Friday, April 1

Today is Shih Tzu's 17th birthday. Happy Birthday, Shih Tzu!

It is also April Fool's Day, as evidenced by our local newspaper...the entire front page was taken up with two April Fool's Day stories. A huge headline announced "Monster Emerges" about our fabled river monster, which the story claimed had been caught this morning just before daylight. The story also claimed that biologists had attached a tracking device to it so they could follow it's travel in the river. A huge color photo, taking up fully half the page, shows the monster being hoisted out of the river by a crane. The monster looks like an enormous serpent.

The second feature announced that our county is now "wet" (meaning alcohol can now be sold here). It tells readers that during World War II, with the men away at war, the women voted our county dry. But just after midnight this morning, the men retaliated by meeting behind closed doors and voting it wet again.

I was up at 7 a.m. this morning, but skipped my exercises in order to get ready to go to the medical clinic for fasting lab blood work. This is a follow up test to see if cutting my cholesterol medication in half corrects my slightly elevated liver enzymes.

My appointment was for 8:30, but I arrived shortly after 8 a.m., hoping the nurse would be free to attend to me sooner. She was, so I was out of the clinic and back home by 8:30.

Hubbie fixed poached eggs and toast for our breakfast (I know, I know, eggs equal cholesterol, but I just couldn't face another bowl of cereal this morning). Afterward, we went to the hydroponic farm for both grape tomatoes and slicing tomatoes. I'd reserved three cartons of red grape tomatoes, but only two were available. The third was a yellow variety. I decided to try them, and they are delicious...slightly sweeter than the red ones.

Mother came over mid-morning, and we put together a recipe of baked beans, using rinsed low-sodium canned pinto beans, turkey bacon, lots of onions and bell peppers, both regular and spiced mustard, Worcestershire sauce, ketchup, brown sugar substitute, low-sodium beef broth, sodium-free seasoning, pepper, and paprika.

After that, we spruced the house a little for company tomorrow. I was bothered by stains on the den carpet, made by Shih Tzu when she couldn't hold it some early mornings before Hubbie could take her outside. So we went in search of pet stain remover, since what we had on hand doesn't work. Started at the WDCS. No dice. Went to a veterinary clinic. No. Ended up at a pet store, where we found a product that does a great job.

Later, for supper, we sampled the potato and macaroni salads, along with the baked beans, and grape tomatoes. The beans were so good that we had two helpings of them before deciding we probably hadn't cooked enough for the family gathering tomorrow.

So after supper, Hubbie went to the store to get more canned beans and another bell pepper, and we put together another recipe for the oven.

This evening, we watched the 2010, PG-13 movie, "Our Family Wedding," a comedy that stars Forest Whitaker. Trouble ensues when an African-American family and a Hispanic family meet the prospective bride and groom. Once the families accept the inevitability of the marriage, they then try to plan a wedding. Nothing can be agreed upon, and everything goes wrong. Can love win out?









My appointment was

Thursday, March 31

Last day of March, and it's not going out without a winter fight...very chilly and rainy today, with a promise of sunshine and a temp in the high 70s tomorrow for the first day of April.

Got up at 7:30 and did a treadmill session and weights exercises after breakfast. Once I was ready for the day, I made three batches of potato salad for family (according to individual dietary needs) who will be here Saturday. Though the salads are for that day, we will sample them for supper tomorrow night.

Mother spent most of the day at home, where she made a recipe of macaroni salad for the weekend.

Otherwise today, we didn't accomplish much. I did do some research on squash for an article I've promised to the editor of the Master Gardener monthly newsletter. Then I wrote the first few paragraphs of the article.

After that, Hubbie watched a basketball game on TV, and I read my novel. Mother came over around 4 p.m. to join us for a supper of leftover potato soup and bran muffins. She went back home shortly afterward.

Before Hubbie and I settled in front of TV for the evening, he went to a grocery store to get milk and a few other items,including a battery for the upstairs smoke detector. Last night, the detector began beeping, so Hubbie took it down until morning.

I hadn't heard the beeping during the night, but when I got up, I immediately heard a muffled noise coming from my office. So I went to inspect. Was it my computer? I pressed my ear to the modem, and to the tower. No, nothing there. The printer? No. Maybe the bathroom scales indicate when the battery is low? No. How about the central heat and air unit behind a door in the hall? Nothing there. I was baffled.

Finally, I reported the noise to Hubbie. "It's the smoke detector, he said. "I buried it in the linen closet in your office until I could get around to changing the battery."

