Monthly Archives: April 2018

How Does This Work?

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While we’ve been living it up in AZ these past four months, our kids back at home have had to handle important household chores for us. Gathering our mail once a week and sending it to us; watering my pitiful plants, one of which came from a cutting from Bill’s mom; shoveling snow, which mostly didn’t happen until this month. For their help, we are most grateful.

I got a text from Jll yesterday, around the time that I knew she and Addie arrived at our house to water plants. How did I know they had arrived? Our wonderful RING program which allows us to see all the activity that happens at our front door. Take that, Burglars.

Anyway, here’s what Jll’s text said: Something funny about the next generation. They are bad with keys. My kids struggle to use the keys to open your mailbox and house. They are a remote and keypad generation. It is so weird.

At first that struck me as odd, but I started thinking about our house and our cars. The car keys can be kept in your purse or pocket because you just press a button to start the car. Of course, my car is a 2003 Volkswagen Beetle that not only requires a key, but still has a cassette deck; I missed an entire generation of ways to enjoy music in your car – the CD! But it’s yellow, so there’s that.  At any rate, while our front door does have a lock requiring a key, we also have a remote opener on our garage door, not to mention the remote controls we carry in our car.

It really is funny to think about what those that Jll refers to as “the next generation” would think if they could time travel back to the 1960s and 70s, never mind the 50s. You have your rotary phones which basically dialed your number using sparks. They were slow. You hated to dial any of your friends who had lots of zeros or nines in their phone number. Imagine an emergency situation where you had to dial 911. Even worse if you’re in England and have to dial 999. Would our next-generationers even be able to figure out what to do if we handed them a rotary phone?

And wouldn’t they laugh at our televisions? Those literal pieces of furniture that were massive in size but had a screen about the size of an iPad. They weighed as much as a Mac truck, and when they broke down, you didn’t just go to Walmart and buy a new one. You called in the television repairman.

Following my recent book club meeting, several of us stayed longer because we began talking about our TV experiences as a child. Remember when you didn’t have 24/7 programming? At some point in the night (midnight?), programming wrapped up, and you listened to the National Anthem as you looked at an American Eagle until it faded away until the next morning.

And we had maybe three or four channels. ABC, NBC, CBS, and maybe a random local channel. If the weather was bad, the antennae could go on the fritz and you were out of luck until it could be straightened up once again.

Baby Boomers such as me like to think of those as simpler times. But I have to admit to enjoying my Sirius radio and keyless entry. I like having a couple of hundred television stations from which to choose (though I probably use only 10; still, I appreciate possibilities). I like Netflix and Amazon Prime and Hulu and iPads and iPhones and being able to change channels without having to get out of my chair.

Still, it’s fun to recall those simpler times when you didn’t have to close your eyes for most of the programming, even on regular television and surprisingly early in the evening.

And don’t even get me STARTED on cursive writing.

Fear of Flying

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Every time Bill and I travel by plane, I am struck by how little room there is between knees and seat backs. It’s not so bad for me, as my legs aren’t much longer than those of Tom Thumb. But I always feel sorry for Bill. He’s only of average height, and yet his knees are always slammed against the seat back. He looks the way I imagine poor Jack looks in his box. You know, Jack-in-the-Box. C’mon people; work with me.

Anyhoo, remember when the flight attendants would tell you that if the plane is plummeting, passengers should bend forward and put their heads in their lap during impact? I never really bought that, even back in the days when I was limber enough to actually bend over that far. I just never figured that was going to do much when you hit the ground at airplane speed. It seemed more like you were bending over so that you could kiss your you-know-what goodbye.

Nowadays, they don’t even bother. If the plane’s going down, I assume the flight attendants just wrap up their potato chip sales, make sure everyone’s signed their Visa receipts and added the necessary tip, put on their parachutes and wave goodbye.

Whenever we talk about air travel, my sister Bec always says she’s waiting for the day when just prior to takeoff, the flight attendant’s voice comes over the intercom, and he or she says in that fake Cheerful Flight Attendant Voice, “Good morning ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to In Your Face Airlines. We’re happy you’ve chosen to fly with us today. In an effort to keep your costs to a minimum because we care so much about our customers, we haven’t staffed a pilot today. So, is there anyone among you who has some flying experience? Any amateur pilots? Anyone ever fly in a hot air balloon? Anyone ever play any of those airplane video games? If so, ring your flight attendant bell. We will be happy to take a full $10 off of your next ticket.”

