Off the Beaten Path at Pt. Reyes and Taming a Fidgety Four-Year Old

Ticks freak me out, insidious little varmints, and yesterday as my friend Lin and I walked over hill and dale at Pt. Reyes we weren't on a trail, and  I kept thinking how easy it would be for a tick latch on to my jeans and take a ride with me while it tried to find bare skin.

(Not unprecedented:  A tick rode home across the country with me from Long Island to San Francisco four years ago, very annoying.)

But this was a wonderful, wind-blown walk, with countless wildflowers to look at, some so tiny you had to stop and really look.

My friend Elisabeth, who lives in nearby Inverness, told us where to go. (I'd pass it along to you, but then I'd have to kill you.  I can say that if you want to see wildflowers at Pt. Reyes right now, go to Chimney Rock or Abbott's Lagoon.)

Photos:

 

The view from where we parked:  the cluster of white buildings if Pierce Point Ranch, with  Tomales Bay in the distance

 

 

 

A plethora of poppies, but lots of tiny wildflowers, too.

Native irises, poppies, and yarrow

 

 

A view of Elephant Rock (see the trunk in the water?)

Lin taking a picture

 



We got back to the car, inspected our socks and pants and legs, didn't find any ticks hitching a ride, and drove back to Pt. Reyes Station where we ate dunbars from the Bovine Bakery. A splendid day.

* * * * *

 

On Saturday, Mr. Adorable came for a visit.  Now four years old, he has a striking vocabulary, knows a mail carrier from a mailman, and says "Oh, my God," when he's surprised.

 

But his hair was needing some attention, his Auntie Claudia and I decided, because he had a decided mullet. 

 

So we took him to a hair salon near my house, and coaxed him into enduring a haircut by the nicest woman on the planet, Monica.  He wriggled.  He protested.  He'd have nothing to do with the shampoo bowl, and WHY did he have to wear the cape? (I tried to tell him it was like Batman's: no go.)

 

At the end, he looked, of course, adorable,  even if he wouldn't submit to a blow-dry.  Now he looks like someone in an ad for wealth management or maybe one for Ralph Lauren:

 

 

 

 

Does it get any more adorable?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note my hand holding down his.  Lots of obstreperousness.  I finally had to bribe him to be still by telling him he could take a picture of me.  Which I'm not going to publish.



What Would You Do With Only Six Months to Live?

Or  5, 20, or 30 years? 

I think about this a lot. 

By the time you're in your sixties, you know your time is limited.   My dear sister-in-law Delilah died at 51.  My lifelong friend Rob died at 60.

I watched them, and I tried to learn.  But I was still left the problem of what the hell to do with this information on a daily basis?   Another day slips by, used up by making phone calls about bills, changing the sheets on the bed, grocery shopping,  researching cooktops.

Nora Ephron wrote after she'd been diagnosed with cancer but before the rest of the world knew:

"The realization that I may have only a few good years remaining has hit me with real force, and I have done a lot of thinking as a result.  I would like to have come up with something profound, but I haven't.  I try to say to myself, If this is one of the last days of my life, am I doing exactly what I want to be doing?"  (I Remember Nothing, 2010,  p. 129)

It's a burden, all this questioning and evaluating.  It nags at me.


A week ago I found this in the San Francisco Chronicle:

I grabbed this page  and pored over it.  It's a list of 50 things to do if you've been told you're going to die (which we all have been, one way or another, some more specifically than others).   It  was put together by Hospice by the Bay, with some content provided by the Singapore Hospice Council, and the list starts out like this:

1. First things first, remember you're not dead yet.  [I find this empowering, even though it's perfectly obvious.]

Here are my favorites:

5.   Laugh
8.   Find joy in the mundane. Sit by the window and pay attention to the song of birds.
11. Gobble up food samples in grocery stores.  [I'm always in too much of a hurry.]
16. Talk openly about your illness...Don't shut out other people.  Don't isolate yourself.
24.  Seek out and attend to what is divine, holy or sacred to you. [To me, this means thinking about my strongest values and honoring them by acting on them, which always makes me feel better.]
30.  Share your grief. Witnessing grief gives others permission to grieve.
31.  Tell someone the story of your life, sparing no details. [my favorite favorite]
39.  Forgive yourself.
46.  Fall asleep under the stars. [Camping is good if you can manage it.]
50. Take a clean sheet of paper and write down another 50 things to do.

