Christmas Tamales

For most of us, Christmas is a time of indulgent eating. Feasting and sampling far more than what we'd normally eat the rest of the year. It's become associated with 'the best', or 'the more the merrier'. Nowhere is this more true than right here in Arizona with the omnispresent tamale.

I'm a fan of tamales, never turning one down when it comes to eating one. But I've never made one, until this year. The true Mexican madre will begin making and freezing her tamales for the Christmas season as soon as the late summer or early fall and if she's got enough room in her freezer (it seems to be a sign of one-upmanship if you are lucky to have two or three freezers stuffed with tamales or their fixings) then she may have ten of dozens of tamales put away by Christmas.

Oh, they go fast however. If you are this same Mexican madre with the tamale stuffed freezer, then you do not show up to anyone's house during the Christmas season without a requisite bag of a dozen tamales bestowed upon the welcoming hostess. There were as many tamales offered as Christmas cookies where I come from. I'm quite sure that by New Year's, there won't be many tamale stuffed freezers left. They'll all be bare and waiting for more.

We've been fortunate to have met a lovely family that makes and sells their tamales. Given two days notice, Rene will have me replete with as many tamales as I request. We take them frozen back to the boys in Dillon Beach. We've feasted company on them. And we try to keep a dozen or two on hand in the freezer... just because.

But this Christmas season, I was given a very wonderful gift. My neighbor, Hope, offered to teach me to make tamales. She was thorough in her instruction and for several days before 'the Big Day' came, I was a) buying pork loin roast and beef roast and a huge bag of Mama Loco's corn husks and two pounds of manteca (lard) and on the proper day of the week(Wednesday afternoon here in Superior) a fresh bag of masa as soon as it was delivered off the truck, then b) opening the bag of corn husks and separating them and cleaning off any remaining 'hair' off the husks and c) cooking the roasts in slowcookers and saving the broth for the sauce. It was quite an operation, so that be Saturday morning, I felt I'd undertaken a whole new occupation: Making Tamales.

Hope is possibly the one of the premier tamale makers in town and I couldn't have learned from a better teacher. We started with the sauce, opening a can of Las Palmas red sauce (oh yes, these were red chile tamales that we made) and adding one part of shredded pork to two parts of shredded beef to a roux of vegetable oil and Bisquick, then just enough broth to impart the right liquidity. Then we started on the masa.

In a dishpan that was big enough to hold twenty pounds of masa, Hope creamed the lard, then broke up the masa mixture and added salt and baking powder and again, just enough broth to make it the consistency of a heavy pancake batter. (That's the crucial step, the right consistency.) Then she tested it by dropping a small spoonful in a glass of water. If the mixture floated, it was right for the tamale. If not, back to the mixing bowl adding more broth and lots more stirring.

Finally, we began the tamale making. A good tamale maker can crank out half a dozen a minute. A new tamale maker can do one in about three minutes. You pick up a corn husk and lay the wide end in the palm of your hand, the 'inside' of the corn husk is that part the mixture will go on, the 'outside' of the husk is the outside of the tamale. With a spoonful of masa, you start layering on the corn mixture across the bottom half of the corn husk. You don't want it to be too thick or it will spurt out of the tamale when it's rolled up. You don't want it to be too skimpy or you've missed the treat of the corn masa when you eat it. It's less than a quarter inch thick but thicker than an eighth inch thick and I guess when you get it right, that's the mark of a good tamale maker. Next you take a tablespoon or so of the red chile/meat mixture and spread it a third of the way down the tamale about a third of the way from where you started. A green olive or two can then be placed on the sauce. Now, starting at the lefthand side of the cornhusk, roll it up, enclosing the sauce and continuing rolling until you reach the end. Carefully fold the unfilled top end of the corn husk over the filled end, set your bundle upright in a pan and start rolling the next one. When you have enough to fill your steamer, steam a pan for an hour and a half, let them sit for half an hour and then you are ready to sample them. Downright heaven!

It's funny, but tamale ladies are quick to tell you how many they made that day. "Ten dozen!" an old lady down the street told me proudly one afternoon. "I couldn't sleep. I got up at four. And I make ten dozen by eight o'clock!" Or, "I've made five hundred since Thanksgiving!" another lady proudly told me. So I've been able to say, "My neighbor showed me how to make them and we got sixy!" (Yikes! I have a long way to go!)


I think with more practise, I could get good at these. They certainly are wonderful to eat. But I wonder if I want to get that good at making them. For I might replace my Christmas season of baking Christmas cookies with making mounds of Christmas tamales. I know it won't be hard finding somebody willing to eat them!

Gift Swap

Some folks maintain that there's nothing that sums up the frenzy of the Christmas Season like a good rousing gift swap at the Christmas party. I've never experienced the ruthless intensity of the steal-em'-as-many-times-as-you-can gift swap as has been generated here in Arizona. For the past two weeks, I've attended four such parties, and let me tell you, Arizonans have really honed their skill when it comes to these types of gift exchanges.

Now the invitations read: "Bring a White Elephant gift for the gift exchange". Sometimes they may add more details to it such as one that asked that nothing over $10 be brought or the "All Christmas ornaments" exchange held by one lady friend. But the other two... (they were the more 'down and dirty' of the exchanges) just said "a White Elephant". Now what springs to mind when somebody says a "White Elephant" is as different as you and me, I'm sure. What sprang to my mind was a replica of an Easter Island sun god molded into a Kleenex box that Bill's dad gave us one year after our trip to New Guinea. Yeah, it looked like a primitive warrior, all right, but the tissue had to be pulled out of his nose and somehow we just could never bring ourselves to put the darned thing out. So when I heard "White Elephant" that's the sort of thing I imagined.

And the Rules go something like this: When your name is called or your number is called, (depending on what style is used) the first person goes to the table and selects a wrapped gift. He opens it and shows it to the others of the group. The second person who is called can either steal the first guy's present or select another one off the table. If he steals the first guy's present, the first guy gets to take another present and open it. The 'deal' here is that you hope for a high number and not to be the first person. At the first gift exchange, the poor gal who chose the first present got hers stolen so many times that she must have gotten up twenty times during the course of the party. Of course, that meant, she had desirable presents. If you happen to open a 'dud' (happened to me at both parties) nobody bothers to steal your present and at the end of the evening, gee, it's yours to take home! One item can only be stolen one time in a round. Otherwise, it would make the party pretty much interminable.

At the first party, we got a Look-See at what makes a desirable present. It ran pretty much like this: Number One was liquor. Number Two was wine. Number Three was Lotto tickets. And Number Four were gift cards. The rest of the so-called white elephants were pretty much not being stolen back and forth. The hits were a bottle of Crown Royal and another with a bottle of Jose Cuervo and a pair of men's bikini underpants. If they got stolen once, they got stolen thirty times or so.

One of the gals who had stolen the Crown Royal and had it stolen back from her, was finally hanging onto a gift card from Borders. There was another one circulating from Chili's. A laconic cowboy just had his bottle of tequila stolen from him. Since the Crown Royal had already been stolen, it was 'out' of range on this round. The crowd urged him to steal one of the wine gifts.

He grimaced. "I can't drink that stuff! I gotta drink the real stuff."

"Well, steal the gift card for Mexican food!" one of his buddies urged him.

The cowboy nodded and clicked his heels. "Will do!" He took three strides over to the lady with the Borders card and plucked it out of her hand.

"What are you doing?" she shrieked. "That's a card for Borders!"

