Saturday Morning Ritual

As we usually do on Saturday mornings, Russ and I jumped in the Smart car early and headed downtown to the farmer’s market. Normally, since we are there at the opening, the place is not crowded, and we see the same familiar faces.

Today, as we pulled up I knew something was different. There were hordes of people everywhere holding big fist sized biscuits to their mouths with melted cheese oozing out.   Apparently we arrived just as the Bull City Run of some kind had finished and the uber healthy, skinny runners were rightfully treating themselves for their morning effort. Of course one 8K run hardly burns off enough calories to warrant a Pie Pusher’s breakfast pizza or an American Meltdown breakfast sandwich, but it is all psychological.

Most of the vegetable shoppers were the regulars since the runners were busy recarb-loading. We made the loop of the stands getting eggs, cabbage, squash and the last of the local strawberries. Russ carried the baskets and bags back to the tiny Smart and filled the truck with our bounty. Of course filling the trunk of a smart doesn’t take much.

We toddled out of the parking lot on our way to the next ritual Saturday morning stop, LOAF. Russ is addicted to the Polenta bread, but does not buy it from the stand at the farmers market, instead insisting on going to the store so they can slice it on their ancient bread slicer. Since I am carb-avoiding I stayed in the car so as not to be tempted by any one of the amazing smells inside the bakery.

Russ was inside for an extra long time. I thought he might be eating a blueberry cheese Danish inside the store so as not to make me crazy. When he came out I asked him what took so long.

“I was giving a Durham visitor some directions about where she could eat,” he told me.

“She was looking for eggs. At first I thought she wanted a store and I told her about Bulldega, around the corner, but when she said she did not want the Marriott fare I understood she needed a restaurant. I told her about Scratch, around the corner and the farmer’s Market around the other corner.” Russ paused and then told me what the woman’s response was.

“Everything in Durham is just around the corner.”

How true! And that is what we love about Durham. Whatever you are looking for, it’s just around the corner.

Vinegar Pusher

I am a balsamic vinegar snob. That sounds like an oxymoron. The fact that I am addicted to balsamic is snobby enough, but there is a great variation in balsamic’s or so called balsamic vinegars. The one I like the most, that I practically main line, is Argento silver.  
True balsamic must be made in Moderna, Italy. Russ and I once drove through Moderna, just sniffing, looking for a little old lady who had a barrel in her attic. We did not find any home brew, but I did discover a brand that I could get imported into the states.  
Now I order it by the case. This last order I bought three cases since I could get the shipping, a very pricey part of the deal, free.  
I have written about this vinegar in the past and talked about it with friends, so I thought that if anyone local to Durham wanted to get a bottle I would be happy to sell it to you. It costs $15 which is about six dollars cheaper than you can get it at a store, if you can find it. There are other balsamics sold in similar bottles, but the product inside is not the same. My friend, Michelle told me that the one at Fresh Market is a poor knock off of the one I have.
Since it is strawberry season for just a few short days it would be a shame not to try this vinegar with some fresh sliced berries and black pepper. I know it sounds strange, but trust me, it is sublime.
I’m not going into the vinegar pushing business. Three cases of vinegar will be consumed in this house easily, but I would like to share my passion with my local friends. Sorry, far off fans.
This vinegar is all I use as a dressing on arugula salad. It is not calorie free, but the few that it has are worth it and no oil is needed. Contact me if you want a bottle or two. Buon appetitio!

“I’d Like To Thank The Academy”

“Where are you?” the text message from my friend Kelly read.

I was sitting in my car in a parking lot waiting for Carter to come meet me for lunch. I knew Kelly was at school in the award’s ceremony because she had been notified that at least one of her children were going to be receiving an award.

“Why?’ I texted back.

“Carter just got a Spanish award.”

My heart sank. What? I was not notified. I missed it!

Carter went off to school with some dread today. Her AP Calculus teacher had sprung on her class that they might be having a final exam, even though two weeks ago they were told they would not have a final. They had a few days to do four very difficult problems and that would determine if they were having an exam or not and today was the day they would find out if they would have the exam tomorrow. It added a crazy amount of stress to an already stressed student.

“It is also awards day, and I hate this day because so few people get awards,” Carter told me. I felt her pain. I told her it is the teacher’s prerogative to give a final and there was nothing she could do about it, but work as hard as possible on those problems. I also told her that she should be proud of what a good year she has had and not to care about awards. Hard work is rewarding enough.

Turns out the e-mail telling me that Carter was getting an award went in my junk e-mail box! Why? I do not know, apparently the title “Surprise – Awards” is highly suspicious. I am incredibly sad I missed it.

Carter was unsure if I was in the balcony with the other parents who were hidden out of site, but she said she did not hear my laugh. “You are such a good liar Mom, I thought you might be there and just hid the fact that I was getting an award so well from me.” No.

Technology screwed me out of witnessing this happy moment. I guess I need to go through the 12,258 e-mails in my junk box. The only problem is they are only on my computer and not my phone or I-pad where I read most everything.

The good news is that Carter does not have a Calculus exam and she got this award. She is one happy camper.

Grilled Lemon

Today for lunch at Mah Jongg I braved ordering the special salad of the week. Usually I have to greatly modify the offering to make it something I would want to eat, but today the special was a grilled salmon salad nicoise, so I just went with it.  
Of course I did modify it somewhat asking for a grilled lemon in place of the truffle oil dressing. I can hardly stand much oil in a dressing these days. Oil is something that has been easy to give up, along with mayonnaise. I wish sugar was as easy. If I taste something with oil I don’t immediately start to crave it, instead I am repulsed by it, but if I eat something sugary it kicks my sweet carving into high gear. I digress.  
Today I want to praise the yummy deliciousness of a grilled lemon. I don’t know what it is about the slight caramelization of that tart fruit, but it makes a fabulous dressing all on its own. It is bright, but not sour.  
Salad really just needs some moisture, that is all that dressing is. Yes, it adds flavor, or over powers the tastes of the food in the salad. A grilled lemon squeezed all over the salad just improves the beautiful taste of the food on the plate.
Speaking of squeezing, I have to give a shout out to my army of lemon squeezers. I have a skin allergy to the juice in citrus fruit. I can eat it all day long, but I just can’t touch it and certainly can’t squeeze my own lemon. My friend Christy squeezed by lemon today. It is one thing to do a wedge for iced tea, but squeezing the juice from a whole grilled lemon was a big messy job. Thanks Christy.
I think I need to keep wet naps in my purse to give to my squeezers so at least they don’t have to be sticky on my account. I really appreciate the help because the number of calories I save skipping the dressing and going with lemon is significant.  
To make a grilled lemon just cut the fruit in half and place cut side down on a hot grill, grill pan, or a frying pan will even work. Let it sit there unmoved for at least two minutes or until the cut side gets some black marks. That’s it. You can grill them in advance and keep them in the fridge, but lemons are juiciest right off the heat. Trust me you will never miss the oil if you replace your dressing with grilled lemon.

Dear Home Depot,

You have a supplier problem. In April I bought six yellow squash plants and 6 zucchini plants that we supplied by Bonnie. The plants were clearly marked and displayed in flats with photos of each vegetable. The seedlings were small two leaf sprouts, but looked healthy. I was careful about choosing plants to ensure I had a good mix of squash to supply my summer garden.

The good news is my plants have flourished and have grown in to fine giant plants. The bad news is they are ALL yellow squash. Granted it is hard to tell one squash seedling from another, but these were in pots labeled with their variety. It was not that they were just put in the wrong flat, but they were mislabeled at the planting.

Now I like yellow squash, but quite frankly everyone else in my house likes zucchini more. It would have been so much better is the mislabeling had happened the other way around.

Of course I can make stuffed squash blossoms exactly the same way with the yellow variety, but zucchini bread is not in the cards this year. I can make yellow squash bread and hope that Russ does not notice, since it is mostly for him.

I still could plant some zucchini since I have space for one small row, but I have missed a big growing period and soon the summer vacation time will start when I won’t be around to water. Needless to say I am not happy about this mistake.

Yes, in terms of money it does not mean much to you, Home Depot. The plants cost all of $2.50 a piece, but if you add the value of my time to plant them, weed around them, water them and lovingly tend them it really adds up.

I figure that six zucchini plants tend to yield about 90 pounds of zucchini give or take ten pounds. So at $1.99 a pound, the summer cost of zucchini at the store, I think you owe me $179.10. I would settle for $170, a heart felt apology and a promise to never let this mistake happen again.

If you want proof of my purchase I have my American Express reference number for my transaction on April 24 in Durham, NC.

I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Shay’s Menagerie 

Memorial Day is a day of remembrance for those who lost their lives serving our country. Tell that to my puppy. For Shay Shay it is a day of rest and relaxation amongst the carcasses of her squeaker removed, limb torn off, destuffed animals. I wonder if there is ever a day to give thanks for those stuffed animals who gave their lives to make dogs happy?
Shay has a large collection of once perfectly good, now disfigured, babies, but heaven forbid we do away with any of them. She is attached to them in any state of disarray.

There is Gray Owl, who once had four limbs, but is now down to one.

Bushy Tail Squirrel, had his squeaker removed through an armpitarektomy. Obviously there were catheters in each thigh.

Snoopy, the giraffe was systematically unstitched at the shoulder and stuffing came out along with the squeak.

Pinto Pony was blinded during a violent fluff removal. Thankfully the other eye is still intact, but Pinto now goes by Flat Pinto Pony since no stuffing exists.

Skinny Snake takes his name seriously, but is concerned that the remaining bit of filling makes his butt look fat.

Pink Bun Bun lost his legs as well as his chin giving him a decidedly British look.

Well, Grey Wolf, what can one say, but poor bastard needs never pass by a mirror, it would scare him to death to see what has become of him.

Only Blue Skinny Dog remains relatively intact with just one stick of eye removed. How Blue Skinny Dog has remain unscathed for months and months we will never know. Perhaps Blue Dog has some dirt on Shay.

But for now Shay seems unfazed by it all. Happy to observe Memorial Day in her own way.

