Honest to God, this has been the single worst year of my life when it comes to endless minor miseries. Every time it looks like I’m just about to get over some ailment something else comes along to take its place. Literally, I’ve been sick since a year ago this fall.
The back and the foot still hurt, although on some days that interminable complaint is slightly better. Now, though, I’ve developed a real bellyache to bellyache about. Don’t know what it is — some kind of enteritis — but my GAWD it hurts!
Nor do I know where it came from, but I’ve got a suspicion.
Saturday friends and I had a grand old time. My pal KJG drove in from her house on the far, far, far west side of the Valley so we could go to the annual chicken coop tour.
Yes. Raising backyard chickens has become such a craze in these parts that chicken fanciers open their yards and coops to tours of fellow and would-be fanciers. So that’s amusing, to see what things people get up to. We went to an urban yuppie restaurant we enjoyed, where I ordered a sandwich billed as “goat cheese and cranberry.” It actually was more like an arugula sandwich with a little cheese and some sort of sauce.
I’m allergic to arugula, and this thing was just stuffed with it. Well, KJG was buying, so it seemed rude to grump that I couldn’t eat it or to send it back and make us wait around another 20 minutes or more for something else to come out of the kitchen. Besides, I was so hungry I just had to eat.
To my surprise, that sat fairly well, at least for the nonce.
Then it was off to dinner and then chamber music with another friend. We went by a kind of bistro for dinner, where I ordered a dish of glorified macaroni and cheese. It was very good, and nice and hot on a chilly rainy night.
By the time we got out of there, a major gas attack was coming on. That’s weird, because there was nothing exotic about the mac and cheese. And it was so hot that no microbes could have survived the trip to the table. So unless a glass was unclean, I’m thinking the bistro likely was not the source of whatever’s ailing me today. It probably was the arugula sandwich. Especially since cranberries were still coming out whilst I was spending the night on the john.
Last night I had the worst intestinal cramps I’ve ever had, and during the vast number of decades I’ve spent on this earth, I’ve enjoyed a few doozies. Entertained a trip to the ER, but I just can’t contemplate the prospect of spending still more hours and hours sitting around an ER with needles stuck in my arms, probably to little avail. So passed the night crawling between the bed and the terlet. Missed choir both on Sunday morning and for the beautiful evensong performance, to my distress.
The minute my fave client got back in town from her world-wide junkets last week, she forked over a new book by one of our most difficult authors (I call him The Emperor of Bad Capitalization) and said she wanted it back in a week. Fortunately other work is slow just now, so there’s time to tackle a rush job. But today I’ll need to spend the entire day finishing that thing. Plus the online students are sending in a new raft of off-key copy for me to read.
So once again, the house won’t get cleaned. But that’s OK, because I’m in no shape to clean house, anyway. As soon as the dog is fed, I’m taking the Emperor’s book back to bed.
So, acting on Evan‘s advice, I decided to give the County Attorney’s office a call and express my concerns about whatever risk testifying against the late, great garage invader might evince, young G.I. being a convicted felon, a member of a violent criminal gang, and charged with armed robbery, kidnapping, and aggravated assault.
Called the number of the Gang Bureau, given on Sheriff Joe’s subpoena. The woman who answered the phone knew all about G.I. Remarked she: “He’s…special.”
Yeah. I’ll bet he is.
She patched me through to the prosecutor in charge of harrying young G.I. He was extremely nice and helpful. First off, he said he thought the charges they were preferring that entailed the garage invasion caper were so minor that G.I. and his pals would hardly notice them. Second, he gave me his phone number and his cell number (!!!), with instructions to call him if anything even vaguely suspicious or alarming happened, and said to call the police if the anyone showed up on the property. However, he said, G.I. is still in custody and will be until the trial. So, since it’s unlikely he memorized my address in his rush to escape the cops or after his captors had beaned him, his co-conspirators are not likely to show up here with any threats.
Then I mentioned, as an afterthought, that if I had to sit around a courtroom for several days, it would mean I would lose a week’s salary—explained that one class meeting for an adjunct section that meets twice a week represents half a week’s pay. Said he: “Oh, hadn’t you heard? The trial has been postponed until January.”
Hallelujah, brother!
By January, of course, I’ll no longer be standing in front of classrooms full of freshmen, and so that moots the whole paycheck problem. Editorial work I can do anyplace where I can sit down and turn on a computer. So, I’m pretty relieved about that.
Mr. County Prosecutor continued: They’re pretty sure he’s going to accept a plea agreement before the trial is scheduled. He said one of his pals has already done so, and they think he will, too. I pointed out that he’s already got at least one felony conviction, plus if he was convicted on the charge of possession of a firearm by a felon, he has two. Thus copping a plea would put him in jail for at least 25 years, and very probably for the rest of his life. I said if I were in that position I wouldn’t be interested in confessing to anything, and anyone who might testify against me most definitely would hear from my colleagues. He said there was something to that, except they have him dead to rights on the pawn shop heist.
So, it doesn’t look like there’s much to worry about where that poor schmuck is concerned.
What a shame. He’s a handsome man, except for the pinpoint irises and the gang tat on the neck. Think of it: once he was somebody’s cute little baby. What do you suppose happens to a person that he turns out to be an armed robber and all-around sh!thead?
Oh well.
This little reminder caused me to reconsider sticking the door screamers on the new Arcadia doors. Damn, but I don’t want to! They look so nice…who needs to junk up a $1,500 door with a stupid plastic alarm?
On the other hand, that one did go off the time the guy tried to get in the westside door. He must have been annoyed. 😀
No question, too, that the sliding doors and windows, especially in back, are the most vulnerable entries to the house. They really should have noisemakers on them. {sigh} That’ll make for a couple of hours of dorking around—have to scrape off the extremely stubborn stickum from the alarms that were removed from the old doors. First, though, I’ve gotta grade some stoont papers.
In the wake of the astonishing destruction Hurricane Sandy wreaked on New York, bloggers and normal citizens alike are talking about how to be prepared if the unthinkable happens “here,” wherever we happen to be. Costco is selling a disaster preparedness kit: paranoia in a backpack. There’s a point where you lapse from envisioning the worst to flaming silliness. However, it certainly is reasonable to think through the most likely disasters that could happen in your part of the country, and to be prepared for them.
Hereabouts, believe it or not, we have had floods. Mercifully, nothing like people in other parts of the country experience, and since the Pacific is 350 miles from here, we don’t need to prepare for storm surges. The Salt River, which historically has flooded sections of Phoenix, is now dry, dammed to extinction upstream. Some of the dams on the Salt are earthen lash-ups that are, shall we say, pretty rickety; all it would take is for one of them to collapse to take out every other dam downstream, and that would flood the downtown area and suburbs that have grown up in the river’s lower flood plain. As a matter of fact, much of the city is in the Salt River floodplain, but the likelihood of that much water coming downstream is almost nil.
The most likely short-term emergency here is high wind and damage to the electrical grid. (This excludes drought, which just now has afflicted the state for over 10 years and which eventually could render the area unlivable.) As the climate has warmed, we’ve seen more and more apocalyptic-looking dust storms, some of them reminiscent of the Dust Bowl.
While these do cause monumental freeway pile-ups and create unhealthy living conditions, they’re not going to bring the entire region to a stop. However, we have been seeing more and more violent windstorms, including tornadoes, which once were so rare in these parts as to be nonexistent. The wind doesn’t have to swirl around in a funnel to be extremely destructive and to lead to lengthy power outages.
So it makes sense to think through the most likely disruptions you’re likely to experience in your part of the country. Power outages represent a major potential problem, and as the nation’s electrical grid ages, loss of power becomes more probable. Many modern gas stoves will not work — at least not safely — without electricity, because they have no pilot lights.
