The Decompression of a Boomer

“Hall-o-we-ee-een!”

October 16, 2009

Ian, Ben, Nick, Aaron and Neil

Beware … Halloween is near! This is a photo of our sons and friends at a neighborhood Halloween party back in 1993. They had congregated at our house and thrown together costumes using stuff from our Halloween box, which still sits in a cobwebby corner of our basement.

Hey! Halloween falls on a Saturday night this year – WOO-O-O-O-HOO-O-O-O! – and maybe you oughtta be thinking about your costume! I have given mine some thought: Depending on my mood, I will either be a ‘slug,’ ‘vegetable,’ ‘bag lady,’ ‘witch,’ ‘pampered wife,’ … one of these (check it out), or, ‘Queen Josephine.’

I’ll be home Halloween evening with my husband who, in meshing with my mood, and/or costume, might be a ‘couch potato,’ ‘bookworm,’ ‘remote control operator,’ ‘hobo,’ ‘millionaire,’ ‘King David,’ or … ‘James Bond.’ ‘Prince Charming’ would work magnanimously well, especially, if, for some obvious, or inexplicable reason, I am a ‘witch.’

Anyway, our daughter, Megan, has been invited to a Halloween party and she needs a costume. What to be for Halloween? Our box in the basement is still crammed with stuff that should have gone to Goodwill long ago, because I doubt Megan or I ever again will be a Ninja Turtle, a gigantic M&M, Zorro, a six-year-old Pirate, Mad scientist (with those goofy, coke-bottle, headache-inducing glasses), wear an aligator nose, or drape discarded white sheets, reeking of ‘basement’ over our heads, with two cut-out holes for the eyes that never stay put so the flesh of your nose is sticking out of your ghost-face and you bump yourself senseless getting out the door, into the night, after the loot.

So Megan and I started brainstorming costume ideas – ‘witch’ and ‘hippie’ were ‘out’ for her, she said, as was ‘angel,’ ‘fairy,’ or ‘cat.’ Geez!, there had to be something half-way original! So I checked out the Internet. Now, I don’t know, the last time I searched online the costumes seemed more … innocent, or certainly, reflective of a less complicated time. Step aside, ‘starlets’, ‘Star Wars characters’ and ‘Spiderman!’ – and make way for … ‘Octomom?’ (Check it out!)

Hey! I’m all over this costume! It’s simple, and I don’t want to drag our Halloween box out of storage, if I can prevent it. For your ‘Octomom’ costume you wear your t-shirt, flip-flops and jeans and just add lips (big ones), long black hair, and eight baby dolls. You could probably get the dolls at the dollar store, except one aspiring ‘Octomom’ would likely clean them out of babies — unless they’ve ordered hundreds of them, in anticipation of Halloween Octomom’s popularity. Oh, and you’ll need some duct tape or a bag or some way to tote your babies – Octopus tentacles???

Admittedly, it’s not the most comely costume … Might look appropriate on grandmothers, since so many are raising their grandkids, anyway. Young girls dressed as ‘Octomom’ wouldn’t come off as wholesome and inspiring as, say, young ‘Amelia Erharts,’ although hauling eight bald-headed babies around for the duration of your Saturday-Halloween-Night-Party-Extravaganza might prove a strong and thoughtful deterrent to stopping in the graveyard on the way home to cuddle with Dracula…

I never plan too far ahead for Halloween on account of one never knows what the weather is going to do. Last year it turned out to be nice – and two days before Halloween I finally did acknowlege its coming, dug out the Halloween box, scattered a few decorations about, carved a pumpkin with Megan, and bought some candy for the trick-or-treaters. Except, I hid the candy from myself and didn’t find it again until three weeks later, stuffed into a basement shelf.

Megan still hasn’t decided on a costume. She is totally not amused by ‘Octomom.’ She was a ‘witch’ last year. This year she could be a ‘rock star,’ or an ‘orphan,’ or a ‘sack,’ or ‘Pippi Longstocking,’ or a ‘Princess’…

I just hope between, say, October 28 and October 31 nature doesn’t come trick-or-treating at our door as the ‘Abominable Snowman.’ Well, if that does happen, then we’ll all just dress up like Laplanders.

Tags: Halloween, Octomom costume
Posted in Holidays | 1 Comment »

Our Frost-Induced Frenzy Faves

October 6, 2009

impatients photo We enjoyed an exquisite Indian Summer here in Idaho through September, brimming with bright flowers, sunny breezes and temps that hovered near 80 all month long!

Here you see the impatiens in front of our house on September 29. Oh happy, happy impatiens! It was the following night, on October 1st, when ‘Indian Summer’ abruptly butted heads with ‘Ending-ing Summer.’

“SUMMER HAS HIT THE ROAD!” Nature declared, as she dumped a killing frost on us, ushered in on the tails of a harsh north wind. The temperatures took a thirty-degree dive and stayed there. That first cold always shoots to your marrow, turning your limbs into popcicle sticks, and it taunts you … “Just try to warm up!’ (Okay, so the impatiens didn’t like it either.)

I crawled out of bed on the morning of October 1st, my bones creaking with chill. My lower limbs carried me like sledge hammers as I shuffled, half-consciously, to my closet to don layers of long cotton …

It was here, in front of my closet, that I began my foray into our family’s 5-day frost-enduced frenzy. I started flinging out flip flops and digging for … KNEE SOCKS and sifting through summer clothes which absolutely had to go! Next thing, last spring’s jeans are flying from their hangers, being tried on, one-by-one, sorted, and strewned across our bedroom floor, with me in exclamation, “Yikes! Too tight!” – “Worn!” – “Out of style!” – “Why did I buy these?” – “I need to go shopping!”

There’s nothing like the first spell of cold weather to kick your butt into re-organizing your closets. Which brings me to … coats! Get them out! Oh, you didn’t launder them last spring before stowing them away? Too bad. Wear them anyway, you’ll have to figure that out later…

The cool, light, summer cotton sheets are … too freakin’ freezing and flimsy! Dig out the flannel sheets from the – (Aargh! what a gnarly, crumpled mess that’s in!) – linen closet. Replace the bedding, haul the armloads of dirty sheets to the laundry room where they’ll … sit there staring at you in a messy heap.

