:Debby on..Twice baked sweet potatoes…

Have the rest of you recovered from the holiday feast?

It snowed last night. This morning Rick and I are meeting the rest of the family at the Cherokee Ranch Castle for a tour. Planned for Rocky’s visit, we’ve had tickets for weeks. Rocky came out early. He thought the world of Jeff.

We hosted Thanksgiving dinner for 12 people. We toasted family. We toasted Jeff. Nate and Kelly – along with their dogs Buckley and Chuck – slept over Thanksgiving night. Hectic, it all was! Ya gotta love family! And ya gotta love friends!

Carol. Among many people I’m thankful for is Carol. Dan, Jeff’s friend and co-worker, spoke about the ease of working with Jeff. He said they could work comfortably side-by-side for hours, not having the need to speak. He told of knowing which tool Jeff was looking for, seeing Jeff look towards the ground. Sometimes Dan would hand Jeff that tool. Jeff asked how he knew. Dan told him, “because I’m good.” That’s what it’s like to work with Carol. Toni once said it was like watching a ballet. We anticipate each other’s moves.

Carol knows I don’t cook. Carol reads cookbooks for entertainment. She cooks. She bakes. She suggested my contribution to the Thanksgiving feast. Twice Baked Sweet Potatoes. Read the last line of the recipe.

A few minutes after Dan’s response, Jeff replied, “if you were really good, I wouldn’t have to look at the floor.” 🙂 Maybe if they’d had the chance to work together more years, 18 years like Carol and I, that could have happened.

The recipe turned out great, converting one non-sweet potato relative. I sugared the nuts myself. I did everything myself. I didn’t have to follow the last step.

:And…so…

Life goes on. Occasionally one is rudely reminded of life’s tenuousness. Jeff. Then one is quickly reminded life goes on. Ponya’ puppies are due the next several days. Given Murphy’s Law for Breeders, they’ll probably arrive Saturday afternoon. Jeff’s funeral is at 1:30.

Puppies rarely arrive at a convenient time. For me, that would be a Thursday evening between 5 and 7. They usually arrive in the stillness of the night. Lack of sleep is the only inconvenience. The stillness of the night is actually a good time, I think, for such a tumultuous process. For a week prior, my expectant mothers are with me 24/7. They have been along for many family occasions, from New Year’s Eve to birthdays, but never a funeral. If she’s in labor, she’ll stay with Mary for several hours. Otherwise, she’ll be with me…well, I will leave her in the car, discreetly checking in during the service. 

Mary is a very experienced mid-wife. She’s 20 minutes from Dr. Hess. While I’m not expecting problems, Ponya’s pregnancy isn’t status quo. She’s seven years old. It’s her first litter. If the situation with the Gompa lineage were different, she wouldn’t be having her first litter at this age. The lives she’s (hopefully!!!) bringing into the world are important to the Program.

As Joni Mitchell sang in The Circle Game:

And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We’re captive on the carousel of time
We can’t return, we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

And…so… Life goes on.

:Jeff…

Jeff. He had a dog. Then another. First a dog named Avie. Avalanche. He had Avie when he met my niece Heather (Chris’ oldest daughter). Avie went to work with Jeff, a construction guy. Heather and Jeff married. Avie grew to be an old, old dog. Time passed after Avie died. Jeff and Heather adopted a huge, gangly puppy and named him Roscoe. Roscoe stayed with Jeff after Heather left him.

For the past ??? eight years Jeff has been at every family event, every family holiday. A tall, gentle quiet man, our entire family was sad about his absence after Heather left him almost a year ago. It wasn’t one of those bitter things, their break-up. No ill feelings towards Jeff, only the warmth we’ve always felt for him. After all, this man, nervous to ask Chris and Herman for Heather’s hand in marriage, drove around their block three times before he summoned up the courage. Never mind they had been living together for some time! But, that’s Jeff for you.

When 8 feet of snow kept Rick, Nate and I stranded for a week in 2003, this man loaded up his snow toys – snow mobiles, snow blowers – and headed up the mountain Sunday morning after he and Heather went shopping for us the night before. Picking up emergency items like dog food and liquor. Other motor toys include a Toyota pickup beefed up, rebuilt for off-roading, climbing steep terrain. Jeff has years of experience driving wild and wacky vehicles.