"It sure is!" he agreed, with a wide grin. "And I just love to eat Mexican!"

"Mexican food! You fool!" she cried, "It's for a book store. They don't serve Mexican food!"

In disbelief, the tipsy cowboy stared at the little card he clutched. "But I like to eat Mexican food. I don't read no books!" The crowd roared with laughter at the crestfallen look on his face.

At the second party, the gifts were even more eclectic: an orange strait jacket with "PSYCH WARD" emblazoned on the back proved to be a big winner; a large pair of fuzzy slippers with Homer Simpson's plastic face plastered on them; more Crown Royal and two kinds of tequila (but no men's underwear this time); a lit up snowman with "I BELIEVE" emblazoned on his tummy; and an oversize margarita glass with "PIMP" in four inch letters. Yes, the prizes were definitely getting more inventive as the Christmas season progressed. The worst prize was the first one selected and nobody stole it back, a wine gift bag stuffed with a can of Spagetti-O's and two Twix fun-size bars.

The joy of these parties is listening to the banter and repartee exchanged and it's impossible not to see the personalities and quirks emerge of these folks we are partying with. Since we're the relative newcomers, I'm having a ball taking it all in. Maybe the same zaniness will wane after watching these characters for twenty years or so. But for this year, it's all fresh and new and man... it gives me something to blog about, doesn't it?

Merry Christmas! And may your gifts be worth hanging onto.

For the Greater Good

The Land Exchange Bill is stalled in the Senate and it doesn't look like anyone can bring about a resolution for Resolution Copper before the new administration comes in. For all of the questions and strife it has caused for some in this tiny town of Superior, one thing is clear. Superior and its residents NEED this copper mine. They're not going to survive without it. Any why they are not getting it, is not clear.

What is CLEAR is that a lot of hanky panky and Big Money is going on behind closed doors regarding the legislation that could make this new copper mine a reality. Three years ago, Arizona's Governor Napolitano was for this bill. Now, she's distanced herself to no help at all. And why would that be? Since if the mine goes through, the fiscal impact on Arizona's economy would be between 600 and 800 million a year, for upwards of sixy years. Isn't that saying something in this economy that's bordering on Depression when jobs, - any jobs - are scarce to come by? Wouldn't anybody who is leading a state be proud to sponsor some legislation that would bring those kinds of Buckos into their state's coffers? Guess not.

Why not? Well... evidently, personal gains have gotten in the way. There's an environmental bigshot, with Big Money (he's married to a DuPont... and you know what? I've NEVER been a Jeff Gordon fan!) who has put up over a quarter of a million dollars the past two years to politicos to defeat this proposed land exchange that would make the copper mine a reality. The environmental bigshot is Bill Roe and he is highly regarded in Arizona's environmental community, like the Nature Conservancy. He has donated money to Janet Napolitano's PAC groups and others as well as big donations to Obama's elections and the Democratic Party. The man is determined to stop the mine. He claims he only wants Resolution Copper to add another choice bit of land to the bill, that along the San Pedro River near San Manuel. That's what he claims. But Resolution Copper doesn't own the land Mr. Roe is interested in having. It is owned by BHP that owns part of Resolution Copper but they are not a bit interested in taking that out of their pocket to make the Resolution Copper mine a reality. And why should they be? It sounds like political blackmail from where I am.

At first, I have to admit, I wasn't Gung Ho for the copper mine to move into this town. I've been worried about water quality and the fact of a mine going in two miles down that might implode the mountain. But there's a heap of technical stuff I don't understand and won't live long enough to begin to understand. So I have to hope that the Right Things will prevail to mean there won't be a huge environmental disaster around here. What is Paramount right now is what is the Greater Good? I believe it is for the young families around Superior and Pinal and Gila counties that don't have jobs or a good enough job to provide for their livelihoods. It's for this super little mining town of Superior that is hanging on by her darned fingernails as she slowly slips away brick by brick because there isn't enough business to sustain business in what could be a bustling little town.

What I'm saying is this: It's time for the politicians to stop thinking of their damned personal gain and start thinking about their constituency and get the Lead Out and get this bill moving through the Senate and House again, - before this next Administration starts all over again - and make this Land Exchange a reality. Forget the dealings of these "do-gooders" Environmentalists and these politicians who aren't looking out for anybody but themselves and do something for this corner of Arizona. We need this mine. AND WE NEED IT NOW!

Message Received

The evening the kids left for Dillon Beach, I retired early, settling down in bed at seven with a book and my bad cold. I left Bill and the puppy in the front room watching TV. Tad and Erin departed at three that morning, saying they hoped to get as far as Bakersfield or Los Banos to spend the night before going on to Dillon Beach the next day. (It's a sixteen to eighteen hour drive from here to the beach, for those that don't know. One extra long day in the car.) Erin promised she'd call when they got home, so I wasn't expecting a call that evening.

Earlier in the week, Bill had changed the ringtone on his cell phone. All summer long he's been having "In The Summertime" playing whenever someone calls in. But this week, he'd gone through a lengthy process and was having it play Bob Marley's "Buffalo Soldiers". I guess because it put us in the mood of Caribbean vacations. We've always taken our trips in October and November and even though we're not traveling this year, it's that right time to do it, you know?

Okay, so now I've set the scene for you: I'm in the far bedroom down the hall dozing over my book (it's real boring and I should just put it down and start something else, but I'm determined in my old age to finish every book I start - something I never did when I was younger and working) and Bill and Chuy are in the front room watching C.S.I. when all of a sudden, the television and satellite go blank. Bill looks at the TV wondering what happened when the stereo next to his couch lights up and the song "Buffalo Soldiers" wafts out. The song plays a few bars and Bob Marley's voice fills the room when just as suddenly, it turns off and the TV magically comes back on with Bill's show on it.

Bill came in to tell me about it. "You're not going to believe this..." He told me the story.

"Was it a message from your dad?" I asked. Whenever we experience unexplained electrical disturbances we tend to think it's a Sign from the Other Side that our loved ones are trying to get us a message.

"If it was, I don't know what They're trying to say," Bill shrugged. "That They're aware I changed my ring tone? Why should that matter?"

"I don't know either." But I shivered. His story was "cweepin' me out!" as Sage would say.

Not ten minutes later, the land line phone rang. It was Erin. She sounded exhausted but happy. Tad had driven them home in one fell swoop. They'd been home for an hour or so but she wanted me to know they were fine.

I hung up, considering. Was Bill's message from his dad who wanted Bill to know Tad had arrived home safely? It was one way of getting us to take notice. Or was it just one of those unexplainable Freaky Things that happen now and then? But why "Buffalo Soldiers"? I prefer to think we had a Sign from the Other Side.

Behind The Times

Sorry for the long delay in Blogging. It feels as though I've been stuck in slow hardening concrete while I've waited for the Writing Muse to strike me. But she hasn't dealt any blows lately, so I thought I'd better write something anyway.

We've had a fun visit with our son, Tad and his new wife, Erin and the effervescent three year old Ronnie. It was a week of Fun and Activities but Ronnie left us with a souvenir of a dandy cold so I'm still blowing and hacking. That's part of the charm of living with a Preschooler, a new cold or flu symptom monthly. When our kids were small, we tended to have one Sickie at least every two weeks. It took roughly ten days to feel well again and in that four day window, another bug would bite and another kid (or parent) would go Down For The Count. My dad used to chide me for not taking enough vitamins to ward off the frequent colds, but I didn't listen then. Well, I do listen now and Bill and I take enough Vitamins to build a small wall daily, but still that wasn't enough against the California Cold Ronnie brought to us. HA!

