Urban Foraging

People who know me for any length of time at all know that I am a total nutcase when it comes to berry-picking. Oh, I like the berries alright - but it's the actual finding and picking of the berries that really turns me on.

This morning I am such a happy camper - er, uh - berry-picker. A friend and I were talking about our secret passions yesterday, and berry-picking came up. She confided that there are "quite a few" blackberries in a field behind her church. Knowing where she attends church, I casually drove to the back of the parking lot this morning, and lo! There are berries. Wonderful, Episcopal berries. Berries that come right up to the car and throw themselves at your feet!

Someone maintains this field just for me. It is undeveloped, yet mowed. And there are pathways mowed through the underbrush. At the edges of all the mowing trails are berries. Luscious, pickable berries. I am the happiest I've been since moving here. I have berries.

Berry-picking is much, much more than a quest for Mother Nature's bounty. It's a trip to a time long gone. It's reconnecting with people and places I will never see again. It's the first sweet week of summer vacation - right after school is out, but before boredom sets in. Berry-picking is my childhood in a pail. My aunt's wonderful blackberry cobbler. My cousin's secret berry patch. Ticks and snakes (or, more accurately, the fear of them) and layers of East Texas dust, so fine it feels like brown talcum powder.

I have berries, Auntie. Will you make me a cobbler? I'll help.

I love you.

I need a man!

No...not like that!

About sixteen years ago, my husband and I parted company. Immediately thereafter, I bought my own home. About fifteen minutes after we moved in, the toilet died. Having absolutely NO spare cash lying around, I was forced to repair the damn thing myself. It was just the start of Adventures in Home Ownership. Third house and many years later, nothing much has changed.

Today I bought what I believe is my fourth complete toilet repair kit. Once again, I will find myself upside down in a rather unpleasant location, water everywhere, trying not to skin my knuckles with either of the gargantuan hand tools I'll be forced to use. I'm going to try to keep the current potty duct-taped together until the weekend when I will have more time and energy, but we'll see. At least, if it finishes falling apart, I'll have the repair parts on hand.

Sometimes I am envious of those other girls. You know...the ones with the husbands lying about, ready to do the dirty work at a moment's notice.

And then I have a Scotch and watch trashy TV until the feeling goes away.

Size Does Matter

I've complained about this before, and not one damn thing was done about it. The size of food is just getting out of hand! Those huge, tasteless, juiceless, hollow strawberries continue to plague us at the supermarket. What have they done with "real" strawberries and why did they substitute those horrific genetic mutations for them? Inquiring minds want to know.

But, the newest thing to bug me at the supermarket is the size of chicken breasts. Come ON! I know gargantuan ta-tahs are all the rage in Hollywood...but on chickens? I really don't think roosters are boob men.

So, yesterday I got a hankering for a good ol' assortment of southern vegetables and fried chicken. A trip to the local farmer's market for the veggies (I'll rant about the corn selections another time) was moderately successful. But, the chicken. Oh, my! I got the smallest package of chicken breasts Kroger had. The price was slightly over $8.00, and the tray held two half-breasts. TWO! Everything else in the case was even larger.

I have an ordinary, standard-size cast iron skillet. Those two chicken breasts filled the entire thing! In fact, they had to be squeezed a bit. They were enough to feed a family of four or five, easily.

But, the biggest problem was that in order to get them done, I had to cook them far too long, browning the crust way beyond the point of perfection. And guess what!? They were still pink and resilient in the middle. UGH! There's nothing worse.

I'm not sure where I'm going to find "normal" chicken breasts in the future, but it's become my newest quest. I suspect the answer will be found at the organic market, where I will probably still pay eight bucks...but the portions will be more normal. And this time, smaller is better. I should develop a t-shirt.

Prepare for the Inevitable!

Yesterday I was reminded that there are still women out there who don't get it. If you are a woman who has made it well into your fifties and your husband hasn't dumped you for a younger, sleeker model, consider yourself lucky. If you're a woman in your late sixties or early seventies and your husband hasn't kicked the bucket, consider yourself lucky. For the rest of us, there's the strong possibility that we will find ourselves in one of these unfortunate situations...sooner than we would like to think. The key is preparation.

A friend came to me and asked if I could help her ease her newly-widowed mother through a growing depression. See...Mom finds herself alone at 70 after nearly 50 years of marriage, not in the best financial shape and in quite a funk about it. Mom needs a job. I have jobs that older people can do on a part-time basis. In fact, half my staff is in their eighties. The problem is, once she married Dearly Departed Dad, this friend's mom went to live in a cave, I guess. That's all I can figure.

