Category Archives: Editorial

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Fourteen Visits

Posted on January 23, 2015 | Leave a comment

We met at TGI Fridays, over 13 years ago. Talked a few weeks after 9/11 when every American was reaching out to strangers as I did, stranded for over a week in Italy because they wouldn’t let me fly home.

We ended up in a group around a late lunch and then there were only the two of us, three hours later. I had to go home to feed my cat, so we shook hands and exchanged phone numbers.

He called me the next night to go to a movie. He opened the car door for me, took my hand and never let go. Sunday it’ll be 12 years of marriage. We’re apart by miles but still together.

We eloped because I didn’t want my divorced parents in the same room together with a small party of friends. A Navy Captain married us and there were eight, including us, at the wedding and the reception, a luncheon we hosted for the Captain and “Admiral” (his wife) and several friends.

We stick together and are still in touch with the “Admiral” whose husband passed a few years ago and we flew to Annapolis for his burial. Their sons are my brothers and I’m “sis.”

I’m also “sis” with my husband’s younger brother, who took a long time to like me. But this is about my husband.

Our first weekend together, I was taking care of several neighborhood friends pets. Feeding birds, cats, walking dogs. He did 14 visits with me then asked “what’s next?” I was exhausted. He took me to Pane e Tulipane (he hates movies with subtitles) and I fell asleep on his shoulder. I still haven’t seen that film.

And Tweety and Moccasin, Coppertop and Dave and Gus and everyone welcomed him to the family. The next month I was walking a dog in the neighborhood, he joined me and we found him a house a thousand feet from mine. We married a year later. He tried to come over for dinner, desperately allergic to cats. He bought a gas mask and wore it for ten minutes, sounding like Darth Vader. Luke, I am your father.

We went out to dinner and married a year later. The cat went to live with the Corgi he loved, for several years, dog of very nice neighbors. He’s gone, along with the others, and we got a dog a year into our marriage who is getting old. She’s very healthy but I don’t want to see her go.

My husband wrote me from afar that he needed to be desperate for me to love and marry me. That took all of three weeks. It was another year before he took me to the family interrogation and married me.

This guy went with me on 14 pet visits in one weekend. Do you think he was just playing hard to get??? Happy anniversary Jim, from your wife Dee

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The Best Things

Posted on January 23, 2015 | Leave a comment

The best things we do often involve sacrifice of a sort. Sitting by one’s mother at hospice for a week. Helping euthanize loved pets when they needed it.

Ones we love come with a price. Either they go, or we go, and I’m at that age when things are happening with us and with more elderly family members.

I’m not really good at this. I learned that early on with a field trip to a hospital with a colleague, he was great with the patients, all I wanted to do was cry. Same with organizing carol singing at a local hospital, where I hung back and sang and tried to control tears. I’m better with animals and have helped others, and two of mine, go to their final reward.

I do take solace in St. Francis, and my favorite priest. I worry about my dad and want to see him, even wrote him a blues song and sang it on his voice mail today. I know my pets are OK with me, and need to plan for Zoe when the time comes and make certain my husband is there with us. Again, I can deal with animals humanely, people who are sick or dying require more fortitude and stamina on my part to make them feel comfortable and at ease with their condition and future.

We’ll be married 12 years on Sunday and are across the country from one another. Our dog Zoe will be eleven. Mom would have been 79. Zoe has a gift, in that she has little past and no future plans except the next walk or meal. She doesn’t remember that cousin Val took out her hips at six and nine-months of age, and just loves Val.

I sometimes wish it was that simple for human beings. Then again, my past has allowed me to change things in order to shape the present and the future. That’s where it gets complicated.

Today, I wish all our older family members a great day, weekend, week, year, years, decades. Family or family pets, be there. Let them know you love them. Dee

 

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Kill It

Posted on January 23, 2015 | 3 comments

That’s what I said to my husband, who created this venue as a gift for me then left it to my care. Kill it at 1,000 posts, I said. I’m now at over 2,300 with over 77,000 hits.

