Ingrediments for Sumo

Miss clam had a double bunionectomy. The viewing of last day of the basho was over at her house. I made mackerel mousse and risotto. It was delightful.

By the way, I am so in love with this lady. An admin in one of the sumo fb groups threatened to expel me for asking who she was. Reddit is a little / lot more promiscuous on the matter. Someone says that she's the head of one of the fan groups. For which rikishi or for which beya I do not know. She reminds me of my mom -- judging me through the screen.

Bonus sumotori armpit for y'all!

Freedom and Determinism

Hey. It's me! Waiting for pathology in the offices of the world's tallest Mohs surgeon. I think this will be a quickie. But while I'm waiting, with a bandage on my face and a drippy nose, might as well catch up on the weekend.

It rained this weekend, which was glorious. The boy kitten thanked me for putting his favorite blanket on the sofa. Mrguy has been consulting Key Ideas in Human Thought, one of our best pre-Internet reference sources.

Saturday was Irish genealogy club day. Two hours of good times, hints, things to pursue. 

And then, a little jaunt with the rev. We went for a rainy ride and some hot tea in Sugar City, where mrguy and I got married. That's her fetching elbow on the right, and the bridge in the distance on the left. We drove past the old old place. They've painted it blue. In the window? One of the many neighborhood cats in windows in that town that are distantly related to our old cat, nose. Nose and eyes were, themselves, spawn of a neighborhood ragdoll, mrbrownballs. We didn't get nose until we moved into the house next door to this one, so it's nice that it's now populated with one of his mishpoche.

I totally forgot to mention that our friend from the extinct ukulele band came over on Saturday night. What a treat! He just moved to our town and we're excited.

Sunday was a bagel and lox feast at the house of that nice guy's brother. We got to talk a little bit by ourselves, but mostly the day was spent in stories of their close-knit community. They were so lucky to have one another, and it seems like that nice guy's mom was one of the neighborhood's adhesives. She drove the kids, she edited the newsletter, she was the person who connected and networked, before that word existed. I wish I'd known her better, which is the desired achievement of every memorial.

Her friend had a psychic connection with the livingroom carpet.

The spreads were divine. I even ate my first chopped liver.

And now...we wait.

Feuerzangenbowle 2026

We finally did it. The feuerzangenbowle dinner. I bought the feuerzangenbowle set in 2022, then we had to wait for the pandemic to be over, and our friends to stop traveling for a minute. Then mrguy got cancer and then he got better, then our friend came over last month and he and I started talking about spaetzle and schnitzel. It was ON!

We had a couple weeks' notice. I was going to make chicken schnitzel. Couldn't remember what sauce I served with it last time, but I saw a recipe for chicken schnitzel with mustard sauce and I just so happen to have purchased a very large bottle of Bautz'ner senf (mittelscharf) that would just plus the whole thing.

Then I went to an estate sale the week before and bought a german cookie form for ten bucks. I have always wanted one! So I was going to need to make cookies. And during the week we did a bread baking class at a brewery, and I had amazing fresh bread to serve. And of course I made a compound butter to serve with it.

The first step in making feuerzangenbowle is to make mulled wine. I got all decorative with that sh$t so I could take a picture for readers of mrsguy. The leaves are from our allspice tree, purchased from fastgrowingtrees.com during the pandemic. The tree is not fast growing. It is still only four feet tall, but the leaves are delicious and I use them in applesauce...and flaming punch, now, I guess.

The cookies turned out great. I made a Dutch speculaas cookie dough and watched some YouTube videos on how to make the cookies. Should have made them the day before, which I will do next time.

Our friends brought sides and different kinds of spaetzle and accoutrements and we had a great dinner. One friend took over the making of the mustard sauce, and it was delish.

And then we made the punch after dinner. You take the heated punch and put it in the bowl. Unwrap the zuckerhut and put it on the metal thingie that is suspended over the warmed punch. Pour a ladle full of 58% rum over the sugar. Turn out the lights. Set it on fire and watch the melting, rum-soaked sugar drop into the punch. Although the guys started a quiet drone-chant of "feuerzangen, feuerzangen, feuerzangen bowle", this is not traditional. 