Whenever Bec jokingly says this, I almost always respond with some funny add-on regarding the fact that I’m surprised they don’t have passengers standing like on a subway, gripping the strap hanging from the ceiling.

Hilarious, right?

EXCEPT THAT MY SIDESPLITTING IDEA is actually being discussed by airline officials. True, the idea came from the mouth of the CEO of a mostly-unknown budget airline called VivaColumbia, who assured the Miami Herald reporter to whom he offered this idea that it was in the consumer’s best interest because the airlines are always looking at ways to make flying less expensive.  Cough.

A scenario that might be a bit more realistic if not more horrifying is this airplane seat design that was offered at a recent Aircraft Interiors Expo…..

I don’t know what to say. I just don’t. I’m hoping those aircraft interior expo guys proposed this on a cocktail napkin after three or four martinis, and the bartender threw it away afterwards. By the way, this information and the photo comes from an article from Inc. Magazine.

Whenever Bill or I make airline reservations these days, we start out with basic economy. It isn’t long, however, that we get sucked into buying assigned seats and buying the opportunity to bring a bag onto the plane that will actually fit more than just a package of travel Kleenex. But we’re dumb, because the United Airlines CFO has actually been quoted as saying, “You get people to pay more for something that in the past was bundled.”

But, at least those of us who are flying what now is optimistically referred to as Basic Economy give those in Regular Economy someone to sniff their noses at after they’ve been sniffed at by those in Business Class.

On the Road

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Here’s why years from now you will most assuredly not be praying for the intercession of St. Kris: I get caught up in the wrong things when it comes to the bible and completely miss the point. You know, the REAL point.

Take the story of the two fellows walking down the road to Emmaus on the third day after Jesus died. They’re heading to the village which is seven miles from Jerusalem, and are shooting the breeze about what the two women had told them about the body no longer being in the tomb.  Suddenly they are approached by a stranger. So here’s Missing The Point I: Why didn’t they recognize him? Luke says their eyes were prevented from recognizing him. In fact, it wasn’t until they had persuaded him to spend the night at their house, during which time he once again blessed bread, broke bread, and shared bread that they realized who he was. It seems to me – pitiful human that I am – that rather than preventing them from recognizing him, it would have been a more efficient use of time to just allow them to know who he is right off the bat.

Break bread, bless bread, eat bread.

And then, when they realize that it is Jesus, he vanishes. Poof. Bummer.

So they immediately set out again to Jerusalem. Luke says so they set out at once. Missing The Point II: That, in and of itself, isn’t too surprising. After all, had my friend who I had seen die right before my eyes come back and make himself known to me, I would want to tell somebody ASAP. But it’s seven miles, and they had walked seven miles just a short time earlier. Well, good on them, I guess. As for me, my hip starts hurting after a mile-and-a-half or so.

It’s at this point that yesterday’s gospel picked up the story. These two fellows get back to Jerusalem and immediately tell their friends what had happened. About that time, who should appear again? Jesus. They are all understandably afraid and think they are seeing a ghost. To calm them down, Jesus says to them, “Peace be with you.”

Now that makes sense even to me. Jesus is telling them (and us) that whenever we are afraid, we should put our fears aside and feel peace, because he is with us and will take care of us. But then Jesus says something that completely throws me off my spiritual game. Missing The Point III: He asks them if they have anything to eat. Did it throw Peter and his buddies off their game as well? Did they ask themselves – as I did – why on earth do you want to eat right this minute?

But unlike me, the disciples did not sigh loudly and roll their eyes. They instead gave him a piece of baked fish, which he proceeded to eat. And that, my friends, was that for me. I spent the remainder of the Mass wondering why Jesus felt the need for a bite to eat right then. And perhaps as puzzlingly, why did St. Luke feel that point was important enough to put into his gospel?

As we drove home after Mass, I asked Bill that question. Why did Jesus ask for something to eat? To prove to the disciples that he wasn’t a ghost, was Bill’s take on the matter.

