Coffee heat rising

Sun Dogs…and Move Over, Dolly!

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You’ve heard of the Valley of the Sun, of course — we who live here recognize it as the Valley of the We-Do-Mean Sun: 118 degrees now being a summer norm. Welp, it’s raining in the VotWEMS, and you know what that means? Very, very unhappy dogs!

Ruby the Corgi Pup has acquired Cassie the Corgi’s profound disdain for water. And when water falls out of the sky? Oh, my. What a horror! These are Sun Dogs. Anything other than a clear day is weather for some other planet.

Ruby rousted me out of the sack at 5:30, whining and ooorrrking. She makes the distinctive, strange corgi noise, something like a combination of purring and baying, a sound that Cassie abjures in favor of pretty much constant barking. Figuring she needed to pee, I rolled out of the sack and lifted them down from the bed.

No. Apparently she was complaining about the sound of the rain falling. She ran into the bathroom and refused to come out!

Cripes.

Cassie was persuaded to step onto the back porch, but declined to go further.

Tell me you don't seriously think I'm going out there!
Tell me you don’t seriously think I’m going out there!

Grumpily, I went back to bed. Ruby refused to get back on the bed — she ran out of the bathroom and huddled in her crate.

A couple hours later, clouds were sitting atop North Mountain, a low butte a couple miles from the Funny Farm. Briefly, though, it had stopped raining.

P1030331Ruby ran back into the bathroom and refused to come out. Cassie stood at the door and stared out, aghast. Their attention, finally, was grabbed by the rattling of the Doggy Treat Jar.

Yes. I had to lure them into the backyard with dog treats. They did their thing in the moments between rainshowers, but they were not pleased. No dog pleasure here. None.

That is about ENOUGH of that!
That is about ENOUGH of that!

 In other news…

Windy City Gal, who is making a pair of Tit Bits for me, asked me to try the “seat cushions” that came from Knitted Knockers in one of my bras, to see whether the size we estimated is right.

P1030335
Don’t everybody’s boobs look like seat cushions for Raggedy Ann and Andy? 😀

heh heh heh heh…

The result, even with the whoopie-cushion effect, was va-va-VOOM! Get outta, my way, Dolly Parton!

P1030315

This is too hilarious to be believed!

Of course, it’s too everything to be believed, and certainly should not be. Believed, that is.

However, it must be said: with a shirt on, the effect is surprisingly believable. And certainly much more buxom than I’ve ever been in real life.

Now…all I’ve gotta do is get the hair right….

Surprisingly Amazingly Good to Eat Kale

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kaleOkay, I’m afraid I just have never been able to work myself to such a high pitch of foodie/health nut righteousness that I could say I actually LIKE kale…before this.

The other day SDXB and I visited a Whole Foods, where I found a bunch of beautiful purple curly leaves. No clue on the bin as to what it was or how much it cost — your whole paycheck, presumably. What the heck. It was so gorgeous I figured if I hated it I could put the rest of it in a flower vase and set it in the middle of the dining table.

Turns out the stuff is a variety of curly kale. And, properly prepared…boy is it good to eat!!!!!!!

The following is a recipe I knocked off from the 1970s-vintage Laurel’s Kitchen and then perverted to my carnivorous tastes.

• Head of kale, chopped
• Small onion, chopped
• 1 clove garlic, chopped or minced
• Enough olive oil to cover the bottom of a pan
• About a teaspoon, give or take, of cumin
• 1 cup, give or take, high-quality boxed or canned chopped tomatoes
• A tablespoon, give or take, of tomato paste
• A fistful or two of frozen peas
• A  small amount of cooked or raw meat (grilled chicken or steak, raw steak, whatEVER), optional
• If you choose raw beef, possibly a wee bit of Worcester or soy sauce, depending on availability and mood
• Maybe a dash of cheap red wine, if you have any around
• Maybe some pine nuts, if you have any of those.
• Or…who knows. Maybe a few roasted salted pistachios. Or not.

To do this in a single pan, get out a Dutch-oven size pot and place inside of it one of those gadgets to hold veggies while they’re being steamed. Failing that, try a colander or sieve that will fit inside the pot when the lid is on tightly.

Slice the meat, if you’re using it, into 1/4-inch slices or so. If you’re using raw beef, sprinkle some Worcestershire or soy sauce over it and let it sit while you start cooking the kale.

Place enough water in the pot to come up to the bottom of whatever steaming gadget you’re using. Bring the water to a boil; then turn the heat down to about medium or medium-high. Fill the steaming gadget with the chopped kale; cover the pan and allow to steam for eight or ten minutes, or until the kale is soft but not limp.

