Yesterday morning, I was up early, as usual. I made my coffee, and then settled down to read the very good book that I am currently reading. In the book, the narrator — a young woman assistant to the brilliant detective — says to herself, “I made a mental note to schedule an appointment for my boss.”

I stopped reading, and looked up from my book. The assistant detective’s statement stopped me dead in my tracks. The reason I stopped reading was that I realized that I no longer can make a mental note to do anything. Well, that’s not entirely true. I can go ahead and make a list of mental notes a mile long. But within 15 minutes, each so-called mental note has gone the way of every mental note I’ve made for the past three years. I can hold on to information for about three minutes, and then it flies out of my brain like a falcon leaving its cage in a circus.

As a result of my inability to hang on to a thought, I now have to write a note to myself if I have two timers going at the same time. Phone timer is for the pot roast; stove timer is for the brownies. You see, I can make a mental note and I will turn off the brownies in two hours and turn off the pot roast in 40 minutes. The brownies will be burnt to a crisp and the pot roast will be raw and tough.

I don’t have dementia, at least not yet. I know where my keys are (as long as I’ve remembered to put them back where they belong) and I remember the names of my husband and my siblings. I know which kids belong by blood to Bill and which one belongs by blood to me. I just don’t remember what day they told me they need me to babysit.

The other day, my brother Dave was visiting us. He and Bill were smoking cigars and we were talking about the kinds of movies we like. “I like movies that don’t require you to think too much,” said Dave, who still works full time and is very tired when he comes home. He wants to watch a movie that you know is going to end with the hero shooting all of the bad guys and has no moral.

“I agree,” I told him. “That’s why I don’t like movies like…..” And then I couldn’t remember the name of the movie. Here is a snapshot of what followed….

“You know, it’s a spy movie. The star is that guy. You know that guy who is the friend of that other guy. The other guy was in that one movie that we like. You know, the one where he saved all those people’s lives. He and that guy were in their first movie together. The movie had sequels. The plots are really complicated and hard to follow. You know. He is from Massachusetts.”

By this time both Bill and Dave were looking at me like I was nuts. I got up and said, “I’m going to find out what I’m talking about.”

“Good luck with that,” said my brother. “I don’t even know what you will google.”

Well, Smart Alec. I was able to figure it out. It would probably have been impossible except, as it happened, the other guy’s name popped into my head: Ben Affleck. And then it all fell into place.

Matt Damon. Friends with Ben Affleck. Both from Boston. First movie was Good Will Hunting. Affleck was in Argo, the movie where he saved all of the people working in the American Embassy in Tehran. The complicated movie was The Bourne Identity, starring Matt Damon. It had sequels. I found them too difficult to follow. I like easy movies like Beauty and the Beast.

So, no mental notes. Mental notes have gone the way of swim suits.

Thursday Bec and I went to the Desert Botanical Garden to walk around and see the cactus bloom. Bec is a docent at the Botanical Garden, but of course the volunteers have not been able to lead tours for the past year. As things are getting back to normal, she invited me to spend a few hours with her looking at the bursts of color……

They had a special exhibit that took my breath away. It’s an artist’s take on a river…..

We enjoyed lunch at the wonderful bistro at the Garden, and enjoyed our walk, the blooming flowers, and the time together.

Have a wonderful week.

Adulthood
While we were in Denver last week, we were lucky enough to be able to celebrate our eldest grandchild’s 18th birthday with her. We discussed what she can legally do now that she couldn’t do when she wasn’t yet 18. She can vote. She can serve in the military. She can get a tattoo without her parents’ permission. She can serve on a jury. She can accompany her younger siblings into a R-rated movie. So, I know she will vote. I know she will serve on a jury if called. She might take her younger siblings to an R-rated move, but only if her parents say it’s okay. As for the military, she is currently awaiting to hear from the Air Force Academy as to whether she receives an appointment. Then we will see. In the meantime, rather than birthday cake (because she gave up sweets for Lent), she had a beautiful bowl of fruit. She put 18 candles into a banana, and lit them. Unfortunately, they were the sparkler kind of candles, and this happened…..

She blew the candles out quickly before the smoke alarms went off.

Grandkids
As I mentioned earlier, we were able to spend time with all of our Denver grandkids. Kaiya, Mylee, and Cole had a sleepover. We took Addie, Alastair, and Addie’s boyfriend Trenton out for sushi. We took Dagny, Addie, Alastair, and their mom, as well as Allen and Emma out for Mexican food…..

Magnolia helped me buy my new iPhone and we were able to watch a couple of episodes of Death in Paradise before she had to run off to volleyball practice. All in all, a great visit.