She hasn't worked outside the home one single day. To make matters worse, she never even volunteered anywhere. So, she essentially has no skills to offer, other than homemaking. I asked if she had any computer experience, because that's something one can acquire without actually going to work. "Oh, yes...she surfs the internet all the time." When I inquired about word processing or...GASP...Excel or even something simple like Quicken. Well....no. Dad always did all their "stuff" for the house. There is really nothing I can do for this woman. I can't pay her to just hang out in my office all day, and I don't have the time to teach her the skills she should have acquired years ago.

I thought we left this mentality behind a few decades ago. I am always totally shocked to discover I'm wrong.

Ladies!!!! Even if you don't "need" a job, get out there and do SOMETHING. Anything. Edit and mail your church bulletin. Answer the phone one afternoon a week at the woman's shelter or pet rescue. Get creative - and get experience. Anything will do. When that day comes and you're left standing in the middle of the room all by yourself - for whatever reason - you won't have to start from scratch. By that time, it's almost too late.

Random Tiny Turds

My daughter thinks I need to blog about my life in general and not just use this vehicle to air my frustrations. She thinks I'm amusing...not like Last Comic Standing amusing. More like putting honey on a baby's fingers and giving them a feather amusing. I love her anyway.

So, this week's Slice of Life is about the Random Tiny Turds.

I have cats. Two of them. I figure it takes at least three to qualify as a Crazy Cat Lady, so you have to understand I am not really a cat expert. I'm also pretty lazy. So, I use those gravity-fed food and water things that I only have to fill about once a month. This means my cats eat dry food. Or did, rather. Apparently, the problem is that dry food sometimes causes constipation, if the cat is not in the habit of drinking enough water. Now, mind you...we had noticed individual little turds here and there around the house for several weeks. But neither of us were sharp enough to connect the dots and realize we had a problem.

One morning not too long ago, we discovered Max, my younger neutered male cat, trying to poop in every corner of the house. He'd go from one room to the other, strain a bit, yell a bit, hiss and growl at the rest of us (we weren't touching his anus, I swear) - and then he'd make a very small deposit and move on, hoping to find another place where things worked better. He was so out of sorts and threateningly grumpy that we just let him continue his quest for relief and followed along behind him, removing the evidence.

I did a little research and learned that I needed to start giving him wet food - and encourage him to take in more water. Since that disturbing morning, I've been splitting a can of very wet cat food between the two of them every day. I've been dribbling a capsule of cod liver oil over their servings in the hopes of lubricating things a bit more. I don't know if that's good or bad. I just made it up. I hope I'm not killing them.

I was complaining yesterday that I didn't think the wet food approach was working because there's still not a lot of material in the litter box. My daughter disagreed, noting that we are no longer seeing Random Tiny Turds around the house. It's a rather unique way to measure success, but at this stage of my life, I'll take success any way I can get it.

Bassackwards

I clearly don't get it. Why is it so important for some of you - you know who you are - to BACK into parking spaces? Lately, there seems to be an epidemic of this behavior. My last several visits to Walmart and/or the supermarket meant I had to patiently wait my turn to park while I endured the contortions of some guy in a monster truck (or soccer mom in a minivan) as they attempted to squeeze into their chosen spot - backwards. It's hard enough to get those behemoths into the typical parking spot frontways. Why would anyone make things harder on themselves by choosing to do it the other way around? It must be some form of masochism. A modern equivalent of self-flagellation. OR perhaps...just maybe...these people are sociopaths who haven't yet found another way to punish the rest of the world for existing. At least they're not in some dark alleyway torturing puppies and kittens. I should be grateful.

Flippers!

I've been meaning to grump about this for a while, but never got around to it. Some guy just punched my button, so now's the time. So, Mr. Big walked up to the ticket window and announced that he wanted "the best cheap ticket" I had for tonight's New Year's Eve Extravaganza. Does this sound like a "cheap ticket" event to you? I didn't think so. Neither did he. He was just trying to "impress" me with his jaunty humor. I nearly split my sides laughing so much. At the time, our lobby piano was being tuned, and he regaled the piano tuner with loads of piano-tuning humor as well. Delightful gentleman. He really charmed me when it came time to pay for his tickets. He flipped the credit card at me, as one might do when tossing cards into a hat! So nonchalant and devil-may-care. How RUDE! I hate those credit card flippers. There are more of them out there than you might imagine. People! When transacting business with someone, please try to remember that they are human beings and deserve to be treated with at least a small measure of respect. It would be ever so nice if you could gently HAND the clerk your credit card. Is that so much to ask? I think not.