Once you reach this stage, lift the steamer out and set it in a clean kitchen sink. Pour off the water and wipe the inside of the pan dry.

Place the pan back on the heat and pour in a little olive oil, just enough to cover the bottom of the pan. Cook the chopped onion in it until the onion is transparent and on the verge of browning. Add cumin and stir in well as the onion is cooking.

If you’re using any raw meat, stir-fry that into the onions as they’re reaching the browning stage. If you have leftover cooked meat, you can toss that in at any time during the cooking process.

Add the garlic and stir to start cooking. After another minute or two, add the canned or boxed tomatoes and the tomato paste. Stir these into the onions and garlic. If you’re using leftover cooked meat, add that now. Add a splash of red wine, if desired. Stir and allow to cook for another couple of minutes.

Stir in the steamed kale. Add the frozen peas and stir those in. Cook until the peas are warmed through but still bright green. Add pine nuts or pistachios, as available.

And there you have it!

Very good with Parmesan, or topped with a dollop of yogurt.

Image: Curly kale. Rasbak. GNU Free Documentation License.

Siri, Drive Me to Independence, Please

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And I don’t mean Missouri. 🙂  Here’s a recent update on a very interesting technological development, the self-drive, self-park private vehicle.

This thing, if it ever comes to fruition, could present a partial solution to the huge headache America faces as its baby-boom generation ages away from independence. The biggest pressure to move oneself into a life-care or assisted care institution is loss of the ability to drive a car. And the reason for that is that in about 99.9% of American towns and cities, public transit is simply not a practical option.

Most of us wish not to be warehoused in a holding pen where old folks wait for death. It’s a horrible prospect, and those of us who know people who have enjoyed that treatment have seen the depression and decline that quickly follow admission to one of those places, which drain your life savings in exchange for sad living conditions and bad food. But for many of us, there’s really no other choice.

If you don’t live in a city like New York, which has more or less usable public transit, your days of living independently in your own home expire with your final driver’s license. A friend of mine, Tootsie, saw exactly that happen to her.

In her mid-80s, she ran a signal at a major intersection and, not surprisingly, someone crashed into her. No one was injured, thank goodness, but both cars were totaled. A few months later, she ran a stop sign in my neighborhood, apparently because she thought it was a four-way stop. It was not. The SUV that ran into her was, yes, totaled. Again, no one was hurt.

But the two accidents in close succession alarmed her kids so much that they insisted she get rid of the car, which, being the accommodating type, she did.

The result was dismal.

She lived just far enough away from her son that it was inconvenient for him to get to her place to help her and drive her around on errands — nor did he feel much enthusiasm for having to do so. He would go out there about once every week or ten days. Less, if he could get away with it.

Phoenix being a 100% automobile-oriented city, access to even the most basic necessities meant blocks of walking through heat that can reach 118 degrees in the shade. Heat radiating off asphalt and concrete can make your external car thermometer register numbers upwards of 125 degrees.

Public transit in Tootsie’s part of town was essentially nonexistent. She tried: waited 30 minutes before a bus showed up. I myself have stood for 45 minutes waiting for a bus in this town. Few bus stops here provide seating or shade structures — most people end up standing in the full sun or, if a nearby business or home has a lawn, sitting on the grass. Getting around on public transport here is extremely inconvenient for younger, fit people and out of the question for the elderly.

The city used to have a Dial-a-Ride service for the disabled and the elderly, but recently they discontinued access to it for people who were merely too old to walk far. Unless you’re in a wheelchair or on crutches, you can’t use that anymore.

This meant she couldn’t get groceries, she couldn’t buy personal products or pick up a prescription, she couldn’t take her ailing dog to the vet, she couldn’t get herself to the doctor unless her son or a friend drove to her home, picked her up, and schlepped her around town.

Trapped in her double-wide, she grew increasingly depressed and listless. When her daughter visited from Seattle, she was appalled to find the cupboards low on food and Tootsie’s normally spotless house disheveled. She persuaded her brother that their mother should be put in a care home, and within a few weeks, off she went to the Beatitudes.

This old-folk’s warren is one of the better institutes in town. But still…an institution is what it is.

Tootsie, who had a resilient and up-beat personality, at first bubbled on cheerfully about how grand it was to have someone else to do the cleaning and cooking. But it didn’t take long for the depressing aspects of imprisonment in a one-room studio inside a facility with locks on the doors to take effect. Within a few months, she lost interest in living, withered away, and died.