Wednesday, March 30

Slept late on this very chilly morning, but did a treadmill session and resistance exercises after breakfast. Mother came over while I was getting ready for the day. She chopped carrots, onions, and celery, while Hubbie peeled potatoes and sliced them in the food processor. Then she simmered the potato and veggie mixture in preparation for making soup for supper.

I did this and that household chores for the remainder of the morning. After lunch, Hubbie peeled another batch of potatoes, which I boiled for making potato salad tomorrow. Mother chopped more celery and onions, as well as bell peppers for the salad.

Then we sat down to watch the rest of the musical stage production of "Les Miserable." This is a wonderful show, and I want to buy the DVD so I can watch it again and again in the future.

When the show was over, Mother finished the potato soup, and I made a batch of bran muffins to go with it. Very satisfying meal on this cool evening.

Mother went home afterward,and Hubbie and I continued watching TV. We saw the 2010 R-rated movie, "Agora," starring Rachel Weisz as the beautiful astronomer and philosopher, Hypatia. In Ancient Egypt, under Roman rule, she leads a group of disciples in a fight to save the wisdom of the Ancient World, after Christians destroyed the great library of Alexandria. She is obsessed with solving the puzzle of how there are seasons of the year during the rotation of the earth around the sun, if the earth revolves in a perfect circle (she finally realizes that the rotation is actually elliptical). She was eventually brutally killed by a Christian mob, who condemned her as a pagan and a witch.

Tuesday, March 29

March is almost over, and when it goes, I hope it takes this cold weather with it. What a dark, rainy, dreary day. Mother felt positively in the dumps today. She desperately needs some sunshine to perk her up.

I was up late this morning, but did a treadmill session and weights exercises after breakfast. After I was ready for the day, Hubbie and I ran errands...to the pharmacy, and to the WDCS for incidentals and groceries for Mother and ourselves.

We got back home around 12:30. After lunch, Mother and I made a recipe of Waldorf salad so I could use some grapes that were getting past prime. Mother loves to chop veggies and fruits, so I set her to work...I think it helped lift her mood to be productively occupied.

We made the salad with chopped apples and celery, and halved grapes (both green and black), plus golden raisins, and broken walnuts. We added to the fruit mixture a teaspoon of lemon juice, and three-quarter cup of plain yogurt combined with a little cinnamon.

After that, we relaxed and watched a couple of programs I'd recorded on DVR. One was a show about the best in films, according to a poll. As always, the people voted "Gone with the Wind," as the number one movie. Categories included musicals, action, animated features, etc. Interestingly, among the top five most popular movie kisses was the one between Lady and the Tramp, but the kiss between Rhett and Scarlett topped the list. "The Sound of Music" is still the musical people love the most. And "Silence of the Lambs" makes our spines tingle, while "Airplane" tickles our funny bone. "Star Wars" is number one for sci-fi.

Then we watched a musical of "Les Miserable," from the PBS channel. This was a stage production presented like a readers theater, in which actors in costume sang their parts lined up at microphones. Entrances and exits were the only movements in the production. We had time to watch only about half of it before supper. So we'll continue it tomorrow, or at the first down-time opportunity.

For supper, we had Salisbury steaks, with sauteed potatoes made from leftover baked potatoes, and a choice of spinach or green beans. Mother went home afterward, and Hubbie and I continued watching TV.

Tonight, we watched the 2009, R-rated movie, "The Book of Eli," starring Denzel Washington, Gary Oldman, and Jennifer Beals. Eli (Washington) is in a post apocalyptic America. He wanders through the wasteland carrying the last copy of a sacred book that contains the secrets for saving mankind. Of course a warlord wants the book,so Eli is forced into conflict to protect it.

Monday, March 28

Up at 7:30 this morning, and did a treadmill session and resistance exercises after breakfast. I didn't have a very good plan for today, so I just played by ear, doing this and that of little consequence beyond making an appointment for bloodwork next Friday to check my cholesterol and liver enzymes (which were slightly elevated at last check a month ago).

Since Mother missed most of the film festival, I read my previous blog postings to her that described the film contents. I also showed her some videos from the seed swap video. Though I don't know if she'd be up to it, I think she'd like to attend a seed swap if one is held in our town someday (provided it isn't at the museum).

Hubbie spent time working in the yard today, though it is pretty chilly out there. Mother worked on her jigsaw puzzle. She also made a batch of rice pudding this morning, in order to use leftover cooked rice from a previous meal.