Of course it’s a niche blog. I would never want to have “staff” to take care of it. I mostly write what I want. Of course the NSA, CIA, FBI, HSA know me and even during hurricane Ike and my rants about lack of food, water, electricity during and after the storm didn’t warrant raids. That’s good because my husband was getting water out of the parking garage, another guy was raking out the storm drain and I and his wife were going door-to-door making sure everyone was safe because there was no management or maintenance on site for days.

The blog becomes a problem when I can’t say what I think so have to write about something else or work around it. The dichotomy bothers me. I always try to be true to myself and my readers but must place some conversations in a larger context, hopefully one well thought-out, before putting it before you.

That is why I’m not an award-winning novelist. But as Freud said, there are no mistakes. My first was a now instead of a not. Think about it Herr Sigmund. Cheers from Dee

 

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Older?

Posted on January 18, 2015 | 1 comment

Does getting older always mean looking to the past? I don’t. I look to the future but now have and have given antique items.

I will never be the gal with doilies over the sofa, forget even talking about sitting on plastic to protect something one has never enjoyed for forty years.

Several months ago we bought my husband’s mother a 1957 Italian Necche Supernova sewing machine, gorgeous, first zig zag in the world. Now its’ former owner, in pre-spring cleaning, has found more pieces to the puzzle, as if what she gave wasn’t enough.

Live long enough and be good to people and things might come around. Last week I received a gift from my husband, a humidifier. Our few year-old plastic one flaked and started leaking from the electrical outlet, a hazard.

This is a glass bottle (sans stand) with a bakelite top, no screw or base to handle, and it gets hot. I would never hazard it with kids, although my parents had one when I was a kid, not this type or model. It is a danger to children and pets. Our dog Zoe went up to it and immediately decided it was not of interest, so that’s good.

Sometimes all the plastic we manufacture with technonogical upgrades, don’t really make the grade. Spending an hour cleaning a Venta with Q-Tips and hydrogen peroxide is not a good time.

The 1957 sewing machine works for its new owner, M, and now has extra parts and information. The new 1950’s vaporizer works well as I learn the tricks to use it. Kudos to my husband for finding us vintage items that work.

We have some antiques, a few crafted by family. New is not necessarily better. We have newer and ancient quilts, art created by an artist who started at age 80 (my father), and two numbered lithos of Tuscany that I spent $150 to frame and it was worth it, from a consignment store ten years ago. It was $4 for the pair of lithos.

I’ve been married a long while and always invite singles because I was one and was dismissed. People get married and want sets of furniture and everything. If you’re smart, young people, take what your parents give you from theirs and their parents and make good use of it. Even the pictures will give you years of joy, comfort and solace. It’s called being eclectic. Perhaps eccentric if you push the boundaries.

My husband says many homes and sites must be torn down. I am more of the restore category of home improvement. No plans for demo and reconstruction of any new property now. We’re going day to day and hope that everything works out. We’re older, too, and think we’re designed to be elegant, useful and live somewhere together, of course. Dee

 

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Today’s Customer Service

Posted on January 15, 2015 | 1 comment

This is a note to Swingline Staplers. For many years their products were up to the task. I would not think of staplers as a particularly difficult or complex machine to manufacture, but my last two are toast. The very last one failed with the first staple.

My communique to Swingline:

Comments: I’ve loved Swingline staplers since I was a kid and never had a problem. Since age 50, I’ve had a nice one that started jamming, and just ordered an inexpensive one to keep papers together for an impending move. I opened the box, loaded staples and spent my time with my kitchen needle nose pliers taking those staples out. How can you be the best in the business and provide such shoddy workmanship? It’s tough to have an office without a working stapler. I ordered another brand and would like a refund for the machine I purchased. Thank you.
Contact preference: Email

Their reply:

We do not refund. As we do not sale to concumers. We do however replace under warranty. To get a refund you will have to contact the vendor from whom you purchased it from. If you would like a warranty replacement, just let me know.

* * *

Should I sue for a $4 stapler? Obviously because there was no warranty statement in the box. I will contact the seller, and did use them to purchase another stapler from Swingline’s competitor, Bostitch. I just received it and haven’t even taken it out of the box.