Personally, I’d rather take a flying leap off the North Rim of the Grand Canyon than die a day at a time in an “assisted living facility.” I am convinced that Tootsie would have lived longer if she had been able to stay in her home, and the quality of the last year or two of her life would have been infinitely better.

Being able to get to grocery stores, drug stores, and other routine destinations on her own would have made that possible.

That’s why I see the planned self-driving, self-parking car as a life-saver in more ways than one. It not only may save lives by avoiding collisions, it will keep older adults independent in their homes.

Obviously these things are going to be ludicrously expensive when they hit the market. But consider what a year in a life-care community costs: thousands of dollars a month. You can hire a lot of cleaning help and buy a lot of restaurant breakfasts and dinners for six or eight or ten grand a month. And you could realistically get there in a car that will chauffeur you to the restaurant while you kick back and read your Kindle. Even at sixty, seventy, maybe even eighty thousand dollars, a self-driving vehicle would save so much over assisted living that it would pay for itself within a couple of years.

And you might have a shot of living life and enjoying it for that couple of years.

This is one of the reasons I decided not to replace the aging Dog Chariot in 2015. Admittedly, it’s way down on the list of reasons…but it surely does register. The lightrail extension past our ’hood will go into service late this year or (more likely) next year. A station will be within walking or scooter-riding distance of my house, and the train will run down to the Ghetto Costco, passing a Sprouts, a Walgreen’s, and two other grocery stores, as well as to the upscale AJ’s market and to all the downtown entertainment venues.

If that strategy works — riding the lightrail to reach places that sell basic needs — it will extend the ancient car’s lifetime by a lot. Even before I retired, I only put about 10,000 miles/year on the tank. If some of those miles can be traveled on a train, then the 30,000 to 50,000 miles that Chuck thinks he can squeeze out of the Chariot translate not as three to five years but as maybe six to ten years.

By then, automakers may very well have functional self-driving vehicles to put on the road. 🙂

Back to Normal…more or less

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Yay! FINALLY the frost cloths and frost curtains are folded up (ahem…apologies to everyone on the Eastern Seaboard…). I’ve got my yard back, and it’s so nice!

We probably will get one more frost — often February will bring in one last cold storm. But for the nonce, I don’t have to look at all that ugly stuff.

Tried to backwash the pool but found that despite my having nagged the Pool Dude all summer and fall to do the job, the fact that he never bothered meant the backwash valve is jammed shut. I couldn’t get it open at all. So called Swimming Pool Service and Repair; arranged to have someone come pull that thing part, lubricate it, put it back together, and then clean out the DE filter.

Harvey II, despite two service trips to Leslie’s, is not working optimally. It’s practically a brand-new unit, dammit. I suspect a backwash may help, although the water is running vigorously through the inlet and outlets so the system appears to be running OK. If that doesn’t work, I’m going to holler at Leslie’s to give me my money back or substitute a new unit that will run.

Today I’d like to go up to HD and pick up as many of their little black metal garden borders as they have. I’m anxious to clean up the yard and get the new anti-puppy scheme in place. Once the last frost really is over, that blue plumbago will need to have all the dead stuff pruned off, and after that happens, the dogs will be able to navigate through the garden bordering the pool and tumble into the drink. So those proposed borders need to be put in place soon.

I’m VERY glad the new neighbor, Joel, canned Pool Dude, who was a sweet guy but a bit of a flake. Joel came home from work to find the fool had left the backwash valve open! Half the water was drained from their pool, according to Joel. That seems unlikely — once the water got down to the tile line, it would have burned out the pump. (Joel is a first-time homeowner and knows NOTHING about pool care.) My guess is the guy somehow opened a drain in the bottom of the pool. How, though, is beyond comprehension. The drains on my pool don’t work that way.

Anyway, when Joel told P.D. never to darken his backyard gate again, P.D. stopped coming to either of our houses. Good riddance.

Fortunately this happened while the water was very cold, and fortunately while I was coming round the far turn into the final lap of the Healthcare Sweepstakes. I’m now just about well enough to cope with that thing, and am glad not to have to tell P.D. he’s fired because his services have become redundant.

Anyway, in addition to making a Home Depot run, I’ve got to read 25 pages a day of International Banker’s single-spaced copy. That’s the equivalent of 50 pages properly formatted manuscript. Plus the stoonts are turning in stuff and asking stupid questions (“Do I have to buy the book? Where it says here that we  have to synopsize chapter 2, does that mean we have to synopsize chapter 2, pages 37 to 42?”)

