It's the small successes.

I was going to talk about music today, but that will have to wait till next time, because this is SO much more important.

I made rice. Lovely, fluffy, just-right quick-cooking organic brown basmati rice from Trader Joe's. This is a cause for celebration. Why? I'm glad you asked.

I consider myself a decent cook, all things considered. I come by it honestly as my parents and both my grandmas were/are good cooks. My brother also is pretty handy in the kitchen. I'm pretty good at taking random ingredients and putting them together to create something edible, tasty, and sometimes even healthy. But rice? Rice has always eluded me. Me cooking rice is like Charlie Brown kicking the football. It never quite works out.

Yes, I follow the directions on the package. Yes, I let the lid stay on the pot. I do everything I'm supposed to do and I still get substandard rice, and yet, I keep trying, I guess because I am not going to be outdone by a tiny inanimate grain. I am bigger than rice.

A few years back, my mom got me one of those automatic rice cookers, and I still managed to screw up the rice. Even following the directions exactly, the bottom of the rice got all hard and crunchy, and I'm not talking about the good kind of hard & crunchy rice that is a delicacy in some Mediterranean/Middle Eastern cooking.  This was icky tough wet cardboard hard & crunchy rice. I e-mailed Oster customer service about this issue, and was told that "that's a common problem with rice machines." Oh, okay. That makes it so much better, I suppose. Whatever. (Anybody want a rice cooker?)

I started substituting couscous as a side dish. It's hard to screw up couscous. This is fine for most of the meals I make at home, but sometimes, you just gotta have rice. On my last trip to Trader Joe's, the bag of organic brown quick-cooking basmati rice called to me seductively from the shelf. "Try meeeeeeeee," it wailed. "Take me hoooooome." So with a deep breath and plenty of doubts, I put the rice in my cart. I figured I have wasted more than $3 on less noble pursuits.

All week I've been wanting to make channa masala for dinner to go with the garlic naan from Trader Joe's, and channa masala really calls for rice. With much trepidation, I took the bag from the cabinet and read the directions. "Ready in 15 minutes," the bag said. (Brown rice usually takes about an hour to cook, so 15 minutes is pretty ambitious.) Put rice and water in a saucepan, let it boil, turn it down, put the top on, blahblahblahblah. I know that drill. It's the same drill I follow every time and I still get crappy rice. But I endeavored to persevere, so I tried once again.

When the clock read 5:12, I took the lid off the pot, expecting to see either water still in the pan or a mass of undercooked chewy rice, but it looked perfect. Yeah, right, I thought. It's probably all chewy. I took a bite. And then the angels sang.

I had perfect rice! Not mushy, not dry and chewy, but PERFECT RICE! And it actually tasted good! Quick-cooking rice sometimes doesn't have much oomph, but this was great. I realize this is probably just a fluke - the rice gods are taunting me and next time will be back to the old status rice quo. But in the meantime?

Hell yeah, I MADE RICE.

Till next time - celebrate the small victories.

Welcome to the Year of the Dragon.

Yeah, I know. I'm late. Ah well. Stuff happens.

Luna, aka Jaws, has continued to thrive, although just as she was done with parvo, she came down with giardia. Whee. Giardia is this little protozoal parasite that lives just about everywhere, and lots of people and animals carry it without ever getting infected. This is most likely what makes you sick when you drink water that hasn't been properly purified, and dogs usually get it from drinking out of puddles & whatnot. But that's not what I came to talk about.

I came to talk about mental health. Y'all can sing along when it comes around again on the guitar.

Over the last few months, a couple of my favorite bloggers have shared their struggles with depression: Hyperbole and a Half (http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2011/10/adventures-in-depression.html) and The Bloggess (http://thebloggess.com/2012/01/the-fight-goes-on/). These two ladies talk about their experiences with honesty and humor. I can especially relate to Hyperbole's cartoon self curled up into a little ball behind the couch, because I have been that little ball behind the couch.

I bring this up because I think it needs bringing up. About 25% of the population will experience clinical depression at some point. And in the world we live in right now, who could possibly be surprised at that? Everything seems to move faster than our feeble mortal minds can keep up with, not to mention the deplorable state of the economy, which has caused people to lose their jobs, homes, and self-respect. Can you blame anyone for being depressed? Most people won't get help, because of stigma, pride, finances, or denial, among other reasons.

