Pucker Up
Yesterday was my annual pickle making day. Every year about this time, I buy pickling cukes and fresh dill from the farmers’ market and make pickles. A few years ago, I forgot to put dill in my dill pickles. This year, while I remembered the dill, it took me two tries to get the brine correct. Nevertheless, they all sealed properly, and that’s a good thing. I will open them in a few weeks and give them a try. I still have dilly beans left over from last year, so they’re a no-go this year…..

Cooking Korean
Court and his family came for dinner last night. I have been dying to try the Korean-styled short ribs that our AZ neighbors made for us last winter. So when they confirmed they were coming, I drove to a nearby Asian market and bought some flanken short ribs. Those are the kind that are cut flat, as opposed to the English-styled short ribs…..

I followed our neighbors’ recipe to the T, using vinegar, soy sauce, garlic, onion, and so forth. While I didn’t have the luxury of marinating them as long as they should have marinated, they were quite delicious. I, of course, forgot to take a photo, but here is what they look like when they’re grilled (courtesy of our neighbors)…..

I made lo mein to go along with the ribs. Yes, I know I’m mixing Asian cuisines, but I got the vote of approval from my diners.

School’s So Close I Can Taste It
Yesterday, Kaiya and many others visited the middle school where she will be attending soon to get an idea of such things as the location of the lunch room and where she might find her locker. She already looks older and more mature. She was dressed in skinny jeans with a black and white shirt, black and white earrings, and black and white Chuck Taylors like these…..

She couldn’t possibly have looked any cuter. She admitted they were her mother’s shoes, at least originally. She expressed a desire for a pair of Chuck Taylors, and her mother told her to try on a pair that she owned and only wore once. Lo, and behold, they apparently now wear the same size. Stop growing please.

Yikes
And it’s now August, so there’s that.

Ciao.

I dislike driving. Well, to be perfectly honest, I hate being in a car, whether or not I’m the driver. I had a friend who loved to drive. City streets or interstate highways; it didn’t matter. She just liked being behind the wheel of a car.

Bill asked me recently what happened to make me so fearful of car travel. I pondered it for a bit, and finally reached a bizarre conclusion. I think part of my fear of car travel has to do with the fact that I was in the hospital for 30 days in 2011 because of a bowel perforation. I recognize that 30 days in the hospital has nothing to do with driving. It’s just that the experience made me realize that bad things really can happen to me. Prior to that, my brain knew that fact, but my heart didn’t.

When I was younger, driving didn’t bother me at all. I can’t say that, like my friend, I loved to drive. It’s just that I didn’t really give it a second thought. When I lived in Leadville, for example, without a second thought, I would get into my snazzy red mustang and drive over Independence Pass to Aspen for lunch. For those of you unfamiliar with Independence Pass, it is perhaps the scariest mountain pass in Colorado. The road is narrow, and there is a tiny little stone fence that theoretically prevents you from death. What’s worse, many RVs travel that pass. If you come face to face with an RV, you close your eyes and hope for the best.

But yesterday reminded me that car travel — especially in the city — is really not fun. Bill had some deliveries to make for a property tax case on which he is working. He needed to drive downtown to the office of the Board of Assessment Appeals to drop off some copies of a brief. Then he needed to drive about as far west as you can go before you run into the mountains — specifically, Golden, Colorado, to drop off copies of the same brief.

“I’ll go with you,” I told him. “It will be fun. It will be an adventure.”

Well, adventure is not quite the word I would choose. It was hot. Traffic was awful. There were accidents that slowed traffic. On two separate occasions as we were driving on busy streets, a broken stop light caused us to go a whopping 2 mph, that is, when we were moving at all.

Still, when we reached our final destination — the Jefferson County Building, which is appropriately referred to as the Taj Mahal because of its extravagance and frankly, its lovely location — I sat downstairs as Bill ran the brief up to the necessary office. I sat in the lobby and looked out the huge windows at this view…..

In my next life, that’s the building in which I want to work. Of course, I would have to live in Golden, which is far, far away from the rest of our Denver family. (But since it’s my next life, maybe they will live there too.)

