C'est tout

The First Unitarian Church of South Bend holds a service auction each fall, and one of my offerings for the past two years has been Dinner on the Deck.   First one wasn't on the deck because rain kept us inside.  This year it was COLD!  But no one seemed to mind that we weren't on the deck.  The dinner is a celebration of spring, featuring wild Pacific salmon, asparagus and strawberries.  That makes a tasty meal indeed, whether inside or out.

My dinner party seemed to be enjoyed by all.  I was able to sit and eat with my guests, always a pleasure.  That is really the best part, the good company.  It was a leisurely meal, and we spent more than two hours at the table, then wandered down to the river where a few of us enjoyed cigars, a gift from Jim Curlee.

Jim was also the photographer.  As usual, I have pictures of food before the meal, and then of the mess and cleanup afterwards, but during the meal, the camera is the last thing on my mind.

Here are Jim's pics from the dinner.

The bar is open.

French cheeses, terrine, fruit and nuts and the first baguette

Spring salad, with the second baguette!

Main course, wild salmon, asparagus, fingerling potatoes

Strawberry rhubarb pie for dessert

Now for the "afterglow," evidenced in my pictures of the rubble and the cleanup.  I'm sitting in the kitchen at my computer now with another cup of coffee.  The cleanup is done, last load of dishes is in dishwater, self cleaning oven is at work.  I hand washed and dried the crystal and silver, which I find pleasurable.  All's right with the world.

Kitchen wreckage in background

Dinner's over

Crystal is shining, silver and china are already put away.

C'est tout.

The cat with attitude is living in a box on the file cabinet.

My new dog has been renamed - from Figgy Pudding, which is really cute but unisex, to Fred, definitely a male.  Since he moved in after I lost Ayn Chee, a female, I was constantly referring to him as "her" and "she."  So Fred helps me to remember he is all boy!

Unfortunately the boy in Fred, or perhaps just the dog in him, led him to chase the cat, Holly Berry, at their first meeting.  Holly Berry has not forgotten.  Being a cat, she probably never will.  He leaves her alone, doesn't even get close after many reprimands, but like I said, she has not forgotten, nor forgiven.

A little history on Holly Berry.  She was one of six kittens born in our garage at First Unitarian Church.  When I arrived at church one Sunday a couple of weeks before Christmas, I was greeted with, "Oh, Susan will take one."  Oh, yeah?  I already had three dogs, a cat and a parakeet and I had no intention of taking on another pet.  And I said so.  An hour later, I left with a 15 ounce kitten tucked in my pocket and headed home.  She was obviously strong willed, as I found out on the ride home.  She wanted to be free to run around the car, and even with several stops to put her back into a box I had found in the car or back into my coat, it was a losing battle.  She would have her way.  By the time I got home, she owned me, as cats so often do.

She took over the other cat, an adult male.  She would straddle his back, tiny little kitten, and wash down Smokey's head and ears.  And he let her.  There really was no arguing with her.  As for the dogs, there was no problem, no growling or chasing, they pretty much ignored one another -- except for Tashi.  Tashi was the newest in the household, probably less than a year old (strays don't come with paperwork so the vet was guessing her age), and she didn't want to hurt Holly Berry - she wanted to mother her.  She, a fifty-five pound dog, carried this 15 ounce cat around in her mouth.  They became close, and played together often.  I found one pic of her sleeping with my beloved Ayn Chee.  So I guess they did more than tolerate one another over time, but they were never a close as Tashi and Holly

Ayn Chee and Holly Berry getting along

About a year after I lost Smokey, someone asked me to take a cat because they were moving and couldn't take him along.  It took Holly Berry about a week to run him off.  Never saw him again.  He was twice as big as her and scared to death of her.  One night he slipped out the door, and that was the last of him.  Holly had won.

Our household has lived in animal peace - until Fred.  It has been over three months, and Holly Berry now lives in a box on top of a four-drawer file cabinet in my office.  Occasionally she crawls into the insulation around the foundation, since I didn't put a ceiling in the basement.  So I see those eyes staring out at me from this pile of insulation, just above her file cabinet condo.  She comes down to eat, to go outside, and if Fred is in the kennel at night, occasionally she will come upstairs in the night, licking my hand, lying on my chest, establishing her right to be there - so long as Fred is NOWHERE TO BE FOUND!

Yesterday morning I was working in the soap room.  I heard Holly jump onto the desk that is beside her file cabinet condo, then she wandered into my soap room, where Tashi lay at my feet.  Fred was absent.  She walked right up to Tashi and nonchalantly kissed her.  And then, of course, she went back to the box on the file cabinet.  The message was loud and clear - Tashi is acceptable, Fred is not.

She obviously still loves Tashi, she has not been declawed so can protect herself, and Fred truly leaves her alone.  What is her problem - other than that she is a cat?  Exactly once, she has come upstairs to the bedroom when Fred was sleeping in the bed.  She did the hand licking, hung around on the floor for a few minutes, then she was off.  Perhaps there is hope.  She really needs to get over this!  I feel bad that she is living in a box.  Yeah, I know, it is her choice, but I want her back in the fold.  Sigh . . .

Here's holly in a box of papers in my computer desk.

Vacation leftovers

It's time to pay my Citibank bill, the credit card I used for just about everything while in France.

I'm sorting by date, and as I look at the bills, I am feeling a little blue - what was once a dream of the future is all just a pile of bills and a bunch of memories - c'est tout.  The vacation of a lifetime is done, reduced to paying the bill for Metro tickets, grocery store purchases, meals out, and one for which I owe a whole pile of money.  What was THAT for?  Some of the bills are in both francs and euros, so I thought it must be francs, but no, it is euros!  Oh, my!!

Then I saw the name Dehilleran on the bill and knew what it was for.  It's the bill from the cooking supply store in the heart of Paris, the one recommended by Ina Garten, the Barefoot Contessa.  I do not regret one penny spent there.  My third terrine is in the refrigerator, meats and spices blending for 12 hours before going into a water bath in the oven for two hours.  After weighting it down in the fridge for another half day or so, it's time to remove the terrine from the terrine (terrine is both the name of the cooking vessel and the end product), wipe down the exterior, wrap tightly and refrigerate until Sunday.  Then I will slice it and serve with Cumberland sauce to my dinner guests, along with a freshly baked French baguette.

My vacation is not over; it lives on - so many pictures, so many memories, so many good meals enjoyed and to be enjoyed in the future with recipes, ideas and cookware from the City of Lights.

Bread baskets and copper - who could ask for anything more?

Better than Christmas morning!

I missed these demitasse cups.  Will have to go back for one.

Provence souvenirs on the left, Dehilleran on the right - rolling pin, melon baller, molds, fish spatula, terrine, paring knife.

Passionate Phoenix can feel it coming on . . .

A few days before my sixty-first birthday, I was croned by my dear friends.  There were about 50 women and men there, from four states, from old jobs, family, fellow drumming women, young, old - and of course the first two crones in our group - Sparkling Wisdom (who has since passed to the Summerland) and Flowering Creatix, also known as Butterfly Peggy, a woman who has a way with words.  We wanted to capture the poet in Peggy, hence her crone name Flowering Creatrix.

So there is this thing about crone names.  We don't get to pick our own; we are named by the group.  The woman being croned has to leave the circle while the group deliberates on what her name will be.

Before I left the group to their task of choosing my crone name, I read a couple of letters, one from my sister Lynn who wrote about how as a young child, I had always opened green beans to look for worms before I ate them.  She related how my mother tried to break me of it, but even if she put a cream sauce on the beans, I still broke them open in spite of the mess.  One day I found one!  Whoa!  Lynn recounted my mom saying, "Well, I'll be darned!"  It got a laugh.  And of course, having found one worm just once, the deal was sealed.

My daughter Valerie couldn't be there, but she wrote a lovely letter and said that my name should be Passionate Flower, because I am passionate about everything I do and I loved to garden.  Her suggestion was taken into consideration, but she wasn't there, so the others would have their say. My friends sent me for a walk in the woods while they took up their task.

As I left the circle, my friend Matt said, "How about Worm Seeker?"  THAT got a laugh, even from me, but fortunately the group kept working on my name while I walked until I was out of earshot.

I heard someone shouting that I should come back, that I had a new name.  I returned to the circle, stood in the middle, and learned that my crone name would be Passionate Phoenix.  They all agreed with Valerie on the Passionate part, but given that I remake my life every few years, they came up with Passionate Phoenix, which I find very appropriate!  I love my crone name, and feel comfortable calling myself Phoenix every now and then.

