Dinner and Dancing

My mom's favorite vegetable is carrots. The last time I served these red ones, she loved them. I wasn't sure if she'd love them tonight or not. Beloved foods fall by the wayside now and then. Last night she picked every last seed out of her tomatoes (which I'd skinned.) And the little "beans" inside the green beans, she removed too.

I'm happy to say that tonight's veggies were a success. And it appears that salmon is still on her list of edible foods too. I do feel though that anything can be bumped from the list at any moment. Bacon is gone as are Rice Krispies and most soups. In a way it makes cooking easier. She really loves sandwiches and pizza right now.

As for me, I'm going dancing. And post dancing, there'll be a Skype session with the man from Indiana. Still the leash feels short this evening. There's been non-stop moaning for two days, but when I ask if she needs a pain pill or a hot pack, the answer is no. The moaning is unconscious. If I tell her she's moaning, which I don't like to harp on, she says she doesn't know she's doing it. If I timed it, roughly every 3 seconds, she makes a sound. There are three or four sorts of moans in her repertoire. One sounds like pain, another like disgust--kind of an abbreviated "Bah!" as in Bah Humbug, the others sound like little satisfied sounds or maybe like she's surprised. Two days of it non stop. Did I mention that? Maybe I'll keep mentioning it over and over again, okay?

Or maybe I'll just go waltz and rhumba and cha-cha for a couple hours. If my mom could still dance, that would probably help her too.

Self-Portrait with the Dead

I didn't set out to make a selfie. Dan's memorial was just so pretty I ran around taking photos of everything. I look hunched up and sad, and that's how I feel these days. Like the couch is made of flypaper and I'm a bug who can't get off. Until I'm forced to manufacture some kind of dinner for my mom. Last night was an embarrassing array of no-effort leftovers. Tonight I'm making lentil soup if I get up in the next ten minutes.

I've been in the weirdest state of mind. Like I could sit all day and Google how to bring a person back from the dead and then actually read the shit that comes up.

It's fixing to rain here. I like the feel of it. Like at least the weather is doing something.

And now I'm doing something too. Soup. I'm making soup. I'm making soup. Well obviously, I'm not. I'm typing. But now really, I'm making soup.

*****

I made soup. I chopped up an onion and some celery and sautéed them in olive oil. I added chicken stock and seasonings and lentils. We'll have soup and some sliced avocado and persimmons, and could anything be better? I'll toast some french bread and butter too.

I just made my mom her 2 oz. doctor-permitted martini and if all goes as usual, she'll soon be having a pre-dinner conversation with her dead sister and who knows who else. She's got a talent for talking to the dead.

God, don't you just wanna come over here?

And did I mention that the non-alchoholic gin arrived? I'm going to have some with a little ginger beer--which y'all might think is ass-backwards. Like maybe I should be the one drinking and not the 90-year-old. Truth be told, I'm pretty sure she'd know the difference and be pissed as hell about it, and I really don't feel I can drink while I'm responsible for her. Any minute I could be following the ambulance to the hospital, then acting like a fool when I can't remember shit when the paramedics or the doctors question me about this and that. That's how I am stone cold sober under pressure.  I can act like a drunk with no help at all from a little fermented bunch of berries. 

Report from Pillville: the pulmonologist, the vascular surgeon, the ultrasound, the foot doctor, and it takes a village...

See these birds? They hang out in a flock. Genius.

My mom's pulmonologist fired her today. That's right. When she arrived here two years ago she was still smoking, still taking breathing treatments that were required after a bout of pneumonia or something, still sleeping with a C-Pap, skinny as could be despite all the good food at my brother's house, and she was still somewhat frail from her lung cancer surgery that had occurred three years earlier. A year and half off cigarettes, she sleeps with oxygen, but that's it. She no longer needs a pulmonologist.

And that wasn't even the best part of the day. When we got home from the doctor, my friend Paula was making carrot ginger soup. That's right, I came in the door, and the kitchen had someone else in it making food, and my house smelled delicious. (And right now, this very minute, she's pouring us wine and bringing me chocolate.)