No, kid. Synopsize the chapter 2 that appears on pages 157-168.

Onward.

Sorry the site was down earlier today. Jesse’s server was attacked, apparently by spammers. Looks like he’s got it back up.

Lazied Out???

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ooohhhhhhhhhh…. Has WonderSurgeon turned me into a zombie? Whaa?

Of late, I just do NOT seem to be able to get my act together in the morning. It’s a good thing I don’t have to be at a job come 8 or 9 ayem, because I sure wouldn’t last much longer, at the rate I’m going.

Down at the church, we have what has been dubbed “Switch Sunday”: every third Sunday of the month senior choir sings at the nine o’clock service, meaning we have to surface there at eight o’clock, two hours earlier than our normal choir call. I’ve never been fond of this relatively new “tradition,” because Sunday really is the single day that I prefer to move slowly.

One reason I pay to have the New York Times delivered in hard copy IS the Sunday Times: I want to read the Magazine, the book review section, the Sunday Review, the business section, and the front section (pretty much in that order) over breakfast and a second pot of coffee.

As a practical matter, if I don’t get to the Times over breakfast, I’m not going to get to it, because there are so many other things that have to be done day by day. And so that expensive Sunday paper is going to get dropped into the recycler, mostly unread.

But whatEVER. It’s not that big a deal. I guess. On these inconvenient Sundays I try to at least look at the Magazine while bolting down breakfast, and then the rest of the pile of dead, mashed trees goes into the trash. I’d rather be singing than reading a newspaper, any day.

 This morning, though…f’r hevvinsake!

The alarm went off at 5:30.

NOT, for a change, loafing in the sack for another 20 minutes, I got up, read and responded to a couple of emails, fed the dogs, returned briefly to the ongoing project of de-stinking the slow cooker (which smells grossly of the many pounds of dog meat that have simmered interminably therein), cooked my breakfast, sat down to eat. As I was stuffing a piece of apple into my face, I glanced up at the clock to see how long I had to get dressed…and…

IT WAS ALMOST 7:30!

And my face wasn’t even washed.

Where the hell two hours went, I do not know! Needless to say, I didn’t make it to choir this morning.

Really, since about the third of these five endless surgeries, I simply don’t seem to be able to get moving in the morning. Often these days I’ll be stumbling around the house, feeding the dogs and doing the early a.m. chores and answering emails and checking on students, I’ll look at a clock, and it’s FREAKING 9:30 IN THE MORNING! And I haven’t even gotten dressed yet!

Ugh! What an enormous amount of wasted time!

Somehow, I have got to get over this!

A Thousand Curses on “Energy-Efficient” Appliances

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GOD DAMN IT!!!!!!!!!!! And yes, that is exactly the language elicited EVERY EFFING TIME I have to use the spectacularly expensive fancy energy-saving water-saving GOD DAMNED Samsung clothes washer I stupidly purchased.

Oh, how I wish I’d bought one of the last agitator washers on the floor at Sears that day. I hate this machine more than I’ve ever hated any piece of junk foisted on me by an American retailer. And those worthies have done more than their share of junk-foisting.

Runner-up: the infuriating, STINKING, ridiculously overpriced Bosch dishwasher that is still grinding away in the kitchen as I try to repair the damage done by the accursed Samsung.

As I’ve no doubt mentioned before, the Samsung top-loader (which I purchased because I can remember my mother’s Bendix and no, I do not CARE how much power and water the damn thing supposedly saves I AM NOT GOING TO BEND OVER AND PUT MY BACK OUT TO HAUL MOUNTAINS OF WET LAUNDRY IN AND OUT OF A WASHER) wads up my clothes into actual, real BRAIDS.

In an effort to prevent this, I purchased a passel of mesh bags. Every time I do the wash, I have to package EVERY STITCH of clothing in these stupid bags. This has the following results:

1) Clothing jammed into the bags comes out wrinkled and wadded up under the best of conditions.

2) This means I have to waste energy running them through the dryer, when in fact most of them could be hung dry (and always WERE  hung to dry before I got this effing washer), to much better effect, with exactly zero energy consumption, and with much less hassle.

3) The bags tear open in the wash cycle, or, more routinely, the zippers work their way open during the cycle. The clothing that slips its way partway out of the bag ends up braiding itself around other bags. This creates an ungodly mess to have to untangle, and it stretches, wads, and damages my clothing.

4) The bags themselves wrap themselves around each other. Once again, an ungodly mess that can take ten minutes to unwrap, with the result of damaged, wadded, stretched, WRECKED clothing.

