Norma

This bowl reminds me of Norma Harrington, a friend who passed away a few years ago. Norma wasn't small and delicate like the bowl. She was a big-boned hearty woman with loud opinions and a loud laugh. But there was a delicate aspect to her and an appreciation for beauty. She was a wonderful writer. She had just finished writing a small book about the death of her husband, Art, when she died, quite suddenly and unexpectedly. Art died a slow painful death, of leukemia. I never met him, but I got to know him through her book. It was a little jewel of a book, fragile and tender, an offering of love, just like this bowl.  She was writing it to pass on to her children, but we members of her writing group got to read it first as it came together in bits and pieces.  

After I lost a beloved friend, Norma said to me, "But you know you've been cared for, don't you? And once you know that, it changes everything. To be seen for who you are and loved unconditionally, flaws and all, is such a precious gift. No one can take that away from you." 

She also said that gratitude was one of the most underrated qualities in life. "Gratitude," she said, "is prayer."

Comfort

Our early spring has turned back into winter. The weather cooled, the sky grew gray and eventually it rained. It was just a drizzle at first, but by the time I went to bed there was a steady downpour against the window pane. It's comforting to go to bed with the sound of rain in your ears -- as long as you're inside, snuggling under the warm covers and not outside in the wet and cold. How lucky we are to have a roof over our heads!

The weekend has been all about comfort, including comfort food, of course. I cooked up a storm: cornbread and chicken soup, Thai beef salad and finally, at midnight, apple crisp, because Bob and I were still hungry. We scarfed it up as we listened to the BBC's midnight broadcast about the Egyptian protests. No one in that country is comfortable. Revolution is not a comfortable thing. But neither is hunger. And the average Egyptian wage is only $2 a day.

Game Over

I'm obsessed with the protests in Egypt. I've been following them on the BBC World News Service, Al Jazeera and the NY Times. The Beeb is my favorite, though I read that the Tories plan to slash its budget. That would be a shame since it's the best news service in the world, but slash and burn seems to be the philosophy these days. Slash and burn in Egypt, for sure. I'm all for getting rid of Mubarak, but if the uprisings succeed, I worry about the chaos that might follow. Or who will take his place, though surely you couldn't do worse than him.  Famous last words -- Remember Iran and the Shah.

I'm amused, though, at how the media outlets and western governments refer to Egypt as the largest "Arab" nation because it isn't. It may be the largest Middle Eastern country in terms of its population, but it's not Arab. It was Nasser who started that idea with his pan-Arabism crap. This ideology aimed to kick out the Western powers (and to make him the ruler), but it was also racist in nature. It discriminated against the many other people living in Egypt: Copts, Turks, Lebanese, and Jews, just to name a few, all who had been living there for thousands of years.

Pinnacles of Pleasure

Shopping was the theme of our day. First we lunched at the Chaat Cafe: senior and student specials included chicken tandoori wraps, salad, and a coke, all for $5! It was too good a deal to pass up so Bob ordered it and I followed suit, but then we were greedy for the naan so we had a helping of that, too. It turned out to be too much. Our wraps were huge and delicious, the chicken succulent and juicy, but we couldn't finish them so we had to take one home.

Bob's next big pinnacle of pleasure was at Target, a store we rarely go to -- thus, we are naive in its ways. (It took us a while to realize that there was a second floor.) But the best realization was that there was an escalator designed to transport the shopping cart upstairs. We had fun watching our cart go up as if it were a person in its own right. It was fun watching it come down, too.

Mostly I took pleasure in Bob's pleasure. He is wonderfully delighted by small things.

Two Films

My Netflix preferences are British murder mysteries, preferably TV series so that the episodes can keep on coming. Alas, I've exhausted that category for now, so in desperation I ordered two foreign films that I knew nothing about.

One was I am Love, an Italian film starring Tilda Swinton. I ordered it because I loved her performance in Orlando and because I love her odd, androgynous appearance. The second one was an Argentinian film called The Secret in Their Eyes starring Ricardo Darin and Soledad Villamil. Both films turned out to be about obsessive love.