Guilt Cleaning

Since the rain was coming down in sheets all day and Carter was studying and Russ was working on a deck for work I felt guilty not being as productive as they were. I decided it was a good time to work on one of my cleaning-out projects.
Earlier in the week I got a good start cleaning out the garage, but was not interested in being trapped inside the humid cave today. So I decided I would work cleaning out one wall of kitchen cabinets. With a tile floor, the kitchen was left in touched in the great wood floor refinishing project of ’15. Thus nothing about the kitchen had undergone the scrutiny I had with all our belongings in closets last year.
I was not going to work on the cupboards where the plates and glasses live, that is a project for another day. Instead I decided to tackle the catch all cabinets where the little used items are housed. Such things as the pressure cooker, the funnel sets or electric knife, things that I like to have, but aren’t called into duty but once or twice a year.
The problem with the orphan kitchen items is that they get grouped together in cabinets with unlikely neighbors. Shay Shay’s tooth cleaning gel, with cinnamon cashews, or hand carved wood salad tossers next to the dough hook for the kitchen aid mixer, festive Christmas apron and the extra large heavy duty aluminum foil roll.   
Some of these things were first put in one cabinet and thus stayed there for life because that is where we knew it was. The problem with moving seasonal items is that when the season comes around you might not remember where you put it. But that was a long standing excuse to keep these misfits in the same place.
So today, without holding back, I cleaned out five major cabinets. Editing what really needed to be in the kitchen, rehousing some things, like all of Shay’s medicine to a better room, and taking out some things I had, but never used or frankly never liked. The whale platter went to the donate pile, and the dozen sports water bottles went to the garage.
I felt great satisfaction when it was all done. Russ came in the kitchen to eat his lunch and I announced the completion of the great clean out of the wall of cabinets, minus the two drawers. “Yeah, those drawers are the real mess,” Russ said.
So much for my feeling of accomplishment. He was right. The job was not close to being done. After lunch I pulled a chair up to the two large junk drawers and tackled the hard work. You know those drawers you have where everything you thought was important went. Turns out not that much was important in them. I reorganized the hundred or so batteries. If you need AA’s I have cornered the market on them. I discovered a pouch of Chuckie Cheese winner’s coins that Carter used to collect awaiting enough to trade in for a good prize. Apparently Chuckie Cheese did away with the coins years ago, and that Carter aged out of that place at least a decade ago.

In the end I grouped like things together, tape and stapler, matches and lighters, pie weights and pastry brush. The very last job I did was testing every pen and discarding any writing utensil that was not perfect. I sorted the pens, from the pencils from the sharpies, which even got their own compartment. Job done. Not bad work for a rainy day. I am working my way through the easiest clean out jobs so that I will eventually have to face the attic, but before that day comes every drawer and closet in my house is going to be perfect. I might be able to drag this out two or three years.

Teenage Vision

Used to be that we could go to the farm to celebrate Memorial Day and the unofficial start of summer. Of course that was before we had a high schooler who needed to study for exams over the long weekend. Today Russ said this was our last exam studying Memorial Day. Next year at this time Carter will be a graduate with no exams. Hooray.
So since we are stuck at home we went to DPAC tonight and saw a play with Carter and her “sister E,” our bonus daughter Ellis. Life is better when we get to have Ellis with us. I love to hear the plans she and Carter make for the future.
Tonight they were talking about going to Mexico. Carter thinks they should go right after high school graduation and Ellis realistically believes they will have to wait until they are a little older, like 30. Carter’s response to that was, “We have to go before then because 30 is when our bodies give out.”
I have to say I have not been the best body roll model, but I hope their bodies last past 30. For now I am happy to just get to spend time with these girls because soon enough they will be off on their own and lord knows my body might be giving out making me incapable of visiting them.

It’s All About The Shoes

Today is a day of celebrations. First it is my very young friend Christy Barnes’ birthday and second it was the Durham Academy graduation. Since we are celebrating Christy’s birthday with a lunch next week I wanted to do something small to surprise her today. I bought a bunch of “happy birthday” Mylar balloons and was planning on surprising her at the gym, but I got her work out time wrong and by the time I got there she had left. First I want to say, who works out on their birthday?
Anyway, I knew she was going to be meeting her sister after the workout so I just tied the balloons to a lamp post outside her house. To me there is nothing happier than seeing balloons outside a house announcing, “something good is happening here today.” So happy birthday to Christy!

Although I did not have anyone graduating today, Carter was a Marshall for the ceremony and I know plenty of kids who were graduating. So I met Hannah Hannan at her office on the campus of UNC and we walked over to Memorial Hall where DA holds its graduation. It is wonderful to hold it there because it is big enough that anyone who wants to go can.  
Carter’s second grade teacher, Karen Lovelace, sat with us in the balcony where we were surrounded by many beloved teachers from the pre-school, lower school and middle school. It was so nice that they come and see kids who they taught over the years graduate. They certainly aren’t required to come since they are plenty busy enough finishing up grading and writing report cards for their own students.

The graduation was nice. Lee Hark, the funniest Upper School Head in America, gave a fabulous speech. It made me sad that he will not be doing one for Carter’s graduation since he has been promoted to assistant Head of school for next year. Maybe as assistant head he could still give a speech.  
Carol Folt, Chancellor at UNC, gave the official speech. It started off slow, but ended with six very sound bits of advice for the graduating seniors, which I wonder if they will remember by tomorrow? Then the diplomas were handed out. The clapping never stopped as each person’s name was read and they crossed the stage to accept their diploma from Micheal Ulku-Steiner, the Head of school.
With their caps and gowns on the only thing that made the girls standout from our vantage point in the balcony was their shoes. Many of them wore platform wedges, some high heels, some sensible cute flat Jack Rodgers. The best were the ones who had a small heeled sandals because they walked with the most ease and grace as the eyes of hundreds of loved ones watched them cross the giant stage.
I was sad thinking about the year of lasts to come. Last first day of school, last last day, last day with all those loving and dedicated teachers. I know that Carter will be rejoicing. I want to remember to help her pick the right shoes to wear with her cap and gown. It seems like it might be the last time I may have an opportunity to suggest school foot wear to her.

Nice Surprise

Today was our last school parent’s council meeting of the year. It is really not so much a meeting as a thank you lunch. I counted it was my twelfth time I have been to this lunch since I have volunteered to chair some committee since the second year that a Carter was at DA.
I parked in front of the lower school, since the lunch is normally held outside at the overhang and followed some very young mothers into the school. I recognized them as people who I knew when they were students at DA when Carter first started school. It made me feel very old.
 As I tried to get outside I was waylaid because the preschoolers were coming in from spirit day all in their matching shirts. Memories of Carter and her friends came flooding back. I felt like they were just that little a week ago, when they would be strapped into the car seats in the back of my land cruiser singing.
Eventually I found the lunch in the auditorium. I was definitely one of the oldest mothers. I sat with my friends Michelle and Chesley who both have juniors in Carter’s class. We represented the old guard in the room. Karen, the out going parent’s council president, got up to start the meeting. She called on Leslie Holdsworth, the director of development to come and give a special award. This was something different than usually had happened at any of the last twelve lunches of this kind.
She asked me to get up and she presented me with a cool piece of art to commemorate my seven years as auctioneer. It was a very nice surprise. She announced that I had been involved with raising over a million dollars. What she did not do was also credit all the hundreds of volunteers who work every year to make that auction happen. The auctioneer is a small cog in the much bigger machine.
I have one last year on parent’s council, still chairing parent’s of alumni, where I have a chance to get that community going before I officially become a member of it. Once Carter graduates, in exactly a year, I will no longer have any official relationship with Durham Academy. It is hard to believe that after fourteen years of volunteering I will just be the person who paid for my child to go there.   

Procrastination Exercises

Last year, at this time, I was busy cleaning out every closet in anticipation of redoing our floors. Although it was pure hell to go through it felt incredibly productive when it was all over. I vowed to continue the cleaning out process, but somehow a vow is not quite strong enough to keep me on that track. It is just like dieting. Good intentions don’t mean anything. You have to actually do it everyday.
I have been feeling guilty due to this lack of productivity so I thought I should get back to the ever giant and still growing list of things that need reorganizing. Attic- still on the list, crawl space – you can hardly crawl through, garage – growing mountain of things that need to be donated, Carter’s section of the house- forbidden zone, my office – the walls are closing in, kitchen cabinets- over flowing.  
I can hardly make a turn without seeing someplace that needs attention. Well, not exactly. The closets that all were all cleaned out last year are still in pristine condition. All the more incentive that I should get to work on the rest.  
Yesterday I had a virtually free day, just one conference call and one meeting. Nothing was holding me back from tackling a big job. Did I do it? Not on your life.
Well, my cleaning ladies were working so I did not want to get in their way. I needed to get my steps in and well, I was playing Catan. Feeling guilty I looked round my office for a job I could do that would count towards reorganizing and cleaning and my eyes landed on the four buckets of change that had been accumulating for the last year. I could roll all the coins! Wait, even better I could do it while walking on my walking desk.
Since our change sorting machine had corroded batteries I had to come up with a solution for putting the right number of coins in the rolls without counting everyone. My solution was to count one roll’s worth and then weigh it on my kitchen scale. A roll of $10 worth of quarters weighs 230 grams. Ta-da!  
It took me the better part of a day and 13,000 steps, but in the end I had over $400 rolled and ready to deposit in Carter’s college fund. Yes, it was a very minor job as far as cleaning out goes, yes, it only netted the value of one college text book, yes, it was the least painful of my jobs, but it was a start, small that it was.  
Peter Walsh, organizing guru would send me for time out for even considering this cleaning out, but in the words of my father, “it was better than a sharp stick in the eye.” I am not sure if I am ever getting to the attic, but maybe this summer I can at least do the garage and maybe my office. I figure I need to save some cleaning out for when Carter goes to college, otherwise I might have to get a real job.

