If You Don’t Know Where You Are Going…
It all starts with a rebate check we thought we had received from our friends at Costco. We couldn’t find the coupon so I tried to find it on the website but I failed to crack the code.
It was getting late. We planned it that way…arrive close to the end of business…it might be less busy. So off we went, coupon-less but full of hope.
Nota bene: if you go late on the shortest day of the year you don’t have to look for a shady parking place so that Beau won’t overheat. And there were less people there so we were all over it.
Grabbing a basket we headed in. The plan was to go to the customer assistant who was located on the way out. So, I squeezed between displays and went to the assistance desk. A young man said we didn’t have a rebate coming. What? How can that be a thing? He did not budge. No rebate money to spend.
What we were shopping for was booze. So we went to the booze, made three selections, cruised by the nuts looking for pecans which were not there, a search of the refrigeration units for pasteurized canned crab. Nada on that too.
We arrived at check out and they had trouble with our credit card. That necessitated a visit from a manager to the register. Since the manager was summoned for help, she multi-tasked and and brought a fistful of dollars which they dutifully counted and recounted and filled out forms. This was all good news because I was on the phone trying to order dinner from Taste, a restaurant in San Luis… the plan being we would pick it up curbside on our way home. It took me all that time at the check out to figure out their website so I could get food ordered.
Walking across the parking lot, I was purchasing our dinner. Isn’t that just amazing? Arriving at the car, I received a text signalling that I needed to reorder. WTF? And did I mention that I was driving? So, Rayman was riding shotgun and he was of no help. Doing things on a phone is not his forte. So, I called them. They would take my order by phone. Remembering our order was an ordeal. The place specialized in sliders and they have about 2000 sliders to choose from. I had ordered four distinct sliders but which ones? I had also ordered Brussel sprouts but at Taste, they have 6 different treatments for Brussels. Good grief. I had no earthly idea if what I reordered was what I had originally ordered as I stood at the cash register at Costco
As mentioned previously, I was driving. So, I asked Rayman if I should take South street. He said, “No you do not want to go south. It’s north.” At this point, I am at the intersection of Higuera and South so I turned on South going north.
“Why did you take South?”, he exclaimed. “Because I am going this way.”
Letting that go, we arrive at South and Broad. “Which way do I turn?” I ask as I can’t remember which way to turn. It is dark. I’m hungry.
“Go left.” He replies like he knows what he is talking about. So I turn left and realize by landmark sightings that this is the wrong way.
“We’re not going the right way. I should have turned right.” At this point Rayman says, “Isn’t Taste on Higuera?” Alarm bells go off and I bring the car to a screeching halt in a bad place, meaning a place where parking is not allowed while incredulously exclaiming, “You don’t know where we are going!!! We are going to Taste.” He says, “Isn’t it on Higuera, the place we ate at when we took the car to the Toyota when they were trying to fix our audio system on the Prius?” “NO. We are not going to that restaurant. That restaurant doesn’t do sliders. Didn’t you hear sliders?”
I wasn’t too incredulous about it because I don’t think Rayman has eaten at Taste that many times to remember so I just laughed at the whole situation. And then I got incredulous.
“I order the food, I drive the car, I plan the trip (giving myself a certain amount of credit) and you just sit there. So please go pick up the food and pay for it. I’m going to sit here and read my phone….please.”
On the way home, Rayman says, “You know when you went to talk to customer service, while I was waiting for you with the cart…I saw something across the aisle and so I went to look at it. 30 seconds max. Turned around and my cart was gone. Someone stole my cart. So I went out and got another cart and when I went to enter, the greeter asked to see my card which you had over at the customer service desk. I explained the situation and she took pity on me and let me through.”
And so I wonder, dear reader, is your life like that? Or are we just old and strange all by ourselves?
As Yogi Berra said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll wind up somewhere else.”
Thanksgiving in the Time of Covid
The new Spark Grill.
There is only one other year that I was thoroughly separated from family for our national eating holiday.
