Some days back I watched in amazement how a group of birds who build intricate hanging nests, by getting together gathered enough force to make an errant squirrel retreat when it got too close to one of the nests.
This was a neighborhood doing. This was all the birds who had spent so much time building these incredible nests congregating and as one, chasing the enemy away. I was so impressed.
And now today I heard a lot of noise from the back forties, a noise I have heard before when the birds are threatened. These were the blue and black Jays who were making quite a ruckus and as I watched them diving and flapping at something in the tree, I saw the reason.
There was a big and not very friendly snake, all twirled around the branches of a tree and very pissed off by the unwanted attention of the jays. Finally it slithered down the tree stump and tried to hide in the undergrowth, but one of the Jays would not give up and kept chattering and dive bombing and , when given a chance, picking at the snake who by now, I imagine, wanted nothing more than just to get away.
Which was fine by me. This is not a fella one would want to find on the terrace; he easily measured 2 meters ( 6 feet) and thick as an arm, so I encouraged the bird to chase the bugger so he would leave the neighborhood all together. I mean, Puertoricenos and snakes and yappy white mini dogs, one might as well sell out and move on.
Disney's birds might be good at tying bows and sing in harmony but my birds, my birds can chase squirrels and snakes. Maybe they don't sound so good, but boy can they deliver.
I feel a lot safer with my birds around me.
Friday, June 29, 2007
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Of Bread And Wine
When Steve, my former neighbor, he of the big gut and foul mouth, announced that he would stop by my house to check on his Harley Davidson motorbike that I have stored in my garage, I thought
well
I shall bake a Rosemary Focaccia bread ( an Italian flat bread ) which will go nicely with my planned dinner of Chili con Carne de Pavo and it will impress Steve, a food lover, besides going well with a glass of wine.
So there it was, the bread, when Steve arrived late and bleary eyed from lack of sleep and other visits before this one, still warm and fragrant with rosemary and garlic and chunks of rock salt and I carried it to the table with cold butter and his bottle of Chilean red wine , which will never be my favorite.
This, I said, is an Italian bread I just baked. Taste it.
Which he did and said that it, eh, was, eh, very nice and, eh.......and then launched into a tirade about all the wrongs done to him, all the money owed him and all the problems with his wife.
He never took another bite.
There was my lovely, fragrant flat bread, barely touched.
There really, really is a vast difference between a gourmand and a gourmet.
And indeed it went well with my chili.
well
I shall bake a Rosemary Focaccia bread ( an Italian flat bread ) which will go nicely with my planned dinner of Chili con Carne de Pavo and it will impress Steve, a food lover, besides going well with a glass of wine.
So there it was, the bread, when Steve arrived late and bleary eyed from lack of sleep and other visits before this one, still warm and fragrant with rosemary and garlic and chunks of rock salt and I carried it to the table with cold butter and his bottle of Chilean red wine , which will never be my favorite.
This, I said, is an Italian bread I just baked. Taste it.
Which he did and said that it, eh, was, eh, very nice and, eh.......and then launched into a tirade about all the wrongs done to him, all the money owed him and all the problems with his wife.
He never took another bite.
There was my lovely, fragrant flat bread, barely touched.
There really, really is a vast difference between a gourmand and a gourmet.
And indeed it went well with my chili.
Monday, June 25, 2007
Josefina and the Puertoriceno
I heard voices from the house down the road, talking voices, so I Figured that Josefina had company and good, I thought, for the old bag and thought no more about it. That is till later at night when the mutts were barking at something in the street and I went to check, and there was Josefina saying
pssstt Senor
reminding me of the old times in Tijuana when shady characters would sidle up to you in the street saying
pssstt senor, you wanna buy feelthy pictures ?
I am hiding, Josefina said, from Yimmili. He wants to go to the pueblo for dinner, and I don't.
I am decent woman, she said, pounding her full but saggy bosom, I cannot go out with a single man except for maybe my husband, my brother, my son, my uncle, my nephew....but not with Yimmili because he is, and she paused dramatically
He is Puertoriceno
Besides, she said, look at me. I am not dressed to go out, and pulled at her t-shirt and shorts.
Now, I have only ever seen her dressed this way so I don't know if she even owns anything else.
I told her to come into the house and wait and then we would go, together, to confront Yimmili.
But first, to soothe her nerves, I poured her a small glass of rum.
No, she said, I cannot drink anything, I am too upset, and it is too much.....what is it? rum ? well, maybe for the nerves.
And with that she swallowed the drink. One gulp.
