663: Dealing With the Bounty

Planting a garden, even one as small as my tiny backyard one, is a blessing. Lots of rewards in seeing plants grow and flourish. Lots of food produced. However. You need to think about how you are going to handle that produce, because God is generous, so that you are sharing. When you see people at church are avoiding you, though, you need to man up and handle your own produce sometimes.

Buying another freezer is expensive – and lately, freezers have just been unavailable, since apparently lots of other people are also planting gardens, and well…God is generous. Problem with a freezer is the initial cost and the ongoing electricity, and the occasional freezer disaster, or power outage.

Canning is another solution that works well, but it is hot and labor intensive, and the jars and lids and rings are also expensive initially – which explains why they are such hot sellers at yard sales and thrift stores. Thank goodness once you have the jars, you usually only need to buy new lids every year, and there’s no electricity cost, just shelf space to store those gorgeous jars of delicious food.

What I like using on those days when I suddenly have 47 tomatoes is a dehydrator. Yes, the dehydrator is initially expensive, and it takes electricity, since I have not made the necessary trays and screens (also $$) for solar dehydrating That is also an option and works on these hot, sunny days we’ve been having (but watch out for those sudden summer showers). The electric one is more convenient for us lazy folks.

You do need containers to store the dried goodies, but unlike canning, any old glass or plastic jar with a good lid will do – and the finished product also stores on the shelf with no further need for electricity. Plus, unlike canning, where the volume of preserved food is actually greater than the initial food (water, vinegar, additives), dehydrating allows me to put 10 tomatoes in one fairly small jar, because I am removing the water. That’s what you add back when you use the dried peas, beans, okra, onions, peppers, tomatoes, blueberries, peaches, apples, etc., etc., etc, Some veggies do better when you blanch them first, and I had to consult Google this time about the green beans. It”s been a while since I had a garden, and I forgot if they needed it or not. There is advice online for beginners. And recipes, too!

654: Missing

I started numbering these posts when I began purging myself using this medium as an outlet years ago when I lived and worked (teaching) in Morocco. There is a place here where some post numbers are skipped (no, I’m not telling), because I wrote some things that I was literally afraid to publish, but I still needed to process the feelings via this method of vomiting out what’s the problem (or the success, or the random thought) on this blank page that begins with a number.

This is therapy, and it damn sure costs less than a professional.

Speaking of that, I live and work now (again) in the United States of America. Very, very few of us here can claim to be impoverished (by world-wide standards). Yes, many of us are struggling here, but here, “struggling” usually still happens with a place to live, food, power, and running water. Of course there are exceptions, but generally, that is true in the USA: poverty is relative. This relative affluence (even in poverty) explains why so many hate us and still try mightily to come here. Where they are doesn’t come with relative affluence in poverty. I get that.

I understand that I am blessed beyond measure just by the happy accident of being born where I was to the parents who had a hand in creating and raising me. No, they weren’t perfect. Who is? I am mature enough (always have been, in this regard if not in others) to appreciate what they did for me. They were certainly quite good enough.

They raised me right, which I tried to pass along to the children I have contributed to this planet. I did wrong on my own – which any adult worth the title has to own. We don’t get every decision correct, and there are also the things we have left undone – even when we had good excuses/reasons.

I have had a good life – even the chapters I dislike, skip over, and just choose not to re-read. Thank you God, for being far more merciful to me than I ever earned.

533: Too Much to Say

Too much to say.

Stars collide, and spin changes in human lives.

Taurus of the Earth and Cancer of the Water.

A planet of eight billion (others)

and of only two.

A universe of only two.

Bound, bonded, committed to be

together for the rest

of our time

until our time is ended and eternity begins.

Together.

Two beings with one

heart, mind, spirit.

United.

Too much to say.

482: New Habits

Many people are dissatisfied with some part of their life. That’s pretty universal, since life has so many compartments: physical, spiritual, financial, occupational, familial, emotional, and every one of those compartments has multiple occupants, all of which can run smoothly, or gum up the works.

In the process of living our lives, we humans are often like water. We choose the easiest path (the path of least resistance) to find our way down an incline. What this translates to in daily life is that we establish easy routines to deal with most things, and they become habits over time with repetition. They start to feel natural and normal with the familiarity, even if they are not natural and normal. It happens this way even when our established habits are actually unhealthy for us, or harmful to us.

All of us struggle with habits, but who would knowingly establish a habit that harms them? Well – that appears obvious, but people do it every day.  We choose to take a drink because we are bored, or because something is uncomfortable that we’d rather not think about and deal with. Repeatedly choosing that option leads us to a dependency on alcohol (or drugs, or food, or sex, or the Internet, or gambling, or shopping, or fill-in-the-blank with your own addictive, escapist behavior) and the poor choice is now a habit that feels natural and normal to you, even though it is anything BUT. The problem with addictive, escapist behaviors is that they are never, ever satisfied with the compartment of your life that they started out in. They do take control of that compartment, yes – and then they cast a proprietary eye on the compartment next door, and the one after that, and the one after that, until they pretty much take over everything.  Every stinking, little, tiny thing.