You can find the entire list at www.LivingBeforeLeaving.org

What did Nora Ephron do?

"I aim low.  My idea of a perfect day is a frozen custard at Shake Shack and a walk in the park. (Followed by a Lactaid).  My idea of a perfect night is a good play and dinner at Orso.  The other day I found a bakery that bakes my favorite childhood cake, and it was everything I remembers; it made my week.  The other night we were coming up the FDR Drive and Manhattan was doing its fabulous, magical, twinkling thing, and all I could think about was how lucky I've been to spend my adult life in New York City."  (I Remember Nothing, p. 129).

My sister-in-law painted watercolors.  Rob cooked.

Turns Out My Last Name Isn't My Real Last Name



That's right--my last name is really "Rainville."  Or should have been.

I discovered this a couple of days ago during one of my intermittent bouts of curiosity about my genealogy when I tried AGAIN to find my grandfather's parents.  I went to familysearch.org (free!) and looked around,  tried my grandfather's mother's maiden name, and there it all was.  Her married name, her husband's name, her son's name and birthday, all in Springfield, Massachusetts.

My very own grandfather, whom I knew as Charles Randal until he died when I was 16, was born Charles Rainville.  His father was also Charles Rainville, a French Canadian.

It's surreal.

My grandfather and me, ca. 1952

My friend Mabry,  a dedicated genealogical researcher, says that many French Canadians emigrated to upstate New York in the 1900's, where they found some bias against the French.  By the time my great-grandfather died in 1889, his name had morphed to "Ramville."  From there, it was just a few letters change to "Randal."

Wow.

Should I make a political statement and change it back?

* * * * *

Thanks for the tips and brand names of cooktops.

Today we went out and bought an electric cooktop.

Not gas, even though that's what I really wanted.

Following a tip from my sister, I googled "chemical sensitivity to gas stoves," and up came a slew of articles about gas stoves leaking formaldehyde, among other chemicals, even when they're turned off.

Most people would probably never notice these minute amounts of chemicals, but I have chemical sensitivities that forced me to abandon my quilt studio for more than two years due to isocyanates in water-based floor sealer.  We also had to remove all wall-to-wall carpeting (no aesthetic sacrifice).  The fumes of latex paint (formaldehyde) make me sick.

On top of that, we'd have to buy a new hood and have a cabinet removed to make room for it.  We'd also probably have to modify a deep drawer under the range.  Couldn't face it.

So we bought another electric cooktop.  It's Whirlpool instead of a Bosch, and it cost less than the Bosch did 15 years ago.  Good reviews, features I wanted.  What the hell.


This is a "Whirlpool Gold 30" Radiant Electric Cooktop with 4 Elements including Accusimmer Element," in case you're wondering.

In the course of investigating cooktops, I had this conversation with an appliance repairman:

"You're only going to get 15 years out an appliance now," he said.  "Forget the 30-year stove your mother had."

"Then why do people pay more for European appliances if all brands last only 15 years?" I asked.

 "I can't figure it out," he said.

This is a guy who specializes in repairing Bosch appliances.

Can't wait to accusimmer.












 

Help!

Yes, our electric cooktop has packed it in.  Two burners gone, and even with the limited amount of cooking we do around here, this isn't going to work.

We're thinking of switching to a gas cooktop.  Any suggestions?  What's your experience?  Which manufacturers are best?  We need a 30" cooktop, and we're not in the Viking league. 

By the way, I wouldn't wish Bosch appliances on my worst enemy.  We have a Bosch dishwasher that blew its motherboard three weeks after the warranty expired, and it's required several repair sessions. 

The Bosch cooktop hasn't been much better: the halogen burner stopped working after a few years, and now this.  (Meanwhile, the Whirlpool oven we bought at the same time has never required a  single call to the repairman.)

