A delicious day

Rebecca cooked a phenomenal dinner for the aunties and me last evening. It was ruddy and handsome to behold, and extraordinarily delicious. But that was just what one would expect with a Becca cooked meal. She made a mysterious grain/pasta dish which had – I guess actually no grain – but couscous and orzo or some such, and teensy garbanzo beanlets. And then lots of tasty vegetable matter to give it the final exquisiteness. There was a beet salad – those are red beets and yellow beets, and a turnip – and a pepper salad, one of my favorites - all prepared to perfection. For dessert she made rhubarb soup with strawberry coconut sorbet. And let us not forget the bread, by which we do not live on alone – or I guess I should say live alone on – or… At any rate, one could live on this alone. Rebecca said it took three days to prepare, and there were many possible pitfalls in its preparation – any one of which would spell culinary disaster. As expected, she avoided them all and the bread was super. We ate the whole loaf. It was a dinner fit for queens, and here are two of the auntly queens enjoying it.

A really fun day

Wow! What a fun day! I had gotten tickets to The Mikado for Tom and I, but then his friends who are helping him move, selected that very day for the big event. On the principal that beggars can’t be choosers, he decided that he must take advantage of his kind friends' offers, and forgo The Mikado. So this was not a fun day for him, but a weary though rewarding one, as most of his things came to his new apartment in Seattle in one fell swoop. I can see that this is quite a weight off his mind, as moving, especially when one is ill and must depend on others for help, is a nightmare in the making. However, I was not moving, and I still had the Mikado tickets, so I callously invited my friend Kristen to use Tom’s ticket. We had a fabulous time. I am sure that even an inferior production of The Mikado would be fun to watch, but this production by the Seattle Gilbert and Sullivan Society was super scrumptious and splendid! The scenery looked like an ancient Japanese print, and in itself was worth the trip. The singing was wonderful, and the acting was brilliant, especially Koko – prancing about with his little list. He was both hilarious and adorable. (Query: are Koko and Don Giovanni the only opera characters with little lists, or are there more?) Parker Albin, the tenor playing Nanki-Poo, was a real sex kitten. If I were thirty years younger, I would be a groupie. He was a wonderful singer, handsome, and seemingly full of personality. And Cara Iverson, as Yum-Yum, when singing about being the most beautiful woman in the world, was quite believable. She was really beautiful. I saw an opera recently, in which the dainty sylph was going to throw herself off of a cliff because of her sorrows. We were all eagerly anticipating seeing how this would be done, because the sylph easily topped three hundred pounds, I am sure. Somehow, this made for significantly less verisimilitude.
The third picture is of an outdoor sculpture at Seattle Center. From afar, it looked like gigantic bamboo, and from closer up, a sort of combination of paper and stained glass windows, but on a really close inspection, it was solid pieces of metal painted with a stained glass window look.

Another planned out day

Once again, despite what Tom thinks, I got up, took Margaret for her walkies, drank tea, did the crossword, vacuumed the top half of my house, cleaned the toilets (such exciting news,), gardened a bit, charted the planned design for a pair of socks, went with Rebecca to the Family Kitchen to feed the Hungry, and then shopping at my favorite grocery store where I got lots of delicacies, including Kellogg’s Corn Pops – a favorite food since year one. Also mangos, avocados, peaches and nectarines. Yum! As usual, I had a lovely time at the Family Kitchen. I was quick to place myself in the “serving salad” spot in the northern half of the serving line. There are several advantages to this. I usually always serve in the northern line because it closes first, and I can get to washing the pots and pans sooner. Occasionally, I start out washing pots and not serving because there seems to be a quorum of servers, and later am called to serve (just like the apostles) when another server is needed. Then, since by that time I have missed my preferred spot, I must serve desserts in the less desirable southern line. For some odd reason, if there is trouble among our guests, it is most often the southern line in which eruptions break out. Perhaps because one has to walk across the room to get to the northern line, and that is a bit more work. Also, serving salad is a desirable position and serving desserts is not. The main dish server, next to whom I stand, frequently has to give out a specific amount, and sometimes this amount seems insufficient to some of our patrons. The rowdier of them can make this apparent in often quite unpleasant ways. Giving out desserts is the most traumatic of all for me, because there are decisions, sometimes painful, to be made regarding the virtues of cake vs. pie, and then cherry pie vs. apple pie, etc. And then some folks who simply cannot decide try to grab two, or change their mind and want to give the cake back and exchange for pie (a no-no – once you touch it, it’s yours), and become very aggravated when foiled in this. Salad is neutral, rather unexciting, and finite. Most people are happy with whatever I give them, although one woman was outraged last night because I offered her salad and she was allergic to tomatoes. “You should know this!” she shrieked. It was the first time I had laid eyes on her, so I can’t imagine how I would have known it. Rebecca, who was serving bread - worse than the main dish, but not so bad as dessert – was thrilled to see her mom the victim of a raving virago, and smirked happily for some time afterwards.
The creepy man comes to the Family Kitchen, and is meek as a kitten. He looks with kindly eyes on the server, politely says “Thank you,” and seems to be one of the nicest of our patrons. Perhaps he suffers from a form of lycanthropy! His ferocious rantings at night are the total obverse of his gentle demeanor at during the day. Rachael took this picture with her telephone of him at his ranting station . The top pictures are of some others of our favorite Family Kitchen regulars.

