Remodeling Connections

"All things are connected," observed the Victorian author E.M. Forester.

Clearly he had remodeled a kitchen.

When my husband and I embarked on our kitchen remodel we decided to do it on the cheap, which was a win-win situation: Mr. Wonderful liked my frugality and after "redoing" our guestroom together, I liked that he still liked me.  DIY home remodels had fractured stronger relationships than ours, so I was thrilled he was game to tackle the hardest room in the house on my bare-bones budget.

Our planned remodel consisted of painting the cabinets, replacing their hardware and installing a backsplash (that was both practical and gorgeous; another win-win!)  And that was where we planned to finish the remodel.  But plans are things you make before your kitchen collapses around you.  What we didn't plan for was Forester's insight: "All things are connected".   Let me tell you, the bookish Brit wasn't kidding.

A kitchen is connected to a stove, so we bought one.  A stove is connected to an overhead hood, so we purchased one.  A hood is connected to a ceiling vent, so we busted through to the roof and made one.  A ceiling hole is connected to repair work, so we insulated and replastered.  Hoods are connected to symmetry, so once our narrow stove was centered under the hood it produced gaps on either side of it... and gaps as wide as the Grand Canyon aren't connected to anything but needed to be, so we made two cabinets to fill them in.  New cabinets are connected to finding things easily or why else would you bother installing the darn things in the first place?  So we built pull-out drawers.  Pull-out drawers are connected to special parts, so we special ordered their specialness despite their extra special arrival delay.  All of this stuff is connected to our money, which was in shorter supply now than when we'd started this %&#@$ DIY project, which was all your cheap, frickin' idea!

The money, the stress of cooking in a lumberyard, the constant scrapping-and-making of plans, this gentle readers, was why relationships broke during DIY projects!

E.M. recognized the ugly truth of remodels but he also gave me the solution.  I walked out to Mr. Wonderful's work bench.  Sawdust covered his dark hair, band-aids were wrapped around three of his fingers.  He set his drill down.

"I'm making steak for dinner," I said.
"Great I'm starving..." he said giving me the first smile of the day.  "Crap, then I have to hook up the stove again."
"Nope.  We're grilling out."
"Yes" he said high-fiving me.

It's connections, people.  With all the kitchen, stuff, crap in a remodel don't forget to connect to the people.  Because... all things are connected.

How Do I Love Thee, Backsplash?

(With apologies to Elizabeth Barrett-Browning)

Oh, Backsplash, how do I love thee?  Let me count the ways!

I love thy depth, breadth, and porcelain height

That lets me keep food stains out of sight

With a quick wipe from a moistened dishcloth.

I love the clean look you give to every day’s

Kitchen moments, by sun or candlelight.

I love thee freely, since I bought thee.

I love thee purely, since I have only thee.

I love thee with the passion I felt before

For my favorite blue jeans or my childhood toys; Like Paddington and Pooh Bear.

None of which was clean but you get what I’m saying.

I love thee with the sweet love I lost

After I learned the truth about Santa.

I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears of all my life. 

Thank you for making everything better.  Will you be my wife?

Kitchen BEFORE, AFTER and DURING the Backsplash

BEFORE: Here's a close up view of our Kitchen sink the day we moved in.  The "backsplash" tile is so "1970s bathroom shower stall".  

AFTER: Here's a close up view of our finished Kitchen backsplash.  My husband also deleted the light switch by the sink, which we never used.  

  

DURING: Here's a close up view of the Kitchen backsplash after it had been hung and before it had been grouted.  The tile was affixed to the wall with glue which had squeezed through the tiles so before applying the grout to the backsplash, I had to go over each tile with a toothpick and scrape out the excess glue.  It was like flossing a T. Rex.

In Summary...

BEFORE: Here’s the Kitchen on the day we bought The House, complete with the streaked “Kountry Kitchen” paint job, itty bitty cabinet handles and the lone strip of bathroom (!) tile.

AFTER: Voila!  Here's our Kitchen after we’d painted the cabinets, installed new hardware, bought an oven and oh yeah, hung the porcelain tile backsplash.  Thank you Mr. Wonderful! The kitchen suddenly has a polished, finished, and—to borrow a phrase—a very “now” look to it. I love my Kitchen! I guess this means I have start cooking in it…

Kitchen Remodel: Backsplash Installation

“I got the tiles for the kitchen backsplash,” I told Mr. Wonderful.

“Good,” he said while shaving in the bathroom.

“I got the grout for the tiles.”

“Good.”

“I called the handyman to install it.”

“No way!” he said nicking his chin.

Since buying The House my husband had turned into a Do-It-Yourself maniac.  It started small with him installing handles on the closet doors the week we moved in and grew with each DIY success until now he wanted to single-handedly expand the kitchen to feed 80, add a helicopter landing pad and build a second Griffith Observatory on our roof.  All while working a full time job.  It was crazy.  He was crazy.  He was driving me crazy.

Now he spent hours at hardware stores buying materials.  He spent days on the internet researching DIY projects.  He spent weeks avoiding local handymen. 

