Suzy Says

Jessica’s birthday card to Erica

Well, this year’s Junapalooza was awesome.

Erica decided long ago that she wanted it to be a fancy high tea. I had my doubts, because fanciness and high tea are not what you usually think about when you think about the family estate. But being Erica, she made it happen. When will I ever stop having doubts? Always trust the Erica.

Erica arrived dressed in a sassy little flowered dress, with a flowered clip in her hair and red Fluevogs on her feet. She wasted no time in covering the Waltons-sized picnic table with a length of sage green (washable) fabric and setting it with teapots, a wide variety of teas, and cake stands/plates. It was bring your own mug.

For those of us (like Self) who are not so tea inclined, Jonathan made some limeade (seen at the end of the panoply of delicacies):

Erica invited her friends Julie and Darius, who own the delightful café where we plotted Junapalooza over lunch, and whose daughter Bella is Jessica’s best friend. Being professional deliciousness purveyors, they brought little pasties filled with sausages, peas and potatoes, accompanied by a little pot of mustard, as well as tiny cucumber sandwiches (crustless, of course) and perfect little rhubarb and strawberry galettes:

Erica had made: miniature palmiers; asiago and scallion scones; lemon bars; sausage rolls sliced to look like spirals; mini chocolate bundt cakes brushed with coffee-rum syrup; and tartes Antoinette, which you may remember was the hit of Thanksgiving dinner last year. They are tarts filled with quince paste Erica made from her own fruit, topped with vanilla cream and then whipped cream. So Marie! And so delicious.

Add in my brother’s home-made cherry tarts and you have the high tea to ends all high teas on your hands.

Dave and Jennifer, my siblings’ land partners and our partners in ballet, were there, and Lichen also made an appearance with his sweet dog Keeper, who found a perfect spot in the wildflowers where she could rest and observe:

Jessica looked adorable:

An outfit of Jack Skellington t-shirt and a flowered bonnet pretty much sums Jessica up. I am hoping that she and Erica can join Megan and me for a sleepover/movie marathon this summer. I want Jessica to learn the joys of John Hughes movies and she wants me to learn the joys of Full Metal Alchemist. We’ll see how that works out!

As for Junapalooza, it was the best one ever. I’m already looking forward to next year!

A YEAR AGO: Doing wild, wild life.

Bee swarm

Jonathan and Rob kicked off Memorial Day weekend by wrestling a muzzle of bees, as you can see above. Our bees had swarmed and were hanging out in a nearby tree, considering their options, when the boys made their decision for them. They cut the branch holding the bees so that most of them went into the bucket. Then they covered the bucket and took the swarm to its new home.

Unbeknownst to the bees, their new home was right next door to their old home. So far, they are staying put, which is great.

Once the bees were taken care of, we turned our attention to our guests for the weekend. Our friend Carrie had come up from Oakhampton with her teenage daughter and entourage of other people’s teenage daughters. I was afraid that they would be bored up here in Hooterville, but as it turned out, they gloried in the unaccustomed freedom. In Oakland, you can’t let your lovely, tall teenage daughter roam free, but in Hooterville, you can and do leave her and her friends at the pond and expect them to make their way home after swimming. They had a little taste of our childhood, when our parents wanted us to stay out of their hair and the ER as much as possible (pretty much in that order). The rest was up to us.

While the kids were playing in the woods, we started dinner. Jonathan grilled up chicken breasts, onions, and peppers, including a few jalapeños*. When they were ready, I put them into a plastic bag so the steam would help in removing the skins and then cut them up while Jonathan was cutting up the chicken. It all went into his giant, weapon-sized cast iron pan, which also housed the paella and Moroccan chicken at family dinners recently:

In the meantime, Megan was grilling raw tortillas left over from Rio’s daughter’s wedding the week before:

She married into a family with Native and Mexican heritage, and the older ladies in the family made these tortillas (and much, much more) for the wedding dinner. Jonathan said it was pretty obvious they had cooked for crowds many times before and made it look so easy. I had never had fresh tortillas before, and I have to say they were a revelation compared to the store bought ones: flaky, light, blistered.

