There are two things that are telling me: YOU’RE GETTING OLD AND BORING. The first is that Sunday night — the 245th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence — Bill and I were in bed at 9:45. In the background, we could hear fireworks popping and booming. Well, at least for about the 5 minutes it took me to fall asleep with my earplugs.

The second thing that tells me that I’m getting old is that I was inordinately excited to receive the package from Weather Tech that held my brand new plastic cut-to-fit cargo liner for the CR-V. There was a time when it would have taken a package from Nordstrom or Crate and Barrel to excite me. Alas, given that I dress now like a hillbilly and I mostly use plastic glasses because we spill a lot, I have lowered my excitement standards to car accessories.

Shortly after we purchased the car this past spring, I drove it to my favorite nursery to buy some plants. While I thought I had the plants securely fixed so that they wouldn’t tip over, they tipped over. Would you like me to come organize your car trunk for you? Anyway, I got home and showed Bill the dirt. We vacuumed it up, but nevertheless, I immediately got on Weather Tech’s website and ordered the trunk liner. As I write this blog post, Bill is installing the liner, happy as a fly on

We had a nice celebration of our nation’s birthday. Jen hosts because her daughter Maggie and family are always in town for the Fourth. This year the dinner featured Chicago hot dogs, because nothing says God Bless America more than a hot dog. Of course, Bill kicked in to buy a couple of pizzas, because for him, nothing says God Bless America more than pizza. Take THAT, Italy.

Ironically, when Bill and I took our Big Trip to Europe, we spent the Fourth of July in Certaldo, Italy. While I was often homesick for my family, it was the first, and I believe only, time that I was homesick for my country. So we went to the market and managed to find funny little short hot dogs and some buns. I opened a can of cannellini beans, and doctored them up with brown sugar, mustard, and ketchup. They weren’t good, but they were as close as we could get to baked beans. Bill downloaded I’m Proud to Be An American, by Lee Greenwood, and we had a little July 4th celebration. No fireworks.

It would be hard to beat the time that my dad and my Uncle Dale were in charge of fireworks and managed to drop a cigarette in the wagon holding our entire stash. That, my friends, was a Grand Finale that we never let him live down.

Oh, and I just thought of one other thing that made me homesick for the good ol’ U.S. of A. while we were traveling. Much as I enjoyed the espresso in every country we visited, I couldn’t wait to get home and have an bottomless cup of American coffee.

God bless America.

Date Night
Well, Date Day, actually. Tuesday morning I mentioned to Bill that it would be nice if we did something together that day. He agreed. But what? “Let me check movie listings,” I said. Pickings were slim, as you might imagine. Hollywood is still reeling from COVID. Summer movies are pretty weak even under the best of conditions. I was bored, but not bored enough to watch Fast and Furious 27, even if they’re trying to fool me with a different name. But I found a movie that seemed reasonably watchable. It is called 12 Mighty Orphans. Based on a true story, it is the story of a new teacher at an orphanage in Texas who offers football to the 12 boys who are grade-eligible to play. This leads to that, and football saves the school — and the 12 orphans. Basically, it is Hoosier, only it’s takes place during the Great Depression and it is football. It was good. As we walked out of the theater, Bill said, “You know what? I’m a sucker for that kind of movie.” So am I. We had fun. Red Vines for me; popcorn for Bill.

Let the Sun Shine
Today, Jen and I are taking grandkids to Pirates Cove. She wanted to take Austin and Lilly, who are visiting from AZ, and thought the three Z’s would have fun with her grands. Given our recent weather situation, we are keeping our fingers crossed for good weather. Lately, it has only been in the 80s, and afternoons often offer a thunderstorm. Fingers crossed. Cole wants to show off his ability to go down the twisty slide once again.

Bosch
Season 7, which is the final season, of one of Bill and my favorite detective stories has dropped on Amazon Prime. We have enjoyed the past six season, but it has been a long wait between the end of Season 6 and now. We sat down the other night and put on the new season. Before beginning, they showed what has taken place previously. Bill and I looked at each other and said, “Oh, oh.” We couldn’t remember a thing. So we decided to rewatch Season 6 to give our feeble minds a boost. Every day is a new day!

Where Am I?
I went to CVS Pharmacy yesterday to find out why one of Bill’s PD medications hasn’t been refilled. He will run out on Saturday. Tick tock. It turns out the prescription has expired, something no one bothered to tell me. The clerk in the pharmacy said she would contact the doctor. But she suggested that since we were soon running out, it might make sense for me to contact the doctor as well. I made a phone call. Shortly thereafter, I got a message from the doctor’s office. The voice proudly said they had submitted a new prescription as requested. She went on to say it would be filled at the Costco in Mesa, AZ. Oops. Wrong pharmacy. Wrong city. I called and got it straightened out. Managing his medications is like herding cats.

Ciao.

We’ve all heard the story about Winston Churchill’s famous speech to the boys of Harrow School, which happened also to be one of his alma maters. Never, never, never give up, he is purported to have said, upon which he sat down, his speech concluded. Guess what? Didn’t happen. At least not that way.

What he DID say at one point in his 20-minutes-or-so speech, was ….this is the lesson: never give in, never give in, never, never, never never — in nothing, great or small, large or petty — never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense.

That puts a different slant on what we always thought he said. I think I like my version better.

I have never been a person with a lot of tenacity. I’m very quick to both give up and/or give in. I guess I just never had enough self-confidence to stick to my guns about much. But Churchill would be proud that I continue to tenaciously pursue one goal: making hamburger buns.

Of course, Churchill probably didn’t eat a lot of hamburgers in his life, what with his mouth being full of the ubiquitous cigar. So, in reality, he wouldn’t be particularly proud of my goal, but he would applaud me for never giving up. Or in. Whatever.

I believe I have conquered bread. I believe I make a really good loaf of white bread, thanks to Browneyed Baker. My soft-crusted french bread is very good, if I must say so myself, thanks to The Baker Upstairs. But I have tried maybe a dozen times to make soft and tasty hamburger buns, to no avail. Rather than soft, they are hard as rocks. Rather than tasty, they are flavorless. Frankly, a rock would taste better.

I set out yesterday with a new recipe. This recipe came from Pinterest. Despite an inordinate time they spend on giving me survival tips, they also have figured out two things: I like to bake bread and I like to cook meals designed for two people. Hence, they offered me a recipe for small-batch hamburger buns. Four hamburger buns. Easy-peasy. Soft and delicious.

Chanting nevah, nevah, nevah give up (because I hadn’t yet learned that Churchill didn’t actual say that), I set out to make four hamburger buns. I followed the recipe. I did everything the recipe told me to do. I knew immediately that the dough wasn’t going to rise. It wasn’t soft. It wasn’t smooth. It wasn’t sticky at all. But I optimistically put it in a bowl and covered the bowl. An hour later, I uncovered the bowl and it looked exactly like it looked an hour previously.

Dang.

But I soldiered on, because I wanted to go against my nature and not give up. I found another small-batch hamburger bun recipe. This recipe used regular yeast instead of rapid-rise yeast. I have decided instant yeast is not my friend, and I can’t really tell you why. All I know is that when I mix warm water with regular yeast and a little sugar, and begin to see the yeast coming to life, I’m happy as the squirrel on my bird feeder.

From the get-go, this recipe worked better. The dough was soft and silky. It dutifully doubled in bulk as it is supposed to do. My buns, at long last, were a success….

Next step is to learn to make the tops smooth and shiny. I will never give up. Or in.

Bill and I watched an old Clint Eastwood movie the other day. It was raining outside, and Bill was unable to work in the yard. He is unaccustomed to having time on his hands, and was like the so-called cat on a hot tin roof. I quickly got on Amazon Prime and a movie — which I had never heard of — showed up on my suggestions. It was called Tightrope, and was not overly long and did not involve espionage — two things that would have been a game-stopper. My general attention span for movies these days is two hours. As for espionage films, I simply didn’t feel like working that hard to follow the plot.

I was struck by the title, which reminded me of one of Alfred Hitchcock’s one-word film titles. You know, like Vertigo, Sabotage, Psycho, Rebecca. The film originally was released in 1984. I like films made in the 70s and 80s. The cars were as big as a small apartment. Women’s hair styles were huge and covered in so much hairspray that a small tsunami wouldn’t move a single hair. Jeans fit tight at the waist and were acid-washed. Men wore corduroy jackets and sported sideburns. Telephones were attached to the wall and political correctness was a dim hope for the future.