They were good.  Not great, but good, with engrossing characters and unexpected story lines. I Am Love is a romantic story with dark undertones. The Secret in Their Eyes is a dark story with romantic overtones.

European films these days seem to center around families. There's always a big family reunion scene with everyone seated around the dinner table. On the surface all is formal and perfect, but explosive tensions crackle underneath. And so it was in I Am Love. Whatever was going on was a bit mysterious to me, being in Italian and all, but the sets were beautiful: elegant and streamlined like something out of an Italian design magazine. 

The Secret in Their Eyes is centered on the past. Can we ever know what happened? Is it worth going back to revisit the pain? To search for an absolute? An answer, justice, ideal love?

Unconditional Love

I always enjoy preparing the invitations to my monthly collage party. For the front of the card, I pick a collage that someone made in the group. This month, I chose my own. (See above.)

In the evening I led the monthly free-writing group at the Lakeview Library. Jeanne Lupton used to lead this group. I volunteered to take over after she went on to bigger and better things, but whenever the meeting comes around, I dread it. I'm afraid that no one will come, or that too many people will.

Once I'm there, it's great -- and so it was this time. Eight people showed up and four of them were new, which was gratifying. We each select two topics; then we throw our slips of paper into the middle of the table and randomly choose which ones to write about. Favorite subjects this time were "Unconditional Love, " "Food," "Basketball" and "Star-Gazing."

Collette wrote about her unconditional love of food. Ted wrote a beautiful piece about star-gazing. Oliver wrote about his love of basketball. After he got off from work, he used to choose his route home through the parks that had basketball courts. He'd stop to play in each one until he finally reached home. That story was particularly touching because Oliver is a diabetic whose legs are amputated. If he plays ball now, it would have to be from his wheelchair.

The Little Room

I ordered a new computer desk from Office Max. The parts were delivered over a week ago, but it was another week before the people we paid to assemble it actually arrived. Actually, it was a single person, not "people": one overweight older man named Jerry who huffed and puffed during the entire time he was here. I was afraid he was going to have a heart attack, but he did a beautiful job. He took two and a half hours to complete the task, but that didn't seem to be too long, considering that there were 58 steps in the process! It would have taken us months so we were grateful.

And now I have a desk with lots of cubbyhole spaces, drawers and a hutch. I spent the rest of the day re-organizing what I call my "office" when I'm paying bills and my "art studio" when I work on collages. I've still got some sorting to do, but the majority of it is done.

I'm quite pleased with my little room. Christina painted it over the summer. It used to be dirty yellow, but now it's pale green, which gives it a fresh, clean look. My next project is to buy a small futon to put under the window between the two built-in bookcases. Then, besides an office and an art studio, it can also function as a sun room/library and sleeping porch.

Free-Range Cats

One cat can seem like three. Actually, there was a cat at each house where we dined over the weekend. Deb's cat, Luna, appeared after dinner. She swept regally through our midst, but wasn't really interested in the proceedings. What she wanted was to be let outside. "To face down monster raccoons," explained Deb.

The other cat, whose name I do not know, was very ardent in her inexplicable attachment to me. After dinner, she insisted on accompanying me to the bathroom. She didn't actually use her cat box at the same time that I used the toilet -- (perhaps a mistake to get too graphic with the details) but she was very friendly in there.

She followed me out to the living room where she very loudly joined in the conversation. It was a free-ranging conversation covering the history of calendars, the tarot, physics, astrology and murder mysteries. It wound up with Russ reading us poetry. I stood at one side to listen while the cat sat at my feet imploring me to --?

"What do you want?" I asked her.

"She wants attention. That's all she ever wants," said LLyana."She's a very demanding beast."

So I picked her up and carried her over to the couch where I sat down and placed her in my lap. She immediately settled herself in for the long-term, converting her plaintive meows into contented purrs.