Now, you have to understand, there's a difference between clinical depression and having a bad day. Depression is having a terrible, horrible, no-good very bad day 24/7 for at least two weeks running. Mine went on for about a solid year.

Yes. I spent a year in one terrible, horrible, no good very bad day, where I ran off to the bathroom at work so I could go cry - for no good reason, except that I just felt like it. This was the nadir of many years of denial. (The irony is that at the time, I worked for a mental health organization.)

Yes again. I did say YEARS. When I finally got help and came out the other side, I was like, what the hell took me so long? And that's one of the bizarre things about depression: you don't know how sick you really were till you get better. It's cruel, for sure, but that's how it is. While depression is a temporary situation for most people, for others (like me) it's chronic, and the best we can do is manage it.

It's been over 10 years now. I should have gotten help 10 years before that. It was one of the best things I ever did. I have the tools now to recognize when things aren't right and the knowledge to fix them, or at least take care of myself till it passes. So I guess what I'm saying to you is, if you're having a perpetual 24/7 Bad Day, don't ignore it. Don't wait to get help. DON'T SUFFER. Visit the Mental Health America website at www.nmha.org and look for the affiliate office nearest you. Call them. They can put you in touch with the resources you need, so don't assume that because you're broke and/or have no insurance, you can't get help. Chances are, you can, and you'll be glad you did.

Till next time, take care of yourself. And Happy New Year.

Fast Away the Old Year Passes.

Hail the new year, lads and lasses.

This is the usual time when we all sit around scratching our heads and asking, "Where has the time gone?" and as always, getting no real answer. Time comes and goes of its own accord, no matter how we set the clocks, but that, as we say in the South, is a whole nother story.

So. 2011. I lost several friends to cancer, including my dog. I lost my job, making me unemployed for the first time ever in my adult life. Presidential campaigning is going on and people are kvetching about the same things they kvetch about every election: jobs, the economy, civil rights, etc. You'd think by now we'd have figured out how to elect people who could solve some of these problems, but I digress.

All the fuss over Happy Holidays vs. Merry Christmas has worn me slap out. Really, people? I'm sure you have something better to do with your time than fuss about how someone wants to wish you well. It's a courtesy that we wish each other well at all; why complain about it? Smile and say Thank You and get on with it. I've said before, if it's important to you to keep Christ in Christmas, then do something Christ would have done instead of getting your knickers in a twist about greetings. That cashier at the MegaLoMart who wished you Season's Greetings may be working three jobs because her husband got laid off and hers is the only income they have to provide even a tiny bit of Christmas joy to their kids. You never know what someone's story is, so why not keep Christ in Christmas by showing a little compassion to people? It neither picks your pocket nor breaks your leg. And to go one step further, as Ebenezer Scrooge once said, why not keep Christmas in your heart all year long? Why wait till December to be nice to folks? Compassion and generosity know no season, because there is always someone in need somewhere, even if all they need is a friendly smile and a sincere "Thank you."

That's enough of that, so let's change the subject to PUPPIES! As you know, Mister and I were heartbroken when our pal Sampson died suddenly in October. It was the first time in 20 years we didn't have a dog in our house. I hated it. I could have gone out the next week and brought home a puppy, but Mister wasn't quite ready, and fall really is our busiest time of the year, so we waited. On December 10, the day of a full moon and a lunar eclipse, we brought a puppy home from Metro Animal Control and named her Luna. I was so happy I started crying right there in the Animal Control lobby, and the front desk lady asked, "Are y'all okay?" Yes ma'am, we are absolutely, unequivocally fine. Do not be alarmed.

One week later, Luna started vomiting pretty badly. I took her to the vet the next morning, and to my great horror and disappointment, she tested positive for parvo, in spite of already having two rounds of vaccine. Turns out, young pups aren't really immune until they've had the whole series of vaccines and given their little pup bodies time to build up antibodies to the virus. I was devastated. I thought, surely we did not bring this little sassy puppy home with us just so she could die from a horrible virus.

Mister and I were on pins and needles for a week while Luna was at the vet, getting IV fluids and lots of attention. I have to give some big props to the staff at PetMed in Antioch, where we've taken all our pets for the last 20 years. They really stepped up to the plate and took great care of Luna. She came home just a couple days before Christmas and while she's still recovering, she's eating well and acting like a normal puppy - zooming all around the yard, trying to put everything in her mouth, then taking a huge nap. The cats still aren't sure what to think, but they seem to be coming around.