It is true that I have reinvented myself more than once.  Wife and mother in my early 20s, I became a single mother at 27, worked hard at whatever jobs I could get (why did I quit college?), started taking some night courses, eventually remarried, sold real estate, then fell in love with a little Victorian house and put a restaurant in it.  Next I followed my husband to Chicago where he had taken a new job.  At that point, I got serious about school and transferred my credits to the University of Illinois at Chicago and got a degree in statistics.  When my husband moved to Florida for his job, I remained in Chicago to finish my degree and decided to stay there after graduation.  The salary for my new job seemed like a lot, until I tried to live in Chicago on it.  So I started my graduate degree at the ripe old age of 55, at Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management.

I moved to Indiana, where the cost of living wasn't so prohibitive, and drove back to Chicago one night a week to finish my MBA at Northwestern.  At last, I was able to get a really good job as a program manager in the aerospace industry.  I was making good money.  But of course I couldn't leave well enough alone.  There were some things about the corporate world that didn't sit well with me, and when I got the opportunity to take early retirement with some pretty good benefits, I jumped at it.

Oh, I forgot to mention, I had bought a farm, designed and built a house, put up a barn to store a couple of tractors, and had moved there a couple of years before the early retirement.  On the farm full time, I got organic certification, bought a small dairy herd, put up a dairy barn and a greenhouse - yup, another reinvention of my life!  But it was hard work, and when I reached 72 and got a new knee, the work started getting to me.  I put the farm up for sale, and after a long search for a house in town, I got the farm sold and the house in town habitable at about the same time.  That was a stroke of luck!

I still have my booth at the farmers market.  I am a one-woman manufacturing department, making soap, skin care and herbals, and bottling essential oils and aroma therapy formulas.  There are no more greenhouse plants or garden produce to deal with, but I'm tired.  My 75th birthday is just around the corner and I'm beginning to feel my age.

I can feel it coming.  The Phoenix needs to rise again from the ashes.  I think I know what my next reinvention will be.  It has been gelling in my mind for several years, but I have repeatedly pushed it aside.  There were always other things to do.  But most of those take more energy than I have to expend.  I was thinking about doing cooking classes, but I did one Sunday and it took me two days to recuperate.  This other idea churning around in my mind takes less energy, and it is rearing its head more and more often.

I envision myself lying in the settling ashes of my life as it currently is, the Phoenix bowed but not dead.  My wings are moving, brushing aside those ashes and the cobwebs in my mind.  I feel it rising - another incarnation, another challenge, another reason to look with relish and purpose to the days ahead.  Soon, soon . . .

Preparing for Ostara

The Spring Equinox is called Ostara on the Pagan Wheel of the Year.  One MUST have a fire to celebrate!

There is plenty of scrap wood on my lawn down by the river.  Thanks to some heroic help from Sarah and Christina, every bit of those limbs and twigs are lying on one of three bonfires, waiting for the match to be laid.

That means we have one for Ostara, which we are celebrating this Sunday, one for Beltane a.k.a. May Day, and a third for Litha a.k.a. Summer Solstice.  By the time we get to Lughnasadh, there will be enough new wood downed in storms or from pruning and cleaning up around here that we will have plenty for that bonfire as well.

So we are all set!  Yard looks so much better.  When we walked down there to start the task, I really feared we would not be done before sundown, but we did it!  Wish I had taken a "before" picture, but use your imagination - all of that wood spread out over the front of the yard, and many pieces ten or fifteen feet long!  We used a hand saw and nippers, and got the job done.  :)

Too much to do . .

Income tax - still not done.  I have promised myself and my accountant that it would be in her hands by close of business tomorrow.  Maybe . . .

Leaks - there is now a hole in the ceiling of my powder room downstairs because of a leak in my shower upstairs.  We are still not sure that the problem is in the drain.  I plan to take a long shower with a bucket under the drain.  If there is water in the bucket, then the problem is the drain.  If there is none, then the fix that the guy who tiled my shower did this afternoon is the whole solution.  I'm betting on water in the bucket.  Either way, there will have to be some drywall repairs.

My booth at market - good news, bad news.  For winter, business has been surprisingly brisk.  I am working to get caught up on inventory, but I seem to be having a hard time reaching the finish line.  Are people having more sinus problems than usual this winter?  One might think so.  I have several products to address them, and I keep running out of them.