 

* * * * *

 

Comic relief:  Two old people on an Easter Day hike (that's what you do when you're not a believer, or maybe even if you are):

 

 

 

 

And now what are they doing?

 

 

 

Why, looking at and taking a picture of a Painted Lady butterfly, of which there were scads patrolling in the Berkeley hills.  Four species of butterflies, total.

 

 

 

A view out the Golden Gate.





 

 



Outstanding Sticky Toffee Pudding: Go Get Some Right Away!

The Sticky Toffee Pudding was outstanding, ambrosial.  Jerry and I swooned.  The "pudding" is more like a very sweet cake, accompanied by a scoop of vanilla ice cream and sumptuous whipped cream.  

I've done something of a survey of English desserts, and this was as good a version as any I've tried.

Per plan, we went to  Kensington Circus Pub last night at about 6:45.  The place was mobbed, the din appalling, but it was a neighborhood crowd, and the vibe was friendly.  Jerry and I huddled at a table near the bar, as far as possible from the children's play area.  The  food was so-so, except for the pudding.  Next time I'm just going to order a pint of lager and dessert and take it outside to eat, if it's a warm evening.  Yum.

The other highlight of the day was getting a manicure.  My nails are in miserable condition, no matter how much assiduous sawing I do with an emery board.  Is it age-related, how easily they break, how ridged they are, how dry the cuticles?  Whatever--for $10 they were transformed.

My friend Leah B., home from New York City for a week, went with me, and we each came out with transformed hands.  She chose red nail polish, I chose pearly gray-pink.  We were elegant.

At that price, I may have to have regular manicures.  As Nora Ephron wrote, the older you get, the more maintenance you need just to hold the line, although I'm ruling out the painful string procedure she had to remove facial hair (shudder).

Thanks for all the birthday wishes!

I

Vera, Chuck, and What's-His-Name

I've neglected the blog due to a mountain of paperwork that's had me wringing my hands because a) it's important vis a vis my financial future, and b) I don't really understand it.

I've pushed aside the fabric on my cutting table and replaced it with labeled stacks of paper that I paw through occasionally (sometimes frantically).  All of it has to do with the UC retirement system and forms they need.  It's wretched.

On Tuesday, I took a time-out from those forms and switched to wringing my hands about income taxes.  We were coming down to the wire, right there on April 15: no tax return received from our accountant, the minutes ticking away. For the first time in history, we nearly missed the deadline. Multiple phone calls and finally a "partial return" e-mailed to us.  We paid the tax due online with a credit card (miles!). Sigh of relief.

But we haven't checked our tax return against our documents, so who knows if what we paid is correct.  Don't care.  It's done.

* * * * *

Tomorrow's my birthday--the one the Beatles wrote the song about--and Jerry's been asking me all week where I'd like to go for dinner.  Berkeley has plenty of good  restaurants, and of course there's always San Francisco if we're feeling ambitious.

But I'm not in the mood for ambrosial food served on a tablecloth by an over-confident waiter (overconfident according to me, anyway).  Instead, we're going to a pub several blocks away that has Sticky Toffee Pudding and English beer. 

Coincidentally, this morning I noticed for the first time that I have this weird, crepe-y skin on my left cheek that looks like it used to be pleated and a good ironing only managed to stretch out so that it now sags. When did this happen?

On the other hand, at the Food Pantry on Monday, a client brought in a harmonica and played "Happy Birthday" for me.  He said he was no Bob Dylan, but I thought he was pretty good.  We all clapped, and he looked very bucked-up (his birthday was on Wednesday, which is how this came up.)

And my dear friend Anne gave me this tiny bouquet and some chocolate Easter eggs on when she picked me up to go to the pool this morning:

 

* * * * *

Does this cartoon strike a chord?

From the latest New Yorker

Tonight Jerry set a spatula coated with salmon fat on a  clean potholder.  This was the day the housecleaners came.  Also, the potholder was brand-new.  I screeched and apologized (but I was still aghast).