Oh, the camper! We haven’t winterized it yet! Better drive out to where it sits in storage and flush out the plumbing before it freezes and bursts – get that taken care of, we wouldn’t want pipes squirting at us come next summer, now, would we?

Hey! Remove the air conditioners from the windows already! Shove them in their winter places, won’t need those again for 9 months! Off with all the screens while we’re at it, ah, geez, the windows are filthy – so glad we can clean all 30 of them now that the screens are off!

Oh oh! The tomatoes! Pick every one – find your recipe for fried green tomatoes! (Yeah, right.) Okay, so they froze already and, my goodness, the gardens are unsightly! Get out there with your 36-gallon trash bags and stuff them full of frozen plants. Rip the black-limbed impatiens carcasses out of their ravaged bed out front and stuff those bags! Oops! Not the perennials! Some need to be transplanted. There’s bulbs to plant too! Now’s the time!

Alas, the grass is tall again, waiting for its last mowing. Cut it way short. But, first! – dig out those dandelions lest they emerge tenfold in number come spring. Mow the lawn! Mulch the gardens with the clippings. Treat the lawn now with fertilizer and broad leaf killer. Drain the hoses and roll them up. WINTERIZE THE SPRINKLERS ASAP, or you’ll be diggin’ holes bigger than crap!

Oh, and you might wanna remove the drinks from the fridge in the garage before they freeze and explode – transform themselves into whirling dervishes that squirt their sticky contents all over the interior of the fridge, you know, like they did last year…

These examples above give you a sampling of our frost-induced frenzy ‘faves’ – our favorite frenetic activities of the past five days.

And now you get to see a photo taken this morning of our front lawn. Well, we did get it mowed …

October 5, 2009

I’m gonna go shop now for some new fall faves in clothing attire. For starters, I’ve ditched my summer purse (duh!) and I need to find a suitable winter replacement.

I should maybe also buy a couple of stocking caps, some gloves, large snow shovels and some ‘ice melt’ …

Posted in Fall | 3 Comments »

The Caraher’s Go-a-Campin’

September 20, 2009

With fall approaching it’s time to call it a ‘wrap’ on the camping season. We took our camper out twice this summer, for a grand total of three nights. I keep insisting to my husband, David, that this is good! – verses his preference, which is more akin to not going camping and say we did.

“But heck!” (I tell David to excite him about going.) “We pay $300.00 a year just to store the thing. We save a night’s motel (okay, flea bag motel) every night we stay in our camper! Camping for three or four nights a year makes up for the cost of storage!”

We hit the mark this year, camping for three nights, and that’s what’s important here.

photo(16) Here you see a picture of our camper where it is parked about 360 days a year. It is a 1973 Bell, a 16-foot beauty, wait till you see its lime-green interior! We bought it three years ago at my insistence as a quantum leap up from camping out of the back of David’s truck. Megan, the dog, and I, would bed down in the back of the truck, while David got the ground, and a tarp to cover himself in case of rain. In the morning we all crawled out as if from under rocks, piled back into the truck and drove somewhere to find food and a bathroom to squat in to clean ourselves up, at which juncture Megan and I were usually thoroughly spent and pleading to go home.

So I spotted this totally retro 16′ camper with its divine lime green interior and just had to have it. For a mere 1,500 bucks! Good buy! We could afford it! And do some REAL camping! Albeit it doesn’t have a bathroom or hot water and the ice box runs on, uh, block ice. Of course, as soon as we wrote a check for the thing and hauled it into our driveway we learned the roof leaked like a sieve, the plumbing had to be replaced and the field mice had a veritable field day chewing on the upholstery. “Sorry, dear!” But, “Cha-ching!” Oh well, what’s another 1,500 bucks for the trailer’s restoration? We will certainly get $3,000.00 worth of fun out of our precious lime-green retro camper in the long run! We only have to camp in it, say, every summer for the next 10-15 years to make the return on our investment.

We do go camping, about 3-4 days a year. Except we have our own special requirements. First of all, we never camp in campsites with hook-ups. No way! We like to rough it! Haul the camper off-road to some wilderness area, hopefully next to a stream, so we can fish. We build a humongous campfire, feed it dead tree limbs past midnight, and stand around it belting out our own unique renditions of old Bee-Gees’ songs, complete with ‘harmony.’ (This activity involves camping with my younger brother, Eric, who knows the wilderness areas like his back yard, knows almost every word of every Bee-Gee song ever made, and belts out a unique, um, falsetto … It also involves making sure we don’t have neighbors within 500 yards.)

Unless we just don’t want to bother with a campfire or cooking and all that. Then we do what we did camping overnight during Labor Day weekend: Park close to a restaurant so we can eat there and squat in their bathroom (since we don’t have a bathroom in our camper, as I said. We do, however, have a corner closet which houses a porta-potty, which, why would we use it if we don’t have to?).

Another plus about camping near a restaurant is that you are also then probably in, or near, a town where you might have cell phone coverage so your daughter, who is twenty and was unenthusiastically dragged along on the trip in the first place, can text her friends.

So we went camping Sunday night into Labor Day. My brother with the falsetto voice invited us to join him in Island Park, Idaho – a mere 90-minute drive from our house. Eric was running a booth at an Antique show in front of Pond’s Lodge (which is actually just a restaurant now). He had parked his camper behind the restaurant in an area that used to house campsites and rental cabins, but was now, under new ownership, transitioning into small private lots sporting $300,000.00 log homes. There was a spot back there beside his camper, Eric told us, where we could camp, and there were no other campers around on account of all the construction. There was cell phone coverage, too! We were totally ‘there!’

We pulled in behind Pond’s lodge about 3PM Sunday – parked our camper back there next to Eric’s camper. Then we did an outsy-doorsy thing, afterall, we were camping. Drove the 4-Runner up to the top of Sawtelle mountain:

Picture us standing at the very top!

It lies just a few miles outside of Island Park and yes, you can drive clear to the top of it. Here’s a photo I took of Megan on top of Sawtelle … She handled it okay:

Yes! There is cell phone coverage!

