Pot Roast Comes in Many Versions

I returned from Austin to find that it was still winter in Chicago.  The couple of days I spent in Texas were quite nice: lovely spring-like days with a hint of a breeze.  Made you think of writing a book or reading poetry.  I am happy to say that Rita did not suffer any kind of relapse during my tenure as care-giver.  That might be, however, because of all the wine we drank.  It’s funny how quickly a bottle disappears when you’re watching “Jeopardy” or “Law and Order” reruns. 

Back in Chicago, I didn’t have  a very good weight watchers week; could be the wine but I suspect it can be more closely tied to my having gone out to dinner with friends 3 out of 5 nights.  And then there were the lunches.  This week I’ve been working much harder at staying on track.  My trainer is out of town, so I’ve been on my own to exercise.  You all know how that honor system works.  My excuse is that I’m evaluating my knees since I started taking glucosamine for arthritis.

I developed a craving for pot roast this morning and I conducted a search through most of my cookbooks to find the perfect rainy day recipe.  I was pretending that I know what I’m doing when I went to the grocery to buy the meat.  I asked all the questions about tenderness, marbling, braising or not braising, should I add carrots and potatoes or make the roast think it was Beef Bourguignon by only adding mushrooms.  Since I forgot the mushrooms, it is in the oven now with potatoes, carrots and onions.  Plain old American, perfect for a rainy, cold, dark day.

Just finished a book at my learning in retirement class that is considered one of the greatest books ever written.  Not having  been a Literature major in college, I’ve enjoyed the experiences of discovering the great works of the past and the modern acclaimed novels.  This one was “The Magic Mountain” by Thomas Mann.  Even the uneducated like me have probably read Mann’s “Death in Venice” and understood what the book was about.  Not so with “The Magic Mountain.”  It is over 700 pages and covers 7 years in the life of the hero/protagonist, Hans Castrop, who goes to a tuberculosis sanitarium to visit his sick cousin and stays long enough for a 700 page book, 7 long, wordy years.   I can’t say that it is beach reading, more like reading with an encyclopedia at your side to find out about the philosphical movements discussed as well as the psychological terms and nuances in the book.  Our next book is the blessedly short, only 96 pages, “Ethan Frome,” by Edith Wharton.  I have to say that I love this book!  Not because it’s short, but because I saw the movie with Liam Neesom before he became worn and craggy.  I’m leading the discussion of “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” and am already deep into my preparation.  That means I’m relying heavily on Cliff Notes.

My next adventure is a trip to Paris with my friend Wilma and I’m excited to tell everyone that Jane will be taking a break from the family to join us.  When we traveled together when Jane was a child and then as a teenager, I was still at that stage in my life where I felt I had to do absolutely “everything” just in case I never got back to London or Paris or wherever.  Jane made the comment that she was happy to travel with me now that I accepted that everyone doesn’t want to leap out of bed at 7 am and hit all the museums.  I think it’s part of realizing that we do what we can with what our bodies will allow.  And then we rest/nap before dinner.  None of this dragging into a restaurant with our maps and brochures and our sweaty bodies.  We do things the civilized way now.  I’m looking forward to sharing the Paris I’ve come to know pretty well with Jane.

The pot roast is starting to smell good, it’s still raining and I might need a nap before dinner!

Spring Means Shoes

Waiting for Spring

Everyone who knows me is aware that one of my biggest expenditures is for shoes.  I’ve always loved shoes and I can’t resist buying more than one pair at a time.  I’m on a first-name basis with my shoe salesman, Walter, as well as with the other salesmen in the shop.  I  stopped in a week or so ago, just to say hello, since I hadn’t gone in since their recent sale.  I managed to come home with two pairs of shoes, one of which has since returned to its’s home at the store.  The ones I kept are pictured in the photo:  lovely little red sandals that can’t wait for it to be warm enough to go someplace!  The other pair a little flat, teal-colored number, just didn’t fit quite right.  When I was returning them, Walter had gone out for a break, but not to fear, someone else could take care of me.  One of the guys said, “Some customers have a special salesman; you have a village of salesmen.”

