Life of Wry

Such the week of ridiculously high temperatures and uncharacteristic humidity.  Makes for some pretty skies.

I’ve said it many times: the 100 degree days in September never distress me, unlike when they occur in April, or June, or August (or anytime inbetween). Those distress me plenty, but in September, the end of the 100 degree days is in sight and I just let them be.. no anxiety, no despair… relief is on the way.

Here are a few sky shots from today and yesterday..

Last night’s sunset over the house:

An early morning stop at Starbucks:

And three variations of the view along Road 31, on our way to get Solly and Matt before heading to Sac State for another game against Pleasant Grove.. about 7:15am.. which works for you? (You can just muse on this and answer to yourself, of course.)

Happy Birthday, Matty.

Both of these were taken about ten years ago.  He hasn’t changed a bit. (Peter, on the other hand….)

It’s Thursday, which can mean only one thing: Throwback Thursday. Which can mean only one thing: dive into the archives and post & comment on an old photo (or five). What a relief.. because I have NO photos in my phone today.

(That’s a white lie: I took some of the half brown leaves on our front yard tulip tree to take in and show Don the nursery man… but a blog post that does not make.)

So, here’s what I got instead: HEAD LICE outbreak at Chavez, January 2008.

Why not. Here goes….

First, off comes the hair. Ow, Dad!

Let me do it:

I hate head lice (but someone thinks I look cool anyway):

Those micro nits are hard to pick out, need to cut a little more… going for the convict look:

But it did grow out and look pretty good a couple months later:

It’s been awhile since I’ve done the shoes… but it was time.  Too many boxes of nicely labeled shoes, too few places to wear them.  All summer, I’ve bounced back and forth between flip flops and running shoes, if I wore shoes at all. And aside from our 9-day hiking trip to Yosemite, that’s all I’ve worn for, like, four months. So… for the sake of simplicity and space, it was time to purge.

Here’s what went to R&R:

I learned that some shoes just can’t hack the neglect of long term storage. Numerous pair, including pricy, industrial-grade Danskos just sort of disintegrated, or seemed sticky. Yes, sticky. Another pair of royal blue pumps had crumbling sole syndrome. My hands were actually wet after handling a former favorite pair of clogs. WTF.

I got rid of lots of business-casual, because: work. Not happening. And even some casual-casual, like penny loafers. In the case of the loafers, I 86’d them because my feet have lengthened and spread (maybe it’s the flip flops and barefeet). I’ve always loved the Levis and loafers look, but even without socks they hurt. Sigh.

I’m embarrassed to say how many shoes I’d never actually worn, like some natty preppy flats from Lands End that I ordered online that ended up being too big, for example, or a couple of fun and sassy flats I got while shopping with my mom in Hollywood Riviera, just to be a good sport. I can’t see myself walking around Davis with faux flowers and jewels on my shoes. But the most costly of the never-worns was a pair of swanky, sexy boots with lots of buckles that I bought in NYC about ten years ago because I thought sophisticated boots from NYC would be just the thing. I wore them exactly once: in the store. Back in California, I hated them.

The rest of the cast offs, were a combination of bad decisions, wear and tear, or lost interest (is 58-years-old a good time to stop wearing Mary Janes?).

Don’t feel sorry for me, I still have Keens and Tevas coming out of my ears, plenty more Danskos, lots of flip flops, probably four pairs of perky padded Sketchers in a variety of colors, dressy sandals, Converse sneakers, several athletic and outdoor shoe & boot options for all weathers, and even these…

… because you never know when you may need to break an ankle.

I also have two pairs of cowboy boots, because I may need to kick some ass.

So, you know, shoe bases covered.

Jeff Andrews’ beautiful painting of David at the corner has found a permanent home at Crepeville, the restaurant across the street from Compassion Corner that has, for many, many years, supported David’s efforts in numerous ways.

It’s a lovely tribute to David and his work to spread awareness for compassion, and a fitting thank you to Crepeville.

If you look closely, you can see the stop sign and the 3rd and C street sign between the tree and the wall…

… oh, wait.  Wrong song. Very wrong song.  

I was just reminded of this song, and have been singing it all day, because we brought home a new washing machine. I got the verb right: Wash. And the object right: Man.  But that’s about it… .the last thing I’d wanna do is rid myself of our washing machine installer and all around DIY guy: Jim.

Anyway. The old one was spotting all of our clothes with big oil stains due to a weakened seal somewhere. Nice, huh?

So, here’s what we’ve got…..

The new one’s a front-loading Maytag and the old one’s a 27-year-old Amana. They don’t make them like they used to. 