So days are chugging along here, now that the election is behind us and Thanksgiving and Christmas are looming. There's a Toy Run (motorcycles) going on in Globe, Miami and Superior today to benefit seven families for the holidays who have fallen on Hard Times. Santa driving a side car with a winsome maid just zoomed up our street for the first stop of the Run (a local bar). So that's a Sign of the Times. Bill and I weren't participating in that ride for our local Free Dump Day is going on out at the dump and we were volunteering for that instead. As it is, I'm staying indoors with my cough and he went out in the blustery thirty m.p.h. winds blowing off Apache Leap on this not cold but thoroughly Windy November day. My neighbor came out and told me, "You know, in Southern California, they have the Santa Ana winds. Well, they are mild in comparison to ours. These are known as the Apache Winds and the Apaches are much fiercer than Santa Ana." So there! Definitive proof it's worse here! (But thank God, no fires for us here in AZ.)

And I'm sewing like mad, trying to get enough shirts made for a craft sale my sister and I are doing in Florence in three weeks. So every spare moment I have, I'm huddled over the sewing machine or cutting out another shirt. I watched Ronnie one afternoon last week while his folks were out playing golf.

"What are you doing, Grandma?" he asked.

"I'm cutting out a shirt for you, Ronnie. I thought I'd sew you a shirt," I answered.

"I don't want a shirt." (Typical Three Year old.)

He left and returned in a few minutes. "What are you making, Grandma?"

"I'm making you a shirt, Ronnie," I answered. "The same shirt I was working on a few minutes ago."

"Well, I'm still not going to wear it!" He turned and went back to his toy trucks.

"Well, I'm still going to make it!" I countered.

That's it from this end. When I quit coughing so much, I swear I'll Blog more.

Ghostly Doings

Happy Halloween, Everybody! Chuy is all dressed up for Trick or Treating but would prefer the "treats" rather than the "trick" of donning one of Mom's five costumes she's carting around.

I haven't seen my Requisite Ghost yet for the season but I got a dandy story the other night. The town council has moved into the old CAAG building downtown. In its heyday, the two story building was used as a barrroom/bordello/hotel (I guess you take your pick) and numerous ghost stories abound. We attended a night meeting there this week and when we left, I asked one of the people who work there if they'd had anything to report in the ghostly realm.

They had. They said doors that supposedly were left unlocked would mysteriously lock, day or night. Or vice versa, doors that were locked were found to be unlocked. One person said that she'd heard somebody using the bathroom one night when she was there alone. It bothered her and she stood in the hall for several moments watching a shadow move under the door from the lit up bathroom. She even heard the toilet fixture creak as when somebody sat down on it. Finally, she screwed up her courage and opened the unlocked door, only to find an empty room. (I think I'd be fleeing into the night, vowing, "Never again!" if I'd had that experience!)

The most amazing story I got so far was that a team of Ghosthunters had come up from the Valley to study the building. They'd been hearing the stories and wanted to see for themselves what was going on. It was daytime and they talked to the current staff of the building and went over it with their digital equipment trying to find EVP's or energy spots. When they finished for the day, they stood across the street and took some pictures of the building. When they got back and studied what they got, they were in for a suprise!

Standing in the doorway of the building, looking directly at them across the street, as though asking them what their business was, was a small statured Hispanic woman, dressed in a long black dress, a high black lace collar framing her neck, much as would be worn at the turn of the century. Is this the woman who walks the floors of the CAAG building and inhabits the toilet and messes with the locks? For it must be her building after all, if she has been here for a hundred years or more.

Tonight, the town has a big Halloween parade. Folks will park on Main Street and decorate their trunks and dispense candy treats to the little folks who dress up and Trick or Treat on the street. We're going and I'm donning a Mardi Gras mask of feathers and hand out goodies. But I'm also going to make it a special point at some time in the evening to go across the street from City Hall and snap a picture of this old building. Then when I get home, I'm hoping for a really ghostly 'treat'!

Life in a Small Town

The Circle K store down on Hwy. 60 was robbed at gun point last week. It was at midnight and done by two local residents of the town. The idea of this is leaving the brunt of this town's residents cold!

During the past three years, the town has beefed up its little police force and enacted a co-operation with the Pinal County's Sheriff office when they needed help. But we haven't had any armed robberies during that time.

Fortunately for the town, our police arrested the two men in their twenties who 'did the deed'. Their names were posted in the paper for everybody and their brother to see. According to some of the older residents, that's a First too. Normally, when somebody did something wrong, especially if it was a Somebody of Note who was related to other Notable Somebodies, the name(s) of the accused would never make the paper. So it appears we're headed in the right direction, but...

On the other hand, an armed robbery was committed in our town last week! Us townspeople had better do something to help stop this if we don't want to see things change drastically for the worse. We have let our Crime Free Superior meetings lapse while we pursued other interests: the elections, the Trash Committee, recycling, the Christmas program for all the children, toy runs for underpriveledged families. There's a whole host of THINGS the lot of us are working on to make this town a better place for ALL the citizens. But... an armed robbery was committed here last week and it looks to me like we should and could be doing something better to assure it's not going to happen again.

Life in a Mining Town

Sometimes, it is easy to forget that Superior is a Mining Town. Though the true copper mine closed up close to forty years ago, the people that live here still regard themselves as miners. It's like fishing, once a fisherman always a fisherman. So are the miners. Once a miner... etc. Currently, Resolution Copper which bought the old Magma Copper Mine is doing reclamation on the old site just west of town, in preparation for getting the land exchange through Congress for the new site east of town up near Apache Leap. So mining activities go on in this town, even though for the most part, townspeople like me aren't that aware of all the mining activity that is occurring. Until last week, that is...

On Monday, we heard and felt a big boom of blasting in the morning. It reminded us that yes, we do live in a mining town. On Tuesday, Bill and I were sitting in the office working at the computers when another blast boomed out. It sounded like one of our earthquakes in California.

Chuy was laying in the hallway and looked up, tense and worried. "It's okay, Chu!" I reassured him. "You livin' in a mining town now, Dog."

He remained halfway up on his haunches, not ready to resume his nap. What was wrong with his people that they hadn't bolted out of the house? Wasn't that what Sane Folks would do?

"Go back to sleep, Chuy," Bill ordered. "You're okay."

Down in the basement, I heard the macaws flutter around and squawk. They were thinking earthquake too. They're really good earthquake predictors, and usually give me about a thirty seconds heads up. But this had thrown them for a loop too. No early warning sound waves for them this time.

We went back to work and didn't think anything about it, until a few days later. We were walking down Main Street and stopped in front of City Hall to read the notices on the bulliten board. I was curious to see a letter with Resolution Copper's letterhead. Seems on that Tuesday that Chuy was so concerned with the noisy blasting, a forty pound chunk of rock became airborne and traveled twelve hundred feet before crashing through a roof of a house on the north side of town. Though the house was occupied, fortunately the person escaped injury. Resolution was investigating the accident as were folks from the Federal Mining Safety office so they were letting Chuy and the other townspeople know that until the investigation was complete, blasting would be discontinued for the time being.