On the practical side, I did need new running shoes now that I’ve re-energized my running routine.  I have know for years that you always buy running shoes a whole size larger than your foot really is.  The boats that I brought home today are another story.  Why is it that as we age and our bodies get a bit broader that our feet also get longer?  The new New Balance shoes are also pictured.  I put them on when I got home and I felt as if I had clown feet; you know, those shoes that flap as you walk.  I’ll have to practice on the treadmill before giving the sidewalk a try.  Might be some length-adjustment and depth-perception changes that have to take place.

Boats from New Balance

No other news.  I’m going down to Austin next week to stay with Rita when David goes out of town for a case.  She just had knee surgery so I’ll be assisting with my best beside manner.  A report will follow when I come home.

Back by Request

Friends,

I have been remiss in keeping you all posted on the events of my life since my last entry.  If you must know the truth, it’s not that exciting.  Maybe if you live under a rock and don’t see sunshine very often, you would think that hibernating in Chicago during the recent blizzard might be fun.  I guess if you were one of those people who had to be evacuated from a snow bank because you thought you absolutely had to have a Starbucks even though all the media in the city were saying “stay in,” then maybe you do need a bit more excitement.  I actually enjoyed not going outside for a couple of days.  It gave me an excuse, not that we retirees really need one, to stay in my jammies and robe all day.  You do find that you do things you wouldn’t normally do like sorting through all the mail that has accumulated on the dining room table or going through all that old makeup you’ve used only once and throwing it away after wondering why you bought it in the first place.  So, now that my closets are all sorted, my books, papers and miscellaneous correspondence have all been allocated to a space, I’m ready for Spring!  After all the cold we’ve had, I don’t have anything else to sort.  And, I’ve even managed to get my taxes off to my accountant.  He was surprised to say the least since I usually wait until March and then expect a refund the next week.  Not that I ever get a refund.

I had an email from the people I left behind in China.  They had all talked about how cold the past winter was, even going so far as to describe how chapped and red their bodies were because of the cold.  They all thanked me for leaving China when I did because it’s been the warmest winter in the past 50 years.  Guess I brought all that cold-karma to Chicago.

I’ve increased my training sessions to 3 times a week.  My shoesalesman, Walter, commented when I was in to look at what was on sale that I seemed to be thinner.  That was with my coat on.  Think he just wanted me to buy some shoes?? Since my weight watchers scale doesn’t show thinner, it must be all that muscle I’m building working out with my trainer.  Wonder if my feet will be thinner when the Spring shoes arrive?

And, speaking of Spring.  I did manage to add two pictures I took during the Blizzard.   The one on the left is looking toward the John Hancock Building which you can’t see because of the snow and the other is looking down out of my living room window.  You get the idea.

Happy belated Valentine’s and Presidents’ Days and early St. Patrick’s.

Why Does It Have To Be So Cold?

When I was in Beijing, the other teachers all talked about how miserably cold the winters were there.  It was hard to wrap my head around that concept because it was around 100 degrees at that time!  One of the men even asked me to leave him any lotion I had brought because he said that his skin got so dry the previous winter that he couldn’t stand the peeling and flaking.  So, what’s a girl to do but leave the bottles of body lotion?  Now, here I am back in my cozy condo in Chicago and it’s colder than the temps are showing for Beijing.  Must be something wrong with the world.  I went out on Friday when it was 9 degrees, something like 15 below with the wind chill and I felt as if my eyelids were frozen.  Everything else was totally covered:  hands, head, legs, lower face.  You still have to be able to see where you’re going so that you don’t step onto an icy spot and go sprawling on the sidewalk.  It’s the getting up once you fall that worries me.  I have a hard enough time getting down on the floor when I’m working with my trainer.  We always position our exercise area near something that I can use as a prop for standing up when we’re done.  So, I can imagine what it would be like for me to get up from a slick sidewalk.  Not a picture I think we want to see. 

