Truckee
Tim and I are up in Truckee, enjoying a week of SNOW! I am looking forward to playing in it, as soon as I feel better. I have a bit of a chest cold.
It’s supposed to snow every day this week.
Cactus, windmills, and Happy Winter Solstice
Oh blogsie, how I’ve missed you.
my friend Cris and I took a road trip the other day out to the windmills near Palm Springs. We did some photography and had some date shakes at Hadleys, and did some catching up. My favorite spot for photos was this little cluster of cacti. I thought it had been through a fire, but on closer inspection it didn’t appear that anything else around it had ever been burned. I guess it’s just from drought, but I’ve never seen any plant life get so dead and then come back to life. It must only stay alive way, way down in its roots. It’s a very humanoid looking gathering of Cholla. About 3 minutes into photographing it, I suddenly felt that old sense of being responsible for looking out for my friend, in case she’d never been around Cholla before. You don’t just look down when you hike around that kind of cactus, you have to keep looking down. You have to make sure one of those harmless looking chunks of the plant doesn’t cling to your foot. Sure enough, Cris had already found a cluster clinging to her foot, and then had it stick to her hand when she tried to get it off. And I had gotten a piece in my boot while on my way over to her. We both should have been supervised.
Cirque Berzerk
We went to Cirque Berzerk the other night, near Chinatown. I loved it! Very Tim Burton, but more colorful. I don’t think everyone who sees Cirque du Soleil style acrobatics appreciates it like I do, but I was fascinated and was turning my head sideways in awe while I watched the girl hang from the silk fabric and climb around doing the splits high up in the air. My favorite, though, was the guys on the trampoline. We couldn’t take any pics, of course, but we could take photos outside. I walked around with my little Olympus until there was too much dust in the air to use a flash.
Worst mother ever
I had one of those really vivid dreams last night, the kind where you wake up and can’t believe it was a dream, and you’re still feeling the same emotions that you had during the dream. Usually it’s a dream where I killed someone and can never take that back, and now I am doomed to spend the rest of my life in prison or on the lam. Or else I didn’t graduate high school and I’m going to have to go back and finish school as an adult.
Last night’s dream, though, was worse. I dreamed that I had had a baby back when I was in my late teens, before I moved away from the desert, and I was just now remembering. I went back to Joshua Tree and went to the house she was living in, with her paternal family, and there were a whole bunch of kids. I had to have someone tell me which one was mine, and she looked nothing like me. She was olive-skinned, and had thick eyebrows that almost met in the middle. She was sixteen, but looked fourteen, and was well cared for and living among the whole family on her dad’s side. I was so shocked and ashamed. The kids all looked at me with fresh, friendly faces, but the adults looked at me like I deserved to be looked at. Someone who had a daughter and then forgot to even visit her. I felt so awful, and was sitting there recounting the missed birthdays and Christmases, and also noting that this explained my poochie stomach. How was I ever going to make up for this? I was doomed to spend the rest of my life feeling horrible, and she was doomed to spend the rest of her life recovering from a childhood where she wasn’t cherished and loved by her mommy. All the missed bedtime stories, and Holloweens, and vacations.
I felt that hollowed out feeling for the rest of the morning, even with reality kicking in. I know what this is. These are the death cries of my biological clock, which will someday shut the hell up. I was sad, though, that she wasn’t real. Naturally, as Mother Nature is trying to trick me into producing offspring. Even with my realistic views about all of it, and my confident belief that you can get stuck with a child that you are thoroughly incompatible with. Then you’re really screwed. It seems to me that people get around that fear by resolving to be nothing like their own mother, and then they’ll be guaranteed to never have children who acted like they did. But my mom was the best mother in the whole world, and I could try my hardest every day of my life and still not even come close to being that good of a mom. So I got nothin.
I hope I go back to dreaming about dolphins, like I do most nights.
OC Fair with the siblings
The fair is in town!
My siblings and I all met up at the fair in OC for Lisa and Ian’s birthdays. We stayed there an incredible 8 hours -probably 9 for Lisa, Chad and Sam. We just kept finding more stuff to do. We only left because the sun had gone down and we were chilly. It seemed like we checked out everything. I was a little intimidated by the food thing, since I’ve been eating so good. I thought I’d end up eating Fair food and puking it all back up. We found plenty of fruits and vegetables, though, and I ate to my heart’s content. I fell in love with a baby goat, and was letting her chew on my hand until I realized I was bleeding. Apparently cuteness blocks pain.