Having taken possession of my bright red MG (this harkens back to the 70s), I was flying up Berryessa Road in San Jose with my two recently purchased pies when out of a cross street lurched a car which plowed right into my brand new spiffy car. And after that debacle, I was consigned to a Thanksgiving all by myself. My children were in Paso Robles, having left a day earlier with my Mother to beat the traffic. And how could they all fit in such a stupid purchase as the tiny MG? These were the years that I was lost emotionally and spent hours on the couch of a psychiatrist. Oh, dear. Now I have spilled the beans.
Without further adieu, I choose to change the date and fast forward to today where Rayman and I are spending the day alone on purpose because we elected not to endanger ourselves or others by gathering against the guidelines issued by every government agency in the U.S.
What a year. What a time to reflect on all that we are thankful for now. Our health, our families’ health… what is more important than that? I think that is such a wonderful thing to know that no one we know was felled by this killer. And we know of no one that has come down sick with it either. Yet. Let us all remain vigilant and do the right thing for our friends and families.
Okay.
The screw up of the day concerning the preparation of the meal is annoyingly funny. My dressing called for 4 oz. of prosciutto. I had 2 ounces and so I added 2 oz. of ham. It all needed to be chopped, so I chopped it. Then I spotted paper in the chopped food. What? It just so happened that there was paper separating the prosciutto that was the exact footprint as the food and I had chopped it without separating it. So…it took about 20 minutes of the Rayman and me looking for thinner-than-paper-thin pieces of paper. Let it be known that the pan “stuffing” has paper in it perhaps. Good grief.
The turkey was brined in buttermilk and salt for 48 hours. It is now unattended on the brand new Spark grill that we have never used but are using today because, why not? It has probes. It has special coals. It has a temperature gauge so that it keeps watch over the turkey and will alert us via Bluetooth when the meat reaches 165. How on earth did we ever cope without this new fandango of a barbecue?
The plate sans roasted pear salad.
The Brussel sprouts with garlic are done. Just threw the balsamic on them. I’m roasting the pears now. Well, almost. I hate digital controls for stoves. I set the oven to 500 and forgot to hit start. So the pears came out with no color on them. Reset the stove and am waiting for the oven to reach 500 so I can, friggin, finish the pears. They are part of the salad.
The stuffing is ready to go in the oven after the pears. Complete with paper in the mix!!
The pie should be good. Cooked the sugar pumpkin to make the puree. Nothing like fresh pumpkin. Beats the canned stuff all over the playground and back again.
Pumpkin pie with gingersnap crust.
We miss our turkey day parties of old. So much fun cooking together. Spending almost every waking moment with Rayman makes it harder because there is such a thing perhaps of too much together time. No. I don’t think so.
The place settings.
After all, I could be completely alone and that’s not nearly as much fun as cooking with the Rayman. He adds charm to the kitchen and his clean up skills are beyond reproach. For my friends that read this and are spending their day alone, I hope you can find comfort in the silence and time for reflection. Reflection is good and so is a good TV series to binge. Just saying. Or a good book that allows for escape into some other world or topic.
Other things we are thankful for include the right pans to cook this feast, a beautiful cloudless day by the bay, a gorgeous table setting. A new President and a first ever, female VP. And Beau, who gives us laughs on a daily basis, that scamp!!
And we are thankful that we have you in our lives. All of you that are reading this as well as friends that don’t as I haven’t captured the gift of great writing but I still practice and I’m writing a memoir that is so much more difficult than I thought it would be. I’m on page 85 now. Single spaced. I think I’ll add some pictures, some recipes to fill it out since so much of my family history was lost with the death of my Mother. She had the goods…and she took them with her. However, she couldn’t boil water…so there is that.
After dinner walk. What a fabulous day…like summer.
Happy Thanksgiving!!
High on the Hog
Thinking about pork. We love pork although, we feel guilt when we eat it. We feel sorry for the pig. We feel guilty for eating the fat. Pork makes us feel guilty until we bite into it. And thus, I must blog.