Tomorrow might go less well. My mom is having some leg pain, so the vascular surgeon is working her in. Later in the week, there will be an ultrasound of her neck because of her coughing fits which originate from a mysterious tickle in her throat, not her lungs. The ENT doc is stumped. Then next week, it's the foot doctor. Keep in mind, it's foot doctor number 3, and she doesn't particularly like him either. No matter how it goes, we won't come home to the smell of soup, and I will be pouring my own wine, so it can't possibly be as good as today.

I would like to belong to a flock. A village. A cooperative of old women taking care of their even older mothers. Or maybe I'd like to be a bird.

Vegetarians Go Wild

This is either vegetarian nirvana, I told my friend Paula, or we've lost our minds.

The recipe for the grilled hearts of romaine came in my CSA box, so we tried it. Drizzled with its homemade lemon dijon dressing and accompanied with grilled lemon slices and sprinkled with shaved parmesan, it was fabulous. Meaty, even.

The evening meal also included Paula's homemade hummus.

the finished product

the process

And beets with goat cheese--which I didn't photograph.

And not only do Paula and I love to eat the same things, today we discovered we were wearing the exact same t-shirt from Target.

State of the State of the Margaritaville

It not yet 8:00 p.m. here in Margaritaville, and I am in bed, wearing my warmest pajamas while the wind tosses patio cushions askew and makes my house feel about as airtight as tent fashioned from a fishnet. In bed with me is my heating pad, a sorry substitute for the man who loves me. The man is tucked into a hospital bed (where he's been since Thursday night,) and if the energy level he exhibited when I left him around 4:30 remains the same, I'd say he is fast asleep. Once again he's been laid low with a soaring white cell count, and this time he had a racing heart and a fever to go with it.

"You knock me out," he murmured when I kissed him good-bye. He looked at me the way he looks at me. Go ahead, imagine it--because I don't have the words for it. Maybe it's the way you'd look at a woman made of water if you were dying of thirst. The way you'd look at a woman breathing out sunbeams if you were freezing to death. Yeah, something like that.

I came home from the hospital and made my favorite no-brainer of a dinner. Salmon poached in a little vermouth, sweet potatoes, green beens, and sliced tomatoes and avocados. I loaded the dishwasher and left my 89-year-old mother to wash the pots and pans.

And in other news, before going to the hospital, I drove to 65 miles to a divorce mediation first thing this morning. Long time readers of this blog, those of you might recall its original name, which I am prohibited by order of the court to render into  print here, sit yourselves down. The mediation went well. Yes, indeed, two months short of seven years since the uttering of the sentence with the trifecta of bad news (our marriage is over, I'm marrying someone else, and we want the house so we can raise our new family here,) the mediation went well. 

It's been a mixed day. And while I would not have ever thought it possible seven years ago to imagine   being more sad than happy on a day when the divorce mediation went well, that is how it is here on this particular evening in Margaritaville.

What I Cooked, part II

Collard Greens Salad with Quinoa, Strawberries, Walnuts, and Avocado

My friend Paula is game. She likes to eat. She likes to travel. She's not afraid to change things up. I might not have made this salad without her here, and I certainly would not have made my own tahini for the tahini based salad dressing....but I did. One peek at the salad dressing labels at Vons with their to the moon sodium content and roster of weird ingredients sent us to the Asian food aisle where I bought a jar of sesame seeds instead. After a little dabbling, the concoction  transformed from paste into dressing. 

But the cutting of the collard greens was the most entertaining part. Remove the center stem, the instructions commanded, then stack the leaves, roll them up like a cigar, and slice them into narrow ribbons. The result was beautiful. 

We also had a radish and cilantro salad in a citrus dressing.

And ceviche from the local fish place.

We lingered at the table, and I am grateful for that.

The wind has been blowing manically since yesterday afternoon, non-stop. Having a houseguest has keep me from retreating to my bed and pulling the covers up over my head.