Now, I said, now we go and talk to Yimmi, and grabbed her arm and we started walking down the hill towards her house.
Halfway there we saw Yimmi by the house and Josefina wailed that she could not face him, that she was scared and that I would have to go and talk to him, which I did.
Jimmy, it turned out, needed 200 pesos to go to the pueblo ( turned out that it was Puerto Vallarta, not Mismaloya) to meet a new friend and he did not have the money but he would pay Josefina back as soon as , well.... soon, and he was drunk and besides he acted like a terrier who had discovered the scent of a rat, in and out of the house, yelling for Fina, climbing the walls.
There was no arguing with him, just as one can't argue with a terrier on a trail, so I went back to fetch Josefina who in the meantime was trying to hide by lying on the side of the street, but really looking more like a stranded mini whale in shorts and t-shirt. I almost broke my back getting her upright, and then we proceeded towards her house when Yimmi came out of nowhere and Josefina made a sprint for the safety of her gate, making it a stand off between her on on side and Yimmili on the other and this old fool, swearing that this was the last time he would get involved with the neigbors, heading back to the relative tranquility of the home, where suddenly five barking dogs seemed easy to cope with.
So that's the story of Josefina and the Puertoriceno.
pssstt Senor
reminding me of the old times in Tijuana when shady characters would sidle up to you in the street saying
pssstt senor, you wanna buy feelthy pictures ?
I am hiding, Josefina said, from Yimmili. He wants to go to the pueblo for dinner, and I don't.
I am decent woman, she said, pounding her full but saggy bosom, I cannot go out with a single man except for maybe my husband, my brother, my son, my uncle, my nephew....but not with Yimmili because he is, and she paused dramatically
He is Puertoriceno
Besides, she said, look at me. I am not dressed to go out, and pulled at her t-shirt and shorts.
Now, I have only ever seen her dressed this way so I don't know if she even owns anything else.
I told her to come into the house and wait and then we would go, together, to confront Yimmili.
But first, to soothe her nerves, I poured her a small glass of rum.
No, she said, I cannot drink anything, I am too upset, and it is too much.....what is it? rum ? well, maybe for the nerves.
And with that she swallowed the drink. One gulp.
Now, I said, now we go and talk to Yimmi, and grabbed her arm and we started walking down the hill towards her house.
Halfway there we saw Yimmi by the house and Josefina wailed that she could not face him, that she was scared and that I would have to go and talk to him, which I did.
Jimmy, it turned out, needed 200 pesos to go to the pueblo ( turned out that it was Puerto Vallarta, not Mismaloya) to meet a new friend and he did not have the money but he would pay Josefina back as soon as , well.... soon, and he was drunk and besides he acted like a terrier who had discovered the scent of a rat, in and out of the house, yelling for Fina, climbing the walls.
There was no arguing with him, just as one can't argue with a terrier on a trail, so I went back to fetch Josefina who in the meantime was trying to hide by lying on the side of the street, but really looking more like a stranded mini whale in shorts and t-shirt. I almost broke my back getting her upright, and then we proceeded towards her house when Yimmi came out of nowhere and Josefina made a sprint for the safety of her gate, making it a stand off between her on on side and Yimmili on the other and this old fool, swearing that this was the last time he would get involved with the neigbors, heading back to the relative tranquility of the home, where suddenly five barking dogs seemed easy to cope with.
So that's the story of Josefina and the Puertoriceno.
Saturday, June 23, 2007
AARGHH
So there I was. I had just finished a long and, I thought, good blog about the dangers of Senior Moments. Now all I needed to do was to spell-check as my typing is atrocious and my spelling not much better.
And I clicked what I thought was the right button and....nothing.
This, I knew, was not right. Surely my blog was full of my usual typos and bad spellings, so I clicked again and again and even tried another button and
poof
it all farted and flew out the window.
No matter what I did, no matter how many times I said that I was sorry and didn't mean to yell at it, the computer refused to give me back the blog, which for all I know is now floating around somewhere in cyberspace.
I was defeated, and the only way I could see my way out of this mess, was to cut my losses, which I did.
I turned off the darned computer. This was my moment of power, my Senior Moment when the finger on the "off" button will outdo even the smartest computer.
So there, I had my Senior Moment.
And I clicked what I thought was the right button and....nothing.
This, I knew, was not right. Surely my blog was full of my usual typos and bad spellings, so I clicked again and again and even tried another button and
poof
it all farted and flew out the window.
