something made different

the ravager of radishes strikes again! (for the first time ever)

2012-01-29T16:21:00.000-08:00

Things are moving steadily along in the winter garden. I got a radish. (See photograph below.) And then I came home one evening and the radish was completely gone. Plucked savagely from its bed. The beast who took it left no trace if it. No footprints. No mangled leaves. No nothing.Lila? (I thought.) Birds? Cats? Hoodlums? But then I noticed the empty tea mug resting on the table next to the chair that sits out by the garden for the purposes of contemplation or garden-related logistical strategy or naps in the sun. And that mug had Guatemalan written all over it. So all I know about the radish in the photograph below is that it was a radish and that it was apparently pretty tasty.

please have a seat on my sofa and...

2012-01-24T08:02:00.000-08:00

Visiting 11-year-old (apparently startled and slightly disoriented): You don't have a t.v.?

Jenny: No.

Visiting 11-year-old (looking from the couch to the place where there is no t.v.): What do you do on the couch?

...discuss.

insomnia

2012-01-23T12:13:00.000-08:00

Brain (in a loud whisper): Hey. Hey! Are you awake?

You: RNNGHhgh...unh?

Brain: We have cancer.

You (fully awake): What?!

Brain: I'm pretty sure.

You: What? What time is it?

Brain: The question is, what are we going to do about it?

You: It's three in the morning. We're not going to do any-- OH COME ON. WE DON'T HAVE CANCER.

Brain: Feel that? That pang near your bellybutton?

You: That's nachos, not cancer.

Brain: Maybe.

You: What do you mean "maybe"?

Brain (shrugs)

You: This is ridiculous. It's three in the morning. I'm going back to sleep.

Brain: If you want.

You: I want.

Brain: Fine

You: Good.

Brain: Good.

You: Good night.

Silence.

Brain (whispering): Caaannncccccerrrr...

You: Shut up.

Brain: Caaaannnnncccceeeerrrr...

You (pretending to snore)

Brain: Fine. Go to sleep if you want.

Silence.

Brain: Whhhyyy arrrenn't yoouu publishhhed yeeeettt?

48 cupcakes

2012-01-21T16:44:00.000-08:00

Last night, as you may recall, I embarked upon an epic and ambitious journey during which I successfully baked four kinds of cupcakes.

Along the way, I learned a lot about myself and my oven. I learned about how I should've bought more confectioner's sugar when I had the chance and how I shouldn't have squeezed my sifter so enthusiastically. I learned patience, ran up the electric bill, and figured out how to jury-rig a sifter with a rubber band. Above all, I learned that it is possible for one woman to bake forty-eight vegan cupcakes in one evening and come out the other side a better person, but that it is unlikely that she could bake sixty, even if she had enough baking cups to begin with.

Vanilla and chocolate cupcakes.

Chocolate cupcakes.

Mucho Margarita cupcakes.

Pistachio Rosewater cupcakes.

Chocolate cupcake.

SHOWING BIG MUSCLES FOR TO SCARING PEOPLES!

2012-01-20T22:43:00.000-08:00

You're in for a treat today! Or...well...more specifically, Raphael and the Vegan Neighbors* are in for a treat today.

Sweatpants on? Check.
Earrings out? Check.
Casual yet adorably perky and subtly flirtatious ponytail? Check.
Florence + The Machine, The Lonely Island, and Salt-n-Pepa keyed up on Spotify? Check.
Fortified with sausage cassoulet? Check.
Dog in? Check.
Dog out? Check.
Space heater on? Check.
Dog in? Check.
Dog out? Check.
Dog banned from further decision-making? Check.
Malbec poured? Check.

Remember about Nana and the vegan cupcake cookbook she gave me for Christmas? Well, it's 6:11 in the American Southwest, baby, and it's about to go down.

In other words, I am about to inititate the most epic Friday Night Vegan Cupcake Marathon the world has ever seen. I'm going to make vegan cupcakes until I run out of ingredients, alcohol, or stamina.

On the roster:
Pistachio Rosewater Cupcakes
Dulce Sin Leche Cupcakes
Mucho Margarita Cupcakes
Maple Cupcakes with Creamy Maple Frosting and Sugared Walnuts
Gingerbread Cupcakes with Lemony Frosting
Your Basic Chocolate Cupcake
Golden Vanilla Cupcakes

6:24 pm
Getting so pumped! INGREDIENTS LAID OUT!!! PISTACHIOS! EARTH BALANCE NATURAL BUTTERY SPREAD! SOY MILK! YEEEAAHH!! SHOWING BIG MUSCLES FOR TO SCARING PEOPLES!!

Oh God - where's my Chapstick?

6:41
Could probably use a little more Malbec.

7:02
BAM! Basic Chocolate Cupcakes in the oven!

7:10
Necessary bowls and measuring cups washed. Beaters licked. And also washed. Book opened to Pistachio Rosewater Cupcakes. Not sure what rosewater is yet, although I tasted rose ice cream once in Cyprus and didn't care for it. (I know! Ice cream! And still-!) Let's see if there's any redemption for rosewater in cupcakes.

7:13
NOW WAIT A MINUTE YA'LL THIS DANCE AIN'T FOR EVERYBODY ONLY THE SEXY PEOPLE SO ALL YOU FLYYY MUTHA'S GET ON OUT THERE AND DANCE DANCE I TELL YA

7:15
OOH BABY BABY BABY BABY OOH BABY BABY B-B-B-BABY PUSH IT GOOD PUSH IT REAL GOOD OWWWW! SALT-N-PEPA'S HERE

7:35
Rosewater really does smell like perfume, doesn't it?

7:43
Folding in the pistachios - lalala!

7:44
PISTACHIOS!

7:45
PISSSSTTAAACHHEEEEEOOOOSSSS

7:47
Oven.

7:49
ALL I WANNA DO IS KERPOWGERPOWGHKERPOWGH AND TAKE YOUR MON-AYY

7:50
Washing dishes. I don't like washing all these dishes every three-and-a-half minutes. Next time I go on a cupcake-making spree, I'm renting someone to wash my dishes.

7:51
More Malbec, yes please, thank you.

7:53
I'M ON A BOAT MOTHERFUCKAH TAKE A LOOK AT ME STRAIGHT FLOATIN' ON BOAT ON THE DEEP BLUE SEA SOMETHIN SOMETHIN WIND WHIPPIN OUT MY COAT YOU CAN'T STOP ME MOTHERFUCKER CUZ I'M ON A BOAT

7:55
Alright. What next? Margarita cupcakes. Darn straight. These suckers have tequila in them. Tequila!

7:56
Where the hell do I keep the tequila?

7:57
Freezer. Of course. Who doesn't keep their tequila in the freezer?

8:13
Switched to Itunes which requires less thinking than Spotify.

8:18
Rosewater or not, these puppies smell amazing. Like perfume if it was a cupcake. Except also like food. Like edible perfume.

8:22

8:47
Mucho Margarita cupcakes - in the oven!

8:53
Did you know that, when I was a teenager, I read science fiction and fantasy almost to the exclusion of everything else? People are always surprised by that. I guess it's because I'm so cool now.

8:59
Maple cupcakes look like too much work. Let's do the vanilla ones since they're the ones I'm addicted to.

9:30
Vanilla cupcakes are baking. This might be it, friends, because I've got four kinds of cupcakes accomplished, and there's still frosting to consider. Vegan or not, a cupcake's not much of a cupcake without frosting.

9:43
I'll make the rosewater glaze for the pistachio rosewater cupcakes first and see how things go. I'm probably going to run out of confectioner's sugar even before I run out of steam. Although the steam, I have to tell you, is suffering from a terrible lowering of pressure.

9:50
Gaw! Broke my sifter!

9:54
The vanilla cupcakes sank in the centers! According to the cookbook, this may be because the oven was too hot. (The other option was "too cold", but after three-and-a-half hours of preheating, I'm guessing the problem was not a cold oven.)

9:56
Uh-oh. Meant to halve the rosewater glaze recipe, but forgot and used to whole amount of margarine. I'm still going to halve everything else. Down the rabbit hole we go.

9:58
Rosewater just does NOT smell like something you should eat.

10:32
OMG I LOVE THE POGUES!!! The rosewater glaze came out fine, by the way. Maybe the dry Arizona air has something to do with the fact that it could clearly never have worked if I added the correct amount of margarine.

10:40
Done. Done. And done. But not everything is frosted, because I've had far too much malbec to make more frosting. Who knows how things would turn out. Not good, probably. I'm gonna go step outside to see if the lights are on over at the Vegan Neighbors' house.

10:46
Smells like rosewater and tequila in here. Oh my gosh, I'm delighted by that! Some lights are on over there at the Vegan Neighbors', but not enough for me to go knock on the door. Maybe I'll wait until tomorrow to deliver cupcakes.

10:53
Have. Licked. Too. Many. Beaters. Cupcake pictures tomorrow for proof because I can't work past the sugar in my bloodstream tonight. I'm either about to go to bed, take a hot bath, or pass out on the couch.Or the floor. Or while leaning against the stove. Or some combination of all of the above. The sugar'sworse than the malbec. This is terrible.

10:55
Oh come on. We all knew seven different types of cupcakes was never going to happen. I only had 50 baking cups, for heaven's sake. Do not look at me that way.

*Anyone else hear hot new band name here?

yes, heads probably ARE exploding

2012-01-19T11:56:00.000-08:00

Two posts in one day!

I'm not going to apologize.

This one's not, honestly, much of a post. It's mainly pictures. And not pictures of my innocent plant-babies, but pictures of taller, scarier plants, some of which are dead and some of which aren't actually plants at all.

That second one, there? That's a prehistoric petroglyph. It represents either a sun or sea life or possibly someone's head exploding as a result of me posting twice in one day.

The last picture I call, "Skeleton of saguaro with tree branch".

The Guatemalan and I took a walk in the desert on Monday. It's been a long time since I've gone on a desert walk for fun (as opposed to work). It was a beautiful, cloudy day, and the air smelled sweet and damp and earthy, and the only reason we went back to the car is because we were craving cheeseburgers, and there are some cravings you just can't work around.

in which we discuss the primal urges of a non-crazy bald man

2012-01-19T07:45:00.000-08:00

Rows of lettuces and spinaches with a smattering of green onions up there
at the top.

The winter garden's up and running.

At the pitiful pace it's setting, however, we'll have to pull it up to put in the bell peppers before anything's edible. It's all very, very small currently, but now that Miss Lila has kindly refrained from pawing through the seedlings for a couple weeks and I have remembered to water it a couple times, it's coming up beautifully.

There's lettuce and spinach and carrots and brussels sprouts and green onions and radishes and a mystery plant. (OooOOOOoooo...) (And that was a scary ghost noise because there's no point in blog without sound effects as far as I'm concerned.)

Mystery plant.
It's beautiful and purple! Like Cinderella!

Infant spinach.

I don't mean to insinuate that my garden is haunted. I'm just saying.

Speaking of mystery plants and haunted gardens, my sister and her husband Graham recently came to visit us. They came just before New Year's Eve. A great time was had by all, and there were a lot of illicit fireworks on account of Graham and Raphael egging each other on. (Boys!)

Julie's an old hand at being unpleasantly shocked by the desert, but because G. didn't make the mistake of arriving in the humid part of August seven minutes after the return of our power following a three-hour outage caused by it being probably technically hotter than Hell, his reactions were positive compared to what I've witnessed in the past. I'm looking at you, Julie. And I'm making some kind of weird face. You don't want to know what I'm doing.

The following is a brief run-down of the primal urges G. succumbed to while in the desert:

He had a shot of tequila at 11:30 in the morning. Or maybe it was 11:00. Or maybe it was whiskey. Don't judge him! He was in the desert! That's what we do! He's probably not doing it now.

He stuck soggy old dog toys onto the prickly pears while singing Johnny Cash songs presumably because he could. Doesn't everyone do this the instant they arrive in the desert and see a cactus? The desire to stick things onto the cactuses is certainly a primal one.

He made like a saguaro. Because that's another one of those primal urges: standing in front of a saguaro with your arms bent up. I dare you to stand in front of a saguaro and not do it. See? Can't be done. I win.

He made a lot of fire in the hand-me-down chiminea we just got from friends who left us for Dallas. (Dallas! We're better than Dallas, aren't we?!) G., it turns out, loves fire in a primal sort of way.

He had beers in the sun, angling his cute little bald head (bald on purpose - he'd probably want me to tell you. But he's not anything scary like a Nazi or a crazy bald person) up towards the blue desert sky to develop as much sunburn as possible. (Bald people!) (Also, beers + sunburn = way primal.)

And he marveled in general about how it was gorgeous and cloudless and seventy-five degrees the whole time they were here. (Jealousy is also a primal emotion.)

Of course, thirty-five seconds after they left, it clouded up and started to rain, and it's been mildly chilly ever since. I'm not complaining, however, because rainy weather means it's kind of like I've gone on a vacation myself. ("What is this?! This is not Tucson!") And it means I can accidentally forget that I have a winter garden without it being necessarily detrimental to the health of the plants.

(And garden-related laziness...? I don't think I have to tell you what that's all about.)

i think we can all agree that it's january

2012-01-10T12:09:00.000-08:00

Hey! Where have you all been?!

Sitting on your couches scrunching up the wrappers of the last of the Ghiradelli mint-filled chocolates your mom sent you for Christmas? Baking amazing vegan cupcakes from the cookbooks your grandma put under the tree for you? Sinking down into steaming, silky water scented all cranberries-and-sugar from the bubble bath you found in the bottom of your stocking?

I'm just making some assumptions here.

Anyway, I've called this meeting because I've gotten in some hot water for not posting enough (at all) lately (since 2011). While I'm not misguided enough to make some kind of crazy New Years Resolution to "Post Every Day" or anything (because we all know that'll go exactly nowhere fast), I do want to get back into the blog. I like it and I miss it. It's been a great way to keep in touch with family and get back in touch with old friends and even - and this surprised me in a pleasant way - to get to know some new people.

So here I am. Happy New Year, friends and loved ones!

I hope you all had a WONDERFUL holiday and consumed too many baked goods and found piles of puppies wrapped in shiny red bows under your trees that hadn't peed too extensively on all the other gifts before you got there. I hope that this isn't the year that we all get taken over by robots (my coffeemaker's been acting suspiciously feisty lately) and that nobody's house breaks in any significant and/or irreparable way and most of all that the Mayans got it all wrong. In summary, I hope 2012 is the year that will fulfill you like you've never been fulfilled before and that all your dreams come true and that you move to Samoa and open up a coffeeshop there, if that's one of your dreams.

