Dept. of Audio

 After Monday's post, a helpful reader, Margaret, suggested I listen to audiobooks to help me  get to sleep.

Just this one book is all I ask

So I took on Audible.  That seemed straightforward enough until I chose a book, a Barbara Pym novel, that would NOT allow itself to be bought by me.  After 23 minutes on the phone, I learned--I am truly not making this up--that there's some kind of "geoblock" on that book, that people who live in my area cannot order it for a discounted, new-member price.

I was ready to cancel my brand-new membership, until the earnest man on the phone said they'd ask for an exception.  I have no idea who they'll ask, but it'll take 5-8 business days to get an answer.

In the meantime, I decided to investigate how to download music to my iPhone, which is nearly a year old and without a single piece of music on it.  (I do have an MP3 player.)

After numerous deadends, I managed to move fourteen downloads from iTunes to computer to iPhone.  I shared the result with Jerry,  a slight downer because I put the earbud in his deafish ear.  No matter!   I've now got three songs on my iPhone that are absolutely dependable cheerer-uppers.  They're all pretty much inane (Jerry says they're "hokey").    Don't care!

No wonder she's smiling

"A Wink and a Smile," Harry Connick Jr.
"Make Someone Happy," Jimmy Durante
"The Puppy Song," Henry Nilsson

How do I know these gems?  Because they were all in movies that Nora Ephron produced and/or directed ("Sleepless in Seattle" and "You've Got Mail").    Listen and you will smile, guaranteed.

So now I'm modern--sort of.  (A few years ago, I heard two old ladies talking in a doctor's waiting room, and one mentioned that she had to go an ATM afterward for cash.  The other looked surprised and said, "Oh, you're so modern!")

Full Moon at the Food Pantry

 

Not good. 

Yesterday was a zoo.  For every client who showed up with photo ID, who understood the rules (once a month only), and was appreciative, there was one who was loaded for bear, insistent,  and demanding.

We had a client just released from the hospital with a concussion, amply medicated. He was very loud, slightly disoriented, and planned to ride home on a bicycle with two bags of groceries in a cardboard box.

Another, an elderly Chinese lady, spoke very broken English, seemed starved for company, and tried to tell us her life story (had been a midwife in China for 35 years).  She also had self-described early Alzheimer's Disease.

One lady and I went mano a mano over a loaf of bread--one only, please, due to there being lots of hungry people and limited bread.

You get the drift.

At the end of the day I came home and reached for the remote.  I needed Judge Judy!  And there she was with her gavel, sternly telling people off, bringing order.   The closest I came to that yesterday was pointing and snapping my fingers at an elderly couple trying to make off with two full grocery bags of bread.

A luxury

Sometimes I try to imagine myself standing in line for food that someone else chooses for me.  At a place that has rules about how often I can come.  I hope I would be gracious and appreciative, but who knows.  It's crowded, sometimes loud, and often I can't have milk or peanut butter or eggs,  or even cereal for my kids.

It'd be exasperating.   And humbling.

And then there's the full moon...

Awake & Stressed: Why Not?

Last night, after rummaging around on the internet for travel supplies (just a plug adaptor and a toiletries kit, for God's sake), I couldn't get to sleep.  I was awake until 4 am.

Wide awake.  I got up twice, per the sleep therapist's advice.  I read a cookbook, which I usually find very soothing.  I took some Benadryl,  which I'm trying not to do.  It was all related to the plug adaptor and the toiletries kit, I knew it.  Travel makes me anxious, vigilant,  mildly wacko.

This morning I resolved to never, ever do anything related to travel planning after 12 noon, the same cut-off I have for drinking caffeine.

But then...lurking in the back of my brain was this idea that I should check our reservations for a flight to Boston in May.   So I did.   The airline had switched planes for that flight and moved us to the back of the plane to very bad seats.  From Row 7 to Row 24.

Lamaze breathing.  Dash to the phone.  I yanked the cord out of  the wall to cut off a  incoming reminder call from  CVS Pharmacy. Then I plugged  the cord  back in and called United Airlines.  An unapologetic but pleasant man switched us back to Economy Plus in reasonable seats--that is to say, you don't need to be a double-amputee to sit in them.