In January of 2013, Madeline asked if I’d have any interest in participating in a food group (I said yeah).  At our first organizational meeting, we defined our group’s parameters: informal quarterly potluck gatherings, where each member of the group (then, there were nine of us, now we are seven) would bring one part of a meal (main, salad, soup, dessert, etc) and the dishes would generally be healthy and easy to prepare. All of our dishes together would comprise a complete dinner, the entire menu of which would be suitable for entertaining. In other words, faced with the prospect of hosting a dinner for friends (as sometimes happens, including the oft-daunting task of figuring out what to serve), we could always fall back on the entire, turn-key menu from one of our gatherings. [First world] problem solved! We stipulated that we would always provide the recipes to share with each other, including preparation tips. At our group dinners, then, we would describe the dish each of us brought and together we would critique them. We’d also share other cooking tips and ideas. 

And pretty much, that’s exactly what we’ve done. We’ve met six times since forming the group, rotating hosts each time; tonight was my turn.

The host sets the theme and is responsible for the main dish. I decided the theme this time would be end-of-summer dishes, the ingredients of which would be all local and purchased at the Davis Farmers Market. 

I made chile rellenos with homemade tomato sauce since Anaheim chiles and tomatoes are in season.  I found the recipe in the Davis Farmers Market cookbook. 

Some pics of that…

First, roasted the chiles to remove the skins:

I then cut them open, deseeded them, filled them with jack cheese, and placed them in a dish on top of a thin layer of homemade tomato sauce. 

Here’s the sauce that simmered for a few hours on the stove:

Then, I separated sixteen eggs, beat the yolks and whites separately, folded them together with flour and salt, and spread the whole mixture over the chiles, cheese and sauce. I’m never very confident with figuring out how long to go to get stiff peaks and I worried I’d gone too far because the texture of the raw mixture was weird… 

When baked, this turns golden brown and the baked texture is really light. The whole dish was actually pretty good, not as labor intensive or as greasy as battered and fried rellenos.   

I also made a white peach sangria, using these ingredients:

(Also sugar and lemon.)

We sat outside for sangria and appetizers, then moved inside for dinner. 

The rest of the menu:

Tomato and basil bruschetta

Chilled cream of tomato soup

Grape, toasted almond, arugula and sweet onion mixed green salad

Homemade corn tortillas from Mi Abuelito 

Tomato, corn salad

Peaches in red wine

It was all excellent. Here we are starting the soup course:

Madeline, Tracy, Kristen, Carol and Rissa (Susan is out of town). 

Actually, not so far. Today’s fancy new field to play on was at Sac State.  Nice place. 

Maybe more far-afield was my scorekeeping effort… if a scorekeeping effort can even be far-afield (I’m going with it, in any case.)  (What IS she talking about??)

Boys played a ten-inning game today. Fall ball is quite relaxed…   tons of player substitutions…a musical chair lineup, if you will; five or six different pitchers; a nine-player lineup one inning, eleven-player lineup the next (this was the worst of the infractions). All havoc for the poor scorekeeper.  I think it took me more time this afternoon to make sense of the game stats than it took the boys to play the ten innings. In fact, I’m sure it did. These digital programs are not equipped to handle data that are outside the legitimate constructs of the game. If you know what I mean. So it took lots of time to figure out some workable work-arounds. Definitely overkill on my part, but it was fun to figure out the program.

So there was that. 

Here is a corner of the field… a far corner, in keeping with my blog title.  And quite unintentionally, I think I actually got Peter in this post-game shot:

I was a small cog yesterday.  In the world of the PTA, small suits me.  Grateful for the relatively small group of parents who contribute great gobs of time and effort to make things the best they can be for our kids and their school.  Me, I’m content to be a small cog in this big wheel.  

I had to laugh the other day describing for Peter one of my more unsung roles (in a pretty long list of unsung roles): I volunteer on a particular committee of the PTA that makes food for teachers’ special lunches.  Meaning, twice or three times a year, I sign up online to bring a dish to one of these lunches. I drop it off in the staff room at DHS an hour or so before the lunch is served, often when nobody is yet around. I return an hour or so after the lunch and collect my serving dishes. Nobody has any idea who the person is behind the dish. It takes a couple of hours of my time between shopping, preparing and delivering… and is utterly unrecognized.  Kind of weird, huh?  I wonder why I choose such an anonymous way of contributing.

Yesterday was a bit less anonymous. Showed up at this one mom’s house to work away with about 30 other parents (mostly moms) to process a bunch of forms and fees that had been submitted by students during registration this year. A huge accounting job, as it turns out.  Worked for about 90 minutes.  Satisfying enough in that we-all-gotta-do-our-small-part-to-make-sure-it-all-works way.  

Here’s a pic taken in the breakfast nook part of the house (I was in the family room, where there were two large tables full of workers; there were more in the living room):

And for the record: my columns all added up.  Not on the first try (or second or third) but eventually.   

Two views took my breath away today:

This one I saw while standing in Mishka’s waiting for my coffee. It’s a painting by this month’s artist whose theme appears to be Bay Area sailing. The others are great, too, and are all from the same perspective…from the water. Made me want to get right out there on a reach…or something. 

And this was at the end of tonight’s baseball game at DHS. Peter and I were walking toward the car and saw a great pre-sunset sky: