Suzy Says

Dad’s birthday dawned sunny and beautiful. He probably would have approved that I spent the morning doing some cooking for the week: my friend Alice’s recipe for dak dori tang (spicy braised chicken) and Ottolenghi’s recipe for mejadra. It was Suzy’s international kitchen!

Megan and Rob hosted the party this year. I arrived to find that the appetizers were ready:

set by a photo we call “American Dad”:

It shows Dad in Cloverdale, wearing Jonathan’s straw hat and holding a slushy from the no longer extant Foster Freeze. He’s standing next to Jonathan’s old car, Grandma. Among Grandma’s eccentricities was the need to operate the windshield wipers by hand, using a string. I love that photo.

The appetizer was baguette with melted cheese and peppers my siblings grew and roasted over mesquite. It was delicious.

We headed to the greenhouse to snip some salad for dinner:

I got some extra to take home. The latest resident of the greenhouse is a Meyer lemon tree, which is something of an experiment. We are hoping it will work, since it would be great to have our own lemons.

Walking back to Megan’s place through the garden, I really felt like the seasons had changed from winter to spring. The plum tree agreed:

I know we are still slated to get more rain, but I think winter has lost its grip on us for now.

Back at Megan’s place, we toasted Dad with the cider we made last fall: “The old man wasn’t so bad!” Megan made spaghetti carbonara to go with the salad, and dessert was two sorbets: one made of wild blackberries and the other from raspberries my siblings grew. They were intense and delicious. After dinner, we watched Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train, this time catching the Master’s cameo and enjoying the film very much.

I think Dad would have approved of his party.

A YEAR AGO: Celebrating Dad’s birthday.

FIVE YEARS AGO: A boy and his dog.

TEN YEARS AGO: Remembering a vintage birthday.

Wartime Dad on His Way to School

A friend noted recently that they had never seen such a family for cleaning our plates as ours. Thinking about the observation, I realized that this was true, and also that our behavior has its roots in WWII.

Our father grew up during WWII, being bombed and having food rationed, and the effects never left him. I believe that it also started him on the path to becoming a research scientist. His childhood home was heated by coal, and by the age of 9, he was experimenting with the coal dust at the bottom of the bin, seeing how much he could mix with other substances and still get some heat from the adulterated briquettes he made.

Rationing went on for about 10 years after the war ended and Dad stopped sleeping in a bomb shelter under the watchful eye of his hero, Winston Churchill, whose photo Dad had cut out of the paper. The photo was still there when I visited my grandparents in 1977, the year of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee. My grandmother used to tell the story of having to live with powdered eggs for years and finally getting a ration of fresh eggs, one per person. On the way back from getting the precious eggs, bombing began and my grandmother hid under a bus with her children and her eggs. She prayed for the safety of the eggs.

I am pleased to report that everyone, including the eggs, survived. But so did the effects of rationing, and they live on in this new (though not necessarily improved) century and from generation to generation. Like Dad, I am incapable of wasting food or leaving a light on in a room when I leave it. I sleep in darkness like he did after years of black outs and turn the heat off at night.

When I cook, I sometimes think of how I come from a long line of good cooks and how I still do things the same way my father and Victorian grandmothers did. I learned to cook from them and I still miss cooking with my father. I loved that we both knew each other’s kitchens so well and that we never got in each other’s way. Of course, having a glass of wine (or two) at hand inspires the cook, as Dad used to say. It’s nice to think that in some ways, they live on in me.

A YEAR AGO: Surprises at the post office.

FIVE YEARS AGO: Being a dog aunt is fun!

TEN YEARS AGO: Rob’s hospital stay ended well (though not as soon as he would have liked).

Well, the New Year didn’t waste much time in getting down to business and racking up the power outages.

I took a day off, which as you all know inevitably leads to disaster. When will I learn? I had a package to mail to England, and with the day off, I could actually get to the post office, which is closed when I go to work, closed when I get home, and closed for lunch. Notice a theme here? So getting to the post office during their extensive work hours is quite a challenge.

Imagine my surprise when I arrived there to find the power was out. Somehow I thought post offices would have generators, but at least in Hooterville, they don’t. I was able to pick up a Customs form, so it wasn’t a total loss, but I think I’ve been trying to mail that package for about two weeks.

Arriving home, I called my friends at PG&E, and received the disheartening news that they had no idea when the power would be back on. I am now on Day Three of the power outage, and I’m here to tell you that power outage days are like dog years. It seems like forever since I had light or heat or could flush the toilet. This makes me very sad.

I am also sorry to say that the kid living next door was blasting his generator all night, making it impossible for me to sleep. When I left for work at 6 am, it was still going. I was so sleep-deprived that I felt drunk. My hands were shaking and my eyes felt like they had been sandpapered.

My kindly sister offered to let me sleep at her place last night. She and Jonathan are off the grid, so they laugh at power outages. I brought all my faux adult armor with me, and settled in bed with a book and Megan’s 18 year old cat, the Beautiful Harriet:

after Meg went to work. I fell asleep by 9:00 pm and didn’t wake up until 2:15 am, which was great. I went back to sleep until a little before 5, when I normally wake up. As you all know, a good night’s sleep makes a huge difference, and I feel ready to face the day, though not to face yet another dark, cold evening.

A YEAR AGO: Feeling better at last.

FIVE YEARS AGO: Interesting to see a patient’s eye view of the clinic now that I work there. Little did I imagine that would happen!

TEN YEARS AGO: Those were the days!

I have definitely been spending too much time working and not enough time with the kitties or with you, for that matter.

The kitties have rewarded my excess workage by stepping up the naughtiness factor. Really it’s the boys being boys. When I (finally) get home, they greet me with enthusiasm and set to work getting underfoot as the Staff distributes treats and food. Dodge has learned from the best, and his getting in the way skills are almost as good as Clyde’s.

Audrey, of course, disdains this type of behavior and those who are doing the (mis)behaving. She now gets room service treats on her throne, as befits an Empress. Unfortunately for her, a Canadian brought up with the respect due the monarchy, she is forced to share quarters with rabble-rousing California revolutionaries who seem to feel that the French had the right idea back in the 1700s.

During the time I had off over the holidays, I noticed that the boys have developed a disturbing tendency to gang up on Audrey, chasing her all over the house. Maybe I’m putting a negative connotation on their antics and they are just playing with her. To be fair, Dodge and Clyde play by chasing each other and roughhousing in a way that looks like fighting. But Audrey hates it and is pretty vocal about it. Also she has been scarce, hiding under the bed or on her throne atop the armoire, rarely sitting on my lap as she used to. I guess some people might think it’s karma for her terrorizing any dog who ventured into her realm as well as Clyde. Personally, I don’t know what to think, but I rarely do.

The boys were on their best behavior when Megan came by to spend an evening with me recently, showing their cute and cuddly side instead of their Bastille storming one. Dodge did his charming quirk of jumping while rubbing against Megan’s leg and displaying his power purr. I never get tired of that and find it incredibly cute. I hope he never stops doing it.

Megan and I had wine and watched girl movies, pausing frequently for chatting and laughter. We did our laundry at the same time, because that’s the kind of glamor girls we are.

A YEAR AGO: When is a bucket of sand not a bucket of sand?

FIVE YEARS AGO: A seasonal malady.

TEN YEARS AGO: A surprisingly warm day.

The Nutcracker was the last ballet of the old year. I thought it would be the same one we saw a couple of years ago, but it was a different production, with choreography from 1966 and the 92 year old choreographer himself in the audience at the beautiful and historic Bolshoi Theater.

It was very different from the earlier production. This one had a glittery deep blue curtain with the guests going to the party (and leaving it, against the same backdrop), which we liked. We also liked the 18th century inspired costumes. But we were less taken with the principal dancers, especially Marie, who seemed to cry a lot, and had no chemistry with the Prince. The godfather who gifted Marie with the nutcracker seemed to be some kind of evil magician and also seemed to conjure up the Mouse King and his army, which seemed a little odd. Some of the dances were longer and others were shorter. All in all, it was fun and interesting, but on the whole, Megan and I both preferred the early production.

We were also glad that there was only one intermission, so it was still light out as we headed home with a car full of Thai food. We went to Megan’s place, where we were joined by Jonathan and Rob. It was the first time I had hung out there since they first moved in. Everything is put away and it looks lovely. While they have to be on the frugal side with electricity until they buy new batteries to store the solar power, it was warm enough to just wear a t-shirt in the house, which was an enjoyable novelty for someone who usually wears at least one sweater in her house and sometimes more. Sometimes even a hat*. To be fair, Megan and Rob’s old house used to be colder than mine is, so they really appreciate the warmth and insulation of their new home.

We enjoyed our fabulous Thai food with some local wine and Alfred Hitchcock’s “Shadow of a Doubt”, filmed in nearby Santa Rosa. Hitchcock chose the location because Santa Rosa was the quintessential small town, hard to believe 75 years later when it’s nothing but concrete and malls. The house where most of the action took place is still there, as is the train station, but the lovely library is no more, and the Til Two bar is gone, too. We agreed that we’d love to have the sign and/or the doors from that place:

We all enjoyed the movie and we all managed to miss the cameo, which I later learned was here about 15 minutes in.

It was a happy evening.

*Yesterday morning, I woke up to discover that the dish soap was frozen. To be fair, there was only a couple of inches in a glass bottle, but still. That’s cold.

A YEAR AGO: Sickly New Year to me!

FIVE YEARS AGO: Home again from San Francisco.

When I was a kid, my Dad used to jokingly say, “When things were bad, they told me, ‘Cheer up! Things could get worse!’ So I cheered up, and sure enough, things got worse!” Well, I never did cheer up from the effects of 2017, but 2018 was even worse. I really can’t see it end soon enough.

Besides the horrors nationally and globally, Erica’s mother died suddenly and horribly just days before the equally sudden and unexpected death of the best man at my long-ago wedding. The effects of these losses continue to echo, most notably with Erica and Jessica fleeing not just the county, but the country. There was no Junapalooza this year and there never may be again without the assistance and inimitable presence of my near birthday twin and aesthetic soulmate.

Megan and Rob moved away, too, leaving me the last one standing at the property our brother first moved to 25 years ago. They lived in that little house for 20 years – the only house they ever lived in, in fact. Before that, they lived on a boat at Pier 39, and before that, Megan lived in an apartment with me. Mom spent the last few years of her life in that house, and Dad visited us there, including the Thanksgiving when he had a stroke on the driveway. And don’t forget my Christmas concussion in Megan’s living room! There are a lot of memories in that tiny place. Megan and Rob live just down the road now, but I miss having them here. Another ending.