Bad Essays

It’s a good thing I am not in college admissions. I am much too hard on applicants. Tonight I went to a talk a school given by an admissions director at UNC. He gave a very informative talk about how admission’s committees read applications. He was giving us the big overview, not the UNC specifics.
He talked all about the stuff I feel like has been drilled into my head, about kids taking an academically rigorous course load, constant improvement, how important teacher recommendations are and the Valhalla of a strong essay.
One thing that rang most true to me is this bit of advice, “if a friend found your essay on the ground, with no name on it, and read it, they should know instantly that it is yours.” Ta-da! The key for all writing, your voice should ring through.
After the introductory talk he gave us two actual application packets, of course with no names. They were the application, the essays, the transcript, the letters of recommendations, the whole shabang. We were told to read them and then we discussed the strengths and weakness of each application.  
I hated all the essays. In one application that had two essays they did not read like they were written by the same person. There was no distinct voice and I did not feel like I got to know the writer any better after reading them. The real turn off was the essay that says why the student wanted to go to UNC. Practically every sentence began with “I”. “I will be a great asset to the University,” “I have something the school can benefit from,” “I am a leader,”… I, I, I. 
Yes, you want to sell yourself to a school, but the last thing you want to be is a used car salesman. “I’ve got the perfect car for you. I know you will love it. Have I got a deal for you.”
The second application we read had an essay where the student thought so little of a teacher who took over a class mid-year that he asked if he could teach the class. He boasted that the grades on the test for the section he taught were the highest for the whole year.
Humility is a fine line to walk, but it feels like it is the tone that was missing from all the essays we read. First, I want to get to know someone, then I want to learn something about how they have grown, learned, changed, evolved or discovered something about themselves. Plus they need to do it in a short, concise manner and throw in a little humor. It is a tall order. No wonder it seems daunting.  
I have no idea what I wrote about in my college essay. I was not a good writer or even a practiced writer, and my life of story telling was just beginning. What I do know is that at the age of 17 or 18 you don’t have to have some earth shattering story to tell. You don’t have to be the best at something, in fact it is probably better if you never claim you are great at anything. Just be human. Show how something someone did made you feel and how that made you act differently after that. Be vulnerable, be curious, be yourself.  
If I were a college admissions officer I would only hope to admit those people whose voice I truly could hear and I liked.  

When You Crave a BLT

It is the time of year when the tomatoes start to be yummy. I bought a few gorgeous tomatoes at the farmers market the other day and ever since have been craving a BLT. The only problem is that a normal BLT is that it is made a two slices of fattening bread, slathered with full fat mayo. No wonder I was craving one.
Carter wanted a Bahn Mi for dinner so I decided a I would make the spicy aioli with fat free mayo, lemon juice and sriracha for her. I decided it might make a lighter option for a BLT mayo. Now to the bread substitute. I looked in the fridge and found some beautiful hearts of romain. Ah Ha! BLT lettuce wraps! I added grilled chicken to bump up the protein and help limit the amount of bacon I needed. I chopped the bacon into smaller bits and sprinkled in on the lettuce, adding the tomatoes, chicken and just running the spoon of mayo across the top.
The BLT wraps totally satisfied my BLT craving. All of the flavor, none of the bread. Now I am tying to figure out how to do a bread less Ruben. I am not certain the the lettuce option will stand up to the griddle.  

Breaking and Entering

I should have known something was wrong when Russ asked for my car keys, “because your passenger door is slightly ajar.” When he came back in the house and asked if I had taken everything out of my center console I knew my car had been broken into. I went down and saw that everything from my glove box and center console was sitting on the passenger seat, but it was the smell of cigarette smoke that was the most assaulting.  
I made the mistake of disturbing the scene by searching through the mess to see what was taken. Of course my beloved Lulu Guinness striped change purse where I keep my mah Jongg money was gone with all of about twenty dollars in change, but nothing else as far as I could tell.  
“Those idiots left your Tom Ford sunglasses,” Carter exclaimed, determining them to be major amateurs. Carter said I should call the police and I thought, what for, a change purse? Then as I was looking at the inside of my car I noticed the cause of the cigarette stench, the idiots had left the butt of a camel cigarette in the cup holder. Now we had evidence so I got out of the car hoping I had not messed it up too much and called the police.

Within moments a very nice young female patrol officer came. She told me that there have been at least ten break ins like mine in the neighborhood this week. Russ came out and we looked around to see if we could find my change purse. We followed a trail of coins, obvious winnings from my gambling addiction and Russ spotted an opened bag of pretzels under a tree with a dozen stale pretzels next to it.  
We immediately recognized the bag as the four year old one that had been in my glove compartment. The thieves had taken it and once they tasted them, discarded the terrible old pretzels right at the end of my driveway. The officer was thrilled with the find and finger printed the whole bag getting a number of usable prints.

She then finger printed the car and retrieved the butt. As she was getting my prints to compare against the ones she already had I asked her what in the world a charge would be for stealing my change purse? “Breaking and entering!” She just was happy to have any evidence since there had been so many of the same break ins with no help to determine the robbers.
Carter and Russ got printed too and Carter was furious that I had not interrupted her from the boredom of writing a paper to help collect evidence.

I was fairly certain I had locked my car as I always do, but must not of since their was no sign of tampering to get in my car and the other cars in the driveway were not disturbed. It was very bold to come down our gravel driveway with our bedroom just above the car, but we heard nothing last night. Make sure your cars are locked, but if they are not, leave some old rotten snack food inside. Just make sure to wipe it clean of your prints so you can get evidence of these idiots who are breaking in. They are smoking camels, have pockets full of change and will certainly not be wearing designer sunglasses. 

Arts and Crafts at Our House

A couple of nights ago Carter showed me a beautiful film on You Tube of someone doing calligraphy. I have always loved everything about beautiful lettering and wished I just had better hand writing.
Yesterday Carter told me that she needed to do some artwork for a class project in school, asking if we could go to the AC Moore today. I am never one to turn down a trip to an art store. As we started talking about what she was going to do for her class I mentioned to her that I had been thinking about the calligraphy she had shown me and was interested in trying to learn it. “I want to learn too,” Carter enthusiastically responded. There is no better time to pick up a new hobby than right before exams.
I told a Carter than she needed to work on her art project and I will start to try and figure out the calligraphy and as soon as exams are over she can pick it up. It helped that AC Moore did not have a huge inventory of calligraphy stuff and I needed to order a few things from Amazon.
So while Carter worked to do a drawing of a war correspondent during World War I, I was studying the letters on a calligraphy website. It is much harder than I thought, especially since I was trying to learn first with a slanted maker and not jumping right into a messy ink pen. Carter was much more successful with her charcoal pencil. 
Maybe this is something we can’t teach ourselves, so I looked on the web to try and find a class. After a couple of clicks I discovered a week long calligraphy retreat held at Camp Cheerio, Carter’s beloved true home. Seems like a sign that we need to learn calligraphy. We probably still need to find a local class and practice a while before we go off on a week long camp, but it seems like a fun activity for the future. Carter thought it was promising thing for me to get involved with as she is preparing to go to college. I doubt it will become a career, just would be nice to address invitations in a neater hand.

Party, Party, Party

Today was one celebration after another and I will not complain about it. I got to start my day with a special trip to the needlepoint store with my friend Jeanne. She moved away to DC last year and I miss seeing her smiling face on a regular basis. Luckily she got to spend the night in Durham last night and needed a visit to see Nancy at Chapel Hill Needlepoint. I have been slow on my stitching thanks to the craziness of May so I loved having an excuse to go and stitch and visit at the same time.
That fun was followed by the last of my birthday celebration lunches. Yes, my birthday was seventeen days ago, but yesterday my friend Jean, a different Jean, took me to lunch for my birthday. It is our annual tradition where I love catching up. Then today was a lunch organized by my friend Hannah with six friends where we went to the WADU and all ordered the same salad. It is just and excuse to get together and have lunch, but if it wasn’t somebody’s birthday we just wouldn’t do it. Thank goodness we all have birthdays every year.
Russ flew in from Denver this morning on the red eye. I wasn’t sure if after ninety minutes of sleep all night if he was going to be able to make it to the last celebration of the day, but he rallied. We went to the Nasher Museum for the Durham Academy fund thank you event. It used to be called the headmaster’s dinner, but now is called the Cavalier Circle. That name does not mean anything to Russ, so I told him it was the headmaster’s dinner. He does not realize that we also don’t call the head of school the headmaster any more. 
The event was actually really fun. Some of the kids from In The Pocket, the musical group, performed. Since it was at the museum we looked at the art. Russ loved the modern art. One of the coolest pieces was a big mirrored bowl. From far away you appeared upside down in the mirror, but as you got closer your image flipped to right side up. How do it do it?
That was a lot of celebrating for one day. Amazingly Russ stayed out late and I had to drag him home. Hopefully he will sleep through the night since he missed most sleep from last night. I of course will be up late since my extroverted self was with people all day. I need a day off from partying so I can sleep.

Orchid Symphony



I am not a good indoor gardener. When I was a child my mother grew all kinds of spider plants and wandering Jews inside. I think as a way to combat seasonal disorder for the long winters we had in Connecticut. Since I live in the more temperate climate of North Carolina I prefer to garden outdoors. That being said I may need to switch to inside if the herd of neighborhood deer keep eating my garden.

My only inside plants are my large and growing collection of orchids that Russ has been giving me as presents when he is at a loss for a gift. I count eighteen plants right now. I did ask him to stop giving them to me since I am running out of space to keep them, but somehow the florist assumed I always get orchids and changed his cut flower order to three orchids in one pot for my birthday.

The good news about orchids is they are very low maintenance. At least I don’t seem to do a thing for them except try and remember to water them about every 8-9 days. My sunroom apparently is the perfect room getting hot in the day and cold at night to sustain the orchids.  

I never know when they are going to bloom and usually I have at least a quarter of the plants in flower at any one time. Some bloom twice a year and others three or four times. Somehow today when I came in the sunroom to try and get some natural light to brighten my day and noticed that practically all the orchids are in bloom at the same time.

I wish I could take credit for how beautiful they look, but only God could come up with this strange plant, which is not very pretty without flowers but simply glorious when it blooms.