For Swingline to say they don’t “sale to concumers” is a blatant lie. Their products are on the shelves of every office supply store and large grocery store in the USA if not worldwide. This answer means that they do not stand by their product and fault purchasers and retail stores for their manufacturing errors. Where are these products made? I’ve only had problems for a while but keeping personal and work papers secure and together takes a device that costs less than $10 and passing the buck like this is today’s invention of customer service. I guess the buck stops with that other guy, the one in the hat, there. He sold it to you. It’s his fault it doesn’t work right out of the box.

Let’s hope their staples work because I’ve an entire box and am a bit frightened that they may break my new Bostitch stapler. Yes, I am making a point via mountains and mole hills. Cheers! Dee

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Parents

Posted on January 14, 2015 | 1 comment

You love them since birth, get to know each other. Then you learn to rebel in your teens, hopefully go to college and it’s a new world.

You’re two-thirds their equal and then you have a career and are off to do great things with the degree you both bought.

Then you marry and have kids, whoops we missed that last one. We married late for both of us and only have a dog, and neither of my parents ever met our girl. She’s a requested visitor at his parents’ ranch. Best dog in the family. We got Zoe at a shelter at just six weeks of age and she’ll be eleven years old this month.

Just as I take care of my husband and dog it has been time over the past ten years to take care of my parents. Mom has been gone over six years and Dad is undergoing second opinion tests at a stellar hospital. They were there for me. I was there for my mother and always will be for Dad.

My husband is younger and his parents are in good health. He will help me assist Dad and I will be there for his parents and for him if ill health occurs.

I don’t want to make waves but the health care marketplace is not ours and paying in full for health care involves long waits on the phone and no answers, mainly because no-one picks up the phone at major health care companies. Imagine a health insurance company denying service to a full-paying customer. That’s another story, another day.

There are now two heavy, zippered notebooks. One for what is and the other for what might be. Swingline is now making crummy staplers but I’ve a hole punch and lots of dividers for health care, housing, tax deductions, insurance, utilities, et al.

Planning for life is just a little bit of it. Oh, while I’ve loved Swingline staplers for all my life, their products have failed miserably and I’ve had to go with a competitor. My new stapler arrives tomorrow. Our papers in my incredibly organized notebooks require essential items to be placed together for easy sorting. I need a stapler that works. Sorry, Swingline. Cheers! Dee

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Heat and Light

Posted on January 13, 2015 | 5 comments

Both are things we treasure in cold weather, especially as I witnessed a first ice fisher out there today, only a few feet from the jetty as the ice is thin.

We also treasure it in inspiration. I don’t remember cooking before age seven when I miraculously found a cookbook in a dusty village library while my mother was off to the grocery store.

The first recipe I ever cooked was from that book, Betty Crocker’s Boys and Girls Cookbook. It was curled carrots. I sliced carrots thinly, and placed them in ice water in the frig. Two hours later I took them out to serve. My grandfather was visiting at the time and he called them “suicide carrots.” Such was the beginning of my culinary life. Everything I cooked he thought he’d die from ingesting.

I wanted my grandfather, parents, siblings, friends and everyone to like me. I learned to cook. Perhaps the best thing my father liked was a cassoulet I made for him from Simca Beck’s recipe many years ago. I would love to make it for him again, with my brother, with two days in the kitchen and items from France I didn’t have. Or we could make it Italian. He may like it even better.

Aunts L and J were also wonderful mentors in cooking and proper English. They still love food and create food for those in need of a good meal, as volunteers.

I was devastated when my husband loved my ten minute (check blog) vegetarian lasagne more than my four-hour version with long-cooked Bolognese and boiled noodles. Then I realized if I made lasagne in ten minutes and cooked it for an hour we’d have more time together.

Lasagne = love? Food, sharing, togetherness, conversation, a toast, that is love. With my berry trifle, it’s also decadence.

As to food I’ve a final exam to pass. Our Swedish neighbor G taught me to make Kottbullar, Swedish meatballs, for us and my husband a few months ago and now I have to take the test and make it for him.

