Musings
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Allergy Boy
Last year, Mulder appeared to come down with allergies. He was losing hair at an alarming rate, and was very itchy. His fur felt dry and brittle. He has an undercoat, which is what he was losing, so you couldn’t really TELL that he was losing hair, except that the evidence was all over our house, we could see tufts of hair fly behind him when he walked, our clothes were covered with it, etc. His armpits went bald. It was worrisome, and when he was at the vet, she said it was not uncommon for dogs to develop allergies at about age 3. So, we tried giving him Benadryl,…
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Monday Randomness
Since finding the pomegranate in a bush last year, I have had my eyes out for pomegranate trees and bushes. There is one on the path of my daily walk, and I noticed the other day that it has both flowers and little pomegranate buds. Aren’t they cute? I will be interested to see how many large pomegranates the tree gets. I don’t know whether the people whose yard it is eat them, or if people take them, or perhaps squirrels and birds. We shall see what happens. I’ve lived here for almost 23 years, and this is the first year I’ve really paid attention to pomegranates in the area.…
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Only Kindness Matters…
So many gods, so many creeds;So many paths that wind and wind,While just the art of being kindIs all the sad world needs. ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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Hog Island Oyster Co – Napa
Ted and I decided to take advantage of the lovely weather here, and drive up to Napa today. The catalyst for this drive was that next Sunday is Easter, and we will be having Easter Brunch with his family. Last year, we had delicious Eggs Benedict with crab cakes in place of Canadian bacon, and it was a hit, so we decided that would be on the menu again. There is a small chain of bakeries in Napa County, Model Bakery, that has amazing English muffins, so we drove up to buy some, and while there, we had lunch at a neighboring restaurant, the Hog Island Oyster Company. They are…
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Happy Birthday Puppy Boy!
Mulder is 4 years old today! Happy Birthday Puppy Boy! We took him for a nice long walk, and I gave him a piece of bacon this morning. Ted just brushed his teeth and he had a carrot (his reward for teeth brushing or fur brushing), and later I am going to bake him some homemade peanut butter dog cookies. In case you are ever so inclined, here is the recipe. I once made him some from an Ina Garten recipe, but he likes these just as much, and they are fewer ingredients and easier to make, so I’ll go with these. Someone from the dog rescue where we got…
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First Day
In my last post, I mentioned that Maya was interviewing for jobs. I haven’t heard anything about the employment agency sending her anything, but she DID really like the law firm, and accepted a job offer there. Today is her first day. I’m thinking of her and hoping it turns out to be a good fit and that she excels there and makes friends and so on, all the things you wish for someone on their first day. She left to catch BART at the same time that Puppy Boy and I were leaving for our walk, and for some reason seeing her in her business clothes (skirt, hose, pumps,…
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Friday Randomness
Birthday, Part 2 Though my birthday was in December, tomorrow we are doing the things I wanted to do then, but couldn’t. After our vacation last summer in France, I was excited to see that one of our local art museums has an exhibit on Monet’s later years, a time when he was painting his garden, over and over again. Trouble was, the exhibit didn’t open until recently, so we couldn’t go in December. My stepmom, Julie, gave me money for my birthday, which I used to buy a membership to the fine arts museums in San Francisco, and I reserved tickets tomorrow to see the Monet exhibit. So excited!…
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(Not) Wordless Wednesday
I hope you have all been well, and that you have had a lovely Christmas or Hanukkah or Solstice or whatever. Ours has been lovely. One gift I received is a new iPad, which is SUCH a relief, my old one, while much adored, was so out of date that it could not take new updates, and thus pages would freeze and reload and freeze and reload, and it was a nightmare to do anything more than a text or facebook on it. Now with my new iPad, which is all up to date and happy, I am hopefully going to manage to find more time here. We shall see.…
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Wordless Wednesday
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Giving Thanks
As always, there is much to be thankful for. (For which to be thankful…better grammar, but sounds awkward). For those of us in California this year, we are thankful for the mixed blessing of rain. Mostly good, because look at the difference in our air quality from last Saturday to today. I’ve never spent so much time looking at air quality indexes before. At some point the air quality was over 300, which is extremely hazardous. In the picture above, it is likely about 185 or so. The lower picture was good air quality, maybe around 20. It felt so good to go out and take our first long…
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Ode to Sancerre
I adore California Chardonnay, and haven’t found a lot of French Chardonnay that I enjoy. I wish this were not true, because I feel less sophisticated for preferring a big oakey wine to one that is more subtle. But I live in California, and buttery and oakey wines are very popular here. While we were in France this summer, I decided to steer away from French Chardonnays, and instead went with a lovely Sauvignon Blanc, Sancerre. When we came home and found ourselves longing for France, we stated looking for Sancerre around here. You can find fairly decent selections of wine at your local Safeway, and even CVS and…
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Wordless Wednesday
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Cooking with Aunt Flo
My Great Aunt Flo (Florence) has a hoarding problem. She LOVES recipes, and has them all over the front of her house. They cover the dining room table, the coffee table in the living room, the card table in the living room (where my Grandma used to do puzzles), and the coffee table in the family room. She sorts them and looks at them and worries about them. It is her overwhelming passion and hobby at this stage of her life, when she doesn’t have my Grandma to look after anymore. It has taken me awhile to figure out that she loves them and wants to keep them. I had…
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Fun at a French Laundry
There is a VERY expensive, 3 Michelin starred restaurant around here, The French Laundry. That is NOT what we are talking about, because while I would certainly go there and enjoy a wonderful meal and invite all of you to join me IF I WON BIG IN THE LOTTERY, my current circumstances would not allow $325 per person without any wine even. No, this is a cautionary tale of washing clothes in a laundromat, which occurred in France, but could have happened anywhere. Our first day in Paris, I woke up before Ted and Maya, and I was ready to go out into the world far earlier than she would…
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Pomegranate, Orange, and Avocado Salad
Ted and I were out walking the spaz (aka, Mulder the Puppy Boy) the other day, and we passed a house we often pass, and I happened to notice that an ordinary looking bush that borders the sidewalk is a pomegranate bush. How did I know? Because I happened to spy a beautiful pomegranate buried deep inside from the corner of my eye. See how lovely it is, hidden in there? Backtracking a bit, Ted’s mom came to visit last weekend, and she brought me a beautiful pomegranate and some avocados. So for Halloween, I was trying to decide what to make, and found a recipe for stuffed peppers where…