In conclusion, let's go get 'em, tigers!

finally! proof that it's an orange tree!

2011-11-23T17:13:00.000-08:00

Last year we got one orange. And a bird ate it while we were at work.
This year...magic!

homemade cookies and the apocalypse: a love story

2011-11-13T20:41:00.000-08:00

I liked what Mandia said tonight when she and Steven popped over from next door.

Yes! We have a new neighbor in The House Next Door! And we're 98 percent certain she's not yet running a brothel out of there or stabbing people or stealing bikes or otherwise engaging in illegal and/or similarly immoral activities. So far, the only really disturbing thing she's done is bring over a bottle of whiskey and a cherry/apple pie, claiming that "the gas isn't on yet" and she needs our oven. She also borrowed four double-A batteries the other day which raised some eyebrows around here. I mean, we'll see. But so far, so good.

So. Quick recap. I already recapped this once and then Blogger ate it. So this recap will probably be quicker than the first one.

Angel

(her real name)

lived next door for awhile. She may or may not have actually sold meth out of her house. What I know is that she and her boyfriend used to fight a lot and throw things at each other and abuse dogs, if we correctly interpreted the noises. There was also bike-stealing. Eventually, Angel got a restraining order against the boyfriend and he moved out. Sort of. Mostly. After that, approximately seven large tattooed men (and one or two scary-looking women) apparently moved in with Angel. And that place is small - maybe five or six hundred square feet. I'm not sure. You'll have to ask Mandia.

They did some stuff or whatever, and the cops came at least once a month, and everybody got arrested a time or two, and then Angel got evicted because she stopped paying her rent.

After that, Jesus

(his real name)

moved in with his wife and small son. We all lived in harmony for about two months, and then Jesus threw a party.

A very loud "f*** you, b****, you f***in' drink that s*** or I'll f***in' **** *** **" kind of party that lasted for about seven hours. We took the high road, because it was during the day, and didn't call the cops. And at dusk, they quieted down and quit with the drunken cussing and we thought all was well with the world.

Until Jesus and a friend took themselves a drunken constitutional through the neighborhood and attacked a random stranger and then got theirselves stabbed at the Circle K down the street. Oh that night! What a night! It was all very police-y. With lots and lots of caution tape and giant scary dogs and big guns. We never saw Jesus or his family again.

"What next?" We asked ourselves despairingly. "Who's going to move in now? God?"

Luckily, the next guy was generally a pretty decent alcoholic who was not named God and who liked dogs and fashion design and had a basil plant. But he moved out recently and unexpectedly, and so we spent a few weeks trying to convince everyone we know to move in. And Mandia was the one who answered our prayers.

Which bring us to tonight when she popped over with a cold cherry/apple pie and a bottle of whiskey and said (not right away, but later, when the context was more appropriate): "Someday the world will implode (emotionally) and martial law will be imposed and everyone will start running around with shotguns and looting and raping and whatnot, and while that's all going on, Jenny and I will be baking cookies." Or something to that effect.

And I was all like, Mandia that's awesome because it's SO TRUE!!, while, meanwhile, waiting for my maple-walnut bars to cool and thinking, that kind of already has happened on this block.

The end of the world doesn't scare me. I've lived next door to Angel and Jesus. I will offer the zombies a plate of strawberry thumbprint cookies. I'll give the crazy shotgun people some kind of chocolate-raspberry torte, and the guy trying to hotwire my truck (good luck to that guy) some orange-pistachio-milk-chocolate-chip cookies, and whoever thinks he's in charge a Spoon Cookie, and then Mandia and I will stand together in our soot-covered aprons with a hot nuclear wind blowing back our hair and pans of cookies in our mitted hands, and when God pulls up in His rusted-out Lincoln Mercury, we'll say something really pithily and searingly profound, and then we'll gaze together off into the distance (the "future") and the credits will roll.

ode to sweaters

2011-10-19T12:42:00.000-07:00

I.
My dear Orange Sweater
with the fluffy sort of edges,
when I pull you on and tie up your ruffles
good and tight,
you remind me of me
if I was a clown.

A good clown, though;
not one of those clowns
that everybody hates for some reason.

(Is is cool to hate clowns?
Is it some kind of terrible trend?
Did everyone simply watch
Stephen King's "It"
at too impressionable of an age,
and so now everyone assumes clowns
secretly have fangs
and enjoy tearing the arms
off of small children?)

II.
Purple Sweater
with the pseudo-crocheted pieces
at the sleeves and attached in various other places
as well:
You are, of course, my favorite.
You don't make me look like an evil clown
or a grape popsicle
or too New-Agey
unless people are skirting around
the truth.

You are:
the perfect weight.

And you are:
soft.

And you have:
only a few moth holes.

But I don't care about your moth holes!:
You're my oldest sweater and my most beloved.
You are mature in a good way.

I wish
that I was wearing you now.

III.
Lavender Sweater Dress,
you count, even though
you are really more of a dress than
a sweater. Sort of.

You are the only sweater I have
that I can pair with leggings
and no actual pants,
although I have not yet done so,
because it has been
much too hot since my birthday
which is when
I. Got. You.

IV.
Darling Pink Sweater.
Oh
Darling
Pink
Sweater.

You are my baby,
my newest love.
With your little tie that I can twirl
like a hooker's tassels
if I choose to do so.

Twirl.
Twirl.

Twirl.

riding the wave

2011-10-18T13:00:00.000-07:00

Let's ride the wave a little: I posted on Sunday. Now I'm going to post on Tuesday. Hold onto your hats!!

This is the problem with posting so frequently: nothing much has happened between today and way back then the last time I posted. Most of the Tucson police force turned out for another party on our street last night, and a couple weeks ago there was a naked man out there at four in the morning, but I think we're probably all getting bored with these stories. I mean, come on. A naked man? A shooting? People aren't creative anymore, that's the problem with our society.

I know what I'll do. I'll post a picture of an adorable baby horny toad. You're welcome!

That says: "approx. 1.5 inches".

making. another. list.

2011-10-16T19:54:00.000-07:00

The time has come for action! Or at the very least a sentence or two indicating that I'm still alive and remember how to make a keyboard work. sldifjoelkdflkdjgi!. (Ha ha! I'm kidding! I totally remember hwo to make a keybaorda woirk1!)

In other news, it's fall, and that means that one of these days, temperatures in Tucson will drop below 97 degrees. It also means it's time for me to make a giant list of things I want to accomplish before 2012.

The List:

1. Must. Begin. Thanksgiving. Menu. Research. (That's me being a holiday robot. I'm also beeping and whirring a lot, but you can't hear me on the internet.)

2. I need to go through my photos and Photoshop that which requires Photoshopping before the holidays roll in and the picture-taking gets really crazy and I freak out and toss my camera in the garbage. I haven't Photoshopped anything since June. You haven't seen any of my pictures from California! You haven't seen the picture of the giant-ass bull (think Ferdinand but way, way more frightening and without the flowers) that kept lumbering through camp at Burro Creek!

3. Homework. I'm taking a writing class, and it involves a LOT of writing. How could I have known?

4. Must. Put. Up. Purple. And. Orange. Lights. For. Halloween. Also carve pumpkins. I already got two adorable fairytale pumpkins from Trader Joe's. No one has smashed either one of them yet. (Beeep. Whiiirrrr.)

5. Must stop being sick. (I'm a little sick.) (Is it feed a fever, starve a cold? Where does wine come in?)

6. Must. Write. Thank. You. Notes. For. Birth. Day. Gifts. (Yes! I'm 36! I've tipped the seesaw of age over towards 40. It's not terrible so far, but it's only been a week. I'll keep you informed if anything goes unexpectedly and horribly wrong.)

7. Make chili. (It's fall. It's 97 degrees, but that doesn't mean it's not fall, damnit.)

8. Put in cold-weather crops. Lettuce. Spinach. Kale. Garlic. I've been waiting for actual cold weather to do this, but if that doesn't happen, I'm just going to draw my line at November. Meanwhile, the tomatoes and the bell peppers are setting again. Take that, midwesterners!

9. Christmas. Yes, people, it's time to start thinking about it. I know. I'm sorry.

10. Must. Start. Posting. Regularly. On. Blogs. Again. I've missed my blogs.

hopelessly optimistic...but not about rain

2011-08-28T22:03:00.000-07:00

By the way? It has been HOT here lately. As in: between 107 and 110 every day for the last week. No rain. Just suggestions of rain. Lots of big clouds and humidity, but little actual water falling from the sky here in midtown. I mean, we're not Phoenix or anything, where they've been in the hundred-and-teens and gotten haboobs, but it's been so hot that my infant cantaloupe has died. Turned yellow and brown and shriveled up on the vine just like that. I was so sad when I discovered it, you have no idea. It was my first cantaloupe.

I'm about to tear out the tomatillos, by the way. I'm sad about that too. But they're these huge, fluffy things that have produced approximately seven pea-size tomatillos so far this summer. I can't justify the water consumption anymore. I should've stopped justifying it weeks ago, but I'm apparently a hopeless optimist. (I'm certain those of you who know me are nodding your heads sagely.) Also, I've got to put in the "cold"-weather crops within a couple weeks if I want them to have plenty of time to fail to produce edibles before winter really sets in.

HAHAHAHAHAHHAHHAHAHHHAHHA!!! Winter. I AM a hopeless optimist.

birthday

2011-08-24T12:55:00.000-07:00

Portrait of the birthday boy.

Today is Raphael's birthday.

Happy birthday, my wise and wonderful man! You're thirty-eight and still as handsome as you were the day you were born!

Or...I mean, I think that's a compliment.

backyard photo journal

2011-08-22T16:20:00.000-07:00

Cherry tomatoes.

Infant cantaloupe.

Baby desert doves.

Baby grapevine.

Jalapenos.

Bell peppers.

Monsoon rainbow over my neighbor's backyard pool.

this is your brain on archaeology

2011-08-21T14:03:00.000-07:00

Warning: This post rambles. Read on!

I do archaeology. I mean kind of. I used to do a lot more of it than I do now. I used to drag myself out of bed every day at the crack of dawn to dig prehistoric pithouses and my old nemeses, the agricultural rock piles, for hours and hours in the hot sun. I used to walk around in pristine desert areas looking for broken bits of pottery and stone tool-making debris on a fairly regular basis. I used to crouch in shadowed backhoe trenches and draw lines in the dirt with my trowel where storage pits and other features were delineated by soil changes. I used to monitor utility trenches. Except for the utility-trench-monitoring, it was pretty awesome.

These days, I'm an instructor of sorts and as such, I work an 8 to 5 job and am required to let the students dig the good stuff even if they have no earthly clue what it is they're looking at. It's not my job to dig anymore. It's my job to give them a clue, because it's not always obvious to students new to archaeology why what they're doing is the good stuff.

Me: Sweet Mother of Jesus! You just found a Clovis point stuck in a mastodon skull, and furthermore the skull is attached to the skeleton of a mastodon upon which is the skeleton of what appears to be a human being riding the mastodon, and also the mastodon is wearing a harness made of mastodon leather which has miraculously survived for thousands of years! And in Marana of all places!

(Silence.)

Student: Nope. I don't get it.

Luckily however, in addition to supervising students while they underappreciate archaeological features, in my role as instructor-type I often find myself traveling to random and unexpected destinations such as Hawai'i. Even though I don't get to dig much anymore, I'm glad archaeology has gotten me and still gets me out into the world. I love traveling, but I didn't get to do much of it back in my shovelbum days because I had no money and could never convince anyone I worked for that they ought to send me to Hawai'i.

This is how it used to be:

Me: You could send me to Hawai'i. I could dig some stuff there or look around or whatever for you. I could send you sea turtle postcards.

Work: How about instead of Hawai'i, we send you to Marana again. There's a utility trench there that needs monitoring.

This is how it is now:

Me: We could go to Hawai'i. We could bring students and map some stuff and check out whales.

Work: Huh. Yeah. Yeah, that's not a bad idea at all. Let's find a way to make that happen.

As another example, last week, Work sent me to a conference in the Arizona Strip which is the area north of the Grand Canyon. This conference is an annual meeting of southwest archaeologists held in various locations in the southwest U.S. and sometimes, if you're lucky, in northern Mexico. It's called the Pecos Conference.

This trip isn't the first time archaeology has taken me to the Grand Canyon. When I was in graduate school, I drove out with some fellow students to survey in the Kaibab National Forest on the south rim of the Canyon. It took us three days to get there, and we camped along the way, and it was mid-to-late October at the time so it was chilly.

Once we got there, there were wild turkeys and there was a snowstorm which sent us into a 180-degree spin almost right off the canyon edge, and then later, after surviving that, we hiked down into the canyon during a series of thunderstorms (Jesus. The lightning. I'm not even joking. We could so easily have died a second time.) and spent the night near the river (we're not even going to talk about the flash flood potential). And I'm pretty certain there was a mountain lion on the other side the river for awhile, too. Also, it was mostly guys in the group which might explain the multiple brushes with death we experienced over the course of the trip, and I was therefore exposed to a lot more whiskey than I had ever been exposed to previously which was none. Incidentally, the whiskey almost killed a couple of people, too.

Boys.

But look at you! I warned you about the rambling, and here you are anyway. You're intrepid!

Anyway, during that trip in grad school, we never made it to the north rim of the Canyon. Probably, had we tried, someone would have fallen off of something anyway. So this trip to the conference was my first one to the Arizona Strip and I was enthralled by the place. It's a stunningly lovely landscape. It's like driving through a painting.

On the way home from the conference at
Mile-and-a-Half Lake in the Arizona Strip.

The conference was actually held in the woods at about 8,000 feet of elevation. Pecos is a generally well-organized but fairly informal conference. Many or most of the attendees camp, and the talks and posters are presented under big tents. People congregate around campfires in the evenings, except on Saturday when there's the big dinner and dance, and it often rains at least once. Additionally, there's always dogs, children, and free beer.

The Smoked Pig.

This year featured a woman with a cat on a leash, Smoked Pig Appetizer, and the Young People Party which we crashed even though we're all old, most of us. This was after the dance and the free beer. There were, like, twenty Young People or six hundred or something, and they had this great fire going, and there was some crazy man who also crashed the party and tried to converse with me about Harry Potter for several tense minutes but I acted like I had never heard of Harry Potter because people had warned me about this particular crazy man, and I was terrified when we made eye contact.

Then it started raining and we all ran away. More on that later. On second thought, I think you know enough already.