It was so fun!

3 Movies, 3 Days

Last Saturday I took Rev to see the new forklift movie. Then I got to show her the forklift archives, and I posed her for photos with forklifts so that she could show her mom.

On Sunday mrguy and I went to see the new Paul McCartney and Wings movie in a theater. Everybody in the theater was really old, and I felt younger than 50% of the audience and mrguy informed me that I was wrong about that. The pre-show music featured some of the worst Wings music ever made. You know how a Paul McCartney song starts out strong and then has a B part that is super squizzy? Those songs.

The movie itself was great. No repellent songs, because Morgan Neville has good taste. The film was more about the people than the music, I'd say. I didn't realize that Denny Laine was a stalwart of the Wings band while others came and went. There were cute animals. Mrguy is really moved by cute animals.

Then we grabbed felafel at the place across the street and went home. It was a perfect day.

On Monday, clamdip2020 and I went to see "Homecoming: the Tokyo Series" about Japan and baseball. What's not to like? We got there early, which allowed us time to go to the new huge Japanese supermarket. And then the movie. It was so good! It centered around specific games held in Tokyo, but told the stories of various people who follow baseball. Americans who came to Japan for the games, athletes who were born in Japan but playing for MLB teams, a mom and son who run a baseball program for little kids, a place where you can rehab your vintage mitt, a guy who is a hair stylist and also keeps a museum for one of the players. It was great. Highly recommended.

Vacation -- A Saturday

Ask me about Twix Head Spa. You can find their videos on YouTube. Also ASMR. And autism.

And now that you did, yesterday was rough. The murder of Alex Pretti happened. Multiple eyewitness videos documented the incident including, presumably, his own. That's the second ICE murder in Minneapolis in a week. It's easy to feel helpless in these times. Also guilty, because it's the first day of my vacation and we are going to Hawaii. But I located the scheduled protest locations in Honolulu, and am bringing cardboard and some markers in my suitcase.

I was too depressed to do much. I worked on my vacation list of things to do. Then I went to get a mani-pedi because I knew the result would make me feel more human. My usual place (the place where I've been a time or two) was busy so I picked a larger place that I'd never been to before. It was very nice.

I mostly like mani-pedis when they're over. There's the question of whether or not to interact with the stylist. There's the scrubbing of the bottom of the foot (I warned her that I might scream, and I clasped my face the whole time). Then there's trying to fiddle with your purse to pay without ruining the manicure.

All success! But it was a sensory extravaganza. There was soft female music playing. A song about a sweater that was polyester. And the world's longest ASMR video where they do things to a lady's head and hair. Endless, endless treatments. Steam, water, ointments, soaps, halo contraptions that are suspended over the hairline and shower you with tiny jets of whatever. Then the neck massage with a thin, smooth rock, and an arm massage. At one point I asked the manicurist if the treatment ever ends. I guess my expectation was that you'd dry off.

Occasionally she'd press a button on my chair and the uncomfortable lumps would move around on my back. Massage. I did try to lean into the experience, because you should.

As usual, I felt really good after the mani-pedi was over. But getting to that point is a sensory overload.

When I got home our dear friend was there. We hung out until late in the night (for us!). I fell asleep watching an autistic comedian and doing online tests about autism. She had me at clothing tags being too scratchy. Also I think her tone has affected the tone of this post. But I feel somewhat seen ; )

I woke up and told mrguy about the salon experience. It made him anxious. Maybe I'm making you anxious as well.

Is Minnesota the place where our next civil war will take place? I would not have guessed.

Things That Tickled My Fancy on Christmas Eve

Yesterday cack and blick came over for the end-of-year visit. It was deeelightful. We ate mole and caught up on 6 months of news and laughed our butts off.

Today I had two different video appointments for a doctor procedure in January. Should be a small thing but they have to put me under in order to do it. Then I finished up a work project, sent an explanatory email to coworkers and made a big old batch of twice-baked potatoes.

