Didn't We Just Do This?

Red and green!  The holidays are here!  Is  anybody looking forward to it?   Or let me put it this way:  Is there anyone without grandchildren who's looking forward to it?

Sigh.

Gump's has been flogging its Christmas-ornaments-for-tourists since October, little Golden Gates Bridges and Coit Towers.   Starbuck's is doing both pumpkin-spice and peppermint-chocolate drinks--which holiday are they exploiting, anyway?  The catalogs are arriving, even the Shaker Workshops.

Oxymoron, somehow: what happened to simple-and-free?

I'm doing Thanksgiving dinner for my family this year.  There's no way out, because my sister's birthday is on T-giving Day and asking her to wrestle with a clammy-cold turkey that morning is too much to ask.   I think.

My friend Mabry says a woman has only so many dinners in her.   My quota of holiday dinners was filled about 25 years ago.  Also, my quota of Christmas shopping, although the internet makes it a lot easier. 

Onward.  Can't leap forward to January 1, so might as well make the best of it.

* * * * *

Retail:   I just bought a pair of clogs!  Yes, I did, despite wearing size 41 (11 US size).  They are surprisingly comfortable.  I clomp, but there you are.  I feel taller and more confident when I'm wearing them.  Only with pants, though.  With skirts, they make me look like a cartoon character, all feet.

On Tuesday, for the first time, I deliberately bought a pair of fat-jeans.  My closet is full of semi-skinny jeans I've been talked into by salespeople.  I can't breathe in them!  Can't sit down!  To hell with it.  So I bought a pair a size up, not skinny (see photo, above).  They're baggy, but so what?  AND they were on sale.

I also bought a couple of pairs of my usual size because Not Your Daughter's Jeans has slyly figured out how to incorporate an invisible maternity panel at the tummy.  Oh, yes!   They must have, because these jeans  are quite comfortable, extremely forgiving, even a bit skinny.

Style M10K43B4337, if you're interested.

It's getting to be the time of year when I can wear a scarf without triggering a hot flash.   I took a look in my scarf drawer:  total disaster.  I can never find what I'm looking for;  I rummage around frantically, and then give up because if I find one I want to wear, it's always a wrinkled mess that needs ironing.

So, I took a handful of 20%-off coupons to Bed, Bath & Beyond and bought two of these:

$4.99 each

They are splendid! I ironed my scarves and looped them through. 

 There's so little left in the scarf drawer that I can actually find things:

Did you know that BB&B coupons are good indefinitely, even if there's an end date printed on them?  Also, you can use one for a group of things, instead of one per item.  Learned that yesterday.

* * * * *

For months,  ever since Jerry found out he'd have to vacate his campus office in Wellman Hall, we've worked a few hours each weekend packing up books and reprints to bring home.  Or, better yet, to leave in a big sloppy stack outside his office door to be recycled.  We owe the Recycle Gremlin a great big bottle of bourbon.

Here we were last weekend:

My role is to badger and direct.  I read the Sunday New York Times until I see that he's bogged down and putting way too much stuff aside to be saved.  Then I'm ruthless.  No, no, and no.  He pretty much goes along, mostly because his home study is already full.

He's a big fan of old oak office furniture

Acres of books and reprints removed...

...almost removed, anyway.  To go WHERE, is the question.

My favorite sign

Half the room is empty.  But the other half:

Worse than my scarf drawer

Left for the Recycle Gremlin at the end of the day.  Week after week, it disappears like magic.

 We're aiming to be finished with this by the end of the year.  Stay tuned.

Still Married



 

July 9, 1977

March 31, 2015
Bored witless on a cruise ship in the Gulf of Mexico

Received at breakfast this morning


* * * * *

Update:  Quilt bidding now stands at $400.  Bidding ends next Tuesday at noon.

Quilt bid now: $400
Thank you~!

Now That Roosevelt's Dead, What Do You Do After Dinner?

Berkeley, 2014

Three months ago, I realized that every night after dinner,we sat on our bums, fired up the TV, and watched whatever we could find on Roku or PBS.

Every night.  This meant that 3-4 hours a day were about sitting, semi-vegged, doing not much, watching the tube.  It bugged me.

"What did people do before TV?" I said to Jerry.

He shrugged.  He was actually alive at that time, in elementary school.  Why couldn't he remember?


"Listen to Roosevelt on the radio?" he suggested. 