Clean water is another necessity you should be prepared to provide for yourself. As long as a stove works, you can boil water, but…what if the power is out?
And, as we’ve seen in New York, if the power is out any length of time, you could find it difficult or impossible to get gasoline. If you live in a city like Phoenix, built for automobile transport down to the smallest detail, that could be a problem: even getting to a grocery store would be a challenge, to say nothing of getting yourself and your family to a hospital or to work.
Here in Arizona, you need to carry water with you even for routine trips across the desert. So most people have some sort of water carrier. Propane grills are commonplace, and so most of us have at least some propane on hand.
Here’s what I think of as the basic emergency kit:
Two or three five-gallon containers of water
I keep that much so as to have enough on hand for the dog and for myself, should things become so dramatic that we have to evacuate the city. Fifteen gallons would get me, another person, and the dog to Flagstaff or Yuma, even if we were stuck in traffic for a day or two.
At least one and preferably two extra barbecue-size propane tanks
A small propane camp stove
Small containers of propane for camp stove
Large container of dried beans
Large container of dried rice
Canned or dry dog food
Canned and dry human foods
Manual can opener
Battery-run radio
Batteries for said radio
Candles (tapers provide the best light)
First aid kit
Large and small bandages
Antiseptic liquid or ointment
OTC painkiller; prescription painkiller if you can get your hands on it
Scissors
Tweezers
Eyedrops
Gloves
Roll of athletic bandage
Prescription meds for humans and pets
Fire extinguisher
Water filter, iodine tablets, or both
Soap
Detergent (dish detergent can be used for hair and clothing as well as dishes)
Toilet paper
Paper towels
Camp dishes & eating utensils
Dog dishes
Toothbrush and toothpaste
Pocket knife
Matches or butane fire starter
Extra gasoline stored safely in an approved container
Camp lantern and batteries or propane to operate it
Gun and ammunition
Blankets or sleeping bags and jackets
Cash
Some of this stuff would only be needed if you had to evacuate, and even then, some of it would be usable only if you could get out of town in a vehicle. You probably should have a day pack loaded with personal emergency items (meds, toiletries, water purification tabs or gadget, toilet paper, underwear, & the like) and a box of camping-type stuff that you could load into the car quickly if need be.
Few of us are likely to have to evacuate, however. More likely, we’ll have to deal with an extended power outage. In that case, extra gasoline, propane for cooking, and candles or a camp lantern would be your most important tools. And if the electricity is out, lo! So is the ATM! And so is every credit-card machine in every store that has still managed to stay open. A stash of emergency cash, as much as $500, should be hidden someplace in your house where the burglar is not likely to find it.
People should be prepared for disruption of water services, too. In that case, a source of heat (propane) to boil water is critical, as is a portable store of water. The trick is, water can’t just sit in a carboy forever. It gets stale. About every three months, I use my five-gallon water containers to water the plants; rinse out the containers, and refill them.
It’s important to remember that the water heater contains 50 or 60 gallons of water, which can be rationed out for drinking in an emergency. And in Sunbelt areas, swimming pools are reservoirs of water that can be made drinkable by filtering, boiling, or iodine.
It’s amazing how few people, even in disaster-prone regions, have emergency supplies on hand.
My friend Elmer used to live on top of the San Andreas fault — he grew up in Hollister and lived in Salinas. His wife was here in Arizona visiting their daughter but he’d stayed home when a big earthquake hit Salinas. Power, gas, and just about everything else were out for days. The road out of town buckled, so people were pretty much stuck where they were for a week or two.
Elmer liked to camp, and he also had lived through several big California earthquakes during the many decades of his life. He and his wife gardened, and they liked to put up tomatoes, fruit, and other foods. They’d designed the shelves where they stored these goods with barriers to keep cans and jars from falling on the floor. So in addition to the garden, he had plenty of edibles on hand.