I guess I have the advantage of 20/20 hindsight. It’s interesting to think about how startling – terrifying, really – it must have been for Jesus’ followers to see him walking around when they had taken him down from the cross and buried him themselves only a few days earlier. And now here he was walking around showing them his wounds and eating with them.

And maybe that’s the point. They really shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, Jesus himself points out to them that his birth, death, and resurrection had been prophesized for hundreds of years. They had all studied their Torahs. They knew what to expect.

But despite that, without 2000 years of hindsight, it must have been hard to understand the whole business. Quite frankly, even with the benefit of 2000 years of explanation, it’s still hard to understand.

That’s where faith comes in.

Will the Real Cole Please Stand Up?

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Last weekend, Court and Alyx took their kids on what seems to be a very fun outing. They went to Boondocks, which is a venue near their home that offers fun activities such as bumper cars and miniature golf and bowling. It was a nice day, and the family had tons of fun. They posted the photos on Facebook. I, of course, love looking at any and all of my grandkids having fun, but these photos were especially enjoyable. I laughed out loud when I saw one particular photo of 3-year-old Cole. He looks like an angel in the photo on the left, but perhaps has more than a little devil in him in the photo on the right. Will the real Cole please stand up?…..

Have a great weekend.

Friday Book Whimsy: House at the Edge of Night

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My husband and I were lucky enough to spend three months in Europe a few years back. Nearly two of those three months were in Italy. While I don’t have a drop of Italian blood in me, I’m convinced I lived in Italy in a former life! From the time I first stepped foot into the country, I fell in love with the people, the climate, the food, the art, and the culture.

Reading The House at the Edge of Night, by Catherine Banner, was a bit like sitting at a table all day on a piazza in an Italian hill town watching the villagers live their lives. The author managed to successfully capture the flavor of the people of this wonderful country nearly perfectly.

The House at the Edge of Night is a multigenerational saga of a family who lives on the fictional island of Castellamare in southern Italy near Sicily. Amedeo Esposito is an orphan who is taken under the wing of a doctor in Florence. He takes his last name and follows his lead in the medical field. He winds up on Castellamare, where the native people eye him suspiciously – as Italians are wont to do. Eventually he marries his beautiful wife named Pina who is strong-willed and smart as can be. Though it takes a bit, the locals eventually accept him as one of their own.

Unfortunately, Amedeo makes a big mistake that results in two babies being born on the same night – one to his wife and one to the wife of the nasty Count who lives on the island. The Countess claims Amedeo is the baby’s father, and unfortunately, it could be true.

The story goes on from here, as Pino agrees to continue to live with him and raise their family. This leads to that, and Amedeo finally gives up his medical practice to open a café in his home, which is referred to as the house at the edge of night. This café takes on a life of its own, and as the years go by, the café itself is as much a character as the people who walk and talk.

Readers watch the wonderful characters that inhabit the island as they live through world wars, attempts to steal relics, an economic downturn that nearly cripples the population, love affairs, births and deaths. At the end of the day, however, it always comes back to the house at the edge of night.

I loved the story. I found its casual pace to be much like the casual pace of life in Italy. As the author described the food, and particularly the homemade limoncello and limettacello and arangcello that they drank morning, noon, and night, I could taste it. I could feel the hot sun on me as she described the town. I think she really captured the flavor of Italy.

It made me want to make sure my passport was updated!

Here is a link to the book.

Thursday Thoughts

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Dolly Does Elton
The other day I got a text message from my sister Jen. Check out the new album that was released this week titled Restoration. I’d never heard of it, so I went into iTunes and typed in Restoration. This is what I saw: Restoration: The Songs of Elton John. I’m not particularly a fan of Elton John, though I certainly don’t hate him and in fact, have owned an album or two of his throughout my life. Still, I couldn’t imagine that she would get excited about a new Elton John album. When I looked further, however, I learned that it features a number of Elton John songs redone by various country music singers. Vocalists like the Brothers Osborn, Chris Stapleton, Dolly Parton, Miranda Lambert, Maren Morris, Little Big Town, and others perform their own countrified covers of some of Elton John’s and Bernie Taupin’s songs. It turns out that Sir Elton John has always been a fan of country music, and when you reimagine them – as did these country artists – you see they actually have a country flavor to them. I ended up purchasing the album, and have listened to it numerous times in the past few days. I understand there was a special on television the other night featuring a number of artists performing their music. I missed it, but intend to find it on demand.

