The Last BLT of the Season

there is one perfect Tomato that somehow escaped the final freeze

she waits expectantly on the counter as the last three slices of perfect bacon grizzle in the pan

there is some homemade mayonnaise

and there is A New Bread in Town : Simple Neo-Tuscan Boule

cant think why it is "Neo" / hmmmmmm

one of the grocery store Bakery Ladies slices the loaf for me with the handy-dandy slicer

so all the pieces are even

and it is very very fresh !

some mixed salad greens from the Youth Garden Project

what cd be a more delicious breakfast on a cold rainy November saturday morning ?

Blah

Blah blah blah blah blah blah Blahs

i googled Me and found this from when i was on DaveWorld

the survey

skaterina, 02:51h

the dw list has a survey

some answers ensue

Shoes / when i was younger i wore hussy shoes / high heels and strippy strippy straps / fm shoes / but now i am old lady and i wear sandals or laced up bootish kind of shoes deapending on the season / i favor Clarks of England and Easy Spirit for sensible more or less well made and comfortable shoes / and i always have a pair or two of Steger moccasins for wearing out in the beWilderness

okay that takes care of Shoes

jewelry / small bear token earring in left lobe / the heart attack lobe

beaded / turquoise chain thing to hang my glasses around my neck / five turquoise bears keep me in bounds

my best feature : i have no boundaries / i have know boundaries

okay what else is on the survey ?

meanwhile i had a very good day / being an old lady may possibly have its merits

i made ghee

vegetable broth

a perfect pizza with leeks and gruyere

my body type is harmoniously coordinated / light but strong skeletal structure / capable of impressive upper and lower body strength / id est / like how much weight can you pick up / carry / / and how far can you run / walk / etc / fast or slow

my coffee mug is from the first trip to ocean city maryland since i was in college and the first trip without murphy ally beloved companion protector / all round good dog

it is the Ocean City Mug and only I use it

my hair is silver / cut short in back / and Did I Mention i cut it myself / so it is always cut as cut can

i have brown eyes and the kind of skin that tans easily

oh if i had unlimited funds as in winning the lottery i woud fancy having a private railway car

and of course / tracks / to all the favorite playgrounds

scenic vistas

cool places to eat

say / where is the rink ?

~~~~~~~kickglidesmile~~~~~~~~~~

No Bones About It

i gave Dought one of the bones to take outside / the rest went into the large roasting pan / the oven was set at 400' / when the light went out the roasting pan went in on the upper rack / they will brown and later will be put in the stock pot to make broth

i lollygagged around for awhile then decided to take the dogs up to the Slick Rock for a walk / it was a clear crisp sunny morning / we parked at Cluster D / they took off to favorite spots and i strolled down the sandy road / i had brought my journal and a book to read and water so i cd hang out for awhile

there was no one around and no ranger at the entry booth / lovely silence

i remembered the bones in the oven !

oh dear oh dear / and where are the dogs ? i dashed back to the car parked at the far inner end of the camping cluster and drove back up on the Sand Flats Road looking for them

THERE !~ i see them / they are doing their favorite thing / digging furiously / i tramped over the desert, crushing the precious and fragile cryptobiotic soil apologizing to it with every step / Sorry, sorry, oh i am so sorry

i hollered : Dought ! Dot ! Come Right Now ! There are BONES at home !

they came right away all sandy muzzled / they do know what BONES means

hey and guess what ? the oven was cold / it has gone kaput / just like my printer !

well, i'll be darned / will there be one more thing ? like a set of three ?

Today's watch word is Precipitous

looking before one leaps

diving in head first

jumping off the cliff

into the abyss

plunging headlong into time

uncurbing all impulses

devil may care

stand back ~ get outa my way

who cares what tomorrow thinks

Aw, shucks

when Giada (Everyday Italian) buys clams from her "pescivendolo" (fishmonger) she asks him to "remove the bodies from the shells"

this is "shucking"

and it is why the clams in her dishes are not tough and chewy for when you bring them home in the shell and steam them and then add them later to the hot chowder (even at the last minute) or the garlic/wine/oliveoil/butter sauce for linguini they will be overcooked

i wonder if the gentleman in charge of the seafood section at the Shifty MarkUp wd be willing to shuck the clams for me

smile

hey, no harm in asking !

the children in europe are starving

and you must eat all your dinner, my mother told me

i grew up during World War II

i come to this blog to be silly and frivolous and insouciant

i will write about how my printer is kaput and how i put it outside and how nice to see more space on my desk

i think of how i will not be able to print stickers or magnets or labels or tags from the mouse drawings that i do on appleworks

unless i get another printer

but first i read Bagdad Burning

silly and frivolous and insouciant doesnt feel like much fun anymore


http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

Contrarian

Daily Dose of Imagery is my new homepage / the photographer posts a new picture every day / the first day i read the comments and decided never to read them again

today i read the comments and added one of my own

i have several things to say about this :

~see what a consistent point of view will do for you

~~have the courage of your contradictions