One of our neighbors, James, was a certified electrician.  When we first trimmed our palm trees, James thanked us by handing out his business card,

“If you need any electrical repairs, call me,” he said with a wave. 

Instead of seeing this as the friendly gesture it was, Mr. Wonderful viewed it as a challenge to his masculine virility.  I saw his chin jut out in defiance and could hear his brain screaming: Fix our electrical system?  Over my dead body!

So I said goodbye to a weekend with Mr. Wonderful.  And for the next 60 hours I worked, I went to dinner with my girlfriends, I watched every movie at Laemmle’s Polish Film Festival just to avoid being in his hair while he toiled on the remodel.  While I gallivanted around Los Angeles, he prepped the walls, applied the glue and slapped the tile suckers to it. 

Then he rested for two weeks.  After which I, again, became a weekend widow while he spent another weekend applying the grout.  This time I worked overtime at the office, I invited myself to dinner with my girlfriends and their boyfriends, I caught Laemmle’s entire Icelandic Film Fest.  I’d never seen so much ice on film.  During (another) harsh ice film scene I got a text message from Mr. Wonderful.

“Come home."

I returned to the house with coffee, sushi and ice cream.  I entered the kitchen and beheld a finished backsplash and a dirty spouse.

"It’s beautiful,” I gasped.  He ran his grout-encrusted hands through his hair.  He was beautiful.  There was nothing but masculine, virile perfection about him and his work. 

So I decided: If he really wanted to be a DIY maniac… I’d let him.

Kitchen Redo: Kitchen Tile

“The kitchen remodel isn’t finished,” Mr. Wonderful said after dinner. 

“I know,” I said.

“We need a backsplash.” 

“I know.”

What backsplash do you want?”

“I… I don’t know!”

Months before, we had painted, sanded and rehardwared our kitchen.  We’d made the space attractively workable but every time I washed a dish in the sink or cooked on the stove—oil, water or waffles splashed on the walls.  It was a daily reminder that we needed to install a backsplash or eat vertically.  Darn gravity.

So I dove into exploring backsplashes.  I looked at stores, I poured over friends’ Pinterest photos, I barged into strangers’ homes to see what they’d done.  I saw backsplashes in tile, ceramic, porcelain, Paris subway, automobile stainless steel and NASA’s titanium/aluminum combo.  The options were dizzying and oddly, transportation related.  These backsplashes were going places.

After doing more research than they did to develop the Hydrogen Bomb, I decided I wanted my backsplash to be: 1) Practical to keep food from sticking to it; 2) Beautiful to look at; and 3) Wouldn’t cost more than our mortgage.  Clearly I had pursued the wrong career.  If I’d really wanted to make a fortune, I would have gone into selling kitchen backsplashes.  Not selling homes or kitchens just The.  Backsplashes.  

Who would have thought a surface to collect dirt and grease could be so expensive?  Not the Parisian subway designers—évidement—who had installed Paris subway tile on 200 kilometers of underground walls, floors and ceilings.  Imagine how valuable those tunnels were!  If Europe really wanted to solve its debt crisis it should dislodge just half those metro tiles and sell them to idiot Americans who were crazy about Paris.  I’d be the first in line!  Mais oui!

As much as I loved Paris and its Métro, I couldn’t install those tiles in my kitchen for two stark reasons: they were white and I was a slob.

Nope, I needed to hide the dirt with a patterned backsplash, which by the way describes 99% of all tile.  I discovered this fact while shopping in a pocket of Los Angeles called the “Broadway of Backsplashes” except instead of having tony New York theaters located one next to another, this pocket of the San Fernando Valley had one backsplash store located next to another.  And another.  After visiting half a dozen of these stores, all their tiles blended together into a brain smoothie of images and impossible tile combinations like “terracotta-white-marble-glass-bubblegum”.  Looking down the street I saw three dozen more stores just like them—

So I fled to Ikea because for once, Ikea had fewer options in tile than anywhere else.  In fact the kitchen tile I liked at Ikea wasn’t even for sale at Ikea but some local Home Plus store http://www.bauformatusa.com/.  I didn’t care, I loved it!  The tiles were wide porcelain panels covered in streaky lines and I had to have them!  I raced to Home Plus and grabbed a salesclerk, the one with the smiling dark eyes. 

“I want this tile,” I said.

“Would you—” he said. 

“I don’t want to look at another tile.  It’s taken me months to find this one.”

“But would you like—”

“This is what I want, so don’t try to talk me out of it!”

“Would you like a cup of coffee?” he said pointing to the espresso machine on the countertop. 

Although caffeine seemed like the last thing I needed, he made us both a double shot and handed me a coffee cup and saucer so small they belonged in a queen’s dollhouse.  While we sipped the java he brought out another tile sample, which had a similar pattern to ours but was cut in thin rectangles.  I gasped.  It was clean, simple and would give our kitchen a retro feel and I… I loved it even more!  Incredible!  This salesman knew me better than I knew myself.  And when I told him so, his dark eyes smiled even more. 

“Some people think I’m pushy but I just want to help,” he said with grinning eyes.  And help he did.  I bought the tile he suggested, loaded it in my car and thanked him profusely. 

