Sleuthery

I've got not so good news from the scale to report this morning, ladies. I weighed in at 150 today - just like last Saturday - which makes it the first weigh-in since early August which hasn't been a success. Well, at least I didn't gain anything... Truth be told, I was a bit sloppy about my eating earlier this week and I haven't been drinking my full 64 oz. of water each day. But as I looked down at this scale this morning and saw the very same numbers that flashed across the scale last weekend, I felt a renewed commitment to my reducing and fitness plans. After all, 117 is still a looooooooooooong way off and there isn't any time to lose!

Maybe it's the change in seasons. This is the first week I've been able to turn off the air conditioning at home. Yesterday, I actually got to open the windows in my apartment and leave them open all day long. I got home from work and everything just smelled so much fresher when I walked in the door. It's much, much darker on Monday mornings when I get up early to do my weekly wash. Darker mornings and cooler temperatures are messing with my workout schedule a bit, too. Instead of having to be at the park by 6 a.m. on Saturdays and Sundays, I need to wait until at least 6:30 or 7 unless I want to be freezing in the dark! And it's just about cool enough to be able to walk outdoors again at lunchtime on weekdays. Temps only hit the 80s - sometimes low 90s - these days. Autumn in the Southwest.

A friend and I were talking about my blind date last week and I realized something that still makes me laugh. My self esteem is so healthy these days that it never even occurred to me that the emailer wouldn't be totally into me. Isn't that crazy? I was so focused on whether I liked him or not, that it never even entered my mind that he wouldn't be crazy about me! So when he didn't contact me soon after that coffee date, it caught me completely off-guard. Just to give you an update, he emailed me three days later. A quick email about a book I'd mentioned when we met each other. I wrote him back the next day - which must have been several days ago now - and I haven't heard from him since. I do believe I've been fizzled!!! This is perfectly okay, but it's just funny to me that I didn't remotely expect this kind of disinterest from my blind date. That's what losing 44 lbs. will do to a dame, I guess! Dangerous, blinding self-confidence.

Ooh, before I forget, here's a picture of the beauteous plum-colored dress I bought a few weeks ago when I first got into a size 12. It's uber flattering just exactly in the places where I need a little extra flattering. Best part? I can wash it on the delicates cycle, dry it on a hanger in my bathroom, and it's ready to go. No iron needed. Now that's fashion a housewife can appreciate.

This is the dress I was wearing on Thursday when I saw Curly for the second time last week. (I paired it with some strappy gold heels, purple beaded earrings, and gold bracelets on both wrists.) Once upon a time, I used to see Curly maybe once every month or two. Over the summer, it was once a week. These days, I'm running into him a few times a week. Which is absolutely fine with me! The man is smokin' hot. He's actually started using the men's room in the hallway right outside my office - there's a men's room just outside his office downstairs - and he came up to use the kitchen in our office suite twice last week. Now, clearly my judgment is a bit impaired these days (see Exhibit A above) so I'm trying really hard not to read anything into all these Curly sightings. But by the third day in a row last week, I started feeling a little intoxicated. Maybe there's something wrong with the men's room downstairs? Maybe he was around all the time before... Did I just never notice him?

*sigh*

Where's Nancy Drew when you need her?

"...when we knew them by the shape of their legs"

Here it is Friday and I haven't posted anything yet about last Sunday's vintage dinner! Thank goodness for "Independence Day Observed" - it gives me the chance to do some serious catching up on all fronts. (I'll do my observing tomorrow.)

Eggs Scrambled with Chopped Chives or Parsley
Salad of Shredded Lettuce and Carrots and Chopped Sweet Pickle
Roll
Blueberry Pudding

Recommended by The American Woman's Cook Book (1945) as a menu for a Saturday evening, this was a wonderful change of pace after a hot summer's day. Just the kind of the meal that would allow a housewife some extra time to get her children through their Saturday night baths... I added some Parsley to my Scrambled Eggs. Most of you could probably scramble eggs with your eyes closed, but I thought you might enjoy seeing a '40s take on the recipe.