We stuffed the tortillas with the chicken mixture and salsa verde made last fall from ingredients grown in the family estate, as well as estate-grown black beans. While we stuffed ourselves, Jonathan told us the provenance of the giant cast iron pan.

Long ago and far away, he worked on historic ships in San Francisco. He has often deplored how these great sailing vessels were treated and (not) preserved versus the way they are cared for on the east coast in places like Mystic. In this particular case, parts of the ship and her equipment were stowed in leaking warehouses, which led to their inevitable decay, destruction and discarding. One day, he noticed this pan and decided to salvage it, rather than waiting for it to rust and be thrown away. So the pan holding our dinner was doing what it had done for more than a century. It was fun to know that, and good to know that it didn’t end up in landfill somewhere, unknown and unappreciated. Perhaps it could be considered a small act of piracy, but I don’t think anyone would make him walk the plank over it.

*Wiser people than I would wear gloves for that part. The jalapenos stayed in my skin for a couple of days despite repeated handwashing and showers.

A YEAR AGO: The first, but not the last, Junapalooza! A tradition is born.

I have to admit that I don’t check my post office box very often. People who send me things often ask if I have received them and I am embarrassed to tell them that I haven’t bothered to look. Mostly because no good ever comes of it.

This week, I was suitably punished for checking my mail by dental bill* and a 10 minute wait in line behind guy mailing fishing poles (yes, it can be done) and getting multiple money orders. I was trying to pick up a package, which was more easily said than done.

I knew that Darlene, the regular post office clerk, was on vacation, but I did not expect the guy filling in for her to ask me for ID before he would give me my package. Even though I was holding an armful of mail from my PO box with my name and address on it, and wearing my work ID badge which also, you guessed it, has my name on it.

My handbag, with the ID inside, was of course in my unlocked car outside the Gro. I was less than delighted to have to go and get it.

Maybe I should have locked it, since we are apparently in a high crime area. According to the local message boards, there are roving bands of Bernie Sanders sign thieves in the area. The person whose sign was liberated notified the sheriff’s office, so hopefully this crime wave will be nipped in the bud.

My resistance to checking my own mail is nothing compared to my reluctance to check the work post office box in the Big Town, though I arguably do it more often, about once a week**. In contrast to my Hooterville experience, I felt like the Queen of the Big Town Post Office. Roger, who used to be the mailman at the jobette but now has a desk job, stopped by to say hello while I waited in line. I told him he cleans up pretty nicely and might almost be mistaken for a responsible adult. He winked and said they’d be pretty far off the mark. While we were talking, Denice who used to be the Hooterville postmistress but is now the Big Town postmistress, stopped to give me a hug. I was pleased to hear that her dog Ginger, who was her faithful coworker at the post office and one of Hooterville’s most popular residents, was doing well, though she is now retired from post office duties. I used to go to the post office more often when Ginger was there to pet and play with. A girl needs the proper motivation, you know.

*Of the $99 charged for the filling touch up which was so minor that no anesthesia was required, $22 was covered. I have to say that insurance has been almost as huge a disappointment to me as painkillers were. I did not anticipate the giant deductible ($1,000, anyone?) you have to pay before the insurance people start paying for anything, which is of course in addition to the monthly payments to the very same insurance people. It’s kind of like not having insurance, only with the fun of paying for it every month.

**The main purpose is to get the weekly paper and check the obituaries so I can send condolence cards to the families of deceased patients. Other duties as assigned…

A YEAR AGO: The Evil Genius gave me a whopping vet bill on my birthday eve. Thanks, Audrey!

It’s 9:00 am and I have already done two loads of laundry and put them away; made pizza dough; washed a load of dishes; swept the stairs and floor; and finally filed paperwork on my desk and put the files in Rob’s amazing cabinet.