This week I had the bright idea that I could stop at least some of the clothing escape by using safety pins to secure the effing mesh bags shut.

Bet you can guess what happened, cantcha? Yes, clean-up DID entail the use of a wire-cutter…

The damned safety pins wound their way into the mesh. To get the things apart and open bags, I had to cut apart two of the pins.

A third safety pin yanked the zipper pull loose. So I had to take a pair of scissors and hack apart the only bag I’ve found that will hold a pair of jeans.

To accomplish these miracles, the Samsung takes A HUNDRED AND TEN  MINUTES to run a load of laundry on the only cycle that disgorges enough water to get the clothing or sheets wet through!!! At five-thirty this morning the dog awoke me by barfing on the bed. So instead of two loads of laundry to do, I had three, one of them now dedicated to laundering the comforter.

Think of that: FIVE YOURS AND THIRTY MINUTES (110/60 = 1.83 hours; 1.83 hours x 3 loads = 5.5 hours!!!!!) to do what used to be and, goddamn it, still should be three twenty-minute loads!

I have GOT to get rid of this thing. Does anybody know of a washer brand that doesn’t do this?

Yes. Then we have the effing Bosch dishwasher in all its highly efficient glory. When I said it stinks, I’m not kidding.

Of late, I’ve noticed an odd, musky, rather unpleasant smell in the house.

I thought it was the dogs. The cleaning lady and I scrubbed the floors; I laundered everything in sight.

The odor persisted. I thought maybe it had something to do with the surgery and my being sick. Or something. Finally, I realized the aroma was strongest in the kitchen.

Yea, verily, it was emanating from the dishwasher. Come to think of it, all the “clean” dishes in the washer reeked faintly of the same stench.

Pulled out the racks and dismantled the lower arm, filter, and drain assembly.

Uh HUH! The filters were pretty dirty all right. That must be it.

Scrubbed out the filter, cleaned everything around there. Reassembled the dishwasher.

Made a run on the hardware store, where I bought a container of that high-powered dishwasher cleaner, the stuff that comes in the plastic bottle with the wax plug that you place upside-down in the utensil rack. That stuff is extremely good, and alarmingly powerful. Ran it through the washer.

It worked adequately. The washer no longer stank to high heaven.

A week or so later — that would be this very morning — I smelled the Smell again.

Once again discombobulated the washer. This time I found not a lot of gunk in the filter, but it was greasy. Very greasy.

I don’t put my dishes into the washer dirty, but neither do I wash them before dropping them in there. You shouldn’t have to. Remember the KitchenAid of yore? NO ONE PREWASHED DISHES before “washing” them in an electric dishwasher, not since about 1952! I normally will scrape the dishes and then take a paper towel and wipe off any grease or sauce before putting them in the washer. But really, you shouldn’t even have to do that.

So it looks like I’m going to have to go back to pouring vinegar into the dishwasher before running a cycle, something I did for two or three years to get the limping old Kenmore to keep getting the dishes clean despite hard water and mechanical senility.

This morning I scrubbed down the washer’s innards again, recombobulated the thing, poured in two cups of Target’s cheapest white vinegar, and ran the thing on the “sanitize” cycle.

This cycle a) sucks up electricity for well over two hours! and b) puts the lie to Bosch’s bragging about the quietness of its wondrous machines.

It seems to have worked, though. I can’t smell the stink.

Probably, like a wonderful new-fangled front-loading super-efficient clothes washer, this thing needs to be left open when not in use in order to keep it from stinking. Won’t that be attractive?

European dishwashers, unlike American products, do not have a “dry” cycle — that is, one way they save energy is by not blowing hot air over the dishes to get them dry. The result is that when the washer turns off, the dishes sitting in there are WET.

You have to remember to open and empty the bottom rack first; otherwise if you pull out the top rack to get something you need, you SPLASH ALL THE DISHES ON THE BOTTOM RACK WITH WATER.

This is a relatively minor annoyance — or at least, it was, when Bosch was a great dishwasher. That seems to have changed with the new annoying generation of electronically enhanced machinery.

I should’ve bought the Kenmore. Just because a bunch of former Sears customers complained that the damn things set fire to their kitchens, was that REALLY a good reason not to buy a Kenmore instead of a Bosch? What are your choices, anyway? You can be burned out of the kitchen or stunk out of the kitchen.

Okay. Enough. I am going off now to wash the rest of the laundry by hand (which will take me all of ten minutes) and hang it up to dry. Have a nice day. Goddamnit.