What’s On TV
Love me or hate me, I must admit to watching Roseanne, and laughing out loud at some point – or several points – during every episode. It amuses me that there is such an outcry about a character in a television program – A TELEVISION PROGRAM – having a conservative viewpoint. After all, the non-conservative viewpoint has been more than well represented over the years. At any rate, I don’t care if it’s conservative or liberal, the Connor family makes me laugh. Tuesday’s episode was especially good, as it finally showed a side of Roseanne that displayed her love for her children. Having said that, I will admit that my favorite line thus far this year came in a previous episode in which her granddaughter was complaining that her life SUCKS. “All our lives suck,” said Roseanne. “That’s why we put marshmallows on yams.” I seriously laughed until I cried.

Spring Has Sprung
I’ve mentioned before that, thanks to modern technology, I can see Kaiya and Mylee’s artwork via a particular website. This week, my email turned up a new offering from 7-year-old Mylee. It was her contribution to a project called Spring Has Sprung. I, of course, think it’s marvelous – absolutely a brilliant piece of art that perfectly depicts spring. I was wholly unaware, however, that T-Rexes made their appearance every spring…..

Pizza Pizza
Yesterday Bill and I made our annual trek downtown to eat lunch at an amazing pizza restaurant called Pizzeria Bianco. We always have a great time. The pizza is delicious, baked from scratch in a real wood-fired grill. No gas flames; real burning wood. The salads are made from local produce from a nearby farmer’s market. The food is flavored using herbs which grow in pots in front of the restaurant…..

You can’t get fresher than that. This year we asked our neighbors to join us. We drove to the light rail station and took light rail down to the restaurant. On the way back, we got off light rail in the Mill Ave area near ASU campus and enjoyed an adult beverage. It was a fun afternoon…..

Ciao.

It’s Hot, and This Time I’m Not Talking About Food

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Yesterday morning just a little past 6, my phone dinged, indicating a text message. That’s about the time my brother usually texts me, but this time it wasn’t him. I was surprised to see it was from my daughter-in-law Jll, who doesn’t generally text me at 6 in the morning. It’s not that she doesn’t know that I’m up and about bright and early. It’s that she is busy getting four kids off to school and scarcely has time to think, much less text.

But her text message said this: Holy cow! Is it really going to be 97 degrees there today? Time to come home.

And it was true. The temperature had been inching up bit by bit the past few days. At 4 o’clock in the afternoon yesterday, it reached its high of 97. Dangerously close to 100 my friends. And lest you have forgotten, it’s April. Midwesterners have been shoveling snow. But, indeed, we are coming back to Denver – where the temperature was 70 — very soon.

I don’t really mind that it’s getting hot because I don’t have months and months of 115 degree temperature to anticipate. Those who stay here do plenty of kvetching when the temperatures start creeping up, and I don’t blame them a bit. The temps don’t start falling again until October, so it’s a long, hot haul.

Still, though it reached 97 yesterday afternoon, it was lovely outside in the morning. In fact, I sat outside on our patio and drank my coffee around 6:30, and was a bit chilly. I knew that enjoying our evening cocktail outdoors would fall into question, so I elected to get my outdoors fix in the A.M. An ice cold martini tastes almost as good sitting in my easy chair where the air conditioner is running as it does on the patio when even the birds are seeking shade. And we simply haven’t really been able to crack the code on how to bring some shade into our backyard. Bill has made several attempts, but he hasn’t been highly successful. Yesterday morning he called me out outside around 8 and pointed out that if we are happy sitting in the middle of our yard instead of the patio, there was about a 4 ft. by 4 ft. area of shade. This could be us…..

While April showers bring May flowers to much of the country, the lack of April showers doesn’t seem to bother the flowers here in the Valley of the Sun. One of my favorite times of the spring is when the Palo Verde trees start to bloom. The blossoms remind me of forsythia, a springtime flower that I have at home but always miss because it’s done blooming by May. They are abundant throughout the area…..