Crap! Never in my wildest dreams would I have worried about an errant rock blown across town from the mine to come crashing through my roof! What a wake up call that would be. No wonder Chuy and the birds were worried! They had already assumed the Worst Possible Situation. Bill said the rock would be bad enough, but what if you had your attic stuffed with junk and odds and ends of furniture? Then it would become a possible instrument of doom too. I think our attic is relatively empty. Bill goes up there occasionally to crawl around and fix stuff. But it gives me something else to think about.

On the bright side, however, we do live south of Main Street. The mine is located north of it. There'd be a few more rows of homes before rocks would rain down. But wait until they start blasting out the new underground mine near Apache Leap. We live right under the shadow of the Leap, so I've got something else to keep me awake at night. HA!

A Room With Color

Since we lived in a mobile home for thirty-five years with wood paneling, when we moved into this house in Superior with its totally white painted walls, I thought I was in heaven. I loved the isolation it brought to my furnishings, colors would stand out, everything always looked 'clean'. Of course, the decorating magazines and books I've been picking up this year to help me 'finish' the decorating were touting color on the walls, banishing the white painted walls, that 'sterile' look.

I even had a discussion (argument) with a younger friend, Jean-Marie, this summer about my white painted walls. She not only espouses color on the walls, she even touts two color walls, the more the merrier, in her book. White walls, she stated, were passe and it was time for me to break out some paint. Not so!, I argued. I'd lived for thirty-five years with brown wood paneling and I was enjoying the sterile white look. But it was so Yesterday!, she exclaimed, get with it.

Well, Jean-Marie, you should see the house now, or even better in a few weeks, when we finish,for Bill and I have discovered Color. We ran up to Ace last Sunday and picked up four gallons of color. We put a new acrylic painting in the living room with a Southwestern theme and the wall was begging for a tan background. So we spent forty minutes painting a white wall in the living room a creamy tan color and it looked good. And it was Easy. Bill did the cutting in with a tapered brush and let me roll on big swatches of paint with a roller. It was water clean-up and we finished in under an hour. Yeah... Easy! And boy, did it look good! And now our other walls looked.... plain.

So the next day, we broke open a can of mint green and started on the opposing wall, the fireplace sits between these two walls. We thought it was a nice light mint green, but the color must have changed a bit when they mixed it, for it turned out to a medium turquoise. Suddenly, that wall now demanded all the attention in the living room. Astounding how the walls were competing for whose attention would be drawn to it! Immediately, Bill broke open a gallon of dark persimmon we'd bought for some work outside and applied it over the fireplace. It picked up the orangey-brown tones of a new Australian print we just hung. Zowie! Now the fireplace wall was screaming for notice!

Suddenly, our living room was a riot of color and we still had another wall to do which would connect with the dining room which flowed into the kitchen... Man, this was fun! But what colors now and where would it end?

Wednesday, we headed down to Mesa and a big Lowe's store. We spent an hour and a half in deliberations (Hey, folks! This stuff takes time!!!) and bought four more gallons of paint, a lemon yellow, lime green, a grape lilac and an iridescent teal green. Now we were cooking!

We came home and entered the sun room. The sun room has big windows looking out onto Apache Leap but the back wall is a solid white. Bill drew out four big ray over the doorway into the sunroom, running big blocks of diagonal color into that wall. The first ray is a brilliant sunny yellow. It just begs you to wake up and get going! The second ray was the lime green. Once on the wall, it almost screamed chartreuse, it was so greeny-yellow. What next? A beautiful tangerine that could hold its own against the other colors. The fourth ray? Well, it's basically under the table that sets there and I'm opting for my pretty grape lilac but Bill is favoring a chocolate brown, so that hasn't been painted yet.

But get this: yesterday, we moved outside. Before I came home, Bill painted the upper and lower driveways a light green. The retaining wall on one side, next to the house, he painted a pale yellow. We thought a lime green on the opposing retaining wall would be interesting. So that was my job. And it's bright all right, but maybe throws the deserty pastels for a loop. (Meaning: It may get repainted.) While I was on that, Bill painted the front step that dark persimmon color and the front walk the pretty lighter tangerine color. Today, he painted the area around the front step the bright lemon yellow. We are lookin' Good, I tellya!

So okay, Jean-Marie! I stand corrected! Color is the way to go. I don't know how far we're going with this, but right now, we're having a really good time with it. And like Bill says, if we don't like it... we can always re-paint!

Vignette

Once in a while, the Universe allows us to witness a slice of life without letting us know the full story. Just a fragment of a sentence, so to speak. There is no beginning and we certainly are not allowed to know the ending. Bill and I witnessed such a piece on our trip back to Superior last week. It's been hard to get it out of my head. What did happen? And how did it end - happily or sadly?

We pulled into a truck stop in Buttonwillow near Bakersfield. Bill was driving his Chevy and had to go into the adjoining bay for diesel. I pulled into one of about sixteen spaces for gas and went inside to pay. When I returned, the pump on the other side of mine was occupied by a hatchback SUV with a young black woman pumping gas. I set about getting my gas pumped and started wiping down my windows.

At that point, the alarm on what I thought was my Explorer began blaring. I madly scrambled for my keys, but even though I pushed the button the alarm still blared.

"Stop it, Rodney!" the black woman pumping gas into her white Explorer next to me yelled at a boy about nine years old.

Rodney was returning from the convenience store with his dad and a younger boy and guffawing. He clutched his dad's car keys, which he tossed over to his dad. Daddy tried to tried to wipe the smirk off his face when he saw how pissed off his wife was with their actions and the younger boy whooped with laughter and ran to open the back door of the car.

"That's not funny!" Mommy promised, her face looking stern and unhappy with the trio of giggling, idiotic men. She made a road trip look like it was no picnic with that happy go lucky trio.

I gave her a sympathetic smile and finished pumping my gas. When I got into my car to move it across the parking lot to join up with Bill, they were just pulling out ahead of me. I was surprised to see that their hatchback trunk was completely open. Their trunk was filled with luggage and blankets and stuff. I started to beep my horn to warn them, but they were driving very slowly and I assumed they were just going over to park and hadn't wanted to bother with closing the trunk before they opened it again to get something out. Sometimes, I think I mind other people's business too much, so I stopped myself from beeping and crept over to the parking spaces to join Bill.

The white Explorer slowed but headed for the driveway and then a green backpack fell out. I rolled my window down and shouted and the Explorer slowed at the curb. I assumed they knew their hatchback was open and they'd just dropped something out. Nope! They were only checking for traffic and pulled out to the left, preparing to get back onto the freeway. Bill started yelling at that point, but they couldn't hear a thing. Music was on and the kids were tussling in the back seat and I guess neither Mom nor Dad could hear the wind rushing by the open hatchback where their possessions were now going to fall where they may.

I ran over and picked up the backpack. A cell phone plopped out and looking inside, it was plain that this was Mommy's purse! Oh dear, oh dear! What had only seemed like a bad day for Mama was now assuming Excedrin proportions! Bill ran the phone and backpack into the convenience store. We looked up the road anxiously, expecting to see the white Explorer return any minute to find their items.

No such luck. As we made our way back onto the Highway 5 South, we didn't see anymore luggage laying out, but I never saw a white Explorer making its way north either. I can't help wondering how far they must have traveled before they discovered the 'boot' was open. Evidently, when the panic button was pushed by Rodney, the trunk was opened too. Daddy was having too good a time to see his message light that "Tailgate is ajar" was lit, and there was too much noise and confusion to be witness to it. But I bet when it was discovered what happened, that Mama doesn't let him forget this one in a hurry!