While dropping off the paperwork, Bill characteristically befriended one of the support staff. He mentioned that he was hungry, and she told him about a pizza place in Golden with delicious Chicago-style pizzas.

Off we went. Unfortunately, this was one of the times that we experienced the broken stop light. A solid 20 minutes later (and it should have been a five-minute drive), we sat ourselves down at Wrigley’s Bar and Grill…..

The pizza was ordinary. But the beer was cold. And this sign indicated to us that food wasn’t the top priority at this particular watering hole…..

We survived our “adventure” with plans to spend today in the car for as little time as possible.

I love to ask my grandkids that age-old question: if you were stranded on a desert island and could only eat one thing, what would it be. The answers vary, depending on what they’re binge eating at the moment. I asked Kaiya and Mylee a few years ago. At that time Kaiya said Noodles and Co.’s mac and cheese; now she would say mozzarella cheese sticks. Mylee said sushi, and I’m pretty sure that would be her answer today.

Like Mylee, the answer to that question now would be the same for Bill as it was 70+ years ago: pizza. In fact, Saturday night, my sister Jen and I were teasing him about his bachelor days when the would eat pizza for breakfast, lunch, and dinner on the same day. Not breakfast, he clarified.

When we were in Italy, we loved loved loved the pizza. For the most part, Italian pizza — whether it’s from Rome or Naples (and I would never get in the middle of THAT battle) — is baked in a wood burning oven. As such, the crust is always bubbly and charred — simply delicious. The ingredients are simple. No shredded mozzarella or heavy red sauce on real Italian pizza.

Back in 2001, when Jen and her daughter Maggie went to Italy with Bill and me, we all enjoyed our share of pizzas. They too liked the charred crust. So when Jen discovered a pizza place in Longmont called Protos, the three of us tried it out. Voila! Nearly as good as pizza in Rome without St. Peter’s in the background. So, each year about this time, Bill and I meet Jen at Proto’s Pizza in Longmont.

It was beginning to look like we wouldn’t make it this year, until I had an inspired thought. I invited Jen to Denver for the weekend so she could attend the memorial Mass I had arranged to be said for my friend Megan who recently passed away.

“Come to our house on Saturday, and we can take light rail downtown and eat at the Proto’s Pizza in Lodo!, I said. It was an easy sell, and that’s how we spent our Saturday night.

Generally when I disembark the light rail train at Union Station, I head east to the myriad of bars and restaurants near the baseball park. This time we headed west, where we hoofed across the railroad tracks via Millennial Bridge, and made our way to the Proto’s that is down past the Platte River…..

The pizza was as good as we remembered…..

And while the Longmont Proto’s is just fine, it can’t boast a neighbor with the offerings of Saturday night’s restaurant…..

Yep, a restaurant that sells whiskey by the drink and doughnuts. What else does a guy need in life? Oh yeah. Pizza.

It’s true the hike wore us out. Lots of stairs. At one point, after we had climbed something in the neighborhood of 2,000 steps and stopped to take a rest, I noticed an elevator. “We can take that elevator down,” I said. We all happily climbed into the elevator and pushed the button to go down. When the doors opened, our mouths dropped open as well. We had simply taken the elevator that took us down to where we had been before we climbed the 2,000 steps. Luckily the elevator went up as well as down.

I’ve said it before and I hope I say it again. We lead very quiet lives. So it is always fun when we break out of our mold and head someplace like downtown Denver…..

For Mylee’s birthday this year, in lieu of a traditional gift, I told her I would take her and a friend to lunch and an activity of her own choosing. She chose her long-time friend Ella. Her lunch choice was no surprise: sushi. The surprise was that Ella enjoyed it nearly as much as Mylee…..

We took Uber to her chosen activity: Elitch Gardens, a Denver historic landmark in the form of an amusement park. It was the first time either of the girls had been in an Uber car…..

I’m not sure what our Uber driver thought of the two 9-year-old girls’ giggles.