Our sunny patio helps us keep the critters at bay, so I don’t complain that much. Scorpions apparently seek out cooler temperatures and moister conditions. We have nothing but sun on both sides of our house, so this discourages their unwelcome visits. If I could speak Scorpionese, I would ask them why they choose to live in the desert when they prefer cooler conditions. But they would probably respond that they have been around for 400 million years, so they ain’t going to change their habits now.

Bill and I spent the afternoon indoors where it was nice and cool. We watched the movie Dunkirk, which we rented from Amazon. About a third of the way in, we finally gave in and turned on closed captioning. There wasn’t a lot of dialogue, but what there was sounded like a foreign language. It was tough enough when it was the English soldiers speaking, but when the Scots started in, well, it was next to impossible. Bill might have Scottish blood, but that doesn’t mean he can understand what they say.

By the way, I suspect that Jll was using our hot weather as an excuse to get us to return to Denver soon. Our children miss us, not the least of which is that we provide another house for their kids to visit. I suspect it’s nice for her to have the option to send Alastair off on his bike to Nana’s and Papa’s house when he has poked Maggie Faith one time too many. We’ll be home in a few weeks kids!

Spicy Food, Eh?

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I grew up without the benefit of Mexican food. We didn’t even eat tacos when I was a kid. It might have been worth it to see the look on Dad’s face if he sat down at the dinner table looking for pot roast and potatoes and Mom plopped down a plate of crunchy tacos in front of him. It’s actually not worth imaging because it would never have happened, not the least of which was because none of us had probably ever even heard of tacos.

Sometime in the late 60s or early 70s, Taco John’s moved into town. You have to understand that having a fast food joint in Columbus in 1970 was a big deal. There were very few chain restaurants. We had a Godfather’s Pizza, a Dairy Queen, a Pizza Hut, but no Burger King or McDonalds or Arby’s. So you would think that we would have flocked to Taco John’s. Perhaps others were flocking. There was no flocking by me. I don’t think I went a single time, because MEXICAN FOOD. I knew nothing about Mexican food.

In fact, I knew nothing about Mexican food until my folks moved to Leadville, Colorado, in 1973. I spent the summer with them in Leadville before returning to Lincoln to complete my sophomore year at the University of Nebraska. Leadville might as well have been Mars. The people looked, talked, acted, and certainly ate differently than that to which we were familiar.

What was different about the way they ate? MEXICAN FOOD. My first bite, and I was in love. My whole family was in love. I have been in love with Mexican food ever since, the spicier, the better. In fact, following my colon resection surgery in 2011, I met with the doctor who had done the surgery to find out if/how my life would be different. We talked a bit, and then I swallowed hard and asked him the question that was troubling me the most: Can I still eat spicy Mexican food? He assured me I could. His name was Dr. Lopez, so there’s that…..

Anyway, Sunday night, Bill and I had our neighbors over for dinner. They are snowbirds like us, and are from Alberta, Canada. They like to cook and enjoy good food. It became clear that he in particular likes to cook. So I was a bit stressed about what to make for dinner.

I decided on Mexican food. Specifically, I decided to make pollo asado, using Ree Drummond’s fabulous recipe. It involves marinating boneless chicken breasts or thighs in a mixture of olive oil, orange juice, lemon juice, lime juice, onions, and seasonings. It’s delicious and so, so pretty (what with all the citrus fruits).

It always takes me so long to get to the point. I wonder how many of you just give up about 2/3 of the way through my blogs when they seemingly have no point. Anyway, my point is that it turns out they had never tasted Mexican food. I mentioned that to Jen over the phone, and she responded as though I had said they have second spouses back in Edmonton. How can they live four months of the year in AZ and not have ever tried Mexican food, she asked. A fair question; however, they had not.

But they were game, and it was a win, my friends. I had to literally show them how to wrap the meat into a burrito-like a package, but they nailed the art of wrapping, and seemed to enjoy every single bite.

By the way, during Bill’s illustrious acting career, one of his gigs was playing the father of a small family eating Taco John’s tacos. None of the actors had speaking parts, so the commercial, which never ran in Colorado, apparently had voice over. What Bill remembers is that the four of them – he, his show biz wife, and his show biz kids – sat at a picnic table and a fan was blowing leaves underneath the table. I asked him if he had to actually eat the tacos.