Now what?  I'm trying to be low-key about upcoming trips, but at this point we have seven plane reservations.  Do I check them all weekly to make sure the airline hasn't moved us to seats that will make me feel claustrophobic and as though I need a hip replacement after hours of writhing?  Do I worry only in the morning, per sleep therapist, about travel arrangements?

For the first time in a month, I swiped a brownie from the Starbuck's haul Jerry picked up for the Food Pantry this morning.  Me, Mrs. Virtuous-on-a-Diet.  (There are fewer calories if you cut it into quarters.)

Blame United

Snapshots from the Week

Yesterday I went to San Francisco for a haircut, and who was standing at the desk paying her bill but Nancy Pelosi.   She was wearing bright-blue heels with a gray-blue pantsuit, and she had a Secret Service agent with her.   My hairdresser says she is a very pleasant person who is on her cell phone at all times.

Loved the bright blue shoes. 



                                                                        2.

I'm bogged down on the quilt I'm working on, so I stopped by Britex after my haircut to check out fabric possibilities.  Nothing grabbed me, but I recommend their shopping bags, especially in these days of bring-one-or-pay-for-another.

I carried an old one around with me all day with my lunch  (dried fruit, almonds, carrot sticks, and half a peanut butter sandwich--what would Nancy P. say?).  Later,  I added small things I bought,  like overpriced hair conditioner and pink goop cover the bags under my eyes.

These bags are sturdy, with cloth handles, but you have to buy a certain amount to get one of these nice ones.  Being a fabric-o-holic helps.

And with a snappy red interior

                                                                      3.

It's hard to describe how charming this movie is: "Romantics Anonymous."

Cover of the French-release DVD

Years ago, my friend Debbie said it was hard for "two shys to get together."  This is about two endearingly neurotic shys who happen to be chocolatiers trying to connect.  Jerry really liked it, too.  You watch it with a smile on your face.


                                                                          4.

                                                                             

In April, we're going to Texas for a week. I've been checking out airfares, and the idea of flying Economy with no leg room, no crammed overhead bins, and my elbows tucked to my sides for 3-1/2 hours is very off-putting.

 Jerry can rise above the discomfort and hassle,  but I get bogged down and very cranky.  Not a good start for a trip.

One of my favorite New Yorker covers sums it up:

                                                                                5.

This week was the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and I had a thought after reading several blogs written by young Catholic mothers who deplore that decision.

I wonder if underlying all the philosophical, religious, and moral arguments for and against abortion, it's a very personal fear of loss.  I include myself in this. 

It's loss of potential motherhood (infertile couples who want children to adopt), loss of their own children (as mothers look at their babies and try to imagine a world without them), loss of control over their lives (pro-choice advocates who don't want anyone else to control their fertility).  I've read profiles of male leaders in the pro-life movement who, it turns out, where almost aborted by their single or troubled mothers; for them, it's near-loss of their existence.

I wish everyone could be reassured:  No one's going to take away adoption or a beloved child.  No one--I hope--is going to take away a woman's right to control her fertility.   I don't know what to say to the nearly-aborted, and maybe that's part of the problem.  Choice would seem to allay so many of these fears, but that's not an acceptable idea to many.

Nobody's neutral on this topic

                                                                                6.

A buck-up on these winter days when the garden's full of weeds but not blooms:

A pot of miniature daffodils on the kitchen window sill.  I've nursed them along for two weeks.  Those, plus the ritual of lighting a very lightly scented candle each night while we're cooking dinner, have been very soothing.  I'm turning woo-woo.

Twilight Walk

Yesterday I walked across the UC Berkeley campus at dusk after a memorial service for a former colleague.  I was dazzled by how beautiful it was: the lights in the buildings coming on, the navy blue sky, a pair of students tossing a Frisbee with a blue light on it.

The Campanile through the trees of Faculty Glade

 

The Reading Room of Doe Library

The detail of the ceiling

If you squint, you can see a figure and the blue-light Frisbee

The lighted pillars of the North Gate






 

Couple Destroys Cooking Pot

 

This what happened last night while we were in the living room talking about trip we're going to take in April.