However, the wind was blowing about forty miles an hour and we didn't linger long. Here is our dog, Rudy, enjoying the view while trying to keep his footing:

photo(11)

We quickly jumped back in the truck and switch-backed our way down the mountain to return to our ‘campsite.’ It was just too windy to think of being outside and too early for dinner so we decided to hang out in the camper. Go ‘lime green!’

Who's got the lime?

It was then that we paused to take in the view out our camper door…

What's with the cabin? Tornado?

How did that cabin get turned on its, uh, would that be … ‘nose?’

Notice the legs and white tennies. Those belong to Megan. I didn’t ask her to position her legs in the scene just to enhance my photo. She is very busy here, mind you, absorbed with focused singularity in her camping experience, unaffectedly battered by high winds as she resolutely …

photo(15)

… texts her friends. Hey, no problem if the cell phone (surrounded by so much metal I guess) doesn’t work in the camper. Eric’s camper (pictured in the first photo with the apparent tornado) is similar in size to ours, except fully equipped and, you will notice, his back window is cracked … (for extra ventilation perhaps? Nice touch.).

Soon it was dinnertime and we walked the 200 yards to the restaurant. My brother, Eric, joined us and so did my sister, Lisa, (otherwise known as ‘Twitch’) and her husband, Tom. They were camping in Island Park as well, only they really were ‘roughing it’ in a campsite 15 miles away off a dirt road. There was a ‘Bear Box’ pre-installed at their campsite along with an 18-foot-high horizontal pole from which to levitate their food stuffs so as to have no excuse if they ended up mauled by bears.

After a comfortable ‘green’ night’s sleep and a hearty breakfast at Pond’s Lodge Restaurant, all six of us embarked on a 2 1/2-mile hike up to Blair Lake:

Blair Lake

The trail head was about a 20-mile drive from our campsite. We fished and picnicked by the lake and it didn’t matter at all about cell phone coverage, particularly since Megan’s cell phone was long since dead by now.

On the hike back from the lake I was remembering all the reasons why I want to go camping.

photo(19)

How can you get any closer to nature than this? I know David and Megan (and our dog Rudy!) felt as I did. How lucky we were! – and blessed! – to be here, all of us together, hiking in the Idaho wild, living this unforgettable experience!

My sister, Lisa, told me later that a black bear had run across the road in front of them as they were driving away from their remote campsite 15 miles from where we camped. Hey, our campsite worked out just fine! Eric explained that the owner of Pond’s Lodge was trying to find the quickest way to demolish the old cabins to clear the lots behind his restaurant. He tried just lifting them up with heavy machinery and dropping them on their sides to see if they would collapse on themselves. Maybe he should set that cabin that was near our camper upright again and just use it – it’s so sturdy!

Lastly, here is a photo of our corner camper closet, you know, the one with the porta-potty…

… staring up at you with it’s two eyeballs as if to issue a warning:

Raise the lid at your own risk!

I don’t know why I took this photo. Nothing in it is even green.

Tags: Camping, Sawtelle mountain, squatters
Posted in Camping | Leave a Comment »

Yes You Can! (hurt yourself doing leg lifts)

September 15, 2009

I’m starting up again where I left off, uh, five months ago, trying to do regular workouts to strengthen my body. Trying to, I say. Yeah, even the process of getting started can be pretty ‘trying’.

First you have to come up with an exercise plan. One obvious option is to join a gym. I joined our local Apple Club a couple of years ago – all gung-ho at first, but I tired of it really fast, and suddenly it was sheer drudgery. I had signed up for a year membership that I couldn’t get out of short of leaving the country or killing myself. They automatically withdrew the money from our checking account every month and I automatically chanted at the Apple Club building as I drove by, “NA-NA-NA-NA-BOO-BOO, I’M-NOT-GO-ING-IN-THERE-YOU-BUM-HOLES, EVEN-IF-I-DID-PAY!” and they totally didn’t care of course. They had my money and I had the satisfaction of totally blowing them off and doing something fun, like shopping.

Alas, so here I am again, facing my flabbier-than-ever, wrinkling, weakling, wussie body. I must DO something! Firm myself up! Maybe join a gym and this time hire a personal trainer. Because I pretty much wander in a fog in workout rooms (I found out) amidst a sea of exercise equipment and mangled weight lifting machines created to find, bend and stretch every obscure atrophied muscle in the human body. Hey! I could hurt myself here.

So last week I checked out the local ‘Y’. For 400 bucks I could purchase a six-month membership and 8 sessions with a personal trainer. Oh, and a fitness assessment for another 25 bucks, because how else could my trainer know that I can only lift 5-lb free weights?

Are you kidding? I am not going to be humiliated with a fitness assessment. Your fitness level should be your own private business, as should your sex life, closet habits, life-sucking compulsions, or in this case, the complete lack of compulsion thereof. It takes courage enough to face up to your abject wussiness without having to subject your girating flab to the scrutiny of a fit and muscled personal trainer likely 20-40 years your junior.

So the gym is out. Except maybe if you are single, or interested in being single, and social, and appear athletic and/or at least semi-kickass in your workout attire. Then the gym could be a ‘maybe’.

Plus, when you check the gym out and tally up the cost and get that figure in your head just to reject it, then you suddenly realize you just saved yourself over 400 dollars. Go shopping!

And move on to … Living room option. Ours is armed with reams of fitness articles I have collected and crammed into notebooks over the past five years, along with stretchy bands, an exercise ball, and a few hand weights. Hey, I would have jumped with gusto on the exercise bandwagon three years ago – had tummy tuck jeans with stretch lycra not been invented.

But, miracle of miracles … I got started! I pulled together my own individualized fitness plan. You know, first you warm up for ten minutes, maybe do a little bouncing or tilting on the ball, some body-bending and then you run around the house till your breath feels a tad puffy. Then you do the strength training – one day upper body, next day lower body, third day core, then back to upper body, etc … Then you cool down – doing lots of stretches and hugging yourself with positive – “I’m so wonderfully getting fit” – “Aren’t I a dynamo!” – affirmations.

I did do GREAT on the first day: Upper body. Lifting those 5-lb weights over my head (even though the directions suggested, uh, 8-12 lb. The 8-pound ones nearly collapsed in on my head on the third lift). I hugged myself profusely after my 45-minute workout, awash in dynamo positivity.