My challenge to Swedish G is true Texas chili, my riff on a classic 1962 recipe from Lady Bird Johnson that was served on the Pedernales ranch for 5,000 guests including JFK.

He’ll have to grind the meat, saute the onions and garlic, add spices and try it three hours later. Then he’ll have his test a couple of weeks later and make it for me. Food is love, darlin’. My husband loves G’s Kottbullar.

My view on life is that if anyone of any nationality or faith met another of a differing one and cooked and sat at a meal together there would not be wars.

Food is friendship, food is love, taste and sharing an experience. I am a complex person and use words to opine, not swards, guns or bombs. I think we spend a lot of our tax dollars for “diplomats” to dine with representatives of other nations. The food may be good but perhaps it is not enjoyed with the camaraderie that best represents our countries.

Savor. Let’s have presidents, princes, diplomats dig in a garden for their meal, together. Cook it, together, and serve, family style to their people. That may actually lead to a representative democracy here in the US of A. and may help other nations as well.

Early on my heat was an Easy Bake Oven. I used it three times. Cooking with a light bulb? Come on. From there I saw light. Thank you, everyone, for getting me here. Cheers! Dee

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Purging

Posted on January 13, 2015 | 1 comment

Sounds disgusting, doesn’t it? It is. I’m trying to get us to a minimum of “stuff” so we remain mobile. The old clothing et al was pretty easy, especially as I had assistance and at least six bags of clothing went to charity. Luckily some didn’t and was trashed. Reasons? Old, yellowed, 80’s shoulder pads should NEVER come back…..

Now I’m pretty much down to paper and sundry items that I have to look through. I spent much of the day on this boxing and taking out trash.

When my husband and I met and married 12 years ago I moved in, slapped things in boxes from my place 1,000 feet away and we never got a chance to merge households. We moved, put stuff in storage for several years, and now have it here. I’ve about 14 boxes left, about 7 paper, some office products, some clothing and bathroom stuff.

I just found a few “duralogs” in one box. My husband reminds me we had a fireplace once. I don’t think so. I had one before we met so I may have dragged these things across the country several times!

Once I get to work documents from 25 years ago I’ll have to cull them carefully and take most to a document destruction facility. I’m shredding personal papers and tossing old news items et al.

This week I took down our tabletop -real- Christmas tree and boxed, sealed and labeled all our precious ornaments. I’m trying to take all the taped, labeled boxes of stuff we wish to retain but don’t need every day (like Christmas ornaments, heater, humidifier) to storage but am terrified of operating their elevator. It’s the oldest industrial elevator in town and is gorgeous, huge with oak floors, but it runs on a pulley system with ropes and lead weights and is difficult to get just right, to land correctly on the floor you want to land upon.

Our place is looking better. It only took 2.5 years. I moved my office into the second bedroom because my husband bought a workhorse of a printer (the Beast) that weighs and ton and takes up a lot of space. I have a 100 year-old English oak gate leg table as my desk, it’s beautiful but rickety so I had to place the Beast on a sturdier surface, my brother’s old glass and metal desk in the guest room so moved my computer in as well.

My cherished oak desk held the Christmas tree, stockings and ornaments. I’ve been restoring it with lemon oil so have left it open. Cooks will love this. I oiled the desk yesterday, found a pashmina scarf my dad got me from Turkey last year in blues, greens and gold and used it as a table runner as it goes with the living room decor.

I didn’t have anything special to place on it so showcased a large Armetale platter my mother got from a hospital benefit years ago, an antique green lemon juicer, a new (used) copy in yellow of The New Settlement Cookbook, two soup tureens in yellow with ceramic Chinese spoons and an antique yellow Pyrex dish from the early 60’s with a daisy painted on the glass lid. Also a crayoned card from a girls’ birthday party we stopped by at a neighbor’s. My husband made them each a balloon and they each drew themselves with the balloon he made. I’m keeping it to frame for him.

With tassels on the ends of the scarf, it looks to me like an altar to food. I joked with my husband that I could grab the gardening kneeling pad I keep beside the frig and he could use it to pray to the food gods to have Dee make him spaghetti and meatballs tonight!