I am ready to put 2011 in the rearview mirror and drive on to 2012. I wish all of you happiness and prosperity in the new year, and I'll leave you with this little rhyme I've always found most inspirational:

May you always have a reason to dance,
And never find frogs in your underpants.

Till next time ---

Unbroken Threads.

I had planned to come on here tonight and talk about memento mori and my love of skulls, seeing as how we just had Halloween and El Dia de los Muertos, but that's going to have to wait, because I had A Moment on the way home from work tonight.

Maybe it's those premenopausal hormones, but as I was driving home from work just at dusk, I looked up for a moment and the moon took my breath away. It made me gasp aloud. It was so huge and bright and creamy there in the almost-night sky, it took me by surprise as if I had never seen it before. Listening to Richard Thompson on the iPod, singing one of the myriad "cruel mother" ballads of yore, I thought, here I am listening to a 400-year-old song, looking at the same moon those people looked at 400 years ago. And it was like I was hearing the song and seeing the moon for the first time ever.

It's not the first time I've had that thought, but tonight for some reason it seemed especially poignant. Maybe it was the hormones, maybe it was sweet sadness of the murder ballad; I don't know. For a moment, I was aware of being part of a much greater whole - part of the unbroken thread of history. Of course, all of us are part of that thread, but it's something most of us don't contemplate on a daily basis, if at all. We're usually too busy to notice what's been there all along.

Several years back, I was confined to the sofa with a case of bursitis in my knee, thanks to an overzealous attempt at learning Irish step dancing. Since we've never had cable tee-vee, we were tuned in to PBS for some intellectual enlightenment. The show was NOVA, and the episode was about 3000-year-old Caucasian mummies that had been unearthed in the Chinese desert. Who were they? Where had they come from? Why did they settle in China? Excavations revealed woven fabrics that looked suspiciously like woolen plaid, along with some stone spindle whorls. (See http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2502chinamum.html to read a transcript of the episode.)

When I saw those 3000-year-old spindle whorls, I nearly lept off the couch, bursitis be damned. At that moment, I felt myself connected to those European mummies in the Chinese desert, because I also use a drop spindle, 3000 years later. I don't remember if I cried, but I do remember getting really choked up. This is a hard thing to explain to people who aren't into history, but it's sort of like the Beatles: "I am, he is, you are, he is, you are me and we are all together." For a moment, I was one of those desert immigrants.

And tonight, looking at the moon and listening to "Bonnie St. Johnstone," I found myself thinking how I could make that centuries-old song my own, spinning off Richard Thompson's version, which was spun off from other versions, and so on and so on. It's the folk process at work, and it's still alive and well. I know many of us bemoan the idea that the old ways are vanishing, but maybe that's not necessarily true. The old ways are still there; we just use them differently in our ever-changing world, adapting as we must, often flying by the seat of our pants. And why not? That's the best way to see what you might not otherwise have seen.

Till next time --- keep spinning that thread.

Let's Talk Music.

Last year, Mister and I went to see Paul McCartney in concert as part of our 20th wedding anniversary celebration. (Yes, I got married when I was 5 - thanks for asking.) This was a show I had waited for since I was an old married lady of 13, and it was just my luck American Express had a presale on the tickets. Furthermore, the tickets were under $100 each. Double score!

Anyhow, Mister and I both agreed that McCartney's show was so fantastic, we never needed to go to another concert ever again, because anyone else would pale in comparison. Except for one: Richard Thompson.

If you are a music fan and don't know Richard Thompson, do not pass Go, do not collect $200, go to Amazon.com or iTunes right now and sample some tracks. (I'll wait.) RT was a founding member of Fairport Convention when he was just a lad, and has been in the music business ever since. He's managed to set a standard for musicianship and songwriting that few have been able to meet, let alone exceed. And yet, for whatever reason, he's not a household word like, say, Taylor Swift.

Last night I got my chance to see Richard Thompson in a solo acoustic show at Nashville's historic Belcourt Theatre. We had supper right after work and got ourselves in line, which rated me a third row aisle seat - not too shabby at all. (I had already bought the tickets online back in August.) This was a mature and well-mannered crowd, not like the bad old 80s when going to a general admission concert meant you got at least one elbow in the face while jockeying for the best vantage point. No, this was a bunch of folk music enthusiasts who just wanted to hear some prime tunes.