Flexability
During the aforementioned sleepover, Cole discovered the Twister game I had purchased a long time ago but never opened. He insisted that we play it, and Kaiya and Mylee agreed. Papa Bill firmly declined, but was an onlooker. Truly, I haven’t laughed that much in a long time. Attempting some of the necessary moves was quite a challenge for this-formerly-flexible-but-currently-as-stiff-as-a-board Nana. The three kids, however, were interlaced like a bowl of pretzels. It was such fun.

Cool Spell
Just as soon as I told you what a beautiful spring we were having, the weather turned cool. When I say “cool,” I mean in the low 60s during the day. I will admit that my heat went on yesterday morning, but it warmed up to high 60s. I think my Denver family was shoveling snow, so no complaints.

Ciao.

It seems to me that people are really starting to take a big breath and carefully step out into the world following everything that’s happened in the past year. I read yesterday that Colorado Gov. Jared Polis plans to lift the statewide mask requirement in a couple of weeks. I imagine that doesn’t mean that we can all throw away our masks. What it does mean, I think, is that a statewide requirement to wear masks is being shifted over to the individual localities, allowing them to decide what is best for their community. Passing the buck, so to speak, but in a way that makes sense.

Still, it’s a really good sign. According to one news source that I read yesterday, the numbers of COVID cases in Texas — the first state to lift all restrictions — are actually inching down. I’m too skittish to say neener neener neener to all the skeptics who worried that Texas was moving too quickly. Numbers can change. But the reality is that more and more people are getting vaccinated every day. Such good news.

As I drove home from my second trip to the grocery store yesterday, I began thinking about our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents who lived through the Great Depression. We’ve had extraordinarily troubled economies since the 1930s, but I don’t think they impacted us in the same way that the Great Depression impacted our ancestors.

Our grandparents and parents were thrifty. They remembered what it was like to be without. Bill’s mother was a great example of the Great Depression mentality. While she lived a very comfortable life, she would use an appliance until it could no longer be repaired. She would use every bit of her ground coffee, no matter how old it was. The ends of bread made perfectly fine toast. Turn off the lights when you’re not using them. (Now I’m starting to sound like a Tim McGraw song.)

I had hoped that this past COVID year, particularly in the spring and summer months when many of us stayed really, really close to home, would have some good come out of it. I had hoped that parents would get used to cooking at home and eating with their families. Maybe all of those parents rushing their kids from ballet to karate to football practice would slow down, maybe making their kids concentrate on only one after-school activity.

Since my college degrees were in journalism and not sociology, I haven’t really tracked whether parents and kids have maintained a slower life. I know that the clean air and pristine oceans haven’t withstood the re-arrival of humans. Traffic (and the ensuing smog) has returned, and will get even worse once all businesses go back to their buildings. That is, if they do. I’m also not an urban planner.

I wonder how — if any — we have changed following this year that was beyond anyone’s imagination. I hope that something good can come out of our sacrifices, if only loving our neighbors a bit more.

Bill and I arrived back in Mesa on Saturday afternoon. The weather was absolutely lovely, and it has been that way since then. I had turned off the air conditioner before we left, but even the house was cool. Since Saturday, the temperatures have hovered in the mid-70s during the day, and the mid-50s at night. Very nice weather after the two feet of snow we had while visiting Denver.

March is the nicest month to be in Arizona. The weather is much more predictably warm, but hasn’t yet gotten to the point where if feels like you’re living on Venus, where the temperature averages 864 degrees. Women definitely AREN’T from Venus (though it feels like it during menopause).

This is the time of year when the AZ weather forecasters don’t really have much to say. In fact, they spend a considerable amount of time talking about the weather in other places that seem much more interesting. Like Colorado, which I understand once again had some snow since we left. In fact, I think it was snowing while we sat on our patio last night and drank our adult beverages.

March is also when Arizona begins bursting into bloom. I know that sounds funny to say about a desert, but all of the cactus which have just sat there for the past months are now starting to get their flower buds. I have posted pictures in the past that show how beautiful the cactus are when they’re in bloom. In fact, I think I have posted almost as many flowering cactus photos as I have pie photos.

Speaking of pies, I made pie crust this morning for a quiche that I will make this evening for dinner. Quiche is something Bill actually likes. It doesn’t seem to make him feel less manly. Quiche was a no-brainer for me, because I did a grocery shop without checking my refrigerator, something I do quite frequently. As part of my shop, I purchased a dozen eggs, only to discover a half dozen eggs that had just reached their sell-by date sitting in my refrigerator. Egg salad for lunch; quiche for dinner. Worry about the cholesterol later.