Meanwhile, back on the ranch, mrguy had chemo today. Scheduling is scheduling, and there you go. My joke was that Cancer Santa brought him chemo. Here's what that would look like:

In other news I very much appreciated this warning from the weather channel the other day.

A few days ago I made apple and otherstuff sauce from my own elder hoard: apples, pears, persimmons, allspice leaf. I have deemed it delicious. It also made the house smell really nice. I watched Shop Around the Corner (1940) while I cooked, and that was downright Christmassy. You know it's that backlot Budapest that made me want to go to the real one all those years ago.

It is excellent to have nothing to do for the rest of the day. I forgot to trim the tree, so I'm not doing that. I did put some solar lights on the three lumps of the topiary mugo pine, so we're not entirely unfestive. I am very much enjoying their subtle colored blinking.

OK, one more thing to like. I was going to take some shredding to the shredding place and they updated their holiday hours on the interwebs so I know that they are closed until Friday. So thoughtful!

What? Genealogy Breakthrough

Today we cracked the code. Mrguy and I have been trying to figure out what happened to his grandfather's first wife for decades. Last week he picked up the search again, and today he had an out of the box idea. He researched one of his half aunts in a local paper that is only found in a local history library. It listed one of her survivors as a mrs somebody of Los Angeles.

I took that and found her in the census, under that name, with a grandchild whose name we recognized. It was her. Mrguy's grandfather was a traveling shoe salesman for a while, and his first wife divorced him for desertion. We learned this years ago while researching his second marriage. In the marriage application you had to confess your previous marriages and he stated clearly that he had been divorced. I asked for the divorce decree, and they couldn't find it. Thanks, Doug-who-was-going-to-call-me-back-the-next-day-a-year-ago-and-didn't. At least Doug didn't cash the check.

Anyhoo, we would have never known about his step-grandmother's next life if he hadn't found that obituary today. We spent the whole rest of the day doing genealogy.

I'm headed to the land of my birth tomorrow afternoon, to go to the funeral of that nice guy's mom. Such a lovely obituary. Really interesting. And I know obits. It got me thinking, again. So I spent the last half of the afternoon researching that nice guy's family. Sooooper interesting. On his mom's side they come from Ukraine in the early 20th century. Excellent Eastern European surnames. Fantastic job titles.

That surely cheers a person up. The ability to dive in and imagine the past, retrieve the information?

Love it.

Cussing.

The prompt: write about cussing. About whether or not you cuss, and when and why. About whether that has changed over time.

I grew up in a non-cussing household. As a young child I was not allowed to use the word "butt". As a teenager my dad dragged me into the bathroom and forced me to bite down on a bar of soap after he heard me softly complain with a "shit". It was really humiliating. He later joked about my "teeth of Ivory", because zingers fixed everything, in his point of view. It was the last week before I left for college, and he was struggling with the idea of losing me. He shouldn't have worried. I continued to make mistakes and offer him opportunities to shame me for years to come.

We didn't start swearing around the house until he died. And I didn't really break free with my mom until I was far beyond her grasp monetarily and emotionally. I knew swearing bothered her, so I did it. Gave me a little thrill.

Over the years, she started using an occasional cuss word herself. The first was "bitch" and I think that says a lot. Not shit. Not asshole. Not fucker. Bitch. Her strongest words were saved for female Democratic politicians that she hated. Diane Feinstein, Hillary Clinton and, most of all, Nancy Pelosi.

As her dementia kicked in, the words were released. She used all of them. It was the one of the few sources of power she had at her disposal. That and put-downs consisting of the words she still knew could hurt you. One Christmas she told me that I wanted her dead so I could go in the fields and "fuck boys". In our last conversation she threatened me without using profanities, and I was half-impressed!

By the end, my mom, who was once really proper, who was remembered as a mom who shushed you at a sleepover, had taken to using an F-bomb as often as she pleased. She often embarrassed her caregivers, who were nice church ladies, to the point at which one of them chastised her:  "Mama. We are married ladies and we know what that word means. Please do not say that word!!"