Made Me Smile

When the request first came into me asking if I was free at 12:30 on a Wednesday my initial reaction was no, since Wednesday is the sacred day of Mah Jongg. If someone needed me early in the morning or later in the day on hump day that would be fine, but never during the middle, lunch hour of Mah Jongg. Now, not everyone is as precious with their Mah Jongg commitment as I am, but I never would skip the game to do something mundane like laundry or the dentist.  
That being said, the request was for me to go to Croasdaile Village, a local retirement community, to accept the donation they were making from their virtual food drive and for me to say a few words. Croasdaile had been doing drives for the Food Bank of Central and Eastern NC for a number of years, but this year was their biggest donation ever and they wanted to have a little ceremony for the BIG check presentation. Of course Mah Jongg could be abbreviated for such an occasion.
I arrived at the main desk where the cutest couple, Larry and Betsy DeCarolis, chairs of the food drive, met me with great enthusiasm. They escorted me to the auditorium where I met other residents who were donors to their drive. I helped Besty hang the posters she had made to publicize the drive as residents, rolled in and took their seats.  
It was quite an official occasion. I was seated with seven other dignitaries and given the addenda for the presentation. Men in suits and ties read from prepared remarks extolling the virtues of Larry and Betsy in their leadership to raise the money. I, having no need for a script when talking about this subject, got up and talked about how invisible food insecurity is in our society and the shame people feel about needing help with food. The audience gave a little gasp when I told them that just the Durham branch of the food bank serves over 106,000 people annually, some week after week. I thanked them profusely and promised that we would take their $15,300 and turn it into $153,000 worth of food.
Afterwards, Betsy hugged me and told me she had the best time running the food drive. I told her I hoped she would do it again next year and promised to come back. I left on a cloud much bigger than one I would have been on if I had played Mah Jongg all day and won every hand.  
Getting a chance to have a ceremony to hand over their check meant the world to these people. They should be celebrated because they did a wonderful thing to encourage their community of people, who are well taken care of, to share with others who need help. Thanks Croasdaile Village and especially Larry and Betsy. You made me smile the whole afternoon.

My Dad is 78 Today!

As long back as I could remember one of my earliest and most recurring thoughts was that I was lucky that I had one of the best fathers on earth. Not all my friends felt that way about their own fathers, but they sure liked mine. He wasn’t always around because he worked so hard, but when he was he always showed a lot of interest in me, what I was doing, what I liked and what I was learning.  
I was never too young for him to teach me things that were important to him, like what every make and model of car was on the road, both coming toward us and going away from us. He loved to talk with me about his work and I learned early on about business, hard work and how to deal with dopes you might have to work with, and there are a lot of dopes.
He taught me to have a strong handshake and to look people in the eye when I spoke with them. Laughter was ever present and telling a good story was a highly valued skill in our house. He made me more articulate, especially when arguing. When I was in the height of pupperty and could not find the words in a disagreement he would scream at me to stop crying and to just talk.  
He had important rules like, “never run one of your cars into another one of your cars,” and “always let your mother sleep late on Saturdays.” If there is one word to describe my father it is generous, often to a fault. Although he slurs all nationalities in an equal opportunity way, he is the kindest customer to every taxi driver and waiter he ever met.
He is emphatic in his speech, often repeating the important words for emphasis. I have never been at a loss to understand where he stood on most issues. He loves to teach and has had a sense of urgency about everything he did. As far back as I can remember he would start a sentence with, “I need to tell you this before I die…” It was unsettling for a five year old, but now I know it means it is important to him.
Mostly, I am happy that I have had fifty-five years of him “teaching me stuff,” and hope we have many more. I am lucky that he is still able to drive himself from the farm to my house to install by birthday present of “the best sound system” and go out to lunch with me to celebrate his birthday.  
If you know my dad, Ed Carter, send him an email and wish him a happy birthday. He doesn’t have Facebook, too many dopes might want to be friends with him if he did, but I’ll pass along any messages.  

Great New Salads in Durham 

One of the perks about “working” at Durham Magazine is my quarterly lunch with my beloved editor, Andrea Griffith Cash. Since a huge part of the Magazine is about local food we are sure to try one of the new spots in town. Usually the problem is that so many places have yummy, delicious, and fattening fare. You can find a world class pizza, but finding a good for you and drool worthy salad is much harder than it should be.
Imagine my delight when Andrea suggested we meet at a new spot of ninth street called Happy and Hale, a salad and juice bar. I googled it and there is one in Raleigh, but the Durham one is not listed yet. Based on what I read I was excited to try it.
The bright sunny restaurant has big glass doors that open out to the street where there are a few tables on the sidewalk. It was already getting crowded so I dropped a couple of Durham Magazines on one of the tables, just inside, as we waited to order.
It is a place like Sweet Greens in DC or Hale and Hearty Soup in NYC. You can get one of their pre-determined salad offerings or a pick your own type thing. They had a lot of different greens as base offerings, with my go to arugula being one of them, three stars just for that. I got roast butternut squash that I was wary about because it still had the skin on it. My cute salad maker told me it was tender as could be and she was right. Roast red peppers, caramelized onions, cherry tomatoes, goat cheese and chicken and I was a happy camper. Andrea had the Acai bowl with coconut chips and granola. She liked it. It screamed breakfast to me.
As we were still in line I noticed a man had sat down at our table, so from across the room I let him know those were our magazines. He got the hint and moved over one seat. Turned out he was a photographer who would like to work for the magazine so he was nice to us when we came and sat down at our saved table.
After Andrea and I gabbed and enjoyed our healthy lunch a nice guy named Tyler, who is someone of authority at Happy and Hale, came by to clear our bowls and asked how everything was. After many compliments I did request unsweet tea and lemons cut into wedges, since the only tea they had was sweetened with agave. He promised that it was coming and he would never cut lemons into anything else but squeezable wedges (that is my life long crusade).
If you are looking for a healthy lunch I recommend Happy and Hale, in the spot where the old Duck shop used to be on the south end of ninth street across the street from the play house. Now, if we can just get more white table cloth restaurants to offer tasty, big and low calorie salads my life’s work of searching for lunch is half done. I still have to tackle the half moon slivers of lemons that can’t be squeezed thing. it.

In The Blink of an Eye

Today we went to a brunch in celebration of Leander Perun’s pending graduation from Durham Academy in less than two weeks. It was a beautiful occasion with brilliant blue sky and friends and families gathered to enjoy a yummy meal. Leander’s mom, Stephanie, hired Carter to photograph the occasion which kept her behind the camera where she loves to be.
As I watched Carter taking pictures of the guests, most of whom I have known since before they knew their own name I had to blink back the tears. The years have rushed by, but one thing that is true is that these kids came out the way they were going to be.
Leander, as a young woman now, poised to go to Denison to play lacrosse, is the same kind easy going person she always has been. I pulled up pictures from a week Leander spent at “Camp Gracie” in 2007. Camp Gracie, is what the girls called going to spend a week at my parent’s farm, since Gracie is my father’s grandfather name.
Since Stephanie was a full time working Mom, finding things for Leander to do that did not involve Stephanie having to drive her hither and yon was a help. Carter was going to a week of riding camp at Mrs. Brown’s very ramshackle barn, about 20 minutes from my parents farm. Horses were Carter’s thing, but Leander was a very good sport about spending the 100 degree days out at the fly infested barn on the world’s oldest horses.

I would drive the girls out, leave them with their packed lunches and pick them up eight hours later. Leander had a wonderful attitude about the whole thing. After the barn the girls would come back to the farm and swim, kayak, eat wonderful Gracie cooked meals and drive the farm vehicles around. Everything they did was OK with Leander, even if it was not her first choice.
That get along, be grateful, make the most of things attitude has never changed about Leander. Now she is graduating and going on to the next life’s step. I know she will succeed because that is what she does. She puts her head down, does the work, and is always pleasant about it, even if it is not her first choice. Well now she is going to her first choice, something she deserves.
Congratulations Leander. You are a joy, always have been and I am sure always will be. I have loved watching you grow up.

Weed or Beauty?

Due to my hurt back Russ volunteered to do the weekly weeding of my garden. Thanks to all the rain we have had, the flowers and vegetables are growing wild, but then so are the weeds. I hobbled out to the garden to instruct Russ about which were the weeds and which were not. Sometimes it is hard to tell arugula from a weed.
At first Russ said he was going to pull the weeds by hand, but I encouraged him to use a hoe, for speed and to save his back. I went back in the house because the worst thing I could do when a favor is offered is supervise.
“I owe you some zinnias,” we’re the first words out of Russ mouth when he came inside. “I’ll go and buy some plants now.” I told him that he did not owe me anything and that I will will plant with seeds, since that is how I got them in the first place. “I used the hoe and just kept going and before I realized I was in the flower area and I dug up the zinnias.”
Zinnia seedlings look very weed like. It was not surprising that he made this small mistake. I have plenty of seeds that my father gave me, so tomorrow I will replant. No repenting needed for replanting.
So often in life we can’t tell the weeds from the flowers when they are in their early stages. You never know what is going to grow up to be a beautiful flower and what is going to a choking weed. The vegetables are the same way. As a seedling a green bean plant could easily appear to be an invasive weed. It is only after letting it grow for a month before you realize what a delicious producer you have on your hands.  
It takes time, care and tender hands to raise a productive garden, just like most things in life. Never recklessly yank something out until you are really sure you don’t want it. You may be ending the growth of the best thing you have. Is it a weed or is it a beauty? I venture that most things are beautiful if you have patience to let it flourish to its full potential.

We Have A Competent Almost Adult



When Russ and I learned we needed to go to South Carolina overnight for a funeral Carter asked us if she could stay home alone. Not exactly alone, home with Shay Shay. We decided that she was trustworthy enough to handle staying home one night alone, so we let her do it.
Carter already drives herself to and from school, she cares for young children, can handle large animals and can navigate her way alone on a foreign city’s subway system. Why couldn’t she stay home in the only house she has ever lived in?
After the funeral I received a text of the steak, mashed potato and okra dinner Carter had bought and cooked for herself. The words read, “I am a competent adult.” When I faced time with her before bed she was happy and loving having the house all to herself. I thought about how much I love to be alone in my own house and understood the fun for her.
In the morning she texted me about feeding and waking Shay before going off to school. “Thanks. I really liked being on my own for a while. It motivated me.” How wonderful I thought. Practice adulthood is something I think is so helpful. For me, practice letting go was also good. I had no doubt she could care for herself and Shay, but I was pleasantly surprised by how clean everything was when I got home.
Small doses of responsibility and adulthood doled out over the next year seem like the plan I should go with. It seems like just yesterday that Carter would not sleep away from home. Thanks to Hannah, who made it her mission to get Carter to feel comfortable sleeping over with her friend Campbell when they were six. Now Carter looks forward to her six weeks away from home during the summer. All practice for the day she goes and makes her own home somewhere else. Now I need to practice not missing her.

