It’s Puzzle Season in a big way. Stay tuned for two puzzle posts coming soon.
I believe that to have one or two people in your life who burst into heartfelt laughter at you on a regular basis is a fortunate gift. To have more than a couple such friends, as I do, is to be blessed and highly favored indeed. I’m so grateful for those people in my life, and recalled tonight the very first time I recognized this gift. My high school best friend and I were riding the after-school bus home. I don’t remember the situation, but I do remember I was upset and venting, possibly crying, and I said something that made her laugh out loud. That made me laugh, and the upset was over. I just sent that friend a hostage note proclaiming that I would die if I didn’t receive a certain recipe by noon tomorrow. As I hit send I imagined her reading it, and I could hear and even feel her unique, musical laughter erupt as she read it. And so I thought to mention my gratitude for her, and for those several other friends who frequently laugh at my way of expressing myself. You know who you are. Thank you for your laughter: I treasure it and I love you.
Tomatoes, onion and garlic from the garden, along with a few Penzeys spices, made a nice sauce for an impromptu chili relleno casserole for lunch yesterday.
The roasted poblano chilis came from the Delta farmers’ market where I stopped last week. Five dollars for a bag of roasted chilis and five more for four big fresh peppers and two tomatoes.
I based it on the Chili Pepper Madness recipe, and added a splash of milk to the eggs based on some other recipes. So simple, so delicious!
Last night I slipped out of a zoom meeting for a few minutes to catch the full moon rising. It occurred to me that this could be the last October full moon I’ll ever see. Not to be morbid, but just realistic. Anything can happen at any time. Age doesn’t guarantee longevity, nor does genetics, nor anything else.
It also occurred to me that grief is an equally valid response to life as gratitude. Gratitude and grief go hand in hand. I attended a webinar this afternoon on how to help grieving people. It was perfect timing. I’d been thinking about grief a lot this past week, after helping a dear friend navigate a sudden, freak death in her family.
There’s also the grief that I’ve felt since childhood about the madness of humans destroying the planet, and now the exacerbating grief of a regime that’s trying to turn back time in all the wrong ways while accelerating the unbridled pillaging of the natural world for corporate profit. I’m grateful for meditation, for mindful introspection, for compassionate and wise teachers from many traditions around the world available to any of us with a few keystrokes. I’m grateful for sleep, for friendships, for the moon and the sun, for water, wild birds, golden leaves, an open heart, for the ten thousand joys and the ten thousand sorrows of being human, and for this breath.
Today I’m grateful for grassroots resistance, for solidarity and community in opposition to the current regime. I’m grateful for Indivisible, for our local chapter, for our founding mother Ellie, for everyone who helped put on a great event at the best town park in the county; for the volunteers and musicians, and the citizens who spoke, and for the roughly 450 concerned people who showed up in peaceful protest.
I was asked to speak as the co-founder of our Indivisible chapter, and after I was introduced by the Statue of Liberty, I kicked off the program. The video file of my speech, which I promised Gina I would share here, is just too big, so instead I’m posting the audio file, above. It’s just over seven minutes, including a moment of silence to honor with broken hearts the Minnesota public servants whose lives were stolen and shattered last night in an act of domestic terrorism. Apologies for getting Ms Hortman’s name wrong; let us not forget these victims as this fight escalates.
Despite the undercurrent of grief and existential angst that any open-hearted American is suffering these days, we had a wonderful time. Having fun, being joyful, feeling happy, each of these is “a revolutionary act in the face of despair.”
The first hour, people mingled, and visited the flag-making table, the sign-making table, the information tables for various organizations, and the postcard table. I saw a post on Instagram a month ago that tickled my fancy: A woman cutting trash cardboard to postcard size, to send to congressional reps: “Trash for the trash,” she said. So I brought my paper cutter, some pens, and some talking points.
An old friend sat down beside me and I put him to work drawing lines and stamping the blank cards while I kept cutting donated cardboard and roping people in to write to our CO District 3 congressman, Jeff Hurd. He said he wouldn’t vote to cut Medicaid and then he did. He campaigned as a moderate and he’s caved.