He had a camper with a stove and propane-driven refrigerator, plus plenty of propane for a grill.
Elmer kept the entire neighborhood going, because was the only guy around who had power to cook food and sanitize water. The neighbors would gather at his house, bringing things to eat and seeking moral support.
We don’t have to be prepared for Armageddon to be ready to cope for a days-long power outage. But if Armageddon is what you anticipate, a good set of camping gear, extra propane, extra gasoline, cash, a decent medical kit, and a store of food and water should suffice.
Sonovabitch! The late, great garage invasion is about to cost me even more money and stress. Comes a summons in the mail from the sheriff’s office: my presence is requested (nay, demanded) at a trial for the sh!thead who caused all that flap.
Over the summer I drew down my survival savings by about $7,000 to install new Arcadia doors that actually latch (two of the old ones couldn’t be latched at all), replace the last of the windows that could be opened simply by pulling off a length of rubber weatherstripping, install a new security door in back, and install (expensive!!!) hardened locks on all three security doors. This seriously impoverished me, requiring me to spend money that should have supported me for the better part of another year and making it impossible for me to to replace my 13-year-old car anytime in the near future (or, more likely, ever).
The summons is for the 20th, a Tuesday. That means I’ll miss the noon class on that day, and very probably this trial will go several days: I may miss class on Wednesday and maybe even more than that. You have to sit there in the courtroom until they call you and until the judge decides you can be dismissed.
I do not get paid if I’m not in class. So unless I can quietly put someone up to standing in for me, I’m going to get screwed royally here. And, given my plan to quit teaching at the end of this semester, I really can’t afford to do without several days of pay.
Just to complicate matters, I donated money to the church during the silent auction, which obviously I should not have done. And during a recent art studio tour, I purchased an interesting necklace, first because I wanted it and second because I realized that if I could study it closely, I could create something similar and sell the things myself. Neither of these was radically costly in the large scheme of things, but taken together they drained this month’s budget. If several hundred dollars of income are sucked out of said budget, I won’t have enough to make ends meet either this month or next.
Nothing gets your attention like a summons from Joe Arpaio. It’s like getting a summons from the Gestapo or the KGB…this is a cynical and irrational fellow. So add that little jolt to the stress of wondering how I’m going to eat and pay the bills.
It is, however, as nothing compared to the content of this subpoena.
As the “victim,” my address is not published in the public record, as if our boy and his pals don’t know where I live…
They’re charging the perp with armed robbery, kidnapping, and aggravated assault.
This represents a real problem.
In the first place, the guy did not kidnap me and did not assault me. He never got close enough to see me, much less lay his hands on my dainty little person. The cops told me that where the garage invasion was concerned, they were going to charge him with criminal trespass and burglary—the latter because he grabbed a shirt, a tattered old sun hat, and a pair of muddy clodhoppers to create his disguise as a gardener. So this means either they’ve trumped up the charges (not at all unlikely in the Arpaio regime) or that he actually did grab and attack someone.
And in the second place, as a witness, I’m instructed to call the “Gang Bureau” on the 19th to confirm that the trial is actually on for the following morning. Charming.
Pretty clearly this character is a dangerous thug of long standing. Not only that, but pretty clearly he’s a member of a violent gang. That means that showing up in court and testifying against him could put me at serious risk, not just from him but from his pals. And that risk may not only be immediate, it may be long-standing, as these guys take their time waiting for an opportunity to inflict revenge on me.
There’s no way I’m going to testify on phony charges, no matter how richly the guy deserves to be taken off the streets. So if the charges of kidnapping and aggravated assault stem from his adventures in my garage, we’re looking at a huge waste of everyone’s time and about $500 that I will lose for nothing.
If, however, the charges had to do with the armed robbery of the pawn shop he and his pals stuck up or with some other caper, then these gents truly are dangerous and could do me some serious harm.