Now I knew why backsplash sellers made the big bucks: they prevented me from making design mistakes, which kept me from re-installing the backsplash twice.  Not having to go through this backsplash drama again?  That’s worth any price.

Next step: Installing the Backsplash!

Home for the Weekend

Nothing says "comfortable" more than the perfect pillow; except cat hair on the furniture.

This timeless pillow is made from a retired U.S. flag.  It's welcoming and has great structure.  For me it encapsulates what "home for the weekend" should be.  Plus it's recycled.  A win-win!

Enjoy the weekend and Columbus Day holiday!

What the Rodeo Taught Me

“Welcome home,” I said embracing Mr. Wonderful at the airport.

He rubbed his neck.  “Remind me never to take a trans-Atlantic flight that starts on the Pacific.”

“The House missed you,” I said.

He nodded.

“The neighbors missed you.”

He nodded.

“Jackson missed you.”

“All that cat misses is a brain.”

He called it.  After witnessing Jackson’s recent run-in with a wild opossum where the cat rolled over and played dead, Mr. Wonderful took to calling him the “Dumbest Kitty Ever”.   Looking at the cold hard facts, if the opossum had attacked Jackson, the cat would now be dead.  So our cat’s existence on the planet continued despite his lack of a brain and his complete physical unfitness.  Forget Darwin’s Survival of the Fittest theory, it didn’t apply to dim, pampered felines whose only street cred was they were named after “Jack” Bauer. 

This pushed me to act.  Perhaps I could help Jackson become less of a pillow and more of a cat?  Perhaps I could reawaken an inner tiger hidden deep, deep down inside him?  Perhaps I could give him the skills to fight off a fierce opossum attack?  

Nah.

But I had to try. I thought about the Reno Rodeo I’d just been too.  All the events were activities that cowboys, cows and horses really did on a working ranch.  Perhaps I needed to simulate real life cat activities to awaken Jackson’s latent tiger?

Currently Jackson’s day consisted of sleeping, eating and playing with his catnip toy, then… sleeping some more.  We’d bought the mouse-shaped catnip toy for him after he arrived in our home.  It had a Velcro pocket where you could remove the old catnip and restuff it with a fresh supply.  Once a day Jackson would hug it between his front paws and slowly lick it like an ice cream cone.  After which he’d crash into a drug-induced stupor right on the kitchen floor. 

Then it hit me.  Catnip was a drug!  It was preventing our cat from functioning at his highest intelligence or any intelligence.  The worst part: I was his supplier!  How could he get in touch with his inner tiger if he was as high as a kite?  I confiscated the catnip mouse toy and stashed it in the closet. 

Another game we played with Jackson was “catch the pocket pen laser”.  Friends had given us this toy to get our sad, lazy cat moving.  Initially he liked chasing the red light across the floor and around the furniture but after two minutes when he couldn’t catch the red dot in his paws he slumped off to his food bowl and ate.  The laser hadn’t help him become fit, it made him fatter.

So I went out to the garden, found a stick and tied a ribbon to the end of it.  Then I tied the ribbon to the empty catnip mouse toy.  Back inside I twirled this contraption around our cat, who ignored it with boredom.  His message was clear: Hey lady, I'm not bothering with this mouse toy if it isn’t full of drugs.

I continued wiggling the stick, ribbon and mouse toy on the floor for 30 minutes and just when I felt my wrist would fall off from spinning this clunky homemade contraption, the cat turned his head and pounced.  He clutched the mouse toy in his paws and bit the toy even though the toy was devoid of catnip.  He has animal instincts!  He's a tiger!  He's alive!

Back at the house, I showed Mr. Wonderful Jackson’s progress with the mouse toy tied to the ribbon and the stick.  While Mr. Wonderful ate dinner, rehydrated from the flight and kicked back on the sofa I spun the ribbon and stick toy until the cat collapsed into a panting, happy heap on the floor.     

“See,” I said admiring our feline.  “He has some cat instincts.  We just had to simulate his natural environment to bring them out.”

“Chasing a mouse toy doesn’t mean he can fight a opossum.”

“It’s a beginning.”

“It’s the start of a beginning.”

“It’s better than nothing.”  Mr. Wonderful nodded.  The cat walked to the sofa and rested his paw on Mr. Wonderful’s foot. 

“I told you the cat missed you,” I said.

“Did anybody else miss me?”

“I missed you.”

“Prove it,” he said pulling me close.

Waiting for Mr. Wonderful...

Jackson is waiting for the return of Mr. Wonderful or the opossum.  Or whoever shows up first.

 

Zucchini, Again

It’s zucchini time (still!) and after having eaten it baked, steamed and fried this summer I found a new way to prepare it for these hot September evenings.  Slice the zucchini in thin strips and lay them in a bowl of salt.  The salt will pull the water from the zucchini making the strips thinner and more flavorful.  By not cooking it, the zucchini keeps its freshness and has a crispy al dente texture.  

We kept the Italian theme going and swapped ricotta for the goat cheese.  Delicious! I highly recommend trying it!