What I Cooked

At the end of a week during which my mom seemed especially tired, and a week during which every conversation with the man who loves me contained the words cancer, or chemo, or radiation, this is what I cooked:

Artichokes. Pasta with pistachio/spinach/basil pesto. Heirloom tomatoes with basil and fresh mozzarella.

My friend Paula arrived with a lots of wine and chocolate.

And she brought her dog.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'll go eat some more chocolate.

Healing Meals

This is just marvelous, the man who loves me says when he sits down to dinner. He smiles at his plate  and gets a faraway dreamy look on his face. Tonight, day four out of the hospital, we had salmon poached in vermouth with dill and roasted cauliflower with sweet red peppers, garlic, and onions. Last night it was spinach and onion quiche (and 2 strips of bacon for that comfort food feel.) Side dishes were squash and beet greens with garlic, sesame oil, and peanuts. The night before that was meatloaf and sweet potatoes and a green salad. The first night home was lentil soup and sourdough bread. He's been so enthusiastic that I feel I'm now my own hard act to follow. Tomorrow night I might have to make this:

Before word gets out that I am a very lazy cook.

From the children's book "A Medieval Feast" written and illustrated by Aliki,

And a fine Christmas it was!

the daughters

Thanksgiving is our holiday.
Christmas is when the daughters go off to be with the families of their significant others.

This year was different. With  C's husband off doing his four-week shift of work out on a boat, and M's girlfriend with her family on the east coast alone, both daughters were here. Old friends had their adult children home for the holidays too, so I made dinner. I was waaay to busy to take pictures, so you'll have to believe me when I tell you the lemon bars were better than ever and that the flourless chocolate cake with the powdered sugar snowflake stenciled on top was divine. I made a green salad with mini heirloom tomatoes that looked like Christmas lights and  roasted veggies that were white and red and green with a little orange thrown in for good measure (cauliflower, red peppers, brussels sprouts, and carrots.) I made salmon in vermouth with dill and I grilled a marinated tri-tip that I wish had been more tender--but people ate it. My friend Ellen brought her  famous wine jello. There was pink champagne and ginger ale and lots of coffee, and I stayed up talking until 1:30 a.m.

I meant to take a picture of all the dirty glasses this morning, but I washed them instead.

I meant to tell everyone how happy I was that they were here--and I think I did that, but if I'd said it fifty times it still wouldn't have been enough to express how much I love these people I got to spend Christmas with.

And the day after tomorrow the son and his family will arrive, so the love will multiply.

the mothers

Notes from Margaritaville, Pillville, and The Love Shack

the love shack a.k.a. my bedroom

It is big deal to sleep next to someone you love when that someone is in pain. Somehow you are asleep and somehow, simultaneously, you are awake. You hear the moans and winces and whimpers, and you are sorry and disturbed, but you realize until that moment you have been sleeping pain free while the person next to you has not been so fortunate, and you ponder life's big questions until...you don't. You wake long enough after the next moan to wonder if you should wake him and ask if he needs a pain pill or the heating pad or should you try digging your fingers under his shoulder blade, but you think better of it because he's silent now. You hope he realizes how completely happy you are that he's next to you despite the way things are currently because it's pure comfort to know what is going on first-hand and not have to imagine him in his own place alone and guess at how that's going. When he sits up for a second sometime in the middle of the night, knowing you're awake too, and he asks you if you're sleeping okay, you want to try to explain what comfort he's providing you by being there and how it doesn't really matter that you've been waking up between stretches of sleeping quite well, but it might be too long of an explanation and then maybe neither of you will get back to sleep, so you just mutter something positive. But later when you are in the middle of a nightmare in which your mother hands you an bloody apron and a pair of gloves and says, "These are the ones that were used in the murder," and she gives them to you like you are supposed to do something--what, you don't know--wash them? Bury them? You don't know, so you scream and scream. Then he wakes you so your terror can stop. You thank him, and you think about terror and pain and how they're alike and different, and somehow you both sleep again.