Second day: Fantastic! Lower body workout to the max! I plucked exercises off several different sheets from my notebook and performed them with super-human enthusiasm. But what the heck. They were just leg lifts. No weights even. You can lift your leg in about dozen different directions and I did them all – full count. I felt great! On a roll, man!

Third day: What the … getting out of bed my legs collapsed under me. My leg muscles were KILLING me. Geez! I have to descend 14 steps downstairs to the kitchen to get to my morning coffee? … Here I go … “Ouch!”, “OOO!”, “EEECH!”, “ARGH!”, “AAAG!”, “WHOOO!”, “YIPES!”, … “WHEY DOGGIE, CAN’T DO STAIRS!”

For the past three days my chant has been, “DON’T TOUCH THE LEGS!” to every living thing or shadow that moves in my vicinity. I can tell you, a ‘lap dog’ in this situation is a living nightmare.

Three days later: My legs are finally functional enough to enable me to get back on the exercise ball. Guess I’m starting over. SLOWLY.

Every exercise plan in my notebook starts out with, “Consult your doctor before beginning any exercise program.” In my case, with all my issues surrounding ‘exercise’ do you suppose they are suggesting a psychiatrist?

Tags: Exercise, gyms, personal trainers
Posted in Exercise | 2 Comments »

Get Your Gardening Tips Here!

September 4, 2009

It’s that time of year again. The flowers and vegetables are mature, tomatoes are ripening, Jack Frost is breathing over us from the horizon. Time to take a good look at your gardens, maybe do some fall planting or transplanting and reflect on what you’ve learned from this year’s gardening mistakes and triumphs. I’ve got a few tips that might prove helpful to you as you update your list of summer gardening do-s and don’t-s.

First of all, if you must grow hollyhocks, then plant them in a sunny spot, so they don’t have to lurch up to 8-9 feet tall, groping for the sun over a tall fence. Of course, they work well in corners framed by tall fences and so they grow and grow and grow and then bud and finally in early August they bloom (if they haven’t already been completely consumed by slugs and fungus).

our lone standing hollyhock

Then they fall over, squashing the tall marigolds or whatever else you’ve planted for show under their canopy. So … Tip #1: Have a few bungee cords handy to tie up the hollyhocks when they fall over, because they surely will – like, for example, on August 10th if your mother in-law is arriving for a visit on Aug 11. I was shocked when I glanced at our back corner garden. “Hey, where did all those hollyhocks your mother planted disappear to?” – I queried my husband, David, who was relaxing in his chair on the deck. I went charging back there to find the hollyhocks lying complacently on the ground. “Geez! You’re freaking kidding!” David quickly arrived with several bungee cords and magically affixed them all vertical again.

Hubby saves the day

They looked pretty good, 40 feet away, from our chairs on the deck, which is where we stealthily reposed with his mother while she was here.

I guess cutesy, decorative, knee-high, wrought-iron, tomato-cage-like, fence sections would work too, there’s probably a name for these, but I didn’t feel up to going to a greenhouse in the middle of August asking the clerk for ‘cutesy, decorative, knee-high, wrought-iron, tomato-cage-like, fence sections’ to prop up our hollyhocks. So, Tip # 2: If you plan to grow hollyhocks and don’t want to spring for bungee cords (no pun intended) you might invest in the above props if you know what it is I am actually describing. If you already have them, and/or have had them for years, then, never mind.

Moving on to the next subject, I planted several rows of a lettuce mix in May and I have harvested it a couple of times. It was tasty! When the lettuce got to about 4-5 inches tall I simply clipped it back with a pair of scissors. Then I soaked the leaves in a large glass bowl in the kitchen sink, being careful to pick out every 2-inch piece of grass that had been blasted into the lettuce out the side of the lawn mower earlier that evening. That’s right. Dinner was delayed by yet an additional half hour as I picked the 100 or so pieces of grass out of the fifty or so leaves of lettuce I had harvested for our salad. Tip # 3: When you are mowing the lawn you might consider either attaching your grass catcher or positioning the mower along the garden so as to project the grass clippings in the opposite direction of the lettuce. This is a prudent pro-active step if you wish to keep the duty of salad preparation to manageable proportions and to keep from sending whoever is making the salad off the deep end.

I re-harvested the lettuce a couple of times until it got too bitter to eat – okay the lettuce was done now, and I could dig it up and plant seeds anew! This was the end of July and there was still time to grow another batch. But I didn’t. Instead our family went on that 4-day trip to Coeur D’Alene. Which brings me to Tip #4: Never leave your garden unattended for more than 24 hours. Because you can’t afford to lose precious time, energy and attention necessary to battle the weeds, fungus, insects, slugs, drought, pets, birds and squirrels. You play, you pay! Get your butt out there and work in your garden every day!

No, I didn’t plant more lettuce. I just left it there and it grew really big. And ugly.

Meet 'Jackomena'

I don’t want to hurt myself pulling it out. The lettuce has gotten so big and nasty that we are just going to leave it there and let it freeze to death. Which brings me to Tip # 5 : Leave it to ‘Jack Frost’ and ‘Old Man Winter’ (five-plus months worth here) to eliminate any mature obnoxious plants that you may or may not have planted.

Tip # 6: If you think you have a problem that may be due to soil conditions you might consider having your soil tested. If so, you should send the soil samples off now because it can take several weeks to get the results back. I remember this every spring when it’s too late to do it, maybe because I really don’t want to know what’s in our soil. We’ve had some pretty strange things crawling out of our soil and growing out of it. I know you can test for such things as nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and iron but I’m starting to wonder if our vegetable garden soil might contain hormones. Like maybe I should have our soil tested to see if it contains unusual levels of … um … testosterone??

photo(10)
Just a thought. I dug this, uh, ‘stud-man’ carrot dude up yesterday, trying to make more room for the baby carrots. Baby carrots? Maybe I should dig up a few more carrots to try and figure out what kind of wing-ding’s goin’ down underground in our carrot patch.

