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Nothing good here, I'm afraid. Just trying to figure out why Google alerts is a post behind.

Sigh. Carry on.

Tangled up in blue

Poor Jorge Posada. I've got to believe that he dreads playing the Angels. Five years ago, he got his nose broken while trying to get to second base. Friday night, he and Chone Figgins ended up in a crazy dance at home plate after Figgins popped the ball up and then fell over backward while watching its flight.











Photo from mlb.com

Ultimately, Posada lost his glove but still caught the ball barehanded, making the out and ending the inning. What makes me laugh, however, is the look on his face afterward.













Photo from mlb.com

To really get the full effect, though, you have to watch the video from MLB.com, which is here. It was a pretty amazing catch.

Although this may not have been one of Figgins' more stellar moments (if one of his more hilarious), I sincerely wish he'd been voted to the All-Star Game. He is a player who really earned a spot on that team--his numbers have been great this year--and I'm sad that he was overlooked. He's been one of my favorite Angels since he joined the team so many years ago, one of those players who is really a joy to watch.

It was nice to see the Angels sweep the Yankees this weekend.

Correction: Amezaga didn't pop Posada at home but in New York. I've always liked Posada for the way he handled that situation, accepting Amezaga's on field apology with no reservation. I cannot imagine how agonizing that injury must have been.

Go listen to some music: "Tangled Up in Blue" from the album Blood on the Tracks by Bob Dylan.

Summertime blues

This is evidently the summer of the migraine. With all that's gone on in the last year, I could really do without that, too.

grumble

At any rate, the Orange County Fair starts today, and we will head out to visit it tonight. The first night is usually the best in our experience, and it's been a few years since we've gone, given our more recent predilection for wandering around Norwegian hillsides in the summer.

The daughter is quivering with excitement. Of course. That child has always loved the fair, since the bygone days when I took her in her stroller. She is 12 now, so excitement over bunnies, chickens and funnel cakes won't last forever.

Or it will. I'm still mostly charmed by it. There are vegetables. There are actual farmers. There are 4-H kids who talk with affection and humor about the critters they've raised, knowing full well where those critters are going after the fair is finished. There are carneys and creepy clown faces. There is truly appalling food--the things those people FRY! There is often dreadful entertainment and sometimes fun entertainment. There are PLACE SETTINGS! Yes, there are people who design place settings. As a competition. I love it, and I'm not being facetious. Much anyway, because it's good amusement value.

(Ok, I pretty much won't eat at the fair with the possible exception of corn on the cob roasted on a grill. I really dislike greasy food, and though everyone assumes I'm just being so holy and healthy, it's not a health-conscious thing. It's a texture thing. Grease just tastes like slime to me, even if there is a Snickers bar or some dough in there somewhere, and I find it quite literally stomach turning. My family is in no such way troubled by these issues, so I let them have at it. It's only once a year. Also, I don't do Ferris wheels or rollercoasters. But I'm more than happy to lead the charge into the livestock pens. And, of course, PLACE SETTINGS!)

Summer has been, of necessity and by request, quiet thus far. I offered up a trip to Hawaii as a vacation option, and the kids just sort of shook their heads. They have been sleeping late into the morning, still just growing children, which I tend to forget. They've discovered TV and their new favorite show is reruns of The Golden Girls. I've become more rigorous about additional chores, preaching that it's as important for them to know how to clean a house as it is for them to learn to cook their own meals. They like the cooking. Cleaning toilets perhaps not so much.

Yesterday, I took them for a walk, a small hike, down the channel trail, where they'd never been before. It was hot and dry, but there were butterflies and the son spotted a Nuttall's woodpecker on a eucalyptus. It was not pecking so much as prodding the crevices already in evidence, secure in its activity, unconcerned by our presence.

It was somehow reassuring.

Go listen to some good music: "Summertime Blues" written by Eddie Cochran and Jerry Capehart. This song was first recorded by Eddie Cochran and then covered by everyone from the Beach Boys to Rush. Definitely something summertime.

I bawled

When we moved into this house years ago, the entire interior had been painted a ghastly yellowish-brown, and the floors were covered with brown carpeting. We pulled out the carpeting before we moved in, but covering the wretched paint took a bit longer.

The daughter was about 2 1/2 when I was standing in her room one July evening, discussing how it should be decorated with the spouse. There was a very narrow bit of wooden trim that bisected the walls, and it had come loose from the plaster near the door.

Experimentally, I pulled.

Huge mistake.

It turned out that previous owners had spent untold years painting over wallpaper, about the most enormous no-no in interior decorating ever. When I pulled on the trim, I pulled off about all of the layers of paint over the first layer of wallpaper.