Readers, you may feel that you have missed a blog post, but you have not. I have been rendered silent (for about as long as I have ever been silent here on this blog) by the fact that the man who loves me has lung cancer. There will be surgery. There will be chemo. Right now there's pain. And in as much as this man and I have endeavored to maintain our separateness throughout this love affair we've been having for the past 5 years, I cannot say how much I will write about the part of this story that is happening to him. But it is a fact that some small part of it is happening to me. So, I will go back to silence or write about that part.

And as for the regular proceedings of life in Pillville, my mother has a stronger pain pill that required giving up her martini for a few nights. That dream recounted above--well, I think it was probably me she murdered and just to really let me know how much she detested my delivery of the no alcohol tidings, she not only murdered me, but also asked me to clean up the mess. She had terrible back pain after returning home from the hospital, but it has abated and tonight, due to the tapering off of the meds, there will be a martini, she has just informed me. As for me, I think a glass of my favorite cheap red will go nicely with this.

And in Margaritaville today the sky looked like a pile of cotton balls.

The fishing was easy. If you were a heron.

Due to my inept photography, you can't see that the heron has a large fish in its beak. The seagull wants it.

And the guardian of the neighborhood was in her usual place, watching over all of us. Or at least the rodents in the empty lot. Blessings upon all of us is what I hope for. Even for the heron's fish. Even for those rodents as they feel the prick of talons as they are swept skyward.

Thank you for the birthday wishes on Facebook, by text, by phone, by email, by blog comment, in person, by telepathy, etc.

The day began with flowers. I was in the kitchen, first sip of my latté barely swallowed when M came in the door. The result was this.

And  breakfast was made--(not by me) eggs with chorizo and avocado and onions and toasted tortilla strips.

Then came the farmer's market where this happened.

And there was cake baking (not by me!!!) that started like this.

And there was a feast prepared (not by me!!!) Grilled shrimp, grilled asparagus, rice so embellished I'm not sure how to describe it.
And the serving of the most succulent gluten free carrot cake ever in the history of the world.

And afterwards, a duet sung by the daughters for which everyone was require to surrender their devices. ( M sang the Tom Wopat tenor while C sang the Bernadette Peters soprano from "Annie Get Your Gun.")

And utter loveliness ( I did have a bit of something to do with that.)

There was a quite literal ache (in a good way) in my heart all day.

Thank you.

Top Ten Reasons I Love Living With My Mother

1. Well, she's my mom.
2. I get weird living alone.
3. I actually cook things--whole meals--and I eat them.
4. I sit at the dining room table while eating the meals I cooked.
5. There's someone to talk to while I sit at the dining room table eating the meals I cooked.
6. It's fun to have another bird nerd in the house. (We will both get up from the table if a blue heron comes in for a landing.)
7. I never have to do the dishes.
8. Due to my new motto, "There ought to be one sober person in the house," I'm hardly drinking at all.
9. She has cookies hidden in her bedroom.
10. Since I can't really go anywhere, my writing life has revved up.

I've been writing a novel for a while. The first 150-some pages were my MFA thesis. I was, at that time, in the absolute worst physical-mental-intellectual-psychological condition of my life due to my fucking hell-hole of a divorce. A few months back, I finally opened the  novel file on my computer and completed a first draft. Today chapters 4 and 5 traded places. Then chapters 3 and 4 traded places. New scenes were added to all of the above. Chapter 7 ate chapter 6. I think I  have 55 much-improved pages.

Thanks, Mom
Here's a fuzzy photo of me and my diploma.

48 hours--and then some

The make-up room in my college theatre department. 

I spent a lot of time with hairspray, pancake, and incredibly good friends there 40 years ago.

My weekend away:

A two hour shuttle ride.
A three and one-half hour plane trip.
An airport pick-up.
A pizza and a conversation with C and her husband.
Five and one-half hours of sleep.
A two-hour drive.
A walk and talk with an old friend
A day of reunion with friends from a semester abroad in France 40 years ago.
Drinks.
Dinner.
More conversation.
Five hours of sleep.
A two hour shuttle ride.
A three and one-half hour plane trip.
An hour and a quarter shuttle ride.
Home.
Out with old friends.

