Life of Wry

I just thought those red onions looked cool. They were used in a dish in our [new] slow cooker that I made tonight: b/s chicken thighs, the above onions, celery, garlic, red pepper flakes, s/p, lemon, broth, wine, dill, cream cheese, spinach, artichoke hearts. Yummy.

The word oniones is a long time family joke, one that originated in Costa Rica nearly two decades ago when Jim wanted extra onions with his entree and asked for extra oniones. The thing is, the word for onion in Spanish is cebolla (and its plural cebollas).

Started my second bout of Efudex (first one in 2014 at about this time of year). This will make most of the next month weird. I’m a bit creeped out by smearing such heavy duty chemicals all over my face, especially knowing it’s going to penetrate the skin and attack cancer cells. Killing would be cancer cells is a good thing, of course, but it’s just weird. Hard to feel relaxed. I know it will be uncomfortable.. like a super bad sunburn when it ramps up (in about a week), maybe worse than that, if my experience last time is any indication.

Anyway, started it yesterday and tonight completed my fourth application. Four down, 38 to go. (Twice a day for 21 days.)

These took my mind off of my impending misery! They arrived in the mail anonymously and it took a couple hours of sleuthing to arrive at just who was responsible (Maya!). Sweetest gift ever.

She’d found this picture deep in my Facebook photo archive and ordered photo socks from a company called divvyupsocks dot com.

I could not love them more, or her for making them. Heart.

Luxuriating in the calm of the day after. Sitting around talking… eating leftovers… not much else. Peter’s showing Jim a program he wrote that reduces a famous painting by Georges Seurat (A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte) to its pixelian parts and reconstructs it again.

This may be what he’s showing to Maya, as well…

Eventually, Peter and Maya hang out with Ray and Jim and I go to see a fantasy black comedy at the Varsity, Poor Things (Yorgos Lanthimos). Quite a movie.. magnificent visuals and kind of a coming of age awakening slash sexual romp fantasy thing. I liked it. Though I wasn’t sure of that until the end. Nicely tied up.

Here’s a nice shot taken at E Street Plaza on the way home ..

From stockings and pastries in the morning to a robust conversation about AI on the car ride home (which I slept through).. ’twas another nice day.

[Speaking of stockings… I just had a brilliant idea about future stocking stuffing.. we draw names. I am planning to implement THAT next year.] This year, as in the past: I fill everyone’s and Jim fills mine.

Speaking of pastries, we relied on Upper Crust, mostly, for morning treats to go with our coffee… a German stolen (Peter’s favorite), a Swedish cardamom roll (exceptional, and nostalgic for me), a Jewish/Eastern European babka (somewhat of a tradition for us, at least since Seinfeld re-run days), and my fave gingerbread muffins. Oh, and some smoked salmon.

Peter and Maya at the tail end of present opening…

We gathered our items for the Christmas feast (cheese crackers, broc/cran/almond salad, See’s, vino) then took off at about 3:30 to meet up with the Bay Area Frames. The John Frames — for the first time in my Frame family tenure — forwent the gathering and went to Seattle, so we were four down! Remaining to gather were Alan, Marie, Monica, Dror, Nina, Ben and the four of us. All adults, no little kids.. it’s been that way for awhile now. It is quiet, I’ll say that. Not too much to take pictures of.. I mean, adults sitting around talking. Lol.

Peter and Maya petting the Matalon/Frame cat Reddy, who is so old, so docile, so big, and so amenable to anything affectionate. I do like taking pics of these adults.

Today was about prepping Christmas Eve dinner and delivering baked goods. It was mostly about hanging with these cutesters, listening to them sing and trade off playing guitar.

We decided we needed a bigger, less-cracked Crockpot, so I made a Christmas Eve trip to Target — yes, the last place I’d ever want to be on Christmas Eve but it was surprisingly not too chaotic — to get one. Yay.. no more stress about all the food fitting in the thing. We had a 4 quart, and now have a 7 quart. Yips! Here’s our giant 3 lb chuck roast getting slow-cooked in our new Crockpot to the tender state of falling apart (well, not quite, but it was good!). Room to spare!

