Excitement swirling around me

Excitement was all around me today while I was safely tucked away in my cozy cottage, doors locked, watchdog on alert—well, not really. She was asleep on the couch, with her head on a pillow, looking for all the world like the position in which I generally sleep. Was she mimicking me? I did hear helicopters from time to time, but I saw nary a police car or officer on foot. Not did I see the dreaded bald man in shorts and a hoodie—with tattooed legs. That probably would have been enough to scare me.

It seems the police were swarming the neighborhood looking for a bad guy who got away. I’m not sure what he did. I’ve heard everything from leaving the scene of an accident—did he really wreck an 18-wheeler on University Drive? —to breaking and entering—breaking a window to get in and steal an older lady’s purse. Also heard he went into another house and began to help himself to food in the refrigerator. That’s a calm fugitive. Supposedly the occupants entered the kitchen and asked him to leave, which he did, but he tried to steal a car outside. At any rate, there was a heavy police presence on the ground and in the air, and the neighborhood email list was alive with warnings and sightings and the like. This afternoon they caught him. Nothing on the six o’clock news, of course.

A young girl has been soliciting in the neighborhood for a fundraiser at a local school, not the school for this neighborhood. When asked why she’s not in school, she has an explanation about being let out of classes to raise money. A call to the school she named quickly disproved that, and the principal expressed concern for the girl. She’s been in the neighborhood several days, but today the agitation increased. Police were called, the principal was sent a picture. And far as I know the girl didn’t appear. Her handlers must have sensed the growing alarm, but like everyone else I worry about the child.

And I thought we lived in this quiet, safe neighborhood. Berkeley prides itself on its friendliness and concern for neighbors. That concern was evident today in the rapid exchange of emails and Facebook postings. Wish we knew what happened in both cases.

I had an adventure in cooking tonight. Decided I needed to cook with the vegetables I hadn’t used, especially that one leek. I cooked something a week or so ago that called for one leek but had to buy two. What does one do with one  leftover leek? I decided to make a kind of cream sauce and bake it with a topping of buttered Ritz crumbs. I opened a new jar of what I thought was chicken bouillon, but it turned out to be tuna. Revise plan. Creamed tuna and leek. Only because I made the cream sauce early, it got too thick. What I had was hash. And the toaster oven burned the baguette slices I meant to put it over. Never give up! I threw away the baguette slices, put the tuna/leek mixture on a plate, and topped it with a good dollop of sour cream. Pretty good. I think the sour cream saved it, and the leek added a new flavor. I doubt I’ll buy a leek just willy-nilly, but I am now less intimidated by them and may do some company dishes with them. They are so difficult to get all the dirt out of!

Speaking of cooking, who has an air fryer? Carla, who I don’t know, found my old food blog and wrote me about her article on brands of air fryers (find it here: https://www.2kreviews.com/best-air-fryers/ ) I’m doing as she wished and giving her a shout out because I like to help writers, but I did check out her Facebook page and found It interesting with advice on purchasing everything from torque wrenches to gardening gloves, though it seems to be heavy on tools. Think what an interesting career that would be—checking out new products and making recommendations to the public. See for yourself:    www.facebook.com/2kreviewsgroup. But, alas, I have no need of an air fryer or torque wrenches.

By coincidence, I heard from another Carla today--a woman I worked with in, gasp!, the eighties at TCU. She wrote to ask advice for her daughter, but what a joy to hear from an old friend and find out she reads my blog and my books.

Two Carlas in one day!