I, over time, have come to love a blend of something deeply and creatively vulgar (mostly to the amusement of my husband and friends) and the random "Poopy!!" or "Holy cow". I like the mix, just as I like wearing something I got at Goodwill alongside a piece of nice jewelry.

One final word on swearing -- I had a friend whose greatest expression of tenderness was the words "Shit, Fool". It took on various meanings, depending on her inflection. These conversations usually took place on the phone.

Me: "My boyfriend just broke up with me..."

Her, slowly: "Shit, Fool!" (tender solidarity)

or

Me: "I just got that job I wanted"

Her, brightly: "SHIT, Fool!!" (astonishment, congratulations)

Back then we were so close that she could call me "Fool", and it would warm the cockles of my heart. Not sure if that's normal. Was it too much in the "He hit me and it felt like a kiss" vein? I think the proper response was "Thank you".

Today, if she called me, I would say nothing at all.

The Last Potato Pancake

At one point while I was driving around on Saturday, I got a text from my ex-boss that she was having a really really final day at the restaurant and a final toast. I rsvped yes. Then I got a text from the former GM asking if I was going and whether I'd see if I could rally the ladies. None of them were available, but then a plan formed where a bunch of us who worked together circa 1990-1993 would share a final meal.

But first I had an afternoon date with my girlfriend and neighbor at the wine and dog bar. Very fun to catch up and drink wine and pet dogs.

Sunday was delightful, with a walk with a different girlfriend. It was good to get out in nature-ish. She showed me a beach where we could swim if we have another heat wave. Then I had a bit of a rest and went out to the final meal. It was fun and loud and tasty. The GM and I share a name and he'd brought his daughter and a son who also shares his/our name. It's been so long since I'd been in a room with so many people with our name. Someone would say the name and three of us would turn our heads. Reminded me of Friday nights where there were three of us. I had to change my waitress name on my tickets (usually a letter) because GM had claimed that letter.

Anyhoo, I had my final potato cheese pancake with a side salad. Eaten with my hands, rolled up together in bites. It was a perfect potato cheese pancake. Not because it was the final one, and in fact I had a kinda sub-par one a month ago. It is just that it was perfect.

I took the GM and his kids to public transit. So he heard my latest podcast listen -- a history of women in hip hop. He knows how little I know about the subject and cracked up that I was a) interested b) listening to something so academic about music. I'm back in my own lane now, by the way, listening to the story of people who collect eiderdown from duck nests on an island in Norway.

On Monday, after a walk with my tiny but mighty friend, I had a thought. A good one, not like most of my thoughts. It's been weighing on me that I want to get rid of my 19 typewriters, but didn't know how. Some are enormous and not in good shape. In a flash of brilliance I remembered the reuse / recycle place that's near work.

This is what a dozen-ish typewriters look like in Tiger Brown. And on a cart. I feel accomplished!

While I was cleaning the garage I was inspired to find a home for my clown painting. I put it on the free table, making a lady at work very happy.

And just a few more pictures from the week. Mrguy sent me this photo of boy kitten relaxing on a pillow near his Clayton Bailey jug, enjoying his window.

Also there was a shipwreck at the ob/gyn.

July 2025

4th of July weekend has been splendid. On Friday we hung out and I did genealogy in the afternoon. Then we watched the Toronto Blujays prevail over the Angels. Then the city next door did it's annual July 3rd fireworks show and we watched it from the sofa. It was clear on the holiday weekend!

Yesterday I went to the dog park with a friend. We saw this adorable creature (gopher?) digging up the tan bark outside the dog wash place. 

Then we ate a little breakfast and caught up on life. Then we did a little walking and met some nice dogs. I warned her in advance that I'm super afraid of dogs. Hers are tiny, with one spry dog and one old dog who needed to be carried part of the way. This little girl had too much fun.

We also saw pelicans in the distance above us. Ahhh.

I got to hang out a little bit at home, and then went to see a screening of a 4k remastered version of This Is Spinal Tap. It did not disappoint.

Finally, I went out with ms clam to drink an adult beverage and sew. It was delightful.

