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Our Weekend So Far
This weekend has been busy so far. Friday evening we went to a potluck hosted by some friends from Maya’s school. One nice thing to come out of that was that the only other girl there for Maya to play with was E, a girl who she doesn’t really get along with at school or in scouts. They had a nice time, and I’m hoping that opened her eyes a bit to the possibility that this girl might be OK. Not that they will necessarily hang out at school or scouts, but that maybe when they’re the only people around, they can get along then. There are dynamics involved when…
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Saturday Poetry
OK, after the last three days of serious, personal family stuff, mostly written by someone else, I’ve decided to lighten things up a bit, and bring you a poem today, also written by someone else. Who knows, maybe this will become a Saturday tradition, a poem that I love but did not write. no man,if men are gods;but if gods must be men,the sometimes only man is this (most common,for each anguish is his grief; and,for his joy is more than joy,most rare) a fiend;if fiends speak truth;if angels burn by their own generous completely light, an angel;or(as various worlds he’ll spurn rather than fail immersurable fate) coward,clown,traitor, idiot,dreamer,beast- such…
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The Final Chapter
Thanks everyone for sticking with this long, long tale. Luckily, it is one with a happy ending. I met my dad in 1987, this story was written in 1990, and now here we are, almost 20 years into this parent/child relationship. I feel like I know my father now a lot more than I did then, and we have the best relationship one could expect, seeing as how we have never lived in the same state, talk about the same town or house. Being the oldest of his daughters, I got the privledge of being the first to make him a father-in-law, the first to make him a grandfather. My…
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The Saga Continues…
I hope that some of you are still interested in this very LONG story, which could in reality be summed up thusly: “A man and a woman have a child. Child grows up without man. Meets him at age 21.” The end. But we like stories, we like to know how things come about, why we are who we are, etc. So I’ll continue. Today, Part II. Belated Fatherhood by Susan Stanley (continued) Joycelyn Ward Fleeing the Father The meaning of a tale depends upon the teller. With each telling, the tale shifts, choosing how it wants to be told. We sift, resift and sift still again, accommodating our evolving…
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A Tale In Three Parts
I didn’t grow up in what you might call a ‘traditional’ family. My mother raised my brother and me by herself, and we had no contact at all with our fathers or their families. When I was 21, my mom got in touch with my dad, and he came to California to meet me. That was almost 19 years ago, and we’ve had a pretty good relationship ever since. I will never have the childhood that I would have had if they had stayed in contact with one another, but the childhood I did have was a good one, mostly happy and secure in the love of my mother. A…
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Tuesday Cooking
I’m working on a longer post, which I had intended for today, but you will all just have to wait for it until tomorrow. It’s about how I came to meet my dad at the age of 21. That’s your teaser. For today, you get this yummy recipe, which I made for dinner last night. It was SO Yummy. Comes from Sunset magazine, 2003. Spaghetti with Roasted Tomatoes and Toasted Crumbs Ingredients: 2 cups cherry tomatoes, rinsed and halved Salt and pepper 2 tblsp extra virgin olive oil 1 clove garlic 2 tblsp finely chopped parsley 6 oz. dried spaghetti 2 slices sourdough bread, torn into pieces 2 tblsp chopped…
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Russian Cooking Class
The main fundraiser at Maya’s school is a Spring Festival, which combines with a live auction, and raises much needed funds to keep the school doors open. The big ticket items tend to be the quilts, which are made from squares made by the students and sewn by dedicated parents, trunks made by woodworking parents, and excursions put together by the teachers. One of Maya’s teachers, Zhanna, is Russian. She emigrated from the Ukraine about 10 years ago. Her offering for the auction was a day of cooking, where the parents and kids would learn to make traditional Russian food, enjoy the pool at her condo’s clubhouse, and all around…
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Failure to Thrive
Any parents out there know what this term means…when you have a newborn, and they’re not doing so well. Well, no newborns around here, but what with the weather being 103 yesterday and me getting all grumpy because I was hungry (just for dinner, it’s not like I even missed a meal, for goodness sake) and then I had a hard time sleeping last night because, though the fog came in and brought much needed relief from the heat, it also brought a wind that pushes the plum tree next door against the fence, causing a creaking noise ALL FRIGGIN NIGHT LONG. I’m just saying, it was hard to sleep.…
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I Need A Chauffer
Yesterday, I walked everywhere, and boy, these dogs are barking. I started with a walk to Noah’s for breakfast, which is just about a mile and a quarter each way. Not too far, but my shoe selection was based more on heat than comfort. In other words, I was wearing sandals. Next, we had to go to the old work office to move what little bit of stuff there still remains into a storage space. The office is in a business park, and the storage space is actually a small office two parking lots over in that same office park. Yesterday was also one of my coworker’s last day, so…
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Props to Safeway
I stopped at Safeway on Thursday evening, and when I got back to my car, there was a woman filling the trunk of the car next to me with fruit and veggies. Corn, watermelon, strawberries, and so on. She didn’t have any bags, she was taking the items out of a big box and putting them into her trunk. I asked her if she had bought all of this at Safeway, wondering if she was against bagging her groceries for some reason, or if she were planning a huge party, since there was so much food. No, she said, Safeway donates the food to the Lindsay Wildlife Museum. Color me…
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Rue Lepic
As you all surely know by now, what with the duo Anniversary Posts and all, Monday was our 13th Wedding Anniversary. We had some different ideas as to what to do to celebrate…we thought of going to Napa, or to a play, etc. We finally settled on taking Maya with us, and going into the city to one of our favorite restaurants, Rue Lepic. We haven’t been there in perhaps 12 years or so, but nothing has changed. I don’t know if you would consider that a good thing or a bad thing, but we considered it a good thing. The story as I remember it is that the chef,…
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Our Summer So Far…
When planning our summer, with me working from home and Maya home as well, one concern that I had was too much TV/Video games. If we lived in a neighborhood full of kids, this wouldn’t be an issue, because she would be out playing with them enough of the time to counter-balance the time spent on XBox or Disney Channel. But we don’t. The other kids in our neighborhood are in summer day camps and their parents are at work. If I were a stay at home mom, I could keep her occupied for much of the day – we could go on day trips to the zoo, the park,…
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This Isn’t Even Alaska…or Yosemite
Here’s your picture of the day. Click the picture to get the story. Moral of the story? Don’t leave food in your car…a lesson I learned back in 1984, Yosemite, food in the station wagon, bear in the station wagon, food gone, windows broken, car moved a couple of feet, 4 very scared campers who had just graduated from High School (one of whom would be me…) Ack! (Picture died with the move to the new blog. Sorry. It was a picture of a bear in a convertable.)
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More Cooking Today…
One of the comments I got on my anniversary post asked about a recipe for Roti, which is an Indian flatbread…very similar to Naan, though not exactly the same. Roti is better. 😉 The Guyanese commenter, Shelliza, noted that when her mother tried to give her the recipe, it came out, “a handful, a pinch and this much”, which is just how Ted and his mom make it as well. So I can’t give you their recipe. However, my friend Cherry tried to find a recipe online, and she gave it a try. She said it was very yummy. I asked her for the recipe, and she said she melded…
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Recipe Wednesday
When Maya and I were trying to plan her summer a few months ago, one of the classes she was interested in taking was a cooking class. The only problem was that the class she wanted to take was through a program that would have her going at 9:00am, 5 days a week, which didn’t fit in with her plan of relaxing and sleeping in this summer. So, we decided that we would have our own cooking class, and I would teach her how to make some dishes. We bought a great looking kids cookbook, but we haven’t tried any of the recipes yet. Thus far, we have had one…