Goodbye Gary



More than twenty years ago Judy McMeekin started working for my dad as a book keeper in Pawleys Island. That was when I first met her and her gravely voiced husband, Gary. Judy went from working for my Dad to working for Russ and is now the comptroller of his company. We have gone on cruises in the Mediterranean and trip to the Mayan Riviera with Judy and Gary and he was always up for a good time. Gary would always ask how you were with actual care and then see if you needed a drink from the bar.
Sadly, Gary passed away this week at the much too young an age of 68. Russ, his business partner Rich and I drove down to Surfside, South Carolina for the funeral. We arrived at the church almost an hour before the service began so we could see Judy and their son Gabe and found the parking lot practically full already. Judy called the service a sellout. Clearly, Gary was well loved by the many people he interacted with from football referees colleagues, to the relators whose houses he appraised, to his fellow parishioners at their church.
After the service Russ, Rich and I went to grab dinner before Russ took Rich to the airport to fly to Boston. On the way to the airport Russ dropped me off at the hotel I booked us into. Rich got quite a laugh as we pulled up to the Surfside Beach Resort Hotel. The parking lot was full of cycles of the motor type.
Gary, with quite a sense of humor, had passed away just before famed Biker Week in Myrtle beach. The funeral was a respectful twelve hours before the official opening of the nightmare time here on the Grand Strand. Of course Gary could have picked any other of good biker week times to go, like black biker week, or gay biker week or black gay biker week, but no, he picked the granddaddy of all, plain ‘ole biker week. Despite our lofty spot on the seventh floor, I can still her the roar of the Harley’s as they rumble into the parking lot.  

I figure this is the best joke Gary could play on us. We would not have missed the service because Judy means the world to us. I am really looking forward to getting a good sight of the people attached to those bikes in the light of day tomorrow. Seeing one biker is not so bad, but seeing a highway full of them reenforces my dislike of all things Harley. Of course, the average age of the attendees at biker week keeps getting older and soon funerals attached to biker week might be common place. Gary was a trend setter.

My Back Went On Strike

I am not one of those sports crazy people who lives to exercise. I do it in hopes that it will help keep me in better shape and so that I can be fully functional in my old age. I don’t usually complain about it, I just do it.  
Well, today while working out with my trainer and my friend Christy I did something, what I don’t know, but it caused me to pull a muscle in my back. It wasn’t one of those, “oh my goodness, what did I just do?” moments. It was the, “now that I drove home why can’t I get out of the car?” pains. 
I took some pain killer and went about my day, mostly sitting, but things did not improve. I came home to lay down and decided that I was going to skip my two evening commitments. Is this what old age has come to?
Am I destined to only doing one thing a day and then need an afternoon nap to make it through the rest of the evening? Carter and Russ gave me a terrible birthday present of a weekend away to figure out what I am going to do with my life when Carter goes to college in 15 months. I was not worried about what I was going to do. Now I see that I am going to have to test drive scooters and look at ramps for our house.
I am sure that is a better sounding plan to Carter than my previously unannounced plan to buy an apartment in the city where she is going to college and have lunch with her everyday between my morning exercise and afternoon walk.  
All kidding aside. I think maybe this hurt back is just a way to give me a night off from the overload of May. Sorry I did not make my meetings tonight. My back went on strike and I choose not to cross its picket line. A huge dose of sleep/pain killer and a long sleep is what I look forward to.

Garden Club Palooza

Tonight was my favorite Garden club meeting of the year, the May picnic with spouses. This year we hit the jackpot with Anna Whalen as the house hostess and perfect weather where we were able to enjoy a beautiful night outside in her glorious garden.
All the members bring a dish to share and we may not all be good gardeners, but most everyone can make something yummy to eat. So for Russ this is a good party because the food is good and he knows almost all the people at the party. That and the fact that it starts at 6:00 and we are home by 8:30, that’s a good party for us.
This year the highlight of the party were the flower arrangements made by Club member Stacey Burkert. For the record she is a good gardener and can cook. She was called in at the last minute to produce the works of art from flowers she found around Anna’s property. The star was this three foot tall green and white arrangement. You can hardly tell how big it is since it is Anna’s great room with 20 foot ceilings, but trust me, it was spectacular.
Stacey has just created a company called Fig Tree Designs to do these kind of things professionally. She reminded me that she first has to renovate her new house before going great guns into flower and garden design, but I’ve seen her produce masterworks from found items before so I’m sure she will be called upon well before her house is finished. She also has three kids to raise, so what’s renovating a house and making flowers arrangements all at the same time? Stacey can do it.
Thanks to all the hostesses of the party. It really was a lovely evening. 

All of North Carolina Does NOT Support HB2- Time to Succeed

As the national news leads off today with the story of North Carolina’s idiot governor counter suing the federal government over the clearly discriminatory HB-2 law I get more and more angry. This ridiculous law that was passed by an emergency called legislature and signed by the governor in less than 24 hours has been the worst kind of government action seen in decades.
The state legislature spent $47,000 to have that “emergency” meeting. That was just the beginning of spending over this ridiculous law. Hundreds of businesses immediately came out against the law. Companies that had planned to expand in North Carolina changed their minds. Concerts and events were canceled. Money that would be spent in the state was not, because the rest of the nation thinks we are bigots. Well, some North Carolinians are and I am here to say they don’t speak for or represent me or most of the people I know.
Now that our governor is getting in a pissing match with a much bigger dog, the Feds, he has had to hire outside council since our attorney general will not support HB2. This is our governor throwing good money after bad. Stop trying to save face, McCrory, you are on the wrong side of history. I am yet to know of any women who were attacked in a bathroom by a transgender person, as you claim the law is needed to protect. Stop using women as your excuse to be blatantly discriminatory. 
After looking at the list of legislators who voted for this dog’s breakfast of a law it is clear that the more rural areas of the state are the ones in support. I see the best answer to the problem is for Durham, along with Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Cary, Greensboro, Asheville, Winston-Salem, Charlotte and Raleigh, excluding the governor’s mansion, to succeed from the state. Let’s see how well the state would do without most of the economic hubs.  
Since those legislators do not understand the constitution that rules us all I don’t want them to have access to spending our money to defend their ignorant actions. I want the progressive “Old North State” back, not this back water swamp the current government has turned into. McCrory, you don’t represent me in any way.

It’s Mother’s Day Everyday

I know a lot of you mothers out there are going to disagree with me, but to me everyday is Mother’s Day. There is nothing better than being a mother. I get great joy in the good, the bad and the ugly parts of all things mothering. I guess you could say I’ve always been one hell of a mother. One of my college friends, Hugh, even nick named me “maternal breast.”
Since I came to actual motherhood late I did not appreciate all that my mother did for all those years. So I would like to declare publicly that I have a great mother. I certainly would not be who I am today if she were not for my mother.  
Nobody asked to be born and it is not my child’s responsibility to validate me as a mother. It is a joy to be a mother. I don’t need a day to know that I am appreciated as a mother. I get that everyday in just watching Carter grow into the person she is meant to be.
Happy everyday to anyone who is lucky enough to be a mother. Not everyone has that privilege or wants it. So for some people Mother’s Day is sad. If you are missing your own mother or the child you never had I hope that you can take solace in this day. You don’t have to actually give birth to “mother” someone. I love being a bonus mother to a few of Carter’s friends.
So hooray for motherhood. None of us would be here without mother’s. As far as I can tell mother’s are not going out of style.   

Small Tokens

Under the category of art imitating life imitating art I bring you the story of the day. Last week my cousin Meredith, from Houston, contacted me with a question. “Are you going to see 42nd street at the Durham Performing Arts Center.” Strange question, from my Houston cousin, but the answer was, “Yes, we have season tickets.”
Meredith went on to tell me that her best friend in Houston’s daughter, Caitlin Ehlinger is the lead, Peggy Sawyer, in the show. She asked me if I was going to the show if it would be possible for me to bring her some apples and bananas. Being southern, the answer to questions of food hospitality to relatives, friend’s children who show up in your town is always yes.
Russ and I carried our bag of Honey Crisp Apples and Bananas to the theater. The door person at the DPAC wanted to know what was in my big bag as I entered the theater. “Apples and Bananas for the star.” It was such a crazy answer she let me in with it.
Here’s the life imitating art imitating life part. Caitlin has been a dancer her whole life. After high school graduation she decided to take a gap year and went to New York just to see if she could get in a show. She was thinking if she were lucky it would be to be in the ensemble, you know the nameless dancers who usually don’t have my lines.  
She did not get an ensemble role, but instead was cast as Peggy, the girl from Allentown, PA who goes to New York to try and get in the ensemble of a musical as a dancer, but instead ends up being cast as the star.
After the end of the show, Russ and I called Caitlin who met us at the stage door. She came out and hugged us as if we were her long lost cousins. She is southern too so any relative of her mother’s best friend is a friend to her too. She was extremely appreciative for the fresh fruit. She told us how this was her 189 show on the road. At nineteen, she is learning what grueling work show biz can be. She told us she has not had a day off in fourteen days and when they leave Durham Monday for Akron her day off is spent on the nine hour bus ride.  
Russ and I asked her where the cast was staying and when she told us the Millennium Hotel we both cringed. “Oh no, the worst hotel in town,” we said apologetically. “I know, you have no idea what this fruit means to me.” We were more than happy to give her a small treat after all the tap dancing joy she gave us in the show.  With matinees and evening shows as well as staying at a bad hotel not near anything good for food I understand Caitlin’s need for access to fruit.
As Russ and I walked to our car parked up by city hall we struck up a conversation with a very thin, I would say older, but he was just two years older than me, man who was down on his luck. If I had more fruit I would have given it to him, but instead I just gave him some cash and he hugged and blessed us profusely. Both the fruit and the money were small things to us, but in the moment they were bigger to others.  