Hm. Come to think of it… This casts a different light on a wacky little incident that took place a couple of nights ago. The doorbell at the front gate rang, after dark. Cassie went batshit. Looked out the front window and couldn’t see anyone, and the motion-sensitive light was off. A few minutes later it rang again: still no sign of a person out there.
The kids across the street at Pretty Daughter’s house were banging around across the street; she also has one of these battery-operated doorbells. I installed mine because Satan or an even more previous homeowner removed the hard-wired doorbell to the house. I had to jimmy it because hers rang on the same preset frequency, causing mine to go off every time any of her many relatives and friends would show up at her door. So I thought she must have adjusted the settings on hers and one of the kids’ friends rang it.
But later when I took the dog for a walk I realized you can walk right up to the gate and not turn that light on—I actually had to enter the gate before the motion sensor kicked on last night. However, the gate was hanging open when I went out…you’d think if someone had entered the gate, it would have turned on the light. If you were careful and savvy, you could, suppose, approach the gate without triggering the motion sensor by keeping your head way down.
A common strategy for burglars and home invaders around here is to ring your doorbell either to see if you’re home or to try to get you to open the door so they can push their way in. Usually they unscrew the lightbulbs in motion-sensitive lights around the doors, so that you can’t see them. But my light bulbs were in place and intact.
It’s mighty unlikely that Pretty Daughter has installed a new battery-run doorbell and, for unknown and highly unlikely reasons, fiddled with it in exactly the same way I’ve fiddled with mine. She’d have no reason to do so, and it would be a pretty weird coincidence if she flipped the same set of switches in the same order that I’ve flipped mine.
I don’t open my door to strangers. But there’s nothing to stop a vindictive sh!thead from shooting you through the door. Or through the window. Or, with the kind of arms gang members carry, right through your block wall. Or from throwing a pop bottle full of gasoline through your window.
So. This episode not only is going to cost me still more money, it may put me at some risk and certainly is going to cause additional worry. And cause me to revisit the question of whether I should sell this house and move.
Yesterday Funny emitted a recipe for genuine 1950s meatloaf, the elixir of the working class. As I mentioned then, IMHO the best use of meatloaf is to stuff a sandwich. Meatloaf is the same variety of chow as pâté and liverwurst (which my father used to call “the worst of the liver” :-D): low-end food designed to fill hungry bellies and stretch dollars. As such, it makes a truly great lunchbox ingredient.
Personally, I think the best of all possible meatloaf sandwiches is made with home-made white bread; a close runner-up is sourdough bread. Try to avoid whole wheat bread: too healthy. Spoils the whole point of this exercise.
Slap a piece of bread on the counter. Cover it liberally with your favorite mustard. I favor Dijon types, but a good ball-park yellow will do the job handsomely.
Not spicy enough for you? What the heck: add a layer of horseradish. Slap another piece of bread on the counter next to the first one, and slather that one with plenty of ketchup.
Take last night’s leftover meatloaf out of the refrigerator and slice off a chunk. Size depends on how hungry you are now or how hungry you think you will be during your lunch break on the job. Place this on one of the bread slices.
Think you should have a vegetable? Break off a piece of lettuce from the head in the fridge and place that on top of the meatloaf. It’s optional, though, and may be too healthy for good sense. Remember, Ronald Reagan taught us that ketchup is a vegetable. Now take the other slice of bread and place it on top of the mound you’ve created…with the condiment side down, of course. Slice the sandwich in half, if you like.
Serve with a dill pickle spear (another vegetable!) and a mound of potato chips (more vegetables!).
The choir had its gala dinner and silent auction last night, the group’s major annual fundraising event. As usual, it was a lot of fun, though turnout seemed less dense than it has been in past years. I purchased a place in a hike up near Sedona, complete with gourmet lunch and good company. It would cost more in gasoline alone for me to go up there on my own. Sure hope the plantar fascitis and sciatica have cleared up by next April, when this junket takes place.
