Aubergine

dasspunk

It is someone's birthday today.  Someone who I met in my first job at Apple, and who I became unlikely fast friends with.  Someone who taught me how to play Quake by killing off my avatar over and over until I learned to dodge him.  Someone who came up with crazy nicknames for nearly everyone in our team, which stuck even when we wished they wouldn't (mine was Doñata, which was better than the nicknames my little brother invented).  Someone who has a long string of nicknames himself (BRay, spunk, dasspunk, etc.). Someone who loves orange, the letter "K" and thinks bananas are the perfect fruit. Someone who can give a long and entertaining monologue about why he loves each of those things.  Someone who has strongly opinionated but is happy to hear out differing opinions, too (as long as he can make fun of you).  Someone who plays beautiful music and is wholeheartedly passionate about it.  Someone who loves basketball and is one of only two people I have voluntarily watched sports with. Someone whose old leather desk chair I still sit my butt in nearly every morning to read my email, and whose coffee grinder I used in my kitchen this morning. Someone who makes fun of me about nearly everything, but somehow it always comes across as love. Someone who has at least twice given away or sold almost everything he owns to move across the country or to another country (that's how I got his stuff).  Someone who quit smoking a few years ago after a very long habit (so proud of you!).  Someone who has the sweetest softest heart, but would never ever admit to it.  Someone who calls women "broads" and "chicks" and I forgive him because I know how much he respects us really.  Someone who has a huge collection of Hawaiian shirts.  Someone who drinks "old man drinks," and always orders his vodka tonic with lime (limes are the runner-up perfect fruit). Someone who wore shorts every single day that he lived in California (with Hawaiian shirts, of course). Someone who took gentle care of me when my last relationship was winding down to a messy close and I really needed a friend.  

Someone who I love and miss very much.

Happy birthday, Brian.

purr

Since Lisa and Wiget moved out, Riley has started to purr. Previously that was a really rare occurrence.  But recently, any time I pet him he rumbles.  He has a deep bass purr motor.  His whole throat vibrates.  It feels like a gift.  This afternoon I was in the living room reading when he came in from the garage where he'd been sleeping, and he started purring before I even touched him.  He was just happy to see me.

I can think of no sound more healing to an aching heart than the sound of a cat purring.

the one about a boy I used to know

Our Junior year you turned 16 about 9 months ahead of me, and your parents gave you your dad's old diesel Mercedes as a birthday gift, which wasn't quite as fancy as it sounds.  It started the majority of the time, but it took ages to warm up at high idle.  The stereo didn't work, two of the doors were nearly impossible to open, and the heater ran only on full heat or not at all but neither at your behest.  On cold mornings that winter I'd watch from my bedroom window for the cloud of steamy smoke rising over the rooftops that signaled you had started the engine and were letting it warm.  I had about 5 minutes from the time the cloud cleared the rooftops until you would be at the curb in front of my house to pick me up for the ride across town to school.  Even after the ritual warming, that car had to be coaxed into accelerating for most of the two mile trip.

I loved walking from the parking lot onto campus with you.  You weren't terribly popular in the traditional football star sense, but you were cute and friendly and seemed to know everyone and I just though you were terribly cool.  I loved being your girl friend - your friend-who-was-a-girl - though that meant you treated me like one of the guys.  Your real girlfriend, Gina, didn't deserve you, in my well-considered opinion.  You were constantly heartsick over her, and because I was the friend-who-was-a-girl, I heard a lot about that.  She *was* in the popular crowd, and she seemed to string you along more than she dated you.  But you were loyal. I hated her.  I hated how she treated you.  I would have treated you better. If only I didn't have a boyfriend already.  If only you weren't so hung up on her and would notice me as more than your pal.  But being your pal was so nice that I almost (almost) didn't mind.

I loved hanging out at your house.  Your dad had such a strong accent I could barely understand him and you were all bilingual, but your parents always made a point of speaking English when I was there to include me.  Your dad's name was Pedro, too, a fact I found much more charming than the fact that both my brother and father were named John.  Your parents took walks together in the evening and held hands, which I found terribly romantic. I wanted some of that to rub off on me. My impression of love so far was that it was fragile and fraught with peril. I'd never been around adults who were mellow in love like that and I was fascinated.