Sunday morning, I slow fried 4 pieces of bacon. Bourbon pepper bacon, from Whole Foods who is known for treating animals right and so forth. It smelled divine. And after the bacon was fried very slowly as to not splatter bacon fat all over the stove, it was removed to paper towels and the eggs from Farmer’s Market were opened over the cast iron skillet, salted, peppered, as they were also slowly cooked in the bacon fat. Then as is customary in our house once in a while, I tilted the pan so the bacon fat could run across the yolks like the tide rushing in on the beach to cover the sand dollars. And then recede.
Oh, the taste of bacon and eggs prepared this way is a joy for the taste buds. Ode to joy! Accompanied with local baked bread usually but not this day. Had English muffins with butter and orange marmalade and a shake or two of Tabasco on the eggs. It hit all the marks for a great meal.
I hate ordering eggs and bacon in a restaurant. The bacon cooked ages earlier and then left to sit in a pan of bacon until needed. The eggs cracked over a cooking surface that is linear and boring and unable to produce eggs basted in anything…let alone bacon fat. No, the eggs in a restaurant are pitiful unless you order in a really high end restaurant that charges arms and legs for a very simple dish.
And then we barbecued some baby back ribs over a fire with nothing more than salt and pepper to gild the lily. Just enough color, just enough seasoning to let the ribs shine. No sugary barbecue sauce for this family. We like our pork nude.
Then we ate a ham and cheese sandwich…with uptown cheese and wonderful ham, slathered in mayo and doused in dijon mustard. Plain. Simple. Yummy.
And there you have it. Three different forms of pork on two different contiguous days.
Happy, happy.
On Creating Monsters
We don’t want Pandora right now. So, I need to cancel it. In order to cancel it, I must find the vendor that the bill goes through for payment since Pandora doesn’t do collection directly. And that is a Pandora’s Box that was unleashed on my tender sensibilities.
After about 7324 hours research, I’m just not sure. I can’t be for certain. Of anything.
How did life treat me so unfairly? I ask. I created a monster, that’s how. This is all my doing and as it currently stands, my undoing. Good grief.
While trying to figure out my Pandora bill problem, I first went to my credit cards. The only way I could figure out what is being paid out of my credit cards was to look at the statements. My feeling was that the credit card companies would have an easy-to-access list of all my electronic debits…but I couldn’t find them. If they are there, they are well hidden.
Pandora is coming due in November, so I had to go back to 2019 and look for November which was always spread between the November AND December statements. Good grief. My patience was thinning.
Because I was going to all this trouble, I decided to write down which debits went to which bills. The list was long. Our life is complicated. I bet yours is too. But not as bad as mine and even if it was, you wouldn’t admit, now would you? If your life in this regard is less of a problem, I would love to know your methodology.
So…three credit cards, a checking account, and Paypal. All three of these methods played a roll in my search to unlock my Pandora’s Box.
Paypal was the last one and they make things super easy. And the bank account was relatively easy. The credit cards were ridiculous. By the time I arrived at Paypal, I discovered that I could easily just stop the auto payments and so I did. Disney Plus…deleted. QVC…deleted although it hadn’t been used all year (I actually think I only used it once), Houzz, Ancestry Uber…all zapped. It was such a powerful feeling. The crazy thing is I don’t remember having this set up on any of them except Disney Plus for the original Hamilton performance.
After hours and hours, I have a better handle on things…except Pandora. I have no idea if that will get automatically deducted or not. But I’m not spending another moment on it. If I win, I win. If I lose, I lose. The worst thing that will come of it is more music.
I could use more music. I’m A Creep by Radiohead would sound good about now…Better go to Pandora and listen to it while I maybe still have the account.
Dueling Devices
Getting ready to leave one place to go to another is a task we always under estimate, thinking it will only take a short time. Reality is… it takes a significant amount of time as a semi well oiled machine to pack the clothes, pack the food, pack the dog paraphernalia, pack the electronics, gather up the pillows, clean up the kitchen which includes the refrigerator, the freezer, the pantry…it is exhausting just detailing some of it in the blog. And poor Rayman has to fit all our stuff into the car. He is a master at it. But it takes time and much effort.
