Sobriety

 Los Angeles, California

Sobriety. Ok, just kidding. It's a state I might visit, but I would never want to permanently reside there. I like alcohol. They're not called spirits for nothing. A past friend used to say (and this is quite quotable): I hope I never have a problem with alcohol, because I love it so much I don't think I could ever give it up. But lately it seems that everyone is giving it up. Not me, however.

But... I did give it up for Lent this year. I gave it up for the 40+ days that comprise Lent, except for the whiskey I drank on St. Patrick's Day. The two whiskeys I drank that evening at our favorite Mexican restaurant. Incongruous, I know. I shoulda had a Jameson's on Cinco de Mayo to rebalance.

And... since Lent I find myself drinking a lot less. Do I enjoy it less? Of course not. I really enjoy the flavor of good scotch and good tequila. With summer approaching, I had a gin and tonic recently. After reading Stanley Tucci's recent memoir, Taste, I have been jonesing for a negroni. While I used to say that I don't drink a lot, but I drink often, these days I'm not drinking that often. And I find that one is enough, even though I haven't gone past two (or at least not since my thirties have long passed). Days now pass when I don't drink anything. This is partially because non-alcoholic beers have gotten so tasty, especially the IPAs.

Am I feeling better, healthier, more virtuous? Hmmm. Not really. I would say about the same. Am I sleeping better? Also, not really. So in essence, there is no reason for this, other than perhaps I broke the routine through my Lenten abstinence.

One more thing, however. I am surrounded by teetotalers. Very few of my girlfriends drink at all. Even the ones who used to drink have sworn off. So when I go to lunch or dinner with them, it just doesn't feel quite right to be the only one who orders a cocktail. And that's ok. Joel doesn't drink much at all. I can get him to share a bottle of champagne with me, but that is now drinking to excess for us both. And, of course, when we are dancing, drinking must be tempered as you have to maintain balance for turns. Too much tequila turns one to floppiness. Not a pretty sight in dance.

So here's the problem with all of this temperance. I have a huge bar. And I invested in even more imported spirits to avoid the threatened tariffs. I probably have more scotch and tequila than I can put away during the rest of my lifetime. So I told Lynnette that I was going to leave my stores of liquor to her husband, one of the few fellow drinkers I know. Sadly, he gave  up alcohol at the beginning of the year. You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille.

Probably the best thing for me to do at this point is to stop buying booze. I have about a dozen different whiskeys in my bar. Why, you might ask. Well, sometimes I want a specific one to drink. My current favorite is Hibiki. But sometimes I want to revert back to a Macallan or the Johnny Walker Blue Label that Joel gave me one Christmas. Sometimes I switch to Irish whiskey for a time. And don't get me started on tequila, mezcal and sotol. While I have stopped drinking vodka martinis, I occasionally want to shake up a Bombay Sapphire one. And all of that listed above makes up only half of what I have in my bar. Time's a-wasting.

So, sobriety's not in my wheelhouse at this time, and hopefully not at any time in the future. Life's too short not to enjoy, within measure, all of that which is available for us to enjoy. So tonight, when I drink my short scotchtequila or whathaveyou, I will tip my glass and, as I always do, toast Here's to us. Salud!

The First Peach

 Los Angeles, California

When Rogers and Hammerstein famously wrote that June is Bustin' Out All Over, they were talking about the month, not someone named June. And here it is, early in June, and peaches have fully arrived in the market. Usually the first peaches are not too good. Not peachy enough and stubbornly clinging to their pits. This year, however, while the clinging part was still happening, the peach flavor was just like what I remember from high season in previous years. Very delectable and juicy. Very peachy.

Peaches are my favorite fruit. I eat them with cereal, with cottage cheese, in crisps, and out of hand. I pair them with raspberries, blackberries, and mangos. I slice them into tomato salads served with burrata cheese. But probably the best part of peaches is that, like sweet corn and melons, they herald the beginning of the summer.

We moved from Burbank to the center of the San Fernando Valley when I was twelve years old. For the next decade, I pretty much spent summers in our pool, and usually with friends. My parents would come and go on the weekends, coming back home with sweet corn from Paggi's, the stand which was on the property of San Fernando Valley State College (which later became California State University, Northridge, or CSUN). The stand was near the Little League field where the love of my life, a boy who lived across the street and three doors down, played baseball. He was my first teenaged boyfriend, a summer romance that he ended the weekend before we went back to school. I was heartbroken. I know it seems maybe a bit precious to put that word in italics. But, that first love lost is the hardest to get over. Whenever I hear the Dave Clark Five song Because, I can feel that late summer angst again in my heart.

Broken hearts aside, let's get back to the fruit. My mom and dad would wander out on the weekends, leaving us swimming or lying beside the pool, and would return home with fruit and vegetables, cold cuts from the German delicatessen or cheeses from the only Trader Joe's market in the Valley (back when Trader Joe still owned it!). Long around the early evening, my dad would fire up the barbecue and we would shower off, change into shorts and tee shirts (my favorite: Primo Fine Hawaiian Beer tee purchased during my fourteenth summer spent with my cousins in Waikiki), and play card games until dinnertime. Games that would resume after dinner and well into the night.