I did a poster on Burro Creek this year, which means I got to stand next to it under the big tent for two and a half hours while people wandered up to it, gazed at the pictures for a minute or two and then wandered away to go listen to the talks or look for snacks or something. I felt pretty professional. I mean relatively speaking.

The drive up was extremely beautiful in a desolate and slightly frightening sort of way. Consistent civilization stops around Flagstaff. After that, it's a few houses here, a few there, and one or two waaaay over there. Some very, very small towns. A lot of rocks. A lot of Navajo jewelry stands on the side of the road. A handful of gas stations. Not too many trees. Maybe none. Lots of red rocks and buttes and things. I think it's extremely likely that there are trolls.

You can see forever and ever. You can even see what I'm pretty sure was Utah sometimes. You can be on the road for eight hours and still appreciate the landscape in northern Arizona. It's spectacular country. Consider a trip there if you're ever trying to come up with a good vacation. Maybe you could bring it up with your boss. Maybe you should just consider becoming an archaeologist. If you need instruction, I can teach you how to dig. But I'm going to want credit for any groundbreaking, mastodon-oriented finds.

Enough rambling. Time for pictures.

That's my boss giving a talk. I know! He looks smart!

That's my poster on the far right. See how professional I am!

Sitting in the grass having beers and learning stuff while listening to talks.
(That's my group there in the middle with the five-year-old.)

The line for Smoked Pig Appetizer:

"Don't worry. We're gettin' pig."

Post-Pig; Pre-The Dance.

The dance.

The dance some more.

Our campsite. This is where the magic happened.

The magic.

reason no. 6 why we should move to California

2011-08-05T12:56:00.000-07:00

So some of the neighbors got together Wednesday night down on the corner. And shot each other.

You thought this was going to be a feel-good post, didn't you? Well, no worries. There are several things you can still feel good about. For example: (a.) no one died this time, (b.) we didn't actually know the names of any of these people for a change, and (c.) our car wasn't the one decorated with police tape when all was said and done. Our friends across the street are the ones that got to deal with that.

One of the three shootees (probably also a shooter - there were apparently plenty of them) in an attempt to evade the swarming cops, or to at least avoid getting shot some more times, made it five houses down from the location of the shooting.  At that point, he jumped through the hedge adjacent to our friends' driveway only to find, to his surprise presumably, barbed wire in there and also a car parked inconveniently on the other side.

The crash when he bounced off their car is what alerted my neighbors to the presence of an intruder. Maybe also the sirens and the pounding helicopter and the glaring searchlights and the guy with the German Shepherd yelling "Follow the blood trail!" outside our house. (That was what alerted us.)

This was Dog TV at its finest. Lila was enthralled.

They caught the guy while he was lying in the driveway next to the car, bleeding from barbed wire wounds on his hands and a gunshot to the leg, and we got to watch all of it from the porch. We even made up a whole pretend conversation between our neighbor and the cop who was taking down his statement.  Although we couldn't hear much, it took so long that we assumed by the end they were probably just chatting.

Cop: Alright, sir. Enough about the guy bleeding all over your driveway. So, the monsoon this year - isn't the shortage of rain just so depressing?

Our Neighbor: Oh, wow, I know, right? I'm just positive my potted chiltepines aren't going to make it.

Raphael's just about ready to move out, I think, but Lila and I are concerned that the quality of programming just won't be the same if we leave this neighborhood.

California Roadtrip Part I: I Really Do Think We Were on the Golden Gate Bridge at One Point

2011-08-02T12:51:00.000-07:00

I've left my brain somewhere along the foggy California coast north of San Francisco or possibly nestled comfortably among the mossy roots of the redwoods south of Eureka. We got back last Wednesday after twelve days of roadtripping through beach, wine, and redwood country, and I'm not adjusting particularly well to the desert heat. In fact, I'm pretty ready to pack up my things and move up north permanently so I can be reunited with my brain which I assume is currently living in a yurt and subsisting on wild blackberries, barbequed oysters, and wine.

We didn’t stay in any yurts, and I never actually tasted a barbequed oyster while in California although we passed millions of places that offered them on the way to wine-tasting opportunities. As for the fruit, a few days into the trip, near one of our campsites, we found a tiny peach and apple orchard gone wild and plucked bruised, juicy peaches from the little trees. Raphael gorged on them in the orchard – they were so sweet - and I tied my jacket into a bag and collected enough to cook down with sugar and cinnamon the following day. We ate them by the fire with hot Italian sausages and canned biscuits for breakfast. It's early in the season for blackberries, but I did manage to forage enough of them to cook up a cobbler in my trusty skillet over the fire near the end of the trip.

The second day of our trip, we got lost in San Francisco because after eight hours on the road I was all like “screw it, let’s take a shortcurt”. (Stop judging me! I was tired, I was hungry, and the map clearly showed the existance of a shortcut!) (What I neglected to account for was the fact that we were in San Francisco. And there are no shortcuts in San Francisco.) (You should write that down somewhere.)

Long story short, an hour - or maybe days - later, one of us broke down in tears on the Golden Gate Bridge. It was Raphael. Okay fine. It was me. But we weren't supposed to have to cross the Golden Gate Bridge at all. THAT WASN'T THE PLAN.

In the end, it’s cool that I can say I’ve had an emotional meltdown on an iconic bridge, I guess. Or presumably it would be cool if I could be sure I was ever really on it. Between the tears and the fog, I couldn't tell you what the bridge looked like at all. I can only assume that we were on it at all based on vague signs that seemed to indicate that an important bridge was present somewhere in our vicinity.  It could've been the Zombie Apocalypse on that bridge, and we wouldn’t have noticed. There was that much fog.

Happily, we finally made it out of San Francisco and got into our campsite late. There were only about two sites left. We parked as quickly as possible and settled in to have dinner by the light of Raphael's trusty propane lantern.

I'll tell you what. Isn't this the way life goes? One minute you're finally relaxed, unwinding, delicately eating a hot dog, reminiscing about that one time when you successfully evaded hordes of invisible zombies on the Golden Gate Bridge, and next thing you know, there are raccoons in the car.

I'm not sure what else we expected, after ten hours of driving, getting lost in San Francisco, and then leaving the car windows wide open while innocently consuming hot dogs at ten o'clock at night. The only logical conclusion to such a day is that raccoons wind up in the car and eat all the vanilla sandwich cookies and contaminate the pasta.

They had also gotten into the expensive sandwich bread before I went to get something from the car and caught them at it. Up until that point, we'd been trying for discretion and quiet since the families around us had already begun getting into their tents and turning out the lights. But when raccoons are in the car, it's no time for silence or any other sort of graceful, zen-like behavior.

"Raccoons!" I shouted. "Are in the CAR!" Or maybe I just shrieked and kicked desperately at the door. One of those things happened, anyway, and then Raphael came along and starting pounding on the car as well. The raccoons grabbed a few more handfuls of cookies and went off to fight violently in the bushes nearby. (Raccoons aren't nearly as subtle as the Undead.) We apologized to our neighbors in the morning, but it turned out they had had raccoons, too, so no one seemed too distraught. In other campsites, later on, it was skunks, so probably we were lucky.

This post is getting too long. I've heard you people have short attention spans. We'll revisit California, though, because we have to. It's a big place and, even though it made me cry, I think you should go there; I have a lot of helpful suggestions for how to navigate it now that I'm an expert and have stopped sobbing.

Meanwhile, you'll be relieved to know that I remembered to marinate the tofu and also put it in the cooler, and I thought it made a great on-the-road snack that would work just as effectively on a roadtrip through, say, Pennsylvania. Or Idaho. So I'll leave you with the recipe for it. Use it well.

Baked Marinated Tofu

Two 19 oz blocks of tofu
1/2 cup soy sauce
2 Tablespoons sesame oil (or vegetable oil)
1 Tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon Chinese Five-spice powder
Freshly ground pepper to taste

Stab the tofu gently with a fork a few times on each side. Place the two blocks of tofu in a ziploc bag and dump in all the remaining ingredients.  Smush it around a little so that the ingredients mix together and then place the bag in the fridge for 5 hours or overnight, turning the bag over occasionally so that the marinade can soak in well.

Preheat the oven to 350 and prepare a cookie sheet. (Make sure it has low sides, rather than no sides.) I line the pan with parchment paper, but the original recipe calls for you to oil the pan.  Follow your heart on this one.

Slice each block of tofu into five rectangles. Each block should be thick - between 3/4 of an inch and 1 inch. Place the tofu blocks flat on the sheet so that there is some space between each one. Spoon some of the marinade onto the tofu and bake in the oven for an hour. Spoon more marinade over at least once while baking. Flip the tofu and spoon more marinade over. Bake for another 20 to 30 minutes or however long it takes for them to dry out to your liking. Remove and cool. You can slice the tofu and eat it as a snack or put it on sandwiches or use it in stirfrys. It should last a few days in the fridge.

can we stop talking about your non-existant vegetables yet?

2011-07-15T20:30:00.000-07:00

No. You wish. (That was you talking up there in the title.) And, by the way, I do have vegetables now, and all five of them are as real as you and maybe realer, depending on certain factors.

Still life with cucumber, jalapeno,
and tomatillo.

In fact, I'm on kind of a vegetable high right now so not only am I going to keep right on talking about vegetables, I'm going to attempt to make you feel how I feel about them. Specifically the cucumbers I just plucked from my beautiful, frothy cucumber plant. The first cucumbers that I have ever produced. (Cue angelic harmonies emanating from the very atmosphere.)

Prior to me Googling cucumbers to see if mine were ready or not or actually cucumbers (because up until about a week ago, I believed with all my heart that they were zucchinis but am relieved that they're not, as zucchinis always cause me emotional distress), I also picked a jalapeno and a bewilderingly tiny tomatillo which may or may not be a preemie, and Raphael and I shared our first cherry tomato of the season. It was buried deep in the dark jungle heart of the garden; I discovered it while crawling on hands and knees through the thick growth hunting for hornworms. It was a satisfying to get to it before the General for a change, but the whole cherry tomato experience wasn't nearly as magical as the cucumber one. (And frankly, the tomatillo experience has just been confusing so far. Let's not talk about it.)

It's a jungle in there among the tomatillos.

Back to the cucumbers. One of these magical, atmospheric music-inducing cukes Raphael and I immediately sliced up and ate with salt out in the hot sun. It was juicy and cucumbery with an unexpectedly but forgiveably tough skin, like a really interesting character in a movie. The other cuke will be traveling to California with us. I'm planning to take pictures of it in various locations such as on a bluff overlooking the ocean and maybe at a Circle K by the hot dog carousel, like they do with those garden gnomes and yard flamingoes and that flat paper kid everyone takes on vacation these days. We'll call it Flat Cucumber. For about seven minutes. And then that'll get old, and we'll start calling it something else - like Mitchell, or Staci, maybe. We'll see. As I said in the last post, we'll just let the wind blow us where it may, and that applies to any cukes traveling with us as well.

I anticipate that these hilarious kinds of activities will occur intermittently for approximately the first six-and-a-half hours of the trip, and then we will take one final picture and pile Mitchell (or Staci) onto avocado, tomato, and marinated tofu sandwiches at a rest stop somewhere along I-10, assuming that any rest stops remain open between here and L.A. which may be assuming too much. This scenario is also predicated upon me remembering to marinate the tofu before we leave and that we need to bring the bread.

Oh, and also, this will happen on Sunday instead of tomorrow because Raphael needs to finish building something before we can leave. (Yes. That is, in fact, the story of our lives.) (He's building a shed.)

Fin.

Carolyn.

Mitchell.

i'm about to so not care

2011-07-14T20:33:00.000-07:00

This War of the Hornworms couldn't come at a worse time. Although frankly any quality time spent with hornworms is probably going to suck, if my recent experience can offer us any useful lessons. I'm not exactly losing, if you want to know, but I'm not convinced that I'm winning either. Twenty-six and hopefully some eggs removed and dropped into the trash bin in the front, so far. Take that, General Hornworm. You bastard.

In any case, for the next few days, it will be up to my neighbors to further the war efforts, as I plan to cease caring come Saturday morning around, oh, seven-thirty at which point I will drop my herb-snippers to the ground, pump my fist in the air, and shove the dog into the truck with all her gear.

We're going to California, that's why. We're packing up the truck, offloading the dog with friends, and putting thoughts of hornworms and desert heat as far behind us as possible.

After we pass L.A., those cold and foggy west coast winds can take us wherever they want. We've got an air mattress, a tent, and a Coleman two-burner propane stove, so we can go just about anywhere. We're like a self-contained flying carpet. We'll be like genies sitting smugly on that carpet as it flies around, debating which Sonoma winery to pop by next and if the redwoods aren't just a marketing device after all. We might not even use the tent. (It's probably hard to set a tent up on a flying carpet.) We'll probably just bunk in the back of the truck. We've done it before. It only doesn't work when the dog, with her inexplicable and debilitating fear of bunking in (or being anywhere in the vicinity of) the truck is traveling with us. And she's not this time, so we're gold.

the great hornworm menace of 2011

2011-07-12T10:39:00.000-07:00

I'm presently in the middle of a battle. This is an historic moment - this battle represents my first encounter as a fledgling gardener with anything close to a real gardening-related menace.

I have certainly experienced the occasional gardening-related irritant over the past couple of years: rotting zucchinis, slumping pepper plants, split tomatoes, inexplicably minuscle jalapenos, shriveled guajillos*, more stubbornly yellow leaves than you could really effectively shake any kind of stick at, skyrocketing water bills, and my dog with her great clumsy paws and her predilection for things that smell like manure. But these pale in comparison to what I'm now experiencing. Because now...now there are hornworms.

Ah! General Hornworm, I presume!

I discovered them yesterday morning and have since removed twelve from the monster Brandywine tomato plant that is five-and-a-half feet tall and has put out thousands of flowers but refuses to produce actual tomatoes. Twelve doesn't sound like many, but I know there are more than that. These puppies are incredibly difficult to spot. I probably spent forty minutes just finding twelve. Every few hours I muster up my strength and go hornworm-hunting again. And every time I do, I find a couple more.

I've done some research on these guys, and I think what I have are not tomato hornworms but tobacco hornworms (on account of their red horn). People on the internet have told me to put them in a cup of water, slice them in half with gardening shears, feed them to birds, encourage wasps to parasitize them, and spray them with Bacillus Thuringiensis which kills them by causing gut paralysis and subsequent starvation combined with tissue damage.