My mom thought you were such a nice young man, and you were, really.  It was usually me suggesting the slightly bad behavior that we got up to.  I found out years later that you just didn't tell me about the parties where there was going to be drinking because you were trying to protect me, but when I found out about them anyway and dragged you along, you kept careful tabs on me.  I'm sure it was your idea to climb up on the roof of our neighborhood church that night, though.  You told me you went up there sometimes to think, and the sky was so clear and full of stars that I wanted to get closer to it.  Once I was up there, though, my fear of heights kicked in and I couldn't get back down so you had to help me.  I swear I wasn't faking a phobia to get you to put your arms around me, but I certainly enjoyed the feeling, once my feet touched the ground again and my panic subsided.  I'm not sure if my shaking hands while we walked home were from adrenaline or your proximity, but either you didn't notice or were too gallant to comment.

We had met in art class at the beginning of our Sophomore year, just after I moved to the neighborhood, before I realized you lived on the next block.  We two were the serious ones, the teacher's pets.  The ones she thought were going somewhere.  We did both go on to study art in college, but I always knew that of the two of us you were the talented one.  For me, it was work.  I had the technical skill, but not your soul.  Your soul was probably why I was so drawn to you.  I wanted that to rub off on me, too.

I went to visit you at San Diego State only once.  You gave me a proud tour through the weekend-empty art department. You had a key to the printing rooms - always the teacher's pet.  You showed me the print series you were working on, and described the process of etching and printing off a lithography stone and then grinding it smooth for the next print. I was deeply impressed with the process and your obvious joy but I didn't really get the gravity of what you were doing until I took a lithography class a couple years later and the instructor told us that the quarry where that particular kind of stone was dug was nearly empty.  Those printing stones were getting really rare and precious and as students we didn't rank high enough to use them.  I only ever got to print off of the cheap metal plates that sort of approximated the process. Those prints you were making off your stone were breath-taking.  Dark wild forms, half abstract.  Long-legged horses or maybe dogs, scratchy bird's wings.  I didn't understand them at all, but I could feel their power.  This was nothing like the work I was doing.  I was just cranking out assignments - still life fruit and a man sitting in a chair.  Color wheels.  I was learning mediums and theory.  You were making art. Mine didn't have any particular meaning.  I didn't know how to make them have meaning.  But you didn't know how not to.

After the tour, you took me back to the funky rental house you shared with your girlfriend on the tree-lined street that would have been charming if not for the other student rentals on the block and the nearly constant party that was going on in the house next door.  Our entertainment for the evening was the band in the backyard.  Since it was a warm night we left both front and back doors open and had great live funk music while we sat on the couch and talked.  When the police came the first time, we hid our alcohol but watched from the porch while the party goers staggered off in all directions.  Some of them drifted back after a while and the party continued at a duller roar for a while, until the frat bus pulled up across the street.  We sipped the beers we'd retrieved from behind the couch and under the coffee table and sat on the front steps watching as each guy in turn disembarked from the bus, took a few steps, unzipped and urinated on the sidewalk and lawn before heading in to the party.  There wasn't a lot of sleep for anyone that night.

On the long bus ride back north I thought about you, trying to figure out how you had changed.  I had expected you to leave me behind in the world of art, I just hadn't expected it so soon.  But there was more.  You were different.  You seemed hollow and vaguely sad.  Worn out.  Somehow empty, as if the emotional depth of your paintings was wringing you dry.  I wanted to protect you, the way I had wanted to protect you from pouring out your heart into Gina's undeserving hands, but I really had no idea how, any more now that I had then.  And you had a woman in your life already, and professors supporting you and urging you on.  A promising art career shimmering there in front of you, and you seemed to want it.  And I was no longer just down the street but at the other end of the state. I was not longer part of your life. No longer your gal pal.

We drifted a bit after that and mostly lost touch.  I emailed to see if you were going to our 10-year reunion, but you said no way.  It had taken you 10 years to get over high school.  Was it really that bad for you? For all of my protectiveness, did I actually overlook that you were that miserable?  

The last time we spoke you were living in Santa Barbara.  We chatted on the phone while you roasted tomatoes on the grill in your backyard. I had recently married and you were sweetly happy for me.  You had all but quit painting, while I was tentatively starting again though when you asked me what my paintings were about I still couldn't say.  You were working in a museum, curating shows, handling other people's work.  You liked it, you said. I wanted to believe you, and almost did.  You had been in a relationship with a wonderful woman for a long time and she wanted to get married, but you weren't sure.  You felt a bit unsettled.  You were thinking of going home to Spain for a while, living with your Aunt in Madrid.  When we hung up I ached for the old closeness of our friendship, but could feel that too much time had passed and we were too far apart from each other to pick up those threads the same way again.