As soon as we walked in the entrance, Mylee — her stomach still full of sushi and edamame — spotted the booth selling turkey legs. I made her wait a couple of hours, but eventually she got her wish — a turkey leg!…..

It was a great day for everyone — even me! Those girls made me smile over and over again…..

Have a great weekend.

Battle of the Bugs
I am not ashamed to admit I hate bugs. If I see a bug that I don’t like, I kill it, whether it’s inside my house or outside. This year for the first time, I hired a pest control company, mainly to keep my wasp population under control. In years past, there have been so many wasps that I was fearful about letting the kids outside to play. I admit that the wasp problem seems better this year; however, I am battling one of the ugliest pests of all: the earwig. I’m thinking that the pest control company should have gotten rid of the little devils. I remind myself that insects should be allowed to live outside. Nevertheless, I stomp the little devils if I see them. Yesterday I harvested some of my Swiss chard, and the battle began. It seems earwigs like to munch on Swiss chard, though I don’t remember having a problem before. There was a lot of drowning and garbage disposal running while I washed my chard. I simply can’t get that episode of The Twilight Zone out of my head. Get it? Out of my head? Look it up.

Fruits and Vegetables
On a lighter note, I made my first run to the Farm Store that I like so much in Aurora. It’s a bit of a drive, but it always makes me happy to shop there. I purchased some fresh Colorado-grown peaches and apricots…..

I got what appears to be the juiciest watermelon in the history of watermelons. And, best of all, I got my first batch of pickling cucumbers. I was halfway home when I realized that I forgot to buy dill. Sigh. I’ll go back in a day or two.

We Have the Meats
Bill and I have started watching the newest episodes of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, Jerry Seinfeld’s very clever show in which he drives a famous comedian in some kind of interesting car to a to get coffee. There is no plot; they just kind of shoot the breeze. In the episode we watched recently, he and comedian Ricky Gervais rode in a very fancy-dancy Rolls Royce. One of their stops was Arby’s (we have the meats). The two of them made the sandwiches look so good that Bill and I had to go yesterday for lunch. And they were, in fact, quite tasty.

Big Blue Finds a Home
After I announced that I was trying to get rid of the blue plastic ashtray that Bill made in high school shop class, I got a couple of quick offers, one from my brother and one from my sister. My brother wants to use it as an ash tray for his cigars, which might be problematic since it’s plastic. My sister Jen offered to take it with the caveat that I have to make her a new billfold as well. Hmmmm…..

Ciao!

I, along with scores and scores of others, eagerly anticipated the new version of The Lion King. I am a big fan of the original version and was eager to see how seemingly real animals could play the parts of some of my favorite movie characters.

And then I recently read a review of that movie from some high falutin publication or other that panned the film. No heart, it said. Ignore the new film and watch the original. Dang. And I was so looking forward to it. Could it really be bad enough to ignore it altogether?

Then I began getting feedback from people who I really know and like and trust, unlike whatever high falutin media outlet it was. These trusted reviewers included some of my grandkids who went and saw the movie with The Other Grandmother. They all said how much they enjoyed the newest version of The Lion King. 

In no time, I was back in the I-Want-to-See-The-Lion-King-Movie-Camp.

Kaiya had already told me with in a solid pre-teen voice that she had no interest in seeing the movie. Cole and Mylee were ready and eager to go. The three of us went yesterday afternoon.

I left with totally positive feelings about the movie, and absolute amazement at the animation. It was animation, wasn’t it? Even Disney can’t get wild animals to talk, right?

But here’s the thing: Should whatever high falutin publication it was that panned the movie ask 5-year-old Cole for his opinion, he would admit he is pretty much with them one hundred percent. He prefers the kind of animation where birdies fly around and land on the heads of talking giraffes or lions. First of all, after sitting through the first 12 previews, he said sotto voce, “When is Lion King starting?” We all want to know, Little One, as we sat back for the remaining 12 previews.

His biggest issue, however, was that he simply couldn’t tell the lions apart. In traditional animation, the characters all have different expressions, or maybe one is wearing a bow tie and another a cowboy hat. In keeping with the realistic nature of the film, the lions mostly look the same. During a fight between Scar and Mufasa, he kept shouting out (sotto voce was a thing of the past), “Which one is Scar, Nana?”

