A little later today I'll indulge in my favorite 4th of July ritual. Not watching fireworks or soaking up sun or eating too much, but reading the Declaration of Independence. Besides, I did two of those things yesterday.

Friends formerly of Portland, now of Los Angeles, are in town and I got to meet up with them yesterday. We went to Portland's annual Waterfront Blues Festival and walked around in the sun, checking things out, occasionally listening to music (the Zydeco was my favorite - there's something about it that seems about as opposed to the blues as you can get, but I wasn't complaining), and mostly just talking and enjoying one another's company. They were staying at a newly opened hotel in downtown called the Nines and after the festival, they invited me back to check it out. It's one of those weird things about hotels that they have public spaces so a person can go look them over or meet people or have dinner, but it's pretty rare that you actually do. So it was great having an excuse to be able to give in to my curiosity, not to mention possession of a room key which allowed access to the non-public floors. We went to the restaurant area (which reminded me of the restaurant I visited in Honolulu that is accessed by going through a furniture store) and sat for a happy hour drink, then my friend's husband left to pick up some of her family to bring them to the restaurant for dinner. It worked out that my family couldn't make it, so I stayed on and had a fabulous meal and got to catch up with her mom, aunt and uncle. (I spent a lot of time with these people in high school - her family (well, pretty much everyone's family) were so much more agreeable to be around than my own.) Since I don't eat beef - and that is a heavy feature of the menu - I had chicken for my protein and it was terrific. I also tried a green bean dish I'm going to have to try to replicate - they were sauteed quickly with thinly sliced onions and almonds. Then the icing on the cake for the carbohydrate lover that I am was the pureed potatoes which were obviously made with cream. Ho man, so good! I don't eat like this often and my stomach is still recovering. I don't know how many hours in a gym it would take to burn all that off - and I really don't care. One of life's great pleasures, so far as I'm concerned, is a good meal in happy company and I'm a firm believer in setting aside the internal calorie-counter every once in awhile and enjoying food in a way that we don't in our day-to-day lives. Oh! I was wrong about something...the icing on the cake wasn't the potatoes (though, did I mention?, sooooo good!), it was the Cakebread Chardonnay. I've said before how I'm not one for Chardonnay, but I'll certainly make an exception for Cakebread any time. I had a water bottle in my purse from the earlier time out in the sun and at the end of the meal hated wasting the final glass left in the bottle so much that we were very uncouth and smuggled it out in my plastic bottle. It's sitting in my refrigerator right now; I don't think it'll be there long.

I was so replete that I had a hard time sleeping last night. Even had I not been planning to go to the gym this morning, I think I'd be going anyway just to wake myself up. I feel like an utter slug this morning and I think if I don't do something to force myself to move around today, this gorgeous and clear 90 degree day will see me sitting in front of a fan napping away the hours, maybe breaking up the time with some reading. Not that that's a bad thing, but living in the Pacific Northwest has taught me not to take a sunny day for granted and to get out there and enjoy each of them as much as possible.

I've had my morning tea, I'm sort of vertical, and it's time I got this holiday started by giving thanks for all of the things I get to do and be as a result of the untolled sacrifices made by many other people - both past and present.

Have a happy (and safe) 4th!

This morning, while performing The Macaroni-and-Cheese Experiment - Part II, I thought of that phrase which is a favorite of dieters everywhere, "Nothing tastes as good as being thin feels." If referring to the mac-n-cheese I was tasting at just that moment, I would have to agree. But if referring to the fresh-from-the-fields strawberries I bought yesterday, well. Then there could be some debate.