Dog - Figgy, actually.  While he is a very smart little guy, he still hasn't cottoned on to going out the automatic door to relieve himself.  Is he housebroken?  Well, sort of.  More like his mama walks him so often that the indoor mistakes are few and far between.  I long for the day when he is as good as Tashi is - and Ayn Chee was.  All of those walks are taking their toll on me.

My foot - I have tendinitis in my right foot.  Ouch!  The first three or so walks are just fine.  By the fourth, I am in pain!  How am I going to walk the streets of Paris in pain?  

Speaking of Paris, my second language - right now, I am sick to death of French!  French Meet-up at Barnes and Nobles every other Thursday, conversational French at Forever Learning every Thursday, French Canadienne Radio in my car, meetings with a tutor every Monday and every other Thursday, and Pimsleur lessons on my smart phone.  Je suis tres, tres fatiguee!  

Speaking of smart phone - really?  What is smart about a phone that loses calls in the middle of South Bend.  AT&T informs me that the phone I bought last September is already out of date, and they basically didn't promise me a rose garden.  It can't keep up with the updates, or so they say, and so it is failing.  I still owe $580, and now I get to buy another one!  Or go to Verizon, who will give me $650 for switching.  Not a hard decision.  

The other stuff - what do I do about internet, TV, a home phone (which I need in order to call myself when I lose my cell phone)?  

I just do not have time to deal with all of this.  Another time.  I'm going to bed.

Super Dog!

Last night I sat down and wrote a thank you letter to the two women who facilitated Tashi's meeting with Figgy.  If it hadn't been for them, if they hadn't shown wisdom, love and patience, Tashi the Terrible would not have gotten her new friend.  After Tashi's meetings with three different dogs, each of which ended in her lunging at them and letting all know in no uncertain terms that she didn't want them anywhere near her, these two women were the miracle workers who made it happen.

A little background - when I lost my terrier Ayn Chee to cancer in January, Tashi went on a hunger strike.  As she was just recovering from a serious bout of SIBO (having lost 30% of her body weight before it was properly diagnosed and treated), she needed every bite of food, but she would only eat if I sat on the floor with her and literally spooned it up to her mouth.  After a few bites, she would walk away.  She lost three precious pounds in two weeks.  How do you get a mourning dog to eat?  Maybe Super Dog?

March 3, 2016

Dear Molly & Kristen,

I just have to tell you how much I love Figgy Pudding. He is Super Dog. First, I truly believe that he saved Tashi's life. They play together. Tashi lets him eat out of her bowl, while she is eating! They even play, batting at each other and doing fake growls while wagging their tails. She is finally putting on weight, and she eats all of her food with gusto. No spoon feeding anymore.

Here are a few of my favorite Figgy stories. The other night, he pulled his blanket out of the kennel. I put it back in and didn't give it another thought. About an hour later, there it was on the floor again, and he was at his kennel, trying with all his might to pull out the bed. He couldn't, of course. He isn't big enough to tuck it through that little door opening. I thought, “What is going on?” I smelled the bed and blanket. He had peed on them. The little tyke was just doing a little housecleaning. I washed and dried them, put them back in his kennel, and he went to the door and sniffed before he would go in. I burst out laughing! He's Mr. Clean!

He never gets tangled in his leash. He has this little skipping step he uses to unwind himself from the leash. I have never seen another dog do this.

He dances. Tonight, I know he stayed up on his tippy-toes for at least six feet while he greeted me when I got home. So cute!

After just a couple of weeks, he was completely housebroken, and today I let him stay out of the kennel while I went to market. No messes, anywhere! Good dog!!

He bites his nails. My Ayn Chee did the same thing. Maybe it's a terrier thing? I never had to trim Ayn Chee's nails, and it looks like I won't have to do Figgy Pudding's either. I am thinking about training him to make my morning coffee. I do believe he could do it! He is the smartest dog I have ever had!

He has adjusted to the electric fence. That was a hard one for me. But after having him dart out the front door and make it all the way to Lincoln Way, I just didn't want to take any chances with him. He is a fast one! And he has TOTAL RESPECT for those flags in the yard now.

Thanks to both of you, from the bottom of my heart, for helping Tashi to adjust to Figgy that Sunday. He lights up our life.  

Sincerely,

Susan, Tashi and Figgy