The table’s been more or less Christmas-set for a few weeks now, but it looked particularly pretty for Christmas Eve dinner (I thought):

I have a couple of guest shots…. Janet with Jim…

And here’re Bill and Sabrina, who came over for dessert only…

It’s 9:30 on this Saturday night… Jim and I have another three hours before we go to the airport to fetch Peter and Maya. I’m all atwitter. Finished a boat load of baking — 17 dozen cookies and a pie. Glad I’d made all the doughs yesterday. Shopped a bunch, reorganized the fridge a bit… things like that. Now doing puzzles. All ready for tomorrow’s Christmas Eve dinner.. mostly.. just need to assemble in the croc pot (making a roast w/ potatoes and carrots, which will slow cook all day). Easy and tasty.

Um… that’s about it.

Butterballs, almont chocolate cookies, pecan pie.

This is what I did this afternoon: made a batch of gingerbread muffins (had some issues, but since I’m the only one who likes them, that’s okay.. they’re quite edible). Then I made the dough for these amazing flourless chocolate cookies (made with ground almonds). Then I made the dough for my favorite Christmas cookies — Russian Tea Cakes (aka Mexican Wedding Cookies or Butterballs or Pecan Sandies). Then I made the pie crust for a pecan pie. Then I made the dough for a batch of cheese crackers. And now, all I have to do is shape and bake tomorrow.. and make a pie. And some other things.

It was fun.

That title’s the sort of call and response that Joe opens the annual holiday show with.. as he jingles his bells and descends the theater stairs on his way to the Vet’s Memorial stage.

I’m glad for this concert each year. This year was the 20th. Jim and I (and in some early years Peter) have attended at least 15 of them, maybe more. Coming up with the exact number, if anyone were to ever ask me, would take some research.

I look forward to most of the musicians, and definitely the show. Incredible talents. Great community feel.

Joe Craven and Bill Edwards.

Bill, Chris Webster, Tracy Walton.

Tracy, Sam Misner (of Misner and Smith), Rita Hosking, Alaina Rose (who plays the harp), Joe, Boot Juice singer, Tracy’s sister (who played a beautiful flute in a flute/guitar rendition of Amazing Grace), the Boot Juice guy.

Founder Bill Fairfield.

The Rita Hosking Trio: Sean Feder, Rita, Bill Dakin.

Hattie Craven and her dad Joe.

Boot Juice.

There was one other group that I didn’t get a picture of… the opening act — always comprising students from some DJUSD music program. This year, it was a Jazz combo from Davis High that was terrific, the Alexander McClintock Quartet. Tears actually formed when they started play. I love seeing kids on their paths… motivated, passionate, earnest.

I’ll go to bed tonight singing, “Eating my way through the holidays, bite by beautiful bite,” a Bill Edwards original.

Also, happy Solstice.

This was fun

I stuffed, he sealed. It was a big deal!

(This was actually yesterday. Days to spare!)

Today was one of those days where I hit every green light (metaphorically speaking). All the remaining stuff that I’d ordered arrived, which meant we could wrap said stuff and mail the last of our packages; our cards were reproduced, folded, signed, stuffed, sealed and sent; and even a final bit of shopping happened. These are the fine details of the season.. the accomplishing of which is important, and feels so great, even as this is not the reason for the season.

On an unrelated errand to pick up a couple bottles of organic, Capay Valley hand-bottled olive oil from Nory (who has a friend…), Nory sent me home with some homemade eggrolls. That was completely unexpected and solved the dinner question! (This kind of day had originally called for Ikeda’s chicken pot pies.) A bonus dinner on top of an end-to-end busy day! How great is that?

Jim and I had never cooked eggrolls before .. but nothing a pan full of hot oil couldn’t take care of. May have left them in a smidge too long, but they were delicious and we didn’t have to cook. Thanks, Nory! Served them with leftover rice and Harry & David pears from neighbors Mary and Lou.

Dinner for the win!

~~

But you know the best news of the day? The former pres, running again in a gambit to avoid jail, just learned — as we all did this afternoon — that the Colorado Supreme Court has ruled that he cannot appear on their state ballot because three years ago he led his followers in an attempted coup… a failed and fraught effort to stay in power after losing his reelection. Turns out, engaging in an insurrection against the government and constitution you swore an oath to defend disqualifies you from holding office. LOL.

The wheels of justice crank ever so slowly. It was THREE years ago to the day that this whiny sore loser started his little insurrection ball rolling. Here’s his famous “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild” tweet from December 19. What a dimwit.

All in all, a fabulous day.