POV

It never fails, I wait all year for my favorite peonies to bloom and when they finally do, the rains come and pound them to the point that all the petals get knocked off. Peonies under the best of circumstances are a very short season, like two to three weeks at best. So nothing makes me sadder than watching the much anticipated large blooms bent over dragging in the mud, full of water, turning them prematurely brown.
Short of building a giant protective umbrella to shield the flowers from the relentless rain there is not much I can do to save them. I guess I am just going to have to wait another year for the next crop of flowers and hope for better weather. Rather than being sad that this year’s flowers are destroyed I could look at my garden from the point of view that I have had 24 years of spring time peonies. Rather than just three weeks, it is year after year of the pink and white blossoms coming. Waiting another year sounds like a long time, but it will be here before I know it, and then again and again.
Tonight, Russ and I finally had dinner with our friends Cynthia and Dave. Dave and I served on a board together and have said over the last couple of years we need to have dinner. Not from lack of wanting, but trying to work out the schedules of four busy people was work. It took over a year to get a date, but it was worth the wait.
We went to Nana Steak where we whiled away the evening just talking and eating with no show, or game or meeting to have to get to afterwards. I could say, “What took us so long?”, but am more inclined to say, “What a lovely evening. I look forward to doing it again.”
Perspective plays a more and more important role in my life. Changing the way I look at or think about things makes all the difference to being satisfied or being disappointed . I hope I can remember to take another view when something makes me unhappy, now I just have to remember that I control how I look at things and not blame the rain.

You Know You Friend Loves You When…

One of the best things about being on the far side of middle age is that birthday celebrations with friends seem to stretch out over weeks rather than just one day. Today my friend Shelayne treated me and our friend Lynn to lunch at her club. When people ask me if I am a morning or a night person I answer, “I am a lunch time person.” So lunch with friends, especially in celebration of me, is the best thing ever.
Now, before I get too big in my birthday britches (which by the way I am with all this birthday celebrating) Shelayne gave me a card that makes sure I know my place. As she said as I was falling off my chair in laughter, “It is not a card you can give everyone.”

I am glad that my friends know me well enough to know I don’t take offense at a joke, even if I am the butt of it. My friend Christy also gave me a card that makes light of me. I’m sensing a theme.

The world needs more people to laugh a lot more, especially at one’s self. With all the serious stuff, like whole towns in Canada burning down, and children in Flint drinking unhealthy water, and our Presidential race (voting for Trump as a joke is not the kind of funny we need), we need to laugh when we can. It is so wrong to laugh at people who are down on their luck, or going through terrible tragedies the safest thing we can laugh at is ourselves.  
Thanks to my friends who love me enough to insult me on birthday. It gives me endless amount of pleasure. I’m glad you feel we are close enough to treat me this way. Only a truly good friend can do that.

Helping the People of Haiti

Last year a group of volunteers from my church went to Haiti to do medical work helping the good people who are still suffering from the earthquake. Seems like that tragedy just happened yesterday, but it actually was six years ago. I feel a slight connection to the Haiti because my sophomore boarding school roommate lost her daughter in the earthquake because she was in Haiti for a school trip.
The same people plus more are going back to Haiti to continue the work they started last year. It costs a lot of money for them to get to Haiti, but they mostly pay for that themselves. What the team needs to raise money for is medical supplies, medicine and money to pay translators. I am not a medical professional so I would be little help on a medical mission trip, but I do want to support the team of volunteers who are giving up their own vacations to help others.
There is a fund raising jazz dinner being held at the Chapel Hill Country Club on May 21. If you feel inclined to have a fun evening out and help the Haitian people at the same time please consider attending. Anyone is welcome. Consider bringing some friends and make it an occasion. The invitation is attached below. If you can’t go you can always make a donation.



So Much Birthday Love

Before Facebook birthdays were often disappointing. I am someone who is awful at celebrating people’s birthdays. I never sent cards that got anywhere near the right day. I absolutely never give gifts. Sometimes, if I remember I might have called someone on their birthday. The best I ever did was organize going out to lunch to celebrate a friend’s birthday.  
When I was younger I was almost always disappointed by my birthday. I don’t know why, considering how horrible I was at recognizing other’s big day. Of course as I got older birthdays did not hold the same importance. It was fine if I did not hear from friends on my birthday since they did not hear from me. Russ was always good at making my birthday something special since he has the one-two punch of our anniversary and my birthday back to back. And it’s not over yet since Mother’s Day is Sunday.
But everything is different today. I was overwhelmed with messages from friends far and near. Thanks to Facebook I could hardly go two minutes without another notification. Thanks to all you, dear friends, I had a most wonderful day.

Most of the morning was lazed away reading well wishes and playing a game. My mother called and sang to me. Carter’s friends texted me and sent me videos saying happy birthday. Then I was off to lunch with friends, Kelly, Hannah and Christy. When I got home there were beautiful flowers from my sister and Russ and Carter. My father called, but no singing from him. I walked this afternoon to help keep the birthday eating in check then went to dinner with Russ and Carter. After dinner I opened the perfectly wrapped gifts from my father in-law.

I have to say it was a wonderful day. I did not do one thing I did not want to do. I had no guilt not doing laundry, or cleaning out the dish washer. One day a year to do just what I want is the best birthday I can think of. But the real icing on the cake is the love I felt from friends and family. Thanks for making my day!
I also want to give a big shout out to all my friends I share this birthday day with– my cousin Sarah who is fifteen years younger than me, my bridesmaid Trica who is exactly my age, my friend Gussy who is nine years older, my friend Beth who is five years older, my friend Vickie who has never told me how much older she is and my friend Suzanne’s faithful companion dog Chance. I hope you all had a wonderful day too. 

Happy 24th Anniversary 

Sometimes when Russ and I are with a group of friends and the question of how long we all have been married comes up, Russ looks at me waiting to see if I get the answer right. The real answer, no matter when the question is asked is, “We have been married for all my happiest years.” Sounds schmaltzy, but it could not be more true.
Russ is much better than I am about remembering exactly how many years have passed since I belted out “I will,” at the church in Georgetown. I know we got married on May 2, 1992, so I just have to do the math. Not always easy since I can rarely remember what year it is now.

Today, a beautiful flower arrangement arrived from our favorite florist where Russ is a regular. The flowers are bright and smell divine. I already knew who they were from, but I opened the card just the same. “Thanks for 20 great years, love Russ.” And to top it off, the 20 was circled.

I got such a kick out of that. I quickly texted him and asked him which were the four not-so-great years. He was appalled. Of course he knew he told the florist it was 24 years, but who can prove it.
Honestly, I can’t think of four not so great days with Russ Lange. I am certain that I have caused many more than four not great days for him, but he would not tell me if it were true. I count all my twenty four years with him as the best of my life. I hope we have at least twice that many more, because Russ is the kindest, most generous, easy going, interesting, brilliant, funniest, and wisest person I know. That’s why he always knows how long we have been married.

Wanderlust

Yesterday my friend Marty messaged me three photos of me from our summer school in France together in 1980. He found them amongst the thousands of slides with his mother’s belongings after her passing two years ago.  
I have not seen Marty since we graduated from college 33 years ago, but he wrote the best thing to me. “That was a pivotal summer for me. Glad I got to share it with you.”
I loved going to school in France, mostly because of the wonderful friends I did it with. For most of them it was their first time living internationally. I was lucky because my family had been living in London before that so I had ready caught the travel bug. Traveling the Loire valley by minibus, exploring every weekend was not hard core schooling. We stayed at hostels, drank local wine, ate fabulous cheep food and laughed day and night. What could be bad?
Well, there was one annoying girl on our program who he never been outside the state of Pennsylvania before this trip. She did not like anything non-American. She kept whining that she wanted to go to a Howard Johnson’s. I wanted to push her under the bus. Our trip was not pivotal to her. I’m sure she went home to Scranton, or Wilkes Barre or some other small minded place and never left.
Today we booked our summer family vacation to Barcelona and Seville. Carter has the same wanderlust that I have. I feel lucky that Russ and I I have been able to take Carter to so many new and exciting places at a young age. I would hate it if I had a child who could not embrace the differences. Mostly I am happy that I get to witness her discovering herself on these different trips.  
Traveling can make you into a diverse and hopefully better person as it did with Marty. It still makes me sad that the one girl on our program could not embrace the new and exotic. It was her loss.

Surprise

Russ flew in on the red eye from the west coast this morning. He told me we were going to Bin 54 for dinner since he had been away all week. After he had a little nap this afternoon we looked at the menu online. I wanted all of the appetizers and all of the sides. Since our anniversary is Monday and my birthday is Tuesday I figured I would do a little celebrating tonight and eat what I wanted and not what I thought I should have, the only problem is that I wanted to order too much for just the two of us.
Little did I know that Russ had solved that problem for me by inviting a few friends to surprise me for a birthday dinner. When we got to the restaurant I thought it was a coincidence that I knew so many people standing at the bar. Should have guessed it was no coincidence.
I love surprises. I don’t understand people who don’t like to be surprised. How can it be bad to have your friends come out to spend an evening with you? It is especially helpful when they will share dishes with you, as my friends do.
Happy birthday to me, I got to have all sides as my main course, but share them with my friends since they were too big. Russ also snuck in a Thai Cafe coconut cake for dessert to complete the total birthday celebration. What a great husband he is. Jet lagged and all he still surprises me. I am one happy old lady.

Things Keep Breaking

As I am on the precipice of turning 55 it seems appropriate that all my stuff is falling apart around me. I wrote earlier about my six year old refrigerator needing replacement this week. Today, Mr. Boozer and Mr. Cameron showed up with my new, and apparently bigger fridge. It was quite an under taking to get the old unit out of my house and a complete dismantling and reassembly of the new one once it went through my smaller than needed doors. I am praying that this one lasts longer than the old one. Six years is too short.

The best part of the fridge delivery was that Mr. Boozer altered me there was a big black snake on my terrace and he could not walk there.  I went outside and looked at the harmless creature who was very fat in the middle from obviously just eating some rodent.  I told Mr. Boozer I would take care of it and went to get a broom. By the time I came back it was gone.  I told him I had moved the snake to the woods.  If I told him the snake had moved himself he might not have delivered the fridge.