Tip # 7: One can always consider running in the opposite direction from anything remotely associated with ‘the garden.’ Focus your energies reading in your chair on the deck, doing crossword puzzles, spending time on your computer planning long, relaxing summer vacations and pleasure cruises. Long, relaxing vacations and pleasure cruises? Really? Yeah, but, wouldn’t I miss our hollyhocks?

Would you like to hear my tips on gardening attire?

Tags: gardening tips, Hollyhocks, soil testing
Posted in Gardening | Leave a Comment »

Tomato Bisque Maggot Glop

August 29, 2009

Okay, so I’m no gourmet cook. I do cook. I figure during our 28 1/2 years of marriage I have made dinner about 6000 times, or on average, at least four nights a week for 1482 consecutive weeks. My husband, David, has cooked maybe thirty times, or, on average, about once a year. He doesn’t cook, although he loves to repair things, like lawn mowers.

David, on the other hand, will eat just about anything. He usually thanks me effusively over the arrival of dinner as if its’ coming to fruition is some kind of miracle. Which, it usually is. I don’t much like to cook, unless it’s TV dinners in the microwave. Maybe my body language gives it away, with me yakking on the phone or out dead-heading the flower beds while the timer is blasting, the liquid is boiling over and foaming on the stove, and/or the oven has caught fire. “Ooops!”

I usually make one of about ten different dinners. I have likely made each one of them at least 500 times. These include meat loaf, chili, spaghetti, beef tacos, chicken enchiladas, baked or fried chicken, or something grilled. Pork once in a blue moon, and some fish. Well I’m pretty tired of it all.

So the other day I spotted this recipe for Tomato Chicken Bisque. Hey, it looked … refreshing? I was thinking, you know, for a change, something light and appropriate for a warm summer’s evening … How about this tomato chicken bisque soup with bread and sliced cheese? And a glass of milk! Simply Delicious!

Let me say right off the bat that I wasn’t told to start growing the basil in my garden at least six weeks prior to making the soup (nor had I bought fresh basil at the grocery store, but maybe this detail doesn’t matter) … photo(4)

(If that is indeed fresh basil they are using as a garnish, an ingredient they list in the recipe, and not water cress or something NOT listed as an ingredient.) Let me also say that I was following the recipe pretty much the way I do most soup recipes: Look at all the ingredients you need, lay them all out, and throw them in the pot to cook! Hey! It’s a friggin’ soup, right? I was a little curious for a half-second at some point as to where the ‘whole’ tomatoes went to in the photo – why weren’t there, like, tomato globs floating around in it? I also really didn’t think about what ‘bisque’ exactly means either, although, I have since looked the word up to freshen my memory and noticed descriptions like ‘thick’, ‘strained’, and ‘creamed’ in the definition.

To be honest, with this tomato chicken bisque I did pretty well with the ‘thick’ part of it but the other two factors were … um… lost in translation, you might say. At some point the recipe says, “Working in small batches puree the soup in a blender and transfer back to pot”… which I realized was the process by which the ‘soup’ became a ‘bisque’. No problem! Oh crap! I’m supposed to add the chicken AFTER I puree the soup into a bisque – except that I’ve already diced and added the chicken! Oh well! I picked out a few chicken pieces and, that proving tedious beyond my ability to cope, I just puree-d the whole thing, chicken and all.

Another thing the recipe should have stated up front is, ‘Be sure to puree the soup before adding the chicken.’ Because the chicken chunks get pulverized into what looks like … an implanted maggot colony. And when I saw all those maggots in my tomato bisque I thought, no, all those little white bits just look like maggots, but I know they are chicken. But then when I spooned a taste of it into my mouth, all I could think about was how cooked maggots probably taste like chicken.

“Dinner’s ready!” I called out to my husband and daughter, Megan.
“HMMMMM … smells good!” David gushed approvingly, as he entered the kitchen, relieved, I’m sure, that his wife had pulled off yet another dinner ‘miracle’. (As he was beginning to wonder when his own starving stomach might commence eating itself.) Dinner was finally ready and steaming on the stove top!

“Well, honey, it’s a new recipe! See, here’s the picture!” I said, flashing the above recipe in front of his face. “Except I didn’t have fresh leaves (whatever they are) for garnish!” … “And uh … well, you go first, dear! There’s plenty of it, a whole pan full!”

“I’ll have a TV dinner!” declared Megan. Smart girl. I suspect maggots do taste a lot like chicken. If you hadn’t made the soup, how could you really be sure … well, you know.

I won’t tolerate anyone around here complaining of hunger. We still have a hearty portion of that leftover tomato bisque maggot glop stowed tightly in a container in the way back of the fridge. And I even stuck a sprig of fresh rosemary on it as a garnish.

Yeah, well, tonight we ordered pizza.

Tags: gourmet cooking, tomato bisque
Posted in marriage | 2 Comments »

‘Liver Spot Love’

August 20, 2009

Warning! This blog contains material that may be offensive to the eye! That’s right, you are advised to read further with caution.

What you will see here is not life-threatening nor harmful, nor toxic or contagious. I promise you will be okay if you choose to continue reading.

photo(7) Hark and behold!! It’s a middle-aged hand sporting a gigantic liver spot! Well, age spot. I’m not sure where the term ‘liver spot’ came from except that liver is about the grossest thing one could think of to eat and so “liver spot’ (being the color of liver and seemingly as gross) perfectly describes this thing on the back of my hand. Yes, that is my hand you are looking at here. A harmless ‘genetic skin disorder’ is what a dermatologist diagnosed me with about 10 years ago, when I went in to see him wondering if I might be stricken with melanoma.

Last week I took our daughter to her dermatologist. He’s been treating her for a couple of years with antibiotics and topical solutions to clear up her skin and he declared her “much improved” with “keep up the good work” and “keep out of the sun!” Then he turned to me, gestured toward my hand, and declared, “Maybe I should have a look at that!” He leaned in with his magnifying glass to peer at that spot on my hand. I was a bit startled. He was giving me his time and attention at my daughter’s appointment? He must be genuinely concerned. “Good, that spot on your hand is okay,” he concluded.

Gross, ugly, unlovable liver spots!

“What about these on my leg?” I inquired, propelling my outstretched left leg in his direction, granting him clear access with his eye instrument to three more sizeable liver spots. (I was wearing a short ‘skort’ and white v-neck t-shirt, the outfit I’ve worn about 50 times this summer. It’s twin outfit is in the dirty clothes.)

