. Something had gone horribly wrong with it. So, I poured it out and put the bottle in the recycling.

 

We were having beef stew last night and I wanted to have something more than just a bowl plonked down on the table. Not in the mood for another salad (yes, I know, a healthier choice) and needing to use up the flour, I made baking powder biscuits.

          Kind of.

          No shortening. Since anyone knows that butter makes everything better, I substituted that. Like so many times before, I mixed the dry ingredients, cut in the butter, and added the milk. Next step, a quick knead and then roll it out.

          No rolling pin. When outfitting your place in the land of sun and fun, a rolling pin is rarely top of anyone’s list.

          But wait.

          A quick rifling through the seltzer cans, tonic bottles, and wine discards and eureka! There it was, only needing a good washing.

          The bottler may have screwed up the contents somehow but they designed a perfectly
shaped container.