This is why people who don’t see (and heed) the warning signs when a habit is still small enough to be uprooted, before its roots are so massive that digging it out uproots the rest of the garden, too – this is why those people speak of hitting absolute rock bottom. It takes that ultimate comeuppance (rock bottom) at that point, to make a change. When there are no more excuses, when you have pretty much lost everything that mattered to you, when there is nothing that is left of any value or worth, making a change isn’t such a bad thing. It is the only thing left.

You can’t dig yourself out of a hole. When you find yourself in a hole, STOP DIGGING. Make a change. You can’t expect different results when you continue to make the same choices. Start something new, and be sure it is something positive, and do it one day at a time, until you are no longer in a hole.

When will you be out of the hole? You will know. Just be sure you don’t start digging again.

474: Ode

Ode.

An ode is a lyrical poem that expresses strong feeling or sentiment for someone or something.

Really.

So when I say I don’t want to live without you, that qualifies?

Or, do I have to make it pretty, and dress it up with rhyme and meter

So that it becomes both something more…and less

Than it was before, when I said it all in one sentence?

There are very, very few things humans can’t live without.

Air, water, and curiously, sleep – where dreams rule.

And yes, you are that essential to me.

Ode.

441: Want

I WANT.

I want five days of peace and quiet, a good night’s restorative sleep, my significant other, a ceiling fan, Egyptian sateen cotton sheets and a good supply of dark, bitter-sweet chocolate.

Then, I want about six uninterrupted hours of mind-blowing games that have absolutely nothing to do with a computer. Give and receive. Rode hard and put up wet. I want to be so tired after, that it will be all I can do to sleep. So tired there are no dreams. And no snoring, either.

I want at least two hours in a 104 degree scented, jetted hot tub, with wine coolers, or hot brandy toddies – either way. Cuddle buddy and some more chocolate. And no swimsuits, either. Terry cotton robes and slippers, massage oil and warmed hands.

I want a sparkling blue day by the pool, with a thick, thirsty towel on the lounger, and deliciously silky water with that thick hot layer on top and the cooler layer underneath.  Strong arms towing me around and sleek limbs intertwining in that perfect, bathtub water. And sun tanning oil. Lots of coconut-scented tanning oil, even if we are not tanning.

I want fresh-cut and ground pesto with whole wheat crackers, jalapeno jack cheese cubes and sliced Granny Smith apples, honey for dipping and whipped cream in the can for fun. Maraschino cherries with the stems.  Jack Daniels whiskey and Amaretto, sangria with orange slices.  No ice.  Honey-baked Virginia ham, spiral-sliced.  Hot chocolate a la Simone Evans, with Benedictine and cinnamon. Fresh, unsalted almonds.

I want hot beach sand, cool ocean waves and a cooler full of iced beer with lime. An ocean-pearled sunset and a campfire, with marshmallow S’mores and both red and yellow-meat watermelon slices. Ten pounds of sweet black cherries, fresh and crisp, tart and juicy. The salt taste of man on my tongue, and the dark scent of musky, warm man all over me. Slow, nibbling kisses that taste of me. That mustache.

I want gentle fingers that tickle and tease, and have no concept of time passing, merely cognizant of pleasure given. I want to bury my nose in the scented places and breathe in that glorious, signature scent that no one else has, and that cannot be bought in a bottle. I want a shower of warm water and thick ropes of soap, slippery hands and steamy mirrors. The shock of ice and the gentle heat of second-hand hot sauce.

I WANT.

352: Murderer

I am a murderer, responsible for the death (an agonizing one, not clean and quick) of a creature I loved very, very much. The prickle of tears is starting again as I confess this unpardonable sin, and it is only right that I should flagellate myself this way….my babies depend on me to care for them, and I let Fluff-man down in the most awful way.

I had to leave Panama to renew my tourist visa, because document thieves stole my FBI Criminal Background Check document in Miami, and this document is required to begin the months-long process of getting my work visa. Without it I cannot apply, and replacing it has been a nightmare of delays and waiting.  So, I booked Costa Rica to renew my visa over our school’s Christmas break. Because I have been robbed here in Panama twice already (once in my home and once in the street) I was not willing to give a key to my house to the next door neighbor who agreed to care for the cats while I was gone. Instead, I fixed a place in the screened metal security door where the cats could come and go, and I placed a large metal crate over this opening, so they could exit the house (into the crate) to access their potty, and the neighbor could tend it without actually entering the house. Belongings safe, right? No dogs have access to the cats, either, right?