And we did. RT did not disappoint, not once. While I'm mostly in it for the songwriting, I was blown away by his guitar playing. He didn't need a band, because he sounded like 2 people on the guitar. I'm still not convinced that he doesn't have two extra invisible hands. He played one guitar for the whole show, and he didn't change clothes forty-eleven times, and he didn't have a bevy of dancers on the stage.

One man + one guitar = one indescribably incredible musical experience. See, it can be done without glitter and theatrics.

Richard Thompson is also funny and personable. He explained that on this tour, he was asking an audience member to choose an old album title out of his Beret of Randomness, and he'd play three songs from that album. Our audience member chose You? Me? Us? which apparently wasn't a huge seller, and is hard to come by now, but the songs he chose from it were spectacular: especially "Sam Jones," about a bone collector. And you all know how much I love bones. (I was really hoping to learn this song right away for Halloween, but was thwarted when I discovered it doesn't exist in a digital download. I had to order a second-hand CD instead. Patience is a virtue, I guess.)

Of course he brought the house down with "1952 Vincent Black Lightning," which rated a standing ovation. Throughout the show, members of the small audience called out their favorites, and Thompson did his best to oblige. He also threw in at least one new song that hasn't been recorded yet, which happened to be another of my favorites of the night. Until he records it, I guess I won't get to hear it anymore unless I see his show again. Oh, what a horrible fate, Dutchy. Reckon I'll be keeping an eye on that tour schedule.

All you young whippersnappers who want to write songs - and yes, I'm talking to you, Taylor Swift - owe it to yourselves to take a few lessons from Richard Thompson. He's clever, witty, erudite, and most of all, he's his own writer. Even though he has a distinctive style, no one could ever say his songs all sound alike. Over 45 years, he's provided his fans with a wide range of incredible songs - not just his own original material, but historic folk material as well. His 1000 Years of Popular Music includes songs from the Middle Ages and 15th century along with modern-day pop hits.

Thanks, Richard. I'm a little late to the bandwagon, but I hope to be listening for another 45 years.

Till next time ---- now I just need to see Elvis Costello.

Gone to the dogs.

I've been absent a little while because this is the time of year when I don't know what day it is. Fall is always our busiest season with performances and other events; even in spite of less out-of-state travel right now, we're still busy as ever. It's a fun, challenging, and stressful time, so full of activity that if an unforeseen incident occurs, it greatly upsets the apple cart.

And last Sunday night, we had to euthanize our dog, Sampson. Consider my cart completely tumped over, all the apples spilling out and rolling willy-nilly upon the ground.

Sampson was 8-1/2 years old. Our former neighbor, Stephanie, found him in the parking lot at Mansker's Station one night when we were having a sewing circle. He was a little fuzzy ball of fluff with a fat little puppy tummy, all alone in the park. We had lost our older dog just a few months before, and here was a puppy who needed a home, so of course we took him.

The fat little fuzzy pup grew into a 90-something pound goofy dog with big clumsy feet and long gangly legs. His tail was as long as my arm, and table height, so that we had to keep our drinks and breakables out of its way. He was playful and affectionate, and protective of me to a fault. We discovered the hard way that he didn't appreciate strangers all up in his face - on one visit to the kennel, the kennel attendant went to put his name tag around his neck, and when she got in his face, he nipped her. There was no blood, no lasting damage, but the young lady was frightened, and we were horrified. But once we realized this, we were able to make the proper modifications so this didn't happen again. Our big loveable goofball taught us a few new things about dog behavior.

Sampson never missed a meal, and managed to score quite a few extra, with our without our consent. Because he could reach the kitchen cabinet standing on his back legs, we lost a few leftovers over the years. One evening he decided to try gnawing on some corncobs, I guess because they were there. He also loved bread of any kind and would come trotting in from the other room anytime he heard me open the breadbox. No unguarded bread product was safe in our house.

He loved to curl up on the sofa, and many's the time he kept me close company while I was sick. When I was unemployed last summer and feeling sorry for myself, he was always right there. We went for nice long walks in the neighborhood before it got too hot. Sampson loved to go for "walkies" and would get ramped up anytime he saw his leash or my walking sneakers.

Just about two weeks ago, Sampson started to get draggy. We thought it was just his hip dysplasia acting up, so we made sure he had plenty of soft cushions to lie on as the weather cooled down. We didn't force him to go up the stairs, and the only walk I took him on was short because I didn't want to be hard on his old joints. He seemed tired, and his neverending appetite flagged ever so slightly, but I didn't think anything of it. He was almost 9 and had arthritis.