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BATTERED OR SCRAMBLED EGGS

In a frying-pan, place one teaspoon of butter for each egg. Beat the eggs until the whites and yolks are well mixed. Season with salt and pepper and add one to three tablespoons of milk or cream for each egg. Pour into the hot fat and cook slowly, stirring constantly until the eggs are of the desired consistency. Serve at once. A little onion-juice or chopped parsley may be added to the eggs, if desired.

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I made the salad using iceberg lettuce, carrot, and chopped sweet gherkins. The whole-wheat roll was purchased at the supermarket --- a nod to the foods commercially available by the 1940s. The Blueberry Pudding was a simple cottage pudding with fresh blueberries added to the batter. It was so good, but I'm afraid it'll be the last of my desserts from these dinner menus for a little while. (The leftovers are way too tasty!) I'm going to substitute either a baked custard, sherbet, or pudding for the vintage suggestions.

The summer rains have moved into this part of the desert. I use the word "rains" loosely - it rains for about 5-10 minutes in the late afternoon - but the storms do stir up some lovely wind and cloudy skies... So it was time to clean my bedroom yesterday evening and a storm had just passed by. For the first time in all these months, I had to find an alternative to airing my bedcovers and pillows on the landing outside my door. The railing was wet and water was still dripping from the roof. Hmmm. What's a good housewife-who's-not-a-wife-and-works-outside-the-home-five-days-a-week to do? I reached for The Manual. Aha!

Remove all bed covers; stretch over end of bed, or over chairs, off the floor.

That - I could do. And at least it gives you a chance to open the windows and air the mattress. Making up my bed again afterwards wasn't quite as satisfying an experience as it usually is. I didn't get to beat the pillows or give the bedcovers a good shake - didn't want to stir up any fresh dust indoors - but it was a decent trade in a pinch.

Have you ever read Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon books? I'm reading the second one, Leaving Home (1987), and there's a thought he expressed in passing that's making me especially mindful these days of the way my legs look. (Mindful to the point where I may have overdone it with my new exercises yesterday --- my legs are aching this morning!) It's a passage in the opening essay to the book that made me think of my legs. A beautiful passage in more ways than one. It makes me laugh and weep a little at the same time. I laugh, because I'd like to be known by my nieces as the aunt with fabulous legs!

When I was little I didn't think of grownups as having bare skin; grownups were made of wool clothing, only kids were bare naked...

Every time I read a book about how to be smarter, how not to be sad, how to raise children and be happy and grow old gracefully, I think "Well, I won't make those mistakes, I won't have to go through that," but we all have to go through that. Everything they went through, we'll go through. Life isn't a vicarious experience. You get it figured out and then one day life happens to you. You prepare yourself for grief and loss, arrange your ballast and then the wave swamps the boat.

Everything they went through: the loneliness, the sadness, the grief, and the tears--it will all come to us, just as it came to them when we were little and had to reach up to get hold of their hand, when we knew them by the shape of their legs. Aunt Marie had fat little legs, I held her hand one cold day after a blizzard, we climbed snowdrifts to get to the store and buy licorice whips. She said, "Come on, we can make it, don't slip," and soon she was far behind, a fat lady in a heavy coat with a fur collar, leaning into the wind, wheezing from emphysema, and sometime later she died. She knew that death was only a door to the kingdom where Jesus would welcome her, there would be no crying there, no suffering, but meanwhile she was fat, her heart hurt, and she lived alone with her ill-tempered little dogs, tottering around her dark little house full of Chinese figurines and old Sunday Tribunes. She complained about nobody loving her or wanting her or inviting her to their house for dinner anymore. She sat eating pork roast, mashed potato, creamed asparagus, one Sunday at our house when she said it. We were talking about a trip to the North Shore and suddenly she broke into tears and cried, "You don't care about me. You say you do but you don't. If I died tomorrow, I don't know as you'd even go to my funeral." I was six. I said, cheerfully, "I'd come to your funeral," looking at my fat aunt, her blue dress, her string of pearls, her red rouge, the powder on her nose, her mouth full of pork roast, her eyes full of tears.

