Happy Independence Day!

I love the 4th of July! My favorite thing is the fireworks, which they do two nights in a row in Texas (do they do that in other states, too?), but I also love the food. This year, A is cooking ribs, which we'll be eating here at my house tomorrow afternoon, along with coleslaw and corn on the cob and homemade strawberry ice cream, and I'll probably make my 4th of July flag cake, pictured above. There's a heavy dose of grand marnier in the raspberry filling that always makes it a big hit. Alex, Chris and Silas are driving in from Chicago and will arrive late tonight. Silas is sporting a new tooth, and he and Alex will stay with me (woo hoo!) while Chris goes off to Australia for a couple of weeks.

Happy Independence Day!

Cringe TV - the Mark Sanford scandal, or Don't Cry For Me, Argentina...

A couple of weeks ago, over at Women On, Lisa invited writers to post on Cringe TV, the kind of stuff that makes you cringe when you watch it, referencing an NPR article that cited the stories then circulating about Jon and Kate Plus Eight. I read the article and found it interesting and thought about writing something, but hey! It's summer. The commute is long and hot, and when I'm home, if I'm not inside reading and making various pasta salads and drinking ice tea, well, the deck needed refinishing, and my flower beds needed work, among other things. So I didn't write anything, and didn't think I was going to write anything on that particular topic...but then the Mark Sanford story broke, and it's pushed me over the edge.

Would someone please tell the Sanfords, both of them, to just shut up? And it would help if the "news" media would develop some sense of journalistic integrity and just stop interviewing the two of them, period. In case you've been somewhere that you've managed to avoid this fiasco, I'm referring to the Governor of South Carolina and his wife, and their ENDLESS venting of their feelings, his and hers, about his having an affair with his soulmate (his description - puh-leez!), with whom he recently spent a week in Argentina (where she lives) while telling his staff he was hiking the Appalachian Trail. Sanford is a conservative Republican, by the way, a member of the God Squad who, while in Congress, opposed gay civil unions and abortion, among other things. He was, of course, an outspoken critic of President Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, voting for impeachment and calling for the President to resign, saying, "I think it would be much better for the country and for him personally (to resign)... I come from the business side. If you had a chairman or president in the business world facing these allegations, he'd be gone."

Now that the shoe is on the other foot, so to speak, he's not considering resigning, himself. In a message posted on his website, he writes that for God to really work in his life (I'm not making this up!), he (Mark, lover-boy Sanford) needs to stay in office.

Uh-huh. Dunno about you, but when I vote for our elected officials, it's not because I think public office is a way for God to really work in their lives. What a dumb ass. And as if that weren't enough, he will not shut up about it! And now his wife is talking too. At first, I felt sorry for her, especially after he said Maria Chapur is his soulmate, but he's going to "try" to "fall back in love" with his wife. This was in the news conference a couple of days ago in which he mentioned he's "crossed the line" with other women, too. But since Jenny Sanford has taken to quoting the bible in her smarmy comments about the situation, I'd like her to shut up too.

Hank Stuever, who writes about TV and pop culture for The Washington Post, is quoted in the NPR article as saying: "People now spend a considerable amount of time deconstructing what just happened to them," with the result that "our worst instincts are reflected back on ourselves."

The endless press coverage of this sordid story is a textbook illustration of that statement. The Sanfords have four young sons who will no doubt eventually read every word each of their parents is now saying about this miserable situation. If only someone would please point out to these two bible thumpers that those are four excellent reasons for the two of them to shut the hell up.

What I Did Sunday...

I spent the rest of the weekend redoing the flower beds out back. First I removed the old mulch, which was so dry it could be simply lifted off in whole plates, then I turned all the soil, with a pitchfork and a trowel, to a depth of about a foot, which it badly needed. It had become so compacted; it was like cement. I scooped out big gobs of clay, and actually quite a lot of soil from the one bed, then I planted black eyed susans, which are sassy and gorgeous; moved the Gerbera daisies leftover from Alex and Chris’s wedding, 4 of which are still going strong, and also moved half a dozen yellow mums from a couple of falls ago. I planted the black-eyed susan vine and put in a metal trellis for it, and I moved a jasmine vine, which had survived in spite of itself. I hope both those vines take; the black eyed susan because I love the look of it, and the jasmine because I love the scent. When I finished all of that, I watered like crazy and then applied several inches of mulch. The beds look great; I may post some pics later.

I made another big bowl of pasta pugliese, but this time I used kalamatas from a jar and I added some smoked mozzarella as well as plain. It’ll be ready to eat tomorrow, when the flavors have melded together a bit.