This afternoon is the Bears vs Packers game and the entire city has gone crazy.  There were fans in a tiny little breakfast place where I met a friend this morning and it’s way off the tourist path.  They were all decked out in their Bears’ regalia and one even had his face painted.  That might be a bit much since it was still six hours till game time.  Didn’t see any Packers’ fans, but I’ve heard that there is a bar here that is  “Packers Only.”  That must be where they were.  Or in their hotel rooms stocking up on warmth.  Supposed to be 20 degrees at game time; I’m glad I don’t have a ticket that I’d feel obligated to use.

The cold seems to seep through the walls of my condo.  I understand why the windows seem cold, but the walls?  When the wind is blowing and you’re outside, it feels like bits of ice stinging your face.  That’s when it’s not even snowing or sleeting.  But, we choose to live where we live so there’s no complaining allowed.

Ho Ho Ho

I spent Christmas in Virginia with Jane and her family, escaping just before the Blizzard hit the area.  The twins are starting to be real little boys now; while I still can’t tell which one is Owen and which one is Henry unless I keep my mind on what color shirts they are wearing, I think I might be able to make better guesses than I do if I could remember those shirt colors.  Charlotte is also growing faster than one realizes.  She has the most amazing hair:  Jane’s hair was never curly so seeing a child in my family with curls is a real treat for me.

Jane has done an incredible job with her weight watchers program.  I only wish that I were doing as well.  For Christmas dinner, we had everything from the weight watchers’ cookbook and what a delicious meal it was.  We knew that we’d done well when Charlotte started using her bread to dip up the sweet potatoes!  Owen and Henry still don’t eat vegetables, but that doesn’t stop Charlotte!  We managed to Skype with David and Rita out in Oregon.  They aren’t trapped there because of weather; they say they are enjoying having rain since Austin has been under a drought for the past several  months.  I think it’s just an excuse to lie around in their jammies reading mystery novels.

Back home in Chicago I’ve managed to do a good bit of  lying around myself.  I had books to return to the public library today, but when I realized I good renew them online, voila, a trip saved.  Of course they have to be returned one day, but not getting dressed seemed more to my liking today.  I’d resolved to do a workout and I did manage to get that done, but dressing for the library was another proposition altogether. 

This winter’s mini-session of courses at Learning in Retirement may prove to be more of a challenge than I had anticipated.  I’m leading a course on The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles and I had planned to show the movie which Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons.  Netflix tells me that the availability is “unknown.”  I think that means I need to come up with another plan for the last class session.  My friend Rich and I are leading another baseball session:  this one is called “Fantasy Baseball” and includes “The Natural,” “Field of Dreams,” and “Damn Yankees.”  We had such a good time last winter that we decided to do another four films; just hope the class enjoys them as much as we do!

For New Year’s this year I’m going casual.  A few friends are coming over and I’m going to make Cajun dishes.  Red Beans and Rice will be the centerpiece of the meal with traditional black-eyed peas for good luck as an appetizer.  My mother always said that if you didn’t eat at least a spoonful of peas then you wouldn’t have good luck during the year.  So, can’t break the tradition.  She also said you can’t do laundry on New Year’s day because you’ll wash away a member of your family.  That’s one I follow even if I can’t find black-eyed peas!