A planned-out day

My friend Tom was reading this blog, and said, “It’s all about how you don’t ever do any work. You have tasks planned, and then do something else every day.” “That’s not true,” I said. “It just isn’t very interesting if I do what I planned to do.” For instance, yesterday I got up, walked the dog, read the paper, drank some tea, worked the crossword, watered my flowers, finished the book I was reading, made lunch, went to work, came home and went to bed. Not an interesting thing there, was there? Today, I got up, walked the dog, read the newspaper, drank tea, worked the crossword, and then – thrilling to relate – vacuumed the house. I cleaned the dust moose out from within the bowels of my refrigerator’s mechanism, and that might have been interesting to watch, as I had to contort myself and crawl about on the floor, find all kinds of instruments (knitting needles, back scratcher, yard stick) to get the fellows out. But not interesting to read about, right? I was so enthusiastic about cleaning that I nearly forgot that I was to sing at our Archbishop’s Fiftieth Anniversary of his ordination. Fortunately, the CD player in the kitchen goes off at noon every day, and this reminded me that it was later than I thought. I scurried off, and then sat there for three hours, watching four cardinals, zillions of bishops, and a gazillion priests march about. And singing my little heart out! This may sound tedious to the uninitiated, but actually, it was wonderful. The liturgy was divine, the music was celestial, and it was heavenly to see all my choir friends, most of whom I haven’t seen since our choir vacation began in June. Now you know that I occasionally accomplish something, but was it interesting at all? Do I hear a resounding “No”? I think so!

A Saturday sort of day

For years, Rebecca made us scones or some other yummy treat every Saturday morning. After she moved into her own digs, I did this for a few Saturdays, but since I fetch Tom at the ferry at just the time I would be tending to the scones, I soon gave up the practice. Rebecca’s scones - pronounced “scahns” if one is pretentious, which of course we are – were always delicious, and somewhat different every Saturday. I asked about her recipe, and it was, “throw in a bit of this, and a bit of that,” so, as Tom was already there and I didn’t have to fetch him, I did just that. I threw in some self-rising flour – the one constant in Rebecca’s recipe, a bit of butter, a bit of yogurt, a bit of milk, a handful of currants and chopped candied ginger. They were quite tasty! Dare I say as good as…….. No, I daren’t. Nothing is a good as Rebecca’s Saturday morning treats, but these were yummy nonetheless. And we had good company, our friend Ward, his bride Jeanie, and my sainted aunt, so it was all in all, a very pleasant morning. I might add, lest you be falsely impressed, that the nearly completed crossword puzzle is left over from Wednesday. We were not up to a Saturday one that day, and so found one from the archives. The other sweet looking furry person here, is Maria, who is actually not very sweet at all. She is haughty, and loves only her mother Rachael and Tom. She disdains everyone else. Michael, who actually is sweet, was not sweet that day, but bit Ward and had to be banished to the basement.

Three noisy nights

Margaret can be a fierce watchdog, and she has been very busy protecting us over the past few days. If an actual burglar were to visit us, she would wag her tail, say, “Come right in! You can have anything you like as long as you will pet me.” However, she is vigilant about the threat of thunder or loud bangs. Two days ago, Rebecca took me cherry picking at one of her secret places. This involved scaling fences, creeping past “No Trespassing” signs, and wading through waist high grasses. Actually we found a gate and did not have to scale a fence – a feat beyond me and my faulty knees - but the signs and grasses were all too evident. Due to the weird weather lately, Rebecca only got a quart of cherries, and I got cherry red eyes, a runny nose, and a body full of itch (vide waist high grasses). When I arrived home, I took a shower to rid myself of any speck of pollen, and settled down for a good read, swollen red eyes not withstanding. Seemingly out of nowhere, there was the most horrendous bang. At first I thought a bomb had gone off in my front garden. Then there was a rush of torrential rain. I called Rebecca, and she said the bomb had gone off in front of her house. Later, my aunt said that no, it had been in front of her house. At any rate, Margaret was right on it, and has been barking for the last three days. First the actual thunder, then the rain – a sign of potential thunder and therefore needing to be ferociously barked at, and then, of course, the dreaded evening and night-long Fourth of July festivities, about which our neighbors are extremely enthusiastic. Today, Margaret is exhausted, and her bark is a mere squeak. I am a trifle thankful about that, as there is still the occasional raindrop from which she must protect me!

A shocking day

Here are two sadly inter-related pictures. I imagine that you can imagine what the relationship is. I came home one evening recently, and had several shocks all at once. The first was finding Rachael’s boyfriend’s underpants (or whatever boy undies are called) lying on the floor of our spare room. The next and even more shocking shock was right next to the undies. I was leaning over to see what the undies were, when right there, almost in the same pile, was a poor little disemboweled bird. And most terrible of all, it was a wren! Wrens are one of my dearest birds, and I am always thrilled to see (an alive) one as they are a rather infrequently visitor to our garden. When I told Rebecca about it, she, being another speciesist (bird-wise at least), exclaimed, “A wren! That’s awful! It wouldn’t have been so bad if it had been an English sparrow, or something like that!” This had been my very thought, and I was feeling guilty and thinking myself unreasonable. Hence, I was relieved when Rebecca had the same reaction. The fact that we both felt similarly proves that it was not unreasonable at all. I will spare you a picture of the bird, and give just this hint of its poor little self. Yet another shock was in store for me! I nearly sat on a gigantic horrible moth. (“Horrible Moth” is a trifle redundant, I fear.) Fortunately I saw him before I sat on him and got moth-dust all over myself. I went to fetch my camera so I could take a picture of him, but he was on to me, and flew away before I could find it.
PS. Rachael had a reasonable explanation for the undies. I won’t bore you with the particulars.