Many demurred, saying “I email him every week,” or “I just called him the other day,” or “It won’t make a difference anyway.” Then I dropped the “trash for the trash” line, and their eyes widened, their lips ticked up, and they picked up a pen. Messages ranged from angry to disappointed to almost kind, about the Big Bad Bill threatening Medicaid, Medicare, the VA, and food security, selling off public lands, selling out education, and more; several called out his consistent failure to show up for his constituents in many ways. It did my heart good to see so much engagement. Some people may have never written a postcard or called a representative, but now they feel empowered to do so. I’ll mail them all on Monday.
There were a lot of great signs brought from home and made at the park but from my vantage point I mostly saw great shirts!
It was a big day for me. I haven’t been to a gathering like that in years. I saw a lot of long-ago friends and acquaintances with whom I’d long ago lost touch, and was grateful that I’d only forgotten a couple of their names, both of which came to me before I needed them. A couple of people didn’t recognize me and I happily reminded them; and then there were a few whom I reminded of my name because they looked confused, then they quickly assured me they recognized me. There were many hugs and a couple of kisses and lots of talking in close quarters. If I get sick this week I’ll know why, but it would almost have been worth it.
I think my favorite sign was one Garden Buddy texted me this morning before I left home, just in the nick of time for me to print it. It lay on the postcard table, and one man considered it for a moment, read it aloud, and said, “Well no queens either.” I said gently, wondering how he’d respond, “It means drag queens.” A small slow smile brightened his face and he walked away chuckling.
I was grateful to be able to get under the stairs and pull out Christmas decorations with more agility and less pain than I’ve had in years; and grateful to be able to hang these lovely holiday quilts from a dear friend.
Something’s getting in my way of posting these past couple of weeks. I keep trying to come to grips with my procrastination habit, and manage to get organized and catch up, but before long I’m disorganized and behind again. I read recently that both this kind of intermittent organization, and procrastination that gets in the way of daily living, are symptoms of adult ADHD. It wouldn’t surprise me. But then again, I’m always looking for some diagnosis to rationalize my circuitous brain habits. Am I “neuro spicy” as the sticker Amy sent me suggests, or neurodiverse in some other direction, or perhaps many? The more scientists learn about the human brain, the more people come under the umbrella of neurodiverse, and it is beginning to look like maybe there’s no such thing as normal.
Anyway, I am what I am, and I’m grateful that I’m beginning to truly accept and appreciate me no matter what kind of brain I have. I sometimes forget that some tick-borne disease robbed me of half my life, and fail to give myself credit for getting along as well as I do. It’s been a full couple of weeks and I’m grateful to be catching up with myself.
The cheese sandwiches the past few weeks have reached new heights of gustatory perfection. Here I spread mayo on both bread slices, then a little hot sauce on one, and maple cream on the other…
…followed by bacon on the maple side and a fried egg on the spicy side…
…and finished with thinly sliced extra sharp white cheddar and shredded romaine.
The result exceeded expectations. Stay tuned for more exceptional cheese sandwiches and other adventures, if I can keep the momentum going. Meanwhile, Wren has run out of steam.
Nothing happened outside today. Nothing. It was simply grey all day with a light breeze. But then this evening, right about the time I met Amy on Zoom, the wind kicked up. There was a brief spell where the sun came out and it blew about 30 mph for an hour, and that was the extent of the windstorm here. I wonder what it did elsewhere. Just in the past hour it’s started to rain.
Since we were cooking on Cinco de Mayo we decided to celebrate our Mexican friends; though we chose an unconventional enchilada, substituting a cauliflower-feta mixture for meat.
The sauce involved onion, garlic, oregano, and tomatoes, so I simplified by opening a jar of organic marinara and supplementing garlic and oregano. It also called for five dried Ancho chiles, but I only had Guajillo. Amy looked up heat comparison: 500-1000 SHU for Ancho, 2500-5000 for Guajillo (you can compare your chiles here). I used just one for equivalent heat, but it wasn’t enough so I added two more, which topped my pepper tolerance; next time, just two Guajillos.
Extra sour cream to cut the heat, and vanilla ice cream for dessert.
All it all it was a restful day and a fine evening. I’m grateful for exercising with my cousin over the phone, having a kitchen to clean in order to make another fun mess in it, for food in the house, for hot running water, for the first Broadtail Hummingbird of the season, for rain from the heavens, and for a reprieve from the planetary winds. I’m always grateful for Zoom Cooking with Amy: for our easy rapport and our fifty-two year friendship, for our shared history and things we talk about and things we don’t need to say, for someone who’s known and loved me since I was twelve.