How to get rid of the negative bullshit in your head.

My week thus far:

Seeing my mom change out her walker for a cane.
Reading info from physical therapist.
Follow-up visit to doctor.
Phone calls with two other doctors and physical therapist.
No yoga.
No gym.
No t'ai chi chih.
No beach walks.
Run futile errand search for box of dusting powder. Has anyone bought a box of dusting powder in the last decade?
Ridiculously embarrassing road rage event.
Wallow stupidly in moody bender as worst self.
Shopping for arrival of house guests.
Finding stuffed refrigerator non-funtional next morning.
Refrigerator madness.
Refrigerator repair minutes before guests arrive.
Guests arrive!Eat.
Drink.
Enjoy family.
Write.
Breathe.
Walk around the corner to watch fireworks.Imagine life falling into its normal rythym. Whatever that ever changing rhythm may be.

Blessing the Beauty

Margaritaville has been bursting with beauty this spring. Herons swooping in nearly every day. More stillness than wind. Mother Nature has perhaps misplaced her calendar because there's been very little of the typical southern California June Gloom. Some evenings, there's barely a ripple on the water, the air soft.

Beauty indoors, too.

And beauty looking in from the outside.

Complete deliciousness, all of it--

in this place I call Margaritaville.

Books and Brie

Thanks to the presence  of daughter M, I went away for an overnight.

First there was this.

A reading at Flintridge Books by one of my favorite writing teachers.

This book includes snippets of writing by a few of Barbara's students. A half-dozen of us were there last night and we read, too.

Then I spent the night with the man who loves me at his place. 

Dinner was chips and cheese and crackers. After 270-some nights of cooking dinner for my mom with the only respite being three evenings of take-out pizza, and two previous nights away, last night's dinner felt like pure decadence. Cheese. Chips. I think we ate it off of plates, but I'm not sure because there was a lot of wine involved. Maybe we just shoved our heads into the bag and tore at the wedge of brie with our teeth.

I slept with both ears closed, dropping off to the distant yip-yip-yeeeee of coyotes. I sleep well-enough at home with my mom. In fact, I'm pretty sure I'm the middle-weight sleeping champion of the world. But there's sleeping and then there's sleeping.

Refreshed, my mom and I tried the various CPAP masks again this afternoon, thinking that we might have better luck if we tried a daytime practice run. 

Nope.

One year and two and one-half weeks after buying a house in Margaritaville....

I finally made it into a kayak. A borrowed kayak, but yes--a kayak.  In fact, C is visiting, so we borrowed two kayaks.

We paddled a couple of miles, I guess, from the yacht club where we borrowed the kayaks back to my house so we could prove to my mother that we hadn't drowned. "That looks like a lot of work," she said, as if we hadn't realized there were boats with motors.

Not really adept at anything athletic, I thought I might have trouble getting into the kayak from the dock, but both getting in and getting out went smoothly. Paddling went smoothly, and it was a glorious southern California day. A breeze, brilliant sun, blue herons flying overhead. Perfect.

Now I must pad, rather than paddle, down to the kitchen and create some dinner.

Blood is Thicker than Water, but Smoke Looks a Lot Like Fog

I smelled it. That chimichuri sauce I put on the fish seems smoky, I thought. I was at my desk juggling  a pile of paper with making dinner. My mother was talking to herself  in full voice, and it had been going on for hours. I needed a little space. I put on NPR. Turned off NPR. Put on music. Turned off the music. Finally I went to my room and closed the door, and turned on my computer. I could hear the fog horns--they'd been making noise for long while, but it was only an hour or so ago that the fog really began to roll into Margaritaville. I wanted to stay in my room and watch the fog blanket my corner of the world. C'mon, muffle everything. Wrap me into silence.

But there was dinner.