There were bombs in the subway in Madrid that summer, and I have not been able to find you since.  I sense that you are alive and out there in the world somehow, but those threads that once bound us close have frayed and let go.  I miss you, Pedro.  I hope that you are somewhere painting wild things again, but have found a way to hold enough of your heart in to sustain you.

the last of the tomatoes

Last year I grew and cooked so many tomatoes.   Remember my "20 things to do with tomatoes" series?  I didn't quite make it to 20, but I got pretty close.  This year I grew some, but cooked with hardly any.  Mostly that's a reflection of other things going on in my life and how little I've been cooking generally, but also I wasn't as pleased with the tomatoes coming out of the garden and so was less inspired to cook with them.  Some made it into my kitchen, but then didn't get used before they went soft.  Some were collected by my mom or her partner when one or the other of them were over helping me clean up my garden in August.  Many just dropped off the vines and rotted into the ground - I expect lots of volunteer plants next year.

The vines are just about done at this point.  I picked the last of the paste tomatoes today and all of the ripe cherries - I may get just a few more of the golden pears if the warm weather holds through the holiday.  I made a big batch of tomato soup with what I picked, augmented with a few dry-farmed tomatoes from last week's farm share.  Honestly these are pretty tasteless for dry-farmed, so maybe it just wasn't a very good year for tomatoes all around. The soup is good, but doesn't hold a candle to the soups I made last fall. I dressed it up with a big dollop of pesto, and it is nice and warm and comforting.  But it isn't the *pow* of the bowl of soup my recipe is based on, which I ate at a cafe in Amsterdam the September before last.  

It is hard to imagine that was only just over a year ago.  It feels like so much longer.  So much of my life has changed - so much of who I am has changed - that it doesn't quite seem possible.

But I did learn a few things from the garden this year where tomatoes are concerned, and in the hopes that I'll remember them next year when I am planting, I'm going to write them down.

1. I really like to grow tomatoes.  My basic garden has only oregano, tomatoes, basil, and flat-leaf parsley.  Anything else I have room for or can get to grow is just gravy (though I really enjoyed the Anaheim chilies I planted this year and I yearn to have a successful strawberry crop someday).

2. For the things I like to cook, it makes the most sense to grow paste and either cherry or small pear tomatoes.  Maybe one plant of some very flavorful globe variety to round out soups.

3. Heirloom varieties don't do well in my garden.  Don't waste the space.  Just buy them at the market.

4. It is better to select varieties for their ability to thrive in the foggy weather of my neighborhood rather than because I like the name.  The Dona plant didn't produce very well and many of the fruit started rotting before they were even ripe.  Also they tasted bland.  The Early Girl I planted last year did much better and tasted much better.  I might have good success with San Francisco Fog, too.

5. I grew San Marzano paste tomatoes this year for the express purpose of roasting them and making sauce to put up for the winter, and then I did neither.  I want a do over.  Also I missed the little Juliets that I grew so prolifically last year and had such good luck drying. I'm still using the dried tomatoes from last season but my supply is getting pretty low.

6. Cherry tomatoes produce best when they have good sun, plenty of water, and are picked regularly.  I had a bit of trouble with #2 and 3 toward the end of the summer.  I need more things to do with cherry tomatoes because I got a bit overwhelmed with the quantity.  I wonder if I could dry some of these?  In any case, one cherry plant is enough.  Resist the urge to buy two.

7. The gophers from all over the neighborhood have discovered my back yard and are settling in like it is Manhattan.  I won't poison them because we have a lot of cats in the neighborhood and also I'm not a big fan of killing things. My deterrent noise-maker stakes are obviously not effective.  I have no idea what else to try.  Suggestions?  I'm not sure I could handle traps, because of that whole killing thing, and if I use live traps then what do I do with the critters once they are caught? To add insult to injury, I got back from Thailand to discover that my beautiful pink Japanese anenomne, which has been planted directly in the ground since sometime before I lived here, and which had so far escaped the notice of the gophers, had been eaten.  They always seem to identify my most favorite plants and find them delicious.

8. My vegetable bed needs to re-dug with fertilizer before I plant next year.  Ideally, I'll take the time and effort to put down gopher wire, too.  Maybe.  I also have a plan to build some new beds in a sunnier spot across the yard, and those will have gopher wire from the beginning.  If I have the time and energy to build them.  I need a handyman/woman.

9. The plants thrive best if they are put in the ground shortly after I bring them home.  I know that seems obvious, but actually getting plants into the ground in a timely period is something I struggle with.  Something to do with ambition being larger than the reality of time and energy.