No matter what I did, no matter how many times I said that I was sorry and didn't mean to yell at it, the computer refused to give me back the blog, which for all I know is now floating around somewhere in cyberspace.
I was defeated, and the only way I could see my way out of this mess, was to cut my losses, which I did.
I turned off the darned computer. This was my moment of power, my Senior Moment when the finger on the "off" button will outdo even the smartest computer.
So there, I had my Senior Moment.
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Monkey Business
So much dreary and depressing stuff in the news that when I came upon the story of the monkeys in Puerto Rico, my day lit up.
The story goes like this:
A bunch of monkeys escaped from a scientific research center in Puerto Rico ( I had no idea that they even had a research center there ) and started doing what monkeys and Puerto Ricans do so well,
they multiplied.
From the alleged ten escapees, they now fear they have an army of a thousand, raiding fields of produce causing the farmers no end of grief.
To alleviate this serious problem, the authorities put out eight cages, stuffed with mangoes, to lure the pesky monkeys and trap them. The monkeys got the mangoes but the authorities got no monkeys. AH But, said the authorities, this is just the beginning. We will now set out twelve cages, full of mangoes.
You guess what happened.
Smart little buggers, them monkeys.
Did it make your day too ?
The story goes like this:
A bunch of monkeys escaped from a scientific research center in Puerto Rico ( I had no idea that they even had a research center there ) and started doing what monkeys and Puerto Ricans do so well,
they multiplied.
From the alleged ten escapees, they now fear they have an army of a thousand, raiding fields of produce causing the farmers no end of grief.
To alleviate this serious problem, the authorities put out eight cages, stuffed with mangoes, to lure the pesky monkeys and trap them. The monkeys got the mangoes but the authorities got no monkeys. AH But, said the authorities, this is just the beginning. We will now set out twelve cages, full of mangoes.
You guess what happened.
Smart little buggers, them monkeys.
Did it make your day too ?
Saturday, June 2, 2007
Pack Rat
Pack Rat n.
1: wood rat esp. a large bushy-tailed rodent ( neotoma cinerea ) of the Rocky Mountain area that has well developed cheeks (!) pouches and hoards food and misc. objects
2: One who collects or hoards esp. unneeded items.
That's me, number two. That's me. A pack rat. I knew it when I was looking for a piece of fabric today to make some new runners for the dining room table and found a beautiful blue and white print.
This print, as I remember clearly, I bought when I was visiting Japan with First Chamber Dance Co.
It is a length of kimono fabric.( they sell them all rolled up and a certain width, all you have to do is cut and stitch ) And I bough it in 1970. So for 37 years I have been schlepping this and many, many other pieces of fabrics around from Seattle to San Diego to Puerto Vallarta.
If that is not a Pack Rat, nothing is.
The wonderful thing is that I still recognize the different pieces and it gives me no end of pleasure to look at all the fabrics and remember where I got them. Sort of like hunters and fishermen displaying their trophies and remembering the day and the fight. Only the closest I ever got to a fight was when a fellow designer wanted the same bolt of fabric that I had my grubby little hands on, and rather than a " High Noon " , we decided, being decent human beings, to split the bolt. And giggle.
Now, there is a lesson.
If you giggle you are much less likely to shoot, kill or maim some other person.
So there.
Giggle.
1: wood rat esp. a large bushy-tailed rodent ( neotoma cinerea ) of the Rocky Mountain area that has well developed cheeks (!) pouches and hoards food and misc. objects
2: One who collects or hoards esp. unneeded items.
That's me, number two. That's me. A pack rat. I knew it when I was looking for a piece of fabric today to make some new runners for the dining room table and found a beautiful blue and white print.
This print, as I remember clearly, I bought when I was visiting Japan with First Chamber Dance Co.
It is a length of kimono fabric.( they sell them all rolled up and a certain width, all you have to do is cut and stitch ) And I bough it in 1970. So for 37 years I have been schlepping this and many, many other pieces of fabrics around from Seattle to San Diego to Puerto Vallarta.
If that is not a Pack Rat, nothing is.
The wonderful thing is that I still recognize the different pieces and it gives me no end of pleasure to look at all the fabrics and remember where I got them. Sort of like hunters and fishermen displaying their trophies and remembering the day and the fight. Only the closest I ever got to a fight was when a fellow designer wanted the same bolt of fabric that I had my grubby little hands on, and rather than a " High Noon " , we decided, being decent human beings, to split the bolt. And giggle.
Now, there is a lesson.
If you giggle you are much less likely to shoot, kill or maim some other person.
So there.
Giggle.
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