While out and about last week-end, my family pulled up the drive of what used to be a small family farm near our house. Since living in this neighborhood, I've gone there in June for strawberries, in July for blueberries, in August for corn, and during the growing season in general for tomatoes, cucumbers, apples, and pears. The family has moved to another farm and that berry stand wasn't open any more, so the next day we tried a couple of other places. One is quite popular locally, but even though the produce is freshly picked, I've never found the flavor to be worth a damn. What's the point of going to the source (and paying more per pound, I might add) if I can get the same, nearly flavor-free food at my grocery store? Obviously, this particular farm grows for bulk sales and not for quality of taste, and I don't see the point of going back. A few miles down the road we tried another one and this time had more luck. We picked up a half-flat of strawberries, and oh!, they were good. They tasted like strawberries should taste, bursting on the tongue with that bright sweet-tartness that tell you, "Here is a worthwhile berry!" and justified every one of those times I've passed on having one of those reddish things you find everywhere that have been bred for looks. Like everything else where the looks are more important than the substance, they are but a pale imitation of the real thing, and only wish they were good enough to be pretenders to the throne.

Well, anyway, despite the fact that my husband doesn't love berries as much as I do, he ended up eating most of that batch. Don't get me wrong, I ate quite a bit, but I wasn't quite in the mood for them, as awful as that sounds. I know, I know: the season to get a true strawberry is so short, and here I was letting it pass me by. This week-end, however, the tide had turned and I was very much in the mood. During the middle of last week, my husband had gone back to get some more, but was seduced by some Hood River cherries instead. You see, we used to take a day and drive to Hood River to a farm to get The Best Cherries Ever Grown on the Planet Earth, and one of our greatest disappointments came on the trip when we found that farm is no longer open to the public. We ended up getting some sorry road-stand version of cherries and have not had a truly fantastic bunch of cherries in all these years since. But last week, my husband tried one, it was good, and he brought the half-flat home. Only to realize he'd been hornswoggled: He'd managed to get the one and only cherry with any flavor out of that entire batch. So there we were with a bunch of flavor-less cherries and no strawberries.

The strawberry season is drawing nigh and now is not the time to dilly-dally, so I went back yesterday for more. These were even better than the first batch, and I gorged on them all the way home, not caring about the stains on my fingers and under my nails, nor any potential stomach-aches. I cut up a bunch and we had Strawberry Shortcake for dessert last night. That dessert will be one of the culinary highlights of my year, it was just so quintessentially what Strawberry Shortcake is supposed to be. It was perfect.

There might be a week or so more when the valley berries will be around (that's what we call them locally; I live in the Willamette Valley), then it'll be time for the cane berries to take the stage: first raspberries, then marionberries, and finally - my favorite - blackberries. Blackberries really are the perfect way for summer to come to a close: they distill the hot, sunny days of summer into a deep, sweet, dark taste that's like nothing else on earth. While perfect picked warm off the vine, they're also good cold over ice cream, or hot in a cobbler. They encapsulate the delights of summer into a flavor that you wish could last forever, even while knowing that part of what makes it so good is the very brevity of its availability.

Every summer I wonder the same thing: how is it I manage to eat the rest of the year? Sure, there's good stuff growing at other times, but the foods that truly delight me, the ones that need so little work to taste so good, the things that make me wish I could wax poetic, are the foods of summer. It always feels like the rest of the year is "feeding a little life with dried tubers" while this... This is living.



ETA: Ha! And then I start catching up on what I've missed last week and see this. I guess this means there is some debate on the mantra.

Tags: food

I came to post about something else entirely (my daughter is extraordinary - I guess I'll leave it at that for now), then I caught this post-prompter on my way in:

If you had to choose between your friends and your significant other, who would you choose?

I'd say, if you're in a situation where you had to choose between one or the other, you've made some bad choices already with either the spouse or the friends.

This stirs up more fodder for the "Marriage Manifesto" that I've been developing subconsciously for several years and which I've been thinking of lately anyway thanks to the dissolving marriage of some people I know.

The thing that bugs me about this divorce is that it's not even final and the wife just moved in with another man. I'm the first to admit that no one outside a marriage can know everything that's going on inside of it, so outsiders truly don't get to judge. And in this case, while the guy she's divorcing is nice and dependable and has a sense of humor and all of that, he also has some tendencies to see a woman in a light straight out of the 1950s that I know I could never live with. BUT. It just seems to me that there's a striking inability for someone to take adult relationships or marriage seriously when she's moving in with another man before the divorce of a relationship (of somewhere in the 10-year neighborhood) is over. It would bug me no matter what, but what's really irritating me in this situation is that there are children involved. Not just the three from the couple getting divorced (or, more accurately, I should say one of the children came from a prior marriage, but that father has been out of the picture for years; two came from the one now ending), but the new man in the picture has a child as well.