I also unpacked a box of books, including classics like The Poky Little Puppy, which used to be my favorite book as a child. My Dad read it to me so often that he used to read it with the pages facing me, his eyes closed. I never got tired of it. Other discoveries included a book on Queen Mary’s Dollhouse (as fascinating to me now as it was then) and a story John wrote about our cat Jack when she was still a kitten. She is the only surviving cat we had together and I don’t want to think about how old she is now.

While unpacking the books, I discovered a fairly sizable scorpion. Its claws freaked me out, but I swept it into the dustpan and then into the woods, where I hope it stays.

I rewarded this industriousness by going with Megan to the farmers’ market in the Village. I picked up some rhubarb and a fresh baguette:

Later, we took the dogs for a stroll in the Village. As usual, Megan took Star and I took Stella, or Stella took me. I discovered that we had many shared interests in common, since she bounded joyfully into a bar as if she were Norm on “Cheers” and went there every day, then into the ocean view bookstore, and then a jewelry store. It was challenging to remove her from these places, and the attention she got from total strangers didn’t help. Stella clearly preferred running a tab, shopping, and petting to walking on the boring sidewalk, and I can’t say I blamed her.

A YEAR AGO: Megan’s giant birthday BBQ, and Erica’s best prank ever!

Beautiful Anderson Valley

The weather has been a combo platter this week. We came off a string of grey, cloudy days, bemoaned by most but secretly enjoyed by me, to a couple of hot days by coastal standards, and delightful rain showers this morning.

It’s amazing how quickly I get sick of the heat. I came home, got out of the car, and thought, “Well, that’s unpleasant.” In the tent-like nature of my house, it was 82 degrees both inside and outside. I sighed and put the fans on. Clyde was melted on the stairs. It was not good weather to be black and furry.

Now, people think Clyde is a doofus – and I’m not saying he isn’t – but he is also smarter than he gets credit for sometimes. He lies right where the ceiling fan sends its breezes, ruffling his overheated fur. Audrey, of course, lounges in the shade on the balcony, and just like she can come in from the rain magically dry, she also never seems to get too hot.

Whereas I hate it when I don’t need a light sweater in the day and I have to sleep blanketless at night. Clyde joins me in my love of the comforter. These days, I have been folding it at bedtime and putting it on the rocking chair my great-grandfather made for my great-grandmother, and often Clyde jumps onto it before I can even get it on the chair. Then he sleeps there all night in comforter majesty, leaving me both blanketless and Clydeless.

This morning, I woke up to the happy sound of rain pattering on the roses on the balcony and Clyde purring beside me. The house is also humming with its civilized ration of electricity, which it was not at this time yesterday.

Megan barely made it home from her fourth night shift of the week yesterday morning before the power went out. And I was lucky enough to already be at work, because someone crashed into a power pole at 7:30 am on the Ridge, shearing it off so it fell onto the road, closing it to traffic until a tow truck could come and remove the old pole and our trusty friends at PG&E could bring and install a new one.

Power pole installation is a lengthy business. They were not finished until 5:30 that afternoon.

Megan and I left our powerless houses to go to a sale at a garden center in Anderson Valley, where we failed to find the pickling cucumbers of our dreams, but I was utterly charmed by a ceramic chicken:

On our way home, we naturally stopped at Libby’s to pick up dinner. We were rewarded not only by al pastor, but by running into Dr. Sue and her husband, who were having dinner there. We had such a good time chatting, and we promised each other that we would meet up properly soon and spend some time together.

A YEAR AGO: A new hairdo and a new play with old friends.

Last weekend was wonderful, though it was also a busy one. Come along with me for a magical mystery tour of the county!

Friday: Met my friend Jim after work at the Ledford House. I was greeted outside by a very fluffy and friendly black cat, and inside by my friend, who had a local beer in front of him. I ordered a glass of local wine, and we settled in at the bar to admire the view and catch up with each other’s news. Even though it was overcast, the view was still spectacular. I never get tired of watching the ocean in all its moods.