My mother was standing at the kitchen island with her martini when I went downstairs. She was still talking. Something about cheese. She'd had enough cheese. It's even foggier than it was a minute ago, I thought. When I opened the oven to test the fish, a cloud of smoke rolled out. The pyrex dish that the fish had been in had spit in two, and the fish now sat in a crevasse, its juices dripping to the bottom of the oven, a slick back stain solidifying into a smoky crust.

I'd already had a fairly stupid day. I'd walked into the sliding screen door and wrenched my neck. I'd sunburned myself while oiling my teak table and chairs on the patio. Not being able to tell the difference between smoke and fog while incinerating dinner was not really necessary to bring home the fallible human shit.

Dinner, surprisingly, was not bad. The fish was not ruined. The roasted carrots and sweet potatoes survived. The avocado was perfect. My cheap red wine tasted expensive.

After dinner I decided to walk--fog or no fog. Afterwards, I picked up our mail and came in through the back door. My mom didn't hear me come in, and there she was, drinking right from the bottle of cheap red. Caught you, I said, and left it at that. She keeps her martinis pre-mixed in the freezer. Maybe she's been tipping that bottle right up to her lips, too. Maybe that's why she finds herself a scintillating conversationalist.

I don't know why her talking to herself gets on my nerves, but it does. About half of it is moaning rather than articulated words.

The good news is that when I went back to the doctor's office for my blood pressure re-check on Thursday, it was normal. The nurse gave me all the blood pressure hand-outs anyway. How you're feeling isn't a reliable indicator of blood pressure, apparently. Which is good, because today I felt like my head might just blow off and go straight through the ceiling.

photo credit: dance.net

Days of Wonder and Amazement

The weather has been shifting here. When the man who loves me and I walked on the beach yesterday afternoon there was a rainbow ring around the sun. Kind of like this.

It poured as we slept last night. Then sunny this morning when we woke. A cold wind kicked up while I was at the farmer's market and I rushed away with my fresh fish as well as some Taiwanese spinach ("Much more flavor!" says the farmer) and this wonderful and amazing stuff.

It's peanut butter. I cooked the halibut with the barbeque peanut butter tonight. My mom wasn't crazy about it....but I LOVED it! I'm imagining some kind of banana dessert. And stir-frying the spinach with the curry peanut butter.

And speaking of wonderfulness, Downtown Abbey season 3 kicks off tonight. Did you catch the interview with some of the cast members on Morning Edition?

Days of wonder and amazement here in Margaritaville.

photo credit for the photo of the sun: news.nationalgeographic.com

HUGE

2012 was stuffed with big things. Sold a house. Bought a house. Left the haunted city of my marriage, but moved 60-some miles from the man who loves me. Applied to four grad programs. Got rejected from four grad programs. Gave up my volunteer job walking Human Society dogs. Gave up my volunteer job tutoring at the Downtown Women's Center. And took on my 88-year-old mother. I cook dinner every night. I walk on the beach every morning. I have a regular Tai Chi Chih practice and a regular yoga practice. I eat less salad. Juice less. Bake more. I see my daughter M almost every weekend. The drive between my son's house and my new place is at least 90 minutes longer. Daughter C now has a room in my new place after months of sleeping on my couch last year--but now doesn't live here. I still have my ancient cat. And I am thrilled by the birds we see here on the water.

While I sit here on the couch with my cat, I listen for the call of the blue heron. While the man who loves me plays a gig I can't attend, I listen to the sound of my mom coughing and the hiss of her oxygen machine. I'm another year out from the end of my marriage. My grandchildren are taller and stronger and smarter. My children continue to reveal new aspects of themselves to intrigue me. I've entered the decade of my 60s.

Some of last year's resolutions never got off the ground--pedometer, Joe's goals. But I have new ones. Kayaking. Homemade yogurt. Homemade sauerkraut and other fermented vegetables. This is how it goes. Failures. Successes. Trade-offs. New projects. Abandoned old ones.

What do I want now, I ask myself--because I am always wanting something. I want more than one night a week with the man who loves me. I want a lighter heart in my day-to-day dealings with my mother.

And then there is this escapist fantasy. But do I really want that? Not really. Not unless I could take everyone I love with me.