We also watched the pig races, since Lisa’s pet pig is so awful and mean and we all wanted to remember what he looked like back when he was cute. I had completely forgotten. We also made it to the hypnotist show, and it was worth the wait. That guy is so good. He had all of his participants in a trance and was making them do the wierdest things. One of the women up there had a lot of trouble snapping out of it, and I was on standby with my zoom lens to take it all in. I didn’t post her pics though, since I try not to use this blog to humiliate people other than myself.
It was a wonderfully hot day in OC.
Laguna Beach, July 4th
I spent the 4th in Laguna Beach, as I often do. I looked forward to it all week, knowing that I’d be spending the day with some of my favorite people. We grilled and cooked all day and hung out at my sister’s house, and I made a vegan dish for grilling (on the stove) and also a vegan dessert. My niece is vegan, and I’ve been loving vegan food lately. We had a bunch of other delicious food as well. At sundown, Tim and I hiked up to the top of the nearest hill and watched the show from up there. There was a wonderful view of all of Laguna coast, from top to bottom. We could also see up towards Long Beach, where the fireworks show was just little sparks from up there. We could see the fireworks inland (Aliso Viejo?) and the glow over the horizon of a very exuberant show in Dana Point. The brightest fireworks lit up the water and the coastal homes. We had little kids sitting by us, oohing and ahhing, too.
Oh the freaky-deaky things I’ve been eating
I got into raw food around Thanksgiving time last year. And let me be clear on this: I’ve never gone exclusively raw. I’ve just added a lot of raw food to my diet. I don’t know what it is, I just couldn’t walk past the raw food cookbook in the book store and not stop and look at it. It was just as simple as that. I find it fascinating. So I made a few of the patés, the ‘Not Tuna Rolls’ since I had so recently gotten into Korean food and had a lot of Nori at the time, and the zucchini pesto. I was put off by how long it takes to soak the raw nuts, but other than that, I loved it. Since I got the cookbook back from my sister-in-law, I have gone on another raw food kick. I don’t know why I couldn’t just go on a vegetarian kick. But then again, like I said, I’m not exclusive with it. I tried the veggie sandwich this time. You use romaine lettuce where the bread would go. I found it was a bit untidy, but it would probably be better to use extremely fresh lettuce. I made ‘Not Tuna Rolls’ again and still don’t know what I think of them, other than they are nicely filling. I also made avocado boats, tomato stacks, date-almond cookies and cream of zucchini soup. It was after the zucchini soup last night that I began to get a little discouraged, at least for the moment.
Here are a few of the conclusions I’ve come to:
It takes a lot of effort at first, but tapers off quickly because there are only so many ingredients you would use in a raw food diet. There is a nice variety, but you can still get them all in one cartload.
The unexpected surge in energy is a welcome bonus. SO welcome.
It seems to make me sensitive to subtle flavors in things. I could never have sat around chomping on carrots, celery, broccoli and cucumber. That is, however, exactly what I’ve been doing for the last two days.
You have to soak the nuts for at least four hours. Otherwise the patés don’t come out creamy enough to dip veggies in, or spread on anything.
When the zucchini soup came out with way too airy of a texture, I felt frustrated because I’d gone through all that work for nothing. However, it turned out that it just needed to sit in the fridge for a while.
So I’m sitting here happy and full after a dinner of zucchini soup and spinach. I never thought I’d say that.
Camping pics
Here are the pics from our camping weekend, where we celebrated my mom’s retirement and enjoyed Tim’s excellent cooking. The entire family made it out there.
I got up early on Saturday morning and got a little time to myself, which I used to photograph the Joshua Tree next to our tent with the moon, and the sun hitting the rocks beyond our campsite. We were guests of Caryn’s and got to enjoy the ranger campsite. I am now spoiled for camping up there. We also saw a desert tortoise, which I put in a previous post, and a baby rattlesnake. Tim saw a coyote while I only heard them, at 3 a.m. on Sunday.
We had several friends up there as well, and we gave mom a cake and sang a round of “For She’s A Jolly Good Fellow”. We had tried to make it at least a little bit of a surprise for her, but she had grown suspicious early on. She is, after all, a mother of four.
We all had a great time.
I’m not easily confused or anything
I was leaving the grocery store in Playa last week and while waiting for the light, I realized I was staring at this bench. It’s down the street from the airport. One of my friends guessed that it was maybe somebody’s version of graffiti. I mean, if you have money to burn, and if you want to mess with people’s heads, and you can do so by renting out a bench and writing whatever you feel like on it, then hey. And sure enough, there I am, scratching my head, staring at this bench.
It turns out it’s for a movie.
