Saturday Morning

Saturday morning and it’s growing light.
I look out my window and remember the night.
The story is starting and this story ends
And I feel like I need you again.

The verse above is from the song “Saturday Morning.” This is the song that’s playing on a loop in my head today. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s just been that kind of a month — a month when I am missing people who are no long accessible to me. (And yes, I am a huge Harry Chapin fan, despite the fact that he died a few years before I even discovered his music.)

One of those people I am missing is a youth minister named Jerry. He and I once lived together — along with half a dozen other people, including my first husband. No, it wasn’t like whatever you may be thinking, unless you are imagining a really crowded house filled with some of the funniest and best people I know. Scott and I had our own bedroom, but I don’t actually remember where Jerry was sleeping. The living room sofa? The bedroom that was eventually used for Ella’s baby? I just don’t know. Anyway, at some point Jerry realized that I couldn’t walk past the chess board that sat atop on old piano in the dining room without straightening the pieces. After that, he made it his sacred duty to give me something to straighten, just so that he could laugh up his sleeve at my OC tendencies. One evening I came home late to find everyone in the dining room eating dinner (or playing a board game — I can’t remember for sure). One of the pieces on the chess board was on its side; naturally, I stopped to correct the problem. Everyone burst out laughing, since Jerry had guaranteed them that I would stop and straighten the chess pieces. I’m sure I must have blushed when I realized that he was right — I couldn’t leave a chess board messy. After that, I averted my eyes from the board whenever anyone was around.

Jerry has been gone for years now. He left a big hole in the lives of those who knew him. I’m starting to recognize that every death leaves a hole. I’m worried that I’ll feel like Swiss cheese in a few decades.

May Sucks.

My mom fell and broke her arm on Monday, thereby pushing May into the clear winner as my least favorite month. So, in honor of that fact, here are the Top 10 Reasons I Hate May:

10. In Arizona, April showers never bring May flowers.

9. Leonardo da Vinci died in May 1519. He was really old though — I suppose it was his time. Still, the world lost a genius…in May.

8. My maternal grandmother died in May 1988.

7. In May 1970, four anti-war protesters were killed at Kent State by Ohio National Guardsmen.

6. My father-in-law died this May.

5. It was a bad month for Anne Boleyn, too. She was beheaded in May 1536.

4. The Hindenburg crashed in May 1937.

3. As previously mentioned, my mom broke her arm, which really sucks because she and Dad were preparing for a driving vacation to Alaska…which may or may not be on hold now.

2. I married my first husband in May 1997.

And the #1 reason I dislike May so intensely is…

1. Temperatures reach 100 degrees in Phoenix by May; there will be no substantial break in the weather until October.

I may be wrong, but I think Anne would agree with me.

 

Angels Do Exist

The last week has been a hard one for our family, but hospice made it bearable. Few things are more heart wrenching than watching a loved one die, especially when he or she is unable to tell you if they are in pain. The nurses and doctors who come to a terminal patient’s bedside are angels of mercy to them and to their families.

When my paternal grandfather passed away a few years ago as a result of cancer, Hospice of the Valley took excellent care of him. The facility in which he spent his last few days was clean, and his room — all the rooms, in fact — more closely resembled a bedroom than a hospital room. When another member of our family approached the end of his life recently, the family opted to care for him at home for as long as possible. My husband chose to contact Hospice of the Valley again; they immediately sent out nurses to evaluate the patient’s condition and provide drugs to ease his pain.

My advice to anyone caring for a terminally ill loved one would be: don’t wait to call hospice. If you happen to be in Arizona, call Hospice of the Valley.

Let’s Talk about Food

Dan hates it when I write about the family. So I won’t…at least, not today. Suffice it to say that all prayers and positive thoughts in support of the Bennetts are welcome.

In the meantime, let me tell you about a wonderful place Dan and I have recently discovered: Nineveh Restaurant. It’s located at the corner of 99th Avenue and Peoria, and, if it had been there a year ago, I would have written it into my Brass Monkey series as Milo and Claire’s favorite restaurant. Their gyro plate is the best I’ve ever eaten. the meat is moist and flavorful without being greasy. The bed of yellow rice is perfectly spiced — I wish someone would tell me the secret to making it. Mine never comes out like this.

If you go, don’t miss the appetizers. Their dolmas — a rice mixture wrapped in grape leaves — are amazing. Dan tells me that the key is the grape leaves: if they are prepared right, the dish is always good. I’ll have to take his word for it. But their hummus is perfect — not to be missed.

Our server, Martina, has been extremely friendly and helpful on all of our visits to the restaurant. She and the rest of the staff strive to deliver a wonderful experience for every guest. If you have never eaten Middle-Eastern cuisine, let this be your first experience. If you try gyro here, your standards will be set far above the average.