He peered at several spots on my leg through his instrument, and declared them ‘okay.’ Then he engaged me in a lengthy discourse about the dangers of sun exposure, like, any sun exposure. No sun!! I argued about vitamin D, that, the way you mostly get it naturally is through sun exposure to the skin, and I make sure to get plenty of sun exposure in the summer, especially because I live in a northern climate. “Food sources contain scant amounts and otherwise you’re stuck with taking supplements,” I argued.

“That’s right!” he exclaimed. Then he shared his personal pro-health regimen: He applies 15 SPF sunscreen on his face every morning and wears at least 30 SPF sunscreen plus a hat to protect himself if he spends any time outdoors in the sun. 15 SPF sunscreen on his face every morning to wear to … his office job? What, is he worried about sun exposure in his 10-minute car ride to work? This doctor is all of 35 years old and I admit he has nary a freckle on his lily white face. What about his vitamin D? Not to worry. He takes a 2000 IU supplement every day, available over-the-counter.

“Come on!” I argued. “Surely some sun is good for you!”

“It causes cancer!” he retorted. He handed me a couple of pamphlets to ‘read over carefully’ when I got home. Concerning cancer, I already knew that excessive sun has been linked to both basal cell and squamous cell carcinoma, which are both highly treatable. It says right in the pamphlet (published by the American Academy of Dermatology) that when found early and treated properly, the cure rate for both cancers is over 95 per cent. Melanoma is the scary one. And probably my biggest fear with age spots (other than being viewed as some kind of leper by paranoid anti-sun freaks) is that they may mask the appearance of melanoma. Plus, to quote from the article above, “Some people wish to have these spots removed as they consider them unsightly; this can be done by cryotherapy or laser treatment.” Cryotherapy? Really?

Well anyway, I’m a die-hard sun-worshipper, come liver spots or not. I have an older sister egging me on here. She has been doing extensive research to support her theories on health involving Vitamin D and the sun, low vs. high fat diets, statins use … and challenging many of our society’s current hard-held beliefs on these subjects. Check out her blog post about sunscreen. She is my sister, but she also happens to be a Graduate of MIT- with her B.S. in Biology and her PhD in Electrical Engineering. She is very passionately trying to get the message out that sun is GOOD for you. Albeit, sun in moderation – 15 minutes a day will do.

And if you are the least bit concerned about the swine flu you might check out this link and give it some thoughtful consideration. Even if you are a dermatologist or doctor spilling out to your patients what you learned in medical school. By the way, my daughter’s dermatologist did say that if you get a blistering sunburn then it increases your melanoma risk by 17 per cent. I’ll have to do some research on this, but nevertheless, I am not advocating blistering sunburns. Hey, I got a sunburn on my back when I was 17 that peeled three times and resulted in sun poisoning. I can’t change that. My body is getting older every day that I am alive. I am alive! – those are the operative words here. And I’m trying to muddle my way though the murky medical corridors of our health system which seems to be seething with misinformed advice. Somehow I will make good healthy choices for myself.

How about, for starters, I learn to love my liver spots?

photo(8) Here we have a kinder, gentler image of my liver-spotted hand which, you see, is still able to play ‘punky monkey” with ‘Rudy’ our miniature poodle.

Kind hand.

Gentle, sun-loving, liver spot. 😉

Tags: liver/age spots, sun exposure, vit D
Posted in vitamin D | 1 Comment »

Trippin’ – II

August 5, 2009

Thought it would be cool to post some pictures to accompany my previous (rather verbose, I see in retrospect) blog about our trip to Coeur D’Alene. Caraher's At Wedding So here we are at the wedding reception on Saturday July 25. There’s the family patriarch back center in blue, my darling husband, David, a.k.a. ‘Father Time,’ who has since shaved his beard and gained about 15 yrs. life-expectancy. You will see the mindful matriarch, me, the short one, front-middle. That is Ben on the left, then Megan, and Aaron on the right.

I’m a little more hesitant to post photos of my family on my blog since hearing on the news yesterday about a Massachusetts mother who found her 7-month-old baby up ‘for sale’ on Craigslist. Her baby’s picture had been lifted from her family blog and advertised as a ‘cute baby baby boy up for adoption.’ She had been alerted by someone who recognized this baby as her son. The mother carried on elaborate correspondence with the website where she learned that her son was supposedly in an orphanage in Camaroon, a republic next to Nigeria. Ultimately the scammer wanted $300.00 to ‘start up the application process.’ Bingo! It was at this point that the mother alerted authorities of the scam.

It might be nice to know as a parent that if you have reached your wits’ end with your kid then you could put the little rascal up for adoption on Craigslist. Or at least threaten him or her with it as a stress buster/behavior management strategy.

I’d like to list our not-so-cute hollyhocks up for adoption on Craigslist. As you can see, they didn’t fare well while we were on vacation. Albeit, they must not have been faring too well before vacation. But here is what they looked like when we got back. Blame it on the ‘s-s-s-s-s-s-slugs’ (Jamie Foxx voice here) and f-f-f-f-f-ing-fungus.

I saturated both sides of every hollyhock leaf with an anti-fungal/insecticide guaranteed to kill about everything. The fungus is called ‘rust,’ I found out, when I took a leaf in to a local greenhouse for a diagnosis. I called a good friend of mine who has had hollyhocks for years and asked her about rust, “Have you seen it on your hollyhocks?” “No.” she replied. NEVER? “Hey, slugs and snails, come git’ yer’ slug bait I’ve laid out for yer’ big dinner party pig out…”

Backing up to our trip, the Coeur D’Alene Resort has had some more ‘after-midnight-we’re-gonna-let-it-all-hang-out’ drama since our infamous vacation ‘fire drill.’ I didn’t take any photos of the resort but in searching for a link on the internet to give you an idea of how large this place is, I came across news of another drama that happened after midnight a few days after we were there. All I can say is, I would advise anyone planning to stay at the Coeur D’Alene Resort that in addition to packing sleepwear that can be donned quickly and worn in a crowded public setting, you might also want to curb your drinking on the balcony, particularly if you are the manic or depressive type or if you anticipate partying with anyone inclined toward over-zealous histrionics. You might consider reserving a balcony room exclusive to the first story or perhaps spring for a room without a balcony. Just a thought …

Last but not least, I must post some photos I took with my i-phone on our 480-mile trek back home through Montana from Coeur D’Alene to Idaho Falls.