Add in some expensive and agonizing dental hell and seemingly endless problems and drama on the property where I live, and you have the kind of year where a girl who loves Christmas doesn’t have any decorations up and in fact ignored the whole thing. I didn’t send any cards out this year, so if you didn’t get one from me, it’s not you, it’s me.

It’s probably not surprising in this underperforming year that I read only 102 books versus last year’s 114, and we have only received a paltry 10 inches of rain so far this season.

On the bright side (though not as far as Audrey is concerned), I adopted a little Siamese cat named Dodge, and he’s still alive so far, defying the odds.

Here’s to a less crappy New Year. I don’t think I can take it if I’m back here a year from now, telling you how 2018 looks like the good times.

January: I still had the plague from the old year. Not a good way to start the new one. When is a potato bucket not a potato bucket? When it’s a cat latrine, of course. Watching the surfers and ballerinas in Point Arena. The beauty of the lunar eclipse – and a perfect cocktail or two.

February: Both the weather and the mail were delightfully surprising. It was the Mondayest of Mondays and the smallest of small town days. I note that Wednesday’s engine light is still on, a full year later. A power outage at work, but not at home. Thankfully.

March: Rob’s amazing ceramic art. The most unpleasant time change of the year, and a delightful visit to Angelika’s little salon in the big woods. The beginning of the dreaded mattress saga. Not one of my finer decision-making moments. Celebrating Dad’s birthday. Stormy weather and the continuing mattress saga. Mark repaired some problems at my house. I note that he mentioned then that he was planning to move, and he eventually did.

April: Spring arrived, along with more silliness on my part than usual. Spring fever? A huge storm dumped a bunch of rain on us. Amazingly, the power stayed on. The horror of the mattress saga finally ended. Enjoying some local history and scandal. My blog turned 17 and Jessica turned 15.

May: Considering joining the library Board. A delightful dinner, a creepy play, and the debut of Lu and Rik’s first grandchild. A road trip to Willits to buy plants for the garden, and Star’s 10 birthday! Two sudden and unspeakably tragic deaths in one week.

June: A memorial service right before Erica’s and my birthdays inspired us to skip the celebrations. There was no Junapalooza either. I had taken time off for my birthday and was rewarded by getting the flu again less than six months after having it. The welcome discovery of wood-fired pizza in the Village. Despite everything, I’m grateful for the love and support around me.

July: My DNA test results. The beauty of the annual quilt show. A delightful outing to Point Arena, replete with delicacies from Franny’s and a play streamed from London. Both my back and my heart ached with the news of my former mother-in-law’s death. Rest in peace, dear Marj. The breathtaking Flynn Creek Circus and the terrifying wildfires.

August: Megan and Rob get ready to move from their home of 20 years onto the family estate. Giving away the things that wouldn’t fit in their new place. The seventeenth anniversary of Dad’s untimely and unnecessary death. I will never stop loving or missing him. The arrival of little Dodge, the beautiful little Siamese cat.

September: Megan and Rob were all moved in to their new place, and Dodge was finding his place in his new family. The beginning of Dental Hell, leading to my first (and hopefully last) root canal. The delights of the Fair.

October: The case of the disappearing landlord. Catching you up on some details. A trip to the hospital for my string of pearls. The last sleepover with Jessica. A lovely lunch and an enchanting garden.

November: The annual cider pressing. Swamped in smoke from distant, late season wildfires. In November! More updates about various things around the Manor. Hint: Not many of them are good. Remembering my grandfathers on the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day. Sometimes I feel like John and I are the only people in California who wear poppies for Remembrance Day.

December: A memorable version of King Lear with the amazing Sir Ian McKellen. The great escape. The always delightful festival of lights. A lovely evening, including a live (and lively) 1940s style radio play. The Christmas that wasn’t.

A YEAR AGO: Looking back at another bad year.

FIVE YEARS AGO: Lots of trips to San Francisco, a shiny new divorce, a new car, and the arrival of Stella, among other good things.

TEN YEARS AGO: Adjusting to life in Oaktown.

It was nice having four days off in a row. On one of them, I slept until 10:30 am. I can’t remember the last time I did that. I also went to bed at 8:30 pm that same day and slept through to 6:30 am the following day. Life has been exhausting lately.

Megan and I packed a lot of fun into one of the days off, though. We started off at the crafts fair at the Arts Center in the Village. We arrived at the last hour of the last day, and it was refreshingly uncrowded. We were greeted by some outsize, outside tomatoes:

and a charming little mosaic frog:

I bought a charming little bird to keep my father the ornithologist company:

and Megan and I both bought hairpins embellished with antique buttons. I put mine on immediately.

Our next stop was Luna Trattoria, where we found a quiet table in the gracious surroundings and were looked after wonderfully. Fresh bread arrived with olive oil in a moon decanter and balsamic vinegar in a star decanter:

Our wine arrived with a standing ice bucket, replete with a napkin for catching drips. Not that we had to pour any wine – the owner and the server saw to such mundane details. We started our lovely dinner with a perfect bruschetta:

It had just enough garlic, and the basil and tomatoes were fresh and flavorful. I followed this up with penne alla vodka with pancetta:

It, too, was just perfect, a great balance of flavors.

We enjoyed a leisurely dinner while catching up with each other’s lives. Our schedules are so far off now that we don’t see each other as much as you’d think, especially since we no longer live on the same property.

