What Do You Do With All The Bad News?

Looking heavenward

How's everyone doing? 

I ask because the news of the last couple of weeks has dragged me down in a way I can't remember feeling.
  
I've tried ignoring the news, delving into it (bad idea), listening/reading/watching selectively.  If I ignore the news, am I being irresponsible?  Poorly informed?  Or wise?  

I'm also getting Caring Bridge updates I've requested for three cancer patients, one very young, and getting these always jolts my heart.  Will it be good news?  Bad?  Things progressing in a good way--or bad?  How're the families doing? 

One afternoon,  I rigged up a digital frame with pictures I took in Inverness and escaped to the peaceful, uninhabited scenery.  I sat for quite awhile in a welcome stupor,  watching a slide show. 

* * * * *

Other distractions and antidotes:

Yesterday Claudia M.'s adorable nephew came to visit.  A four-year old squirming, testing, charming bundle:

Checking out his new digger,  just purchased at Mr. Mopps

 A mischievous grin

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I've been working on a new quilt:

Thumbnails, 2014 --  or something

  I'm trying out possibilities:

Frame each of them with a different green/blue?

Add more?

Impatient, I did this to it last night:

Who knows where that's going.  If you have an opinion, please weigh in.

 * * * * *

My sister and I have been choosing paint, tile, flooring, and plumbing fixtures for the bathroom remodel, is scheduled to start in September:

Paint and floor and on top a rejected sample of back splash tile

The glass tile we liked better

"Selective demolition" starts tomorrow.  I have no idea what this means, but I have big plastic tubs standing by so I can empty towels and sheets into them.  Think of me doing this at 8 am.

And by the way:

Yes, this is Hillary Clinton, but look at her back splash.  I'm obsessed.  People in the allergist's office must have wondered why I took so many pictures of a magazine.

* * * * *

The Wine Cellar restaurant at Old Town, Los Gatos.  Plenty of umbrellas helped with the fierce sun.

On Saturday, I drove to San Jose to take to visit my friend Lin, who won the auction quilt.  We went to Los Gatos for lunch, where it was hotter than the hinges of Hell.  Honestly.  We ate lunch outside at Old Town (above) and then knocked around the shops.  When we got back to her car, the thermometer read 112 degrees. After we drove for awhile, it plunged to 102.

* * * * *

I just found this picture on my phone:

What's he doing?  Why, he's searching for tiny moths that blew on the floor while he was trying to sort them.  See the open cigar box on the table? He's going to pierce their little bods and stick the whole works in there.  This was taken at a motel in Hesperia in June.  Not at all eccentric.

Quilt Auction Winner and Recipe for Fresh-Smelling Towels--No, I Am Not Martha Stewart

Quilt auction update:  My friend Lin, who bid $450, won the quilt.   She's a high school pal I reconnected with on Facebook a few years ago, and I visit her in San Jose every few months, so I'll be able to visit the quilt.  Readers have now donated nearly $1200 to the Berkeley Food Pantry through quilt auctions!  Thank you!

* * * * *

 

 

Oh, woe, my computer rebelled yesterday, so no pictures on the blog until I get it back from its pediatrician, the blunt-spoken, cruise-loving musician/computer-fixer,  Steve at Berkeley Back-up.  In the meantime, I'm using Jerry's computer when he peels his hands off the keyboard.

 

He was gone for four days to a meeting in Utah, and during that time I had a couple of friends over to eat cupcakes from Love at First Bite in Berkeley (I ate the most, disgraced myself with my sugar addiction); started another quilt to be auctioned off; and thrashed the hell out of my stinky (mildewy) bath and kitchen towels, a mountain of them.

 

A few months ago, I heard Terri Gross interview Jolie Kerr, author of My Boyfriend Barfed in My Handbag...and Other Things You Can't Ask Martha, a guide to getting out stains.  My ears perked up when I heard her Rx for towels that don't smell fresh, even when they're washed regularly.  Here it is, and it works!

 

1. Run the towels through the washer in hot water and one cup of white vinegar. No detergent.

2. At the end of the cycle, add detergent, and run the towels through another hot water cycle.

3. Toss the towels in the dryer and don't remove them until they're completely and utterly DRY.

 

My towels have a new lease on life.  They're fresh-smelling and feel fluffier and cleaner to the touch.  Kerr says the towels smell mildewy because we use too much laundry detergent, which is food to mildew, and because they're so often damp. 