This one was taken in Montana, south of Butte:
photo(4)
“Big Sky” Country!

Big Idaho Sky
Big ‘Idaho’ Sky! – above

Who took this?
Uhhhh…?

“Big Coeur D’Alene Lake Bottom?” I honestly haven’t a clue.

Where did this picture come from? It appeared on my i-phone amongst all the other ‘trip’ photos. Where were we here and what in God’s name were we doing? Those rocks just don’t look like mountains illuminated in the sunset to me. Did something go awry with this trip that I am not remembering? Did I … swim? How grateful should I be that I (and all the rest of us) am … alive?

Life is good … I’m bent on living the ‘next 24’ a little more gratefully. “More consciously aware” might be prudent too, although I wouldn’t want to get too over-zealous about it.

Tags: Coeur D'Alene Resort, Craigslist, Gardening
Posted in Gardening, photography, travel | Leave a Comment »

Trippin’

July 31, 2009

I’m Baaack! It’s been a while since my last post because, well, I’ve been trippin’. That’s right. My husband, our daughter, Megan, and I made a 3-1/2-day trip to northern Idaho to attend my nephew’s wedding. We left on Friday morning, July 24, and returned Monday evening, July 27. Of course, all told, ‘the trip’ involved pre-trip preparations, the road trip to the destination, executing the events at the destination, the road trip home and, last but not least, the post-trip process of unpacking and decompressing back into our pre-trip life, tackling anew an ever burgeoning to-do list.

I like road trips and love weddings, but I hate the pre-trip planning and packing. This adds three days to the time you spend taking the trip. Well, it’s good to start on it a few days ahead, so you aren’t in a panic like I was last Thursday, out, first of all, shopping for a new pair of shoes to wear to the wedding – because I already knew without opening my closet that my shoes were dorky. Having arrived home with new shoes, I affixed myself in front of my closet to start packing.

I have my own special technique on how to pack: Postpone even thinking about it till you absolutely have to, which, for me, fell mid-afternoon of the last pre-trip day. Then … quick! Pretend you are hypnotized so your thoughts about how much you hate to pack are disconnected from your body. Because one lousy “Geez I freakin’ hate this” thought worming its way into your consciousness is enough to derail you. Open your closet. Quickly grab and fling everything you could possibly wear onto the bed. Oh wait, most of everything you could possibly wear is in the dirty clothes! Throw a wash in! But first! Strip down! Because you also want to take the clothes you are now wearing.

So, yeah, packing sucks. I hate it when my husband arrives home from work expecting everything to be ready to go and there is no sign of my suitcase. That’s because it is still in the basement storage room. “What have you been doing all day?” he asks.

“I needed new shoes!” Well, I had packed our daughter’s suitcase, watered the gardens and house plants, delivered the dog to the sitter’s, tied up about 30 other domestic loose ends, and crammed everything we could possibly want for the car ride, motel, weekend festivities, and leisure into backpacks and tote bags, which were now sitting on the dining room table, ready to go.

So now it’s Friday, 9 AM, road trip day. The car is loaded up and we are all piled in, ready for take-off. You can always tell how well things went in the pre-trip phase by how long you have to endure dead-air silence in the car after finally pulling out of the driveway and heading down the road. For us on this trip the silence lasted uh, about the usual: 25 minutes. Not bad! Pretty much up to par. l was gloating to myself during that silence about what a good job I did overall, packing for this trip – I didn’t forget a thing! I even packed 2 bathing suits, and I don’t even swim.

We drove straight north from Idaho Falls, 460 miles to Coeur D’Alene, Idaho. With cruise control set at 80, charging up I-90, it was a 6 1/2-hour drive. Geez! And when we pulled up to our motel we were still in Idaho.

Our two sons, Aaron and Ben, flew into Spokane from Atlanta and Denver, respectively, and met us at the motel. We were all staying at the Coeur D’Alene Resort – a costly but very nice five-star accommodation. My husband, David, daughter Megan, and I had a room on the third floor of the main building while our two boys settled into a room on the second floor in an adjoining 15-story tower. Nice. We could do our thing and they do theirs and if we find each other it’s beautiful. Hey, they are in their mid-twenties and we are, well, their parents. My husband was sporting a beard and our younger son Ben greeted him with, “Hey, Father Time!” (The beard came off post-trip, uh, yesterday actually.)

To be honest, my husband and both sons did well with the wedding festivities through Saturday afternoon, but it became clear that getting them to participate in (my) family reunion walks, sojourns on the beach, and anything organized was like herding cats. Our last name is Caraher … or is it … Cat-aher?

But I had fun. The 11 AM Saturday wedding was great and I was glad out on the dance floor that I didn’t look down at my feet at dorky shoes. About 15 of my extended family members enjoyed a fabulous dinner Saturday evening at the Bardenay restaurant (sans my sons, not sure where they were). Sunday a large group of us walked down Sherman street and stopped for lunch (sans our younger son). Sunday evening about 15 of us ate a nice dinner at a Marina, while basking in a summer sunset (sans my husband and both sons, I hope they are reading this and realize how much I NOTICED their absences. What WERE they doing, anyway?).

I had been having so much fun romping around the resort that I didn’t even think about where our room was in relation to the stairs, you know, like you’re supposed to do when you check in, in case of fire. This detail has never mattered before, which is probably why I wasn’t paying any attention to where the stairs were now. Sunday night the three of us in our room all fell into a deep sleep soon after our heavy heads hit the pillows – about 11PM. The next thing, there is this horrendous screeching siren blaring through the halls of the motel. “What the …?” I tripped out of bed. Our daughter was up. I realized I was stark naked at precisely the same time I realized it was a fire alarm going off. Evacuate! Naked? Crap! I hadn’t packed a single nightie or jammies or anything! I stumbled to the dressing area in complete darkness. I don’t know why. Maybe I thought in my sleepy stupor that I would be able to spot the fire better in the dark. The fire alarm was still wildly blaring in the hallway, people were evacuating the building and I there I was buck naked still groping in my daughter’s suitcase. My husband was up and gazing at the shadow of my bare ass as I hollered in a panic, “Where’s my suitcase?”