This morning mrguy and I took our time but then officially started our garage triage. I bought some stickers (colored dogs) to help us see at a glance what decisions had been made for our various items. Then I made a drop off at Goodwill and did some laundry. 

I'm kinda sleepy.

In Memoriam

We wound up this week's world heritage tour with a memorial. The setting was an Italian social club, and the memorialized was a person who was one of my favorite customers at the restaurant where I used to work. His lovely bride is an old old friend of mrguy. Such a great couple, with a son who attends Berklee. Attendees included people from all corners of my life, as I mentioned earlier.

I'm not sure how well I navigated the answers to why I was there and not mrguy. It's chemo week and his goal for yesterday was to sit upright, watch baseball and read a book. He's doing really well, otherwise. But if you're hearing me say that and I'm all cool with it and it's catching people off guard? I didn't know that so many people didn't know, so it came as an unwelcome surprise to some. I've had time to process and am happy to have every day. Really. But when the widow spoke about how she was supposed to grow old with her person and wasn't going to get to do that, I really lost it. Luckily I was in the back row, and mostly out of sight from people I work with as I bent into my kleenex and wept. 

There was a raffle in between speakers at the memorial, and I came home with a bottle of wine.

I mingled, I cried, I had to go. Met up with my new friend from the club for a beer. She is off for a few months in Norway, so this was a last visit of the season, so to speak. She had missed Scottish Night. I of course performed a full recitation of the events of the night. And then she told me about how she'd solved an irrigation issue at the local community garden. Suuuuuper interesting solution, directing rainwater into reservoirs in raised beds. The plants find what they need, reaching down into the reservoirs, and there is no evaporation because the water is underground. I wonder if we could do something similar for the island in the middle of our street. Just a thought.

A Week in June

I got back into doing the things this past week:

On Friday I saw a movie with a friend:

On Saturday my old workmates from the restaurant where we used to work 30 years ago got together for breakfast at the restaurant. The owner joined us and actually treated us, which was super sweet. We told stories and had such a great warm time. The food was delish. The restaurant is closing in a month or so and our old boss is retiring to garden and surf.

On Sunday I was able to clear out my home office, which gave me some peace of mind.

Monday was my first real day back at work after being mostly out of the office for a month or more. We got right back into it, doing 5 hours of oral history with the founder of the company. After work, a weaving class.

On Tuesday mrguy had chemo and then got a fever in the evening. We had the most pleasant ER experience you can have. There were very few people in the waiting room, we were seen within 15 minutes and got a room quickly. We are old hands at this so we each had our noise-canceling headphones. This was good, because there was a patient on a gurney in the hallway all night who talked loudly and nonstop, while being watched over by a security guard. Mrguy heard him say that he'd seen "Jim Brown and Adolf Hitler at the Warfield". The doctors found nothing wrong, but they gave him a chest xray to be sure, and also some infusions.

When you have a weaving class on Monday, everything looks like inspiration on Wednesday:

On Thursday I learned that my most persistent bucket list item will come to pass. Amazing. And at the club, we had Scottish night. I've learned that this is always the final event of the "season". Who knew? I had a great conversation with a guy from one of the visiting groups about his Titanic archive, digitizing historical collections and a little about the forklift collection. And from two other fellows I learned about their tartans. One tartan had a special color that was matched to some of his clan tartan that was dug up, somehow. It was such a beautiful red. Delish.

My brush with unfortunate masculinity came when I struck up a conversation with a young man whose hat I admired. Then I saw his sporrin, which was made from a badger. It was so beautiful. I love badgers. He said that I'd know his father if I saw someone who had an arctic fox sporrin. Once found, the father sat with me. He was a Fred Willard type, wearing both his Scottish regalia and a large quantity of oversized turquoise jewelry. It made for an interesting combo. I felt confused by our interaction because he kept gesticulating close to my boobs while we were talking -- not to grab them, but more flailing. I felt trapped, as the nice guys I met had left and Fred Willard and I were the only two left at the table. We were seated, so I ended up taking a defensive posture with my shoulder raised towards him. I just didn't want to make a scene while we were hosting this group. I also felt like this guy had been busting people's personal space for 40 years and he already knew. Eventually I just grabbed my stuff and said "I'm going upstairs, now!"

