Thursday, May 29, 2014

Hit by a foul

The seats we normally have at Dodger games are on the first base side close-ish to home plate. The view is great but they are right in prime foul ball territory. I tell everyone around me that if one comes my way to just leap in front of me and save me from being killed. I don't care about catching a ball. I care about breaking something. I am terrified of hard, fast flying objects rocketing towards my head. And those things come crazy fast. Well, everyone around me failed last night because Matt Kemp (I think. It's all a blur.) hit one back and it landed on the steps right in front of me and then bounced up and hit my knee. And then the kid who was in front of me got the ball. I got hit by a foul ball, you guys! Dad explained that since it hit me but I didn't catch it the error goes to me. Which is a little baseball humor for you.

But I got a Dodger Dog and I was wearing my new Dodger shirt and the night was cool and breezy. A bruised knee is a small price to pay for heaven.




Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Memorable

Memorial Day is one of those holidays that I've come to love more and more for it's meaning and not just for the fun that comes with it. I always seem to have a really good, solid cry over it because war is dumb and I just can't believe we participate in it still. How about we  stop killing each other, okay? Great, I'm glad that's settled.  As per tradition I read Flanders Field and the Gettysburg Address. We also watched the Memorial Day concert on PBS the night before which is the worst. Oh, it's just awful, the crying that goes along with this every single year. I mean, the things these soldiers and their families go through are truly devastating. I thought about Grandpa and all of his war stories. Did you know he got shot in the keister with some flak while flying over Germany? He always said he didn't want the Purple Heart because he didn't really deserve it just for bending over at the wrong time. Well, does anyone really deserve a war wound? Regardless, I'm grateful for him and his wounded behind. I'm grateful for them all. I'm also grateful for the people who choose to be peaceful. For leaders and diplomats and everyday folks who say, you know what, I'm not going to go blow that guy up because he stepped on my land. Let's talk it out instead. 

We did have fun this weekend. It wasn't all weeping over sad stories. Camille and I headed up to the mountains to see Lynn and Jeep's new house in Lake Arrowhead. In general I think I'm a beach girl. Give me a chair and a book and the sun and the sand and the waves crashing and I'm set. Until I go to the mountains and then I'm definitely a mountain girl. Give me a deck with some scampering squirrels and the wind blowing through the pines and all that fresh mountain air (what makes it smell do heavenly?!) and I feel like a new woman. Fortunately, California has both beaches and mountains so I don't have to choose. I'll just tell the Wealthy Benefactor I need both.

There was also homemade boysenberry ice cream and a picnic in the park and bocce. And I slept in and then read in bed for hours. The weekend was a dream. Let's do it again next year.

Friday, May 23, 2014

Year 2 - Complete

Hey, guess what!

Seminary is done!

I used to be able to do cartwheels. Should I attempt it? No. But you can go ahead and imagine me doing a cartwheel. I think that would be enjoyable for you. And if we're going there we might as well make it big, so imagine me doing a cartwheel that goes into the splits and then pinwheel fireworks go off behind me. I'm wearing blue sequins overalls.

Anyway, I'm pretty excited about this. And also sad.

Because those kids really get to you, you know. You spend 9 months thinking about them constantly, and spending hours preparing lessons every single night for them, and seeing their sleepy faces every single morning, and singing solos to them because they refuse to sing with you for the opening song, and trying, pleading, begging, tap dancing, anything just to get them to comment on a question, just one question, and laughing at all the funny things they say and crying over how far they've come and rejoicing that they come at all and seem, sometimes, to get it and enjoy it, and that they come back the next day and do it all over again with you. And it's usually only now, around the end of the year that you start seeing that they've been listening all along. And suddenly 9 months seem too short.

These are great kids.






Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Oldies

I have a very distinct memory of once thinking that I would never get to a point where I wasn't up on music. When a song would come on the radio and an adult would say, "Who is this?" I would be astounded and kind of embarrassed for them that they would let themselves get to that point. How do you not know who this is? I was maybe about 16 and it seemed impossible that I would ever stop listening to music or searching for new songs.

Folks, I'm there. I'm old and I just don't have the time nor the desire. I regularly turn on the radio and ask, "Who is this." I thought this day would never come. I still love music but it takes so much effort now to find anything good and new. I was at a show a few weeks ago and having a great time but what I would have done for a chair. And then a few days after that I was at another show (this was a freakish coincidence. It sounds like I go out all the time. I don't. I am a hermit.) and happened to be sitting in the back next to some grandparents while all the kids danced up by the stage. And I was quite content. When I'm not listening to NPR on my drive home I'm normally in silence, because I really like silence a lot. If the knitting and the early bed time and the dreams of the muumuu years hasn't already turned me into an 80 year old, this certain has.