Then there is handing off food to the relatives, cancelling the TV, asking the neighbor to take of our garbage cans next week…yada yada yada.
Driving from Portland, Or to Morro Bay, CA is not easy with fire and smoke complicating the journey this year. There are many routes and most of them have issues. So, after careful consideration, I think we picked the absolutely worst way to proceed…straight down I-5. It was fine until we got in the hills and mountains. Smoke as dense as pot de creme. It brings home to us how horrible the world is becoming with global warming. We really need to do more raking. Click the link. https://pin.it/1CE0h53
And in OR, you can’t go a mile without seeing beautiful tree boles piled high on a big rig truck so there is obviously some forest management going on despite the rumors. But the raking. We need more raking.
This is near Medford where an entire town was burned to the ground.
Choking smoke.
Can you spot Mt. Shasta? And Lake Shasta is a mere wisp of itself.
When we reached Roseburg, OR we were hungry and I was at the wheel. I asked Rayman if he would find us a spot for a bite. This may have akin to asking him to find the black hole. OMG. After much googling and Yelping he found a Mexican place. Great. He found it on his iPad. Then somehow, he tried to find it on his phone, I think…god knows what he was actually trying to do but in the process he lost the restaurant which he first reported to be located off off-ramp 124. He couldn’t find it on the iPhone. Then he couldn’t find it on his iPad and in the meantime, I’m making good time barreling toward to the destination. His frustration rose as the destination got closer.
“I think I have it. It’s off of 124 just like I said.”
One of the devices says, “Take exit 138 East toward downtown.”Okay, then.”
Then like a premonition from the heavens, another device says, “Exit 124 and stay in the right lane.” Then both devices talk to us in unison and we couldn’t make head nor tails out of any of it.
“Rayman, you have both devices giving us conflicting info”, I offer.
”He says, “What the hell? I don’t know what is going on.”
I say, “Rayman, you need to turn the one off that doesn’t take us to where we want to go .”
Rayman said, “Jesus Christ. What the hell is going on?”
I say, “Rayman, you need to pick one place or the other. I don’t care which one as long as it has food.”
He fumbles with this devices. “There. I turned off the iPad.”
Then the iPad says, “Take exit 138.”
At this point he is screaming at the device. “I don’t want that restaurant. I want the other one on exit 124.”
“Well”, I said. “You turned the wrong device off”.
At this point Rayman goes to the F word. “Oh, fuck, what the hell is going on?”
I say, “I don’t know. Turn the iPad off.”
He said, “I thought I did.” At that point the iPad chirped, “ In 500 yards….”
Rayman yells, “Just get off the damn freeway!”
And then the iPhone says, “In 2 miles, exit the freeway.”
Really, this is exactly what happened.
Anyway, we exited the freeway, turned left and drove toward city center. The iPad said, “Stay in the left lane and the destination is on your left in 200 yards.”
Then the iPhone said, “Get in the left lane and make a u-turn at the light.”
By this time, I spot, I kid you not, three roach coaches (aka as food trucks) parked in a gravel parking lot. “Well, I’m going to pull in here and see if one of these is the Mexican restaurant.
”Rayman says, “Really?”
I turn into the lot. The first roach coach is a Thai venue. We couldn’t figure out what the other two were. I made a U turn and was going to leave the lot but suggested, “Rayman, why don’t we just see if that far coach is a Mexican coach?” He said okay. It was a Mexican roach coach without any signage other than a lone neon “OPEN” sign. So, we parked and sauntered up to the coach. A nice Mexican woman took our order. Food was on paper plates, two tacos each. And it was delicious. Fresh, flavorful, and the best part was that there were three tables under some cloth “umbrellas” that provided perfect outdoor dining in the age of covid. And we were the only ones there until a couple of young guys joined us as we were leaving. They had tacos too!!
Key learning was that really, I need to be on the devices arranging things. And two. Sometimes just giving it a whirl works out just fine!!