~~~no more declarations of intent

wink

Notes of a Rule-busting Visionary

from The Fictional Archeologist :

"it's not easy maintaining your human disguise, sed Dwadwee

especially when the humans we were planted into are so WIERD

you must become a juggler of reality

each level of your awareness supports and is integrated with all your other realitease"


(this is the basis of kaleidoscopic vision)

Leftover Soup

soup made from leftovers
(not soup that is leftover)

the raw ground sirloin tip leftover from cannibal sandwiches
finely chopped raw sweet onion leftover from cannibal sammies
brown them a little in butter/olive oil
chopped roast vegetables leftover from lunch (they were glazed with brown sugar)
the mixed broths : some vegetable broth and some chicken broth
some fresh made tomato juice leftover from Virgin Mary's
some broth made from oxtails / jelly-like and rich
that which remains of the tomato/garlic jam

newly made basmati rice

what a wonderful colour this soup is !

a deep ruby red

tastes good too

wont be any Leftover

Memory

flames flicker
candle Dance
an
Auspicious Narcissus
winks at my Past

links

sites to which i refer in the previous post :

http://wvs.topleftpixel.com/

http://www.catherinejamieson.com/

http://www.mnftiu.cc/mnftiu.cc/home.html

you will have to copy and paste

Creeping Up On The New Moon

The Alarm Cat insisted i come out of a deep sleep / i was sleeping on my back so he sat on my chest / he is a big old heavy cat / i was in a war zone and glad to be up to my simple life where i started the day with my new home page / Daily Dose of Imagery on the marshmallow machine and Catherine Jamieson on the powerbook / i learned yesterday on Daily Dose not to read the comments / picky picky

what a big difference from seeing first CNN (corrupted nauseating negativity)

i went to a new site on the Bookmark Bar - David Rees of Get Your War On - there is more to his page than the clipart comic

This is definitely a New Start / New Moon tomorrow

Next it is coffee by the heater (gasfire behind glass) where the heater keeps my coffee warm while i put the drops in my eyes (three kinds of drops four times a day)

My new coffee mug was made to raise money for the local humane society by a local potter / it is shapely blue green with a picture of a dog and a cat / natch / Humane Society of the Moab Valley / i got it when i went to Arches Book Store to get one of their oversized mugs for the son-out-law

The Arches Book Store mug sez : "Oh, DONT GO IN THERE, THATS A BOOKSTORE!" (overheard Father to Son, Spring Break Moab 2003)

This is an excellent big mug for soup or tea when you want to make a double with two bags.

These mugs have superceded former mugs

In my life A Mug or Cup is a memorial or a trophy

For example / the Ocean City Mug is from the first trip i made after the Beloved Murphy died / i made a nostalgic trip to Ocean City, Maryland where i had not been since childhood visits and college/sorority blow outs

A majorly symbolic trip for not only was Murphy, the loyal ally and traveling companion, not there i had to drive All By Myself over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge which had replaced the old ferry boats / it is a long suspension bridge / about three miles over open bay / sometimes i have bridge fear and get the whim whams / i know there are people that will drive you over but i make myself guts it out / the Ocean City cup memorializes this adventure / because Murphy was not waiting for me outside or in the truck i was able to look at every damn cup in the store until i chose the one i wanted

I used that cup until this past year when i bought a hand made cup from a potter who had gone from acquaintance to friend / now i like her cup a lot / it is smaller and has a delicate handle / it is not "thrown" / she wraps clay around rocks and stuff like that to make wonderful shapes

i switched to the Humane Society mug because it is a jot larger / it will hold all of the contents of the One Cup (Italian sizing, not Starbucks) Bialetti espresso maker / and one cup of hot milk

If i make another small pot of coffee in the afternoon i use JoAnne's smaller cup

The book store mug is for cream of tomato (i still use campbells made with milk) soup and a handful of homemade croutons

i clicked Next Blog after Blog for America and got a complex page of graphics, a photo of a tomato plunging into water, and fancy little windows / dont ask the name / much of it was hard to read white font on black and Oh, before that one, something plainer but still not as plain as Skaterina

gosh, Skaterina is really spare in her simplicity / no About Me / no pix / no links / no lists of former entries / hmmmm / oh well

if Skaterina had to learn how to do all that she wouldnt have time for anything else

like experimenting with glass and making something w/o telling her mentor first
like setting up the keyboard and connecting it to garage band
like making fruit jellies
like taking walks again
like making spinach pillows with the newly made ricotta and EGG ROLL WRAPPERS

(will my italian sensibilitease and vivid memories of freshly made spinach pillows from the pasta makers down the street in Rome be able to transcend the egg roll wrapper ?)