I can see already that the oldest girl, a teen-ager now, has a distinct lack of interest in boys. And I don't mean this in the "she may be gay" way. I mean it in the "she doesn't see the point" way. From her point of view, these men in her mom's life have meant moving when she had just made friends (and she's a very shy girl), being told what to do by people who are but temporary placeholders so why bother, a mother who goes through periods of being down that she can do nothing about. In other words, getting involved with a man means feelings of helplessness, sadness, and losing one's power of self-determination. It makes me sad to think how hard it will be for her to ever trust a man, or to trust her own ability to choose wisely.

While I don't believe every person needs marriage or that every woman needs a man to have a fulfilling and interesting life, I do think it's sad to have that option taken away from you. I see a future for her of never being in a truly special relationship either because she'll hardly ever let a man in long enough to give him a chance or because she'll treat relationships in the same way her mom does.

In all, it's frustrating to see. And of course takes me one step closer to understanding parents are, after all, just people. You spend years and years thinking they have some special wisdom or power that you don't, that the ways in which they messed up your life had to be done deliberately somehow, when really they're stumbling around trying to figure things out just like everyone else is.

It's a strange quirk of human evolution, isn't it? How much a person needs from her parents to survive childhood, and how much she'll need to be a parent to forgive how her parents accomplished that survival?

Tags: family

Just back from my Saturday morning work out and I'm all sweaty and starving, so this will be quick. On my way home, I had an urge to hear the School of Fish song Three Strange Days. When I checked the video out from that link I saw this comment: "the 90s was my favorite decade for music - and i've been alive since 1952".

Generally speaking, I try not to think in those terms when it comes to music and art because these are things in constant flux: an artist is inspired by something personal, something happening in the wider world, something some other artist did and there always seems to be something of value there to appreciate even if it's not your favorite thing. Having said all that: man, I miss the music of the 90s, too! I've really been struggling with this lately because my daughter is into the Top 40 kind of music right now and I swear so many things sound the same to me. I tell myself every era has its sound, its quirks, its exceptional musicians who will stand the test of time and the ones who merely move things along in very (very!) small ways.

I remember reading a Newsweek article around the beginning of the 90s about how rock-and-roll was limping along and the music industry was struggling to find a way back to the heyday of growth in sales they experienced in the 80s (I'd like to see that article again; wonder if I can google it?). The gist of it all was that rock was dead, killed off by the soft rock that did so well in the 70s and the New Wave and hair bands of the 80s. And then grunge hit. I know for a lot of people, it was Nirvana that kicked all that off. For my husband and me, it was more Pearl Jam, Temple of the Dog, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, et al; Nirvana were pretenders to the throne and we bought Nevermind because people kept telling us it was so good, not because we had come to that conclusion ourselves. Plus of course U2 kicked off the decade with Achtung Baby and it's one of the best rock albums. Ever.

So now the 00s are nearly over and for me the 90s have it all over this decade of music. On the one hand, I think it's probably natural to have strong feelings about the music that got you through the years before marriage and kids and career take over your life; the years of relatively little responsibility coupled with lots of free time. But on the other hand, I truly believe - objectively speaking - there was some damn good music going on back then. Don't get me wrong, there's still lots to love going on these days. But that era will always hold a special place in my heart.

And so, off to the shower where I expect something from the 90s will be on the set list.

Tags: music

Man, time has been flying lately. I've been on the hamster wheel of up early, off to work, taking short lunch breaks, rushing home, rushing off to softball/gym/wherever, and moseying back home to drop into bed for a short spell before doing it all over again. Sadly, the softball games will be all over with next week since my daughter chose not to play post-season this year (teary face). On the other hand, that's more time for the "wherever" part of the equation and what's lovely about summer in Portland is the long, long days and so many nooks and crannies to discover.