Ship-Shape

I have to add another post since I'm anal and my goal is to post an entry each and every day--which isn't realistic unless I have daily access to a working computer and the Internet --yet still I cling stubbornly to this illusion of "daily practice." You can imagine my consternation when I discovered that one of my entries had mysteriously disappeared!  In other words, I deleted it by mistake. By posting twice today, I hope to make up for its loss.

Ahem.  This post is to inform you that The Curse of The Bathroom has been lifted. Christina finished the paint job and with the masking tape removed, our bathroom looks lovely. The lavender-blue walls against white bead board gives it a nautical look. True, it didn't turn out to be the Provence salle de bain of my dreams, but the tiny room does have an undeniable New England charm. Tidy and ship-shape, that's the ticket.

Old Friends

We had dinner with our friends Deb and Joan last night and it was fun. Bob brought a salad, which he made in THREE BOWLS. Since that's the title of this blog, he said he'd done my work for me.  Deb baked a chicken in her new clay pot, which she bought at a garage sale. The succulent chicken came out of the oven with lots of broth, roasted carrots, potatoes and onions. She didn't put any broth in to begin with, just soaked the pot in water and then added the ingredients. Magically, the thing produced its own broth!  I was impressed. Now I want a clay pot, too.

We had The Old People's Conversation: litanies of our various ailments, complaints about young people talking on their cellphones in public and much clucking of tongues about how the country has gone downhill since Our Day.

We used to talk about sex and heartache, about our dreams and plans for the future. Then the subjects changed to mortgages, house repairs and stock market investments. From there it went to retirement benefits, health insurance and 41Ks. And now we're here.

Still, it's good to travel through the decades with old friends.

Space-Nectar

Liz commented that my posts are often about food.  This is only natural, since my family was obsessed with the subject.  As soon as we finished breakfast, my father would say,"What are we going to have for dinner?" Jumping the gun. I jump the gun, too, worrying about what to fix.

My mother and dad were both good cooks, but I'm not. I'm no good with the spontaneous approach.  I have to cook by recipe, but often the recipes are too complicated. I'm daunted by the thought of making them so I just eat whatever I can find in the fridge or go out.

This has not been the best approach.  If cookies are what I find, I eat them. A whole bagful.  Or a piece of cheese, which does not agree with me. Eating out is not always a good idea, either. It's expensive, hard to park, and often not worth the time or trouble.

Yesterday I ate a slice of pizza out, which turned out to be a mistake.  Too much cheese. So I've determined to eat in more and eat more healthy items. More fruits and vegetables. I love fruit and have no problem devouring it in quantity, but vegetables are more problematic.

The Demoniacs

I have to read something before I go to sleep and it has to be a real book, not a virtual one. If I haven't been to the library, I pull a mystery out of my bookcase to re-read. Even when I remember the plot, if the writing is good enough, the book is still enjoyable.

Last night I re-read The Demoniacs by John Dickson Carr. He was American, but the majority of his mysteries are set in England. He's famous as the master of the locked room mystery. His intellectual puzzles tend to be rather dry if you're not in the mood for them, but his historical mysteries are really fun, full of romance and adventure.

The Demoniacs takes place in eighteenth century London. It's populated with famous figures of the time like Lawrence Sterne and Justice Fielding, the brother of the author Henry Fielding and originator of the Bow Street Runners. The best thing about the book is the details: fulsome descriptions abound of the old London Bridge, Newgate Prison and Bridewell, the waxworks and the bagnio.

Full Moon and Fog

A  blanket of fog obliterated our usual view of rooftops and palms. It was so unearthly that I got up several times during the night to peer out of the living room window. As the night went on, the fog became even thicker. Then at dawn, it suddenly dissipated. Rooftops and palm trees reappeared on the horizon. The sun came out and our first hint of spring was in the air.

I didn't entirely like that. I prefer mist and rain, in moderation, of course. If it goes on too long it can get depressing, but mostly I find cool weather to be mysterious and magical. It's the greenest time of year  in California -- and the quietest time in noisy Oakland. Delivery trucks, barking dogs, construction crews and freeway traffic: all is muffled by the fog. But at the first sign of warm weather, the construction crews renew their noise and the neighbors bring out their lawn mowers and leaf blowers. The neighborhood dogs get excited at the activity and start barking. And during rush hour, you can hear TV helicopters circling overhead.  