Figuring Out How to Stand Up Straight

Miss Craig

"Incorrect posture can be the cause of a protruding abdomen, thick waistline, sagging bust, protruding hips, stooped shoulders, double chin, short neck, knock-knees, bowlegs, and flat feet."  Marjorie Craig, "Miss's Craig's 21-Day Shape Up Program"

Thanks for sharing, Marjorie!

I've had lousy posture as long as I can remember.  People were always telling me to stand up straight. 

Which was sort of okay when I was a kid and used to being bossed around, but not okay when it was other adults telling me. 

Hey, I came by my slump honestly!  I had a lot on my shoulders when I was a kid:

My mother, me, my sister, and my dad:  I slump, my sister stands up straight, shoulders back.

I know I should stand up straight to be more comfortable, to look better in my clothes, and more important, to avoid a dowager's hump and maybe solve a persistent upper back ache.

Why not address this in advanced middle age?

So I've been going to a physical therapist (who's also a massage therapist, Pilates instructor, and practitioner of yoga).  Her name is Liz, too, and I see her every four weeks.

She works in a studio in her house, a bungalow in the hip Temescal district of Oakland.  Her studio is an addition at the back, large, airy, and painted a sophisticated taupe.  She has a massage table made up in taupe sheets. (Oh, how I look forward to the back massage after she's run me through the exercises!)  Yesterday she told me she gave birth to her son in this soothing room, with a midwife in attendance.

Liz runs me through exercises, increasingly ambitious.  She has a bamboo stick she holds to my back sometimes to show where my back should curve and where it should not.  I catch glimpses of myself in the wall of mirrors.

"Who is this sweaty old bag and what is she doing?"  I think.  I've always been lousy at PE stuff, uncoordinated, out of touch with how my body looked.

"Good, good, good!"  Liz says.  "Perfect!"

Perfect?  Honestly?  I'm trying to remember to retract my head, stay in neutral position, feet shoulder width apart, all at the same time.

Last weekend, taking a hike, I realized that if I'm in good-posture form, head-back-chin-retracted,  I can't look at my feet.  What if I trip, for God's sake?  But apparently correct posture doesn't mean you're not scanning the path ahead of you, especially if you have good progressive lenses.  Supposedly.

Yesterday Liz told me that my posture is already improved and--I'm not making this up--that I'm a role model for her.  She's 39.  I'm 63.

"Why?" I asked, startled.

"Because you've taken care of yourself, and you don't look your age," she said,  she with the perfect posture.

That sent me out with a bounce to my step (and I did not trip on the way to the car.)

Now I have to do my homework:

Stingy or Setting Boundaries? One of Those Days at the Food Pantry

I'm back from the Berkeley Food Pantry, where I volunteer on Mondays, and I'm mad at myself and mad at a client.

I'm mad at the client, who helped out because we were understaffed today, because he spent a fair amount of time "shopping" in the pantry, seeing what he could take, including an apron I bought for one of today's absent volunteers.  The director asked if he wanted to wear it.  No.  He just wanted to have it, maybe to present it to his mother.  As far as he was concerned, it was there for the taking.

He almost made off with one of these aprons, which I bought for volunteers and take home with me every week, because otherwise they'd walk (@ $20/each.  Am I setting boundaries or being stingy?

Near the end of the day, he picked up the two bags of groceries he was entitled to and left, but while I was helping other clients, he came back in.  I found him shopping in the back room, where the food's kept.  Anything would do.  He just wanted more.

I've seen this happen sometimes with other client-volunteers--not all of them by any means, but some.  I know intellectually that this stems from deprivation, a terrible feeling of lack.

But it still irritates me.

And I'm mad at myself for being irritated.  Surely if I can understand intellectually why a person who's short on food--and probably so much else--is on the look-out for free stuff, I can rise about my irritation?

I do rise above it and usually look the other way, but at times I call a halt, as I did today because the director had had to leave early and couldn't police him.

"You already got some of that in your bag," I said to him.  "You have some."

He dropped whatever he had in his hand and scooted out the door. 

Sunday Started Way Too Early

Awake at 5 am, reluctantly out of bed at 5:50.  My insomnia program has its lapses.

Here's a book I recommend for early risers, because it's fascinating and readable.  The author is an experienced journalist, a knowledgeable Catholic who gives an unflinching portrayal of the mysterious city-state.

