Random thoughts from the cottage

 

Looking at Jordan, like,
Where are you taking me?

Sophie went to the vet yesterday. Poor dear leads a sheltered life. She’s either in the cottage or in our relatively small backyard, but at least she can come and go between the two at will.
Still, she gets excited when we bring out her leash, and a car ride is a real joy. Somehow she

Looking at the world

never figures out that the vet is at the end of the ride. But she got a good bill of health yesterday, some new medicines—ear drops which she acts like are the most painful things in the world, an anti-bacteria pill for an unhealed sore. Jordan took some cut pictures of her in the car (why wasn’t my daughter’s attention on driving? Maybe these were all at stoplights.)

Resting, all is well.
We're going home.

Some odd food notes: today from my favorite grocery store I saw an ad for personal watermelons. Stopped me short—I can’t think of what they are unless they are individual-sized watermelons, and I’ve never seen such. In other food news, for the past two nights we had happy hour company and never really had a proper supper. Last night I wasn’t hungry but thought I should have something solid and substantial, so I decided on scrambled eggs—my go-to. I had watched a video of Jamie Oliver’s foolproof technique for making an omelet, so I thought I’d try it, even if I wasn’t going to put any cheese in the middle. Major fail convinced me I will order omelets out and give up trying to do one at home.

Not an omelet

Tonight I made lamb burgers and put lettuce, mayo, and feta in the buns. So good. And satisfied my longing for a substantial meal. Added a cucumber salad with a yogurt dressing that had, of all things, a bit of mustard. You couldn’t taste the mustard, and it was really good.

But speaking of food, a friend emailed today and wondered if Irene ever made clafouti, the French dessert of fruit, traditionally black cherries, covered with a flan-like batter and baked, then dusted with powdered sugar. After all, she reasoned, it’s French so Irene must have made it. The subject came up because I said pitting cherries is too much trouble, and I intend to make a blueberry dump cake. I don’t even want to imagine what Irene would say about a dump cake (fruit, cake mix, and butter) but I have promised to mention clafouti to her. (In France, it’s called calfoutis.) And by the by, don’t plan a trip to France for your clafoutis—they are having serious problems with too many tourists.

Big news at the cottage today is that we got new sod in the backyard—a variety of Bermuda called TurfTen I think. It was fun to watch the guys install it—they scraped out the old, dead, beat the new into place and affixed it with a huge roller thing, a much more complicated process than I never thought planting grass was. Grass in our back  yard is a sore subject—we have tried everything—zoysia, St. Augustine, winter rye. And I always end up having to replace it. The part of the yard that is grass is relatively small, and I’d be all for decorative grasses and ground cover, but the dogs need someplace to poop and pee. And that, of course, is what kills our grass. I don’t expect it to improve a lot now that we have only two dogs instead of three, but my lawn service friend assures me this should come back next spring (if it survives this summer).

I read today that in thirty years it will not be uncommon for the Texas temperature to hit 125^o.  I am advocating for replacing the front lawn with native plants but am stopped by cost and lack of knowledge. Christian showed me one such front yard in a nearby neighborhood that he said was the only way he would do it—plants grouped by variety and still a bit of grass. I would like a wilder look. Probably a pipe dream since I am hit with vet bills, hearing aid bills, and other big expenses. At this point in my life, the odds of making a fortune with a bestselling book are pretty slim.

Take heart, my friends. Tomorrow is supposed to be a tad better but still pretty hot. After that, though, we begin to head down into the nineties, which I find reasonable, and there’s the promise of a breeze and a hint of possible rain next week. I keep remembering a year when Colin and Lisa came for the fourth—at least twenty years ago—and it was downright cold. Guess climate change has made that unlikely to happen ever again.

Stay cool and safe.

Welcome rains and the power of imagination

No sign of rain this evening, although “pop-up thunderstorms” are possible, according to the TV weathermen. Yesterday I had no idea it might rain—first brief shower came while I was napping. But then, when Jordan and I prepared to sit on the patio with wine, the world darkened, and the gods began their bowling. Didn’t see lightning, but the thunder was fierce. It scares Sophie, and she takes it out with sudden, ferocious barking. We had two good, heavy rains.

I just had new grass put down in the backyard—it’s not a large lawn, because much of it is in ground cover and patio, but it was more than enough to challenge my pocketbook. The lawn care crew put down zoysia sod Thursday, with directions to water daily, twice daily if needed. So the heavy rain was a blessing.