Got a call from our friend who lives in Springfield, MO. She and her husband are in their 80s, and are beginning to experience a litany of physical ailments. Her husband is home recuperating from prostate surgery. The surgery was supposed to be a procedure with an overnight stay, but turned into a ten-day ordeal, with doctors discovering he has congestive heart failure. He also contracted pneumonia while hospitalized. It's our contention that it's not safe to go to a hospital these days. The main reason that our friend called was because her computer crashed, and she lost all the information in her address book, but we had a nice long chat and caught up on each other's lives.

Later, our local newspaper confirmed our suspicions that lightening caused the fire that burned our neighbor's house to the ground. Thank goodness, when the lightening struck, it created such a loud crashing noise that they were awakened and could escape the house unharmed.

For supper tonight, we spooned leftover barbecue sauce loaded with carrots, onions, and celery over baked potatoes. The sauce was from the pork chop lunch we had yesterday. The remainder of the Chinese beets, along with sliced tomatoes from the hydroponic farm completed the meal.

Tonight, I met my Literacy Council student for a session at the college.

Sunday, March 27

Had trouble going to sleep last night, maybe because I'd seen so many movies yesterday that my mind was reeling. But I got up at 7:30, anyway. Didn't exercise today, though, since I needed a day off. Spent the rest of the morning doing the usual Sunday things...laundry, programming the DVR, reading the Sunday newspaper, etc. Mother came over mid-morning and put a recipe of barbecued pork chops into the oven, which we had with baked potatoes and steamed vegetables.

Afterward, I went to the film festival at the college down the road, where I met and sat with two other women who were attending sans husbands. The feature we saw was called "Etienne," (pronounced ATN), about a man whose best friend, a dwarf hamster, is diagnosed with cancer. The vet recommends he put the animal to sleep, but the man instead decides to show the hamster the world before he has him euthanized. Along the way, he meets lots of interesting people, one of whom suggests he release the hamster to live in the woods until it dies, which is what the man eventually does. After he returns home, the vet calls to tell him he's made a mistake and the hamster doesn't have cancer. So he sets out to go find it. In the meantime, a young woman finds the animal, but turns him loose again. The man and woman meet accidentally, and the man tells the woman he's looking for his poodle, instead of his hamster, thinking the woman will laugh at him if he tells her the truth. So the man never finds the hamster. Phooey.

The next feature is about a chef who fixes food that creates "living dreams" for his patrons. A man who has lost his wife thinks he sees her across from him. Another man, who wants to be a writer, becomes one in his own mind. A bus boy and a waitress become Romeo and Juliet. I returned home after this, deciding not to stay for the documentary showcase, because there wasn't a sufficient break for supper.

A couple of hours later, I returned to the college to see a documentary about a 96-year-old man who created some 4,000 pieces of hobo whimsies and tramp art. During filming of the feature, the man reveals his life history, which was filled with alcohol addiction in his earlier years, heartache at the loss of his wife, estrangement from a son (who was born intersex, and upon whom "corrective" surgery was performed when he was a child, which later in life he resented, causing him to break with his family), his estrangement from his church, regret for not trying the hobo's life instead of getting married, having a father-in-law who belong to the Ku Klux Klan, being one of ten children of a widowed mother, living through the Depression, etc. He bared his soul in this film. His art was bought for about a half a million dollars for display in two museums, and he died of bladder cancer in a nursing home at the age of 97.

Hubbie joined me for the last feature about a pregnant woman who abandons her husband and moves into a derelict motel in order to sort out her life and figure out where she wants to go. She balances on the edge between self-discovery and self-destruction. Not my favorite film. We were back home about 9:30. I had challenged myself to see every film this year, but didn't quite make it. But at least my eyes aren't about to fall out tonight.

Saturday, March 26

We were awakened at 4 a.m. to a crashing thunderstorm with scary lightening that caused a brief power outage. A little while later, Mother tried to buzz us on the intercom to let us know there was a fire close to our house. But the intercom is downstairs, and we didn't hear it. So when I contacted her around 7:30, she said fire engines were gathered nearby.

I looked out a downstairs bedroom window and saw smoke billowing behind our immediate neighbor's house, so Hubbie went to inspect. A recently-built home next door to our neighbors had been gutted by fire and was still smoldering. The fire engines were gathered to keep the fire contained. We speculate that the home might have been struck by lightening this morning. Though the fire engines left before noon, the house continued to smolder and flame, eventually taking down the walls. As late as 10 p.m., when Hubbie and I passed it on our way home from a film festival screening, flames and smoke were still visible, though by that time the house was completely leveled.