After dinner, we headed to the theater and its welcoming little bar:

The bartender creates a special drink for every play, and was kind enough to make Megan the drink from the last play, which featured Crème Yvette (a new ingredient to us) and blue Curaçao. I had this play’s drink, called Heaven Fruit cocktail. It is composed of gin, pomegranate juice, ginger beer, and lime. They were both delicious.

The play was three one act plays by Thornton Wilder, perhaps best-known for “Our Town”, though I also admire his screenplay for one of my favorite Hitchcock movies, “Shadow of a Doubt” (filmed in nearby Santa Rosa). If you know “Our Town” – and most former high school students do – you may not be surprised to hear that all three had a recurring motif of mortality. They were clever and we enjoyed the performance. It was another great evening for the sisters!

A YEAR AGO: I was feeling a LOT more festive.

FIVE YEARS AGO: Celebrating Thanksgiving.

TEN YEARS AGO: Enough with the Thanksgiving already!

Rain finally made its welcome appearance. When I drove to work the day before Thanksgiving, the Ridge was littered with red needles glowing against the mirror black road in the light of the high beams. I was glad I had replaced my wiper blades.

The office had a ghost town quality that day. I got some filing done, though not all of it. And even though I was not hosting Thanksgiving for once, I left work a little early anyway.

It was still raining as I made my way to Rio’s house on Thanksgiving evening, literally going over the (Albion) river and through the woods to Rio’s house (and she is, in fact, a grandmother). According to the local message boards, we have received about 2.5 inches over the past three days. That’s something to be thankful for, as is finding two errors on the same page in a recent issue of “The New Yorker”. My petty little heart rejoiced.

Arriving at Rio’s house, I met her son, his wife, and their son. Rio has picked up our reproductive slack by having four children and three grandchildren. Erica and Jessica arrived shortly after I did, with tales of packing and moving misdaventures. I think I would have given up on the whole thing, but they are made of stronger stuff, and as of tomorrow, they will be on their way to their new home. I am having a hard time coming to terms with this. My heart is an even slower learner than my head.

Dinner was well in hand: organic turkey, gravy, potatoes, carrots, and delicata squash from the garden. Dessert was wild huckleberry tarts and pie from our own apples. Needles to say, it was all accompanied by the cider we just pressed a few days ago. It’s satisfying to have a mostly home-grown Thanksgiving.

I am pleased to say that I did not burst into tears when saying goodbye to Erica and Jessica. I did hug them a little longer than usual, though, and I already miss them.

A YEAR AGO: Getting ready for Thanksgiving.

FIVE YEARS AGO: Some little treats to brighten up the day.

TEN YEARS AGO: My beautiful girls. I will never stop missing the incredible June.

The 100th anniversary of Armistice Day made me think about my grandfathers more than usual.

Both the Ernests fought in World War I in France. They may have even been on some of the same battlefields.

My mother’s father, Ernest Raymond, was a farm boy from New York state. I recently came across this photo of him in his uniform, setting off to fight in the war:

He looks like a kid to me, and he also looks like he is off on adventure. He clearly has no idea what’s in store for him. He told me that he saw his boyhood friends blown to pieces in front of his eyes, and that his feet rotted in the trenches. When the war was over, he got shipped back home as if nothing ever happened. It must have been surreal to go from the battlefield back to the farm. He survived it all, though, becoming a high school principal and having a long and happy marriage, living into his 80s.

I don’t have a photo of Ernest Victor from wartime. He was a tough young lad from a tough part of London, Southwark, which would be heavily bombed during the next World War. I happened to make a journey there to see his old neighborhood on what would have been his 100th birthday. It was pretty sketchy, with boarded up council housing, buildings with broken windows, and the old, disused railway stable. I’m sure both the council housing and stables are now multi-million pound condos. Gentrification is rampant and there are no bad neighborhoods now in central London.

Ernest Victor’s early life is something of a mystery, and will remain so since everyone who knows anything about it, including him, is long gone. His birth was registered by his mother, which was odd at the time, and was done long after his birth, also unusual. He never spoke to anyone in his family after WWI, except for his sister Elsie, who was very dear to Dad and to me. I have no idea why he cut them off like this.

He was gassed in the war and suffered from depression for the rest of his long life. He became an international banker at Lloyds of London, taking the train to the City from his home in Surrey. He too was very happily married for more than half a century and died on Christmas Eve, 1977, waiting in his special chair for his beloved wife to make him a cup of tea. Victorian gentlemen did not make their own tea.

They both went through a lot, survived it all, and rarely spoke about war and its horrors. I am thankful they survived and for their service, but sorry for all the young men lost in that war and the many to come.

A YEAR AGO: Car problems did not make me feel very thankful.

FIVE YEARS AGO: A late season BBQ with family and friends.

TEN YEARS AGO: Five year old Jessica already knew what to do in almost any situation.

Cider pressing day dawned fair for a change. For the first year, it was rainy; last year, it was cold enough to move all operations other than the actual pressing inside Rio’s house.

When I pulled up at Rio’s estate, the boys were hard at work setting up the new (to us) press. Instead of borrowing our friend and neighbor’s apple press, this year my brother Jonathan invested in a 30 year old press. It’s still a hand-operated press, but this one has separate parts for grinding the apples and for pressing them.