The original recipe came from the L.A. Times: http://www.latimes.com/features/food/la-fo-calcook-rec3-20120818,0,6325931.story

The photo is all mine.

Enjoy!

The Enemy… Returns

Today, beware the return of an old enemy. 

“Horoscopes are so dramatic and silly,” I said sipping my morning coffee as Jackson drank from his water bowl. 

Pushing the newspaper aside I opened my computer to this message: ‘You are not connected to the internet.’

“What’s going on?”

The cat shrugged and licked his butt.

Beware the return of an old enemy.  Darn that horoscope!

Indeed.  Double-checking my computer confirmed I wasn’t connected to the internet, which meant I was shut out of my Facebook feed, I was blocked from tweeting this news to my twitter followers and I was prohibited from watching the latest dancing cat videos on youtube.  My life had screeched to a halt.

I needed to fix this.  And I had to discover who my horoscope’s “returning enemy” was because the lack of an internet connection must be tied to this old enemy.  They happened on the same day, therefore they must be connected.  Hello—it was only logical.

“Hi, neighbor,” Harold said in the dark morning, poking his 86-year-old head over our shared fence.  His eyes peered into our kitchen through the open door.

“You’re an early riser, Harold.”  I looked at him closely, my eyes shrinking to a squint.  He was old but was he the enemy?

“I understand your internet is out—”

“How did you know?” I said suspicion rising in my voice.  Ah-ha!  Harold was the enemy!  I flicked on the porch lamp, which flooded his face with a jolt of light.  He blinked from the brightness.   “Harold, what did you do to the wires? ”

“Nothing.  I—I didn’t do nothing.”  He shook his head. 

“Then how did you know my internet was out?”

“Because, ‘cause mine is, too,” he stammered.

“Likely story,” I shook my head.  “I’m calling our service provider.”

“I already did.  They can’t come out until next week—”  

“Forget it.  I’ll handle this.”  I said reaching for my phone.  With the door closed, I considered the facts: Harold had thwarted me in the past but if he too lacked an internet connection, he couldn’t be the cause of my internet outage nor could he be “my returned enemy”.

I dialed Time-Warner and spent the next 40 minutes punching the keypad in response to the menu voice-prompts.  There is a special circle of hell reserved for voice-prompts and it’s located between Hoarders and Thieves because they hog up my time as they steal my patience.  Maybe voice-prompt menus were my returning enemy…  Although it didn’t explain how a voice prompt could disconnect my internet.  Horoscopes were mental puzzles!

When I finally got a live human, “Bob” told me, “there isn’t an outage problem in your area.”

“Then tell me why my neighbor and I don’t have an internet connection.”

“Coincidence?” Bob asked.  “Whatever?  We’ll have someone there in 6 days to check it out?”  Since Bob was asking me questions with his Valley Girl rising tone, I said “No”, which convinced him to send a technician to my house that day.

Ahhh, the benefits of dealing with people who ask questions?  Over those who make statements.

A smiling Rafael of Time-Warner arrived in his bucket truck and after climbing the pole determined that Harold and I were right.  We lacked an internet connection in our homes.  Perhaps Rafael was my returning enemy?  Impossible, I’d never met him before and besides, with his big, white smile, he couldn’t know the meaning of “enemy”. 

Instead Rafael found something—a part of the black Time-Warner cable had a hole in it.

“A squirrel chewed through it,” he said pointing to the now exposed, plastic white wire.

My old enemy had returned!  It was the squirrel, the one I had stopped from eating our apricots!  I considered the rodent’s cunningness.  He’d come back, weeks later, with a vendetta.

“Squirrels chewing though cables, that never happens,” I said.

“Oh, it happens all the time,” Rafael said replacing the cable.

“But this chew-through, it’s particularly bad,” I said peering around my yard for the varmint. 

“Nope, it’s just standard,” he smiled as I slumped.  He continued, “actually the unique thing about this chew-through is how small it is.  It knocked out connectivity to just two houses: yours and the neighbor’s.”

“It’s like the squirrel was getting revenge on me,” I said my eyes expanding, my breath coming fast.  “Like he wanted to get me back after I deprived him of my apricots!  But I showed him!  Yes, I did!”

“Uh, sure,” Rafael said leaping into his truck and racing off.

For having a brain the size of a walnut, this squirrel was a worthy foe.  It knew revenge was a dish best served cold.  Well, Ha! squirrel!  You couldn’t eat my apricots and you couldn’t keep me disconnected from watching cat videos.  I wiiin!

Squirrel 1; New House Girl 2

Even though the horoscope had been right about my day, I still thought horoscopes were overly dramatic and super silly.  Like, right?

Bird of Paradise

The Bird of Paradise plant spends most of the summer green but as the nights have gotten cooler, the orange blooms have popped out in full force.

I love the structure of this plant!

The Cat Gets an F

“Jackson is looking for a friend,” I said pointing to the cat seated before the French doors.

“Hmm,” Mr. Wonderful said.

“I bet he misses that opossum we had in the house.”

“Then he’s dumber than I thought.”