Tonight we decided I need to survey my readers. When my brother and I were little, our mother tucked us in with a prayer. Most of you know how it begins: “Now I lay me down to sleep/I pray the Lord my soul to keep…” It goes on, “If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” My dear mother thought that was grim/scary/horrible, and so she changed the last two lines. I was grateful to speak with my brother this past week, and finally remembered to ask him if he remembered, and he laughed at the thought that he might. I was grateful to hear his laugh. Amy only said the first two lines as a child. I guess her mother thought the same as mine about the last two. We both remember that afterward we “god blessed” a list of names. And while we were talking about it, the third line came to me. I’m pretty sure mom said, “And in the morning when I wake…”
But I cannot yet recall the final line! So the survey is, what do you think it was? Please offer your suggestions in the comments. Sweet dreams.
As part of the decontamination project, I got the opportunity to wash all my clean tea towels and dish cloths. Wren helped me hang them out on the marvelous Breezecatcher line back by the compost. Tea towel culture is a relatively new thing for me, but I’m grateful that I finally get it.
The first tea towel I remember being given was this linen Y2K tea towel, and I thought of it more as a joke than anything else. But look, it’s 24 years old and as sturdy and useful as it ever was. The next time someone gave me a tea towel, I was disappointed: I had expected something more special, more personal, perhaps even more expensive. I was insufficiently grateful for both those tea towels, and I’m sorry for that. I didn’t really know how to incorporate tea towels into my daily kitchen routine. Only after I saw a stack of tea towels on Amy’s kitchen counter, and watched her reach for one to clean up a spill on the floor, another to dry a pan, another for something else, all in one evening, and then throw them in the wash that same night, did I begin to see the value in having a lot of tea towels.
Long before that, I had bought a set of embroidered days-of-the-week towels at a local antique shop. They were cute and inexpensive, but I was afraid to use them hard because — because I don’t know, I still didn’t get it: use them for everything, wash them, use them again and again until they graduate to being rags, and the more you use tea towels the more tea towels will come to you. Or something. Saturday and Tuesday are the last of these towels remaining in the kitchen, and Tuesday is so tattered it’s about to graduate.
Another towel that’s just beginning to fray is this gift embroidered by a friend no longer living. It will be hard to relegate, I mean graduate, this one to the rag bin. It gets light use these days, in baking rotation, covering bread or rolls as they rise.
This is the latest tea towel to join my collection, one of three tea towel gifts I received this holiday season. Where once I may have looked askance at a tea towel, I now appreciate the thoughtfulness and fun in these gifts from friends. They show that these friends know what I like, what’s meaningful to me; they remind me that I am seen and known. And I’ve learned to give a nice tea towel, too, from time to time.
There’s no need or time to share photos of all the tea towels in my kitchen, but here are a few more of my favorites. I’m grateful for tea towels, for their utility and their beauty, for the connections and memories they represent, and for the sense of belonging in a culture of wise women who love being in their kitchens, cooking and caring.
And in the kitchen last night, among the clutter of the half-cleaned, I made farfalle Alfredo, having no fettuccine but instead this wonderful pasta from Italy. I used mushrooms instead of chicken, and ate two-thirds of it last night because I couldn’t stop. So simple, so delicious!
Meanwhile, the Alluring Fox puzzle continued to delight, and offered up a final sweet surprise as I placed the last piece. As Liberty has an eagle mascot, the Unidragon emblem is a curled baby dragon that I saved til the end, and found that not only did it fit right in the center, the heart of the puzzle; it also completed a perfect miniature of the fox design. Noticing gave me a little jolt of joy. I’m grateful for other people’s clever creativity.
In the Mindfulness Foundations Course, we include an Evening Review in the daily practice. Sometimes I feel like I’m doing a Constant Review, looking at how I’ve behaved, choices I’ve made, habits and patterns that keep repeating despite my best intentions. I’m grateful for Introspection, even when it’s painful. I’m grateful for complex relationships, even when they’re uncomfortable: we can learn from every person, every situation, every relationship and every moment in our days. It can be exhausting. But the we take a break, take a walk, watch a Drag Race, curl up in a little ball, eat a heel of bread with cream cheese and jam, whatever self-soothing works in the moment. And then we return with resilience, and take on the next moment, the next day, the next challenging interaction or condition. I’m grateful for grace, forgiveness, and love from others when I find myself struggling in a mental morass of my own making.