I spent the next several days investigating wallpaper removal. Because I am a cheapskate and I don't like chemicals, I decided to do the job myself. So I bought scrapers and spray bottles and enormous vats of vinegar.

The pervasive smell of wet wallpaper, wet glue, wet plaster and quantities of vinegar mixed with warm water was decidedly overwhelming, so I kept the windows open to mix it up good with the smell of California summer ozone. I kept the kids occupied in another part of the house while I worked, and I had a CD player turned up loud.

Stripping the wallpaper was time consuming and slightly back breaking but neither difficult nor entirely unpleasant. My mind wandered through the vinegar fumes, and it was hot and I was in a retro mood, so kept The Kingston Trio, Alan Parson Project and The Moody Blues turned up to 11.

I went to 11, too, alternately singing and cursing when I ran into a bad patch or accidentally scraped up some plaster. The neighbor commented that he was surprised that I listened to '60s folk music. He also commented that he was previously unaware that I had such a colorful vocabulary.

(There were days when it was colorful vocabulary or just burn the house down. We determined there were at least 10 layers of paint over 4 to 5 layers of wallpaper, and on one wall, the plaster revealed what appeared to be blood splatter from a massacre. I'll never know precisely what that stain was, only that it took four coats of Killz to cover it.)

Removal, basecoat, paint and trim took a month. With a 5-year-old and a 2-year-old in residence, I will never know where I found the energy.

Working on one's domicile, however, can be revealing. It turned out that at one time, there had been a lovely 1960s intercom system linking the front door and every single room in the house, now reduced to giant patches. It was also interesting to find out that the walls were genuine plaster.

So, I scraped and wielded a paintbrush and I sang.

The Kingston Trio was always the most fun, one truly delightful memory from childhood. My mother had a few record albums that we played on that enormous stereo, and among them, my favorites were the Trio, Tchaikovsky, Offenbach and the cast album from The Music Man. The Kingston Trio, however, with their sly satire and social commentary and fantastic harmonies were the best for singing along. Even recently, playing "The Merry Minuet" for the kids, I couldn't help but laugh when the son shook his head and said, "But nothing has changed!"

Indeed. Nothing has changed.

And even now, I look at the walls of the son's room and the walls of the daughter's room and see that it's time to paint them once again. Though this time, I think I'll decline and allow someone else the honor, especially now that all the wallpaper is gone.

Go listen to some good music: "I Bawled" from the album At Large by The Kingston Trio. I am trying to shake off another freaking migraine, so I do rather feel like I've been hit with a rolling pin.

Jellicle cats come out tonight...

Boxes covered the bricks by the front door and I couldn't imagine what was in them. I hadn't purchased anything, hadn't ordered anything. Just at the mat, though, was a tissue wrapped bundle, fanned out on the bricks like an offering. A white rose peeked out from the tissue as it rippled in the breeze, and I knew where the flowers had come from even before I even searched for a card.

And then, of course, I opened my eyes and realized I really needed to get out of bed.

I suppose I'm meant to be writing a post...it's only been what? Three or four or five days since the last one.

*sigh*

Last night was the full moon, so naturally it was a night of vivid and odd dreams. And the cat running around the house, preparing for the Jellicle Ball.

(Yes, you really should read T.S. Eliot.)

At the beginning of the week, I read an article that spurred me to start a post about how to eat healthily on a budget. Because everyone tells you that you should, but they don't tell you how. Also, I'd seen a query somewhere from a woman with six dollars trying to figure out how to feed her family with it. As someone who knows from budgets and who once had five dollars a week budgeted for food, I've more than a little experience there.

Then, of course, everything got complicated. Well, it's always complicated, so it was just more complicated than usual.

Because there was a process server (occupational hazard of someone in the house working as an expert witness). Fortunately, this one was evidently not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, or at least not the most motivated, and left it at the office hoping the spouse would pick it up. Alas, the admin did not give it to the spouse; she mailed it back to the lawyer, which is how the office handles these things.

One of our friends got cornered at home by a process server. Scarred for life, I tell you. So, for the moment, we don't answer the door to anyone. Not that I ever do, actually.

There's more. There's always more. Microsoft is back to making my life hell. There is a certain group of people, a group that caused me tremendous displeasure a little more than a year ago, who cannot fathom that I do not wish to socialize with them, and thus, will not leave me alone. Not the brightest bulbs there, either. And my sweet feline friend Max has been diagnosed with cancer in his pretty little pointy chin, which is heartbreaking.

I have resources; there are workarounds to despair and anger and fear. My Rock Band avatar likes the dress I bought her: she blows kisses to the audience, jumps enthusiastically but demurely, and seems to end up in the back of the squad car much less frequently. There was zucchini bread to make, sticky sweet and filled with chocolate chips, to the delight of the kids. It was beautiful today, in the 80sF, but with such a cool sea breeze that we kept all the doors and windows open, the a/c off.