Last Friday evening, Mister noticed something wrong with Sampson's left eye. Sure enough, it was entirely red, like an albino rabbit eye. We ran him over to the vet before they closed, quite apologetic at being the jerks that show up at the last minute on a Friday. It turned out Sampson had gone blind. His bloodwork didn't turn up anything too odd, so the vet sent us home with some meds and made us an appointment to see the vet opthalmologist on Monday. (Yes, there is such a thing as a veterinary opthalmologist. Vet medicine has specialties just like people medicine.)

We took him back home, gave him his meds religiously, and let him lounge around on the soft cushions. He was tired and listless, and then Sunday morning, he wagged his tail a little. I thought maybe we were making progress. But later that afternoon, I noticed his front leg was swollen and it looked streaky under the fur. I got a good look at his skin, and it was bright red.

Not good.

Mister and I made the decision to take him to the emergency vet, where we left him overnight. New bloodwork showed drastic changes, and they weren't encouraging. Something was terribly wrong with our dog, and it was something terribly bad. X-rays showed he had an enlarged spleen and fluid around his heart, as well as suspicious masses in his lungs. He went downhill fast from there, and in the middle of the night, we had to make the choice to say goodbye. It was time.

The vets think Sampson had hemangiosarcoma, an aggressive and untreatable cancer that eventually causes the dog to bleed to death internally. There was nothing anyone could have done except what we did: we kept him comfortable. We loved on him. That was all there was. I wasn't quite ready to let him go yet, but it was the right thing to do.

I have loved and lost many pets over the years, and plan to love and lose many more, if I can help it. It's heartbreaking to let them go, but the joy of having them in my life far outweighs that. I'd like to think all my pets are waiting for me in the Summerlands somewhere. If there are no dogs in Heaven, I think I'd rather not go.

Goodbye, Sampson. Thanks for being my friend.


Till next time ---- hug your furry friends.

Crisis averted.

If you've been with my little blog since the beginning, you know how much I love and use my bread machine. It makes bread at least twice a week and sometimes more on the weekends if I have time. We rarely buy bread at the grocery anymore unless I get a hankering for some pitas (which I could also make if I wanted to go to the trouble).

Lately, breadmaking has been a little of a challenge. A couple of weeks ago, I went to make my regular loaf of whole wheat bread. I put all the wet ingredients in the pan and when I went to measure out the flour, I noticed it was crawling. Yes. Tee-tiny nearly microscopic crawling things were in my flour. I took everything out of the Rubbermaid bin I had kept all the bread things in, and to my great horror, found that all of my supplies were crawling with critters. White flour. . . wheat flour. . . barley flour. . . rye flour. . . gluten. . . coconut milk powder. . . buttermilk powder. . . all the sugar. . . it all had to be thrown out. Every. Single. Last. Bit. We took the bin outside and hosed it off. Thinking it was safe, we put it back in the kitchen under the table. And guess what?

A couple of days later, there were still tiny crawling things in the bins. We took them all outside, cleaned the floor and the bins with hot bleach water, and having decided out invaders were tiny pharoah ants, we put ant baits in the bins when they dried. Mister packed up his wine & beer supplies with bay leaves, and so far, it seems to have worked. I'm still keeping an eye out for the little critters, though.

Tonight I went to bake a loaf like I usually do in the middle of the week. I put all the ingredients in the pan, put the pan in the machine, set it on the Express cycle, and went about my business. When I went to check on it later, I saw it wasn't rising, and. . . wait. Is it BOILING in there?

Yes. It was boiling. The ingredients hadn't been mixed when I turned on the machine, so it all just sat there in a blob cooking in the pan. I thought, great, now the bread machine's crapped out on us, and we'll have to start buying bread again. I took the pan out to let it and the machine cool off. Mister and I were contemplating going to the grocery to pick up a loaf of bread, when I noticed the BREAD PADDLE sitting on the counter. Then it dawned on me.

I had altogether forgotten to put the paddle in the machine. Made bread so many times I have the basic recipe memorized, and I FORGOT to put the PADDLE in there.

So, after the machine cooled off and Mister cleaned out the pan for me, I started over. And sometimes, that's all you can do: laugh at your dumb mistakes and just start over.

Till next time ---- if you fall off the horse, just dust yourself off and get back on.