The water boiled away in a pot with artichokes.  Eventually,  I smelled something burning, and we checked.

Four overcooked artichokes and a wrecked pot.   There's this crinkled dark stuff sticking to the bottom, even after an overnight soak.  We might be able to salvage the steamer rack.

We ate the artichokes, because, hell, we cooked them.  Tasted like burned electrical wire.

Oh, well.

Art Trek: The Oakland Museum

Erin, 1997, Beth Yarnelle Edwards

What a messy room and why does she have so much stuff?  Are those troll dolls lined up on a shelf?   Is she eating a candy cane or brushing her teeth?  Does she ever get out of bed?

It's so tempting to judge the people in the photos by Beth Yarnelle Edwards, who visited middle class people in Silicon Valley and came up with these lavishly detailed, staged photos after interviewing them about their lives.

On Saturday, my friend Lin and I went to see, "Suburban Dreams," an exhibit of 22 photographs at the Oakland Museum, on show through  June 30.

Edwards is a voyeur, she admits, and we become voyeurs right along with her. But I found myself backing off from judging the clutter or sterility of the settings, and instead  simply studying them as interior landscapes. (And wondering what she'd make of me in my home.  Never let her in the house, I resolved.)
 
Here's another photo, one of Edwards's father and stepmother in their kitchen:

Art and Carol, 1997, Beth Yarnelle Edwards

Why is their kitchen so tidy?  What is that look they're sharing?  What does the photographer think?  But, no,  it's just an older couple with a batch of pills on each placemat, having a routine breakfast.  Edwards isn't exposing pathology, the way Diane Arbus did, or suburban angst, the way Bill Owens did.   She's curious in a much more benign way.

After that, Lin and I lunch at the museum cafe, where we could watch carp circling in the pond.  On the way home, we stopped at Bittersweet on College Avenue for what has to be the best hot chocolate in the world.  I lost my sanity just down the street at Maison d'Etre and bought this beautiful (pricey)  bowl:

What would Edwards make of this?

Got Inclusivity?

All the songs, the flags, the trumpets at the second inauguration of the first African American president--who mentioned in his speech the importance of equality for gay Americans--it renews my faith in the soundness of our democracy.    

 

Loved the colors

Snapshots from the Week

A record of every mouthful

                                                                                

Armed with a whole lot of resolve--waistbands had gotten really tight and uncomfortable--I started a diet on January 1. I got out my beat-up guide to Weight Watcher's points, given to me by a friend years ago, and started writing down everything I eat.   It's tedious.

I've lost 15 pounds on this diet several times, but it's not working so well now.  The scale is pretty inhospitable (I'm using The Bastard in Jerry's bathroom). 

I've decided to adopt some of the South Beach Diet rules: no potatoes, for example. We'll see. 
                                                           

                                                                                    2.

 Leah,  my adorable 21-year-old friend  from next door, left on Monday for Boston, where she'll finish up her senior year at Tufts.  Boohoo.   

She and I had a farewell lunch at Cesar's in North Berkeley, and then we went to Earthly Goods, where she advised me on buying a pair of (very) tight jeans.  That's when I still had hope for the diet.

After that, we staggered into Peet's, where she had a latte and I stared at the wall rather than order a drink I'd want cream in.  The next time I see her will be at her graduation in May.

                                                                                    3.

I saw an ad for this book in the New York Times Book Review and in a moment of madness ordered it from Amazon.  It's a well-written account of what happened to various people in the World Trade Center between the time the first jet hit Tower 1 and 102 minutes later when both buildings collapsed.

I got only a quarter of the way through and had to abandon it.  My sleep went to hell all over again, back the pattern I've been working to change since October, bad insomnia.

I think I had an idea that reading it would somehow honor those who died. 

                                                                                    4.

After this week's Big Relief Trip to the Doctor, Jerry is all  for booking the river cruise from Paris to Normandy, even though the lawyer we consulted about our living trust this week  made us feel like we're living on a shoestring.  She was very nice, but I think she's used to people with big bucks.   We slunk out of there.

Does anyone think 154 square feet is kind of small for a stateroom?  That's the only size offered on the boat we'd take. Jerry asked worriedly if it had a bed.