 

* * * * *

 

"News is hell," my sister wrote in e-mail last week. 

 

Between the plane that was shot down, the war in the Middle East, and the Central American refugee children, I needed an  kind of antidote to reality that didn't involve alcohol or carbs.   I loaded photos from our vacation in Inverness on to one of those electronic pictures frames, a gift from Jerry's son David and his wife, Michele, and sat and stared at the slide show of green trails, blue-blue water, and the view of Tomales Bay that we had from the deck of the house we rented.  A welcome escape.

 

Then I called a moratorium on news in any form, even NPR, which is my studio companion.  Enough.



Just Wondering: What if the Children from Central American Were Blonde?

Not only blonde, but products of an excellent school system, like, say, Norway's.  And none of them was over the age of 5.

I'll bet Americans would be lining up to adopt.  There wouldn't be complaints about too many, too needy, illegal, a burden to the system.

I was thinking this morning about the Americans who rushed to adopt children from Russia and Romania, young children whose skin color matched their own, despite the fact that were thousands of non-Caucasian American children who need adopting.  Children from those countries were hot property then, even though they were underprivileged, often from tragic circumstances. 

It doesn't sound as though the Central American children "pouring" over the Texas border need parents.  They need care, safety, opportunity to live their lives without being enslaved to drug cartels, or being killed.  After I read an article in the New York Times on Sunday, I thought, how can we say "no" to this humanitarian crisis?  (You can hear the journalist on NPR here)

I know we need comprehensive reform of the immigration system.  In the meantime, what about these kids?

Off to the pool now to flail away some of my frustration and sadness.

That Bully on My Wrist

 



The bidding stands at $400.  Winner to be announced on Friday, July 18, at noon.  Thanks to all!

 

 

 

 

 

 

* * * * *

See that big pale mark?  That's where my watch used to be.

Here's the watch:

I wore it every day for 18 years, and I like it, as watches go.  It was designed by Tibor Kalman of "M&Co," a very creative guy who designed all kinds of things.    The watch  wasn't expensive, and it's practical because it's easy to read.

Here's the back:

 See what it says? 

 

For years I've lived by that maxim, way before Tibor and his watch.  As in, "What have you accomplished today?  Oh, and by the way, are you late?  You ARE late  You've been wasting time!"

 

Three years after I got the watch,  I read that Tibor died of cancer at 49,  poor man, and after that every time I caught sight of the back, I'd think, "Right! Take note!"

And now I say to hell with it. 

Last weekend I realized my mood slipped each time I checked my watch.  That quick flick of the wrist was always accompanied by a bossy voice I'd rather not hear (see above).  Consulting my watch made me feel less in control of time than I already do at 64, keenly aware that I'm considerably past the half-way mark unless I plan to live to be 128.

Boy, is this liberating!  Now I do what I do, I consult a clock occasionally if I have an appointment, and that's it.  Time takes care of itself.  I'm in charge, and I no longer feel browbeaten.  I can't believe how many times a day I catch myself taking a look at that pale patch on my wrist and think how it was a daily series of  little punches, hour after hour, prodding me, hounding me.  That watch is a bully.

I'm using time much more efficiently without it.

Has anyone else done this?






 

 

 







A Quilt, Anyone?

 

7/10/14--2 pm:  Bidding now at $400.

7/9/14--9:10 pm:  Bidding now stands at $250.

 

 

So, here are the particulars of the quilt I mentioned in yesterday's post--it's ready for its new home!  As in the past, proceeds will benefit the Berkeley Food Pantry.  The winner will make out a check directly to the Pantry and get the tax deduction.

This quilt is rectangular, 57" x 65", a good couch-potato size.  Throw it on a sofa or fold it at the foot of a bed.   It could also be hung vertically or horizontally.  The fabrics are 100% cotton  and machine-washable. 

Angie Woolman did a beautiful job machine-quilting it, with each square picked out and quilted with a pattern that I think really suits the design:

The border color is a grayed-green, seen above compared with a true gray.

The back:

 

 

If you'd like to make a bid, please let me know in the comment box, on Facebook, or via e-mail.  I'll post updates on Facebook and in future posts. 

This quilt is bigger than the others I've auctioned off and with more quilting, so let's say a starting bid $100.  Please be generous--we are living in a climate of punishing the poor, and 700 households a month, many with children, depend the Pantry as an essential part of their food budget.