After Jackson narrowly escaped being sliced open by a wild opossum, he sank into a depression, which he coped with by sleeping a lot.  Instead of his daily rest of 22 hours, he was now sawing wood 24/7, which was 8 hours more than usual.  Give or take.

Through his depressed state I still fed Jackson, still cleaned his litter box, still played with him after work and yet… he barely noticed me.  Despite several months of living with us he remained aloof by refusing to let me pick him up, to cuddle him or to come when I called his name.  All of these facts just confirmed for me that our cat was indeed male.  Clearly some gender behaviors crossed species lines. 

However if he barely tolerated me he completely ignored my husband refusing to even purr for Mr. Wonderful.  Apparently there are some aspects—like my husband’s wonderfulness in handling a saw, drill and Phillip’s screwdriver—that didn’t translate across species lines. 

So Mr. Wonderful and I did the only thing we could—we left.  He took a business trip and I, gentle readers, went to the rodeo.  Yee-Ha!  We left Jackson and The House in the care of our houseguest and crossed our fingers. 

Matt, my cousin’s kid, was staying with us while looking for an L.A. place of his own and Jackson was looking for a friend.  It seemed like destiny that they should spend the weekend together.  Besides after caring for an unfriendly cat, we needed a break.

My sister joined me at the Reno, Nevada rodeo and what a treat!  Where else but Reno can you watch real cowboys rope calves in the shadow of glassy downtown skyscrapers?   Well you can in Denver, Houston, Tucson and just about everywhere else west of the Mississippi River.  But who’s counting?

The Reno rodeo was for "Californios" who are the original cowboys of the region encompassing California, Nevada, Utah and Fornios who actively worked on ranches herding and roping cattle.  Judging from the merchant booths some Californios also herded turquoise jewelry and roped freshly squeezed lemonade. 

The rodeo events included the jobs that cowboys do on the ranch like lassoing, roping and sitting on their horses looking handsome.  If I were judging that last event it would have been a tie among every Californio present.  No one looks more handsome on a horse than a real cowboy.  Although I’d never tell Mr. Wonderful that.

A definite highlight of our trip was seeing the one and only Buck Brannaman in person performing at the rodeo and strolling around the casino.  Buck is the original horse whisperer even working as a consultant on Robert Redford’s movie, "The Horse Whisperer".  He’s forged a career helping scared, emotionally damaged horses unfit to be ridden become calm, confident creatures eager to work with a rider.  They even made a documentary film about Buck and his horsework called "Buck".  In the movie something he said stuck with me: “Why let an animal live in fear?  Why not fix it?”

Watching Buck compete in the ring I noticed how the horse trusted him.  How they worked together as one, which made me think of… our cat.  In the family of emotions, fear and sadness are cousins.  Jackson was sad; sad from losing his original owner who’d found him as a days-old kitten and raised him; sad for having to leave her West Hollywood condo; sad for losing his other two cat pals.  Although Mr. Wonderful and I lived in a suburban house in the Valley where he was an only feline, I still wanted to provide a happy home to this kitty.  I wanted us to be friends

Maybe I could fix Jackson with some cat whispering?

After 48 hours of cowboys I returned to Los Angeles and The House.  Jackson greeted me at the front door.  He meowed—for more kibble.  I replenished his bowl.  He meowed—for attention.  I stroked his coat.  Then he walked around my legs circling them like a lasso before he stopped, setting his paw on top of my foot.  It was a very sweet thing to do—in any species—because it showed that Jackson was happy to see me.

“Finally,” I whispered to him.  “We’re friends!”

September Pool

It's after Labor Day but here in Los Angeles summer lingers until Halloween and if we're lucky, Christmas.  So I'm still wearing white, still barbecuing and still swimming in the pool.  I just have to push the bougainvillea blossoms out of the way.

I hope you're having a great weekend!

Opossum Invasion

“Nightfall is beautiful,” I said dipping my bare foot in the swimming pool.  “It means—”

“Work is over,” Mr. Wonderful said clinking his wine glass to mine. 

“Look at the moon.  Look at its reflection in the pool.”

“Look at the opossum.  Look at it enter our house!”

As my husband and I lollygagged in the backyard calmly gazing at our house with its open French doors, a wild opossum waddled past the new pool filter gate and right inside our living room.  Now don’t get me wrong: I pick up trash at the park, I feed the hummingbirds, I donate to the World Wildlife Foundation but I like nature where it belongs.  Wild and outside.  Having an opossum in my house was too much wild nature, way too up close and personal for me.

I slugged the wine—for courage—then raced inside after Mr. Wonderful.  The lights burned in the living room, the kitchen, the bedrooms.  The whole house was illuminated like a Christmas tree during an electrical storm, which dumbfounded me as to why a nocturnal animal would choose to enter a bright house in the first place.  Maybe the opossum was confused, sick or tired of wild nature. 

On the plus side, all the lights made it easy to find the wild, black and white critter hiding under a bookcase in the guest bedroom. 

“Get the cat,” Mr. Wonderful said pointing to the intruder.  “He needs to fight this opossum.”