                                                                                     5.

 I've been studying recipes I like to see if they'll work with this half-breed diet I'm on.  This one works, and it's easy.  Judy Hanlon originally pointed it out to me in David Lebovitz's memoir on food, The Sweet Life in Paris.  I've changed it a bit, mostly by leaving out butter and dried apricots (feel free).

Chicken Tagine

1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground turmeric
1 tsp smoky paprika
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp salt
1-1/2 T olive oil
1 large onion, finely chopped
4 boneless/skinless chicken breasts
2 cups chicken stock
1/3 cup chopped fresh cilantro
1 T honey
Juice of 1/2 lemon

Preheat oven to 375.  Combine ginger, turmeric, paprika, cinnamon, salt, pepper.  Toss the chicken pieces in the spices.  Set aside.  Cook onion in olive oil over moderate heat, until translucent.  Add the chicken pieces and cook for 3 minutes, turning with tongs to release the spices.  Pour in stock, add cilantro, cover, and bake for 25 minutes (check to see if done).  Transfer chicken on a plate, cover tightly with foil.  Put the casserole on the stovetop, add honey and lemon juice, and reduce by one-third over medium high.  Return the chicken to the pot and reheat in the sauce.

This is delicious!  Goes for two nights around here, and I think next time I'll cook six chicken breasts and go for three!  Who cares if we get tired of it?  Serve over couscous or quinoa.

                                                                                   6.

I'm back to quilting,  and I'm working on a quilt to give to someone willing to make a donation to the  Berkeley Food Pantry.  It's just me and NPR in my studio these days.  I'm learning more than I ever wanted to know about Mali and Lance Armstrong.


                                                                                   7.

I recommend a documentary I got from Netflix, "Pink Ribbons, Inc."  It addresses the pink ribbon/breast cancer PR campaign, which seems to be everywhere and which critics call "the tyranny of cheerfulness," and an attempt to "prettify" breast cancer.

Contrary to the message of the Susan G. Komen Foundation, which preaches early detection as the magic bullet,  mammography has its limits.  Did you know that one-third of breast cancer patients will be cured, one-third will have treatment they don't really need, and the other third will have aggressive breast cancer that cannot be cured?  I held my head.

Also, corporations are cashing in big-time by sticking pink ribbons on products as a way to get people to buy.  And only 15% of the money raised goes to research on prevention.

Pink-suited Nancy Brinker, head of the Komen Foundation, has had a facelift so tight that I'm surprised she can speak.  She also favors a modified Snooki pouf.

Doctors and Lawyers

It's been an odd week.

On Tuesday, we went to get the verdict from a hematologist about some abnormalities in Jerry's blood.  There were some scary possibilities,and we'd had a month to worry about them.   But no, the test results were "uneventful," and no treatment is necessary.   Hurray!

The very next day, we had an appointment with an attorney in Oakland about updating our living trust.

Remember that scene in "Hannah and Her Sisters," when Woody Allen learns he doesn't have a brain tumor and leaps along Fifth Avenue,  full of relief and joy?  And then he stops, because he realizes that one day it will  be bad news.

Going to the attorney was a little like that for me. I kept thinking, ye gods, one day I may be sitting with this cheerful woman after Jerry dies, figuring out what to do.  Or he may be sitting here without me, staring out through the windows at the winter smog obscuring the view of Lake Merritt.

This was a big law firm with multiple receptionists, free coffee and tea and hard candy, and a painting of the building they occupy.  It reminded me of the law firm you see on "The Good Wife."

Painting in reception area of the building in downtown Oakland

Where grown-ups do business

Today I may book that cruise from Paris to Normandy.



 

Snapshots from the Week

 I'm back and with pictures, thanks to advice I found on a Google users forum, after Google customer service threw up their hands.

                                                                               1.

Diet substitute for sugar

A number of little things went wrong this week, mostly because I was impatient to scratch things off my to-do list.  This made me a cranky driver, a curmudgeonly customer, and prone to eating handfuls of sugar-free Ricola lozenges due to being on a New Year's diet.