I have a bit under the weather, and that’s frightening in this time of COVID. Mostly stomach issues, which led me to believe that it was a virus of some sort. But at three o’clock in the morning, it’s so easy to imagine yourself into all the symptoms of COVID. I did have a rash on my leg and other symptoms that could have been it but weren’t—no sore throat, no unusual cough (I always cough a bit from blood pressure medication), no fever. Still I felt I had to ask my doctor, even though I felt a little foolish. He was kind and gentle, assured me it was a transitory virus, unrelated, and since I was a little better each day, I am not communicable. I love being able to “talk” with my doctor via email—one of the great perks of modern medicine.

So tonight with my stomach feeling better, I’m going to test it. Jordan has gone for a weekend with her high school girl friends to a rental house in Blanco, so I am alone with Christian and Jacob. I will give them hot dogs, baked beans, and the potato salad I made a couple of days ago. A real Fourth of July picnic meal, only eaten inside. It’s pretty steamy outside, and we have a bad fly problem on the patio. Christian is enthusiastic tonight about some non-toxic fly traps that are found on Amazon.

Back to that problem of imagination. I am capable of all kinds of wild thoughts at three in the morning. When we first went into this corona virus quarantine, I would wake convinced that we were all going to die. I’ve since modified that opinion. My brother says he has three o’clock thoughts of, “Wish I hadn’t done that one.” I too have regrets—sometimes I fix on a lost love or a book not written and feel great regret. Why is it that three o’clock thoughts are always disturbing?

On the other hand, I can wake at six, go back to a deep sleep filled with dreams, and wake at eight with happy feelings. Sometimes I quickly forget what I dreamt, but other mornings I carry the memory around with me all day. When I worked in the TCU Press office, I used to recount my dreams. One was that a possum made its way into our office, and our production manager picked it up to carry it outside—when it peed on her. Ever after, she would say, “I sure hated being peed on by that possum!”

I am blessed that for the most part I am a sound sleeper and almost never bothered by nightmares or night terrors. Sometimes I dream that dream-within-a-dream where you know what you’re experiencing is a dream, but you can’t wake. I do have tenacious dreams—I’ll wake from a dream I don’t like, go to the bathroom or something to kind of divert my brain, and go right back into that dream. It’s like I can’t get rid of it.

Sometimes I write great fiction in my dreams, but in the morning, I either can’t remember it or realize that it was an impossible fantasy that would never translate into good writing. Still, I am blessed not to be an insomniac!                                                                                                                                                                                 

A day of minor annoyances

MY shaggy grass

My first glance out the window by my desk this morning was a tad discouraging—wet sidewalks, cloudy skies, and long, long grass. The grass in the front lawn is okay, a mix of Bermuda and St. Augustine that has gone dormant for winter, but in the back, we have winter rye, lush and green and lovely up to a point. The yard service owner said last week he thought it was growing an inch a day in this rain. Ours hadn’t been mowed in three weeks, because it rained every time our turn to be mowed came up. It occurred to me that three things at my house were shaggy—the grass, the dog, and me. Tonight, the grass is short. Sophie and I are still shaggy.

Not sure how to describe today. It began to go south when I discovered that my printer was shooting out blank sheets of paper. After much tearing of hair, prowling on settings and devices and troubleshooting and finally calling my computer genius son-in-law, I discovered it was the black ink cartridge. And it’s all my fault. Somehow when I last changed the cartridge, I re-installed the old one and threw away the new one. Yikes! A $50 mistake! I have ordered a new one from Amazon, and it is to come Friday.

I actually broke quarantine this morning and went to Carshon’s deli to pick up an order. It was like driving in a ghost town, so little traffic. At the deli, we got curbside service, but Stephanie , who brought the order out, says they have no business. I am so sorry. Hope it doesn’t crater the business. I’ve been eating there over fifty years. My oldest son thinks no trip home is complete without a stop at Carshon’s. It’s a fixture in our lives.

Jacob went with me, but he was pretty monosyllabic, in spite of my attempts to start bright  conversations. His excuse was that at ten o’clock, he’d just woken up. Tomorrow they are supposed to get schoolwork.

Spent a lot of time checking authors for my monthly column in Lone Star Literary Life, only to have the editor tell me I’d somehow missed several newer books when I reported that several authors only had much older books. So tomorrow I have to backtrack and re-do what I did today. Only bright spot was that I got in touch with an old friend who has new books coming out.