There was some beautiful bagpipery, and ceremonial haggis blessing, and the recitation of Robert Burns poetry. I have never heard so many "skoll" toasts! The Scots started on a higher pitch due to their relative youth and preponderance of tenors. Ours are a bit lower in timber. My goal is to start a "skoll" at the club some day. It's like starting The Wave. You know that SNL sketch from forever ago where someone claims that he started a particular wave? I wanna be that guy!

We had salad and haggis and soup and as the evening went on there were lots of songs of what I call the Shaggy Dog Song genre. Then the Ole and Lena jokes were offered by the Norsemen among us. It became 9:30 and the main course had not been served, and I had to work the next day. I was sitting in my preferred spot at the table, with the door to the hallway behind me. It makes me feel less claustrophobic. So I just put on my jacket, quietly picked up my purse, said farewell to Knut and slipped out the back hallway that leads from the kitchen to the entry. Escape! I'd had a great adventure, and enough for the night. I was a bit peckish when I got home.

On Friday I did 4 more hours of oral history with our company's founder. Then some research on a completely different topic, and then I found myself staring into space so I went home. I felt like I had completed things going into the weekend, and that is a fantastic sensation.

Today's excitement is a memorial for a friend. Back in the day he was one of my favorite customers from the restaurant. One of the few who treated me like he knew I was a person outside of the restaurant. His partner is a longtime friend of mrguy. The crossover is huge. He worked at a local radio station in his spare time, so there are people from there (including ms scandiwaiian), people from work, friends of mrguy...I'm a bit nervous about going to something like this without my man, but I gotta represent. Also people will be curious about mrguy if they know his situation. He's feeling gross after chemo.

After that I'm meeting a known Norwegian for a glass of wine. Whew!

Better Days

Today is just one of those days. After a few of those weeks. Thank goodness for friend visits (M&R are here from NY) because that's why I'm not bugged by today.

So first I had Covid. Then it was taking so long to go away. But once I got that call from my sister and my mom ended up dying the adrenaline just scared the bejabbers out of Covid. And, you know, my mom died. And I had to get my mom's apartment emptied, which was so much work.

However, we've had a week with our dear friends, and that has been super lovely. The timing could not have been better. The validation of being surrounded by loving people who have your back and think your mom was pretty shitty and have had a mom like that and came out the other side and can talk about it being better after awhile? So good.

But mrguy, who feels shitty about this, told me that I probably wouldn't get called for jury duty when I got a notice that told me to appear on the last day of our friends' visit. And for some reason I listened to him and didn't get a postponement because I am lazy. And I did get called, and I am Juror 6 and will have to spend more time at the courthouse tomorrow. But I have an out. I would be a good juror but I have reasons.

And the three oranges that I was expecting were mistakenly cut off the orange tree by the tree guys today, despite the clear instructions of mrguy. To paraphrase Elizabeth Clare Prophet, what tree has done, tree can do. Honestly, I expected those oranges not to make it to maturity but I expected deer to do it, not dudes.

Tomorrow, my last day of vacation, I report at 10:30.

Easter 2025

It's about the colors.

My plan for today was to dye some eggs. I just like color. Color makes me happy. I had saved some tablets from last year, so I was ready to go.

But first! An old old friend contacted me to ask if I wanted to pick his ume. Heckyeah! I went over to his place with a grabber and a picker and a bag. We talked for an hour, catching up on all kinds of stuff. So good! 

Here's the tree, and the haul.

I went to the Japanese market and bought shochu and rock sugar. "Getting an early start on umeshu?" said the checker. I boasted that I had just finished picking mine.

Then I did a drop off at Goodwill. Ahhhh. Been meaning to do that for a long time.

After a big shop at the supermarket and a very long chat with my sister I got to coloring the eggs. I was hoping that I would make a three-peat of making a glamorous black egg, but I couldn't make it happen. Maybe I needed fresh dye. But what I *did* make was an egg that looked exactly like a pickle. Boy kitten needed to examine it.