Wedding Finery

Tad's and Erin's wedding was a fine occasion. It allowed every single Vogler male from Grandpa Bill to the newest member, three year old Ronnie. a chance to don a tux and and brocade vest and necktie and the shiniest black shoes that ever could be found.



Tad asked me at the Rehearsal Dinner if I would get Ronnie dressed in his tux the next day. Ronnie had been telling folks that he wasn't going to be wearing that thing! So at noon the next day, Willy met us with a very dignified Charlie and Sage who were only too thrilled to be wearing their tuxes and we drove to the hotel in Santa Rosa. (Charlie would strike a stance and say, "Bond. James Bond!" he thought he looked so hot.) Sage was striking kung foo poses in his tux, not to be outdone.

It didn't take Ronnie long to want to dress like the Big Boys and we soon had him stripped down in one of the best men's rooms and tugging on his tux trousers and buttoning up the ivory dress shirt with (get this!) pearlized cuff links. As we had him step into the first patent leather shoe, he whimpered, "That hurts!"

Charlie peered over the bed at him. "'at's okay, Ronnie! It's s'posed to hurt!"

"Yeah!" Sage agreed, "Mine hurt too!"

We jammed his foot in the second shoe and I tied it up. "Dat hurts too!" he murmured.

"Well, ours do too!" Charlie and Sage chorused.

I escorted the trio of tux clad men from the room so the groom and best men could get on with their tuxes. It was now an hour and a half before the wedding would begin. The bride and her maids were on their way back from a nearby salon for hair and nails and the bride's mother was arranging placenames and flowers in the dining room. We stopped in so she could see that indeed the three year old had gotten the tux on.

"Why, don't you look grand, Ronnie!" she cooed in pleasure seeing her baby grandson appearing so grown up.

"My feet hurt!" Ronnie said.

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" she started to fuss over him.

"Dat okay," Ronnie stopped her. "Dey s'pose to hurt!"

But now the boys needed a nibble. In our haste to get to the hotel by one, and get the boys dressed beforehand, no one had thought of lunch. It was nearing two and I had three hungry boys. We walked through several floors of the hotel looking for an aunt's room that held the promise of Sun Chips and Seven Up but were unable to find it. The men were getting cranky and disgruntled being traipsed through miles of hotel corridors, plus my own feet were getting cranky with all the walking. We headed back to the lobby where I asked the whereabouts of the restaurant. While the desk clerk gave me the information, I had to steer Ronnie away from an assortment of Twix bars and M+M's. I didn't think chocolate would set too well with ivory colored shirts and white brocaded vests!

In the dining room, which was almost vacant, the waitress led us to a banquette with high walls. Sage and Ronnie sat across from Charlie and me. She presented them with the children's menu. There were four items on it, hot dogs, hamburgers, chicken fingers and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

"Look at these prices for a hamburger, Grandma!" Charlie roared, oblivious of the waitress standing by the table. "They want $8.95 for a hamburger!"

"Don't mind the prices," I told him, secretly glad I'd brought along extra twenties for this special day. "What do you want to eat?"

"I'll have a hot dog," Sage decided at once.

"Peanut butter and jelly," Ronnie said. "And French Fries."

The waitress nodded. "They come with French Fries."

"Charlie," I prompted.

"Ohhhhh, I can't decide!" he mulled the few selections over in his head. "They both sound so good: hot dog or hamburger. Hamburger or hot dog!"

"Charlie!" my tone had gotten surlier. He sounded not unlike my old granny when I'd take her out to lunch and it was torture for her to decide on an entree. But Grandma's been dead for twelve years and here sits her great-great grandson doing the same thing!

"Oh, okay! A hot dog," he flopped back in his seat, exhausted with his decision. He still looked darned good in his ivory brocade vest with the cuff links dangling precipitiously from the buttonholes. My little James Bondsians had just ordered hot dogs. What was wrong with this picture?

The waitress returned in a few minutes with three Seven-Ups and straws were unwrapped and plunged in. Ronnie commenced to slurp his down with passion. He could just barely reach the top of the cup on the table by sitting down and I encouraged him to sit on his knees, but the boy was being proper and refused with a sullen shake of his head. Nevertheless, I jerked my hand across the table a number of times to keep the Seven-Up from upending in his lap.

Every time the kitchen door opened, the boys would perk up. Their lunches had arrived! But no, they were being delivered to somebody else. At two fifteen, the waitress came back, empty handed. "I'm sorry," she cooed. "But the chef says he's out of hot dog buns."

"Oh, bring them hamburgers then," I snapped. "But hurry! The wedding starts in forty-five minutes and we don't want to be late!"

She left again. Sage sprawled forward on the table, hungry, tired and ready for something to happen. Ronnie squished his straw so hard with his teeth that he now couldn't draw anything to drink when he slurped on it. Charlie looked about him.

"You know what, Sage?" he told his brother. "This is such a fancy place that you can't see the other people who are eating their lunch! You've never taken us to such a fancy restaurant before, Grandma!"

He was quite right. Burger King and In 'n Out's do not compare with a Hilton dining room.

"You know, Sage, THIS IS WHERE THE RICH PEOPLE GO!" he roared.

I wanted to slink under the table. "Keep your voice down, Charlie," I hissed. "If you're not careful, it will be thirty years before I'll bring you to a place like this again!"

At two-thirty, only thirty minutes until the wedding was to start, the waitress brought in their luncheons. Each one, even the peanut butter and jelly, were served on the biggest platters I've seen. My Thanksgiving turkey platter isn't that big! And next to these, for each boy, was a four inch square dish, brimming with a cup of thick red ketchup!

Little boys .... white dress shirts.... vests and ties... and gobs of red ketchup!

"Be careful," I warned Charlie through my still gritted teeth. "If you get ketchup on your shirt, your mother will kill me!"

"Yeah, then she'll stick a knife in you too!" He took the top of his hamburger bun and liberally doused it in the dish of ketchup. Not to be outdone, Sage took the top off his hamburger and laid it into the ketchup dish too. Sage was sitting catty corner from me and I couldn't lean that far across the table to stop him.

"What in the world are you boys doing?" I asked aghast. Never, in the nine year history of being Grandma to these two boys has there every been a time when ketchup, relish, mustard or any other spread touched the sacred hamburger these boys would eat. If, God forbid, I ordered them one 'with everything' there were either tears or a thorough cleansing of said relishes before a little mouth would touch it. And there they were, dressed to the Nines and Tens in the fanciest duds they've ever worn in their lives, liberally drenching their hamburgers in red ketchup!!! I felt my heart palpate.

I looked wildly around the room, hoping that Daddy or Grandpa or Uncle or SOMEBODY would rescue me! Ronnie's sleeve dropped a quarter inch from his dish of ketchup as he blissfully ate French Fries. Forget the peanut butter and jelly, he was happy with his French Fries. (The night before at the Rehearsal Dinner, the waitress asked him what he wanted to drink. "French Fries," he told her. I told him he could have a Seven-Up. "What?" he asked, as she left the table. "She don't have French Fries?")

Now, Charlie's and Sage's Daddy entered the room and looked around. I waved him over and hurriedly admitted what I had done. "Hi, Daddy!" Sage greeted effusively. "Want a French Fry?"

"I don't mind if I do," Willy said, scooping one up. He was wise enough not to use any ketchup however!

Charlie pushed the remains of his hamburger into his mouth and regarded his dad. "It was okay," he told him, "but not worth eight ninety-five!"