Thinking our shy, pampered, indoor cat would volunteer to attack a wild opossum made me realize that Mr. Wonderful was confused, sick or hadn’t drunk enough wine. 

I handed Mr. Wonderful a broom then scanning the house found Jackson nibbling kibble from his food bowl.  Sensing the excitement Jackson sauntered through the dining room and kitchen and plopped down in the hallway well out of the path of the opossum. 

“Jackson wasn’t raised on the wild plains of the Serengeti but in a West Hollywood condo,” I said.  “The only thing he’s going to attack is his catnip toy.”

Taking matters into our own hands, I grabbed a foamcore board to block off the open doorways.  Mr. Wonderful used the broom to steer the opossum out from under the furniture and into the hallway, which was right where Jackson lay—like the Queen of Sheba.

Seeing Jackson’s ample black and white body blocking his path to the great outdoors, the opossum stopped in its tracks.  The cat tilted his head at the opossum, which was just half the feline’s size.  The opossum opened its mouth to hiss and our fearless cat… playfully rolled over exposing his belly to the stranger.  I gasped.  One swipe from the wild critter’s claws would split our cat’s belly in two.  

Realizing Jackson was as fierce as dental floss, the opossum scurried past him into the night. 

Quickly we closed every door—French, sliders and kitty.  Jackson looked through the glass pane and meowed for the mean opossum to return.  Yes, our cat was confused, sick and totally lacking in brain cells. 

Or was Jackson so hungry for the companionship of other animal friends that he missed the opossum? 

Labor Day

Today kicks off Labor Day weekend, which means I plan on doing absolutely nothing.  Except: swimming, cooking, eating, grilling, baking, eating, running, rehearsing a play and... eating.

This weekend is perfect for chicken grilled with our home grown tomatoes and thyme.

Happy Labor Day!

Losing Lavender

“Summertime,” I said reclining on the outdoor lounger.

“Hmm,” Mr. Wonderful said from his garden chair.

“Look at our geraniums, the bird of paradise, the rosemary—” 

“Hmm.”

“Everything’s gorgeous and blooming!”

“Not the dead lavender.”

“What?!”

I first experienced lavender traveling through the South of France with Mr. Wonderful.  Together we witnessed the endless fields blanketing the region in a purple haze and lending the air a sweetly clean fragrance.  It was there that we fell in love… with lavender.  For our honeymoon we returned to the South of France to confirm our love… for lavender.  After spending those blissful weeks together we knew it would be a lifetime love affair…with lavender.

Lucky for us Southern California’s climate was similar to that of the South of France, minus the French snobs.  Instead we had Hollywood OMG wanna-bes.  Life's full of trade-offs. 

Horticulturalists call our SoCal region “Lavender and Lazy”, which comes from their planting recommendations: 1) You plant lavender; 2) You do nothing to it ever again.  Lazy is me!  What a fun garden plan!  Vive la lavande!  After we bought The House I ripped out a whole garden bed and replanted it with lavender—an entire bed of only lavender.  Just sniffing the air transported me back to our honeymoon where we fell madly in love…with lavender. 

The plants grew in the spring and thrived until June, which is exactly when we added one more lavender plant to the bed.  That lone plant came from the nursery with some brown stems on it.  Mr. Wonderful said the brown would go away with some watering.  By August the brown stems had overtaken the entire loner plant, and spread to six others transforming them into tumbleweed skeletons.  Worst of all was that the brown was creeping toward our remaining 10 healthy plants.

OMG.  I needed a fix.  Fast. 

Online I found websites dedicated to the plant, like Lavenders-B-Us.com, which had an active community of lavender lovers who posted hourly updates about their purple plants with Instagram photos.  When I explained my dead situation and how it was spreading, the site’s posters all said the same thing, “You’re watering too much.”

“Impossible”, I said under my breath then read on—

“Maine summers are moist—”  Maine?!  I stopped in my tracks.  Maine’s rainy climate is ideal for growing rocks, in fact some of the finest rocks in North America are grown there.  But not lavender.  Scouring the website I noticed that everyone posting on Lavenders-B-Us resided along the Atlantic coast where a “Summer” in Maine was like the wettest winter in Southern California.  And a “Winter” in Maine was a dark, cold, frightful nightmare.  There’s a reason Stephen King lived and wrote in Maine and not sunny southern California. 

After another Google search I found a California gardener’s website specifically for southern California lavender.  In answer to my problem every gluten-free person posting on that site said the same thing, “You’re watering too little.” 

“Impossible,” I said biting into my gluten-free hummus pita-wrap sandwich. 

“Southern California summers are hot—”  I know but they are the same type of dry, hot summers that have been happening in the Mediterranean region for thousands of years.  Watering too little?  When was the last time anyone read a story of Zeus or Hercules where they watered their lavender?  How about in The Iliad or The Odyssey—neither one mentioned watering lavender because lavender was ideally suited to the bone dry, hot summers Italy, Greece and Turkey have known since before Zeus, Homer or Jesus ever picked up a garden trowel.

Besides Mr. Wonderful and I used a drip hose on the lavender.  They got the water they needed. 