Then, I took all six kitchen table chairs and placed one heavy chair in front of each and every door inside my house, so that the wind (which occasionally is pretty strong) could not possibly blow any inside door shut, which might trap a cat. Then, I filled each and every pan and bowl I owned with kibble or water, and placed them all around: kitchen, living room, both bathrooms. I even put one bowl in the bathroom sink and left the tap dripping into it, and filled both sides of the kitchen sink for good measure.  Secure in the knowledge that there was super-abundant water and food available, and access for the kitty potty, I headed off on my visit to Costa Rica to renew my six-month tourist visa.

Well. The best laid plans of mice, men and kitty mommies aft gang agly. The chair I placed in front of one bedroom door did blow shut. The wind just pushed the heavy chair aside, and when the door shut, Fluff-man was inside. The food and water bowls, so many of them, were all in other rooms. The neighbor heard Fluff meowing after some days, and they took out the window glass to get him out of the room. However, because he’d had no water, he was dehydrated…and when you are seriously dehydrated, you lose the desire to drink. They did not know to force-feed him water, and they did not know to take him to the veterinarian, and Fluff died the next day.

I loved that cat, and would not have harmed him for the world – and I harmed him to death. I’d rather they had robbed everything left in my house than to have hurt that kitty boy, but hurt him I did. I am so awfully sorry that he paid for my mistake with his life, and it has been a horribly hard lesson for me, too, even if I am still living.

327: Fluff-man and the phone

Fluff-man is one of my current three fur children. We adopted the others out (we HAD eleven) when we decided to move country from Morocco to Panama, but these three got to make the trip, for which I am still unsure of they are grateful. His name is Fluff-man because Fluffy sounded too feminine even for a fluffy, soft-and-silky-furred lover boy.

Fluff, like most other living creatures, has a few quirks. One of them is his INSISTENCE on swimming before he drinks water. I think this is a hold-over from Morocco, where he was born. The water in that part of Morocco is mineral water and FULL of minerals, at that. It makes a skim of minerals on the top of water if you let a bowl of it sit. Sugar Daddy, another lover boy, used to stick his paw in the water to break the skim of minerals before he would drink, but Fluff trumped him. When Fluff approaches a bowl of water, he vigorously makes swimming, pawing motions outside the water bowl, sometimes for quite some time – and THEN he drinks. He has not disturbed the water, but he’s energetically cleaned the floor around the bowl. Meh.

Fluff also wants to come during the night and get mommy loving. See, I try not to use the air conditioning here in Panama. Usually, in the evening, there is a nice breeze off our mountain, flowing over the house out to sea. So, I prefer to leave the door open to my bedroom so the breeze passes through, nicely cooling things off.  And here comes Fluff for a petting session. He jumps up on the bed, tromps across my abdomen- OOFF!! – and settles on my chest, putting his wet nose right under my chin, and then he energetically begins making bread on my neck/adam’s apple. Depending on how well I/he is sleeping, this can happen three or four times a night. Mommy has to work, so I end up closing the door.

Mommy is newly arrived in Panama, and has not purchased an alarm clock. I don’t need one, since I have an alarm function on my cellular phone which works just fine – until phone meets Fluff-man. Sometimes when Fluff comes to get his loving, the mosquito net is situated just so, such that he can’t figure out where the opening is in order to get inside it and to me – dispenser of cuddles. So, he sits on my nightstand, and amuses himself inspecting, and playing with, whatever I have put there prior to retiring. Like the cell phone. He nearly always knocks it off the table at JUST the right angle so that when it hits the floor, the back pops off and the battery pops out. This means I have to GET UP, FIND MY GLASSES IN THE DARK, and go to the bathroom where I can consult the wall clock to reassemble the phone with the battery, start it up and re-program the time and date to that the alarm will go off in a few hours to get me up in time to catch my ride to work.

The cat can be grateful that I love him. Especially after the fourth time this week. He’d actually make a pretty nice little RUG………

306: Cutting Out Carbs

I’ve been reading about how I am eating. If you read an article about sugar, you’ll have a heart attack on that information alone: much less about artificial sweeteners, or lack of exercise, or fructose, or processed foods, or…….(fill in the blank here). Apparently, if you did not pull it from the Earth yourself, or pick it off the tree, you should not eat it. And if it did not come gushing forth fresh from a mountain crevice, you should not drink it, either. Jeepers, creepers.

OK, some things I can control, and some things I can’t. I can learn to live without breads and grains – even without pasta and rice. I can learn to let vegetables be the primary component of my food, with fruit as dessert. I think I can do without any processed food, and I am pretty sure I can do without sugar. Maybe. If I try really, really hard. I can stop using margarine, and switch to butter. I can drink tea without sugar, and use lemon instead. Or cream. I can learn to love avocados, and coconut. I already like olive oil, so that’s a given.

It would help if they would tell you all these things when you are a youngster, so you grow up doing it the right way, ding, dong, dag nab it. It sucks waiting until you are fifty-something to find all this out and finally make up your mind to do it. Sheesh. Well – I wanted a fresh start in life – looks like I will be getting a complete do-over in the food department, anyway.

280: Sirsty, mom!

Sugar Daddy and Caruso