Rob washed our organic apples:

Megan, Rio, and I halved or quartered them, depending on size:

It felt like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. No matter how many apples we chopped, there was always more. Here they are in the hopper of the grinder, which was mostly manned by Jonathan, but also manned by Rob and Clayton:

Clayton mostly worked on the pressing part:

You can see Jonathan valiantly grinding the apples in the background.

We went through several wheelbarrows of “pomace”, or crushed apples, which all had to be wheeled to the compost pile.

We took a break for lunch, which was corn chips and salsa made almost entirely from our garden-gown ingredients, including cherry tomatoes, jalapenos, and apples. Apples are great in salsa! Fun fact: the bowl was made by Clayton himself. He’s not just a master painter and apple presser!

Then it was back to work. Jonathan estimates that we made about 40 gallons of cider, or twice what we made last year when we and the rest of the coast had such a poor apple crop.

When we were finally done, we cleaned up and toasted another successful cider pressing. Dinner was garden slop and pasta with garlic bread, followed by raspberry sorbet made from raspberries my siblings grew:

I can’t describe the intense berry taste of sorbet that only has two ingredients: raspberries and sugar. It was the perfect end to a lovely dinner and a hard-working day.

A YEAR AGO: A chilly day for cider prep and pressing.

FIVE YEARS AGO: A busy and action-packed trip to Atlanta. Those were the days, though I didn’t know it then.

TEN YEARS AGO: Voting day, and it was a nerve-wracking nail biter. Again, those were the days and I didn’t know it then. I’m sensing a theme here.

We were long overdue for a family dinner. The last one may have been for Dad’s birthday, way back in March. I was too sick to attend Megan’s birthday BBQ, and the tragedy of losing Erica’s mother so suddenly and horribly removed any festive feelings for the rest of the summer, preempting Junapalooza and any other celebrations.

We had the dinner at Rio’s house. When I arrived bearing wine, she already had a plate of delightful appetizers set out. They were rice crackers topped with Cheddar and neat squares of roasted red peppers:

My industrious siblings had a bumper crop of peppers this year, and had roasted them over apple wood and then preserved them in olive oil. I admire (but do not emulate) their near-constant garden labor. It seems to me that they are either watering and weeding or picking and preserving. They are probably glad when winter rolls around and they can take a break from endless garden duty.

The homegrown theme continued. Jonathan was in the kitchen making what he and Megan affectionately refer to as “garden slop”, which is pasta sauce made from tomatoes, peppers, basil, and anything else from the garden that looks good and can be tossed in, like delicata squash:

Despite its unlovely name, garden slop is delicious and never quite the same. We had it with pasta and freshly grated Parmesan, along with garlic bread. The garden crew cleverly made a big batch of garlic butter from the garlic they grew and froze it in individually wrapped, flattened patties which are the perfect size for a loaf of bread. So making garlic bread is practically instant.

For the first time in recorded history, my brother’s pastry didn’t work out. He had to consign it to the compost pile and instead made apple crisp from apples he and the team had just picked. There were more than enough left over for the upcoming cider pressing:

Plan B tasted as good as Plan A would have, and it was a great evening. I was glad we were all together at last.

A YEAR AGO: Trick or treating with Jessica. Little did I know it would be the last time. Here’s how she looked this year:

Note the terrifying neck makeup!

FIVE YEARS AGO: A happy Halloween.

TEN YEARS AGO: A happy ending for everyone!

Beautiful Downtown Boonville

When I woke up the next day, it gladdened my Grinchy heart to peek over the driftwood railings at Jessica, sleeping peacefully on the couch in her fuzzy skeleton PJs. I sneakily fed the cats and made coffee, following my usual weekend routine of drinking coffee in bed with the cats while reading and answering my fan mail.

Jessica awoke in due course, packed up her things and slipped into a little black dress:

She got it at a thrift shop – I think it’s a Calvin Klein. She is accessorized by a little black cat. Clyde goes with everything.

Megan, Erica, and I conferred by text and decided to meet up at Julie and Darius’ lovely emporium in the heart of Boonville for lunch. In my case, it was a BLT made with local bacon, greens, and heirloom tomatoes along with spicy sweet potato fries:

It was nice to sit in the shade at the wooden picnic table while enjoying the view:

After lunch, we poked around the shops. I was charmed by these shoes in an antique shop:

Unfortunately, they were too small to fit my wicked stepsister sized feet, and as usual, my head was too giant for the charming hats, once again making me wonder how my head can be so big when it only has to house two underemployed brain cells.

It was nice to meander around town together, and I have to admit it made me sad when we parted ways, knowing that the final parting is looming next month. I can feel the beating of its black wings.

A YEAR AGO: Storing the potatoes we grew. The storage did not turn out exactly as expected, due to the buckets of sand strongly resembling litterboxes in a house full of cats. Lesson learned.

FIVE YEARS AGO: Back home after a lovely trip to LA.

TEN YEARS AGO: Watching the catspat.

I took a couple of days off around the Labor Day weekend, and I am pleased to announce that nothing horrible happened for a change. Faithful readers may remember that when I took time off last Labor Day, it was about 5,000 degrees every day, and when I went to Eureka over the Christmas holidays to meet up with friends, I got the Flu from Hell.

So I was a little worried about what might happen on this long weekend – being a worrier – but nothing untoward occurred, unless you count going through the two blanket chests from Megan’s house which supposedly contained Depression glass, but in fact contained 100% junk. It reminded me of when my brother and I cleaned out Mom’s storage in Santa Rosa and found that it was mostly junk, including a phone book from 1982 and an empty answering machine box. It did not make me happy to know I had been paying for years to store Mom’s crap collection.