I have opted to hold a plastic flower pot under each hornworm and snip off the leaf it's sitting on. Then I take it out to the front yard and throw it into the garbage bin there. I'm not yet sure how successful my method will be because these hornworms might have vastly larger reservoirs of willpower than I give them credit for. For all I know, armies of hornworms are presently advancing upon my tomato plants, having survived the heat and somehow scaled the smooth walls of the trashcan. They might have tiny drums and tiny bugles and tiny tattered flags and a tiny hornworm general (General Hornworm) and tiny night vision goggles, for all I know.

We might wind up in an all-out war before the week is through.

* Not a euphemism.

2011-07-06T20:07:00.000-07:00

At dusk in the summer,
Mexican free-tailed bats emerge in clouds from under the Campbell Avenue bridge over the Rillito River
in Tucson. We took my parents to see them on the Fourth of July.
The river was running from the monsoon storms. Better than fireworks.

the parents are coming! the parents are coming!

2011-06-29T12:42:00.000-07:00

Mom: We're coming to visit you!

Jenny: What? Why?

Mom: It'll be fun!

Jenny: No, seriously. Why?

Dad: I'd like to have a look at your laptop. How's it working these days?

Jenny: It melted on Tuesday. When it hit 110 degrees.

Mom: I'm so excited! Cacti! Lizards! Fish tacos!

Dad: Do you people have ice cream out there?

Jenny: Good idea, Mom! I can cook the fish on the patio! Directly on the bricks!

Dad: What do you have there, some kind of cactus ice cream?

Jenny: In July, ice cream turns to a gas before you can eat it. Poof.

Mom: Roadrunners! Palm trees! Mexicans!

Jenny: I saw a Canadian the other day, too. His head was on fire.

Dad: You realize I expect you to bake me cookies while I'm there.

Jenny: Cookies are not happening in my kitchen in July.

Dad: Chocolate chip.

Mom: Wildfires! Rattlesnakes! Baby quails!

Jenny: We could probably bake cookies on the patio, I suppose. Since you've already got your plane tickets.

a weekend of pantslessness and wine tasting. Oh right...and a wedding

2011-06-22T21:19:00.000-07:00

And at the risk of enraging anyone who has just promised their firstborn to the Reception Hall People, I have to tell you: small outdoor weddings are by far my favorite types of weddings. And Ohio did it up pretty good for my sister's wedding this past weekend, with soft damp grass, perfect lighting, and a short rainstorm half-an-hour or so after the completion of the ceremony. All the four-year-olds (and there seemed to be thousands of them) managed to get themselves drenched, but the adults stayed mostly dry under the large tent that took up half of the backyard.

We arrived on Wednesday afternoon. Minutes after we stepped onto the tarmac in Dayton, my parents whisked us away to the clock shop for wine tasting. If they could have gotten their hands on some fake airport personnel badges and one of those zippy little maintenance vehicles, we could've been there more quickly, and I'll probably never fully forgive them for their inability (or mulish unwillingness) to breach airport security. As it was, we had to endure nearly forty-five minutes of baggage and driving and not being at the clock shop before we finally got down to business. Business being, naturally, wine tasting.

The following day, we started the wedding preparations in earnest. These included drinking coffee, picking up a bucket of delphiniums from the florist, buying a potted thing of geraniums, arranging delphiniums in mason jars, goats, slipping shortbread butterfly cookies into gauzy little bags, finalizing the post-wedding-brunch shopping list, arguing about bottled iced tea, moving potted plants around in order to achieve visually appealing configurations of tiny, starry white flowers around the "altar", and purchasing vodka and earrings. Some of these activities didn't actually happen on Thursday, but it was all such a whirl of activity that I couldn't begin to break it down for you.

At one point, after discussing the relative merits of silver versus ivory ribbon at Michael's for far too many minutes, my mother, sister, and I decided to go shopping for jewelry at a nearby outdoor mall. We may never know exactly what happened on that fateful afternoon, but I think I may have to take some blame for the following events. Drunk with power after having purchased not one, but two pairs of earrings, I put forth a suggestion...

...And thus the three of us we found ourselves on the patio of a seafood restaurant with the slowly setting sun in our eyes and nine partially filled wine glasses sparkling on a tray set up next to our table. There was a fountain full of laughing children, a guy with a guitar, and a handsome waiter who didn't know what a flight of wine was but seemed determined to figure it out one way or another. Mom and I managed to wrestle Julie down and pin her to her seat in spite of her misgivings about leaving the guys (With no prior warning!) (We were like wild things!) (Waaa!) to feed the boys dinner.

Julie: Wait. Where are we?

Mom: Here, take one of these.

Julie: What? What is this? Is this shrimp? With tomatoes? Where am I? Where's my son?

Jenny: No questions. Just eat.

Julie: I'm so confused. Now is not the time for eating shrimp!! Where's my son? Is he somewhere starving? Is he starving?!?

Mom: Look, Julie! Wine!

(Silence.)

Julie: Let me just call Dad to tell him where the hamburger is.

There were other events: a big family dinner out at a place called The Pub that featured giant carved chairs at both ends of the table and people in kilts, trauma associated with the general implosion of United Airlines on Friday afternoon, bath time, brunch, a trip to Young's Dairy for ice cream and barnyard animals, and that whole thing with the M&Ms. I won't bore you with too many more details. Suffice to say, many of these activities involved either wine or flying M&Ms or four-year-old boys becoming unexpectedly pantsless ("Naked! Look! We're naked!") or all three.

(In addition to taking their pants off with abandon, the boys also enjoyed covering their heads with bath towels and saying repeatedly in squeaky voices: "I'm Raphael! I'm Raphael!") (The bath towels, of course, meant to approximate his long hair, and the squeaky voices meant to approximate his, you know, incredibly squeaky voice.)

On top of all this pantlessness and general debauchery, the wedding itself was lovely. Big tent in the backyard. Lots of grass. Cool, damp afternoon. Barbequed meat. Ice cream sundaes. Champagne. A jumping castle.

And afterwards, everyone met up at the clock shop for a wine tasting. Naturally.

where i've been:

2011-06-11T16:25:00.000-07:00

you can read this post, but it will not make you a better person

2011-05-27T18:42:00.000-07:00

You haven't heard from me not because nothing is going on, but because there's been so much for me to think about that I can't possibly organize it all on paper. "Paper". Electronic "paper". The magic white screen that's here in front of me. Or whatever. And, actually, it's not that there's really anything going on but that many things are about to go on. Or are at least in the Vague Idea Stage of things that I think I might like to have go on. Renting a yurt in northern California, for example. That's not an actual plan. It's really more of a non-crucial design element of a complicated idea that will ideally cause me to become present in a situation sometime this summer in which I am able to pluck blackberries off the bushes in the Northeast and eat them by the handful at least once a day. It's not so much that I need to rent a yurt but that blackberries don't exist in Tucson except in Safeway. And I've been led to believe that Safeway frowns on people who eat them by the handful off the refrigerated shelves.

In the meantime, real life is moving right along. Our annual summer field school, Burro Creek, is coming up. We'll be pulling out of the parking lot on Wednesday morning, and I have piles of gear strewn all over the back room to prove it.  I have not yet packed the campsite bling, but it's foremost on my mind. That and socks.

My hiking sock situation has been dire for many years because I always feel it's excessive to buy socks. I don't know why. I feel like a person should be able to buy socks once and then just have them for the rest of their lives. Clearly this has to do with how I was raised. Spending money on socks makes me feel like an irresponsible rock star minus the drug use and groupies. Spending money on bras also makes me feel this way, incidentally. Who do I think I am, buying socks and bras willy nilly all over the place?

I blame the entire thing on my Puritan ancestors who probably cut off their own feet to avoid the sin of wearing socks and considered women who admitted they had breasts (and possibly who owned socks) to be the daughters (or mistresses) (or, most likely, sock-wearing daughter-mistresses) of Satan.

So every year I buy exactly one nice pair of expensive and comfortable hiking socks for Burro Creek. But I've only been up there four times. So I currently have only four pairs of nice hiking socks. As for the bra thing, I was recently forced to admit that I needed to go bra shopping.  Does anyone else feel absolutely ridiculous raising your arms like a four-year-old in need of a sweater so that a sixteen year-old girl can wrap a tape measure around your boobs and then offer very solemn and serious high-pitched opinions about your cup size?

The moral of the story is that I now own more new bras than pairs of good hiking socks. Though I've probably inadvertently sold my soul to the Devil somewhere along the way.

Shortly after Burro Creek, Raphael and I are heading off to the wilds of Ohio for my sister's little backyard wedding. (Yes, my sister is the one having the wedding slyly hinted at in the last post.) I've heard rumors of barbequed chicken, a jumping castle, and a wine-tasting. And a marriage will occur somewhere in there, presumably. (Hopefully in the jumping castle!) (Will have to concentrate really hard to bring down the swelling of my Burro Creek-induced gnat bites before I slide into my new strapless dress with the butterflies for the wedding.) (So much for all the bra-shopping.)

For the remainder of the summer, there's an ice cream social in the works, Mt. Lemmon-based afternoon picnics to be planned, and swimming to be done in the neighbors' pool, and we're hoping desperately to drop Lila off somewhere and head north for blackberries and yurts and forests for a few days.  We need a blessing from our mechanic, first, however.

My little red truck is becoming elderly, and has, in fact, already broken down in Northern California once, although the experience wasn't so terrible. We dropped it off at a random car place in a small town near the coast and crossed the street to pick over piles of fresh fruit at the farmstand there and then had lunch on the pretty patio of a nearby restaurant. California is a magical, magical place. There are no farmstands loaded with fresh fruit or adorable cafes with lush, shady patios in the vicinity of my mechanic's shop in Tucson. There are people with no teeth and abandoned, graffiti-covered buildings, though. And he always lets me wait in his air-conditioned guesthouse with his five or possibly six dogs. (Don't let me fool you - my mechanic is awesome, and his dogs are all very sweet and only smelly in the usual way that dogs are when five or ten of them inhabit one small space. Still: not all fruit stands and cafe patios exactly .)

I'm writing this on my patio, by the way. It's the Friday of a long weekend. It hit 100 degrees for the first time this summer today, and I have a Stone IPA by my side to help me celebrate. My handsome boyfriend is singing hair metal songs and digging happily around in his plants with his old archaeology trowel - or possibly with one of my missing ones - and intermittently playing air guitar with the rake. My dog is chasing birds. And planes. My fridge is loaded with fresh produce, there's a cooling breeze passing through the yard, and the final Harry Potter is coming out this summer.

Life. Is good.

i'm three weeks older!

2011-05-18T20:03:00.000-07:00

Forty-five minutes ago, I turned on the computer in order to look for an ice cream recipe that doesn't involve nectarines or ten hours of waiting. (Although I have nothing against nectarines, waiting for ice cream isn't my strong suit.) I've been distracted, though, by the internet and all its wonders. I spent some time on other people's blogs. I spent some time looking for yurt rentals in northern California. I spent some time considering DIY save-the-date ideas on marthastewartweddings.com even though I'm not the one getting married and the date has already been saved. And now it's 8:00 and I have yet to search for the ice cream recipe I'd hoped to use tonight.

Meanwhile, here's a picture of my dog demonstrating the effectiveness of the anti-pawing dog-deterrent device we've rigged up around the garden.

april again: and this time, there's a Tomato Pirate Captain

2011-04-28T20:26:00.000-07:00

It's that time of year when I start talking incessantly about my plants.

But I did something unprecented this year. (I like to change things up for my long-time readers. Nothing keeps people reading like keeping them guessing! "Is she going to grow tomatoes this year? Auughh! I've got to know!" *)

Gratuitous picture of a cactus flower.

Here's what I did: I planted seeds.

Some of you already know this because, technically, I already wrote a post in which I detailed my planting of seeds. It hasn't been all instant success and cheering crowds exactly, but that's what's so great about seeds it turns out.

It's totally rewarding to watch a plant grow - like when you got to pick out a new pencil after winning the class Spelling Bee in fourth grade. But when seedlings start to come up, it's like you've just won the Whole School Spelling Bee and now you get to have your picture in the paper with the principal and maybe also get a new pencil.

It's amazing for me to see that first seedling poke up through the soil because I know where it came from, and I know I'm pretty much the one who did all the facilitating. Specifically, it came from one of about thirty-seven different seed packets bequeathed to me by Lisa when she moved to the Netherlands which I shook indiscriminately into pots that I subsequently failed to label effectively. Whatever that seedling is, it's beautiful because it is and I helped it to be. (Even Raphael with his ridiculous green thumbs leaves my vegetables and herbs to me pretty much. He might fear that I'll wind up killing them, but he lets me teach myself my own lessons. And that's why I love him.)

Party in the tomatillo pot.

So. I may have been premature in my assessment of total destruction for the tomatillos that Lila pawed up a month ago. She did manage to paw up a few - no doubt about it. But I had failed to count on the exuberant liberality with which I besprinkled seeds about in the first place. I probably wound up planting dozens and dozens of tomatillo seeds. Those suckers are very small. You feel like you've got to aim for overkill or none of your efforts will amount to anything. The happy result of all my flailing around of seeds is that, instead of no tomatillos like I feared would happen after the horrible pawing incident, I currently have seventeen healthy, enthusiastic plants, some of which are half a foot tall already and putting on what's got to be close to an inch daily. It's a party every day in the tomatillo pot. I couldn't be more proud and Lila couldn't be more thwarted.

Baby bell peppers, exploring their world.

Pirate Captain of the Plants.
Yarrr!...mouth is filthy!**

In other plant news, we also have several - ten, twelve, sixteen? - bell peppers, a tentatively sprouted potato that keeps escaping its pot via the dog's paws, a brand-new basil plant (replacing the other three or five or whatever it was that died this winter), chronically ill rosemary, lavender, mint with funny white spots on its leaves, and a single tomato plant which I have reason to believe is a Roma. The tomato the biggest and most handsome plant in the garden. It's like the Pirate Captain of the Plants.

There are also five pudgy little guys with big round leaves that started coming up last weekend. They look like watermelon seedlings. I was almost certain I planted watermelon seeds in only one pot, but these things are coming up in two pots. It's a magical and crazy world, my friends.

In citrus tree news - and I know this is what you've been holding your breath for - I'm sad to report that the lemon tree didn't fare so well during the Big Freeze in February. We had to cut it down to a stick and hope fervently that it would survive. Thankfully, it's pulled through. But I'm not anticipating a robust crop of thirteen lemons this November like what we got last November.