“They tasted awful, so we had the kids eat them and we drank Taco John sodas,” he said.

I’m thankful our Canadian neighbors’ first bite of Mexican food wasn’t Taco John’s.

Cart Race

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The grocery store near our house that I probably go to a minimum of six times a week has added small grocery carts to their grocery cart offerings. Nestled in between the normal-sized carts, the electric scooter carts, and the carts with the little area for kids to sit and pretend to drive — designed to torture young mothers and fathers given that their design makes them about the size of a 1968 Cadillac – sit these tiny little carts.

I love these carts. In fact, I will choose a grocery store that has these little carts over another store that doesn’t. They are easy to maneuver. I don’t run into the back of people’s legs when using one of them. Most important, they are so darn cute. The problem is, lots of people love them. In fact, I’m pretty sure ALL OF THE PEOPLE love them. This grocery store, and seemingly all of the stores that offer these little carts, only have about 10 of them.

This is problematic. Why? Well, picture this scenario. I am walking towards the entrance of the grocery store. I see that there is one of these little carts remaining, looking adorable next to the regular carts. I pick up my pace. Out of the corner of my eye, I see another woman who has also spotted the cart. She looks at me. I look at her. I start to trot. She starts to trot. Pretty soon I’m at a dead run, as is she. Happily, I have watched my nephew Austin slide into home plate often enough that I have an advantage. I win, though my clothing is dirty.

One sad day when even my slide into the carts didn’t work, I said to Bill (who happened to be with me, and frankly, doesn’t understand my love for these carts), “Everybody loves these little carts. I don’t understand why grocery stores don’t buy a whole bunch of these carts so that ALL THE PEOPLE can have them.”

He didn’t hesitate. He explained that it was likely that grocery stores preferred that patrons use the bigger carts because they are more liable to buy more groceries if their cart is bigger. Dang. He is probably right. Sometimes I hate consumerism. Mostly I am a tried-and-true believer in our Capitalistic system. I love that I have countless choices in produce, for example…..

But maybe not when it comes to grocery carts.

After Easter, the Catholic Church sets aside the Old Testament reading we generally hear during the Liturgy of the Word, and instead we listen to the Acts of the Apostles. This is my favorite time of the year for our liturgy readings because I love to read Acts. Here was yesterdays’ reading:

The community of believers was of one heart and mind, and no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they had everything in common. With great power the apostles bore witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great favor was accorded them all. There was no needy person among them, for those who owned property or houses would sell them, bring the proceeds of the sale, and put them at the feet of the apostles, and they were distributed to each according to need. – Acts 4:32-35

I had heard these words before, obviously, but this time they really struck me. I leaned over to Bill. “Basically, the disciples were socialists, weren’t they?” I said.

And then I spent the entire homily trying to figure out why Socialism doesn’t seem to work now like it did for the followers of Jesus. I am not going to provide the answer to that question, as my name isn’t John Stuart Mill, but I suspect that it has to do with basic human greed. Most socialist or communist societies have been unsuccessful because they don’t really follow true socialist teachings. There is always a winner, and he’s usually the leader.

But I reminded myself that the followers of Jesus had just spent the recent past three years with a man who lived his preaching, which was to love God and love each other. Maybe it was easier to share all you have with others when your very best friend had just given his life for you with only one instruction: Love everyone.

Plus they didn’t have to worry about sharing cute little shopping carts. That’s a game changer, my friends.

Saturday Smile: Monumental

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Dave and Jll and the kids took their RV out for the first time last week as a test run for their upcoming tour of the western part of the United States over the entire summer. Five years ago they toured east of the Mississippi River. For this test run, they visited the Black Hills of South Dakota. Since they will be taking off from Colorado, it would have been one of the only significant tourist attractions they would miss since they don’t want to head east before they head west. Hence, a Spring Break adventure.

They took many pictures, but this is the one that gave me my laugh for the week…..

It took me a moment to understand the photo, but once I did, it became apparent that Maggie Faith needs to work on her mustache.

They will see lots of things this summer, but I don’t think they’ll come up with a more clever photo.

Have a great weekend.