More folks were arriving for the wedding and I got the boys out of the dinette, one by one to square them away. Charlie had a sizable glob of ketchup on his vest. I dipped one of the cloth napkins into a glass of Seven-Up and scrubbed away. Ronnie managed to get a few drops of ketchup on the suit coat after I'd buttoned it up. Seven-up took care of that too. Sage was unscathed, but most of his hamburger lay uneaten. Grandma had fussed at him too much to make it worthwhile eating.

I hustled the Little Men out of the restaurant, leaving a tip too, mind you, and we got out in front to greet our friends and relatives. But it was still some time before my nerves settled down and I could forget white shirts and brocaded vests and sublimely dressed little boys and start to enjoy the festivities!

Exodus

We traveled back to Superior this week, after I had spent four months in the cool Dillon Beach air. The warm (hot) Sonoran desert days feel good after all that frigid cold of the Pacific. So this week I've found my legs again. Yeah, they paled up quite a bit since last May when I last wore shorts. Bill's look incredibly tanned from his summer spent mostly working outside on the house, even in 115 degree weather! (The grandsons have a little action doll in the toy box, dressed in khaki shorts and a canvas vest. Bill and I found it on the beach years ago when Charlie was a baby for him to play with. Charlie immediately named it "Jeff". When Bill returned from Arizona looking so brown this summer, little Ronnie picked it up and asked, "Is this Grandpa Bill?" So it's amazing how good a tan can make you feel (You Action Figure-You!)

The house looks luscious, much better than I remembered. It welcomed me back every square inch of it. In my absence, Bill had the upper and lower driveways poured with new cement and a back yard, under the deck poured as well. He has painted it a light grassy green, so even if grass won't grow in the hot Arizona summers, it still looks like we've got one. He covered over the major part of our upper deck so there's more shade and added misters to cool the air. Already, the parrots are overjoyed about their 'rainforest' in the Sonoran desert and have spent five hours a day enjoying their new climate. He took extra special care of the garden I had recently planted before leaving and now the tiny shoots of fountain grass are four feet high or better and brimming with blooms; the Mexican sunflowers just about took out all the other flowers they grew so hard; and the Mexican primroses are still showing no end in blooming their little pink hearts out. Who knew stuff could grow so well in this heat if they had enough water? I was overwhelmed.

The house, if anything, seems more settled, more content, and yes, more powerful than it did before I left. I guess it's happier with us and knows we mean it no harm. Last year, we had several people walk in and say it felt like the house had wrapped its arms around them like 'a big ol' hug', and this year the feeling is just bigger and more fulfilling and THERE. As if, the house itself has assumed an entity. But... a good entity all the same. It's still welcoming and warm and "glad to meetcha!" And, yes, the house likes the changes that Bill has worked on all summer long. We've plans for more rock work in the front yard and some more garden beds for planting, so we won't be idle this winter. Plus, it will give us reasons for more Boonie trips to collect more rocks.

Okay, so now, I promise in the next few days I will write about the Wonderful Wedding of Tad and Erin last week. I promise I won't be so slow to blog. And even though I'm going to be missing my Little Men (the grandsons) I will include some stories about them from this past summer. Promise!

A Bad Day

First off, my apologies for neglecting the blog. Summer and lots of activities got in the way, but I promise to do better. A rather bizarre story surfaced a week ago and I've got to tell it. I have changed the names of the participants, but the story is so bad it's good to remember when you roll over in bed one morning and think you'll have a 'bad day'. Nah... it couldn't be that bad!

We've got a good customer at the Landing who's been one of our regulars for at leastl twenty- five years. His name is Charles. The last few summers, Charles' wife, Edna has been spending less and less time here, but Charles loves to halibut fish and claims it's more peaceful here than in Lodi with Edna. He's a fairly amiable man. Last week, Charles was out fishing when he received an emergency message from Edna. The night before, Edna and her daughter-in-law and her twenty one year old grandson were on their way to Coalinga to spend the night. Why, Coalinga? Because Edna's son, and the grandson's dad, was getting released from prison where he'd been incarcerated for the past couple of years for drug possession. Charles wasn't with them because he'd washed his hands of his son's actions several years ago and doesn't have anything to do with him. Ditto for his grandson. Grandpa Charles had washed his hands of him about three years ago a) because the kid was gay and b) because he too was having trouble with drugs. Edna persisted in giving both the son and the grandson her attention (and money). They checked into a motel so they could get up good and early to go pick up dad at the prison, but the grandson got to thinking a couple of things. Since he was in possession of some drugs and either a) didn't want to get caught with them in the proximity of a state prison or b) (my personal favorite) he'd better use up his stash before his old man got released and used them up. So the grandson shot up that night while staying in the same room with mom and grandma. Next morning when the ladies woke up, the grandson is dead in bed with an overdose. Oh boy... how low can you go?

When Charles finally got in from fishing six hours later, he calls Edna on somebody's cell phone. I heard him ask plaintively, "Well, do you expect me to come home? I just got here and there's fish biting. You don't need me now, do you?" Phew! Charles-Buddy, haven't you learned anything after forty odd years of marriage????!!! And no, we haven't seen Charles this week. I bet he's stuck in Lodi until next summer.

Have a good day!

Dog Person

I never considered myself a dog person until Chuy came along. I liked dogs fine. I've been owned by a number of them throughout the years. But I've always been partial to cats and never was what you would call a Dog Person. Chuy seems to be changing all that.

Since Memorial Day Bill has spent the majority of his time in Arizona fixing up the house and Chuy and the cats and the parrots and I are here in Dillon Beach. Chuy misses his dad greatly but has wormed himself pretty fully into my life. He realizes I'm a different type of person than his daddy who will rough house with him in the evenings (throwing the stupid "Legs" toy numeroso times to the dog's delight). Chuy's lucky if he can get Mom to throw it five or six times. But Chuy is smart enough to know that each of his parents react in different ways and the doggie has picked up on that.

He knows that when Mom comes home at the end of a busy day at the boathouse, he's prepared to wrap himself around the pillow on the couch so she can lay down and nap for a few minutes before he starts pestering her to play with him. He knows she likes to read a book laying down on the couch while the cats nap on her belly and legs, so he too finds a spot near her head, sometimes kicking her in the face with his little feet while she attempts to read.

Friday I was upset with the puppy for pulling out the newspaper from the macaws' cages while I was working. When I returned every hour or two to walk him, I'd find torn up newspaper scattered around the birds' cages, and I'd reprimand him while I cleaned up the mess. Chuy began hiding behind the couch when I came in instead of greeting me with delight at the door.

So on Saturday, I decided I wouldn't pick up the paper messes each time I came in and not say anything to him. No need to be reprimanding him when it was doing no good, I reasoned. Saturday was a long day and Chuy didn't get out much to play, but each time I returned to the house, he hadn't messed with the birds' papers but he still remained hiding behind the couch, peeking out when I came into the room to see if I was going to yell at him. (I didn't!)

I can hear Chuy's side of the story: I can't understand my mom. Every time she came back to the house on Friday, she was chewing me out for something or other. I took to hiding behind the couch because you could tell nothing was going to make her happy. Then, like magic, on Saturday every time she came in to walk me, she was all sweet and nice and never yelled at me. But I hid out each time anyway. That Mom... you just don't know when she's going to get pissed at you!

So yes, I've become one of those "Dog People". We try to understand what's going on in those little doggie minds and either live with it or try to change the behavior. We delight in those happy-go-lucky doggie grins when Puppy is happy and all is Right with the World. We get all proud when strangers stop to admire our dog and tell us what a cutie he is. (And they are right of course!) We begin to know strangers by their dog's names before we know theirs.