10.  I really like growing tomatoes.  I realize I said that already, but it bears repeating.  Even with this year's poor results, I'm not at all deterred.  Even being able to make *one* meal with ingredients I grew myself is enough to encourage me to try again.

dulce

It is cold in my house in the morning recently.  Winter is creeping in.  I love hot cereal, but (especially in winter) try to avoid too many carbs, and especially first thing in the morning which just makes me crave them all day.  Last winter I was making a very simple hot cereal by mixing quinoa and a handful of trail mix with a splash of milk or half and half.  I don't actually know where quinoa falls on the glycemic index, but I know it is high in protein and so I've convinced myself this is an improvement over the Cream of Wheat and oatmeal that I crave on cold mornings.  And it tastes good.

When I looked up the instructions for cooking quinoa in my mom's whole grains cookbook, I found a recipe for a quinoa-based hot cereal that looked good (OK, it is a pudding, not a cereal, but close enough).  YUM.  Definitely an improvement over my down and dirty cereal, and it only takes a few extra minutes to make.  And it keeps well, so I can make up a week's worth of servings at once and just reheat one in the microwave in the morning.  Thanks, Mom!

Quinoa Dulce
(makes 2 generous bowls)

1 cup cooked quinoa
1 cup low-fat milk
1/4 cup honey
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 c each raisins and chopped nuts (optional)

Combine cooked quinoa, milk, and honey in a medium-sized saucepan.  Stirring gently, bring to a boil over low heat.  Reduce heat, add cinnamon and beaten egg, stirring quickly.  Add vanilla.  This may be served immediately, or poured into a covered casserole and served later, when it will be slightly thicker.  Also good cold.

Notes:
- To make basic cooked quinoa, simmer 1 cup quinoa grains (rinsed well) in 2 cups of water, covered, until all the water is absorbed - about 15 minutes.  This will give you almost 3 cups of grains, so you can increase the proportions of the pudding above accordingly if you are putting servings away for later or cooking for a crowd.

- I've been using a dark local honey that I had around, and it is lovely and rich in this cereal.  You could also use agave nectar or molasses to shift the flavor lighter or darker.

- Because I don't follow directions very well, I made this the first time by beating the spices and vanilla into the egg while the milk was heating.  This is more efficient than the instructions in the book, and I don't think it effects the final flavor. I also added some nutmeg. It is pretty as garnish, but if you aren't planning to photograph your breakfast, just mix it in to the egg with the cinnamon. :)

smarty pants

This one just stood up on his hind legs and tried to open the sliding glass door in my studio out to the back yard.  Yes, he's tall enough.  If he had opposable thumbs, he'd totally be an outdoor cat.  On the other hand, if he had opposable thumbs, maybe I could get him to cook me dinner occasionally.  At least leave the light on for me when I'm coming home after dark.  He's certainly smart enough to handle those tasks.

He can also read my mind.  He's over there glaring at me now.

He and I are still getting used to being each other's only company.  He'd never admit it, but I think he misses little Widget.  And I know he misses Lisa, who he had trained better than he ever did me.

pause

I returned from a short trip to Thailand late Thursday night.  Yes, it was wonderful.  More on that later.  I was not there long enough quite to get on East Asian time, but just long enough to be completely loosed from any time zone affiliation now that I have returned.  My body is responding to its confusion by refusing to sleep longer than 4 hours at a time, in intervals many hours apart.  I woke up at 2:30 AM this morning. And today, thanks to the time change, I have an extra hour to not be sleeping in. 

I have filled my very-long-so-far day with reading 3/4 of a book that I really want to like but don't really, making quinoa for my breakfast (that involved finding a recipe in a cookbook that was packed in a box, and then finding a temporary lid for the pan, because Lisa took the lid that fits the saucepan she left), putting together the two new stools that I bought yesterday (very comfortable - I tested them while eating my breakfast), not putting together the bookshelf I bought at the same time (which will house said boxed cookbooks), playing with Riley who is lonely, not yet reading my work email, not yet finishing my travel journal, writing a singles profile and choosing pictures to put with it.  The writing the profile bit took hours, and I'm still not loving it.  I think I sound prickly, which, if I'm honest, I probably am a bit.  Am I ready to start dating?  I'm not really sure.  I feel like I'm ready to start meeting interesting people who I *might* like to date.  Exercising the muscles, so to speak.  For my photos, I picked several of my 365 portraits.  I like them, although I guess they are not your normal singles profile photos.  A little arty.  But I'm a little arty.

On the current version of my "100 things" list, I have this item:  Stop living on pause.  Today felt like an example of how I'm not ready to cross that one off.  I feel very paused today, waiting for something external to happen.  Stop it.  This is my life now.  If I am unhappy with it, I have only myself to hold responsible.  If I want it different, I have the power to change it.  And yet, also, this is coming on winter, the season where I naturally pause each year.