No, another problem was afflicting my lavender and the answer originated with one root.  The loner plant we brought home from the nursery had been tainted with a virus condition called “Wilt”, which was described as a “rapid wilting, browning and dying to lavender plants during the month of August.”  The only method to deal with Wilt was to remove the infected plants, the soil surrounding them and burn them.

Who said planting lavender was lazy?  Or gardening was fun?

This week I put on my gloves, gripped the shovel and removed the (now) 12 infected plants plus the surrounding soil.  Without them my lavender garden resembled a scorched volcano site; not the frolicking grounds of Greek gods, mythological heroes or French snobs. 

What I would give to see a French snob in my garden!

Not all love stories end happily.  I fell in love with lavender and… it broke my heart.  OMG.

Friday Fun--Cat

Good thing we have a swimming pool otherwise Jackson would go thirsty.

 Have a great weekend!

Addiction--Home Improvement

“After work I’m going to The Home Depot,” Mr. Wonderful said as I debated which shoes to wear to work.

“Didn’t you go there yesterday?” I said.

“I need drill bits.”

“Didn’t you buy drill bits there.  Yesterday?”

“I need some for the kitchen.”

“Didn’t you buy drill bits there. Yesterday.  For the kitchen?”

“I need more!”

My fears were confirmed.  Mr. Wonderful had an addiction of Going to The Home Depot. 

Before we moved into The House; before we bought The House; before the doctor pulled him from his mother’s womb, Mr. Wonderful was going to The Home Depot.  And Lowe’s and the Do-It Center, Orchard Supply Hardware, Anawalt Lumber, Koontz Hardware and every Mom and Pop’s Super Duper Home Improvement store in town.  If the joint smelled of cut lumber and its male employees wore aprons, Mr. Wonderful was there roaming the aisles, looking at plumbing displays and examining wood grains with a microscope.

I wasn’t using the term lightly.  I knew how serious this was.  The dictionary stated: “Addiction (noun): having a practice that is habit-forming, which gives so much pleasure to the habit-former that he forgets his wife and dreams of wearing his own orange apron.”  

It was true.  Mr. Wonderful was going to the home improvement store after work, on his lunch break, on Friday nights and staying there 'til the wee hours in the morning.  In his mind why waste time going to a club, eating dinner out or watching a movie on NetFlix?  When all he wanted to do was go to the HD and weigh the value of plastic tubing over copper.

And just like that I became a proverbial home improvement widow.  Before the proverb became my reality, I had to address his addiction or lose my husband to drill bits.  I ran to my computer and typed in “Alcoholics Anonymous 12 steps”.  I adapted them to fit Mr. Wonderful’s situation, in advance I extend my apologies to AA.org.

1) Mr. Wonderful admits he is powerless going to home improvement stores and buying materials for new projects.

2) He has come to believe that his wife is right.  Again.  Like always.

3) He must follow his wife’s advice exactly as SHE WISHES HIM TO FOLLOW IT.

4) BEFORE going to any home improvement stores, he will look in his tool shed to see if he already owns 14 Phillips screwdrivers.

 

5) He will take his wife to dinner and a comedy show.

6) He will tell his wife what a great lady she is.  (I swear she’ll really like this).

7) He will humbly ask for her forgiveness by giving her jewelry.  Rings are nice but anything sparkly will get his point across and make her very happy.

8, 9, 10) Repeat Step 7. 

11) He won’t complain when she buys another pair of shoes.  (This step has nothing to do with his addiction but it would make her life much easier.)

12) Having had a spiritual awakening because of these steps, he will carry this 12-Step message to others similarly afflicted.  And he will thank his wife for being such a great gal.

That night while organizing my shoe closet I broached his home improvement addiction and how he had to stop spending money on these House projects. 

“My addiction isn’t any worse than your shoe shopping.”

“I wear all of my shoes.”

“And I use all of my tools.”

“When did you last use that Channellock Crescent Swing Wrench thingy?”

He grabbed a shoe from my closet.  “When did you last wear this pair of hot pink pumps?”

“Three years ago with that pink dress I have with the—”  He raised his hands.

“Okay,” he said scratching his head.  “I’ll stop going to home improvement stores and buying stuff if you stop buying shoes.”

I raised my hands, scratched my head and had a spiritual awakening in the form of my own 12^th Step:

12) I liked both our addictions just as they were.  And I’ll say “Thanks” to Mr. Wonderful for being such a great guy!  

Friday Fun

If there's something I've learned in my 29 years--give or take--on this planet, it's the importance of perspective.

What appears to be a huge, scary monster...

On closer inspection, is just a small Praying Mantis insect.  

Our yard is home to several of them.  I try not to bother them because they eat the pesky insects like crickets, moths and other... Praying Mantises.  They are big into population control.  After the triple-digit heat wave this week, my garden needs all the help it can get.

Happy weekend!

Lemon Pie--Photos

Baking is a process made of elements and formed with fire.  It’s an exact science that resembles a chemical experiment more than a Jackson Pollack painting.  Although if it were a work of art, it would be a glass vase forged in the heat—practical, three dimensional and beautiful.