Winner to be announced on July 18!

Summer Ramblings

Summer weather in Berkeley, which means FOG.   All week, and it lifts later and later.  Is it possible to have Seasonal Affect Disorder in the summer?  I may have it.

It's been a couple of weeks of bad news--I mean the kind you read about or hear on TV, not the personal type, thank God.  The Supreme Court has lost its mind, Israel and the Palestinians are at it again (sometimes I have the feeling that a firm mother should yank each side back by the collar and say, Just stop!), a homeless woman abandoned her baby at a subway station in New York. 

Yesterday at the Food Pantry, one of my favorite clients, an older African American man, seemed more frail than ever  (though he still drives his convertible with a jaunty air).

What to do?  Delve into St. Petersburg, where we hope to go in a year.  Read TripAdvisor.  Consult Rick Steves.  Order books on the Romanovs.  Even if we don't go, I've had a wonderful trip in my mind.

I've finished a quilt I intended to auction here to benefit the Berkeley Food Pantry, but I'm having some separation of anxiety about letting go of it...

...even though I can't find a place for it in my house.   Anyone like it enough to make a tax-deductible contribution to the Pantry AND let me come visit it?  It's a practical, couch-potato size.

On the up side, Jerry and I went to Pt. Reyes on Sunday to collect our bikes from Elisabeth's house and had an exhilarating ride on the Cross Marin Trail.  It was Full-On Summer in the best way: a lazy stream, kids at a swimming hole, people camping, smoking fires leftover from cooking breakfast.  I was ready to set up a tent.

Off to the pool for some exercise and bracing chat with my chums,  Anne and Val.

But Will I End Up a Bag Lady?

 

See this? 

 

 

The toilet front and center

 

 

This is the doorway to the biggest bathroom in our house, the only bathroom when the place was built in 1924.  You come up the stairs, turn right, and this is what you see.  And it's Jerry's bathroom--need I say more?  The lid is always up. 

 

This has bugged me for 30 years.

Now, note the 90-year old bathroom floor:

 Discolored and chipped

And the 1960's era Formica countertop, also chipped:



We put up the wallpaper in the 1980's.

Ancient and murky shower door

How many people think this bathroom should be remodeled? 

If no, would it change your mind to know that the shower has twice leaked into a kitchen cupboard below?

If yes, would you change your vote to hear that the estimate for a remodel is higher than the cost of the first house Jerry and I bought, in 1976?

Also if no, would you go for it knowing that we will not have radiant heated floors, a spa bathtub, heated towel racks, or any of that other stuff you see in high-end bathrooms?

We're keeping the tub

And, most important,  that the toilet will be nearly hidden behind a ponywall (half-wall at far end of vanity)?

When the contractor handed me the estimate on Tuesday,  I quickly skimmed the first page.  Near the bottom was a "Subtotal," line and a figure that was about what I expected. 

"Yay! " I thought.  "This is do-able."

Then I turned the page, and the number doubled. Plus,  there was a list of things that weren't included in the price, such as plumbing fixtures, dimmers, tile, painting, light fixtures, and moving the heat register.

I glanced over at my sister, who's designing this new palace-of-a-bathroom.  She seemed calm and not in a way that suggested she was masking panic. 

I went out and bought a bottle of Prosecco.  Jerry came home, and we drank all the Prosecco, and I laid on him the total cost of the remodel (which includes some re-working on a hall closet so that drawers of fabric will no longer tilt and nearly fall on my feet when I open them).

"Scary," he said.

"We'll be in the poorhouse," I said.

"There'll be less for you when I'm gone," he commented.

Cheery.

The next morning, I felt rocky, but I spent some time on the phone with a guy at the bank to see about a home equity line of credit.  Then I reviewed our investments and cash-flow situation. 

Since then I've gone through the several phases of Accepting the Reality of a Remodel Estimate:

1. Shock
2. Serious questioning over whether this really needs to be done. 
3. Panic over depletion of finances, including seeing self as bag lady in later years.
4. Liberal guilt--this is a gold-plated problem-why-not-give-the-money-to-the-poor.
5. Resignation that we're going to do it.
6. In-depth look at personal finances and planning.

I made it through Stage 6  yesterday and hit Jerry with financial information when he got home from a butterfly count.  I started in.

Yes, the number was scary, he agreed.  No, we won't go to the poorhouse.  The he dozed off.

I guess we're going to do it.