More optimistically, the orange tree is loaded with tiny, adorable oranges. (Mini-oranges for 6-inch people who need to make teensy mimosas, perhaps?) (Oh, how I love mini-fruits!) I'm not going to hold my breath that any of them are actually going to reach adulthood, however. In two years, the orange tree has produced exactly one full-sized orange which was eaten by a vampire exactly two seconds after reaching maturity as evidenced by the giant hole in it that was abruptly there when I returned home from work one evening.

Infant orange. (His future is uncertain.)

The lemon tree has moxie!

* Are you kidding me? Of course I am. Do I not always grow tomatoes?!

** Haha! Private joke. Family to trip to Cape Cod, blah blah blah. Never fails to crack me up. Oh God. And it's been years.

paws

2011-04-19T09:31:00.001-07:00

hedgehog cactus flower

2011-04-16T11:14:00.001-07:00

Rednex: an actual band

2011-04-15T20:52:00.000-07:00

Anyone else remember "Cotton Eye Joe" by Rednex? I played it for my dad once in the car back in my OWU days, and he proclaimed it "Pretty good". Or maybe "Not bad". Memory is so fickle! In any case, I secretly thought that he was very cool for possibly sort of not hating a song I loved to dance to. So I dedicate this one to you, Dad! A song you might not hate!

after last weekend's rain

2011-04-14T12:50:00.000-07:00

plotting

2011-04-10T19:28:00.000-07:00

I found a disturbing note on a business card
in Raphael's pocket the other day.

it's a recipe fiesta!

2011-04-08T21:38:00.000-07:00

Well, a two-recipe fiesta. BUT - two recipes can still be party! These two are vegetarian and potentially vegan, depending on your mood. My neighbors Kim and Chris (of Twelve-Hour Brunch fame) have gone vegan, so I've periodically been trying to remove non-vegan elements from various recipes so I can offer them good food the next time they come over for one twelve-hour event or the other. The most important thing I've discovered so far is that chicken can be pretty effectively substituted with tofu a lot of the time. But not in bread.

Recipe #1: Brown Bread
From Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Favorites
Makes 2 loaves

To make this bread vegan, make a vegan substitute for buttermilk by mixing 1 tablespoon of lemon juice (or white vinegar) per 1 cup of soymilk (or almond, coconut, or rice milk I've heard tell) and letting it sit for about five minutes. I'm not sure I could've told the vegan from the non-vegan breads if I hadn't known which was which.

I love this bread just-toasted with butter. SO good.

1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup cornmeal
1 cup unbleached white flour
1 cup raisins
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
2 cups buttermilk
1/2 cup molasses

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare two 8-inch loaf pans by lightly buttering or coating with cooking spray.

In a large bowl, stir together all ingredients through the allspice. Add the buttermilk and molasses and stir just until batter forms. Pour batter into prepared pans. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes, until loaves are firm and begin to pull away from sides of pans. Cool in pans on a rack for 15 minutes. Remove the loaves from the pans. Cool completely before wrapping for storage.

Recipe #2: Grilled Tofu with Mango, Cucumber, and Ginger Dressing

Altered from the recipe here. The original recipe is for grilled chicken instead of tofu.

Tofu's fun. To grill it, you have to squeeze a lot of the water from it. Here's my method: place a folded dish towel on a plate. Put a folded paper towel on the towel. Put a block of tofu on top of the paper towel. Another folded paper towel on top of the tofu. Another dish towel on top of that, and a plate upside-down on that. Finally, put a heavy book on top of the plate. Leave it all to sit for about half an hour.

I can't figure out how to tell you how to slice the tofu, but once you get it sliced to your satisfaction (aim for nine slices about 3/8 of an inch in thickness - good luck!), brush it with olive oil and put it on a hot grill for a few minutes on each side. I have never timed this. You can a pan on the stove too, if you must.

1 lb extra firm tofu, grilled
Jasmine rice, cooked
1 lime, quartered
1/2 cucumber, halved lengthwise and cut into this slices
3 scallions, cut into 3-inch-long thin strips
1 firm-ripe mango, peeled, pitted, and diced
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro

For dressing:
1/4 cup seasoned rice vinegar
1/4 cup vegetable oil
3 tablespoons mayonnaise
1/8 cup soy sauce
1/8 cup finely chopped peeled fresh ginger (from a 1- by 1.5-inch piece)
1 garlic cloves, chopped
1/4 teaspoon Asian sesame oil

Purée all dressing ingredients in a blender until mostly smooth.

Serve tofu over rice with mango, cucumber, and ginger dressing. Serve with quarter of lime on the side to squeeze to taste.

"CAUTION: The writer of this note is having a severe nervous breakdown. Nothing said in her notes should be taken seriously or held against her." (BJHS, 1989)

2011-04-06T21:04:00.000-07:00

SO! I have a Blogging Buddy! You probably haven't guessed this because I'm such an irresponsible blogger. So I'm telling you.

Everyone, meet my Blogging Buddy, Charity. Charity, this is everyone. Charity's blog is here: Imperfect Happiness. You should go see it. Charity's really good at, well, blogging for one thing. Whereas I'm really good at pouring a second glass of wine and watching Hulu.com until I pass out. We all have our strengths I suppose.

Anyhow, as blogging buddies, our job is to motivate each other to write things and read each other's things that we write and generally provide support and perhaps encourage our own readership (that's you!) to go visit each other's blogs. Charity is very, very good at this.  She can find anything I slap down on the internet relevant somehow to something she is thinking about. It's impressive as hell. I am apparently not so good at this as I haven't actually read anyone's blogs in about two weeks and so couldn't possibly begin to tell you how what I'm talking about is relevant to what she's talking about. Probably it's not. Charity tends to think a lot and apply logic to her writing. This is in direct contrast to the way I approach things. Obviously.

So instead of linking to her blog through a relevant passage in my own text, I've decided simply to blog about her.

I have known Charity since junior high. We spent a lot of time writing notes to each other, and I happen to have a BAG full of them right here and have, in fact, just been inadvertently reminded that my friends regularly addressed me as "Dinker" or "Dink" when writing notes to me for some reason that made sense all around back when we were thirteen.

I think Charity will be pleased that I've dug out these notes. Here is an example of why you should go read her blog:

"I decorated my USHISTORY folder. It's abstract art. Actually it looks like a close up of the spots on a cow. Either that or vercose veins." (When you visit her blog, you can ask her to explain what those things could possibly have in common. She'd probably love to discuss it. Also, I'd put money on her knowing how to spell varicose now.) "I like the cow one better. What do you think?" (Honestly, at thirteen, I doubt I had the first clue as to what a vercose vein actually looked like. Being from Ohio, I probably went with cow.) "I try not to." (She means think.) "Whenever it's at all possible, I avoid it." (Yeah, right.  She's a total thinker, this one. That's why you ought to go see her blog.) "I've got to stop talking to Tom Downey." (Don't remember Tom Downey very clearly. I don't think she discusses him much in her blog. But still.) "I could get a detention." (Extremely unlikely. Well... maybe for defacing your USHISTORY folder.)  (Charity, Note to Jenny, BJHS, 1989; parenthetical asides are mine)

So, in conclusion, "You may have won $15,000,000,000,000,000!!!" (Whoa. That's a lot.) "To claim your prize, you must eat twelve hot dogs," (Jesus) "fifteen ice cream sundaes," (done and done) "five large root beers," (is two glasses of wine acceptable?) "and the order blank included" (uh-oh - haven't seen that in 22 years) "by 2:30 pm on April 28th." (Charity to Jenny, BJHS, Rm 114, April 28, 1989; parenthetical asides are mine.)

things both exciting and puzzling

2011-03-28T21:08:00.000-07:00

A number of exciting and puzzling things have happened in recent days. For one, I no longer have access to my hotmail account because the Portuguese have apparently infiltrated it and are using it to spam everyone and their dog with messages in Portuguese. I'm not too happy about that. My dog doesn't even speak Portuguese.

Secondly, my parents sent me another box of alcohol from the clock shop. Puzzling and exciting, all rolled into one! Why this sudden interest in keeping me intoxicated, I can't help wondering. The care packages were a little different when I was college is all I'm saying. They generally involved those tins of flavored coffee that I used to live on before I wised up to real coffee, and Snackwells which I also lived on before wising up to fancy clock shop wines and IPAs.

Thirdly, Mandia made me go to the Second Annual Festival en el Barrio Viejo with Calexico and Friends this past Saturday, and it was so awesome. I'm exaggerating about the "making me go part". I totally wanted to go. Mandia just made it all possible by reminding me that it was happening and that I'd need cash.

"Crystal Frontier" (2010)

Mariachis and Silver People

CALEXICO!!

i'm a mama!

2011-03-22T09:07:00.000-07:00

I planted seeds for the first time ever this spring, and it's been quite the journey so far.

I planted seeds for eggplant, collards, spinach, basil, Roma tomatoes, Brandywine tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, tomatillos, Guajillo chiles, green bell peppers, and jalapenos. I know! I was excited too! I was all like, OMG, I can't wait for everything to come up so I can find out what the hell a tomatillo is!

According to the backs of the seed packets and to various commercials for fertilizers and cat food, within a week or two, hundreds of seedlings would joyously spring up and leaf out and burst into bloom, and birds would flutter down, and there would be salmon splashing around and ladybugs and singing. And I felt confident that I could facilitate all this. I watered and picked fallen leaves from the soil. I talked to the seeds the way the back of the Happy Frog Organic Vegetable Fertilizer bag says to. I faithfully moved the pots inside in the evenings since it was still cold at night, and outside into the sun during the day. Except for the leafy greens which were in a box garden and so on their own when it came to surviving the elements.

I tried to do everything the seed packets told me to, and I felt that things were probably progressing well, although there was no clear proof that anything was happening in the pots. And then came the Big Freeze. After that, I re-checked the seed packets. But they never said a word about what happens if you have a Big Freeze shortly after you do all your planting. Or at what point to give up all hope of ever seeing a collard with your own eyes. Or what to do about it if nothing happens. (Panic, I assume.)

Frankly, without the seed packets telling me what to do, I was kind of at a loss.

What I wound up doing, as per my usual strategy, is waiting around for awhile. During this period, I wandered around the house in my fuzzy socks with my brow furrowed in a thoughtful manner, making firm statements such as, "I've decided to wait until the third weekend in March to plant any more seeds." As if I know Thing One about seeds. Or, for that matter, March in Tucson. Like, for example, it's raining tonight. I seriously never saw that coming.

The weather eventually began to warm up for reals and still nothing sprouted. Assuming the worst, I went ahead and dropped a few more seeds into the barren pots. I gently watered all the pots and left them in the sun so the magic promised by the cat food commercials could happen.

Every day I came home from work and went right out back to examine my pots for seedlings. Having weathered (so to speak) the Big Freeze and finally made it to spring, I felt I could breathe easier. We're on Easy Street now, baby, I told myself smugly. I hadn't counted on predators, however, or I wouldn't have been so smug about it.

People complain about deer and rabbits and ground squirrels destroying their gardens, but the worst predator of all is my dog Lila. It wasn't long before she discovered that there was new soil in those pots. I began coming home to find that Lila had pawed the top layer of soil out of four or five of the biggest pots. How wonderful it must have felt between her toes! How soft against her tender nose as she buried her snout deeply and inhaled its rich, loamy scent! How like a gentle spring rain as she flung it up into the air and let it spill down upon her! For days this happened. I felt sure my seeds were doomed and wondered briefly if the dog was incubating any of them in her stomach and how much a thing like that might come to in vet bills.

The seeds, I figured, were either dried up and lost in the wind, digested, or will eventually sprout next to the patio and then perish in the foot traffic there. You might think I would be discouraged. But no! I scooped all the dirt up off the ground and refilled the pots anyway and patted it down and spent the next few days wandering around the house in my lighter-weight spring socks making firm statements such as, "She won't do it again." Finally I got smart and stuck some rocks in the pots which proved to be a much more effective method of stopping the pawing than just fervently hoping she'd quit.

Baby Mystery Plants #'s 2 - 7

And finally, this past weekend, just when it was looking like I would have to sprinkle more seeds in more pots - and then build a greenhouse and exchange Lila for a gerbil - things started sprouting. It was like magic had ensued! I may actually have clasped my hands together and said, "AWWW" and then performed a small dance when I saw the first little sproutlings. May have. Okay, did.

And then I realized that nothing is labeled anymore because when I was labeling everything the first time around, I ran out of toothpicks and couldn't be bothered to get back into the random kitchen implement drawer for more (it's just so deep and frightening in there) and for some reason it had seemed reasonable to believe that memory would suffice once things started popping up. Ah, yes, I would say at the first pale curl of tender baby leaflet, it is obvious from the pseudo- terminal counterclockwise whorl of the supernumerary bud that this is an eggplant.

I guess "nothing is labeled anymore" is not really the right term here. What I mean is "half of them never got labeled at all because I was simply to lazy to mess with it and now I regret that because, my god, even if these things fruit, I'm still not going to know a tomatillo from a ground squirrel which I don't think I planted, but really, without labels, how would I know?!"

So, this year's going to be even more fun than last year because it's Mystery Plant Year! Tomatoes? Eggplants? Basil? Tomatillos? More importantly, how much water are they going to take and do they prefer sun or partial shade and how long are they going to live until I inadvertently kill them? Who knows? Regardless of the answers to these timeless questions, I finally have baby plants and I'm very pleased about it.

Baby Mystery Plant #1

Update! Not half-an-hour after publishing this, Lila decimated Mystery Plants #'s 2 - 7. Two of the six were pawed up. I managed to rescue four of them with some careful pushing around of loosened dirt. They're still upright, at least. I'm scrapping the rock idea and have now piled furniture around the pots.

not really a cave troll

2011-03-18T12:58:00.000-07:00

Concerns have been expressed regarding my apparently negative frame of mind as I wrote that last post, so I want you to rest assured that I fully appreciate the many wonderful benefits I get from having the particular job* that I have**, and that I have not actually morphed into some sort of crazy-ass cave troll. Also, I was probably unfair to the burritos, which were actually pretty good. Trader Joe's Mildy Spiced Vegetable Burritos. Highly recommended.

Furthermore, I have good news to impart: we are building a shed. Also, the dog recently became bathed, so pictures are forthcoming.

* The students are adorable, and I sometimes wind up in Hawai'i.

** But I'm not crazy about the fluorescent lights.

here i go again, breaking my own spirit

2011-03-16T14:20:00.000-07:00

There you are, at your desk, starting morosely at your calendar which hangs on the smudged, windowless white wall in front of you. Like a jerk, a long time ago, you carefully penciled "Spring Break" across the appropriate squares. You weren't just making it up. You, in fact, work at a college, so it is, in fact, Spring Break for most of the people who would normally be there on a beautiful Wednesday afternoon in March.