To add to my day of minor annoyances, Sophie, who is almost nine and should know better, has suddenly taken to retrieving used Kleenex from the bathroom wastebasket and strewing it about the living room. It’s not a huge problem, as I have a grabber to pick it up—but it is, to repeat myself, an annoyance. And she knows it. When I start to pick one up, she’ll grab it and run, with a furtive look at me. Sometimes I think this and some of her other behaviors are her way of acting out the underlying tension she feels in all of us. I would tell you I’m not anxious and on the surface I’m not, but the virus is always there in the back of my mind. Yours too?

I’m having fun using up leftovers. For way too long, one giant baking potato has been staring at me in my bowl of onions and potatoes. It even started to grow little green sprouts, as if to remind me it needed attention. Tonight I baked it, mixed it with plenty of butter and grated cheddar, those last tiny slices of bacon in the freezer, some rapidly wilting scallions that I had to trim way back to find usable onion. Bound the whole thing together with sour cream and had a feast. The other half of the stuffed potato is in the fridge. One day I’ll run out of leftovers, but for now cleaning out my stash is an enjoyable challenge.

Enough prattling. Sweet dreams and pray for sunshine tomorrow. It’s supposed to go into the eighties.

The Fourth, with all its glory

My Fourth of July feast for one—homemade potato salad, a hot dog with kraut (the way I like it), and corn on the cob. My family is off to watch the fireworks at the country club, a huge display, beautiful but noisy right on top of you. And crowded. At lunch today Jordan asked earnestly if I was all right staying home alone. If not, she said, she’d make it happen for me to go with them. Sweet of her, but the last thing I want is to sit on the ground (probably not physically capable, certainly not of getting up) in the midst of a huge crowd and have fireworks thunder in my ear. And stay out too late. No, I’m happy at home, with the TV showing Macy’s fireworks show but the volume muted—I can look but not listen.

I have friends who are staying home because, as they said, “We have dogs.” So many dogs are terrified, and the number of frightened animals who end up in shelters is appalling. Sophie bless her sleeps through the nightly display that ends each Concert in the Garden, not far from us.

Maybe being alone on a holiday makes you nostalgic, but I’ve been thinking about past Fourth celebrations. When I was a teenager, I went with the older kids to Soldier Field in Chicago where there were stock car races—amazed now that I found that entertaining. Also a bit amazed that my parents allowed those outings. But what was then a marvelous fireworks show followed—I suppose it would pale in light of advanced pyrotechnics these days.

When the kids were little I remember going to the 8^th floor of the medical school where their dad worked and watching the city display. Later, single, I took them to various places all over town with a good view—the parking lot of the same medical building, a bridge over the Trinity River (their uncle and I both suddenly became uncomfortable on that high bridge, and the kids had to lead us off). Traffic coming home was always a tangle, and it was a late night. One year I went with friends to a historic cemetery on the river—we had a good view. And for a few years I went to the country club with Jordan. But I really don’t like to have fireworks explode in my face as it were—makes me think my heart is going to stop with the next loud boom. I am content at home with my dog. I may watch on TV, but only with one eye—I’m deep into a good mystery, What You See, by Hank Phillippi Ryan. She’s a master at capturing tension—or maybe what I mean is angst.

Jordan, Christian and I went to lunch today at a relatively new place, HG Supply. I’d not yet been there. Split a club sandwich with Jordan—one of the best and most flavorful of those concoctions I’ve had. French fries were unusually good, and the lemon aioli/ranch dressing out of this world. Christian had Frito pie which was huge but looked delicious—I may try it another time if I can get someone to split it with me.

You have to park a ways from the restaurant, so I got some good walking in, albeit with the walker. We passed an attractively landscaped area that sent my antenna up immediately. “That’s not grass!” It was fake. Christian said he loved it. “You don’t have to mow or water.” Still protesting that it was fake, I said, “It’s not contributing oxygen to our environment,” and he replied, “That’s why they put in these other plants” which is clearly not true. They put in some succulents for appearance. Jordan, ever our arbitrator, commanded us both to stop, and Christian said, “Your mom always starts it.” It’s a good thing it’s all light-hearted. But, damn, that was ugly fake grass, a color green God never created. Makes me so angry!

Happy Fourth everyone. Go plant God’s green grass, water it, and mow it.