Returned, alas

Example:  After much research, I asked Jerry to buy me a new carry-on bag for Christmas.

It turned out not to fit on top of my suitcase, plus it looked like something you carry a bowling ball around in.

First, I called the wrong company for a pre-paid return label and after they failed to find a record of it,  I had to slink back apologetically and tell them, no, it wasn't their company that  sold it.  When I finally got the label,  I tried to take the package to a UPS store, instead of FedEx.  Two tricky park jobs and a long line later, I got the package in the mail (or whatever--the Universe of FedEx).

The whole week seemed to go like that.

                                                                            

                                                                                      2.

Department of Travel Porn:  I'm susceptible.  Yet another luscious cruise brochure arrived, and  again I was seduced, although we haven't bought tickets yet.

It was a brochure from Viking Cruises.  All the glammy photos, plus the idea of gliding along European rivers, stopping here and there to check out Monet's this-and-that, no unpacking, no figuring out transit, no search for a place to eat.

This time it's a cruise up the Seine from Paris to Rouen, with a side trip to the D-Day beaches, including Omaha Beach.  Even Jerry's hooked.  Who knows, maybe we'll do it, but not until 2014.

Begins and ends in Paris

Lest you think we're hopelessly affluent, I remind you that my car is 17 years old, Jerry's is 9 years old, and we have two bathrooms in desperate need of remodeling.  It's a matter of priorities and the Grim Reaper.

Would you rather do this:

Or remodel this:

Yes, that's Formica, c. 1964

I thought so.  (The man who cuts my hair says he'd do the bathroom, but then he's a wealthy salon owner who can  do both.)                               

                                                                                    3.

After one of the horrible Errand Days, we put together a surprisingly good dinner and watched a very good movie.

This  Dill and Caper Sauce in Parade magazine transforms salmon:

1/2 cup plain low-fat Greek yogurt
2 T freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 T chopped fresh dill
1 T chopped capers

Whisk it all together and drizzle over salmon. (This recipe is enough for six salmon fillets. I cut it in half.)

                                                                               4.

Here's the movie:

Clint Eastwood makes me crazy sometimes with his over-the-top sentimentality and scenes that are maudlin-to-the-max, but this movie has little of that.   He plays an aging baseball scout with failing eyesight who goes on a scouting trip with his grown daughter, played by Amy Adams.

                                                                               5.

The adorable Rylan, aged 2-1/2, came to visit last weekend, and his Aunt Claudia and I took him to Live Oak Park in North Berkeley.

After he conquered the tot lot, he ventured into the big kids playground:

                                                                                     6.
A book recommendation:

This is a really good read.  It's the story of a tech-money couple in Orange County who have a falling-out over financial difficulties and unwittingly abandon their young sons to the care of their Mexican housekeeper, an illegal immigrant.  Reminds me of one of my all-time favorite books, T.C. Boyle's Tortilla Curtain.

                                                                                   7.

 I just discovered this:

Suzanne's birthday gift due in August, wrapped belatedly for Christmas, and still hanging around the house.  Sorry, Suzanne!

Safe Deposit Box

I still can't upload new photos due to Google engineers taking a long time to sort out a "bug," per Google Support.  

Today I went to the bank to check out what's in our safe deposit box as part of an Overall Assessment of Our Affairs in Case We Die. Turns out the last time I did this was 2005.  Jerry's never visited the box.  Neither of us had any idea what was in it.

What a completely random assortment of stuff I found!  Our heirs would throw up their hands.  A few pieces of jewelry, a beneficiary form with type so faded you can't read the names, eight computer diskettes, two photographs, the pink slip for my car but not one for Jerry's,  a copy of  Jerry's  birth certificate but not mine. An insurance policy dating to 1967 and an appraisal of our house done in 1993.

Back in 2005, I guess this stuff was important.  Now I'm going to look online for lists of suggested items to put in a safe deposit box.  Then it'll be a lot of trouble to gather them.  Then I'll go back to the bank with these things,  and if I'm alive in eight years, I'll probably wonder why the hell I put that stuff in there.

In the meantime, I'll feel organized.

One of the photos I found in the safe deposit box.  My mother, sister, and I at my wedding, 1977.