Anyway, I'm waaaay behind on looking at posts. I'm obviously delinquent with posting. And I've got topics and thoughts stacking themselves up, waiting to be off-loaded, cluttering up my brain. I need to say something about them so as to clear the decks, but who knows if I'll actually get around to that before the pressure to speak dissipates. So, anyway, there's that sob story.

Meanwhile, we had a wicked thunder and lightning storm here today. As I left work there were the high winds with leaves, branches and dust flying hither and yon. During the bumper-to-bumper drive home there was the pouring rain. As I neared home there were the amazing streaks of lightning and booms of thunder right above and all around me. Then I made it home and it was nearly over (where we are - it was just making its way north and west to spread cheer up and over to the coastal area). Of course, that kind of weather seems to wake up my molecules and get them hopping, so I was loving every electrifying minute of it. I expect I'd be one of those idiot storm chasers if I didn't have the small supply of common sense I have because I find storms like that loads of fun. But after all the action, it's still humid as hell, which is most unusual for this area. At some point I expect it'll break and I'll be able to wear my wedding ring again. I hope.

Now I've exhausted what was left of today's meager mental abilities and it's off to bed for me. Take care and enjoy the summer, everyone.

It's been a beautiful day here in the Portland area. Low- to mid-80s in temperature, blue sky, flowers blooming, and birds chirping. At one point today, I was at a loose end for about 2 hours, so decided I *had* to get outside and enjoy the day. I was a bit on the fence about hiking by myself (due to the on-going ankle issue, time, etc.), so in the end I compromised with myself and went off to a place in Portland called Hoyt Arboretum. My daughter and I have been there many times together. Trails named Magnolia, Hawthorn, Wildwood, Fir, Creek (and many, many more) criss cross one another up and down the mountain. There are so many ways to go, it's like the choose-your-own-adventure-story of hiking. I don't know if anyone's done the math, but I'd have to guess there have to be at least 100 variations one can hike. For the most part, my daughter and I like to try a new combination on each visit, though when time is tight we have a couple of loops where we know the approximate length and time involved and will stick to those.

Today I went about 1/2 way on a section I've done a few times before and the other 1/2 on an area that's new to me. There are benches and picnicking areas sprinkled throughout, and groups and singles were out in force enjoying the day, making the human element as effervescent as the one provided by nature. I was very glad I decided to go up there, and was reflecting on the way home that every time I doubt whether it's worth it to do whatever it is I have to do in order to get myself outside for a walk, I need to remember that IT IS. Today's walk was worth how I had to squeeze it in between other obligations. And it's even worth the extra ache in the ankle I'm feeling tonight. It's always worth the effort I put out and then some.

I was kicking myself for not taking the camera as there's so much of interest (and it's so different on every visit) to memorialize. At the top of this trail is a vista across the city of Portland to the Cascade Mountain Range beyond, and on a down-swing for that trail is a panorama of trees, bushes and grasses that display more nuances of green than all the world's languages combined have words to describe.

Tomorrow we'll be able to spend the day as a family, and as the weather is predicted to be more of the same, we'll come up with something to do to enjoy it. I'm voting for a drive and a hike, with lunch al fresco on the banks of a stream. In other words, more of today, only supersized.

Here's hoping....

On my daughter's 8th birthday, my husband and I woke her up early in the morning. We had her open a couple of small gifts (clothes), then gave her the big one: we were taking her to Disneyland that day.

My husband and I had talked for awhile about when the right time to take her would be. Since going for us involves plane rides and a hotel stay (aka a not-insignificant outlay of money), plus a coordinated stint of time off work, we wanted to make it count. So it had to be when she was old enough to really remember it, yet when she was young enough to still be into all of the things designed just for kids. Around the time she turned 6, we decided to make it her 8th birthday gift.