I have admit that I was hoping for some of Nana’s square, emerald green plates and dishes, like these:

And in my heart of hearts, I was also hoping that maybe, just maybe, there might be a couple of the miniature creamers decorated with rabbits which we used to pour milk on our cereal at her house. Even though I never use milk. Such is the triumph of nostalgia over practicality.

Megan and Rob are out of their house and into their new home. It’s still hard to believe that they aren’t just down the secret path through the woods and huckleberry bushes. They are now in the throes of figuring out where to put everything. Unpacking is almost as much fun as packing when it comes to moving.

Our friend Carrie came up for the weekend with her daughter Miranda. It had been a whole year since they were here last! Erica and Jessica came by for a BBQ one night, full of plans to sell their property and move to British Columbia as soon as possible. I will miss them if they do move. At least we’ll see them at the Fair in a couple of weeks.

Clyde and Audrey are coexisting with Dodge. I think Dodge would like to play with Clyde, but it’s going to take a little more time. Audrey will continue to disdain the interloper like she does everyone else. As long as there are no fights and the older cats are happy, I’m happy.

Included in the adoption fee was a free exam at any local vet, so Dodge got the once-over from Dr. Susan*, Dr. Karen’s partner. She said in 30 years of veterinary practice, she had never seen a cat with markings like Dodge’s. She believes he is a pure-bred Siamese, and that he is very smart and curious. Here he is, exploring his new home:

She was also impressed by how friendly and affectionate he is. So other than needing his fur to grow back and to put on weight, he is in good shape. She agrees that he is around two years old. I wonder what his story is. I guess we’ll never know, but it has a happy ending.

*He’s lucky he didn’t end up being a boy named Sue, considering all the Susans in his life: the one that found him, the one that adopted him, and the one who gave him a check-up.

A YEAR AGO: Having a great time with family and friends.

FIVE YEARS AGO: Lounging in the fabulous spa in Reno.

TEN YEARS AGO: Oh, Ray. I think I miss you most of all. In fact, you may be the only thing I miss about Oaktown.

The old man himself at Point Reyes, New year’s Day, 2000

I spent the morning of the Evil Eighteenth cooking, as I often do. Something about Dad’s birthday and deathday seem to inspire me to cook, wishing he was there with me. We never got in each other’s way in the kitchen, which is a rare gift. I always liked the fact that we knew where everything was in each other’s kitchens, and where to shop for dinner ingredients, whether in London or San Francisco.

That evening, Megan and I met Lu and her daughter at the theater to see “Becky’s New Car”. You may recall that our last outing was a little less than successful due to the rather unpleasant subject matter. I am pleased to report that this play was both funny and delightful, and that the cast was wonderful.

The special drink for this production was an unusual and delicious mixture of pomegranate schnapps, ginger bitters (both new ingredients to me), fresh orange juice, and champagne. We toasted Dad with this delightful confection, saying “The old man wasn’t so bad”. I think Dad would have approved of the way we spent that day and remembered him.

We had toasted the old man the evening before as well.

Megan’s new home arrived earlier than expected, and was moved to its permanent location after camping out on the (fortunately wide and capacious) driveway on the property for about a week. Our brother cobbled together enough electricity to pop out the pop outs and power the lights.

Megan also popped out the champagne – Roederer, no less – that evening when Lu and I arrived to toast her new home as well as the old man. The dogs are already feeling pretty much at home, though the household is in the awkward phase of being between here and there. Star and Stella were happy to flop on the couch:

Dad would be happy about that, too. Maybe we will start to think of this time of year being about happy new beginnings as well as sad endings. As the years go by, I feel less anger and sadness about losing Dad and more happiness that I had such a remarkable father who was also my best friend. The good memories tend to come to mind more than the sad ones. Though I will always miss him, I was lucky to have had him at all.

A YEAR AGO: Enjoying a drink and the view at my favorite seaside bar.

FIVE YEARS AGO: How to make the world’s most expensive peach pie.

Every morning now I check the progress of the wildfires on the Cal Fire website. Overall, containment is up, but it seems that the Ranch part of the Mendocino Complex fire keeps losing containment. It’s down to 20% today. Overall, containment is at 46%. Full containment was originally projected for mid August but has been moved to September 1.

Today the air was smoky as well as foggy. Surprisingly, it’s the first time it’s been smoky since the wildfires began in late July. The forecast calls for a shift in the wind tomorrow to clear out the smoke. The Mendocino Complex is now the largest wildfire in recorded California history. My heart aches for our inland neighbors, going through this yet again after just a few short months.

So far, we are safe here on the coast. We are all working together to get Megan and Rob ready to move – next Saturday! Even though their current home is on the small side, there are many things that will not fit in their new abode and are being rehomed. One of these was a rather battered dresser which had been Megan’s since she was a kid:

It was worse enough for wear that she decided to give it away. I listed it on the local message boards and it was snapped up in about an hour by a guy who lived right down the Ridge. When he came to pick it up, he told me that he had helped James to bend the redwood to make my house’s distinctive shape.

Despite the diminutive size of Megan’s house, there seems to be a lot of stuff be sorted and disposed of. That’s what happens when you live in one place for 20 years. Megan observed that this is the only house she has lived in as an adult. She went from living with me during high school to living on a boat at Pier 39 to living in this house.