You can go home again but you can’t stay

I went down to Mississippi this week and spent a few days reconnecting with friends. Had a glorious day in New Orleans: ate too many beignets, had a muffalatto that was one of the all-time best, had a carriage tour and rode The Streetcar Named Desire out to the end of the line and back. It really isn’t named “Desire,” but it makes you think you’re riding the rails with Stanley, Blanche and Stella when you take the St. Charles line through the Garden District. I stayed with Miss Willie and Mr. Pie for the few days that I was down South and want to thank them and the mother deer and her two fawns for the pleasant mornings looking out across the yard. With temperatures in the 70′s and low 80′s, who can complain? It was so warm in New Orleans that I got a bit of a sunburn, but I’m not going to complain about the heat one bit.
I had dinner one night with a high school classmate and his wife and tried to catch up with everyting that has happened since our reunion in June! Did the same thing during lunch with two of my girlfriends: we ate at the Mall which didn’t exist when we were in school. Now there is a Walmart that has literally closed downtown McComb and turned it into a ghosttown of sorts. I made a quick stop into The Railroad Museum to catch a bit of our town’s history. When the Illinois Central closed the railroad shops back in the 1960′s, the town of McComb began a slow decline. Main street, all two blocks of it, used to be a scene of hustle and bustle on Saturday. There were department stores, a drugstore with a soda fountain, furniture stores, a JC Penney store, a drygoods store (more on that later) as well as banks and ten-cent stores and even a hotel, The McCoglan. It had deteriorated into a sort of flop house by the time it was torn down, but at least it didn’t turn into a wig shop or a pawn shop. Who can forget McCrory’s on the corner? I had a Saturday job at a shop whose name I don’t remember, but it was one of those typical small town places where you could get an entire outfit for only a few dollars. I hated it when it was my turn to guard the dressing room area!
While driving through town with my friend Carolyn, we passed a house that I used to love when we were growing up: The Wall’s House. Mr. and Mrs. Wall owned the drygoods store on Main Street, next door to Penney’s, and I have many fond memories of going there with my mother to buy material for my school dresses. Mrs. Wall always was gracious and helpful; she helped plan one of my college sorority formal gowns. It was satin and lace and was prettier than anything I can remember wearing. And, my grandmother made it and you wouldn’t have known that it wasn’t store-bought! I noticed that Mrs. Wall’s house was for sale and mentioned to Carolyn that I’d always wanted to live in that house. Well, long story short, one of our other classmates just happened to be the listing real estate agent for the house. Next thing you know, I’m looking at houses in McComb and Summit. There is something magical about living back in your hometown. The memories, the good times with friends and family, the hope of recapturing your youth, maybe. Then, reality sets in and you realize the author with Asheville, North Carolina, whose name I can’t recall, probably was right: you can’t go home again. While the urge to return is there, something about one’s current life and lifestyle is more real than the ephemeral bit of memory that you try to hang onto.

The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You

I went to Austin, Texas, over the weekend to visit my brother and sister-in-law and along the way managed to go and see President Lyndon Johnson. Well, not really LBJ himself, but his ranch out in the Texas hill country. It was a nice, warmish fall day with some overcast clouds in Austin; once we got out to the ranch, the clouds were gone and it was a lovely, sunshiny day. I can see why LBJ came to the ranch: it was very peaceful with cows grazing and wildflowers growing by the side of the road. And, these had to be some of the biggest cows I’ve seen lately. There were also some two-toned goats. Since they didn’t have signs around their necks to tell us their breed, we could only surmise that they must have been some kind of “foreign” goat that has immigrated without official papers.

On Friday we went to a really wonderful exhibit on the life of Walter Cronkite at the LBJ Library at the University of Texas. It was one of those exhibits that more or less covers not only the life of the subject, but your life as well. All the major events that he covered were major events in my life: the assassination of President Kennedy, the race riots, the moon landing, Vietnam, Watergate, the Chicago Democratic Convention in 1968. The ideas and work ethic that Walter Cronkite espoused have gotten away from today’s journalists. They actually aren’t journalists, they are simply news readers, I guess. News in his day was to inform, not to entertain. I was quite moved by the exhibit and honestly wished for those days of integrity in television to return.

Back in Chicago, we’re bracing for a storm to end all storms according to the weather reports. I guess I’ll be forced to spend the day inside tomorrow. My plan is go to the library and check out another dozen books to keep me occupied for a few days. We’re reading Chekhov in my literature class next week, so among the fun stuff I’ll get in some heavy, thought-provoking things also. I saw a book in Borders this morning that looked interesting: Best Travel Writing of the Year. So far I’ve been disappointed. Maybe the next articles will cause me to want to go adventuring again!