It turned out to be the perfect time to take her as respects all of the things we hoped she would get out of it, plus the things we hadn't really thought about, like her stamina to make it through the hours of walking around and waiting in line and her ability to maintain a good mood without getting cranked out too soon.

It was a terrific vacation and at the end of it we decided that, unless there was some other reason we'd be in the area, we wouldn't want to come back until about 5 years had passed. That way the park could develop some more (as it always is), giving us new things to see, and it would still be something special for us to look forward to. Eventually we hit upon the idea of taking her back for her 13th birthday, hence the trip last week.

Once again, it was terrific. As my husband and I were discussing yesterday, it felt as though we had our little girl back. She really is a delight for us to spend time with - smart and funny with a unique way of seeing the world - but of course at this age she is pulling away to spend more and more time with her friends, so we don't have the same kind of connection that we once had. Though we're probably about as close as any parent can hope to be to a girl entering her teens these days, we're not the center of her universe any more. It was great to have that again, if only for a short time.

She's completely fearless when it comes to going on the rides, and as she's always been kind of tall for her age, even at age 8 she was big enough to go on anything she wants. And she wants to go on them all. For the most part, her dad will go on the rides with her that I can't won't, but there's even a couple that scare the crap out of him that she has to go alone. With the exception of a few times where we split up for rides (and an evening where she was dead tired so my husband and I went to Shakeys without her (we couldn't pass up the opportunity to have the fried chicken and mojo potatoes)), we spent the week together.

As my husband and I both had childhoods that made us think the word "family" actually meant "stress", it's so lovely to find that word can actually mean a lot of really great things. It also means we realize how lucky we are. At some point last week we saw a guy who looked to be in his mid-30s with a black t-shirt that showed a couple getting married. The male in the picture had a ball and chain around his ankle and it read "The Party is Over". My husband saw the shirt, then my face, and immediately moved to pat my back and say, "I know. I know," in a soothing manner. That kind of thing is insulting to me on a variety of levels, starting with the fact that our culture doesn't require marriage in the same way as it used to and therefore it doesn't need to be any kind of ball-and-chain obligation and ending somewhere around the fact that there are plenty of gay couples who would like nothing more than to be married and are denied the right. In the end, though, I suppose what I feel most for people with an attitude like that is pity because they will always associate marriage and family with negative things and therefore miss out on the good stuff. Those people will never feel that getting lucky will mean anything more than winning some money.

Spending a nice chunk of uninterrupted time like that together can't be beat as far as my family is concerned. So the trip was supposed to be a gift for my daughter, but really, it was a gift for all of us. Now I'm thinking it would be great to make the every-5-years a tradition and take her again when she turns 18. Even if we don't, it feels so great to think that we could probably take her camping for a week when she turns 18 and we'd all get just as much out of it.

Next up: more specifics on what we actually did.

Tags: egads my baby is a teen, family, vacation

I really hate this "I'm starved but nothing sounds good to eat" mood that I'm in. It leads to bad food choices. I'll try a little of this and a little of that, and nothing will quite hit the spot. So I'll have some additional this-n-thats and those won't work, either. In the end it seems like I could've done better with a plate of Fettucine Alfredo chased with some onion rings and beer and polished off with a large slice of chocolate cake as respects consumption of fat, salt, sugar, and non-refined foods. Yeesh!

The only thing working for me now is the Vanilla Ceylon Iced Tea I'm drinking (picked up a tin while in California last week). It's so good. So, sooooo good. Why can't I find the food equivalent of this tea to hit the spot right now?

I have a couple of good vacation stories to tell, so will be back for that soon. For now I'm off to try to find something good to eat, if such a thing exists.

Tags: food

My husband saw a version of this Quiznos commercial for the first time last night.



Neither of us can believe this made it past the censors and we can't help but wonder: did the censors not get the innuendoes, or is our culture coming to an acceptance of homosexuality?

My carpal tunnel issue has been causing me some pretty intense pain lately, hence the extended absence here. I've started to think that Twitter might be more in my line right now since about 140 characters would be just about right for me to type at one time.