While I am no film aficionado, I believe I could tell you that a movie was made in the 70s even if I had never seen it before. And not just from the cars and the hairstyles, but from the way they are directed. Lots of head-on shots. Lots of background music that sounds like wannabe jazz and might have also been used in a porn movie. Lots of shots from the knees-on-down to build suspense.

Bill and I didn’t think that Tightrope was very good, to be perfectly honest. At one point, I told Bill that if I hadn’t paid Amazon to rent the movie, I would have abandoned it and moved on to one of my British mysteries. But money doesn’t grow on trees, my friends. After all, $3.99 is $3.99. That, and about four more dollars, would buy a cup of coffee.

I was surprised, however, to read that the late film critic Roger Ebert gave the movie a really good review when it came out in 1984. He credited Clint Eastwood for his portrayal of a tortured cop whose wife had left him with his two children. Perhaps she left him because he kept having sex, albeit consensual, with women he met while chasing bad guys. Oh, and he liked using handcuffs, and not just for police work. But he was a really good dad!

At the end of the movie, which featured a very bad villain, Eastwood’s character makes the right choice, and falls for a feminist who teaches self-defense to women. And he hangs up the handcuffs for good.

I never figured out why the movie was called Tightrope, as there wasn’t a rope in sight. But while I thought the movie was crap, I have to agree with Ebert that no one plays a tortured man like Clint Eastwood. He clenches his teeth so much that his mouth must be sore at the end of filming.

Still, he’s one of my favorite actors. And I will admit that I use lines from his movies more than any other actor’s lines. Think Do you feel lucky, Punk? Well, do you?

There’s a crow flying
Black & ragged
Tree to tree
He’s black as the highway that’s leading me
Now he’s diving down
To pick up on something shiny
I feel like that black crow
Flying
In a blue sky.

Joni Mitchell

If you follow this blog, you know I love the sound of the birds singing. No matter which home I’m living, I open up the doors and windows early in the morning when I arise so that I can listen to the lovely sound of birds chirping. This past spring, I was able to watch quails as they sat on their eggs in the nest they had built in my geranium pot. I like birds.

I thought I liked all kinds of birds, but I have learned in the past week that there is a species of birds that I not only don’t like, but I actively and heartily DISLIKE.

Crows.

For the first time that I can remember in the 28 years we have lived in this Denver abode, we have a murder of crows living either in one of our trees or in one of a nearby neighbor’s tree. I have seen seven or eight of them at a time dining luxuriously on the worms they are pulling out of our lawn, particularly after it rains.

I don’t mind if they are using my yard as a cafeteria. It’s the food chain. It’s the circle of life. Eat away, Mr. and Mrs. Crow. However, lately they have taken to starting their cawing sound early in the morning, just as the sun is beginning to rise. You’ve heard crows cawing, right? It’s an extremely unpleasant sound. It’s loud and shrill and incessant. Our crows start early and never seem to know when to stop.

I assume there is a reason for their cawing. I don’t think they have set out to purposely become Southmoor Park’s alarm clock. In fact, I’m probably the only person who hears their terrible racket because other people are smart enough to close their windows and run their air conditioners. I, however, love the night sounds and leave ours open. Or I did, anyway, until the night sounds became the dawn sounds of never-ending cawing. As for Bill, if a car crashed through our garage door, Bill might snuffle and turn over, but it wouldn’t awaken him. He sleeps soundly.

I have googled the entire issue, of course. Lo, and behold, Lennon and McCartney were right. Blackbirds sing in the dead of night. Why? To get a drop on the other birds who are still sleeping. Their song may well be a mating sound. They might simply want to be heard.

Of course, I also learned that there is a difference between ravens, crows, and blackbirds. Blackbirds are smaller, and it seems they have a much pleasanter sound than the irritating sound made by crows. And if Edgar Allan Poe is right and the raven quoths nevermore, I should only be so lucky that the crow would also quoth nevermore.

It could, however, that the crows are letting their murder mates know that a fox is near. I hate nature.