In addition to many eggs, I also bought another container of heavy cream to befriend the one that was sitting in my refrigerator with a distant pull date, and some butter to bring our total butter count to three pounds.

What I didn’t buy was bread on which to place the butter. And wouldn’t you know that I efficiently used all the bread before we left, leaving not even a crust for morning toast. So yesterday I baked a loaf of bread. Don’t I kind of remind you of Caroline Ingalls in Little House on the Prairie? Except I have a Kitchenaid that did most of the work, and no wood to chop. I’m actually quite proud at how much my bread baking has improved. Except for my hamburger buns, with which I’m still not satisfied. Caroline Ingalls wouldn’t worry about hamburger buns.

We will get back in the swing of AZ living just in time to go home again at the end of April. First World problems.

I was searching the web the other day for ideas for my blog. One idea that caught my eye was BACON. Yep. The internet suggested a blog post about bacon. Seriously?

But the more I thought about it, the more it didn’t seem so crazy. Bacon is an important part of my life. One of my favorite memories from my formative years is smelling bacon cooking in the little house in which I was reared as my mother cooked Sunday morning breakfast. (By the way, I hate using the word reared to describe being brought up by my parents. I prefer raised, but every time I try to say someone was raised, I hear the voice of the man who was my boss for nearly 20 years — and who had a master’s degree in journalism from Stanford — telling me “cattle are raised; humans are reared.) The smell of coffee brewing and bacon cooking scream BREAKFAST to me.

In my opinion, the United States of America rocks when it comes to bacon. I have had bacon in several foreign countries, and while all kinds of bacon were good, the fatty strips that we cook and eat in the United States is the best. U-S-A! U.S.A.! U.S.A!

The famed English breakfast often doesn’t even feature bacon. You’ll get a couple of eggs, a couple of sausages, some crisp toast that you butter yourself, a tomato, some pork-and-beans, and blood sausage. And let me tell you a bit about blood sausage. Here’s how Wikipedia describes blood sausage: A blood sausage is a sausage filled with blood that is cooked or dried and mixed with a filler until it is thick enough to solidify when cooled. Doesn’t that sound scrumptious. It looks like a scab…..

Despite the fact that I’m certain my grandparents ate blood sausage, I never paid a bit of attention to it. So the first time we were in England and saw a few pieces on our breakfast plate, I asked the owner of the bed-and-breakfast about it. He told me it was blood sausage. “It’s like summer sausage in America,” he told me. Almost always game, I took a bite. No. Just no. It bore absolutely no resemblance to summer sausage, which is made with MEAT and which is also delicious. Both Bill and I always gave our blood sausage to Allen, who was traveling with us and would eat anything that was offered to him for free.

I like Italy’s version of bacon, which is called pancetta. Pancetta isn’t smoked like American bacon, but it’s very good. It’s especially good when served as part of Spaghetti Carbonara, particularly because it’s complimented with cheese, eggs, and wine. How could you go wrong. Tradition says the Italians starting serving Spaghetti Carbonara to American soldiers who were missing their mother’s bacon-and-egg breakfasts.

Canadian bacon is good, but it can’t compete with American bacon. Of course, it’s considerably healthier, but who wants healthy bacon? If you live in America, you transform Canadian bacon into an Egg McMuffin. Don’t get me wrong. I buy and eat Canadian bacon. But like turkey bacon, it tastes fine but don’t try to convince me it’s bacon.

Everyone says it, but they say it because it’s true: bacon makes everything taste better. You can eat a spinach salad that has red onions, mushrooms, hard-boiled egg, but it isn’t until you add the bacon that it becomes that spinach salad that we all love. Have you ever put bacon in your potato salad? It’s delicious. Here’s my favorite potato salad for two (but actually serves three or four) from Zona Cooks. Bacon is a key ingredient, and takes regular potato salad up a notch or two.

And if you are a tried-and-true bacon lover, try the Bacon of the Month Club. Hand to God.

I’m proud to be an American.

Amidst the March Blizzard of 2021, Bill and I managed to see and spend time with all of our kids and grandkids that live here in Denver. In other words, I spent the entire 10 days with a smile on my face, even in the midst of shoveling snow. There was action and laughter and we even managed one sleepover. I made oodles of noodles and enjoyed sushi, Mexican food, and burgers with various members of our family.

To top it all off, we were able to attend the birthday celebration of our first-born grandchild — Adelaide Grace — who turned 18 yesterday.

We return today to Mesa, where we will finish off our winter in the Valley of the Sun. But we sure have lots of memories to take with us.

Have a great weekend.