And it's not that there aren't things I'd like to be talking about - like what fun Candy Tan's reading and signing of Beyond Heaving Bosoms was at Powells recently. And how I couldn't think of a question until my drive home (natch). (I'll give you a hint about the question, it was inspired by these Dame Sally Markham sketches.) And how I got to meet up and chat with lilithsaintcrow and Meljean Brook and a few others. Candy told the story (thanks to a question asking for the "early warning signs" of a person getting into romance novels) of how she first read a romance and it was awful and she couldn't help but wonder at the intelligence of anyone who liked them - which is a pretty good parallel for my own first romance-reading experience - along with the subsequent revision of that opinion upon finally reading a good one. Candy read from the choose-your-own-adventure chapter of the book, which I highly recommend. (Not just that chapter mind you, but the entire thing.) The book is entertaining and true and the kind of thing I'd induce my husband to read, if it were truly possible to induce him to read anything. (He won't even read any of Wodehouse's Ukridge stories, just so you know what I'm up against here.)

There's also been my contemplation of impactful story endings and how they can be an important and significant in their own way as the first impression. I mean, obviously a book needs to give a first good impression or the reader won't give it much of a chance. But I find I hold stories with an ending that can't be improved upon - the kind that practically smack you upside the head they pack such a wallop and are just so perfect in their way - are the ones that keep me pondering a story for weeks thereafter, that make such an impression that there's never a question to myself of "did I read this or not?" when I come across it at some future point again, and that can even get me to hold off on reading or watching any other stories for awhile so I can really savor that one. And those are pretty rare, if you think about it. I mean, it's not as if any story that doesn't do that isn't worthwhile or terrific in its own way. It's just that those stories that can be terrific all the way through from start to finish yet hold back until the final moment what will elevate that story from damn good to genius don't come along all that often. Complicating it further is the fact that the elusive genius-making element is all in the eye of the beholder. For example, when I say that I find the endings of One Hundred Years of Solitude and My Antonia to be superlative, I can also acknowledge that other people may not find the endings to be anything special. But to me, the endings can't be improved upon, they were perfect for the stories, they had me just sitting there savoring them for a long while afterwards and made the next things I read or heard or saw pale and insignificant little things. Not many stories can do that, you must admit.

There's the amazonfail fiasco, which at the moment I'll only say astonishes me (since I don't have the hand power to say everything I'm thinking) from the point of view of their complete inability to handle the public and their perception of what happened and why. As a company completely founded and run within the internet age, and thus one would imagine more than savvy in knowing how the internet and its rumor mills works, it is utterly baffling how/why they *still* haven't made any overtures to the public. Utterly amazing.

There's also how my family is going to Disneyland next week to celebrate my baby's 13th birthday. Egads! 13! It just doesn't seem possible. My sweet little snuffling infant, always so ready to smile (except right after waking - can't say I can blame anyone for that), always wanting to be with her mom and dad, entering the snarling teen-age years where mom and dad are such idiots that it's some kind of miracle to her adolescent mind that we can walk and talk at the same time. Anyway. We've been planning on this particular celebration for years and booked/paid for the trip last year, which kind of worked both for and against us given the current economy. Nevertheless, we're all looking forward to it - not least because the weather is rumored to be quite warm and we're freezing here in Portland at the moment. I tell you, one is just not meant to be wearing 5 layers of clothes to a softball game, and that's what we've been doing about half the time this year.

OK, my hand it starting to cramp significantly, so time to pull the plug on myself. Back to reading old Agatha Christie mysteries and a book I picked up last week-end at Powells: Love My Rifle More than You. Here's the first sentence: "Sometimes even now, I wake up before dawn and forget I am not a slut". Sounds promising, no?

I'll just close by apologizing for my radio silence, which I suspect will be ongoing for awhile to come. It makes me feel a bit ghoulish, reading all of your posts, getting little insights into the goings-on in your lives while not saying anything myself. Just know I appreciate your posts, even if I'm not reciprocating in kind.

Tags: books, family