Travels with The Rayman

We made it back from our desert sojourn last Friday afternoon.  So glad to be out from behind that sound wall, I’ll tell ya.

 

And I’ve been on a merry-go-round ever since.  Does your life go like that every now and then?  I bet it does.  The idea that I”m not like everyone else, disturbs me at times.  Other times, I am happy to be unique.  Of course, if you consider it, we are all unique.  Perhaps the word I was looking for was “similar”.  Okay.  I’m sometimes happy to be similar.

Saturday and Sunday was comprised of things we all do.  Washing clothes.  Hanging the clothes on the line (this is not done by too many people, but in my defense, there are some).  Sorting through the mail that had accumulated and I don’t think I am exaggerating when I report that there was about 50 pounds of mail.  For two weeks, plus a day or two.  Really, people, we do need to stop wasting trees and go digital.  We don’t need hard copies of everything anymore because we have the cloud.  We have zip drives.  We have external hard drives (that does sound suggestive, doesn’t it?).  There all types of ways to preserve and recapture and I’m not talking about food here.  Data.  Datum.  Datuss (a new word not yet invented).

When one is busy, one depends on their calendar to keep them straight.  Up-to-date.  Organized.  And so it is for me and the Rayman.  ECal is more than a phrase.  It’s our tether to the world.  We have all things planned recorded on our electronic calendars, don’t we?  Really smart people keep a paper calendar.  We don’t qualify for that category.  So thoroughly modern are we.  It’s on the computer, the phone, the iPad.  No paper in our world.

But I digress.

The phone rang.  It was my cousin, Chris.  He wanted to come up to visit Uncle Ralph. Chris reported that UR sounded confused.  So, I invited Chris up to visit (he lives in Camarillo).  Great.  They would come on Monday.  Except that the Rayman and I were scheduled for our monthly or bi-monthly card game.  “No problem.” Chris retorted.  He and his wife, Nancy didn’t want to disrupt anything.   So, we agreed they would come here to stay on Monday.

Back up for a minute.  I baked a cake on Sunday for Easter dinner at our place.  A chocolate, banana swirl cake.  Yum.  And while I was at it, I made panna cotta for the dessert on Monday.  Our card group does a potluck and then we play cards.  I volunteered to bring dessert.  And I have never made panna cotta before so I gave it a whirl.  A sour cream panna cotta.  With a rhubard compote.  Double yum.

Chris and Nancy arrived on Monday about noon.  We visited.  Then we all went to UR’s house and visited.  And then we came home and visited.  Lots of visiting occurred.  This is principally because we don’t see each other that often and there is always lots to talk about when we do get together.  All of a sudden it was 5:45 p.m.  The card game was at 6.  Chris and Nancy were going to take UR to dinner and they were picking him up about 6.

I felt terrible.  Not cooking dinner for everyone was not setting well with me but what could I do?  What we did was grab the dessert and that is when I discovered that the dessert had not “set up”.  It was runny.  OMG.  Well, I grabbed the cake, grabbed the sour cream “soup”, the rhubarb compote and off we went to the card game.

Rayman drove really, really slow because he didn’t want the “soup” to spill.  And as luck would have it, the host’s home sits on a steep hill.  We were late.  When we arrived, there were no cars there.  OMG.  Where was everyone?  I called.  No answer.  This was not a good sign.  I called Laurie, one half of one of the other couples in our card group.  She said that the card game was scheduled for Thursday, not Monday.  OMG.  Really?  Really?  What to do?

Well, we drove home slowly, put the “sour cream soup” in the refrigerator, the cake in the microwave (doggy tactic), the rhubarb compote in the refrigerator.  And we drove to the Great American Fish Company where we met up with the UR and cousin Chris and his wife Nancy.  They were as surprised as we were!!  Had dinner.  Came home.  Visited some more and fell into bed.

Today, we got up and I made cornmeal pancakes, Rayman squeezed oranges for fresh orange juice.  We had a great breakfast.  As Rayman was starting to load the dishwasher, he said, “Is Bertha coming today?”  Bertha is our housekeeper.  OMG.  We had completely forgotten.  Bertha’s day was today.  How embarrassing this was becoming.  Our eCal struck again.  But in the calendar’s defense, it was us.  We had not entered Bertha’s visit.  We never do.  Because we were gone for over two weeks, we got confused about which Tuesday she was due.  So, at Rayman’s suggestion, I went out and asked Bertha if she could do another job before ours since we had company.  She said okay, threw the vacuum back into her SUV and drove away.   Another crisis averted.

The other thing is that  Rayman had signed up for golf today but cancelled because of the 1.  the wind  2.  I had to go with UR to his Dr. appointment at 9:00 a.m. today.  Rayman reasoned that he should stay home with the company.  I agreed. About this time as Bertha is in retreat, UR and Claudia show up to pick me up for the Doc appointment.  We visited a few minutes.  Then UR, Claudia and I jumped into the car and headed for San Luis.  Rayman stayed with Chris and Nancy.

Confused yet?  Well, if you aren’t you should be.  We certainly were.
So, tonight, all is quiet on the Western front.  I I’m finishing this blog, Rayman is walking the dog.  The fire is blazing in the fireplace (it’s cold outside tonight).  And I’m getting ready to head to bed to read and relax.  Tomorrow I’m to be at the golf course at 7:45 to play golf.  Then at 4 p.m., Claudia and UR are picking us up to drive south to Casmalia for dinner at the Hitching Post.  It’s about 2 1/2 hours total windshield time.  However, the ribs are fabulous.  So there you have it.