Sigh.  That happened yesterday after the fog disappeared.  But last night there was a full moon, round and glowing in the sky. That made up for everything.  

The Curse of the Bathroom

Our bathroom renovation should have taken three weeks.  In reality, it's verging on six months. Our contractor got sick, then we both got sick, and Christina who volunteered to paint it, got sick. Finally, she's back on the job and the first coat is done. Only one more coat to go plus a few touch-ups to the door and window frame and a mirror left to buy -- but do I like the color, the one we all agreed on? It's very BLUE, a deep lavender blue. Maybe a golden shade would have worked better with the dark blue tile (think Provence).  But it's been so goddamn hard to get this done, I'll probably just settle for the blue.

Cabbages and Kings

Ingrid and Christopher came over from San Francisco and we all went out to lunch, this time to Champa Garden, a Laotian restaurant near our house. The four of us shared an order of shrimp rolls while we talked of cabbages and kings. Actually, we talked of tie-dye (we were all wearing tie-dyed T shirts),  of nude modeling (Christopher's livelihood) and of birthday parties (Ingrid's was last night).

Edamame

I went to a Japanese restaurant for lunch. A woman walked in with two small children, her husband following.  She was not particularly beautiful, but she looked stunning in a black crushed velvet dress, a pendant around her neck and a cunningly wrought metal bracelet on her wrist. Since this was a casual lunch with her family she had dressed down by wearing black tights and gray boots. The husband wore a T shirt, jeans and a baseball cap.  The children were neatly but casually dressed. They all sat down at the table next to me. It turned out she was French, naturellement.   She spoke French to the children and fed them little tidbits. Her husband was American, of course. He looked on.

I am fascinated with the French.  I have a totally erroneous but highly romantic idea of their way of life.  This elegantly dressed woman fit the bill.  I watched in fascination to see what she would feed her children.  First the edamame arrived. She arranged the pods on a small plate between them.  The little girl opened each pod carefully, examined the bean, and then placed it daintily in her mouth. The little boy hammered his fist on the table, scattering the pods until a few rolled near him;  then he stuffed a bunch in his mouth.

The mother took his eating style in her stride.  More plates of food arrived: salmon teriyaki for the children and sushi for the adults.  She chose two oblong plates and heaped a mound of rice on each one.  Then she cut up the salmon into bite-sized pieces and divided it evenly on each plate.  The kids went to work with gusto on their food.

My faith in her Frenchness was realized.  She not only looked perfect, she fed perfect food to her children in an aesthetically pleasing way. Their meals were healthy but elegant.  No pizza or burgers with fries for them (though I hear Le McDonald's is very popular in France) -- nor America's version of a healthy meal for children: carrots and celery sticks, a peanut butter sandwich and an apple. Ugh!  How uninspired.

Indulgences

Bob's birthday was all about food and shopping.  We stuffed ourselves on Indian buffet and indulged ourselves buying office supplies at Office Max. It was a beautiful day and fun to drive around Alameda looking at houses.  Though the island is small, we are always discovering new gems -- this time several streets of impressive mansions that overlooked the canal.  We completed our day of self-indulgence by watching the last episode of The Pillars of the Earth, in which indulgences were traded for nasty favors. I'm glad the word "indulgence" has taken on a new meaning since the Middle Ages, but I could have used a pardon for the sin of consuming two bowls of kheer. Unfortunately, my digestive tract would not forgive me.

Blessings and Peace

We received a wonderful letter from Ruth, our 95 year old neighbor:

Dear Bob and Catherine,
     I enjoyed your holiday visit and the cake.

May joy surround you.
May happiness enfold you.
May be good health be with you.
Blessings and Peace.

                               Ruth

And today, on Bob's 68th birthday, her prayers were answered with a good verdict from my doctor on the state of my health. All is well and we are grateful.