Purging is tiring, hurts the back and feet but a good night’s sleep will take care of that. I’ll let you know when I get to the ancient stuff. Perhaps I’ll find the signed copy of James Earl Jones’ Chilean Sea Bass recipe my father bought for me at auction. Cheers! Dee

 

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Dear Mom

Posted on January 9, 2015 | 1 comment

It’s been over six years since you passed. Your address and phone number are still on my address book and phone. I think of you and dream of you often.

We’re doing OK. A move is in the works but we will be married 12 years near the end of the month. Sorry to tell you this but our nearly 11 year-old dog was born at the end of January 2004 so I made it your birthday. Your real birthday and not the one the Feds made up for MediCare.

Yes, I remember going to the pharmacy for you, making you homemade chicken stock and freezing it for you, and taking out the overnight nutrition from your pic line every morning and cleaning it all out.

I hoped that my legacy as your eldest of four children would have ended with you liking me, for a change.

I fought my brother and sisters to get you permission to ask for a Priest for Last Rites. It took hours and finally I won. Since you never liked me and my younger siblings didn’t want religion involved I asked the hospice Chaplain to ask you if you wanted a Priest. You said yes, but he had gone for the day, and was from your Parish.

I asked to bring him back as your morphine intake was enough to take down a horse and you were only about 70 lbs. and fighting. The last night I made up a story about a Fr. McGuinness as Kevin was having a Guinness at the time. Next morning I was walking down the hall to the ladies’ room and a priest came up to me and said, “You must be Dee, I’m Fr. McGuinness,”

I kid you not, Mom. He did Last Rites and we all walked around your bed and said we love you. And my Jim said to you that he would take care of me. You said he was a sweetheart, Mom, at an earlier surgery, and he has been for many years.

Calling you is always on my mind, especially when I want recipe advice. Last year 12/25/14 I ordered a capon from South Dakota, that took four years to find and interview and blog for the ranch owners. This year, wherever we are living, I would like to re-create your prime rib, Yorkshire pudding dinner. I’m already making mincemeat tarts and berry trifle. It will be a challenge but Mom, I believe I’m up to it. With love from your eldest daughter, Dee

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Neighbors

Posted on January 9, 2015 | Leave a comment

In hope of driving to see my husband at his new location I called a former neighbor from several years past, as this may be the perfect place to rest for an evening. Unfortunately the organization that accepted dogs in the community courtesy of Poster Dog Zoe will not accept her at their hotel.

Jim and I hope to meet and drive through the desert together after I spend three days driving alone with the dog across the country. But we hope to get a dog-friendly hotel and meet up with old friends, our former neighbors, along the way.

We “held” about five six-unit buildings back in the day, through harsh ski winters. We were always on call for one another in any emergency and that’s a blessing at -6 degrees when I accidentally “fry” the thermostat plate because I’m wearing Crocs inside in a desperately dry environment.

We used to do pot luck suppers a few times a year with the main dish provided by the host, and the location changed every couple of months. We got to keep in touch and started having community events and watching the fireworks outdoors every July 4th.

Today I helped a neighbor who’s never been to visit. He was invited for my Around The World Christmas Dinner but never came. He’s ill and needed a few things from the store. I did what any good neighbor would do and offered to take care of his dog and bring him a few things. I added soup and a few Tazo tea bags for good measure.

Neighbors are to cherish because they help make a house a home. Plus, I really miss those neighbors who worked for SmartWool and ProBar because I got treats every time I walked their puppy. Ah, to have free SmartWool socks. Another neighbor was a pastry chef and was always a warm and generous host. Another was a darned good cook who always pushed the flavor envelope for our dinners and made us feel like we had always been part of the family. How I miss these folks and environment and wish we could go there again.

That’s what neighbors mean to me. We plan to get together next month, to “chew the fat” and get kept up to speed on goings-on. I will be driving cross-country with the dog so need to find a pet-friendly place to stay. Wish us luck. Dee

ps The lodging I stayed in for three years will not accept my dog. The nearest hotel is costing $200 per night. $20 of that is dog rent.

 

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