I think I’ll try the shwarma next time.

Against Medical Advice

I’m angry and sad today — and I’m trying not to show it.

Someone important to my husband’s family — a man I respect and love — is choosing to end his life by refusing medical treatment. I know this is his choice; it’s a choice I have seen others make before. Under other circumstances — if he had cancer, for instance — I would support his choice. But he doesn’t. He has pneumonia, which has led to sepsis and renal failure. He is probably going to die from something that is highly treatable in the 21st century.

I have said before that my goal is to reach the ripe age of 100. That wasn’t always true. When I was a teenager, I went through a bout of depression and found myself contemplating suicide. When I ultimately overcame those dark thoughts and emerged into a better, happier life, I decided that I would never let depression fool me into believing that life wasn’t worth living again. Even on my worst day, I know that I still have more good days ahead of me — and I want to see them.

But what if I didn’t see any better days coming? What if I spent every minute of every day living with pain, and the doctors told me there was no way to predict if that pain would ever disappear? How bad would that pain have to be before I decided that life wasn’t worth the trouble anymore? Before I chose to allow a curable illness to advance to where it could kill me?

I hope I never find out.

In the New Mexican Wilderness

Fuzzy and I have spent the last few days in and around Mountainair, New Mexico, where we are visiting her last surviving aunt, Ruby. Ruby is a spry 91, and, even though she can’t remember my name from introduction to introduction, she still teases me as if she likes me pretty well. In fact, we share a love of butterflies, the color purple, and eggnog — proof that we are indeed related!

Today, we drove to Encino, where my grandmother remembers spending part of her youth. We visited the graves of my great-great-grandparents there, on a desolate, windswept plain that seemed to have been, for the most part, forgotten. Nevertheless, I noted that someone in the family had put some fake red flowers on her grave relatively recently — no doubt a testament to “Mamma Nick’s” enduring reputation as an amazing mother and grandmother. Unfortunately, she was gone about a decade before I was born. No matter — I have my own amazing grandmother!

We also stopped at what used to be Negra, where my great-uncle was born in a strip motel in the 1930s. The building is still standing! A short ride down the road, we found the house Fuzzy lived in when she was a child. The back wall is all but gone, but the front, sides, and roof still stand. Fuzzy peeked in and said, “They remodeled it.” I thought she was referring to its lack of a fourth wall, but she continued, “It was one room when we lived here.” Sure enough, to one side of the building, I could see the remnants of what must have been an interior wall!

Notably, none of the small towns we went through today have a store or a gas station. Forget about getting something cold to drink! Mountainair is the most robust place we have encountered since leaving Albuquerque, and I’d be hard-pressed to call it thriving. Still, it’s a nice little town with friendly folks who all seem to look after one another.

And all I have to say is that I’m visiting Aunt Ruby — it’s an instant icebreaker around these parts!

Cameras Will Steal Your Soul

One unexpected consequence of joining Beta Sigma Phi has been the proliferation of photos of me. Now, for a woman who has spent much of her adult life staying out of pictures, this can be quite distressing. I am not the prettiest woman in the crowd, but I have carefully honed my mental image of myself. I think I am elegant and interesting; photographs, however, generally make me look like Andre the Giant’s ugly sister.

Nevertheless, I have obediently stood up or sat down for pictures at least twice a month since September. The best angle for me — as with most people cursed with a double chin — is from above. Unfortunately, the Beta Sigma Phi photographers are almost always at least six inches shorter than me. Since I am so tall, I am invariably made to stand in the back, where my chin and I hover over everyone else.

In a few years, there will be enough pictures of me to create a flipbook of my aging process. But that’s okay as long as every once in a while, a good picture is accidentally created. At the swap meet a few weeks ago, once such picture magically appeared. And it happens to be a good one of my sorority sisters too. Go figure.

 

Most of Eta Delta. For those of you who can’t figure it out, I’m in the center.

Foodie Heaven

On Saturday, Nikki and I went to the inaugural Food Truck Festival at Park Central in downtown Phoenix. I’d been wanting to try a food truck for a while now; Eat Street makes them look so appealing! I wasn’t sure how Phoenix’s offerings would stack up against those showcased from different cities, but we were both pleasantly surprised.

About twenty food trucks and carts were arranged along the perimeter of the tarmac set aside for the event. We took our time and checked each menu before making any decisions about what we wanted to eat. The trucks sold everything from fry bread (a Native American specialty) to Filipino food. After our first trip around the circle, we had our choiced narrowed down.