Chit-Chat

Christina prepped the bathroom for its paint makeover while Bob and I went to Berkeley for lunch at the Chaat Cafe.  The Chaat has the best naan bread around, though our first order was burnt and the second underdone. According to Three Bears logic, the third would have been "just right" if only we'd had room to eat it.  But even when imperfect, Chaat's naan is superior to all others, so we were satisfied.  In the evening we gorged ourself on The Pillars of The Earth, a medieval swashbuckler packed with blood and gore, which was just as satisfying. Evil monks and sexy witches, swordplay and prophecies: what more could you ask for?

Art Therapy

I spent a happy morning re-organizing my art studio.  There's a lot to do, but I got a good start on it. Then Christina came over to paint our bathroom, but she was feeling down because her computer had stopped working.  As it turned out, her hard drive was defective so her two novels, her music, and her online bill-pays were all gone. It was a tragedy that definitely called for some art and retail therapy so we made a visit to Blick's. We bought a few items, but as she said, "It's enough to be near all these beautiful things.  Just the atmosphere cheers me up," as she lovingly fingered the decorative papers and I looked with longing at the blank journals.  I refrained from buying any because notebooks are my addiction and I already have a thousand or so at home.  A slight exageration, but not by much.

The King's Speech

The two bowls in the tray represent two shitty aspects of my very difficult day. The bowl not in the tray is the exception.  Having returned from a botched up blood test and then getting sick after an unwise lunch of cheeseburger and fries, I happened upon a line of people filing into the Piedmont Theater for the afternoon matinee. So I filed in behind them, bought a ticket and sunk down in my seat for two hours of escapist entertainment.  Not a great movie by any means but Colin Firth's performance was worth the price of admission.

Euro-Crime

It's cold enough to make beef stew, which I did.  Then Bob and I watched Inspector Montalbano on International Mystery. The warm world of Montalbano is the opposite of my cold one.  He solves crimes in Sicily, which is corrupt, poor and dominated by the Mafia, but also breathtakingly beautiful.  It's a sunny island inhabited by lovable characters, one of whom is the wonderfully exasperated, sardonic inspector.  He lives in a house by the beach and loves to swim and eat seafood. When he's not detecting, outwitting the corrupt bureaucracy or entangled in complex romantic relationships, he's feasting on squid in ink or cold pasta with anchovies. Last night we watched him savor rice croquettes while we munched on crumpets dripping with butter and honey -- just to give our Italian evening a bit of British flavor.

Quebec in Oakland

No, I don't own a cat in a woolen hat, but I wish I did  because it was so cold on Saturday -- at least by my wimpy Bay Area standards. I did bundle up in gloves and jacket to drive to the Alameda Library for a solitary writing session.  It was well-heated there, but I was cold on the way home and even colder in the house. I could have used a kitten as an energy-saving device -- a  purring heater curled up against my body as I read my mystery, which ironically took place in the dead of winter in Quebec. The characters huddled up next to fireplaces, sipped hot chocolate and ate buttered croissants to escape the cold. There was a lot of snow in the book. I haven't seen snow in years, but I imagined myself holding my mug of chocolat chaud as I sat there with them, discussing the case as I watched snowflakes freeze against the windowpane.

Cafe Writers

Deb and I have been writing together ever since we  met; in fact, we first met in a writing class.  For years we wrote in various coffee houses in San Francisco. Then she moved to Mountain View, but that didn't stop us.  I drove down there and we wrote -- or she drove up to Oakland where I had recently moved and we wrote. It got easier when she moved to Oakland, too.  That was more than a decade ago. Yesterday we went to Woody's, a coffee house conveniently located on Park Street and -- we wrote.  Now that we've gotten older, the people around us seem younger and strangely weighted down with unnecessary equipment: laptops, I Pods, cell phones and such. Being oldsters, we just stick to pen and paper.