After breakfast this morning, I did a treadmill session and weights exercises. Didn't do much else before lunch.

Shortly before noon, I went down to the college near our home to attend the day's film festival. I was determined this year to try to see every offering. No wonder my ticket is called a "red-eye pass," because after nine or so hours of watching films, I felt like my eyes might fall out.

The first set of films were ones created by filmmakers in our state. Among the films, was one (36 minutes long) about a homely woman in her 40's, who has a debilitating illness. She has a day job, but lives alone and is desperately lonely at night. Starved for male companionship, she becomes a telephone sex company worker. Before she'll talk to a customer, she insists they tell her they love her. One night she gets a call from a young preacher (she knows this guy, but doesn't recognize his voice). As commanded, he tells her he loves her. But at the end of the call, the preacher feels all guilty about calling and blames the lady for "making him sin." The next day he asks her out (not knowing she's the one he talked to the night before). At some point in their conversation, she makes a remark something like "okey-dokey honky-tonky" that he heard her make on the telephone the night before, and he suddenly realizes who she is. It turns him off, and he stands her up for their date. She goes home, and during her telephone sex work that night, she gets a call from a man who threatens her life, and decides to invite him to her house and let him kill her. "Tell me you love me," she says as he approaches her. This was based on a true story.

Another film (15 minutes) has two drifters traveling in the woods and along a railroad track. They come upon a dead body...another drifter...but ignore it and move on. They are met by another drifter, who shares his food with them, letting them know he stole it from a church. The three come to an encampment of homeless people who warn the two to move on. They do, but that night, the two drifters leave the sleeping third one and go back to the encampment and steal food. Homeless men from the encampment go in search of the thieves. The two hide and watch as the homeless men find the sleeping man and beat him to death. The two continue on their journey.

The second set of films was a documentary showcase about our state. Included here was one about Islam, which made many valid points, but did not sway me from my own beliefs, and one about a school (since closed because of budget constraints) that tells the story of a 20-year-old nonviolence program. In 2009, the school went 300 days without a fight. Officials from other schools have thought about modeling after that school, but eventually found the methods too time-consuming to bother attempting.

After these two sessions, I came home for supper, and then returned to the college for an international animation showcase. I wasn't sure what the filmmakers were driving at with some of the films, but a couple of them did stand out. One was about a man who is both on death row and Weight Watchers. He's talking to his lawyer, to whom he comments at the end of the film, "I don't mind dying, I just don't want to die fat." It was funny in a weird sort of way. Sort of pointed out how superficial we can be sometimes. To see this video, go to http://www.vodpod.com/ and search for "Death Row Diet."

But the one that touched me was about a 12-year-old with Asperger's Syndrome, who interviews his mother about their life together. Asperger's was described by someone as a person born without the ability to gain social skills. Therefore, people are not drawn to this boy as they are to his outgoing, friendly, cuddly baby sister. His mother explains how she loves him just the way his is, and how he has helped her grow as a person. To see this great animation, go to http://www.storycorp.org/ and search for "Q&A."

Following the animation showcase, I came home for a supper of veggie soup and bread spread with peanut butter. It was a quick supper, because I only had 30 minutes to eat and return to the college for a feature called, "God's Architects." This 82-minute feature centered on castle-builders in Tennessee and in our state, as well as other men building divinely-inspired monuments.. I have yet to see the castle in our state, but a friend of ours highly recommends that we visit it. One man is building a very colorful concrete mountain, with Biblical messages upon it, in the middle of the desert. He has been working on this, alone, for some 40 years. These men are building with neither funding nor blueprints from materials at hand. The man who is building in our state uses available rocks. The man in the desert mixes concrete from sand and straw. Others use metal, bricks, and wood. A 92-year-old African-American preacher fashioned a church from an abandoned bus. To see portions of these castles go to http://www.homeoffolkart.com/.

Later, Hubbie joined me for the 8:30 p.m. movie, "In/Significant Others," centered on a murder investigation. It revolves around an Iraq War veteran and his emotionally disturbed wife, the wife's female friend, with whom she's infatuated, and who turns out to be a drug dealer connected to the murdered man, a new father living in the shadow of his older brother, and a drug-addicted sister. It was about 10:30 before we got back home. Br-r-r, it was cold. It was cold in the auditorium, too, so I was ready for something warm to drink. Odd: even as it was 43 degrees here yesterday, it was 86 degrees in the south part of the state.