These are just some of the character traits of Dog People I've added lately. I'm sure there are others. I'll probably get worse before I get better. And I still love my cats. But really... Chuy is growing on me and maybe he's just bringing out the inherent Dog Person that lived in me along.

Cleaning Up The World

I have never considered myself a Busy Body and certainly didn't ever think I was the pushy sort of person who constantly told people what they should or shouldn't be doing. But I'll tellya, the older I'm getting, the more I'm fitting into that category.

This week-end, I found myself trying to set some young people straight. Oh yes, for the past forty-something years, since being an adult, I've had to let some young folks know that their behavior needed to be changed. But the things I reprimanded kids for this week-end were things that under normal circumstances, should never be happening anyway.

We have a small store at the Landing where we sell bait and tackle, rent boats and motors and dispense snacks and drinks, particularly coffee and candy. There are usually two or three of us clerks behind the counter and at times we can get crowded with thirty or more people coming in to get their goodies at the same time. Needless to say, July is our busiest time of the year and a week-end is even busier. Our aim is to help our customers get their goods promptly and not have to wait.

There's usually a wait around the coffee counter, where customers draw their own cups of cocoa and coffee. This morning was cold and foggy and windy, so the crowd around the coffee was bigger than usual. Sometimes it's little kids that take more time to get their cocoa cups filled; other times, it's sleepy big people that just don't move very fast before they've had their first cup of coffee. But we try to keep the area clean and tidied up and above all, keep them moving! A young girl and her three brothers came in and began filling cups of cocoa. I was selling bait to another man and didn't look up at first, but then noticed a large down coat, nearly as big as a sleeping bag, spread out on the floor in front of the bait freezer.

"What's this?" I asked, stepping around the counter and picking up the coat. "Who dropped their coat?"

"Uh, it's mine!" the girl, about thirteen, said. She didn't bother to look around as she finished getting her cocoa.

"It doesn't belong on the floor!" I picked it up and put it on top of the bait freezer. "Somebody's going to trip on it."

The girl didn't say anything and in a few minutes, when she was done getting her cocoa, turned and picked it up. I gave her a hard look. I'm sure in her own home, the young girl might carelessly throw her coat on the floor if her mother wasn't telling her to pick it up. But in a public place? Is that something that is becoming a normal thing or am I just being a picky old lady?

Okay, now as far as picky old lady goes, yeah, I've become one! Yesterday, again with a crowd of summer visitors, I looked up from the counter and was aghast to find myself looking at the back of a fat teen-aged girl. Her jeans were loose and hanging half way down her bulging hips. Her panties were more than visible as well as a not very attractive butt crack. She was leaning over the bait freezer picking out crab bait with an equally sloppy young man, but at least his underwear or butt crack wasn't showing.

"Ma'am!" I yelled across the crowded room. "Ma'am!"

She didn't turn or acknowledge or even look up to see who I might be yelling at. Evidently, she hadn't been addressed as "Ma'am!" very often and certainly didn't think she was one.

"Young lady!" I changed my pitch. "Young lady!"

Again, she blithely ignored me, intent on the packages of mackerel in the freezer. Okay, then.... desperate times call for desperate measures.

"Hey, Girl! You! With the pants hanging down!"

Ah ha! I had her attention now. She turned around, her hair hanging lankly into her eyes. "Pull your pants up, Honey!" I hissed, as more customers turned to see what I was harping on. "Your undies are showing!"

She hitched them up and twitched her hips and they promptly sank back down. I guess a belt was out of the question. The boy with her slunk out the door leaving her to pay for the bait.

But I doubt my reprimand did any good. The girl was back this morning, with her pants hanging 'half-ass' off again. Only this time, it was so cold, she was wearing a long parka over the whole lot. Oh me! Guess I should keep my mouth shut. But the older I get, the more I think I need to get this ol' world in shape. One kid at a time.

Best Wishes

We were walking in the park when three year old Ronnie found a dandelion puff.

"Look!" he pounced upon it exuberantly. "You can wish!" He picked the flower and puffed his cheeks out.

"Ronnie's making a wish," I said as Charlie turned and walked over to us.

The little boy blew the dandelion puffs to the wind. His face broke into a big grin.

"What'd you wish for?" Charlie demanded.

"Bananas." Ronnie's attention was on the ground looking for another flower.

"Bananas?" Charlie's tone was incredulous. "You can have bananas! Why not ask for something hard?"

"Like money, Charlie?" I asked.

"No! Like world peace. I would wish for world peace rather than plain ol' bananas!"

Grandma Duty

IT was a Red Letter Day for me today in that it was the first day I got to care for all three of my grandchildren. Sage and Charlie have been visiting me all summer on my days off and afternoons, but it was the first time we added three year old Ronnie to the boy-pack. Ronnie is Tad's soon-to-be-stepson, and as far as I'm concerned, my third grandson.



We started off for a walk on the beach. Sage wanted to show Ronnie the sand dune near the beach we've been playing on all summer. It was a hit. Ronnie liked it so much he didn't care if we went anywhere else. But we had an ambitious day planned. Noontime found us packed in the car, Chuy included, headed for Sebastopol and a visit to the apple farm. The apple farm didn't materialize. I heard the Gravensteins were ripe and I was hoping to buy several boxes for applesauce but we learned at the fruit stand the growers were only picking this day and there was no product to buy. So we made a provisioning stop at the local organic produce place for fresh mozarella balls and breadsticks and a wierd yellow watermelon for a picnic lunch at the local park.



Chuy was happy. He nibbled everybody's leftovers and the bottles of gourmet root beer were a big hit. Sage burped his way through lunch, then admitted, "I might have drank too much of that, Grandma!" A walk afterward settled everybody's tipsy tummies and then we drove home. Though it's only twenty-some miles, Sage complained that it was "a long drive!"

Ronnie couldn't keep his eyes open on the ride home and nodded off. I had put him in the middle seat between the two older boys.

"I think Ronnie's gone to sleep!" Sage announced in a shocked voice midway home.

"I imagine he has," I answered. "He's a little boy trying to keep up with you big fellas. He's probably worn out."

From the front seat, Chuy looked up at me bleary eyed, agreeing in his dog fashion.

"Nope!" Sage shouted. He was leaning over and peering into Danny's drooping face. "I don't think he's really asleep, Grandma. He's got one eye open a tiny slit and I bet he's faking!"

"Yeah!" Charlie confirmed. "You can't sleep with one eye open!"

"Boys! Leave him alone! He's worn out!" I hissed from the driver's seat.

Chuy closed his eyes and went back to sleep. He knew when to gather his energy for this crew.

A bit later, Charlie announced. "No! He can't be asleep. He's drooling now! Oh yuck! Little-boy-drool!"

"Boys!" I warned, my teeth clenched.

"Oh, look at him!" Sage chortled. "He looks like a Zombie!"

We finally got home and I ordered the big boys out of the car. They took a suddenly awake Chuy into the house and I gathered up the still sleeping Ronnie in my arms. He turned and stretched and mumbled something.

"What'd you say, Baby?" I asked, carrying him into the house.

"The Hucka Muckas were after me." He slowly woke up.

"They were? I hate it when that happens!"

"Yeah, they were chasing me. But the Hucka Muckas didn't get me!"

"Not this time." (Hmmmmm, those Hucka Muckas couldn't have been Charlie and Sage, could they?")