Yesterday, on my way to an afternoon of back to back meetings at the Food Bank in Raleigh, I heard a strange and unsettling thunking sound come from the front of my car. It felt like it might have been a tire, but at 60 miles per hour on I -40 my car slowed a little, but no tire indicator light came on. My car, being high fangled, has indicator lights for almost everything and none of them came on. I went a couple of exits and knew I needed to stop and give my car the Dana mechanic visual test.  
Sure enough the front rubber baffle that protects the underside of the car from road shit going into the engine had come undone on the front side. The large rubber unit was hanging down and was folded back the wrong way. If I was not dressed up, it was not 87 degrees outside, I had gloves and a big ass roll of duck tape I could have fixed it. Well, fix is too strong a word. I could have laid down on the pavement and yanked the thing into the right position and taped it up on the front grill like some car in the third world, or Caswell County.
That was not what I chose to do. I called AAA and had them tow my car back to Durham. Thank goodness the executive director of the food bank, Peter took pity on me and came and picked me up. I was only ten minutes late for my first meeting.  
At the end of five hours of meetings I asked the roomful of mostly Raleigh people if anyone was going west on I-40 any portion of my trip to Durham. It was pouring rain and hailing at this point in the evening and I just did not think that it was a good idea for me to try and walk the 28 miles home.  
My friend Eddie, drove me to Cary where I had Carter come and pick me up. She had the fun of driving in rush hour traffic for the first time. It was good practice for when she is going to have to drive herself to camp this summer.
So, a car and a refrigerator in one week is too much upkeep for this old broad. I know these things usually come in threes, so I am trying not to use any other major appliances in my house for fear that I will break them.
I guess that machines going bad are better than me going bad, especially since my planed obsolescence should be happening any time soon. Seems like new fangled machines don’t work like they used to and humans work better than they used too. Why can’t we all just be better, last longer and work with fewer problems longer? Is that too much to ask for my birthday? 

Camp Cheerio Goes On

Monday night as I was making dinner Carter got a text from a Camp Cheerio staff member alerting all summer counselors that there had been a fire at camp. “The Hilton”, a building of four cabins and “the swamp” burned down. Carter had been a camper in the Hilton more than once and lived in the swamp with the other CIT girls one session last summer.
Quickly her friends and fellow counselors responded. One boy, JP, was first to ask if everyone was all right. “That is typical of him,” Carter said. “To be concerned about the people first.” Thank goodness no one was hurt.
After last summer’s terrible accident and now this fire it seems like Camp Cheerio has had its share of bad luck. But the spirit of Camp can’t be put down. They are figuring out the logistics of this summer and the rebuild. Russ and I both told Carter they might have something temporary for this season, but no matter what it is it will be fun.
Camp is not about a building. It is about the people. The staff and counselors are chosen because they love making sure that kids are having the time of their lives. Like JP, they are always concerned about everyone’s welfare.
Thank goodness this fire did not happen closer to camp opening or heaven forbid during camp. But Cheerio lives on in its people who I know will make sure that it is the best camp season ever. God bless “the Hilton” where many great memories were made. The swamp on the other hand could use a face lift since it was the cinder block basement of the Hilton only fit for CITs who are too tired to notice they are living in a cave.
For now I am praying that is the last trouble Camp Cheerio is going to have for a while. But even with the fire it is still the most magical place on earth.

Something Is Wrong In The Appliance World


In a tragic follow up to yesterday’s post the worst possible scenario came true. After many days, interrogations, interviews and proof that I was a registered American the repairman showed up today to look at the freezer on my fridge. He pushed many buttons, unscrewed multiple panels, had me help him pull the refrigerator out of the cabinets (which then involved my mopping the dirty floor) unplugged and replugged and after an hour declared that I should buy a new fridge.
“What? #%£. This one is only six yer old.”
“Well, it must have a leak somewhere. The part will cost $800 and we don’t guarantee it will work.”
That bit of advice cost me $95. The best part was the guy was from Affordable Appliance Repair, ain’t that rich?
So between the service call and a conference call I needed to be on, I went out to buy a new refrigerator. I told the salesperson under no circumstances did I want a Samsung since my last one only made it six years. “That is about how long refrigerators last these days.”
What is happening in the world? How could we go from fridges that worked nonstop for 20 years and never a service call to ones that only make it six years? The world has gone crazy. Seems like there is some work to be done in the keeping food cold business. At this rate I estimate that I am paying almost $3 a day, not including electricity, to keep milk at my house. 
I am certainly thankful that I don’t own like three of four houses, that would mean I was buying a new fridge every eighteen months. If I had to do that you would have to put me in a sanitarium. As it is I might go there now and let them worry about making ice.

Qualifying For A Service Call

It started with the slowing down of ice production, the loss of cold in my Samsung freezer. The flap on the ice maker door stays open and water drips out the hole onto the floor. I looked at the Samsung website to find service and filled out an online form. I never got a response — three months went by and I just kept living with the slow ice production.
Then I pulled a piece of ginger out of the freezer and rather than being the rock hard frozen root I needed to shave off into a sauce, I was met with a limp, soft, browning mess. The need to get a repairman got urgent. Back to the website, filled out the from with ALL CAPS. Two days later I got a call.
Hooray, I thought. I am going to get a repairman. The call starts with a man, clearly reading a script, asking me question after question, even though I had already filled out a lengthy form. Twenty minutes into the call the man tell me I qualify to speak to the service department. WHAT? I had no idea I had to pass a test to pay someone to come fix my out of warranty refrigerator. “Thank you,” I said sarcastically.
“Do you have a pencil, I will give you the number to call?” Double what? Why the hell don’t you just transfer me? Doesn’t work like that. I dialed the number and got a nice woman who begins to ask me many of the same questions. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Here is my case number.” I tell her. “I’ve already been through this. I just need a repairman.”
No dice. More questions. “Ok, you qualify. I will have a repair service call you in the next two days to schedule a visit.” WTF! I qualify for being crazy for buying a Samsung refrigerator. Who needs a system that takes one online form, two lengthy phone interviews and five days before I even get an actual appointment?
The service provider called me and the earliest available appointment was five days later. “You know you don’t have to go through Samsung since your refrigerator is out of warranty.” I explained that I could not find any information about their company online and that Samsung would not even give me their name and number. “Yes, it is a secret who the authorized service providers are.”
Tomorrow the secret agent repairman is coming to look at my freezer. I have little confidence that this is going to be a one visit repair. I can’t wait to learn about the replacement part interview. I am girding myself for the communist Cold War type interrogation I might have to endure before anyone decides if I qualify for a new compressor. I am considering going back to an old fashioned ice box, if only I could find an ice block delivery man.  

For My Protection, Yet Not



Tonight Russ and I went to the Bulls game with our friends Dave and Sara. We sat in our regular seats, the same ones we have had since the Bulls moved to their “new” ball park decades ago. For all those years we sat on the second and third row right behind the Bulls dugout on first base side and had the best view in baseball. We also were fairly safe there with only a few balls or bats coming our way during a moment of wild play.
This year the net that used to be right behind home plate was changed to extend it half way down the field on both sides. It was done to protect the fans. The old net used to also connect to the roof of the permanent covered area so if a ball ran up the net and it did often, it ran right back down on to the field. The roof netting has been removed because they made the netting higher.
Because of our seats being on the aisle that leads to the field and dugout the net has a little opening in it right by us. Tonight in the first ten minutes of the game a wild ball went off the bat of the hitter and few at 95 miles per hour right through the small opening in the net, over the heads of the two young boys in front of us and slammed into the seat directly in front of me where my pocketbook sat. Everyone came to check to make sure we were OK.
The protective net was not so protective. Through the rest of the game I counted at least eight balls that went up and over the top of the net and into the stands. Granted that they had slowed down a little after having climbed the net, but spectators still had to pay attention to the game if you wanted to ensure you were not hit by a ball.
I liked the old non-net view better. The net is only a false sense of security, and at our seats, with the opening not any safer at all. I think that one of the problems is a world full of nets. It takes some of your own personal responsibility way from you prematurely. You think you are safer than you actually are. Yes, a line drive hit off a ninety mile per hour pitch could hurt you and a net might slow it down, but from what I could tell it never stopped the ball, just drove it up and over the net.
I like when we have to all watch out for ourselves and not have some false sense of security. If I had not been paying attention, and that ball that went through the opening was just a inch higher I could have been hit, but I saw it coming and flinched in my typical not sporty way.  

I am going to continue to watch out for myself, net or no net, but personally I vote for the old net.

Family Night Out

Russ usually doesn’t like to go to the DPAC because his legs are too long. When our seat test offered us their tickets to go along with our for tonight’s Cabaret show I suggested that we just give Carter the four tickets. “In two months she will be gone for the summer,” Russ told me, “let’s all go as a family.”
So together with our bonus child Ellis, we went to dinner and the show. Actually we also killed time at Russ’ office between dinner and the show, where Carter and Ellis played fuse ball and took pictures of themselves running meetings in the conference room. The mood was light and we were having a great time. We tried to teach Ellis how to perfect chopsticks, but that was a longer term project than one dinner. We know these times are fleeting, but I hope we can equip Ellis with the chop stick skill before they leave for college.

Cabaret is no Mary Popins. It starts out racy and gets political suddenly with the introduction of Nazis in Germany. The man who played the gender fluid Emcee did a great bit at the end of intermission he called “audience appreciation” where he asked us if we got a drink or went tinkle during intermission. “I tried, but they wouldn’t let me,” he said in a nod to HB2, the ridiculous North Carolina law. The audience went wild.
Carter and Ellis liked the show, but the gravity of the subject matter hit Carter hard at the end. Keep an eye on your government because the party can be over before you know it. I couldn’t help but imagine Donald Trump in Cabaret.  
I am really beginning to lose patience with people who I know personally who are supporting Trump. They can’t exactly tell me why and that lack of concrete reasons to like him makes me feel like history can be repeating itself with Nazi Germany. Saying, “He says what I am thinking,” scares me even more.  
It may not have been the light hearted bonding evening Russ imagined, but it was a great night for serious issues. Our kids need to take hold of our country and make sure we don’t become a place none of us could stand to live. That and we all need to know how to use chopsticks.