The second anniversary of his husband Joel’s death is upon us, and we drank a toast to the dear departed. But we also laughed, thinking of how the royalty checks still come in from the “MacGyver” episodes Joel wrote, and remembering how he smoked pot with Allen Ginsberg when he was at Harvard. He lived a rich and wonderful life. I just wish it had been longer.

Saturday: Megan and I headed to Boonville in beautiful Anderson Valley. We were in search of tomato starts for the family garden, so we stopped at a nursery where chickens were merrily hatching:

And two yin and yang cats were playing (or was it fighting):

It turned out that the white cat in the background is the mother of the black one in the foreground. The white one was very friendly to me, but the black one needed some convincing before I could pet her.

At the farmers’ market in Boonville, we ran into Rose’s daughter Citlali, but we didn’t find the Holy Grail of tomato starts. We ended up getting Plan B tomatoes at a plant sale at the high school. As you do.

We met Erica and Jessica for lunch. We worked on plans for Junapalooza, which is basically going to be a dessert extravaganza, and entirely catered by Erica other than the cucumber sandwiches, which may be the only thing we are serving that doesn’t have sugar in it. There have to be some compensations for being a grown up, and having sugar in multifarious forms for your birthday dinner may be it.

We gave Jessica her belated birthday t-shirt, which she loved, and she gave us origami birds she had made, seen here gracing my sandwich:

I love those girls.

On our way home, we stopped at Libby’s, which was miraculously open, but which only had one order of al pastor left, because you can’t have everything, which seemed to be the theme of the day. I let Megan have the al pastor and I settled for carnitas, because that’s the kind of sister I am.

I got home in time for the Kentucky Derby. I had made simple syrup infused with mint, and bought all the other Julep necessities, including freezing the glass for it. It turns out that I am not a Julep fan, sadly. I love the idea of it and the name of it and everything but the actual taste. It is pretty intense for daytime drinking also.

Sadly, my favorite jockey, the legendary Calvin Borel, had retired just a couple of months before the Derby, and I missed him and his smile as the jockeys came out of their dressing room to mount the beautiful horses. I love the walk over and the call of “Riders, up!” and all the pageantry. The favorite, named for the legendary Detroit Red Wings player Gustav Nyquist brought a little reminder of hockey to the glamorous occasion, only appropriate during playoff season.

Sunday: It was up and at ‘em again, leaving the house by 9:00 am and not getting home until after 6. Megan and I headed over to Lichen’s house, where he cut her hair and we admired his garden and his new to him Rottweiler, Keeper. At nearly 9 years old, she isn’t very fresh, but she is very sweet, and they seem very happy together.

Our next stop was Anchor Bay Thai, where we got dinner to go at lunch time, ‘cause that’s how we roll. I always think I will try something different, but I couldn’t resist getting my favorite Massaman curry, fresh spring rolls, and cucumber salad.

With dinner taken care of, we headed to Point Arena for the last ballet of the season streamed from the historic Bolshoi Theater in Moscow. At three hours (partly because of two intermissions), it was long, but it was my favorite of the season. I loved the costumes and sets and the beauty of the dancing. Semyon Chudin, who memorably played the Mouse King in the Nutcracker, played the male lead, and he and Ekaterina Krysanova, who played his love interest, had wonderful chemistry and matched each other well. I still can’t believe they can jump so high and spin like that!

It was a wonderful experience. And it was wonderful to see something so beautiful and then drive home through such beautiful countryside.

It was a great weekend.

A YEAR AGO: I was having a lovely weekend then, too.

Speaking of cats…

Remember the white cat who made an uninvited appearance early one morning, simultaneously driving Audrey insane and cutting short my much-needed beauty sleep? I have finally solved the Mystery of the Cat in the Night*.