The party’s theme was 1950s cruising. Accordingly, the caterer came up with an approximation of 1950s cuisine, but featuring a 21st-century twist. They served up meatloaf made with Kobe beef.
😀
LOL! In the 1950s, no one this side of Tokyo had ever heard of Kobe anything. Certainly not in Phoenix, where the term “bread” meant Wonderbread and “cheese” meant Kraft slices. When we moved here in the 1960s, literally you could not buy a decent piece of cheese in a grocery store, and if you wanted a loaf of bread with anything resembling a flavor (other than caraway seeds), you had to go to the kosher bakery.
My mother made a great meatloaf. IMHO, the highest and best use of meatloaf is as a sandwich filling, served cold a day or two after the meatloaf is cooked. But some like it hot.
You need:
• about a pound of ground chuck or ground round, decidedly not of the Kobe variety (meatloaf is working man’s food!) • one onion, chopped • one stalk of celery, chopped • one or two pieces of grocery-store white bread • salt and pepper • maybe a little garlic salt or garlic powder • an egg • butter or vegetable oil • one small can of tomato sauce • 1/2 small can of tomato paste
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Grease a bread loaf pan liberally with butter or vegetable oil (my mother favored Mazola).
In a bowl or mixing cup, combine the tomato sauce and half a can of tomato paste; with a fork, stir these together well.
Place the meat in a large mixing bowl. Tear one or two pieces of low-rent bread into small pieces and add these to the meat.
Skim the bottom of a frying pan with a little vegetable oil. Add the chopped onion and celery and cook over medium-high heat until the onion is translucent. Then add the vegetables to the meat and bread in the mixing bowl. Add some salt and pepper, as seems appropriate. If you’re using the optional garlic salt, you can add about 1/4 teaspoon of that; if garlic powder, use about 1/8 teaspoon. Add the egg, too — just crack it into the bowl with the other stuff; no need to beat it.
Take a fork and toss the meat, veggies, egg, and bread together until they’re well mixed. But don’t smush them or overdo the stirring. Just gently stir them together so everything is distributed evenly.
Transfer the meat mixture into the baking pan. Pat it down so it fits smoothly and has a nice rounded top. Spread the tomato sauce over the top (the more the better: IMHO, the tomato sauce topping is what makes meatloaf edible…).
Place the meatloaf into the oven and cook about an hour or an hour & 15 minutes. Remove it from the oven and let it stand on the counter to set up while you’re finishing the rest of the dinner. This stuff was typically served with things like green beans, carrots, mashed potatoes, and green salad. Or Jell-O salad. Jell-O salads were big in the good old days. That’s why we apply the word “good” with a degree of irony.
The mixture is pretty forgiving where ingredients are concerned. The whole point of mixing bread with hamburger was to extend the meat, so as to make it feed more people or last longer as leftovers. The egg is there to make the stuff hold together. You can have less meat and more bread. You can use two eggs instead of one.
You can add other stuff, such as ground pork or sausage, ground veal, parsley, real garlic, chopped bell pepper, mushrooms, and the like. You can dollop catsup over the top instead of tomato sauce. You can use all tomato paste or all canned tomato sauce, depending on what you have on hand. You can add pitted olives to the topping, or mix horrible pimiento olives into the meatloaf itself. Some people would add herbs: my mother’s idea of herbs was pretty much limited to dried parsley, thyme, marjoram, rosemary, and oregano, very typical of the average 1950s middle-class cook. None of these add much interest to this particular dish. Summer savory will work pretty well in meatloaf, but in those days we’d never heard of the stuff. I think some women would add a little cream or milk to the meat mixture. Instead of the tomato topping, some people would place a few pieces of raw bacon over the top before sticking the meatloaf into the oven. Whatever rings your chimes, that’s what goes into meatloaf.
Even, I suppose, Kobe beef. 🙂
Image: Meatloaf with sauce. Renee Comet. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Public domain.