No Water Pistols At Dinner

  
I rarely regret giving up drinking in the past thirty years. Almost everything in life is better sober, but I have finally found something that would be better if I were drunk; being constantly shot by a water pistol while trying to eat dinner. Russ and I were at a lovely party tonight with a Godfather theme. The table decorations included pistols and someone discovered they were of the water type.  
After a while I got tired of getting wet so I took two of the guns and smashed them with my foot. One guest, who does not know me at all, told me I should lighten up that I was ruining the party. I think I ruined his gun. What he did not understand was that was my lightest option for dealing with getting shot at. My first reaction was to flip a table over, or take down the shooter at the knees and hog tie them. Just smashing the plastic gun on the cement floor was a reaction that took great self control on my part.
Now if I were drunk I would have gone and gotten a cooler full of ice and pored it on someone, or pulled on the roof of the tent and let a flood of water fall in on the guests. There are so many other things so much worse that I could have done than end the spray of water, if only I still drank.
My reaction to my wet dinner is in no way a reflection on my advancing age. At any age I have not enjoyed getting wet while trying to eat all dressed up. So I guess I have always been uptight about that and will remain that way. There is absolutely no possibility for me to lighten up, never has been, never will be. But to the man whose gun I smashed, so sorry if I ruined the party for you. If you knew me better you would have laughed about my smashing the gun and would have seen the fun in that.

My Job As A Bouncer

Tonight Durham Magazine had it’s annual TASTE event. We rented the Durham Convention center, the old armory, and filled the place with top chefs and drink purveyors. The tickets this year sold out in record time so I was conscripted by my magazine colleagues to work the door as the ID checker with our art director Kevin Brown.
Twenty minutes before the event doors opened we started checking ID’s and taking tickets. No matter how old someone was I asked to see their government issued ID. The older someone was the happier they were to pull out their license. A few people showed up without any identification at all and I quizzed them about what year they were born and then asked them questions like, “who was president the year you were born?” Not that I actually knew if they were right or not. Since the police were watching me check I made it all look very official.
It was a fun job. I got to see a bunch of friends who had come for the food and drink. After an hour on the front door the crowd dwindled down and I was freed to go enjoy the party. Of all the things I tasted Andrea Reusing’s clam and shrimp dish was the best followed by my good friend Amy Tournquist’s deviled egg. I definitely do not need to go to one of these eating feasts. I skipped three out of four tables and still felt like I had more than a meal.
After a few hours on my feet I knew it was time for me to go home. When I got back to my post where I had been checking people in I saw my friend the cop still standing guard. “Have you had any food?” I asked. “No,” he said sadly. “I’ll go back and get you some,” I volunteered.
He wanted seafood so I filled a plate with shrimp and clams and fish from saltbox seafood. I threw in a slider that had looked good, but was too much for me to eat. I got a glass of water and brought it all out to my new friend. He was very happy. I didn’t have to ask for his ID since I did not bring him any wine. The one thing you learn in event management is always feed the cops!
Next year when TASTE comes back around you should go, but come hungry and bring your identification, in case I’m not the bouncer.

Buy This Book

As a cook I usually just make up recipes according to what I have on hand or looks good at the market. I do this because I have more than one life times worth of recipes in my head no a fairly encyclopedic knowledge of ingredients. I often look at cookbooks, but rarely use them as gospel. Every once in a while I come across a cook book that breaks that rule with me. A couple of years ago my needlepoint friends, who happen to be good cooks too gave me Yotam Ottolenghi’s book Plenty More. It is the most exciting vegetable cook book I have ever come across.  
I had some friends over for a cold supper that needed to be made in advance. I was making salmon and opened my Plenty More and was practically overwhelmed with the many options I was dying to make. Rather than pare it down I made five more things for the dinner, which was at least one or two more than I needed.  
One of my favorites was a rice salad with sour cherries. Since I did not create the recipe I can’t post it here on my blog, but I am happy to send you a photo of the recipe if you request it. Better yet, I want you to go buy this cook book. I promise you will not be disappointed.

  
Since I’ve had this book I have probably tried fifteen or twenty recipes from it and each one was more Delilah than the next. I can tell you that in my collection of at least 500 cookbooks I probably have not ever made 15 different things from the same book except for maybe the original Silver Palate cookbook and that was because I have had it since 1986.
Cooking wonderful and interesting vegetable combinations will be a skill that will make you meals more exciting. A plain meat will be enhanced by better sides much more easily than making the meat dish something special. So try this book. I get no revenue for. Your buying it, just your love and adoration for introducing you to the best cook book you will have this year.

Calendar Management 

You would think that by this point in my adult life I would learn to look at my whole calendar for an entire week, not just what event is coming up next. Maybe I do and I just don’t remember exactly where I am supposed to be and when. Maybe it is just that when I am in the throes of one thing I can’t think about the next thing. Yeah, that’s what I’ll go with.
Today has been a day of contrasting meetings. It started with a “coffee” that was advertised as a “making the transition to college” talk. Although the esteemed speaker was highly qualified, the topic was not exactly about the transition. It was more about how college has changed to be more globally focused and more about group work. This was not news to me. I was interested in how Professors, who wrote books for a living, were instructing students to be better collaborators and group participants, but did not really get an answer.
I went on to a lunch with a colleague where we talked about the failure of a project because “group working” was unsuccessful. The answer to make the group smaller for the next project was, in my humble opinion, exactly the wrong way to go. More people helping and buying in would be better.
From the lunch I went to have coffee with a young woman, Alex Z. I first met when I interviewed her for my column at Durham Magazine three years go. She is the program director for Student U. a very successful program aimed at enrolling middle school students with high potential but low opportunity to be the first in their families to go to college. It was clear that her organization is succeeding thanks to team work. I was sensing a theme to my day.
My final meeting at 7:15, my least favorite time to go to a meeting, was the Deb Ball society. It sounds like it might be superficial compared to my other meetings, but it is the model of efficiency and team work. A large group of woman come together and put on a year of wonderful activities culminating in a ball.  
Seems like college professors should have to work on a Deb ball if they want to learn how to get the best out of people when working in groups. None of the women in the group is getting paid so there is no personal incentive to make sure the group is productive, except that it is. Seems to me that the idea of group work has been something woman have been doing well for centuries, how can it be such a new thing at colleges? 
As I was sitting in my last meeting Russ texted me from San Fransisco reminding me that we were having a dinner guest tomorrow night. I wish that I had looked at the events for tomorrow today and he planned the menu and done the shopping today. What I really wish is that I had group I could call on to help me. Oh yeah, my group is my family. They are already booked up so I’ll be handling this one alone. Seems to me that calendar management and not group work is my issue.

What’s For Dinner, Again

The biggest mistake I ever can make is asking Carter what she wants for dinner. When I do that I am thinking, “Tell me what you want me to cook because I’m bored of planning meals.” No matter how good a cook I am her answer is almost always some foreign cuisine.  
“No, I meant like hamburger or chicken, not sushi or Indian.”
The food world has gotten so much smaller than when I was a kid. Outside of Italian I don’t think I had any ethnic food until I was about eleven. I remember the exact day I first tasted Chinese food. It was at my Aunt Eddie’s wedding in Greenwich Village. She had a buffet of fried rice and mini egg rolls. My sister Margaret was only about seven or eight so of course she did not like it, so my father took us to a hippie hamburger joint, no pun intended, and got us milkshakes.
I also remember the first time I ever ate sushi. It was is Washington DC when I first moved there after graduating from college. A woman named Susan Montgomery, who I had worked for in Pittsburgh the summer before, came to visit and we went to the big sushi restaurant on Wisconsin Ave. in Georgetown. I quickly discovered that I loved raw fish.
Now when we take Carter to look at colleges most of the tour guides mention that sushi is available in the cafeteria. I can only imagine Dickinson college food service in 1979 saying, “What do you mean we don’t have to cook that fish before serving it.” Sushi was not a thing in Carlisle, PA back then.
Today our family’s favorite food might be Indian. My introduction to Indian came when my family moved to London in 1979. Curry houses were definitely cheep eats back then, but that was good with us. The food quality in the UK was not so great in the 70’s. They fed the chickens fish meal so they tasted fishy. Indian spices were the perfect answer to covering up a poorly raised chicken.
I wonder if Carter, having been raised eating exotic food as her first choice, will end up having a child who only likes meat and potatoes? I am wondering what part of the food world that is left to conquer. I’m just really happy that “space food” never stuck around, of course it has for survivalist, but not at our house. If a big disaster happens I am just going to die. There won’t be any reason to keep going without sushi or curry.

Homemade Myer Lemon Relish

  
A few weeks ago I wrote about this yummy Myer Lemon relish that Russ buys me from an Italian food online seller. Even though we have bought six jars at a time when he went to reorder it Russ found that it was not available. This caused us sadness, but was really a first world problem. I really can’t whine about not having an extravagant condiment.
Friday while I was shopping at Trader Joes I discovered a bag of 6 Myer lemons on sale for $1.99. Seemed like a deal so I bought them and tried to make my own version of the relish. It turned out fairly good, not exactly the same, but good enough for a first try.
Myer lemons have thin skins and you make the relish using the whole lemon, peel and all. I only made it and let it marinate for a day. I will let you know if it improves over time. Or try it yourself and let me know.
1 Myer Lemon

1 Shallot

2 T. Champagne Vinegar

1 t. Sugar

Big pinch of salt

5 T. Olive oil
Cut the ends off the lemon and discard. Slice the remainder of the lemon into paper thin slices. Remove any seeds and cut the lemon circles into quarters. Mince the shallot. Mix everything together except the olive oil and mash it up a little. Add the oil and mix well. Keep in the refrigerator. Enjoy of fish, grilled chicken, lamb or as part of. Salad dressing.

Prom Picture Post

An all pictorial post for now.  

  
Carter and her prom date John

  
 Carter and her gang.  They all looked so beautiful.
  

And then they had fun

T’was The Night Before Prom

T’was the night before prom and all through the house,

Not a sewing machine was running annoying my spouse;
The dress was hung in the closet with care, 

Carter was thankful it was done with no time to spare;

The nails had been polished, both fingers and toes,

They were shiny and glossy as everyone knows;

The shoes how they sparkle, ready for dancing at night,

Sandals that make her exactly the right height;

The earnings are diamond circle type hoops,

Not so big to make earlobes go droop;

The hair and the make up have been perfectly planned,

It’s sure to be anything other than bland;

The flowers are ordered, a boutonnière in white,

She’ll pin them on his tux, which will be quite a sight;

The parents will gather to photo the scene,

Then off to the party the kids will be keen;

And so one last rite of passage will happen tomorrow,

Means our girl will be going soon, that causes me sorrow;

But for now we will celebrate the Prom and it’s fun,

It’s a night to remember for each and everyone.