“Try turning on the light.” he called out to me flatly.

A good ten minutes had expired by the time I made it into the hallway dressed in my daughter’s shorts and shirt. I would likely have burnt to death buck naked if it had been a real fire. My husband had somehow concluded from the get-go that it was a false alarm. But maybe it wasn’t! This was a huge motel! But in which direction were the stairs? I was still thinking these thoughts when I met security at the end of our hallway fiddling with the alarm system, which had now been turned off. “Sometimes mists from the showers can set the hallway alarm off,” was their explanation. At 12:45 AM? At a humongous, tremendously expensive, five-star resort motel?

So we all went back to bed. I was just dropping off to sleep again when my cell phone rang. “What the … ?” I tripped out of bed and stumbled in the dark to get to my phone. It was our younger son, Ben: “Mom! Where are you?”

“In Bed … Why? Where are you?”

Well at least I knew at this juncture where both our sons were. They were sitting outside on the pavement in front of the entrance to our motel, having evacuated their high rise along with scores of other folks. The alarm had gone off in their 15-story tower. They, and a large number of other motel guests, were still waiting for permission from motel security to safely re-enter the building.

Is anyone out there buck naked? I wanted to ask. If I had packed my jammies or nightie then maybe I would have evacuated too. Would I have truly burnt to death in my birthday suit had there been a fire?

So we are back home now. Have spent the past three days unpacking, doing laundry, dealing with the fungus and weeds in the gardens that proliferated with Godspeed while we were gone. In post-trip mode I have been practically tripping over myself trying to catch up to where I left off in my life pre-‘pre-trip’ mode.

Next time we plan a trip, my nightie will be the first thing to go into my suitcase. Otherwise, I probably won’t do anything differently.

I do find it difficult to pack my suitcase.

Tags: Coeur D'Alene Resort, packing tips
Posted in travel | 4 Comments »

Eat Less, Conquer Mange

July 16, 2009

Speaking of diets, longevity, brain freeze and, uh, monkeys – I can’t stop thinking about that 20-yr. study done with those rhesus monkeys which showed that cutting calories by almost a third slowed the aging process and fended off death. Some guy named Weindruch and his colleagues conducted the study where half of the monkeys were allowed to eat as they pleased, and the other half ate a carefully controlled diet that provided just two-thirds of the calories they would normally choose to eat. Well, they didn’t eat less by choice, did they? The monkeys were caged and the half that ate 1/3 less did so because their diets were were carefully controlled by that Weindruch guy and his associates. Caloric intake was reduced in the dieting group by 30 percent over three months and held at that level for the rest of their lives!

By the end of the study, 37 percent of the control group had died of age-related causes while only 13 percent of the dieting group had succumbed to age-related conditions like diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and brain atrophy.

It turns out that caloric restriction of around 30 percent also leads to health benefits in yeast, worms, flies, and rodents.

Yeah, well, during these studies, did anybody interview the worms, flies, rodents or monkeys to see how they felt about being held captive most of their lives and forced to eat 30 percent less than they wanted to? They couldn’t even make their own food choices. Their lives may have ended up more healthy, but were they happy?

A couple of days ago I tried to eat less. I guess I took this study to heart especially after watching this CBS Evening News clip. This and other recent news articles have effectively convinced me that I should eat less. For starters, I wouldn’t want to be eating naturally all my life only to end up with mange hair like the monkey in the control group who, you will notice (check out the photos in that first link) ended up with patchy, red balding spots all over his scruffy fur, whereas the monkey who was food deprived for 20 years had a thick, brown, lush coat of hair covering his body. What was with these contrasting photos? Some kind of scare tactic? Okay so I’ll cut my calories!

But I’ve been eating normally for 55 years already so I’ll probably still get mange hair and other nasty conditions in my older age. Geez, had I been depriving myself of my daily intake of food by 30 per cent over the last say, 20, 30, 40 or 50 years maybe my hair wouldn’t be this thin already.

As I mentioned, I did try to eat much less than usual about three days ago. I can tell you, it was difficult. I cut my breakfast and lunch in half. By 3PM, I was at home with no supervision, ravenous with hunger and scrounging in the fridge for something big and filling to eat. But hey! As I hung on to the open fridge door I paused and began breathing deeply to feel the hunger. You know, do a ‘Zen’ thing and be the hunger, embrace the aching hunger in my belly …”Hmmmm … good, kind, nagging, lovable, fending-off-death, hunger …”

Being hungry sucks! I devoured all the still-edible leftovers in the fridge and, still feeling hungry, cleaned out the Baby Ruth candy bars from the candy bowl on the dining room buffet. I don’t even like Baby Ruth candy bars, but I didn’t remember this until after I had eaten three of them.

My point here is, the average human couldn’t follow a caloric deprivation diet for more than about six hours, much less 40 or 60 years.

And the problem with these ‘caloric restriction studies’ is that a ‘caloric lifetime of deprivation is needed to achieve the longer-life benefits.’ Darn it! Forget that! Although some people might eat less longer by joining the calorie restriction society,they might never smile again (judging from the member interviewed for CBS News).

Or … choose to continue eating normally and possibly succumb to age-related conditions like diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease, brain atrophy, and mange hair.

My plan is to keep on keepin’ on with my happy eating habits while holding out for some Big Pharmaceutical Company to replicate the positive results of the food deprivation study with drugs! Yeah! Because they have their research teams working on it, developing a souped-up version of the red wine compound resveratrol that has been found to make mice live longer and stay healthier. Not to worry! Just keep eating the way you normally do and slow your aging process and fend off death by taking a pill! How else could we ever do it?

That’s my plan! Hey, at least I have one! I may buy a wig too, because I really don’t dig the look of that mange hair.

And I do wonder, in the final analysis, how are you really gonna know that you are living longer?

Tags: caloric deprivation studies, rhesus monkeys
Posted in Diets | Leave a Comment »