Sweetie Pie

We had our first collage party of the new year. As usual, it involved a lot of shrieking and chocolate.  I made a collage with a cat's paw in the foreground and a malevolent innertube cat in the background.  The cat was poised on a dripping spoon over a bowl of red glop.  I called it "Sweetie Pie."  Bob made a collage with disembodied faces peering out from a dark background. Christina worked on her art journal and Katherine created up and down figures floating in space or peering through doorways. Chris painted two pictures, one of a fantasy animal and the other a brightly-colored abstract, and Barbara experimented with textures.

A Healing Prayer

At my post-surgery medical appointment I felt great when the nurse informed me that my blood pressure was perfect and the doctor said I was "healing like gangbusters." I felt even better when I found out that our neighbor Larry was coming home from the hospital after a bad bout with pneumonia.  And it was good to visit  our other neighbor, 95 year old Ruth, who told me that she had started working on another quilt.  (She makes beautiful ones). So I decided that the theme of the day was "healing" and lit my virtual candles to facilitate it for all three of us: one for Larry, one for Ruth, and one for me. The others are for the rest of you. May the candles light your way!

Three Libraries in One Day

1. The Alameda Free Library is my favorite place to write.  It's quiet with lots of desks, free two hour parking, and  a minimum of crazy people. There's a gorgeous tree on view with flaming red leaves in autumn, now bare--branched.  I set up my laptop on one of their lovely pristine desks and typed away to my heart's content.

2. The Dimond Branch of the OPL is starting to grow on me, especially since it's located near two of my favorite burrito joints. The African-American woman behind the main desk had amazing Christmas tree-embossed nails. I found two mysteries in their free bin besides a few more from the library's "Hot Picks" shelf.

3.  The Lakeview Branch of the OPL is just down the hill from our house. I picked up a book that was on hold and then Bob and I took a walk by Lake Merritt.  We saw an elegant egret perched on a chain and two cormorants with their wings spread out in a pleasing architectural configuration -- as well as a regiment of ducks on parade.

Berkeley Bowl

Berkeley Bowl was the highlight of my day.  I always enjoy shopping there.  I view the fight for a parking spot as a warrior's challenge and the tangle with other shoppers' carts as a 21st century version of a Roman chariot race. I emerged victorious with my groceries in hand, my prize a bunch of Satsuma mandarins. They are my favorite kind of tangerine, juicy and succulent but without seeds. I devoured several of them later in my effort to go for ONE ENTIRE DAY without eating sweets.  Of course, Satsumas are sweet, but I figure fruit doesn't count.

Just Right

That's how I spent my day, in bed, after getting sick.  I guess my bowl of soup (French onion) was either too hot or too cold.  It definitely wasn't "just right."  It sent me to the restaurant's bathroom toute de suite! After that, there was nothing to do but come home and spend the rest of the day in bed.  That turned out to be exactly what I needed.  I dozed and re-read a Margery Allingham mystery while Bob went off to a party.  When he got home, we lit a fire and watched an Inspector Maigret episode on International Mystery. That did feel "just right."

New Year's Day

A gloomy New Year's Day.  Bob and I went to Sears.  I was looking for a nightgown since mine is in tatters.  I found one and bought it, mainly because one of my New Year's Resolutions is to buy an item of clothing once a week -- but I didn't really like it so I returned it. Bob bought an orange T shirt for $5.  I came home empty-handed, but, hey, I tried.  The best part of my day was baking banana bread. I made two loaves, one for us and one as a belated Christmas present for our neighbors Joyce and Ruth.  I wrapped up theirs in tin foil and a leftover ribbon. Ours is gone.

New Year's Eve

I wanted to go to the bell ringing ceremony at San Francisco's Asian Art Museum, but it was at ten in the morning on New Year's Eve and New Year's Eve was on Friday this year, not a convenient time. Three years ago I went to the ceremony with some friends. The giant gong was rung continuously and anyone could take a turn.  It was splendid to hear the deep continuous reverberation of the gong, a very auspicious way to bring in the new year.  Anyhow, no bell ringing this year, but a walk by Lake Merritt.  Lake-wise, winter is my favorite time of year. The geese population is diminished and the coots take over, small black birds with white dots.  They glide over the cold smooth water like ice skaters.