Rhymin' Thymin'

two lines / eight syllables each

"I hope that I shall never see
anymore gasbag punditry"

Learning, Practicing

if you were learning to play golf or practicing to perfect your swing you would go to a range and buy a bucket of balls and then if you were still unsatisfied with your progress or improvement you would buy another bucket of balls / and another / and another .....

when i was learning to make bread or pizza dough the attempt would often be a flop but i would bake it anyway and we would try to eat it despite its unappetizing qualitease

i learned to learn / learning is learning How to learn

i learned to keep buying another bucket of balls

smile

i have the kiln cranked up tonight again / i puzzle over the finished, fused pieces, trying to recall exactly how i used each chip to achieve each result / just cant fathom it / just cant figure it out / i have entered that great realm of the Unknowable

i know that as soon as i *know* what i am doing i will *no* what i am doing

there is no end to the fun

well i'll be ding dong derned

Giada makes ravioli with *egg roll wrappers*

! mamma mia !

Today is Drastic, Zen Monastic

a periodic purge of relentlessly tedious routines

designed to refresh the spirit / restore humor / and relieve the boredom of automatic choices

no more twirling with the New York Times / a quick boogie with the Rude Pundit instead

no more fox-trotting with the thigh rubbing gasbag pundits on the televison cable networks

indeed, if it were not for Jon Stewart (The Daily Show) and Giada DeLaurentiis (Everyday Italian) i wd cancel the satellite)

Democracy Now (Amy Goodman) on KZMU is okay

unsubscribe from everything (newsletters, political magazines, non-profits, activist groups)

(er um / except for a couple of cooking mags)

(and it's okay to continue to be sustaining member of the Marijuana Policy Project working for legalization of medical marijuana and states' rights involved thereto)

set up an impenetrable barricade to prevent Any Catalogue from entering the sacred domain

the Last Cat will definitely be the last cat / it will be okay to donate to the Moab Humane Society but dont bring home anything warm and furry that needs to be fed and cuddled / sigh)

ALL books even those i havent read will be packed into boxes and put in the backroom pantry where they will be accessible but not take up so much room

(i never owned so many books ! i was always a library person but when i came to live in Moab and despite the really wonderful library here i began to accumulate books especially collections of old favorites like Italo Calvino / i worried that something might happen to the library and then what would i do ? smile)

book shelf space will be filled with yarns and fleeces that have been hiding out of sight out of mind in baskets in the closet / my Knitting Body yearns to see what she has to work with especially since the Glass Fusing Body has been making such nifty buttons

in fact, Knitting Body wishes just to knit button bands and buttonhold bands ! and maybe she will

~~~~~~~~~~~

okay this is a start

ongoing considerations re Dreams That Havent Come True Yet and whether they have a chance or not / stay tuned in

ps / it's okay to make as many glass doo dads as you want even before you stick them on the bracelets / like spinning fleece into many skeins of yarn you cant have too many possibilitease in either yarn or glass

love, skaterina

Sometime you just have to empty your dance card

more about this later / right now i am engrossed in the audio of Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

Boo Hoo I am a Big Baby

just now i was real snarky with the office staff of the local eye doctor who is sposeto see me a week after the surgery but she is making the appointment for the 15th instead of the 11th

she is prolly telling the rest of the staff what an asshole i am

i cry

daughter sez it's good to cry / tears will be good for healing my eye

yes / there is a toxin in the body that is only released through tears

the IV has left considerable toxic residue / i am robbed of my appetite and my pizazz

the twinkle in my eye is gone / my smile no longer dazzles / my hair is limp

poor poor me

the good news is my formerly "bad eye" is now my "good eye" and the formerly "good eye" nervously awaits its surgery in a few weeks

sigh BIG SIGH

Correction

the eye surgeon told me i did NOT have a general anesthesia, just something in the IV to Relax me and that i was awake and talking to him and not to worry he wont tell anyone what i said

smile