I’m grateful for stretching beyond habits. Today I baked a different kind of sourdough. While it didn’t rise as well as I’d hoped, it still sliced well and tasted delicious. I used a locally milled ‘Rouge de Bordeaux’ flour that I’m grateful was given to me to try, mixed 50/50 with King Arthur organic all-purpose flour. I think the dough was too dry, and maybe I over proofed it. It seemed to collapse in on itself in the first half of baking when it should have steamed and risen. It made a tasty toast. Don’t know yet how it will hold a cheese sandwich, but my intention for tomorrow is to find out! I’m grateful in the midst of mental suffering for the simple sensory pleasures that make our larger failures bearable.
In my Values exploration, Community happens to be today’s value, and interestingly the whole day was spent in community. I could have as easily titled this post Graduates, because that’s the community I largely spent the day with: in the morning on zoom with the bimonthly gathering of graduates from the Mindfulness Foundations course I teach, in the afternoon with a small class in their last session, and dinner with two of those new graduates and two earlier graduates.
Or I could have titled it Courage, which is what it took for me to accept an invitation to go out to dinner at a restaurant for the first time since Covid lockdown. Or, I could have called it Best Cocktail Ever, which is what this extraordinary French Aviator is, in my humble opinion. The fragrance alone was intoxicating, and I savored every sip of the drink. And I learned some new things to do with lilac blossoms next season, including freezing them into ice cubes. They must have a mammoth stash of lilac ice cubes to still be serving them this long after lilac season.
I’m grateful I spent the day in community, and capped it with a delicious plein-air meal at Mesa Winds Winery. With our cocktails we split a couple of appetizers, whipped feta with apricots, and chicken liver paté. The special was salmon cakes with pineapple slaw, and for dessert we split two other kinds of cake: cherry ricotta, and chocolate mousse. I’m grateful for the kindness and respect of my friends, for their good cheer and good will. And I’m grateful for their acknowledgment of me as a teacher, and for seeing the benefits of mindfulness ripple out in all of our lives.
I’m grateful for living with a tortoise. Biko is about 23 years old. I got him when he was one, but I just don’t remember exactly which year I got him from a zoo where he was captive hatched. He’s a leopard tortoise, a species native to South Africa, who semi-hibernates inside over winter, but free ranges through the yarden all summer.
Biko is the last of three tortoises that have lived here. One got too big and I hurt my back lifting him: He found a good home in Florida. The second one took a ten-day unauthorized journey and was found, but didn’t survive that winter for unknown reasons possibly having something to do with his autumnal misadventure.
Wren a few days ago chewing her treat after finding Biko tucked under the sagebrush behind her.
For as long as I’ve had tortoises, I’ve had dogs trained to find them at the end of the day. It’s essential in spring and fall, when it’s too cold overnight to leave them out. And it’s good practice in the summer, so the hunter doesn’t forget the job. It took Wren all of last summer to learn what I was asking her, but as soon as spring came and Biko was out again, she knew immediately what to do. The catahoulas used to bark when they found a tortoise. Wren sits down beside Biko wherever he is tucked in.
This evening we had a special guest, so we hunted Biko before heading to the canyon. He was still out foraging, and when Wren found him she sat down like a good girl for her reward. Biko just plowed right into her.
I’m especially grateful today for a short but deeply meaningful visit with another old friend who happens to be in the valley for a few days. She captured Wren’s heart as quickly and easily as she did mine all those years ago when she first smiled across the counter at Moonrise Espresso. It was pure delight to spend a few hours together on a gorgeous early-summer day with heartfelt conversation, laughter, and a few tears.
On our walk back from the canyon, I was grateful to see the claret cup cactus filling with buds.
Grateful as always for Zoom cooking with Amy, spontaneously this evening. A simple snack of Baked Cheese and Onion Dip to go with our adult beverages and easy conversation. Despite the deep freeze nights there were still a few green chives in the garden, and I had a jar of pickled jalapeños in the fridge for zesty garnish. A sweet garden onion from the pantry, some staples of cheese and mayonnaise, and dinner was made. I was horrified to discover NO Ritz! But dug through some old bags of mostly stale tail ends of fancy crackers til I found a serviceable variety, and tossed the old ones in the compost.