Yesterday he took his last ride. On a crane. His construction crane. Moving it from one job site to another, the crane lost its brakes going down a hill. He was able to maneuver it in traffic through a T-intersection before it rolled in Dry Creek. As Rick said last night, he hopes Jeff was driving it, maneuvering it, thinking “I’ve got this handled! Perfect! Here we go! I can do this! I’ve got it under control!” While driving, he was hanging half-way out, ready to bail. It was the bail-out that was unsuccessful. I hope he thought it was successful. He died immediately.

I haven’t seen the images. I haven’t watched the news. I don’t want to see Heather and Em hysterical at the scene. Herman was with them. They were on the news. I don’t want to see those images. These are some of the many, many images I want to remember….

Christmas dinner at our house. He surely helped carry the extra table and chairs…

Showing Heather’s young cousins The Fort down the hill in front of our house…

Talking with Rocky, wearing that usually present baseball cap…

In Chris and Herman’s kitchen…

Mother’s Day breakfast (probably not prepared by him!)…

Wedding on the beach in Mexico surrounded by friends and family…

I’m gonna miss that smile.

:Another ghost…

My grandmother seems to be right at my side the past few months. She’s been dead for years, but she’s here. The old cliche “I’ve become my mother” has changed for me. I’ve become my grandmother. She was a young bride in the Great Depression. Her skills as a homemaker developed long before TV dinners. My grandparents kept a vegetable garden, maintained an apple orchard. Grandma was the ultimate recycler, not because she wanted to save the earth, but because she saw the fundamental value in items tossed these days without a second thought.

This summer after reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle Rick and I began a mission to eat local food. It was a little late in the season, but we bought a bit from the Farmer’s Market. Rick now asks about the produce in the grocery store. Where is it grown? We bought a chest freezer. We purchased a Food Saver and began freezing locally grown, fresh vegetables. I picked wild raspberries on our property. I started research on growing vegetables way up here…both Carol and Fred grew tomatoes this yeaar. I have a tentative design for a couple of raised beds artfully placed within the housedog yard.

This was all before the economy tanked. Thanks to podcasts, I’ve learned more than I ever wanted to know about global economics, credit default swaps et. al. One economist summed up in simple terms, “the world has too much debt.” I could go on, but I won’t. This blog entry isn’t about the sorry state of monetary affairs, it’s about my ghost. My welcome ghost.

My grandmother saved everything, all neatly organized, stored for daily use. Rubber bands. Bread bags. Paper bags. She made quilts. She bought adult coats at the Methodist Church’s annual rummage sale. She took those coats apart and redesigned them into winter coats for me and my sisters. She crocheted pretty things. She embroidered pillow cases. She blanket-stitched the edges of sheets, towels, washclothes. And, of course, she prepared food grown in her garden, scrambled eggs laid by their chickens. She taught me how to sew, embroider, crochet. She taught my sister Lori how to cook.  

These past weeks I’ve begun saving all plastic bags, all rubber bands, all paper sacks…just in case, her ghost tells me. Last Friday I shopped at Goodwill, purchasing six cotton shirts for everyday wear, along with a royal blue dress jacket, trimmed with black piping of sorts, to add to my dog show clothes. My sewing machine has been out for months, sitting on a desk made by some relative of grandma. Rather than ordering new smocks for work, this weekend I’m digging out my smocks in need of repair. I’ve been drinking beer instead of wine. Not a tip from grandma! She was a tea-totaler!

Am I nuts? Given the state of affairs, have the rest of you made any adjustments in lifestyle?

:Ah! Warmth!

Like Lawrence, Laura was one of mom’s cats. Mom had three groups of cats. Her house cats. Her grooming shop cats. Her barn cats. The house cats lived 24/7/365 in the house. The grooming shop cats were free to come and go. The barn cats lived outside 24/7/356.

Laura was a house cat. She’s been my house cat since mom died eleven years ago. Our house is heated with a combination of things, the ratio varies depending on the year and our mood. It’s a pain-in-the-@$$ to heat with a wood stove. It’s labor intensive. It’s messy. The indoor pollutants are probably really bad. But there’s nothing like the warmth! Roasty! Toasty!

Our house is small and simple. The main living area is open and includes the living room, dining room and kitchen. The wood stove sits in that room. The master bedroom, the only bedroom these days, has french doors which open to the living room. These rooms are all easily kept warm with the wood stove.

Sitting down a hallway from the main living area, the bathroom and library are another story. A bit chilly. Last year we incorporated two small space heaters; one for the bathroom, one for the library. Last Sunday I found Laura basking in the heat. Ah! Warmth!