I think what we didn't get about those summers is that the adults were doing all the work. They were skimming the pool and laundering the pool towels. They were making snacks and meals appear as if by magic. On many of those weekend mornings, we were fed my mother's sourdough waffles, made on a waffle iron set up on the patio table. I am at a time in life where I don't want to nurse sourdough starter, much less get the waffle iron out. And for the convenience of prepared food, Trader Joe's now populate the Valley almost to the same extent as Starbuck's.

But the first peach still heralds the summer of my dreams, which I have written about here before. It is summer spent here at my home, barefoot and in candlelight. And though I no longer spend long days in the pool, I do like to swim and hang out under my patio umbrellas, listening to the sweet music from summer's past. Summer in the City by the Rascals, Boys of Summer by The Eagles. All Summer Long by The Beach Boys. Sure, there are more contemporary songs about summer, but my memories of those long-ago summers requires a more nostalgic playlist.

So here's to those summers past. And to the girl I was in cut-offs and my Primo tees. And to all we can always enjoy every single summer, like being barefoot and in candlelight. And peaches. Always, peaches.

Election Day

 Los Angeles, California

It was election day in California and I had not yet completed my ballot. I woke up early with thoughts of my mother, as it would have been her 106th birthday. Betty made it to 94 and up until the last five years, had a wonderful life filled with education, travel, celebratory events, lots of dinners out, and a marriage with a husband who adored her. But the last five years were beyond unpleasant for her. She ended her life non-ambulatory, deaf, blind, and suffering from vascular dementia.

My dad went fast, lingering for ten or so hours after a heart attack. Funny, but their deaths suited them. Dad would never have wanted to make a fuss or cause anyone to care for him. Mom expected her daughters to be her handmaidens and one of us was till the end of her life. I spent that last day with her, leaving to drive home at 10 PM, after the hospice nurse told me it "wasn't going to happen tonight." The call that she was gone came just after I arrived home. Oddly, as needy as she had been in her life, I believe she spared me being a witness to her death. It was as if she was waiting for me to leave. In the final analysis, one parent went fast and the other unbearably slow. Fast is better.

So, I had thoughts of my mom on my mind that morning as I went through my morning rituals of tea-drinking and meditation. I was finally ready to sit down to my ballot. And to my surprise, I found my father's name as a Libertarian candidate for California governor! And to add more coincidence to this coinkydink, my father was a Libertarian. Do you think they were trying to tell me something?

I completed my ballot, did the rest of my morning rounds of breakfast, bed-making and getting dressed, and left the house to place my ballot in a local ballot box. Then went to Costco, did some marketing, and a Trader Joe's run. As I was approaching my home on the long avenue that runs uphill to my street, I noticed an abundance of water and mud running downhill. I made the turn to approach the cul-de-sac on which I live and saw a police car and police tape cordoning off the entry. And again, it's a cut-de-sac. One way in; one way out.

I pulled over to ask one of the LAPD officers if residents were being allowed past the  barrier. He told me I could not enter the street until the department of water and power came to turn off the water. He also told me where the break had occurred which was on a property that was recently purchased and is being rehabbed. The new owners are not living there, and many workers are there each day. And, for whatever reason, they had dug a very deep hole in the front yard. Bingo...

There is a way onto the street through a large retreat facility that backs up to our quiet street. The facility itself is pastoral with gathering places, dormitories and a duck pond. I used the winding drive through this facility to get to my house. Items from Trader Joe's still in frozen state. Before I unpacked groceries I went to wash my hands. No water. However, since the pandemic, Purell still sits on my counter next to the hand soap located at my kitchen sink.

After unpacking, I called my neighbor. She confirmed that water was out on the entire street. And shared that it had been a terrible day for her, even before the water issue. Thanks to the duckpond we often find baby ducks in our pools. They can get in to the pool, but because of the pool coping, they can't get out. I mean, theoretically they can. But their little brains can't conceptualize that they have to hop/flutter over the lip of the coping. Instead, they just keep bumping into it and landing back in the pool. The solution to this is to fashion a ramp and engage in the tedious process of directing the chicks to the ramp. Last season, it took me about an hour to get this little renegade to the ramp. When you try to nudge them, they dive. Unfortunately, while my neighbor was in this process, a hawk swooped down and grabbed one of the chicks in front of her and her six year-old twins. She was horrified, but one of the boys turned to her and said: Circle of life, Mom.

I shared with my neighbor that if she had empty one-gallon water bottles, she could fill them from her pool and use them to fill the tanks of toilets so you can flush without running water. She remarked on how ingenious I was. No, not really, I replied. Just experienced. You learn a lot about working around utilities after experiencing earthquakes in California. And I've experienced a few.

The water returned around bedtime and I gratefully took a shower in sputtering water. I did run water through the faucets and taps throughout the house. Something I have also learned.

Dad didn't win the election. He got less than 1% so he didn't even show up on leaderboards on national nor even local news sources. I thought about him the next day. He would have made a good statesman. He was honest and steadfast in his beliefs, relentlessly moral and ethical, and had a solid sense of civic responsibility. But he felt the military was badly run, and that government screwed up everything in which it got involved. He was a registered Republican, churchgoing Presbyterian, and a 32-degree Mason, belonging to the Al Malaikah Shriners. I married a man who carried the same first name as my dad. Governor/Dad Tommy would have been an asset to California.