Have a better day and keep the Hucka Muckas at bay.

To-Do Lists

I'm a big believer in To-Do Lists. The older I get, (meaning: the more forgetful I become at times) the more I rely on the To-Do List to make sure I get done what needs to be done. There's something imminently satisfying about checking off numerous items one has done during the day. Makes the day seem that much fuller and your time better spent. I tend to over enumerate too many items on one To-Do List, making a regular list much too long to accomplish in one day. So my To-Do Lists are usually week long lists with anywhere from eighteen to twenty-four items on them. My grandson, Charley, is a fan of my lists and likes to read off what Grandma has failed to do. I guess for him, that's more fun than what Grandma actually got done.

So two months ago, on one of my weekly lists, I wrote down "Get wireless connected to computer". We'd just gotten back here to the beach and had shut off our wireless satellite connection last February. A phone call and it should be re-instated, right? Not so right. Seven weeks and two days after that first phone call, I have finally got our wireless connection re-connected. The "Get wireless connected to computer" has been written and re-written on my weekly To-Do Lists, until I despaired of ever getting it crossed off. There were times I thought perhaps it was too lofty a goal and I should maybe better learn to live with the old "watch the paint dry" dial up connection. It took more than one phone call too. For a while I was calling the wireless satellite people up two or three times a week. They would give me varying degrees of explanations until I'd find myself spluttering incoherently at some stupid reason why they couldn't connect me sooner. On one of those days when I muttered in front of the grandsons that I needed to call the satellite people, Charley looked at me and asked innocently, "Are you going to get mad and cuss at them again, Mackey?" And I sheepishly answered, "I hope not!"

Well, the gist of the problem was a malfunctioning dish which the satellite people finally deemed a work order for a technician to come two weeks ago, so today was the big day. It took him all of an hour to replace the broken part and at the end of the job, when he called the wireless people he was upset with how little they said they would pay him. So he turned on me and announced that he was Never coming back to Dillon Beach again for another service job. And I apologized for calling him but told him he was the one the satellite people said I had to call. So finally, he took his rotten mood back to Santa Rosa with him and I was left (a bit shaken, I admit) with my computer now hooked up to wireless. And I can read my emails and send pictures without thinking that I am in a limbo of stagnation waiting.

And oh yes.... I was able to mark another item off my too long To-Do List. Who knows? I might actually finish all the items on a list one of these weeks.

On Being A Nobody...

Most of us are Nobodies. Nobody anybody is ever going to hear about, read about. Nobody whose life is so important that it has to be talked about on tv or read about in gossip columns. Us Nobodies expect that. We don't expect to wake up Famous some morning and have our lives turned topsy turvy because now the public is watching us. So when something unexpected happens and a Nobody gets some attention, then something shifts inside of us and you start to wonder, what would it be like to not be a Nobody?

I had a niggle of non-Nobodiness happen to me this week. My sister emailed and said she'd found a lady on EBay selling one of my Something Fishy shirts. I checked, and sure enough, a shirt that I had given as a raffle prize at one of our monthly HOG meetings was being offered on EBay for $9.99. The lady said it was used, but in mint condition, which makes me think it was probably tossed in a corner and never worn. When the time came to clean out the closet, out came the Something Fishy shirt and onto EBay it went. The lady who was selling it had it almost right. She said it was a "Something Fish" shirt out of Dillon Beach, California. (Hey, when you're a Nobody and somebody gets it half right, we're satisfied!)

So I don't know whether the used shirt sold or not. The new shirts I'm listing right now aren't selling as fast as I'd like them to. There was a spurt the end of June and I thought, "Ah-Ha! Things are looking up." But maybe that was just the President's Economic Stimulus Checks that were aiding impulsive buys to sites like EBAy and I got some peripheral leftovers from that. Whatever the case, sales are languishing now.

But if somebody wants to make this Nobody feel halfway like a Somebody by re-selling her shirts on EBAy, go for it! For a small slice of time, it feels pretty good just not being a Nobody!

Puny and Defenseless

I'm sure, by now, most of you have noticed the counter at the top of the blog on The Arizona Land Exchange & Conservation Act, otherwise knows as S.3157. The bill got re-introduced, I believe for the third time, on June 18, 2008 by Senator Kyl for another stab by Resolution Copper to get the copper they want from the sacred Apache Leap area, just east of Superior. The bill is scheduled to be heard in the Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests this Wednesday at 2:30 (SD-366, if you're going to be Washington and want to make your views known).

It's not real popular with the public if the counter at the top of the page is any indication. At the time of this writing it is running 14% For and 86% Against, but I don't think public sentiment means a hill of beans difference to those in Washington when Big Money is at stake. Just shut up, folks, and let us handle it, seems to be the situation here.

I've read the bill on the Thomas website several times and believe me, I'm no lawyer and I haven't got one around to tell me what it is I am reading. But what I'm gleaning from this version of the Land Exchange Bill is that this time around, there are some environmental policies in effect, even if it looks a bit skewed to me. (Hey, I'm willing to admit I might be wrong, but I'm just reporting it the way it appears to be written.) And this time, evidently, NEPA (the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969) will be followed instead of discarded, BUT the Secretary of Agriculture has to issue an Environmental Impact Statement before Resolution Copper "begins production in commercial quantities of valuable minerals". I would have thought that Resolution Copper would have to be responsible for producing an Environmental Impact Report that would then have to be accepted by the Secretary of Agriculture. So why should the onus be on the Federal Government who is going to be the one who will approve it in the end? Maybe I'm missing something here. But it sounds like the same entity is judge and jury. Are there going to be hearings on this Environmental Impact Statement, so the public who appears so negative against this land exchange can weigh in on it? Or are we going to be ignored for this portion too?

I'm aware that the Feds do things differently than the States, but this ignoring of what the public wants, doesn't sit well with me. Resolution Copper badly wants this big vein of copper ore sitting on Federal Land and it looks like this time, the Feds are quite likely to hand it to them, with little regard for what the people want. Will Resolution Copper do the right thing and protect our water supply? Will they ensure that Apache Leap doesn't shift or implode with their block cave mining two miles deep underground? There's no assurances in the Land Exchange Bill. There's very little in the bill that addresses my concerns. So maybe I'm just one of those useless dumb entities that the Feds override to keep "business as usual". But this Land Exchange Bill feels like the Feds and the international copper company are ganging up on the "little guys" to get what they want and the rest of us don't matter.

I'd love to hear other opinions on this matter. It may be that I'm misinformed. What do you think about it?

Kitchen Nazi

Charlie had his head buried in a new book yesterday and Sage was at loose ends, so I suggested he help me mix up a batch of chocolate chip cookies. For six years old, he's a fairly proficient cook and can crack eggs without adding shells to the batter. So we mixed up a batch. He even used the cookie scoop to lay them out on the baking sheet.

But when I opened the oven to slide the first tray of cookies in, Sage was disturbed.

"Grandma, why do you have that pan in the bottom of your oven?" he demanded.

"It's not a pan, Sage. It's a cast iron skillet and it's there so when I bake my French Bread, I pour water in it and it steams the bread, giving it a nice crunchy crust."

"But you're not making bread. We're baking cookies."

"True. But I'm not adding any water to it. It will be fine."

"I wish you'd take it out," he stated firmly. "I find it disturbing!"

So this morning, while cleaning up the kitchen, I took the offensive skillet out of the oven. Think Sage will notice on his next kitchen excursion?