The day wraps up with us watching baseball on our new tv that mrguy bought while I was gone. The previous tv was quite elderly, and it seemed to have some sort of allergy to our AppleTV which caused it to periodically make a big cracking sound and go blank. We put our foot down after we watched a show where we couldn't figure out what the characters were saying at all. 

All better now, plus a slightly bigger screen with a slightly more crisp display. Not getting any younger. I'll take it!

Happy Easter, everyone.

Saint Fiberica

This morning the Rev came over, and we went to an Italian bakery that I'd never heard of. It's on a frontage road, in a business center of warehouses that surrounds a giant parking lot. Not the place you'd come to look for Italian pastries. 

But we did. Oh man, I had a salmon and cream cheese plate on focaccia. Not very on trend for this restaurant but I hadn't had a bagel plate in so long that I really craved the flavors.  I came home with a strawberry camel puff pastry for mrguy.

We had parked in front of a quilting store, so we decided to check it out after our nosh. It did not disappoint. I bought some beginners' embroidery needles, asking for help from the people who were working there. I recognized one of them. I had had two cups of coffee previously. The conversation went like this:

Me: Did you go to [name of University]?

Her: Yes

Me: Did you own iguanas?

Her, eyes wide: Yeeees?! At [name of housing unit]

Me: I lived in your apartment right after you. OMG that is so wild. I'm here with my best friend from freshman year at college. Rev! You remember the iguana apartment? This is the lady who owned the iguanas!

They introduced themselves. From this point I will identify the woman as "G". I think that the other lady working in the store might have been her daughter or granddaughter, as they shared the same big blue-green eyes.

Me: I think the last time I saw you was right after the earthquake. We moved chairs out of a truck into a building for people. It was a Red Cross thing.

G: I worked for the Red Cross at that time.

So she is now retired, but had a great career managing the communications department at the university near where we both now live.

The story of the iguana apartment is epic. I had never lived with other people before living in a shared apartment at school. After my first quarter at school it was clear that sharing a room was not a good idea. So I looked for a single room in a different apartment. G was going to PELP, so she wouldn't be needing that room. PELP stands for Planned Educational Leave Program. It's a way of leaving school for a period with a way to ensure you can come back to school later.

Anyhoo, before I moved into it I remember that you could recognize her apartment because her iguana liked to bask in the sun while clinging to her window screen. You could see it from the first floor. She lived on the third. When I moved into her apartment she'd left a few things behind. There was iguana poop and mashed banana baked into the shag rug. There was a refrigerator containing frozen newts in the freezer compartment. And a phone bill.

We didn't know what to do about the phone bill. We figured out which number was her mom's and called it. Mom was unsympathetic: "My daughter is an adult, and she can manage her own finances". So we had to eat the cost. But one day I realized that she was in a different section of my entomology class. The way they returned your test results was to toss them in a pile on the floor outside of the lecture hall. I rooted through the pile, wrote "Pay your phone bill!!!" on her mid-term, and a while later she repaid us.

She was delightful today. I love seeing someone who is retired and doing what they truly love. The shop was filled with every sort of gadget that you could want or need for doing needlework. And there were crafts. Rev ended up going home with a dog toy. I bought needles and a thimble and got some fabric from a scrap bin that had big lip prints on it. She gave it to me for free because she'd brought it in herself. I want to applique it on a cheap top that I bought on ebay that is unsatisfying and did not arrive in time for our trip to Hawaii.

Here is the candle in honor of Saint Fiberica. Like I said, they have everything.

We had planned to do other things, but this was such a satisfying jaunt that we stopped there. Plus rev was having an allergic reaction to something she was wearing. 

We wound our way back to my house via points of interest in my town, including my old singing teacher's old house. It was bought by hoarders. There is stuff crammed onto the porch, and her beautiful garden is completely overgrown. To their credit, the current owners do a good job of watering.

And that's all there is to say for today. We really did it up. Now that my phone is charged, it's time to go to Safeway and do a big shop.