We both started with a single street taco from the Carte Blanche Gourmet Tacos cart. Mine had pork carnitas topped with a sweet potato and pineapple chutney. Unbelievably great! Nikki chose the vegetarian option, which featured marinated mushroom pieces. She was equally impressed. If you have a chance to try Carte Blanche, we highly recommend it!

My main course was a pork curry from the Spice It Up truck. It didn’t disappoint either. The curry had just enough kick and the flavor of the coconut really came through. The only problem I encountered was that the hot dish made me even warmer than I already was. Nikki had a fry bread concoction called D$. It had white beans and a mild green chile chicken topped with salad greens. She said it was good, and it must have been — she ate the whole thing! Unfortunately, I didn’t get the name of that truck. If you see a bling-y fry-bread truck on a Phoenix road, that’s probably the right one. (I’m pretty sure this is the right one: Emerson Fry Bread.)

For dessert, we bought fruit popcicles from the Paletas Betty cart. Paletas Betty has quite a reputation in Phoenix — I’ve read about them in at least two local magazines. They didn’t disappoint, either. I had the coconut and Nikki had the pineapple. Both of them had plenty of actual fruit in them and were the perfect ending to our foodie indulgence on a hot spring day.

There were only two disappointments. One was the lack of seating provided for the event. There must have been a few hundred people there at any given time, but only a few awnings and tables were provided. The second was that the arts and crafts portion of the event didn’t live up to its potential. Apparently, the organizers were only able to sell space to two or three vendors in that vein. Hopefully, they will learn from their mistakes.

I look forward to attending next year!

The Martian Solution

The Boston Marathon bombing. The fertilizer plant explosion. The acrimonious end of the gun control debate. This has been, without a doubt, a bad week. Was it bad enough to make anyone consider a move to Mars, though?

Earlier this week, one of my friends post a link to this article, which offers anyone interested the opportunity to be a part of the first colony of humans on Mars, on Facebook. At first glance, it looks like an interesting proposition. However, any potential astronauts should note that there will be no return flights offered; once you are on Mars, you are there for the foreseeable future. I have days when I wish I could be a hermit, but permanent, irrevocable removal from my home planet seems extreme.

And what if you don’t get along with the other space pioneers? What if you lose your mind? What if someone else in the group does? There’s something to be said for the way England colonized Australia — at least everyone knew going in that they shouldn’t blindly trust the exiled prisoner next to them.

I know Arizona has some extreme weather — summers can top out in the 120s — but I don’t think that even compares with the average temperature of Mars — a hell-freezing 80 below. The barren landscapes may be similar, but I don’t think the red planet would ever feel like home.

What sort of person would be willing to leave all of their friends and family behind to live with strangers in a pod set down in a hostile environment? Shouldn’t their mere interest in such a life be reason to psychologically disqualify them?

Here’s my thought: let’s give anyone currently awaiting execution the option to get on that one-way flight instead. If they have survived prison, at least they have a fighting chance at surviving on Mars.

Home Sweet Home?

 

A Dessert Oasis in the Desert

Today, Nikki and I took a road trip to Palm Springs, California, where we met my publisher for lunch. As it turns out, that desert oasis is just about halfway between Phoenix and Temecula, California, where the Inknbeans Press office is located.

Nikki showed up right at seven this morning, and we were on the road by ten after. The traffic was light and we enjoyed the company and the scenery as we made the 265-mile trek. As it turned out, neither of us knew much about Palm Springs. Our fleeting impressions of it were bleak, since the highway off-ramps don’t offer much promise. However, we were pleasantly surprised to discover that the city itself is quite lovely and more than lives up to its promise as a resort destination and game-show vacation prize. Did you know that there’s a Knott’s Berry Farm Soak City there? Nikki and I wished we’d brought our bathing suits!

We arrived at the Manhattan in the Desert deli restaurant about fifteen minutes before noon. Unfortunately, the Boss Bean ran into some traffic delays, so she was about half an hour late. This is apparently a popular luncheon spot; the place was completely full by twelve-fifteen. And who could blame the locals? The menu is extensive and varied, and the bakery case at the entrance offers a wide array of mouth-watering treats. Nikki and I enjoyed fried dill-pickle spears while we waited for Jo to join us. When she arrived, we ordered our meals and enjoyed a long afternoon chatting about books. By the time we left, the restaurant was nearly empty.

By the way, the sandwiches are huge! I came home with two-thirds of mine, and I know Jo took home at least half of hers. I also ended up with Jo’s leftover cheesecake, which is amazingly wonderful.

We headed back toward Phoenix at a little past three this afternoon. I wish we had more time to check out the city today, but Nikki and I have already decided we will need to make another daytrip over to try out the water park. Why be embarrassed to wear our swimsuits in a city where no one knows us?

Palm Springs — more beautiful than I thought.