One night, Mark called me to ask if I had a white cat, because there was a large one treed outside in his house and making a large fuss about the predicament he found himself in. You’d think Mark would know that my dwindling supply of cats now only includes Clyde, who is jet black and rarely leaves the manor, and Audrey, who is stripy and whose hobby is terrorizing Mark’s dogs, but apparently not.

So I disclaimed ownership of the mysterious cat in the night, while being pretty sure it was the same one who had annoyed Audrey about a week before**.

The next morning, while I was drinking my coffee and perusing the local message boards, I came across a frantic message from someone who was missing a large white cat in my neighborhood. I emailed her and told her that as of the previous evening, the cat was up at a tree at my neighbor’s house.

She replied with relief, since it turned out that she was taking care of her son’s cat while he and his wife were on vacation and she was horrified that she had lost the cat. Being a small town, it also turned out that the cat’s owner was a long-time friend of my brother’s.

I alerted Mark, gave the cat sitting mother his address and directions, and went to work. I later learned that attempts to persuade the cat out of the tree were unsuccessful, and they had to call in the services of a semi-professional cat remover, who is well versed in dislodging disobliging felines from trees. He brought a ladder and a box, and apparently of all the cats he has relocated from their arboreal perches, this is the only one who didn’t pee on him during the process, so it was considered a win all the way around.

I am pleased to say that I haven’t seen the white cat again. Hopefully he is staying a little closer to home these days.

A YEAR AGO: Trying to accept my new lot in life. Still trying!

*If this isn’t a Nancy Drew title, it should be.

**A perusal of my blog shows that this same cat was annoying Audrey almost exactly a year ago. I hope this isn’t becoming an annual tradition.

The sun came out after some late season showers. As usual, the ocean was especially pretty after the storm had passed:

It was the perfect day to stroll along the headlands with Megan and the dogs. Megan took Star and I took Stella. Stella and I like to watch the ocean and the birds surfing the thermals, whereas Megan and Star like to get on with their walk. But we had a good time together.

The wildflowers are out in force, from field of irises to the ice plants clinging to the cliffs and drifts of buttery California poppies.

After our walk, we went to see an exhibit of local quilts in a historic building in the Village. It never ceases to surprise me how many talented people live in this small community. I believe the beautiful surroundings both draw artists to the area and continue to inspire them.

This quilt had hand-sewn crystals to represent the bubbles around the fish:

And this one is a kelp forest:

This one is an embroidery rather than a quilt, but it may have been my favorite piece in the exhibit:

It represents Montgomery Woods, where the some of the tallest redwoods in the County can be found. To me, it really captures the magic of that place.

Of course, we couldn’t pass up the chance to wander around the bookstore under the watchful eye of the Great Catsby:

He likes this perch, since it gives him a panoramic view of his kingdom and the ability to avoid the more annoying attentions of his perhaps overly devoted public. A king has his dignity, you know.

This morning, as I emerged from the dark woods on the Ridge for my first view of the Pacific, there was a lone fishing boat with all its lights on, alone on the wide ocean in the early morning greyness, looking like a fallen star. There can be unexpected beauty in the world.

I planted the tulips too late last year, around Christmas (or maybe even New Year’s) instead of before Thanksgiving, so they bloomed in March instead of February, and bloomed long after lilacs, daffodils and magnolias, which just seemed wrong. And when they started to poke their green shoots up in their containers, I felt that I had planted them wrong, because one of the containers housed a single bloom:

But when it flowered, it was so beautiful that I realized it was perfect, just as it was, all on its own:

And speaking of perfect, Rob has done it again, creating a companion piece to his original shelves:

The cornices at the top match the original piece, as do the beveled edges of the shelves. I love how he used the speckly pieces of wood for the center of the sliding doors in the cabinet at the bottom. The whole thing has been sanded to a silky finish and waxed by hand. It may be the nicest thing in the house after the 250 year old grandfather clock.