But staff don't get Spring Break off. You know your fate. You will sit for endless hours under the fluorescent lights during Spring Break, your skin getting paler as your soul shrivels up and falls out. Over the course of the week, you will morph into a strange goblin-like creature who subsists on microwave burritos and develop twitches in the soft bags of skin that form under your near-blind eyes. You will learn to speak in a tremulous whisper of The Outside and whimper in fear when the cleaning person opens the door and allows fresh, clean, evil air to slide through the office.

Faculty and students? All gone. Roadtripping to Mexico or riding ponies across a beach or relaxing with frosty beers in the sunshine or swimming with shiny dolphins. You feel certain that if you had a window anywhere near your cold, hard desk, you'd see hoardes of these people skipping across the parking lot, singing and yelling cheerily and wearing sunglasses with rhinestones on them and flip flops and shorts and bikini tops, some of them, and waving brightly colored scarves around their heads. Isn't that what people who are on Spring Break do? With scarves, I mean? I would. If sunlight didn't burn so.

unexpected raphaelisms

2011-03-10T12:03:00.000-08:00

To recap for anyone who hasn't been following along or isn't my mother, Raphael is from Guatemala so he speaks Spanish like a native. Of Guatemala. Which he is. But he's also really, really good at English. In most situations.

Raphael taught himself English when he was in his twenties. He lived for awhile in Antigua, Guatemala, and worked as a tour guide, taking the more intrepid sorts of tourists hiking up volcanoes and camping in the jungle and whatnot. (He tried to do this with me once, early on in our relationship, and I wound up breaking down in tears on the trail. The inclines, people! Hiking up a volcano over there is like scaling straight up the side of a multistory office building! Only with jaguars! And Canadian tourists! Also, unbeknownst to us, I was developing a lung infection. So I was saddened to find myself in a situation where I had to use vines and roots to literally pull myself up a 45-degree muddy slope that my new boyfriend had just bounded up like a squirrel. I did finally make it up the volcano and even to the cheese factory that was on the other side and eventually got my lung infection diagnosed by a guy in a pickup truck who wrote me out a prescription for antibiotics and am still with Raphael, so please don't be upset.)

Anyway, all these crazy, young tourists who wanted to climb volcanoes spoke a lot of English around Raphael, and, intitially, all sorts of hilarity ensued as he struggled to communicate with them. For example there was the time with the group of Australian guys. It was a cold night and Raphael thought he would make everybody a nice fire. To convey this to the Australian guys, he said, "Let's get hot."

Eventually he became much more fluent in English and no longer said things like "Let's get hot" to big groups of Australian guys, and, still later, after moving to the U.S., he got even better at not saying things like this. And now he regularly uses big, fancy words that I don't even know such as thermogenic.

But there are still the Raphaelisms. Learning big, fancy words is easy; mastering the idioms is much more difficult. For example, this morning, he tried to insult me in a breezy, affectionate manner. I forget why. I had probably done something dumb. I remember that I was standing in the bathroom, so maybe it had something to do with toilet paper.

Raphael: You're being a blonde dumb.

Pause.

Jenny: No. You're being a blonde dumb.

another hair-raising tail

2011-02-26T14:38:00.000-08:00

It started yesterday. Innocently. Like babies. Riding ponies. On a rainbow.

But how was I to know that the rainbow was nothing more than pretty smoke? And the ponies were lame? And the babies had fangs? HOW WAS I TO KNOW?!?

Scene: Lila and I are in the backyard. It's a mildly warm day. Some wind. Lila is tempting me with a filthy Kong AirDog ball. I reach out to pet her.

Me: Lila, all this crazy running after the Kong AirDog ball has gotten you pretty dusty. Let me get the Furminator and we'll get some of that dust out of your coat.

Lila: I'm fine. Really. What's a little dust between friends? Want my Kong AirDog ball?

Me: No no, it's okay. This will just take a minute. You're not shedding much lately, so... let me just...

Lila: I'm FINE. Take the ball. For the love of God, TAKE IT.

Me: Here's the brush. Now just hold still for one minute...

Lila: No. NOOOOOOOO!

Me: Oh. Oh...SWEET JESUS.

Lila: Leave me be! You mustn't see me like this!

Me: How is is possible that you can lose THIS MUCH FUR and still qualify as an mammal?!?

Lila: I'm hideous!

Me: You're not hideous. You're just...losing a LOT of fur. Look, here. Look at this giant puff. It's like you're a dandelion.

Lila: (Sobbing) I'm a monster!

Me: Oh my God, it's sticking to me. It's STICKING TO ME.

Lila: Go. Go! Get out of here while there's still time!

Me: It won't come off. IT WON'T COME OFF.

Lila: I'm frightened.

Me: IT'S STICKING TO MY LEGGINGS! IT'S EVERYWHERE!!

Lila: Didn't I tell you not to Furminate me? Didn't I?

ME: AAAAACCKKK!!

And then I collapsed under the weight of the fur that clung to me, and Lila ran into the house to grow new fur and disseminate it in our bed.

The end. Or is it only the beginning...? (Scarrrry muusssic.)

tell me the season again?

2011-02-16T18:02:00.000-08:00

The mesquite finally shed all its leaves this past weekend. Half of them on Sunday and the rest on Monday, I think it must have been. Although I never heard the WHOOMPH sound that they presumably made when they fell in one great, heavy clump.

So now it's more or less spring around here. Feels like spring, anyway, with daytime temperatures in the seventies and a little rain coming in this weekend. I've already begun craving fresh tomatoes and cantaloupe and feeling that daily spring itch to check every morning on my sad little pots of dead plants in anticipation of bright new growth, so those are good signs that things are moving right along.

But this mesquite thing feels like a setback.

mini but mighty

2011-02-15T10:08:00.000-08:00

The hundred-dollar carved ironstone Fu dogs were out of my budget,
so I settled for the fierce little six-dollar resin ones.
These guys look imposing, but they're only four inches tall.
Four inches of RAWRR!!

yes. i now own Fu dogs. pictures tomorrow.

2011-02-13T17:44:00.000-08:00

Carved horn skulls and an inlaid stone cross.

The Annual Tucson Gem Show is in town! The Gem Show is the largest gem and mineral show in the United States and is actually comprised of more than forty shows set up throughout Tucson.

We're among the faithful who make the long trek up the Frontage Road adjacent to I-10 every year, where all the hotel rooms have been turned into shops and every gravel lot turned into a vast sea of giant white tents. We have such an awesome time at the Gem Show. It's like the circus for people who are afraid of lions. All the spectacle, none of the crazy teeth!

And the Gem Show vendors don't limit themselves to the purveyance of gems. They purvey, of course, minerals. And dinosaur eggs. (Yes! People want these!) Meteorites. Billions upon billions of sparkly beads. Jewelry, rocks carved into turtles, giant statues of Buddha, lifesize carved giraffes, baskets, more trinkets than you can shake a walking stick carved like a Pacific Northwest totem pole at, sets of carved wooden ducks, Moroccan lanterns, African masks, tubs of shea butter, statues from Indonesia, soaps, and carved furniture. You can buy incense, piggy banks made out of coconuts, Tibetan prayer flags, textiles from India, rugs from Pakistan, fluttery dresses and scarves, knit hats shaped like zebras, paper parasols, Navajo rugs, antique pistols, rhinestone-studded purses, amethyst geodes bigger than people, carved ironstone Fu dogs, the world's tiniest fold-out knife for one dollar, fossil marble sinks, and pants.

This afternoon, while gazing at my future Fu dogs, I overheard a girl on a cell phone describe the Gem Show thusly: "It's like Portland on crack." I'm not sure what that means, but for some reason it sounds about right.

A vendor from Tibet demonstrates how to make
a singing bowl sing.

Tibetan singing bowls.

Greek food:
chicken and vegetables with couscous and tzatsiki.
Also bonus lamb bits!

Pistachio baklava.

Pausing in our trek along the Frontage Road to prove we were here.

The African Village show.

Inside one of the giant white tents.
They're set up right over the vegetation.

assessing the damage

2011-02-05T20:37:00.000-08:00

This is what eighteen degrees does to cactus:

Mayhem in the prickly pear hedge! Now we can see
our neighbors!

These parts of this cactus are supposed to stand upright

This poor guy used to be four feet high.

okay. so nobody's roof collapsed. BUT...

2011-02-04T21:28:00.000-08:00

As you may know, there's been a lot of weather going around recently. I'd like to add to the picture, if I may, even though I know you Midwesterners/people from Rhode Island are groaning and slapping your foreheads.

I can hear you.

Wait...that's just the pipes.

See...Okay. Here's the thing. Whatever you guys have done out there with the several feet of snow and the buried cars and the downed powerlines and everything has caused us here in the Desert Southwest to experience temperatures way beyond what we're used to. 100 degrees? Check. 108? Double check. Whatevs. We can handle those kinds of extremes.

But 18 degrees is kicking our ass. It's caused my house to be 37 degrees when I wake up in the morning. Which is unacceptable. It's killing all our cactuses. They're simply freezing and then keeling over from their own weight. The prickly pears are a mess. And that exotic thing from Africa...? (Sad head-shaking.)

It's also causing our pipes to burst. Because only the people who have experienced Midwest winters know the first thing about letting your water drip all night or turning off the water to your swamp coolers or whatnot. (Okay. The swamp cooler thing is all on us. That's totally our fault.) No, but seriously, I'm pretty sure 95 percent of everyone I know in Tucson (Facebook, February 3, 2011) had a pipe burst on Thursday morning. Including Work. And Tucson Water. And they're professionals!

True story: I took my dog for a walk Wednesday evening and personally witnessed a man wearing a trash bag climb onto his roof to fix a swamp cooler line that was geysering like Old Faithful. Also, the cold broke my car door handle, and my internet lines have been frozen for two days. You think I'm kidding, but I am not. I may be wrong about the car door handle, but the facts are that it's been harder to open the driver's side door since it got consistently below forty at night, and on the morning everything else in my world froze solid, the handle snapped when I pulled on it. Coincidence? You decide. Now, it's going to cost me seventy-five bucks and a Tuesday morning to get a new handle. And I blame Canada.

As for the internet - I'm really not kidding on this one. When temperatures are below fifty, the internet on the computer in the back room with all the cracked windows and barely any ceiling and all the spiders STOPS WORKING.

My supervisor at Work thinks this is hysterical. On Thursday morning, as all the complaints about frozen pipes are filtering in, I tell her that my internet has ceased working again and she says..."Your internet pipes are frozen?" and I say, "Yes, in fact I believe they are." And she laughs for approximately seventeen minutes. But, seriously. The internet doesn't work on that computer when it's below fifty. We don't get it, but we have learned to live with it. And use the laptops a lot during the winter.

Not only are we suffering frozen pipes, dying prickly pears, and having to see our neighbors wearing trash bags, but apparently we have also run short of natural gas in various parts of the city. And that, I have heard, is really specifically your guyses' faults. I'm not clear on the specifics of why, since I actively stopped listening when the story came on the news.

In conclusion, I just want you all to know that we in Arizona are suffering too. We haven't had quite the news coverage that you guys scored this past week, but 18 degrees is only one degree higher than the last official low temperature. It's frickin' strange to be this cold here. That's why people have to wear trash bags while they staunch the flow from their burst swamp cooler water lines. Because we all long since thrown out our coats, and our Daisy Dukes simply aren't warm enough.

does this mean it's technically still fall?

2011-01-22T13:21:00.000-08:00

How many teeny little mesquite leaves can flutter down and slip under the keys of my laptop before the laptop stops working do you think?

I never had this problem in Ohio.

revisiting the old flag spanker

2011-01-17T09:56:00.000-08:00

We're in the car one recent evening and listening to the radio. It's a feel-good story about an eight-year-old girl who was performing a certain song at a minor league hockey game in Virginia when the mike cut out on her high note and everyone in attendance helped her finish the song. (You might be one of the four million people have seen the video by now, in which case, you have already guessed the punchline.)

So I'm getting a little teary-eyed as I am wont to do, because it's a nice story and those hockey fans all just sound like a veritable chorus of angels descended unto earth, when Raphael, who unbeknownst to me has apparently this whole time been getting more and more frustrated at a failure of memory, blurts out, "What is this SONG?!"

"What is this SONG?" I ask incredulously.

"It's a Christmas song, right?"

"It's not a Christmas song!"

"What is it?"

"You took a TEST on this!"

"What IS it?!"

I'm laughing now instead of sobbing, so that's nice, but considering that it's probably the most universally recognized song in the United States, on top of the fact that Raphael has a history of having no idea what it is, it still takes me a minute to get out: "It's the Star-Spangled Banner!"

For the record, Raphael still can't wrap his mind around the word "spangled".

vegetarian chili - not just for the vegetarians anymore

2011-01-16T12:50:00.000-08:00

Vegetarian Chili with Sweet Potatoes

(Altered slightly from Real Simple October 2010)

Makes 4 servings

I'm not a vegetarian, and I love chili with lots of different kinds of meat in it. But this chili - not only vegetarian, but vegan! - satisfies me like no other vegetarian chili I've ever had. Granted, I don't seek it out, so my experience is more limited than that of, say, a vegetarian chili-lover. Raphael seems happy yet mildly ambivalent about it ("it's really good"), but I love it, and it's really easy. It basically involves you, a knife, and a pot. If you were feeling frisky, you could saute the vegetables in some olive oil before dumping everything in the pot, but I've never actually done this. It might bring it from "it's really good" to "it's frickin' spectacular, honey!". But who knows. It might not be worth the risk. You could also add carrots. For some reason, every time I make this, I consider adding carrots and then don't.

1 medium red onion, chopped
1 green bell pepper, chopped
1 red bell pepper, chopped
4-6 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon chili powder
1 tablespoon ground cumin
2 teaspoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1 28-oz can fire-roasted diced tomatoes with garlic
1 15.5-oz can black beans, rinsed
1 15.5-oz can kidney beans, rinsed
1 medium sweet potato (about 8 oz), not peeled, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
Optional garnishes: sour cream or plain yogurt, sliced scallions,sliced radishes, tortilla chips, coarsely choped cilantro

Combine first ten ingredients in a large pot. Add tomatoes and their liquid, beans, sweet potato, and 1 cup of water. Cover and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and cook for about 1 to 1 1/2 hours until everything is soft and delicious.

mailbox makeover: The After Pictures!