Post-Influenza-Like Illness, I am still inexplicably exhausted, and can sit down mid-afternoon only to fall into deep and dreamless sleep.

It was an odd airport, all cyclone fencing and open air benches. The woman in uniform at the desk told me in precise English with a formidable European accent that the first flight out was tomorrow, that clearly I had misread the sign, that there were only two flights per week and that I had to wait until tomorrow. All the while she told me this, precisely and formidably, she smiled happily, as if pleased she was able to exercise her English. So my brain turned, in its tidy and inimitable way, to Plan B...

Go listen to some good music: "Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats" from the album Cats. I know, but it's been two years, and I do like that song. And evidently, the neighbors have heard me singing, thankfully believing it to be the son. I do have a deep voice for a woman, or "low and throaty" as one of my high school teachers characterized it, sending me into paroxysms of perpetual embarrassment.

Buckaroo holiday

Milton is endlessly outraged by the fol-de-rol gripping the neighborhood today. Unattended children whipping up and the down the street, usually more-or-less responsible adults behaving like unattended children. Disapproval emanates from every pore on his little body.

It dawned bright, although it usually dawns foggy, and it's over 90F out there now (which why I'm in the house pretending to be washing dishes while everyone else is out there eating whatever is being produced. I never eat anyway. I stand around with my water bottle and make social noises. Oh, and in the food department? Hummus won. A good thing, too, because one of the organizers told me that no one seemed to be bringing appetizers this year! So I ran home and got some more stuff...)

I was prevailed upon to make an appearance at breakfast ("But I never go to the breakfast!" I wailed), and to ride in the Cad in the parade ("But I never ride in the parade!" I wailed).

After the early-ish morning excitement, I made lunch: sausages, fresh corn on the cob and cherry cobbler, and then somehow, the spouse and the kids and I started talking about the old TV show Night Gallery, which I was far too young to watch when it was actually on in the early 1970s.

And lo! Night Gallery is on Hulu! So we watched two episodes and the daughter took up residence in my lap, shrieking.

Then we started talking about the old Outer Limits episode "The Zanti Misfits," which I saw as an adult on a 4th of July Outer Limits marathon, while the spouse saw it as a child and was scarred for life.

And behold! "The Zanti Misfits" is on Hulu! So we watched that, and the daughter took up residence on my lap, shrieking. Of course, by the end, everyone was shrieking with laughter.

Now, it is heading into evening, and at some point it will cool down, and then there will probably be fireworks. There always are.

Go listen to some good music: "Buckaroo Holiday" (part one of Rodeo) from the album The Copland Collection: Orchestral and Ballet Works by Aaron Copland & the London Symphony Orchestra.

Celebration

The fireworks started last night.

The 'hood is starting to anticipate the annual 4 July apocalyptic bash. My week has been somewhat discombobulated, so it only occurred to me yesterday that a) I must go grocery shopping (sigh) and b) I need to think about what I'm taking to the potluck.

As I've pointed out, this place is a non-stop party, the holiday dinner and 4th of July being the most obvious symptoms of a larger disease process, but on any given day you see people trailing about with bottles of wine or swim suits or frisbees or just standing in the middle of the street socializing. And for all that I am an introvert, I still enjoy watching them, all children great and small.

The holiday dinner is for the adults, so when July 4, rolls around, it's really an all singing, all dancing, all ages event. As I noted last year, it's all holidays for 100 years rolled into one. The son, at nearly 15-1/2, is now taking a rather jaundiced view of the whole affair (ok, not the pancake breakfast), but the daughter is already quivering with excitement. Because, you know...chocolate chips. On the pancakes.

(Do I put chocolate chips on MY pancakes? Of course! However, I'm assured it is simply not the same. Mostly because I am not DR, gentleman owner of many tiny cars with lawnmower engines, and somehow his pancakes are just cooler than mine. Maybe because DR is only as tall as the daughter. I don't know. I do know, however, that the daughter feels compelled to comment, a little bitterly, on the fact that I never go to the pancake breakfast. What did Rauch say about introverts? Hell is other people at breakfast? Yup.)

This is the place that I must state categorically that I'm really fond of most of my neighbors.

Usually, I contribute hummus to the potluck, and probably will this year. I make my own and it is quite simple and excellent. Last year, I sent the leftovers to C.'s house--they do the July 5th party--and she told me that her teen sons and their friends devoured it overnight.

What? You think I'm kidding that there is a July 5th party?

Go listen to some music: "Celebration" from the album The Very Best of Kool & the Gang by Kool & the Gang.