We were in Rome for four days in 2011, coincidentally at Easter, not the best time because of crowds and because the basilica was closed so that it could be readied for Easter services, a big disappointment. This book makes me want to go back and see more than the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel. 

The really interesting stuff, though, is what tourists never see but Thavis writes about.

* * * * *

Yesterday I tried on the skirt to an expensive suit I haven't worn since 2005.  I was so far from being able to zip it up that it was laughable.  At least a two-inch gap, even when I held my breath as fiercely as I could.   Sigh.  I read last week in the New York Times that women tend to gain 10 pounds in their fifties, and there it all is: around my waist. Hell.

The suit skirt compared with waist of jeans I wear now  (stretch, of course).

But then I really don't need a black suit.  I wore that one to the opera a few times, once when we took martinis in a thermos to a bench near the Opera House in San Francisco and had a picnic dinner before the curtain.  That was more fun than the opera was (Don Giovanni).

Now that suit and a bunch of Jerry's clothes are off to the West Marin Thrift Store:

Mostly clothes Jerry had forgotten he owned, some dating from the 1970's.

* * * * *

 

Conversation over lunch a few days ago:

 

Me (lamenting sleep-flattened hair):  Do you think I should blow-dry my hair before we go out?

 

Jerry (thoughtfully, not looking up from a magazine):  Well, it doesn't cost anything.

 

It doesn't cost anything? 

 

We're talking morale here, guy, not cost effectiveness.

 

* * * * **

 

Breakfast now, or back to bed?  Breakfast, I think.  And the New York Times, starting with the real estate pages in the business section.  A house near us just sold within two weeks, cash (no "pending sign"), for probably $2 million.  The listing price was $1.65, but everything around here goes over the asking price.

 

Who out there is able to do this, and why do I feel vaguely hostile that I couldn't afford to buy a house in my own neighborhood?



 

 





Needing a Cold Compress...

I'm holding my head today, not because I spent 70 minutes on the phone yesterday with two phone companies, to little avail (although I did learn that the very nice, businesslike young woman who helped us at Best Buy last weekend--fantastically long nails and painted eyebrows--lied to us).

No,  it's because of what I read this morning:

1.  The Supreme Court decided to allow individuals to give a huge aggregate amount of campaign donations (from a $123,200 limit to $3.5 million).   The Koch brothers won, in so many words, although it was an Alabama businessman who brought the case. 

"I believe in democracy," said Eleanor Roosevelt, in her clear, warbling voice.  Would she say about this?

Cry for us, Eleanor!

2.  A blogger I follow explained today why she and her husband rely on God for family planning (she is pregnant with #4; another blogger with #6).  Was it only yesterday we heard from climate scientists how desperate the global warming situation is?  Every child born in the U.S. is going to drive a car; you can count on that.

I'm thinking about carbon emissions and traffic jams.

Jerry, the evolutionary biologist who contributes to every known environmental organization, thinks about these children living in a world turned upside down by the effects of global warming.

To be fair, I guess we all bend our view of reality to make ourselves more comfortable--I can go on a cruise ship that uses a lot of oil because I had no children to sap the world's resources.  Paul Ryan's budget proposal suggests that he'll feel a whole lot more comfortable if Ayn Rand was right and the poor are just lazy, and the devil should take the hindmost. 



Yes, we traveled to Alaska on this behemothic oil-burner

The conservatives on the Supreme Court apparently think that every citizen can do anything s/he wants to with their own money, and if the government-of-the-people becomes the-government-of-the-billionaires, so be it?  Natural order of things?  Like no birth control?  (Or is that an insane analogy?)

Oh, well.

* * * * *

A spot of good news:  My friend Marian, 90-years old and incarcerated in an acute care hospital for nearly two months because of a lung condition, got the go-ahead yesterday to move to a rehab hospital. 

With only three hours notice, she exited Alta Bates Hospital and is now at a facility in Kentfield.  With treatment, she may be able to resume something of her former life.  Everyone's amazed.

Maybe that's what I need, some magic!  I want to be amazed.