2011-01-12T11:33:00.000-08:00

Mailbox Makeover Part II

It's like Cinderella!

Only distant memories of dents!

mailbox makeover: The Before Pictures!

2011-01-09T17:45:00.000-08:00

I still tell people to look for the red mailbox in front of our house even though technically the last time it was red was sometime back in 2008. I forget because it was red when we moved in and that was how I figured out where my house was for the first few weeks. So I still feel like "the people who have the white house with the green porch and the red mailbox."

Our mailbox has been bashed in by hoodlums, no longer latches correctly, and regularly draws official criticism from the US Postal Service via little forms with boxes checked off indicating that it needs to be 1.) at least three feet tall, 2.) not spin around in a wobbly manner on its post when opened, and, 3.) function.

So Raphael's making us a new mailbox...which you will get to see tomorrow!
Mailbox Makeover Part I

Before:

Tilty!

Bashed in!

Still red!

a brief tour of downtown Tucson

2011-01-07T11:48:00.000-08:00

We went out for dinner last night to Cafe Poca Cosa, an excellent Mexican restaurant in downtown Tucson where the menu changes daily and they read it to you from a chalkboard and all the entrees are served with an amazingly giant salad of fresh fruits and greens. I had the Carne Asada de la Diablo - beef with a chipotle cream sauce, and it was fantastic. Afterwards, we went for drinks at Hotel Congress just down the street from the restaurant. (Everything is just down the street from everything else in our tiny downtown, though, if you want me to be honest about it. Tucson's kind of adorable that way.) At Congress, we sat at the bar in the lobby and I had a glass of tempranillo. I don't really have a story here, just pictures of the lobby at Hotel Congress.

A picture of notorious criminal John Dillinger.
In January of 1934, he and his gang were on the run from the FBI and the combined forces of several states, having gotten away with a series of bank robberies. They were hiding out at Hotel Congress when a fire broke out in the basement and spread up to the third floor where they were staying. Yada yada - their escape from the fire led to their capture by the small-town, podunk Tucson police force which surprised everybody, not least of all Dillinger.
(Read more here!)

happy 2011!

2011-01-02T13:04:00.000-08:00

I didn't stay awake until midnight on New Year's Eve, but thanks to Midtown Tucson's general affection for fireworks, yelling, and shooting off of guns to express their happiness, I was awake at midnight and so felt somewhat a part of the festivities and not quite as lame as I otherwise might have felt if I woke up and realized I'd missed everything. My dog was certainly a part of it - barking and racing around the yard like a crazy, racing, barking machine in response to the Guatemala-style fireworks that went off as 2010 finally ticked over to 2011 in the American Southwest.

But our New Year's Day festivities more than made up for my chronic inability to remain on my feet past 10:30 pm. In fact, I was going to post yesterday, but we hosted a small brunch that was much more successful than we anticipated and wound up going from 11:00 am to 11:00 pm. That's twelve hours of brunch!

Twelve-hour brunch!

Mandia came by bravely after her big night out, and our neighbors Kim and Chris lugged over their waffle maker and introduced us to their New Year's Waffle tradition. (You don't have to eat your waffle on New Year's Day, but you have to eat it sometime during that year. As traditions go, this one is pretty non-constrictive.) We also had mimosas, Bloody Marys (recipe below), sweet potato hashbrowns, roasted vegetables, and brown bread with raisins.

Later that afternoon, more neighbors came by - Sara, Glen, and Baby Samuel - and we opened some beers and mixed up some prickly pear drinks with Kim's Handmade Artisanal Club Soda. (Kim has a machine that can make club soda out of your tap water! It's like you're God!) Artisanal was the word for a few hours yesterday afternoon: the prickly pear juice came from tunas I juiced this past summer, we used lemon juice from our actual lemons, and we used Handstuffed Safeway Olives with Homegrown Jalapeno Bits for garnish (see picture below).

Prickly Pear Martini with Artisanal* Stuffed Olives.

*Kim and I removed the pimentos and re-stuffed the olives with
chopped jalapenos from the backyard jalapeno plant which is recently deceased
because I accidentally let it freeze the other night.
I'm a terrible mother to my plants.

Finally, much later, we got into the leftover vegetable soup (au pistou!) we had in the fridge because by 9:00, we needed actual food or people were going to start dropping like flies. Some people (me) actually did that anyway. It was a lovely way to ring in the new year - a full day of eating, drinking, talking, and cooing over babies.

Baby Samuel*
(* Handmade by Sara and Glen only a couple weeks ago. Artisanal!)

Happy 2011 Fresh Tomato Bloody Marys
(Altered slightly from recipe in Gourmet July 2009)

Juice without horseradish, Tabasco, or lemon can be made a day ahead and chilled. Makes 8 drinks.

3 lbs ripe tomatoes
3 celery ribs
1 cup parsley
1/2 Tablespoon sea salt
1.5 Tablespoon bottled horseradish
1.5 teaspoon Tabasco
1.5 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
Additional sea salt and coarsely ground black pepper, for rimming glasses
Lemon wedges
8 oz (1 cup) chilled vodka
For garnish: green olives, blue cheese, parsley, lemon wedges

To make the juice:
Coarsely chop tomatoes, celery, and parsley, and puree with 1/2 Tablespoon sea salt in a food processor until smooth. Transfer to a bowl and chill for one hour. Strain pureed mixture through a sieve into a bowl or jar. Discard the solids. Add horseradish, Tabasco, and lemon juice to the strained liquid.

To make the drinks:
Mix sea salt and ground pepper on a small plate. Use lemon wedges to moisten the rims of the glasses and dip rims into salt and papper mix. Fill each glass with 1 oz vodka and 2/3 cup juice. Season to taste. Garnish with green olives, blue cheese, parsley, or lemon wedges.

it's snow o'clock somewhere!

2010-12-30T15:54:00.000-08:00

The important part is that I can see snow from my house.

Snow in the Catalinas.

So it's cold today, but we're making it through. Luckily, our archaeologist friend Jen prepared some flotation samples for us for Christmas this year, although it wasn't exactly a score for altruism. Many years ago, Jen, Raphael, and I worked together doing contract archaeology for the same Tucson firm. One day, Raphael came in from the field and presented Jen with a plastic bag innocently full of what appeared to be powdered cocoa.

Christmas flot samples.

"It's instant hot chocolate," he assured her, smiling sincerely. Jen, who apparently hadn't paid a lick of attention over the past few years and therefore still didn't understand what Raphael was capable of, stuck her finger in the bag, tasted the contents, immediately gagged, and has yet to forgive or forget.

It was, of course, a bag of brown silt collected from the field.

Well, I'm happy to report that Jen's flot samples really contain powdered cocoa. I'm having some now and it's keeping me warm as I watch the snow in the distance.

badly buried bones

2010-12-28T08:42:00.000-08:00

Lila got a giant rawhide bone for Christmas from her grandparents this year. She has eschewed (ha!) chewing it in favor of burying it in different places all over the yard. We watched her bury it, for example, under a pile of gravel against the fence right outside the living room window. Then she "buried" it under the big agave in the back of the yard. This morning, she buried it in the Mexican Oregano.

"Buried" under the agave.

Buried in the Mexican Oregano.

Maybe rawhide is the trick to making this thing grow.

Acting casual.

Christmas recap

2010-12-27T19:48:00.000-08:00

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday!

Cardamom cookies &
Chocolate Peppermint cookies

Sugared Cranberries & Cinnamon Swirl cookies

Christmas Eve Open House

Spoon cookies &
Almond Thumbprint cookies

Peanut Butter cookies

Sugar cut-outs

Ready for the Christmas Eve open house

Christmas Eve Eve

2010-12-23T19:09:00.000-08:00

I'm about to finish jamming the Christmas spoon cookies which means A. my fingers are a lot jammier than they usually are, B. I'm wearing an awful lot of flour, and C. the holiday festivities have begun!

Oh, and also, D. I'm reminded that I have something to share with you: My new blog. It only makes sense that I start a food blog, really. It's the logical next step. I can talk about spoon cookies every other day if I have a food blog. Who's going to complain? Spoon cookies are nothing if not food! Anyway, my new baby blog is a work-in-progress, so please don't judge it too harshly for at least a year. Next Christmas, by all means, lay on the critiques.

Food blog! http://feastiary.wordpress.com/

BONUS OPINIONS!

1. Asus makes a damn fine laptop, even thought no one's ever heard of them. God. The battery life gives me goosebumps.
2. Battlestar Galactica! Really good Sci-fi! Who the hell knew!
3. I love Lady Gaga. I just can't help myself.

lunar eclipse

2010-12-21T18:24:00.000-08:00

If you haven't heard all the hoohaw, there was a total lunar eclipse last night. It was the first total lunar eclipse to coincide with the Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere since the one in 1638 which I missed. Raphael woke me up around 12:45 this morning and we sat in our plastic Adirondack chairs in the backyard and watched the moon move through a thin and patchy cloudcover and the red shadow of the earth creep across it. It wasn't that cold last night and we didn't see any Druids.

forced segues

2010-12-20T18:12:00.000-08:00

This is true: We have a neighbor. Named Rafael. Who is an architect.

Weird, right?

Anyway, Rafael routinely refers to architecture as "architorture". Thinking of architorture reminds me of how Raphael just recently finished all his final projects and exams, and how, while he was doing all this, I had to replace him with spiced brandy wine.* And speaking of spiced brandy wine, Charity has recently requested the recipe. Presumably to replace her husband who I believe is still out of town. So here it is.

Spiced Brandy Wine
(Recipe from Martha Stewart Living October 2010)

Makes 4
1 bottle (750 mL) light-bodied red wine (such as Beaujolais) (In Tucson, I have reliably found Beaujolais at both Trader Joe's and World Market, but so far, nowhere else.)
3 ounces brandy
1/2 cup sugar
6 whole cloves
4 strips lemon zest (3 inches each)
2 cinnamon sticks
2 star anise

Bring all ingredients to a simmer in a saucepan, covered, over high heat.

Remove from heat and steep for 10 minutes. Strain through a fine sieve (or just make your peace with picking cloves out of your teeth, like I do). Ladle into four mugs. (Or one really giant mug.)

* I'm kidding, Mom! I didn't really replace Raphael with alcohol! Technically, I don't think it can be done, anyway.

Christmas portrait of my animal

2010-12-20T17:29:00.000-08:00

Lila is ready for Christmas in her new sparkly poinsettia party collar.
She's especially ready for holiday food,
such as sausage balls or a pork tenderloin,
to fall on the floor.
It's like I'm dressing up my vaccuum.

time to schedule in the Holiday Cheer!

2010-12-08T12:04:00.000-08:00

Don't let candycane crumbs fall into your keyboard like I do.

Christmas decorations around the workplace are almost as depressing as how the caferia never quite gets the baked potatoes exactly right. But I did what I could with what I had available. And I had nothing to do with the fortune cookies.

Some sparkly mistletoe garland stuck on the bulletin board with thumbtacks.

Saddest holiday candy dish selection of all time.

One lonely strand of Christmas lights.

Two hours of Holiday Cheer scheduled for next Thursday.
The rumor is, there's going to be wassail.

can Raphael be easily replaced by a lemon?

2010-12-04T10:46:00.000-08:00

The peel of my new lemon is going to be part of the spiced brandy wine I will warm all evening on the stove tonight as I festively open up my boxes of Christmas stuff and adorn things. This will be a solo gig. Raphael's not coming to the gala event because we're smack in the middle of Architecture Final Projects & Torture Week.

I don't honestly know what those people do over there in the architecture studio, but they spend a whole hell of a lot of time doing it. These days, I literally see Raphael each day between about 6:15 am when we get up and 7:37 am when he makes me leave for work. Then that's it until the next morning. And this time - unlike all the other times when I've told you about how my zucchini plant was in the mafia or how Santa showed up to that one holiday brunch and got wasted off the champagne - I'm not exaggerating at all.

I won't be lonely tonight, though. I've got my lemon to hang out with. Maybe we can have a pillowfight or something.

update! Includes lemons, turkey, & lumberjacks!

2010-11-28T15:11:00.000-08:00

My boy.

I'm running around like a lumberjack today: flannel shirt, baggy jeans, giant axe...because I'm desperate to be cozy. You don't get to be really cozy that often in Tucson, but it's finally cloudy and "cold" today, with a high of "sixty". You know, the quotation marks are probably not strictly necessary here, since it really is actually sixty and to Tucsonans, "sixty" is the equivalent of "snow flurries and a chance of sleet". A (god forbid) high in the fifties is "you don't know where the snow chains are?! Did you at least buy extra water?! Oh my God, we're all going to die!".

I know you think I'm kidding, but I assure you - I'm only kidding a little.

Anyway, since we're practically in the midst of a winter storm, Lila and I have a roaring fire going in the kerosene heater in the back room which we've recently bedecked with my folding Coca-Cola table that my friends stole for me from Mexico (don't judge me! Judge my friends! Mexico should've been paying more attention!), some nice candles, and a cup of coffee (see below). We're listening to Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros right along with the rest of the civilized universe, apparently, and we're trying to buckle down and write something for a nice change of pace. It's so far a very peaceful kind of afternoon.

Cozy!

In other news, this morning Raphael plucked our first official lemon of the season from the fruit-laden tree - laden with no fewer than thirteen adolescent lemons! That's its picture up at the top. Here's a shot of its younger siblings:

The extended family.

And finally, Thanksgiving was nice, in case you're dying to know. We stayed home just the two of us, and I cooked all day and Raphael did some yardwork, and we had pecan rolls, bacon, and mimosas in the morning. For snacks before dinner, we had some Warm Fennel-and-Parmesan Dip that surprised me with its deliciousness because I assumed that I didn't like fennel when I picked out the recipe. Sometimes I wonder if my instincts are out to get me:

Instincts: Here, Jenny, eat this fennel.

Jenny: I don't like fennel. It might hurt me.

Instincts: Nooooo... You trippin', man. Fennel won't hurt you...C'mon, trust your instincts. Heheheheheh...

For dinner we squashed a butternut squash that had been lying around pathetically for some time, unfroze some cheddar buttermilk biscuits that I thoughtfully baked in advance of the Big Day (thanks, me!), and I made my traditional Sweet Potato Gnocchi with Pecans and Brown Butter that I always like to make during one holiday meal or another. It's kind of my replacement for the rutabegas my mother always made me eat when I was too young and helpless to fight back. Also we had Raphael's new favorite stuffing, Caramelized Onion and Herb Stuffing (which inexplicably gets terrible reviews on the internet - ignore those people! They're clearly insane and Socialists!), Roasted Brussels Sprouts and Grapes, and Sage Butter-Roasted Turkey with Cider Gravy. And my dear old friend, Grand Marnier Cranberry Sauce. Everyone's sure to be saddened and disappointed by the next two admissions, but...I didn't make mashed potatoes. And I didn't wind up making the Spiced Apple Pie until the following afternoon. But nuts to all of you, because I bet we still have more apple pie leftovers right now than any of yous.