Yes, but they were doing things with their hands.  Knitting, building ship models, whatever.  So, I decided we'd devote and hour or so to "projects" every night after dinner.  We cleared off the dining table, made numerous trips upstairs to find paper, pencils, scissors, glue sticks, blah, blah, and set up shop.

A mess for two:  Notebooks and cards for Jerry, trip journals for me

Gathering up what we needed was so much trouble that we weren't going to put it all away each night, which meant we had to find another place to eat dinner.  What to do?  Eventually,  I set up a small table in the nice-but-useless nook we have off the dining room, and we eat there now.  It's sort of romantic. 

Dinner for two

We commenced.  We've been doing the kinds of things we thought we'd never get around to doing:  labeling trip photos, sticking random photos in albums, etc.  Last week I did some review and updating of trip journals/scrapbooks I've put together since we began traveling a lot in 2006, and glued my trip blogs into their respective journals. At that point, I moved into the living room and did a lot of cutting:

A blizzard

As I went through my trip journals, I was amazed at how many leaves I found.  We don't always travel in the fall, but you wouldn't know it:

New York City, 2008

Middle Temple Courtyard, London, 2009

Memphis, 2008

 Switzerland, 2013

Rome, 2011

Boston, 2009

Corfu, 2011

 England, 2011

Spokane, 2012

Castle Howard, England, 2011

 Paris, 2008

England, 2009

Chicago, 2012

Kew Gardens, England, 2008

Hyde Park, New York, 2007

Washington, DC, 2006

 England, 2009

 And one of my favorites:

New England, 2007--amazingly well-preserved!

I never set out to collect leaves and didn't look for them in key places.  One would catch my eye, and I'd carry it around and paste it in my journal.  Here's one that didn't work out so well:

Rome, 2013

 * * * * *

This week Jerry had a cardiac stress test, which he has every year.  I went with him, and it was a long haul, because they gave him shots of something-or-other so they could track the blood flow through his heart before and after exercise.  But he did really well, working up to a run on the treadmill.  Just watching him made me tired:

He was running uphill at the end.

 He gets the results next week.  In the meantime, no more shirking hills on walks, I told him.

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?



 

 





A Missing Jet, the Kardashians, & the Coen Brothers

There are about a million things these days that I just don't understand. 

I find myself getting impatient and cranky and have to back away from the Cliff of Judging Other People, because I could fall into the Ocean of Unkindness, Intolerance, and Intellectual Laziness (the Sea of Republicanism?).

I am currently bewildered/confused by:

1.  The relatives of the people on the missing airliner.  They are very angry at Malaysian government officials because they don't feel they've gotten the entire story, and maybe they haven't.  But where I'm confused is that no one, not even the USofA with all its overpriced Pentagon gear, can find the jet.  The radar/satellites/weather situation is complicated.  I want to say, "I'm so sorry for what's happened to you, but I don't see how throwing plastic water bottles helps."

Rushed back to Netflix

2.  "Inside Llewyn Davis."  We watched the Coen brothers' movie last night, and I was exasperated within ten minutes.  The newspaper review says it's "bleak but funny, and funny is its own justification."  We hated the main character, who had no redeeming qualities whatsoever.  Also, it's not funny.  I dated people like that in college (narcissistic-poet types), and it was never funny. Shudder.

3.   Why Khloe and Kim Kardashian are described as having toned bodies, well-suited to skinny jeans.  The media would call the rest of us "fat." 

4.  Why Michael Chabon's novel, "Telegraph Avenue," is called "a masterpiece."  I'm on page 43 and probably will get no further, even though I'm really trying.

* * * * *

Updates:

1.  My friend Marian, 90 years old and hospitalized for six weeks, is no better.  I took another bouquet of flowers on Monday and spoke to her briefly on the phone.  I'm going again today with some macaroons to tempt her appetite.

2.  The quilt show, "Voices in Cloth" is at the Craneway Pavilion in Richmond this weekend. (A spectacular building, right on the Bay,  originally a Ford plant, converted to producing Jeeps, etc., in WWII).  Be there or be square.  Wear comfortable shoes.

3.  Jerry woke up out of a dream the other night, said, "Damn it!  I spilled a Coke!" While he went to get a towel,  I leaned over his side of the bed and looked, even though I was pretty sure there wasn't any.   "No Coke, no Coke!" I yelled. He tossed the towel aside and went right back to sleep;  I did not.  Attack of the Phantom Coke.

4.  Spring has arrived.  We didn't earn it, but it's here.  I painted my toenails and created a big mess in the front yard, pruning (man's job to clean up?).