Baking a lemon pie is like that.  Sort of.  Here’re some photos of the process.  First slice the lemons in half.

Grate the lemon peel and add it to the pie for added flavor.

Bake.

Ta-da!  Paris on a plate.

Just Desserts!

“Looks like you’re busy,” Mr. Wonderful said getting home late from work.

“I’m making dessert,” I said over the din of my blending Kitchen Aid mixer.

“That’s a good initiative.”

“It’s for tonight.”

“A very good initiative,” he smiled peering into the mixing bowl.

“I’m making lemon pie.”

“Uh, I’m not hungry.”

Our friendly neighbors, Charles and Stephen, had gifted us homegrown lemons from their mature Meyer lemon tree.  As the saying goes when life gives you two huge bags of lemons, you make lemonade; which I did for a week.  Twenty gallons of it.  I also squeezed quarter lemon wedges on all our dinner salmon, lunch mahi mahi and Pepperidge Farms’ Goldfish cracker snacks; I even made enough of my lemon shrimp pasta to feed an army of hungry animators.  And still I had lemons left over—a bag and a half.  So making lemon pie was next on the proverbial and actual plate.

“You’re making three pies?” Mr. Wonderful said. “That’s a waste of your dessert making time.” 

“Lemon pie makes me think of that Paris café with the amazing tarte au citron where I sat, ate and watched the Left Bank world go by.”

“Paris isn’t about lemons. It’s about chocolate.”

“My Paris is about lemons.”

“Let me know when you upgrade to chocolate,” he said grabbing a bar of 72% dark chocolate and promptly left the kitchen.

To be honest I knew Mr. Wonderful was… a chocoholic.  A day didn’t go by when he did not consume chocolate in some form—milk, dark or white.  Every morning he ate more Nutella than a family of 10, combined.  To make matters worse, he was a chocolate snob preferring Ghiradelli, Swiss and above all, Belgian chocolate.  Belgians were a modest people who had mastered the art of chocolate making.  In fact making and consuming high quality chocolate was the Belgians’ way of dealing with life’s joys and disappointments, which was a philosophy Mr. Wonderful thoroughly understood.  To him a dessert needed to contain chocolate or it wasn’t dessert.  It was a side dish.

Therefore I had to find someone else to share my lemon pies with.  With three pies cooling on the pie rack, I hurried outside just as Harold was hoisting the stars and stripes on the flagpole 

“Hello, Harold!  Thanks you for all your neighborly advice,” I said.

“What do you want now?” he said with caution.

“Nothing.  I just wanted to give you a pie… as a way to thank you for everything.”

“Uh-huh—”

“It’s a lemon pie—”

“Not for me.”

“Maybe your wife, Norma, wants a piece?  I made it myself.”

“From scratch?”

“Yes,” I smiled, “the crust and everything.”

“No can do,” he said turning back to his house.

To be fair I knew Harold didn’t have… a sweet tooth.  Maybe back in the day he did but since becoming an octogenarian he was too busy power walking, lifting weights and giving me grief to enjoy anything as sweet as dessert.  I had to admit that it bruised my feelings that neither my husband nor my neighbor wanted my pies because I had made them myself; rolled out the dough; creamed the butter, sugar and lemons; and baked them in my own oven.  The result was three beautiful pies.  And no one wanted any?  What happened to all the pie eaters of the world?  Where was Kobayashi, the World Champion Eater, when my baking ego needed him?

I had to find someone to give a lemon pie to.  Sufficiently cooled, I grabbed one and ducked across the street to Charles and Stephen’s.  As Charles pulled his new jeep into the driveway I jumped out from behind the fence with a pie in my hand.

“Ahh!” he screamed.  “You scared me.”

“I wanted to thank you for all the lemons you gave us.  So I made a pie of thanks,” I said with a grin.

“How nice,” Charles said regaining his composure.  “What kind of pie?”

“A lemon pie.  Made with your lemons.”

“I’m tired of eating our lemons.”

I felt the smile fade from my face.  He must have seen it fade too because he scratched his beard and relented. 

“I’m sick of lemons but Stephen still likes them.  I’ll take it for him.”

I recovered my smile, proudly handed him the pie and retreated to our side of the street.  For the next seven days I ate a huge amount of lemon pie all on my own.  With each delicious bite I imagined myself at that café in Paris listening to accordion music, drinking coffee and flirting with my imaginary waiter en francais.  I loved every moment of my lemon-flavored Paris.  Then and there I decided never again to make pie for anyone else but me. 

My French reverie was broken by the ringing doorbell.  I opened the door to find Charles and Stephen clutching my pie pan—clean and empty.  Their enthusiastic words spilled over each other.

“Thank you for the pie!  It was delicious—”

“I’d never eaten lemon pie before—I loved it!” 

“I bet you made the crust from scratch.  It was amazing!” 

“It was like being in Paris!”

“It was better than being in Paris!”

Indeed.  Sharing good food and good times with real neighbors topped flirting with imaginary French waiters any day.  Vivez tarte au citron!  Vivez les voisins!  Vivez my Valley neighborhood!