Kind of a yellow palette, but tasty. Green stuff is overrated.
Yeah, you heard me, brussels sprouts.

Tucson's All Souls Procession

2010-11-19T21:26:00.000-08:00

Tucson's All Souls Procession occurred two weekends ago. Raphael and I usually just watch, but this year Clariza and Clariza's friend Suzanne and I dressed up. I made a loaf of pan de muerto to celebrate - the traditional Mexican bread of the dead - which we ate as we were making ourselves up, and I made a sign to honor my grandpa who died just about one year ago. That's him as a boy in the picture above.

Being in the procession was something different. It's weird to be the spectatee instead of the spectator. Although everyone is a spectator during this event. You can't just walk. You have to look. The costumes and masks and floats are fantastically weird, glittering and glowing and spinning.

After the finale - which is a spectacularly theatrical show involving aerialists and drums and stiltwalkers and dancers and the traditional burning of the giant urn as it's hanging from a crane a hundred feet or so over the crowd, we went with Mandia to Hotel Congress for drinks and food. Love going to Congress after the Procession. The bar is loaded with skeletons and other bizarro creatures. Death was there this year, drink in hand, gettin' his groove on with the ladies.

Here's the link for more pictures from this year's Procession.

And I've just realized I never put pictures up for the last two years. Lots more shots of the finale from 2008 and 2009 because we were much closer to the stage. So...links below:

2007

2008

2009

Day 209

2010-11-06T15:43:00.000-07:00

Being the parent of a Meyer lemon tree requires an awful lot of patience.

Must be fall in Tucson - the lemons are finally starting to look like lemons.

Baby pictures from back in April.
What will they grow up to be?!
Lemon meringue pies? Basil Vodka lemonades?
Candied lemon?
Their whole lives are ahead of them!

angst and jack o'lanterns: like peas in a pod

2010-11-01T19:40:00.000-07:00

WHY am I incapable of caramelizing a damn onion?!?

Whatever. Here - look at some pictures of my house decorated for Halloween.

the box wasn't ticking, so i probably should have known...

2010-10-25T19:22:00.000-07:00

Double Chocolate Coffee Oatmeal Stout -
found on my porch this afternoon.

So my parents cleverly waited until I was living thirty hours away by car to start doing fun things without me.  These days, they frequent a place called Bruning's Clock Shop in Beavercreek, Ohio. (If you click on that link, you'll find pictures of some Bruning's regulars that include my parents. See? I can't make this stuff up.)

I like to think of Bruning's Clock Shop as a kind a modern-day speakeasy.  They sell clocks, of course, so if you're in the market for a clock, there's no better destination. But, similarly to a speakeasy, they also sell wine. And not everybody knows it. Or maybe a lot of people know it by now. Just like during Prohibition!

I don't know the origin of this whole clock/wine concept. It might be that clocks don't sell so well these days when your pen is actually a computer and you can just ask it what time it is and not have to deal with any ticking or bonging.  Personally, I like the juxtaposition of timepieces and alcohol, two things which historically haven't always exactly meshed. Anyway, Bruning's has a bar and everything, and you can tell your troubles to the wine guy at the bar if you want and you can see what time it is on any one of hundreds of different clocks at any moment. And there's little cubes of cheese.

This setup is convenient for my parents, because when their friends spot the ol' minivan in the parking lot, they doubtlessly assume my parents are shopping for clocks again. Goodness gracious! (My parents' friends probably say to themselves.) They were shopping for clocks last Sunday, too! How many clocks can two people adequately maintain? Meanwhile, my parents (their reputations safely intact) are ponied up to the bar, sharing a flight of wine, relating their troubles to the wine guy, checking the time a lot, and consuming small cubes of cheese.

I'm telling you all this because I came home from work this evening, depleted and hungry, and there was a box of beer and wine on my porch. (That's how any self-respecting Monday should go, of course, but you and I both know it doesn't always work out that way.) It was from Bruning's Clock Shop. More specifically, it was from my parents, who were apparently out having fun without me again a couple weekends ago.

I'm pleased with this box on so many levels. First of all, I love that my parents wanted to surprise me. Secondly, it's a box of beer and wine. Thirdly, it arrived on a Monday. Fourthly, I'm totally going to try that beer tonight.* And, finally, the return address label says: "Bruning's Clock Shop", so as far as the mailperson is concerned, I just got a clock delivered to me in the mail. Or more likely - in a box so strangely heavy and lumpy - a handful of clocks. (For a few seconds there, I thought maybe my parents had sent me a box of clocks.)  In conclusion, my reputation with the USPS remains unspoiled. Cheers to that!

* Update! OMG. Yum. It's Founders Brewing Co. Breakfast Stout and it's really, really good. It actually tastes like chocolate, coffee, and stout all mixed together into the perfect beer for a chilly, fall night.  It's wildly appropriate that I'm drinking this Breakfast Stout right now, too. Dinner tonight? Bacon, eggs, and toast.

Thanks, Mom & Dad! You're the awesomist!

(ooh! maybe it'll even get cold enough to use it!)

2010-10-25T12:47:00.000-07:00

We have a little mortaring to go, and the bench is not yet in optimal shape (small folks can fall through the holes), but the firepit is functional! All we need now to make the most of these gorgeous fall evenings are logs, matches, beer, and a few good friends with cold digits.

something i did this weekend that has nothing to do with giant gators

2010-10-18T12:42:00.000-07:00

I made the firepit. Well, technically, it's still in progress, but I made some of it. I made the hard part.

Here are two pictures of our new gator-free firepit-in-progress:

If there's anything life has prepared me for up to this point,
it's digging a damn fine hole.

Here's the hole lined with recycled bricks.
All the construction materials we're using for our firepit area,
with the exception of the mortar, are either "found", recycled, or gifted.
(Not "smart"-gifted, but gifted to us most likely by Amy,
who's also the one who leaves the sinister food items on the porch.)

Smallest Horse! Giant Gator! Giant Pig! AND Monkey Madness!

2010-10-17T20:42:00.000-07:00

We went to the Arizona State Fair in Phoenix yesterday with Mandia and Jon who are two of

Raphael's fellow architecture students. You wouldn't know how much architecture exists

at the State Fair if you didn't go there with architecture students. I'm all like, "OMG! Baby cows!"

And when I turn around, Raphael, Mandia, and Jon are craning their necks to look at how

the barn is put together.

Mandia picks out the perfect corn dog.
(Also! There are pickles!)

Awesome chiles that won prizes that I don't think
have anything to do with architecture.

Raphael struggles with his corn dog.

Behind us: The Smallest Horse, The Giant Florida Gator,
A Giant Pig, and Monkey Madness. And look at us - we're oblivious.
I'm thinking about how cute a goat is. (Any goat. All goats.)
And Raphael's pondering architecture again.

Architecture! And flower garlands!

Jon and Raphael are really, really cool. Really.

No architecture here... or IS there? (Scary muuusiiiic...)

Funnel cake.
(Mandia is wondering what type of joints they used

to hold the Ferris Wheel together.) (That's not our kid.)

Raphael and Mandia are thinking hard
about Indian Fry Bread. Sugar? Honey? Beans?
These are not endearments - they're options.
(They went with beans.)

Raphael is impressed by the Ferris Wheel.
("It's no building, but it's damn awesome.")

Mandia's Fair connections got us tickets to see
the B-52s. (For a few minutes, we could forget about
architecture!) (But why would we want to?!)

Mandia and I have just seen Morris Day and The Time.
Look at us! We're stoked! (Also, I just drank a ten-
dollar margarita from a tap.)

Standing ovation!

(Jon's not in this picture because he's somewhere

tapping on the struts to get an idea of the

structural integrityof the Coliseum.)

the cake

2010-10-11T07:47:00.000-07:00

Chocolate Cake
with Milk-Chocolate Crunch & Caramel

birthday shenanigans

2010-10-10T16:48:00.000-07:00

I'm officially smack in the middle of my thirties now. Maturity, here I come!

Yesterday was the big day. Remember we talked about a cake? So this cake I finally picked is a Martha Stewart Living recipe with four easy steps that can be effortlessly combined into a three-layer Chocolate Cake with Milk-Chocolate Crunch and Caramel Sauce. IF you are Martha Stewart.

I'm kidding. It would not have been a difficult cake to make if I had done a few things differently (and by "differently", I mean "correctly). However, that's not how it went down, and so at this point we've been making this cake for approximately - let me glance at my watch here - fifteen hours. It's no longer my birthday. And Raphael gave up long ago and went off to school to build things besides cakes.

While we're waiting for the second batch of caramel (don't ask about the first - its fate saddens me. Let's just say it this way: Damn you, Martha! Thanks, Some Guy on the Internet!) to cool and the frosting we made yesterday to be ready for refluffing (because I inadvertently defluffed it by leaving it too long in the fridge), I'll give you a rundown of my birthday festivities.

On Friday, Lea (my co-lab specialist at work) brought me a cake which the Excavation students (and me! I got some too!) wolfed down at the picnic tables at lunchtime while resting from the wearying task of bailing almost a foot of water from the concrete-floored fake pithouses we wanted to map but didn't want to drown in. (We also did some other educational activities - none of which taught anyone more about doing actual archaeology than the bailing. )

After class, we hit our usual spot for beers and one of the advanced Excavation students presented me with a bottle of Jager and a box of Dixie cups with fish on them. Classy! So we all shared birthday Jager shots in fish-themed Dixie cups and (bless their little hearts, those students) I went home with only an inch or so left in the bottle. Also, one of them bought me a pretty pink shot called a P*** P****. I can't type its name in front of my parents. Someone suggested we refer to it as a Rose Kitty. Or perhaps a Pink Panther. We could do both of those things. And probably should.

Yesterday, we got up and Raphael made Guatemalan breakfast and gave me flowers. And we had mimosas and opened wonderful presents from my wonderful family. I'm a better-dressed person because of them.

Guatemalan Breakfast: black beans with onions and garlic,

eggs, fried bananas (these are supposed to be plantains
but Safeway threw out the plantains because they were
black, which means "perfect for frying", and Americans don't
like black fruit, so whatevs - the bananas were delish),
fresh bread, cilantro and tomatoes, and queso fresco.

Later, we worked on the cake for awhile and, in the evening, we went downtown where something called Second Saturday was going on. I'd never been before, but it apparently involves sidewalk food and craft vendors, bands and performers on the streetcorners, stores and galleries staying open late, cars with things stuck to them (such as hundreds of cameras and things that appeared from a distance to be snowmen), and many more people on stilts than you might expect. Tucson has a thing for people on stilts. You can't have an event in Tucson without people on stilts showing up. I don't understand it, but I find it endearing.

We had a drink at Hotel Congress, where they were setting up a dancefloor on the patio, and then Raphael took me to dinner at Poca Cosa which does delicious, fancy Mexican food and giant piles of salad. You keep finding surprises under the salad as you're eating. ("OMG! There's more carne under here! And a big piece of pineapple! And a guy sleeping!")

I had a margarita at Poca Cosa that was the easily the best one I've had in Tucson. I can't tell you what my food was, because I had the plato, where the chef picks out three dishes for you and hides them under your giant salad but because there are so many of them and their names are all in Spanish, you can never remember what it is that you're actually eating. Raphael got the pollo pipian which was actually pollo mole only with peanuts involved so they had to call it pipian. Our waiter explained it all to us, but I Googled it just now to make sure, since "pipian" I'm pretty certain means "pumpkin seed". I remain confused, but it doesn't really matter. The sauce had chocolate in it, so it was good.

(By the way, Midwesterners: it's mo-lay. Not mole, like the animal that digs up your lawn. That would be terrible. Although that would explain why they call it pipian.)

I've got to go put the cake together. It's been - checking the watch - 16 and a half hours. I think it's time.

playing with fire...as soon as possible!

2010-10-04T18:25:00.000-07:00

We laid out and poured concrete for the foundation

a few weeks ago. It was a little on the buried side,

so we had to find it again before we could start.

Here's a picture of Raphael flashing back to

archaeology just a little bit. (If you have assumed that

neither one of us has spent much time sweeping dirt

off of other dirt,you have assumed too much.)

Yesterday, we began in earnest to build our future firepit slash cozy seating area in the back corner of the yard. We laid a row of blocks that will form a curvy bench from which to enjoy the fire.

Setting the first row of blocks after evicting hundreds of spiders and at least six lizards from the holes.

Someday, you might sit around our firepit
and feel a strange tingling sensation.
Unless you've misjudged the distance
between your toes and the flames, it's
a good bet you're sitting right on the spot where
we carved our initials into the foundation.
Awww! Sure hope we work out! Now that
the concrete has dried!

It was Lila's job to make sure the datum stayed
put and hoodlums didn't mess with the hammer.

(They didn't.)

Here, Raphael and Lila confer about our progress.
It was Lila's contention that more squeaky balls
should be involved.

(Note squeaky ball in mouth in this picture. Lila's mouth.)

The "final" product. Later, when it's not 8 billion degrees out, we'll add two layers of adobe blocks and possibly some decorative tiles. Then we'll turn our attention to the firepit itself which should be easier, being mostly just a big hole in the ground.

camping in the Chiricahuas

2010-10-02T16:11:00.000-07:00

This past July, we went camping in the Chiricahua Mountains to get away from the heat. Hardly anyone else was at our campsite, and it was cool and a little rainy, and I was all ready to move in. It wasn't feasible, unfortunately. We ran out of water and beer within three days, and, you know, there was work to think of or whatever. But we enjoyed our three days, and we saw deer and turkeys (and a bear, some of us), and I tried "baking" brownies in a Dutch oven over the fire (and it totally worked). And "Chiricahua", in case you're wondering, is pronounced "Cheer-ih-cow-ah".

Here are some belated pictures.

The Chiricahua Mountains

Apparently concerned that we might forget the important things, Lila packed her ball in the cooler with the beer while we weren't looking. I swear I did not stage this.

Tent. Check. Mountain bike. Check. Overstuffed sofa. Check.

Wuv!!

Spaghetti sauce in the wild!

Bliss is a giant stick...

...and a glass of red wine.

The End.