In other music news, we ended up having a Classical Music Appreciate Night at my parents house on Sunday. We sat around and listened to pieces that we each loved. None of us are particularly up on classical music and they were mostly standards that everyone knows but I think everyone has a song that moves them.  Mine is Ode to Joy. It is manic and German and the sopranos are up in the stratosphere. What's not to love? I would like for it to be played at my funeral.

And in other, other music news I played on a different organ on Sunday and as I finished up the intro my finger knocked one of the pre-set buttons and suddenly we were in Westminster Abbey, or Notre Dame, or the National Cathedral, somewhere really, really majestic and grand. It maybe would have been appropriate if there had been a thousand people there for a coronation rather than the 100 there for just regular old church. There was so much bass! And because it was a new organ for me I had no idea how to change it mid-song. Hitting the button again did nothing and I didn't want to try any other buttons because who knows what other kind of pre-sets there were. There's always a Christmas bells pre-set button. This happened to me once before and it was as if Satan had picked the stops, like I had somehow tapped into the Pipes of Hell.  So I just stuck with the grandeur and played through all four verses like the Queen was about to march in.

Thursday, May 15, 2014

An Illustration of Space Exploration

Heather showed the Art Society kids my post about wanting to go to space and find the best space nachos and Jarron drew these pictures for me.




Both my scanner at work and my scanner at home refused to scan in color. So I had to take a picture with my phone, which is lame. Let's not talk about how I'm in a fight with technology these days. I basically love everything about these pictures and I want to frame them and hang them in my bathroom.

In other space news, I'm sure you've seen this because it's everywhere. But in case you haven't, NASA has put up a live stream of several cameras pointed towards earth from the ISS and I don't think I have to tell you that it is mesmerizing and beautiful and glorious a total time suck. I can stare at it for hours. It is mostly cloudy and mostly over ocean and half the time it's just a black screen because they've orbited into the shadow but when it's on it's ON. It's so beautiful I can hardly stand it. Sometimes you'll catch the moon rising over earth. Sometimes you'll see something familiar. The other day I watched as it went over California. It was hot and dry and windy that day (every day this week actually)(sweet land of liberty, the heat we've been having!) so there were no clouds and it was such a perfect slow shot from the Bay Area all the way down to Baja. And, yes, fine, I'll admit that when it hit LA and I spotted our mountains I got a little misty. Can you blame me? Set aside a chunk of time and gaze. And try to catch it at the sunrises and sunsets. It's amazing.

In other, other space news, I finally saw Gravity and I was as tense as a tense thing the entire time. I mean, the entire time! But it has not deterred me from my plan to stow away on a rocket.

Friday, May 9, 2014

Buttered corn

How do you butter your corn on the cob? Do you just use a knife? Or do you just roll it around on a stick of butter?

Either way, you're doing it wrong.

Here's how you do it:  You take a slice of bread, the ends work well for this, and you spread a lot of butter on it, like half a stick. And then you hold the bread in one hand and you roll your corn on the cob around on it. It  molds to the corn and coats everything and you still get a lot of butter on your corn without wasting any. It's clever, right?

Right.

Except that no one else seems to know about this trick. My whole life this is how it's been done in my family. And whenever I've been to other places with corn on the cob and there isn't buttered bread I'm initially confused. Because it's the most logical way to do it. But people look at me funny when I suggest it.  In fact, I'm bring this up because Camille got mocked at work for telling people this is how it's done. What if I told you that Martha Stewart suggested this on one of her shows and tried to pass it off as one of her ideas. I hate to break it to you Martha but LaRue Knecht was doing it before you were even born!

If you're using a flat knife on a curved surface you're going to have dripping clumps of butter in some spots and nothing in others. And if you're rolling the corn around on a stick of butter than you're wasting butter. And if you're not putting butter on your corn than you're really, really doing it wrong. Butter and salt and a whole lot of pepper. So much pepper that your lips burn.

Ok, so have you heard of this? And if you don't do it this way how do you do it? And since we'll soon be entering corn on the cob season, will you promise me that you'll give it a shot? Because I care about your happiness.