It was close to a hundred degrees today as I worked on my flower beds. The sun was behind the house by the time I started, so I wasn’t in direct sunlight, but despite the heat I wore a shirt, long jeans and socks with crocs to protect myself from insects and any poison ivy I might encounter. It’s abundant here in Texas, as I’ve learned the hard way. I got fairly dehydrated, but all in all, I've decided covering up is the way to go on a project like this. Eventually I stopped to have some dinner: a salad of black beans, corn, jicama, red pepper, and onion in olive oil, washed down by glasses and glasses of ice water. I swear nothing ever tasted so delicious.

And the flower beds look GREAT.

Things I Did Friday and Saturday

I'm a nester, and I love my house, but...that said, there are always jobs that need to be done. Here are a few I've taken care of so far this weekend.

1. I had the front door fixed, finally. The front door of my house is huge: 4' wide, 7' tall, almost 3" thick. It was getting harder and harder to close, and I wasn't sure why. It turned out it was because it was sagging on the top two hinges. The problem was solved by replacing the 3 1/2" screws with 4 1/2" screws. The door now shuts better than it has in the entire 25 years I've lived here.

2. I had the genie on the garage door fixed. The capacitor needed to be replaced, and the limits reset. It now works beautifully.

3. I restained the front deck, first coat anyway. It looks like it's going to require a second coat.

4. I bought some more coneflowers (echinacea) and some black-eyed susans, and planted them in one of the flower beds in front.

5. I bought some more skullcap plants (scutelleria suffrutescens) for the west side of the house. This is a wonderful perennial that's hard to find. I recommend it to anyone who claims they don't have a green thumb, because the more you abuse it, the more it thrives.

6. I began cleaning out the flower beds on the back of the house, where I intend to plant more coneflowers and black eyed susans.

Michael Jackson

So the King of Pop has died, at the relatively young age of 50. Pop is not my music, so I was never a big fan myself, but my girls loved him when they were young, and tonight, driving home in the sweltering heat, I turned from NPR to a pop station and listened to several songs from when he was still quite young. Whatever else he was, Michael Jackson was incredibly talented, there's no doubt about it. He was an adorable little boy with an amazing voice, and there was so much energy and promise and yes, sweetness, in those early songs.

But somewhere along the way, in spite of his incredible talent, something went terribly wrong. I'm not going to speculate on his weirdness, either what caused it or how it manifested itself. His psychopathology did not negate his amazing talent. But it was a bizarre combination, all that talent and all that psychopathology. About ten years ago I was doing a psych eval on a 7 year old boy, and he made a comment that captured the tragedy of Michael Jackson's life very eloquently. This was a very anxious little 7 year old, and I was asking him what kind of things scared him. Thunder, of course. Darkness. Things that go bump in the night.

"Anything else?" I asked.

He hesitated.

"It's OK, " I said, "you can tell me."

"Well," he said, looking up at me..."Michael Jackson...Michael Jackson really scares me" .

Yeah. Despite all that amazing talent.

So incredibly sad.

Summer Things...

Here are a few of the things that I love most about summer:

1. Sunflowers. Aren't they gorgeous? Every week I buy a bunch at the grocery store, and put them in a tall narrow vase in my kitchen. I feel good every time I look at them.

2. Cicadas. They've finally started singing in the trees at night, and I love stepping outside and hearing them.

3. Thunbergia, or Black Eyed Susan vine. I telecommuted today, and having cut 3 hours of driving out of my day, after work I took a quick trip to a nursery that's close to my house to look at plants. I was over the moon to find one of these vines with orange flowers, wilting a bit in the heat (it was just under a hundred degrees today). I bought the plant, brought it home, and drenched it before taking this pic. Isn't it beautiful? This weekend I'll pick up a trellis and plant it in a sunny spot.















4. Ice tea. I make it with mint and my house is fragrant with the scent of it right now. Mike called last week from Arizona for the recipe, so I know it's good.

5. Pasta salads. In 1985 there was a restaurant in Dallas called Massimo's, and they had wonderful pasta salads, including one made with penne pasta, fresh basil, tomatoes, Kalamata olives, and mozzarella called Pasta Pugliese. Massimo's eventually closed, but somewhere along the way, the recipe for the ever popular Pasta Pugliese was published in the paper. Tonight I made it for dinner.

the inimitable Joe Cocker...

Tonight I went to the Meyerson and heard Joe Cocker. The Meyerson's seating capacity is 2062, and it was close to sold out. Cocker is now 65, but the inimitable, gravelly voice is still going strong, as is the air guitar, and the combination made me happily aware that he's clearly still quite capable of rocking my gypsy soul. He pretty much brought down the house with You Can Leave Your Hat On, and when he sang You Are So Beautiful...well, when Cocker sings that song, and his voice breaks a little over the lyrics, it's like he's singing it to you, personally. I've been a fan since I was a teenager, but I'd never heard him live. He was definitely worth the wait.