And the transformation from lion cub Simba to grown-up lion Simba also threw him for a loop. “Is Mufasa alive again?” he kept asking.

And the ending (at which time I had tears rolling down my cheeks), when the baboon held up Simba and Nala’s new cub, he had about had it. “Nana,” he said in total exasperation. “Why is Simba little again?”

I assure you that the movie is well worth seeing. I enjoyed it very much. I must admit, however, that since Cole needed a bathroom break during the critical scene with the stampeding herd, I had to play a bit of catch-up with Mylee (who, by the way, followed the plot and characters with no problem at all, and even shed a few tears).

Cole, I’m sorry the animals were so confusing to you. All I can say is HAKUNA MATATA…..

Many, many moons ago, when I was in HIGH SCHOOL, I was required to take Home Economics. As Baby Boomers all know, that was the class that taught girls how to cheerfully and economically care for a home and family. I still remember and use some of the cooking tips I learned in that class from Mrs. Eckert (I think that was her name?).

As an aside, when Bill went to high school in Chicago, he was required to take Shop Class; however, the Morgan Park High School boys were also required to take Home Ec. Very progressive thinking if you ask me. I’m not sure what he learned in Home Ec, but I know for a fact that the number of meals he’s cooked in his life in a kitchen can be counted on one hand and that he never changed a single diaper in his life. But he did make a rather ugly blue plastic bowl in Shop which his mother handed off to me as soon as she saw the whites of my eyes. I have tried convincing his grands that it would be so nostalgic to own something their papa made with his own hands. So far, none has been convinced. Anyone? Anyone?…..

Anyhoo, back to my Home Ec experience. The cooking part I liked a lot. The sewing part I wanted to like, but I was simply awful. As a result, I hated sewing, then and now. I have often said that sewing — like gardening — is something I would like to like but just plain don’t. However, in my effort to exercise my brain more as I mentioned in this post, I have decided to give sewing another try.

Some years ago, our AZ neighbor (not the nudist, but the nice elderly lady who moved in after he and his wife, fled, er moved away) gave me the gift of a wallet that she made by hand. I love that wallet. It fits in my purse nicely, all of my credit cards fit into its handy pouches, it has a convenient zipper compartment for my loose change. What’s more, I often get compliments on this particular billfold…..

Isn’t it cute?

In fact, Jen liked it so much that she asked for, and received one from our neighbor before she passed away. The neighbor, that is.  Because yes, she was one of a handful of people in our AZ neighborhood who unexpectedly died last winter. The grim reaper was moving down our street and we got out in the nick of time.

Unfortunately, she left me with a billfold that was beginning to disintegrate. Oh, and rest in peace Patsy.

Luckily I have another, which I have been reluctant to use because then it will disintegrate and I won’t have a spare…..

And suddenly, the other day, as I was getting more and more frustrated by my new puzzle, it occurred to me: I can try sewing again. I’m sure I’m going to like it this time around.

Using the theory that you can find anything on the internet, I search for this particular wallet. AND FOUND IT! It’s called the diva frame wallet. I purchased the pattern because I couldn’t borrow it from Patsy. Because she’s still dead.

I downloaded the pattern and began reading the instructions. It took me about 30 seconds to realize that the pattern might as well have been written in Mandarin Chinese.

Sigh, I said out loud to Bill. He looked up from the pie he was making (just kidding because see above: his Home Ec experience was an epic fail), and suggested that I go on YouTube to see if someone has posted a tutorial. Well what do you think? Of course they have. I’m pretty sure you could find a YouTube video on embalming but I’m too scared to look.

So just as soon as I get up the nerve to drag Wilma’s cast iron Necci sewing machine from the basement, I am going to dive in to my latest project.

Oh, and are you ready for this? I signed up for a beginners’ sewing class at Joann’s. I’m hoping like hell that the teacher’s name isn’t Mrs. Eckert.