This is also the last of our homes where our parents spent any time. Dad visited there often, including the time he had a stroke between Megan’s house and what was then Jonathan’s house. He recovered, but died nine months later in London of medical malpractice. Megan’s house is where our mother spent the last few years of her courageous battle against breast cancer. We celebrated many Thanksgivings and Christmases there. When Megan closes that narrow front door for the last time, she will be closing the door on a long chapter of her life and many memories.

A YEAR AGO: A visit from our friend Carrie and a passel of quite excellent teens. They are coming back for Labor Day weekend!

FIVE YEARS AGO: Clyde’s encounter with the slobber monster. He seems to have avoided it ever since, and it had better stay that way. The fur where the injury was is notably white against his black fur.

TEN YEARS AGO: The walk in pharmacy and other Oaktown delights. I do miss Ray the Safeway guy, though.

Megan is moving! And she’s moving soon.

Our good friends and my siblings’ land partners, Dave and Jennifer, found a fabulous mobile home for sale down in the Bay Area, where Dave works during the week. They went to check it out with Megan and Rob one weekend and everyone liked what they saw. Dave, the expert negotiator, got a great deal on it which included delivery all the way to Hooterville.

However, delivery is slated for the 17th anniversary of Dad’s untimely death on August 18. This short time frame kicked preparations into high gear as Megan and Rob divest their tiny house of 20 years’ worth of things and stuff. Don’t forget that every time Rob went to the dump, he acquired a project or two, so that’s a lot of stuff over two decades. It is surprising how much stuff one little 450 square foot house can contain. Also how much you can get of rid of and still have more stuff to deal with. I think I noticed this same unlovely phenomenon when I escaped from Oakhampton several years ago.

It will all be worth it, though, since the new place is lovely. Here’s the living room:

And a peek at the kitchen:

Sadly, the kitchen is just about as low on counter space as their current home, but they are used to that and Rob has some clever ideas of how to work around it.

The bedroom has closets! I have heard of these mythical things, but my sister and brother-in-law will actually have one:

The bathroom even has a tub:

They may find they have a semi-permanent guest who lounges in their bathtub and luxuriates in the central heat and air conditioning. Air conditioning! My dream come true!

A YEAR AGO: Coming home to a couple of surprises.

FIVE YEARS AGO: A lovely day in the Village.

TEN YEARS AGO: Remembering wonderful summers in Maine. Those were the days!

I am happy to report that I am sitting in bed with both cats at the luxurious hour of 8:00 am. There is no Evil Death Star blasting through the skylight and blinding me. Also I am actually wearing my bathrobe (the old red fleece one from the Gap that I have had since I lived in San Francisco, incredibly enough) and sitting under the comforter. Huzzah!

Last night it was a mere 70 degrees in my living room as I watched The Man Who Cheated Himself and drank lemonade with raspberry vodka. The movie was filmed on location in San Francisco in 1950, and it was fun to see my old hometown and guess at the locations, seeing what has changed and what hasn’t. I have to say that Lee J. Cobb made as unlikely a leading man as Jane Wyatt did a femme fatale, but it was still fun to watch.

Today I did a little gardening and a lot of cooking. When I was finished with these tasks and settled on the couch with a baseball game on, I got an email telling me that my DNA results were in.

Despite the tragedy that struck Erica, and the ensuing memorial service right before our birthdays, Erica bought me an Ancestry.com DNA kit for my birthday. She knew that I have been wanting to do this for some time now, but found the cost prohibitive. She really is like another sister. I sent it in the day after I received it, and here’s what they say is my heritage:

It’s not very surprising, other than the high percentage of Iberian Peninsula. I wonder if that is on my mother’s side, since we know absolutely nothing about her birth parents or any of her ancestors. Mom never cared about who her birth parents were, feeling that her parents chose her out of all the kids in the world, and they were the ones to raise her and love her and travel through life’s journey with her.

I always accepted this, and I could not love my grandparents more, but over time I have come to wonder about the girl who gave birth to Mom and felt that she had no choice but to leave her on the steps of an orphanage one spring day in 1932. I now realize that she was most likely heart-broken, possibly in a really bad situation, and probably wondered for the rest of her life how her little girl was.

The DNA results also told me that I have very, very distant cousins who also sent in their DNA. I have to admit I was secretly hoping that Mom’s birth mother had other kids, and that they in turn had their own, and we would find each other and the mystery – or at least part of it – would be solved. I will just have to accept that I will never know.

A YEAR AGO: A blissful sleepover with Jessica. So much fun in such a short time! We are overdue for another one.

FIVE YEARS AGO: Man, everyone was sick! Megan had the flu, Clyde had a Mystery Illness, and Jessica broke her leg. What the hell? What the heck?

TEN YEARS AGO: Heat, miracles and wild, wild fires.

I continued my course of therapeutic frivolity by leaving work early the Friday before the long Memorial Day weekend and heading to Angelika’s little salon in the big woods:

To be fair, I had planned the haircut long before the tragedies hit, but the timing could not have been better. I was surprised to see that Angelika had cut her long blonde hair to a cut similar to Robin Wright’s in House of Cards. It looked great on Angelika, very stylish and pretty.

I was very happy to see her dog Anasazi, too. When I last saw Angelika in March, she was planning to put Ana to sleep due to her issues with her hips and balance at the age of 13. When the vet came to do the deed, she said that Ana was not yet ready to start her next adventure, so hopefully Ana will be with us through the summer and maybe beyond.