Golf May Be a Metaphor for Life
As I lay awake in the early morning hours this a.m., I took to serious thought about my golf game. This is because yesterday afternoon, we played golf with number one son…nine whole holes laid out before us as sun was going down.
The course is set in a grove of redwood trees, thank goodness because if the trees were of the leaf-dropping type, we never, ever would have been able to find our balls. As it was a few times we still had to look hard for those golf balls which tells you something about our skill levels.
But I digress.
Golf is a game of ups and downs. One minute you are on cloud nine because of a shot you pulled off. The next minute you feel like a toad for the golf shot you didn’t pull off. Golf is like life…it is voluntary. You choose to live, you choose to play golf. Golf teaches humility and if you are lucky, life teaches you humility. Golf teaches us how to lose gracefully. Okay, most of us. Our President is a golfer but he threatens to cheat to win, he threatens to refuse to concede, he is known for disregarding the rules. For the rest of us, we regard golf as a game of honor, our own honor. We do not cheat because in the end, it only hurts us by giving us a lower score… which will drive our handicap down to the point that we cannot win in a low handicap game because we cheated to win. I know this is a circular example and I wish I could explain it better for my non-golfing friends. Just trust me on this.
So, now I’m asking you to trust me and for those of you that know me, you know you can trust me. Unlike our President who lies every time he opens his mouth, seemingly. Those that I know that cheat at golf, the funny thing is, so does everyone else know they cheat at golf. Word gets around. And when you are known as a cheat, fewer people want to play with you. Who wants to play with a cheat? You have to keep an eagle eye out. How many strokes did they really take? Did they sneakily move the ball for a better lie? It takes the fun out of it and it may also have a negative effect on your own game because you can’t truly relax with a cheater.
So, you see, golf is a microcosm thing. It is a wonderful game for young people to learn if they learn the lessons of honesty, integrity and the like. I think it is the only game where a player has been known to call attention to committing a foul and then adding strokes to their score because of the foul. That is darn cool.
You know, if Trump had learned about all that and taken it to heart, we would not be in the situation we find ourselves in today. And neither would he.
For non-golfers, you may not know this but golf balls can break windows. And it is on the golfer that hit the ball. They are responsible. And most golfers are honorable enough to seek out the owner of the window or leave a note if no one is home. I’m not convinced Donald would do that. I don’t know but I’m sure it is true. (one of Bill Maher’s favorite lines).
Speaking of Bill Maher, he has been predicting that Trump will refuse to leave office. He did a montage on his program last week that went back years of him saying Trump will no go. People thought it was ludicrous. But, he was right all along. In golf that would be akin to refusing to lose a match. It just doesn’t happened. And it has never happened before in the history of our democracy, politically speaking.
Ever heard a pro golfer give an interview and call Golf Magazine a hoax? Of course not. It has never happened. Ever heard a player state that if the round isn’t completed by a certain time, that they must stop playing at that time for the match to be legit? Of course not. You get the drift by this time, I assume.
Golf is such a wholesome game in so many ways and it is beyond ironic that this man living in the People’s House, has been shown to owe $400 million today on properties that have golf courses. But, really, when will the dripping ever stop?
Jeering at a winner in golf just doesn’t happen. Cheering happens all the time for all the players because anyone who golfs knows just how darn hard the sport really is. 99% of all golfers in the world are duffers…just not that good. But that doesn’t stop us. We look forward to the next round hoping for the best, always. We tell people we are playing with that their shots were good…we never comment when the shot is bad…unless the errant shot ends up next to the pin in the in the hole!! That is part of the fun and enjoyment. It is a thrill to see a great shot up close and personal be it mine or someone I’m playing with. A good shot is a good shot. It is to be appreciated and admired. If a person hits a good shot, acknowledging it is akin to saying thank you in a way. It is just so cool.
Recently I have considered selling my clubs because of my poor play. However, having written this, I realize, I can’t give it up. I is a reminder of all that is good in this life. Playing for fun, enjoying the walk, the nineteenth hole, the challenge and yes, the honor and trust and the humility.
There. I left you all on a high note!!
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