Wordjanitor Strikes Again

Three weeks ago, my dad called me with questions. By his tone and the less-than-subtle hint of frustration in his voice, these were very pressing questions: Why do we have so many damn towels?  Where in the hell did all of these sheets come from?  What am I supposed to do with all these damn towels? Who needs this many towels? Then two weeks ago, on a Thursday morning, it was abundantly clear why we had         so              many                        damn                                   towels. I come by my hesitance to ask for help honestly. It's inherited. Hobbled after a foot surgery, X gave me a bell so I could ring for help when I needed it. Me? Need? Help? True to form, I would wait until he was out of the house, then hop around to...

My dad has a plain ol' farm gate at the end of his driveway. It's the gate that comes right after the END OF ROAD sign. It's the gate that has a NO TRESPASSING sign on one post and PRIVATE PROPERTY painted boldly on a watering can attached to the other. It's the gate people drive through and find themselves sitting in front of his garage asking themselves, "what happened to the road?" If I happen to be there, there are also two large dogs barking at them while they attempt to figure out how their sign-blindness or illiteracy allowed them to drive to such lengths. I find myself in what I have officially labeled my "mid-life craft crisis." Fear not, I am not going to the dark side and diving into the cult of scrap-booking. Exacto knives, stickers, and such don't have the right potential for injury. I'm buying tools. I'm looking into welding classes.

Notes from stops along the way on the Central Coast... Watsonville Food: Gizdich Ranch  Moss Landing Food: Phil's Fish Market Santa Cruz Relax: Well Within Check out the Friday Funday Central Coast Day Trip here. Watsonville Gizdich Ranch 55 Peckham Road, Watsonville, California It's all about the pie. Yes, they have sandwiches, but how on earth do you expect me to focus on some bread with stuff in the middle of it when the air is aroma-fied with apples, cinnamon, ollalieberries, and other good things? Here's a hint. Don't expect me to focus on the sandwich or even remember it exists.  The first time I went, I had straight-up apple pie. These things are so loaded with apples that the crust is probably eight inches high at the middle, the crown, the summit, the apex of pie-ness. Most recently, I had the apple-ollalieberry pie. You can do the whole a la mode thing, but I don't like to dilute my pie with unnecessary dairy produc...

Admittedly, I'm pretty lousy at this whole dating thing. I was pretty clueless in my 20s and now that I'm single again at "somewhere beyond 40," I'm still in the fog. I'm not used to getting "hit on," probably because it didn't happen in my earlier life. Or if it did, I didn't notice because I was shy and pretty sure anyone interested in me was outta their damn gourd.  Somewhere along the way I escaped that way of thinking and evolved into my current goofy, relatively outgoing, more social self. I ain't bucking for Julie McCoy 's job on the The Love Boat , but ain't hiding behind plants, furniture, taller people, posts... I'm just me and I'm cool with who me is. But I just don't always pick up on those pick-up cues. I'll be in the middle of a conversation and realize, " Oh, you're hitting on me. Now I get it."

Queen of domestic culinary skills that I am... insert laugh track here ... I've never actually made a peach pie. Before today. And now I've made three. And I still have plans for cobblers, strudels, and other such previously unprepared pastrified peachification projects. I'm on a mission. My dad's peach trees went more than a little over-the-top this year. Despite thinning the fruit earlier in the season, he has three trees that quite possibly define the term prolific. The fruit on two of the trees is so ripe it can't be transported further than to the house. So, I've picked, peeled, pitted, and pared pounds and pounds of peaches. After pie #1 I was already bored with plain ol' peaches, so I've been experimenting... Muah ha ha ha... So far no explosions due to chemical reactions between grated ginger, peaches, and pecans. Tomorrow... The Strudel Experiment...

The walls were closing in on Cubeville. It was definitely time for a break. I pulled @ out of his summer program and took off Friday from work. FIELD TRIP!!! Destination: Harley Farms Goat Dairy , Pescadero. I figured it would be a neat experience for @ and I'd get some amusement out of it too. You know -- breathe some good coastal air, get close to some goats, learn how they make goat cheese, add an answer to the logarithmically expanding "how do they? how does it work? where does it come from?" list. How did we do? Breathe good coastal air: check Get close to some goats: check Learn how they make goat cheese: check Add an answer to the logarithmically expanding "how do they? how does it work? where does it come from?" list: check, check, check But really, how did it go? @'s trip report: "I milked a goat!!! It was so AWESOME !" My trip report: "I milked a goat! It was great fun!" And, no need to brag, but according to our absolute ro...

My (week)daily lunch travels usually take me to the building 3 cafeteria where I fill a compostable plastic container with whole grains, edamame, cucumber, tomatoes, tofu, sunflower seeds, and a bit of soy dressing. There's some variation depending on the veggie selection, but I pretty much have the same thing every day. Yes, because I actually like it. No, really. Every once in awhile, a coworker will catch me eating something from the animal kingdom and react with some surprise that I consume things that used to moo, bok, swim, or otherwise require chasing to catch for use as food. So my absolute glee (yes GLEE) upon receiving an Armadillo Willy's e-mail titled "The Legend Returns" and announcing the return of the Linda's Drive-In Parisian Burger could be quite a shock to some. E-mail marketing sometimes hits the mark. Even to a jaded web marketing chick. You see, the Parisian Burger isn't just a burger. It's nostalgia. It's the one burger place I e...