It was nice to get such happy news, and to watch a Steller’s Jay taking an enthusiastic bath in the bird bath outside the salon window. Angelika’s garden was full of blooms, from the rhododendrons you can see peeking through the windows to the irises outside the salon:

It was a relaxing and rejuvenating to spend time with Angelika. She sent me on my way with a hug and birthday gifts for both Megan (whose birthday it was) and me.

Since it was Megan’s birthday, my new haircut and I met her at our favorite seaside bar, where our favorite bartender started us off with free glasses of birthday champagne, which I think we all can agree is the best kind, to inspire us while we decided on the next drink.

It turned out to be a Lemon Drop:

and it was delicious. It was great to chat with the bartender and enjoy our drinks despite the cloudy weather. Later we moved the party to my house, where we stayed up later and possibly enjoyed more adult beverages than we should have, but after all, it was a special occasion.

A YEAR AGO: Celebrating Megan’s birthday on the family estate.

FIVE YEARS AGO: Megan’s birthday was both festive and eventful.

Megan mentioned on a Friday evening that she was planning to go to the thriving metropolis of Willits on Saturday to get pepper plants and tomato plants for the greenhouse the boys just built:

Willits is 30 miles inland from the Big Town (though it takes a good hour to drive those 30 miles*), making it much warmer in the summer (and colder in the winter), so they have a wider variety of heat-loving starts for sale there.
I decided that I would go with her, a decision that seemed reasonable after a couple of adult beverages on Friday night, but a less attractive prospect on the following day. I did manage to get up, though later than intended, and threw together pineapple salsa to go with the chicken enchiladas I did not have time to make before heading out the door.

We made our way past the ocean and the mighty redwoods, the road curving around and around, climbing up and back down again. It’s such a beautiful time of year, with the fields full of wildflowers in every color and baby calves, lambs, and foals. The steep, rolling hills are still green from the winter rains, and pooled with the deep shade of gnarled live oaks. Grapes are putting out their transparent green leaves on the dark vines.

At the garden center, we loaded up on practical greenhouse plants for Megan and pretty flowers for me. There was hardly room for us in the car, so it was a good thing we hadn’t brought the dogs this time, even though it was Star’s 10th birthday. Happy birthday, Star (seen here exploring the greenhouse):

To be fair, Megan did buy special birthday treats for Star to share with her BFF Stella (seen here lounging in their garden beds):

so it’s not like we didn’t celebrate this auspicious occasion.

We picked up some extreme takeout at El Mexicano and headed home. It was a good day.

*We recently had some folks coming to the Big Town from Sacramento for a meeting. Needless to say, the drive took much longer than they expected. When they texted that they were just leaving Willits and would be there in half an hour, we all laughed uproariously. It took them nearly an hour and a half. It takes me about an hour.

A YEAR AGO: A surprisingly life-affirming flat tire

FIVE YEARS AGO: A less than delightful Monday the 13th.

TEN YEARS AGO: How to turn $20 into crack.

It had been far too long since we had eaten at Luna Trattoria, and far too long since we had seen a play in the Village. We set out to remedy both of those omissions on the same night.

Our multi-tasking was made easier by the fact that Luna had moved to the Village from the Big Town. Megan’s parking luck held as we pulled up right outside:

We followed a very pretty gardeny path to the restaurant:

where we were greeted by both Lu and a mob of people. The restaurant does not take reservations except for large parties, and the place was jam packed. We went to wait in the little garden outside.

It was the first time I had seen Lu since the first grandchild arrived about three weeks earlier, so we had lots of catching up to do. It is somewhat alarming when your friends start becoming grandparents. The baby himself is lovely:

He is a happy baby and despite his impressive size (nearly 10 pounds at birth), is as relaxed as his début, where his mother slept through labor and it took a mere 20 minutes for Dean to arrive in the world. Can’t ask for better than that.

When our table was ready, we went upstairs, past the singer who had also sung at Lu and Rik’s wonderful wedding. It was less hectic up there:

and we had time to drink some wine and nibble on bruschetta while we decided what to have for dinner:

Lu had lasagna, Megan had pasta sangiovese, and I had penne alla vodka:

It was delicious. You can tell that they make their own pasta and it is really good. It was so nice to enjoy our dinner and each other’s company.

After dinner, we made our way to the theater:

where Megan again parked right out front. Inside, we discovered that the lobby had become more elegant:

The bar, and more importantly, the bartender were the same. In honor of the play we were about to see, Blackbird, he concocted a black cocktail with blue curaçao, vodka, lime, and cranberry juice, garnished with blueberries:

It turned out to be better than the play. From the description:

“He moves to another town. He changes his name. But now she finds him and confronts him about a 15 year old crime – a crime for which he’s been to prison. This hauntingly poetic play by one of Scotland’s most notable playwrights will challenge audience members to question their perceptions.”

we thought it would be a mystery, but it turned out to be about a victim of statutory rape (then aged 12) hunting down and confronting her rapist years later. It was pretty upsetting stuff. The acting was really good, but it wasn’t quite the fun night out we were expecting. At least dinner and the company were wonderful!

A YEAR AGO: A fun day at the bookstore. Is there any other kind?

FIVE YEARS AGO: The birth of an orchard.

TEN YEARS AGO: Ugh. What a horrible trip.