Every tear she wept, that foolish woman, I will weep every one before I am done and so will you. We're not so smart we can figure out how to avoid pain, and we cannot walk away from the death we owe.

So true. For all our modern technologies, shopping malls, and miracle drugs, we can't avoid the mistakes and fears and losses that shaped the lives of our grandmothers, our great-grandmothers, and their great-grandmothers before them... If you've never read any of Keillor's books - or listened to his marvelous Prairie Home Companion on NPR - you've got something wonderful in store. He paints such a frank and beautiful picture of life in a small Minnesota town. His bits in Lake Wobegon Days on the scandal of air conditioning and over-ambitious tomato gardeners --- genius!

Sunday, Monday, or Always

"Oh, yeah," I thought to myself this morning when I heard on the radio that today was the big day. The transition from analog to digital television was made today here in the United States. At least, I think it was. I felt the tiniest bit tempted to turn my TV on to see if it was picking up the new signal, but decided against it. This was big doings in the Jitterbug household last winter when they were planning to make "the switch" in February. I'd purchased my converter box, fussed about trying to pick up stations, figured out - finally - that my set would need a digital antenna, set that up and fussed about some more. Everything was in order when I parted ways with my television three weeks ago, so I'm sure it's fine now.

One of the things I'm certainly not missing about TV - analog or digital - is the constant grumbling about weather. Oh, those local newscasts... They'd moan and groan if it was in the 60s ("Too cold!"), they'd moan and groan if it was in the 90s ("It's a sizzler out there!"), they'd gripe about the slightest breeze ("Gusts of up to 40 mph!"), and rain? Forget about it. The softest shower was built up to be some massive rain system moving through the city. As if the griping and groaning and going over it again and again is going to make the slightest difference. It is what it is outdoors. All you have to do is open a window and you can see and feel what's going on out there. If your allergies are acting up - yep, there's pollen on the move. I can see how important forecasts would be if you were a farmer or if you lived in a Northern climate during the winter. I know firsthand how great Doppler radar is when a snowstorm is moving in. I used to get really frustrated hearing all that grumbling from the anchorpeople several times a day. (Not frustrated enough to just turn off the TV, mind you!) But it's an irritant that's gone now. Completely absent. I don't think I've heard a weather report of any kind in three weeks and I'm surviving quite nicely.

Another subtle shift for me is that I think I'm becoming more attentive to things like song lyrics. Music that was once more background for me than foreground is now the main attraction. If I'm sitting here tapping away at the keyboard and listening to big band, I'm really paying attention to the song. And this is probably going to sound goofy, but it's as if the lyrics of ballads and things are beginning to seem more passionate - and sexy at times - than they used to. Frank Sinatra singing "Sunday, Monday, or Always" is all crazy sexy to me now, and I probably would have written it off as a nice tune several weeks ago. It's kinda funny. Today's singers think they need to practically have intercourse on stage in order to elicit the same reaction that Sinatra got just from the way he paced his lyrics. And the catch in his voice. The bobby soxers were swooning in the aisles, but I'll bet there was many a housewife who stopped - iron in mid-air - to close her eyes and listen with a smile...

I'm getting ready to spend a few hours catching up with my kitchen. Because of the changes I've made to my housekeeping routine this week, I just wanted to post the revised list of chores I'll be doing on a weekly basis in the kitchen. These would have been daily tasks for the '40s housewife - and probably still are for many of you!

Open windows top and bottom for free circulation of air, or open kitchen ventilator.

Rinse and stack dishes, pots and pans.

Check and reorganize foods; put away.

Collect all refuse and put in garbage can.

Wipe off top of refrigerator and all work surfaces in need of cleaning.

Wash dishes. Dry and put away, if not room to rinse with hot water and leave to dry.

Wipe off surface of range. Clean spilled food from drip pan or oven.

Dry damp work surfaces.

Dust radiator or register.

Take out garbage; put clean lining in garbage can.

Clean sink. Rinse dishcloth or mop; hang outdoors if possible.

Collect soiled towels; wash. Hang fresh towels.