Luke brought me a holiday gift this year... I had to wait to mention it, but I think it's finally safe. I figured I should be cautious. I spent the last few weeks scouring the headlines, google news searching, and otherwise verifying that come next winter, my dog won't be responsible for going way beyond Seuss's Grinch. When we're up in G'town visiting LD , Luke has the run of the woods. No fences, no leash. He patrols the property using the house as his base. A bird -- or for that matter, a moth -- flutters on the other side of the pond and he's off to the races to check it out. He sleeps quite well at night because he spends the days in nearly constant motion -- generally at high speed crashing through the woods, circling the pond, or traversing the driveway. A couple of days after Christmas, while my dad and I were moving random slash piles to burn piles, Luke emerged triumphant from the woods carrying a branch. As my proud pooch approached, I noticed the br...

Oddly enough, or not, one of our annual traditions has become going to a local car show out in the woods where LD lives. It's an interesting deal with an odd crowd. LD usually enters a car in the show, but this year opted out -- something about energy, spiderwebs, 104 degree heat, etc. So, this year we were spectators. My faves are usually the 32-34 Ford Fordor or Tudor hot rod restorations and I'll admit I have a thing for flame paint jobs. One of the cars this year has the most bad-a** flames I've seen to date. The flames trail from the front with little bursts on the sides. And then there's the trunk... (The trunk pic is worth double clicking to see larger, trust me.) Keep in mind, this is all free-hand work. I can't draw freehand with a pencil and a giant eraser. Whoever did this work, did it on a car -- no eraser. @'s fave is a delivery sedan he calls the "bug car" because he likes the headlight covers. And for the flame traditionalists among you....

The CAL FIRE stats are pretty amazing. That's all I know. I called LD to find out where the nearest one is to where he lives since a map shows one much closer than I'd prefer it to be (probably within 10 miles). Luckily, he's a big proponent of defensible space, ponds, irrigation ditches, and oh yeah, his own fire truck...

My guess is that I'm not the only parent on the planet who is a bit squirrelly about having a son learn to drive. My guess is that fear typically sets in around age 13 or so. Not me and my overachieving and amusing kid. His feet can't come close to reaching the pedals, but he can steer a tractor. Not just a little lawn tractor, but a full-size Kubota farm tractor. And that's a good thing when mama's car is parked between Point A and Point B of "Adventures in Tractor Driving 101" as taught by Grampa LD. Strangely, I'm pretty sure LD would have sooner eaten granite gravel before putting me or my brother behind the wheel of any such vehicle when we were only barely at the midpoint between four and five years old. My how adding the "grand" prefix to parent changes things. Note how, except to redirect a certain kid's gaze forward, LD's hand doesn't even get near the steering wheel. And how Luke wisely stays four legs and two steps ahead of...

It's official. I'm tired of coughing. Or Marge is. As is probably anyone who has been within 50 yards of me since, say, two weeks ago? I'm long since past contagious, but I don't sound it. Marge sounds like hell. I almost felt bad for the guy in the seat next to me on the flight home from Seattle. Almost. Until he unearthed a massive onion-filled tuna salad sandwich from a greasy paper bag and proceeded to eat it. And then silently but stinkily belch for the next two hours. He also felt he needed to share his newspaper at full width rather than doing a polite airplane origami. I complimented him on his sharing skills (after all, I have a four-year-old), but asked him to figure out the concept of personal space before his paper ended up in little wads seven rows up and three rows back. Actually, my phrasing was much nicer. Gosh, I really miss those monthly flights to JFK. Wait, no I don't. Someone should do a study on how many people eat burritos the night before a ...

Sometimes a spot is just a spot. Or it's not. In this case, 'twas not a spot. Or it was, but upon further examination, it wasn't. When my dad had his bone scan after his diagnosis from the biopsy, they found a spot, which they then x-rayed and determined was nothing after all. Meaning, the cancer is not in his bones. Which is good news. Damn good news. This reality shit is exhausting. The physical exhaustion from the weekend was honestly cleansing. It felt much like I did after playing weekend soccer tournaments back in the days before the titanium toe. I'm fairly certain most people think I'm nuts, but I'm fairly certain they probably thought that before I answered the "What did you do this weekend?" question. The exhausting part is all of the little lists in my head. Things to do, buy, decide. Work things, errand things, house things, dad things, and occasionally even me things. Apparently I have a habit of putting that list in the inco...

I'm not quite sure when I'll get back to big words. Or complex sentences with internal punctuation. I'm tired. Quite tired. On too many levels. The good news is that I am not learning the ins and outs of life at Starbucks, which means I successfully completed a major project at work. The project was exhausting, but energizing. I got to play a significant part in seeing something prominent emerge from a blank piece of paper. In a VERY short time. It's not so much, "look what I did" as "wow, it worked." It has been a rough few weeks. There's work, but then there's that real life thing too. I've been spending a lot of energy being the protector, caretaker, advocate, etc. Don't get me wrong, it's part of what makes me tick. When Y went to the hospital, it was automatic to me that I should be there to make sure she had what she needed. And before I left each night, I wanted to be damn sure the nurses had her pain meds figured out. But ...