I would stack up Rob’s work against any of the artists at the fine woodworking show we attended a couple of months ago (and which may have inspired him). He is a true artist.

I may be the world’s leading collector of his work. On my desk at work is a little ceramic purple box he made, which holds paperclips, and the dish in which I put my car keys and iPod when I come home from work is also a Rob original, as is the lovely fluted tray in the bathroom which holds the lotions and potions a girl needs to put her best face forward. Come to think of it, the entire bathroom, from its black and white tiled floor to its copper shower curtain is a Rob original, too.

A YEAR AGO A peek into Hooterville’s past.

I had dinner made for me by cute teenage boys on Friday evening. That’s not something that happens often enough.

The high school was having a $10 a plate (or Styrofoam container) fundraising dinner to support the sports teams. For your $10, you got BBQ chicken, baked beans, corn, and a roll*:

The kids were manning (or boying, to my aged eyes) the BBQ:

as I pulled up into the arena parking lot, and they brought dinner to my window with a smile, like a drive-through. What’s not to love?

With dinner taken care of, I headed to Safeway, where I found most of the population of the Big Town. I was buying one bottle of wine to go with the dinner Megan made for our brother and his girlfriend, who were expected home from their road trip to Oregon. You can’t use self check out for booze, though you used to be able to, so I was doomed to the inaccurately named express line. At least the girl ahead of me was half my age and buying a six pack of wine.

Megan made enough lasagna to bring some over to Jonathan’s to be ready when he and Rio got home. So they would find dinner and a bottle of wine waiting. I also added some TV shows and movies to his hard drive, and we wrote a little note saying “Welcome home! We missed you! Love from the PIA [Pain in the Ass] Sisters!” Megan also put the heat on and made sure that Scout the mini cat was inside. I think Scout missed Jonathan most of all.

He texted us:

“Dinner was delicious and the wine was fabulous. Far better than both was savoring the love and caring from my sisters. I love you both so much.”

I love my family. All for one and one for all! ♥

*It turned out there was enough food for two dinners. That was a good investment.

A YEAR AGO: Being Gaslighted. But in a good way.

Megan and I set off on a sunny Saturday morning for a road trip to Willits. Willits is best known, if it is known at all, as the home of the racehorse Seabiscuit*. It also has a more modest arch sign made by the same folks as those who made Reno’s, donated by the city of Reno:

and has the oldest continuous rodeo in California. But we were headed that way for non horse related reasons. Our destination was the garden supply store, for unglamorous things like deer fencing for the pea prisons and iron (or possibly copper) for the orchard trees.

As we wended our way up and down and around and around the curvaceous highway, I thought of how it had been a covered wagon track and how hard it must have been for the horses dragging those loads, or the kids walking behind them, if the Little House books are to be believed.

Our brother was on a road trip of his own, a much more ambitious one heading to Oregon. We always text each other from the road, those of us at home with pet updates and those of us away with what we are seeing and doing. While we sent Jonathan a photo of our view from the apex of Highway 20:

He sent us his of a vertiginous view:

which quite rightly had a sign telling visitors to keep their dogs in their cars to keep them safe. I can see why.

We arrived safely in Willits as Jonathan and Rio arrived at Belknap Hot Springs (which he gave two giant thumbs up). While they soaked, we shopped, getting garden necessities and, in my case, being charmed by a little wooden bear:

Necessities out of the way, we poked around a bookstore, where I picked up a couple of things for Christmas stockings (I know, I know, and it seems particularly absurd since it’s an unseasonable and unreasonable 80 degrees as I write, but I will be glad I did when December rolls around), ordered dinner to go, and stopped in at a mysterious store where we bought: dog food; a pair of shoes; and iced coffee from the soda fountain/bakery section of the store. I have never seen such an unusual mix of items in the same store. Only in Mendocino! All in all, it was a successful field trip.

A YEAR AGO: An unsuccessful (attempted) blood-letting at work.

*I tried and failed to read that book.