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Shakshuka
I realized the other day that I haven’t posted in over a month, and that it was a month between my last couple of posts too. Also, my last post was just a political meme with no input from me. I will try to do better, I do have things to tell, and I want to come see your blogs as well. I sat down with the intention of writing a ‘catching up with J’ type post, but now Ted wants to go to see a movie, there is a new library that is opening today, I need a shower, blah blah blah. So, here is a recipe for a…
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Meme Monday
My brain has been very distracted lately. In late August, my 97 1/2 year old Great Aunt fell. She lived alone, but was able to call 911, and a neighbor was able to let the paramedics in, and off she went to the hospital. She said her ribs hurt, so they did an X-Ray of her ribs, found no problems, and sent her home. They sent her home even though she could not walk without collapsing in extreme pain, and even though she lived alone. One of my cousins, K, took her back to her house, where she stayed for almost a week, until her follow up visit with her…
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Lura
Ted is the youngest of 4 siblings. His eldest brother is Ray, then sister Lura, then Steve, then Ted. This is a picture of Ted goofing around way back in about 1986 or 87. This is about the age they were when I met them. Even in this goofy picture, you can see her beautiful smile. The last few months have been rough, as Lura went to the hospital thinking she had asthma or perhaps even pneumonia, and it was discovered she had stage 4 lung cancer. It was inoperable, and had spread enough that there wasn’t much they could do for her. With medication and treatment, she could perhaps…
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Meme Monday – A Saturday Morning Walk
I didn’t ride through the desert, but I did drive to my old hometown last weekend to take my Great Aunt for her second dose of vaccine. I haven’t spent much time with her since COVID began, for obvious reasons, and it was really nice to have some time together. I spent the night with her, since I’m fully vaccinated, and I wanted to spend the night with her just in case she had any side effects. I didn’t like the idea of her having a fever or aches in the middle of the night, and being all alone. Happily, she had zero side effects. No fever, no aches, no…
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Meme Monday – Happy Birthday Edition!
Today is my daughter Maya’s 25th birthday! That is somewhat shocking to me, I remember 25 very well. Actually, 25 is when my biological clock started ticking, and I started really wanting a baby. Before that, I was more hypothetical about it. But Ted and I were dating still, had just recently gotten engaged, and I was just graduating from college, into a recession. So it was 5 more years before we had Maya. Anyway, this is her 2nd COVID birthday. She went out yesterday with some friends, and sat in the park and had a lovely time while socially distant. It was almost 80 degrees, so pretty perfect weather…
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Meme Monday
Sorry for that meme, but yeah, we all feel that way sometimes, right? I saved it for you awhile ago, and was reminded of it while out running errands with Ted the other day, when cut off by someone who then stopped short to turn into a driveway, of course without signaling. Sigh. I hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving. We did. We went out to Ted’s parents house, just us 3, his parents, and his brother. We worked on being safe and socially distanced, and hopefully none of us had anything to pass around. We’ll see in a few weeks whether that worked or not. Other than the…
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Life is Hard
Life is hard right now. To be very clear, it is not currently hard for me personally. We are all working, we are all privileged and safe and healthy. Since Ted and Maya are working from home, so there are no commuting costs, we’re probably coming out a little ahead, financially. At least for now. But my heart is broken. The murder of George Floyd, on top of everything else, on top of the pandemic and a tanked economy and our shit for brains asshole President, it’s too much. I talked to my sister last week, before the news of Mr. Floyd’s murder, and she said, if we can only…
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Thursday Thirteen, Los Angeles version
(Photo courtesy of Wikipedia – there was a TINY bit of snow on the tip of the mountains, nothing like this. I don’t think I realized before that there are mountains RIGHT THERE, but I’ve not really paid much attention to LA in the past.) My BFF Rosemary lives in Pennsylvania. She and I met in High School in 1982, and after HS she moved around a bit for a few years, ending up in PA a few months before we moved back to California. She has two boys in college, one is graduating from Clemson in May, the other is a Freshman at Lewis and Clark in Portland, OR.…
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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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Normandy
After we left Brittany, we drove slowly back toward Paris, with a few stops along the way. On our way out to the coast, we had noticed that we could see Mont-Saint-Michel, which is pretty amazing. You’re just driving along, and then you glance over and see what looks like a medieval fortress that looks like it’s floating. Well, it’s not floating, and it doesn’t look that way when you are close, but from the freeway it appeared that way to me. So we decided to stop and at least look at it on our way to Normandy. Mont-Saint-Michel is an island right off the coast of Normandy (where Normandy…
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Fun with Plumbing
Back in April, Ted noticed that he could hear water running, and the sound seemed to come from the wall. Once he pointed it out to me, I could hear it as well. We did some internet research, and found some possible causes. A leak, of course, or perhaps sedimentation build up in our water heater. Quite a few years ago, we had to replace our water heater due to sediment. We have very hard water here, with a lot of minerals. Further research informed us that we should flush our water heater once a year. What? We’ve had the thing for at least 10 years, and have never done…
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Family Treasures
Monday was my mom’s birthday, and it was also my Great Aunt Flo’s birthday. My mom was born on her 18th birthday, and Aunt Flo always said she was the best birthday gift she ever received. Aunt Flo married my great uncle Wes on her own 26th birthday, and my mom spent her 8th birthday being a flower girl in her beloved aunt’s wedding, a job she cherished. Aunt Flo became a widow after only 11 years of marriage. She never had children of her own, and Uncle Wes’s girls were mostly grown by that point. 2 of them were married, and I believe the 3rd had also moved out…
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Spotlight Saturday
Spotlighting an exhibit that I saw back in September, that was based on the Milliner’s trade, mostly Degas, but not all Degas. The painting above is Renoir, called, ‘At the Milliner’s’. I liked this painting a lot. Art can be subjective, so I will tell you what I see…I see women, tired at the end of a hard days work. Work that they may or may not enjoy, work that they can take pleasure in a job well done. But tired. There is a certain dignity in that, again, whether or not they have enjoyed their job.
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Friday Recap
Thanksgiving is over, and it was a lovely day. Mulder and I went for a very long walk in the morning, much longer than usual, and we were tired when we got home. Too bad, because I still had some cooking to do. Thankfully I had started the day before, or I wouldn’t have gotten it done in time. We had all of the family favorites, which means there was way too much food and not everyone ate everything, but we all ate what we wanted. Some ate turkey, some didn’t. Some ate potatoes, some didn’t. Some ate cranberry sauce, some didn’t. The salad I made with Brussels sprouts, pomegranates,…
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Dad’s Memorial
My Dad’s memorial was last weekend. It was difficult. But it was very nice as well. It was a lovely service and very well attended. I think there were maybe 300 people there, which showed how many people’s lives he touched. There were people there from the alternative newspapers that he started way back when, from his time managing (and more recently as a board member) an alternative, non profit radio station, from his many years working in grant writing, from mentoring others to writing books, to teaching classes. People from Meals on Wheels, where he volunteered as a delivery person for over 20 years. People from my step-mom’s life…