life on the Oregon Coast – Page 14

The Joy of Eating Whatever You Want

IMG_20181025_075416678[1] Ferrari-Adler, Jenni. Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant. New York: Riverhead Books, 2007.

Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant is the title of the book I just finished reading. It’s a collection of essays about eating alone. The writers describe the meals they eat at home by themselves when no one’s looking, as well as their experiences dining alone in restaurants. Many of them are excellent cooks, but when they’re on their own, they may not bother to cook at all. Picture writer Ann Patchett standing in her kitchen eating saltine crackers or Nora Ephron in bed with a bowl of mashed potatoes. On the other hand, Holly Hughes daydreams about salmon dinners eaten without her husband and three kids interrupting with complaints that they would rather have macaroni and cheese. Then there’s Laurie Colwin, who thrived on eggplant, fried or stewed, hot or cold. MFK Fisher, known for her food writing, found that her friends were reluctant to feed her because they couldn’t meet her standards, so she’d wind up at home eating a can of soup. It’s a delicious book, beautifully written, often funny in that way of bittersweet truth. It also includes recipes.

Since I lost my husband, I have thought a lot about eating alone. To be honest, I love cooking for myself. It has its challenges. Produce sometimes rots before I can eat it all, and every time I buy salsa, it grows fur in the jar. How do I buy enough but not too much?

I usually end up eating the same entree for three or four days because it’s difficult to cook just one portion. For some people, this is a bad thing. My father, for example, doesn’t do leftovers. He will actually throw away food if his caregivers make too much. Not me. I like what I cook, and having leftovers means less work the next day. I often announce out loud to the dog and the air, “This restaurant serves great grub.”

I believe in eating three good meals a day. I would never be happy with a few crackers eaten on the run. Nor am I likely to be skinny as long as I stay healthy. My tastes run to ordinary comfort food, although I experiment occasionally. When I got divorced ages ago and moved into my own apartment, I couldn’t wait to make myself a tuna noodle casserole. Somehow over the years, the men in my life have never loved this conglomeration of canned tuna, mushroom soup, noodles, peas, Swiss cheese, and slivered almonds, but I could eat a bucket of it by myself. Add a salad, and there’s dinner.

I avoid packaged foods. I eat a lot of chicken, pork and fish. I’ll make myself a meatloaf and eat meatloaf sandwiches all week. Last night, I tried a recipe I saw on Facebook for Sausage and Apple Stuffed Acorn Squash (thanks, Wiley). I didn’t even know acorn squash was edible, but I tried it. If I failed, there was no one around to complain. But it was wonderful. I’ll be eating it for days. I served it with leftover broccoli into which I had thrown some leftover boiled potatoes, which sounds weird, but it tastes fine.

I like throwing things together. On nights when I’m out of meat, dinner might be just a big bowl of rice cooked with leftover vegetables, a handful of mixed nuts, and some cheese. I might wrap it all in a tortilla for fun. Or I might mix everything together in a salad. I can do whatever I want because I have no one else to please.

I bake for myself. Breakfast today was half a grapefruit and a big oatmeal-blackberry muffin. I have homemade peanut butter chocolate chip cookies in the cookie jar. Who does that? I do. I like my own cooking, I prefer to have control over the ingredients, and I don’t need to deprive myself just because there are no other humans on the premises.

I serve my meals on my blue and white Currier and Ives dishes at my dining room table, complete with a tablecloth and a cloth napkin. This week, I bought myself a dozen roses at the grocery store to decorate the table. Why not?

Some people hate to eat alone, but eating alone can be a treat. You can eat anything you want, however and whenever you want.

How about you? How often do you eat alone? What do you feed yourself? I’d love to read about it in the comments. And do check out this book. It’s delicious.

Taking a videotape trip through my past

Sue and Fred Lick 1995 — Sue and Fred in 1995

I recently went through at least 50 VHS tapes as part of a massive clean-and-sort operation inspired by my friends and across-the-street neighbors who have been overwhelmed by stuff as they prepare to move to the East Coast. (Good luck, Carol and Wayne.)

I’m not planning to move anytime soon, but things could change and I have too much stuff.

It was raining that weekend. With advice from a British guy on YouTube, I built a bad-ass fire in the woodstove and settled in to watch movies. I had to at least see if the tapes were still good, right?

Most of the tapes were homemade, bootlegged off TV shows by my mother-in-law, my husband or me back in the ’80s or ’90s. Do I need the first “Sex and the City” movie when it’s on TV every other day? Am I finally over my “Northern Exposure” obsession? Do I need movies that I never cared about? No. But do I need to keep the three-part “Beatles Anthology?” Absolutely.

Considering that almost any TV show or movie can be viewed online these days, I probably don’t need to keep them. But there are some tapes I may never let go of. One is the video of my 40th-birthday party. I cried a lot watching that one. Everyone was there, including so many loved ones who have died. There’s Fred and my mom and my uncles and aunts, alive and talking just the way I remember them. There are my niece and nephew as little kids. Oh look, I still wear that flowered jacket. I remember buying it at Sears.

Videos from my 20-year and 25-year Blackford High School reunions also went into the keeper pile after I watched them all the way through. The sound is terrible, the picture not great, but look at all those young, eager graduates in their 30s. God, the memories. I wonder where those people are now.

I also kept the video from Fred’s 40-year John Burrough’s High School reunion in Burbank, California, the first one I attended, when people kept saying, “And this is Annette.” We had to inform them that no, Fred and Annette got divorced. This is Sue, who is 15 years younger than all of you. Anyway. The tape contained a lot of palaver from old guys who were full of themselves, but then the camera focused on Fred and me slow dancing. My polka-dotted blue dress and red jacket, seen in the picture, didn’t look as swell as I thought they did then. (You can’t see the ruffles on the short skirt.) I don’t know about that pageboy hairdo, either. I was a terrible dancer. Still am. But we were so happy, singing to each other, kissing now and then.

Another tape was one Fred’s mother had made from a 1948 home movie of Fred and his little brothers Don and Conde playing on the beach and in the yard. Fred, the oldest, was the tall skinny guy with glasses, his hair blond in those days. Conde was chubby with wild curly hair. Don was the adorable one, also blond then. The pictures are faded, but I treasure this bit of history I wasn’t around to see in real life. Both Fred and Don are gone now. Keeping that one.

I also reluctantly saved the video my aunt Suzanne shot of my “spotlight concert” at a coffeehouse in Campbell in 1994. I had been sick for days before that, probably from nerves. There was a weird vibrato in my lower notes, and the upper notes were on pitch but thin. The worst thing: I looked fat in my purple Hawaiian sundress. I mean seriously fat. I had no idea. I still had that pageboy hairdo and the huge glasses. And my piano playing, oy, not that good. Twenty-four years later, I hope I’m better at it. Why did I choose those songs? What was I thinking? Why did I shift from “Your Cheatin’ Heart” to “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” to “Have Mercy on Me”? Pick a genre, Sue! My voice sounded too operatic for most of what I did. I should have pitched the songs lower. It may be a blessing that the background noise was really loud. On the video, it sounds as if nobody was listening. The crazy part is that I’m still doing a lot of the same songs in the same way. Thank God I got rid of that dress.

I considered throwing that tape out, but I decided it was my history, and I should save it.

By the end of the day, I had thrown away a lot of videotapes. I am quite aware that VHS technology is passé. But I still have two machines that play them. When they die, I will thin out my collection again, maybe getting the Fred tapes converted to the latest technology.

What do you do with used VHS tapes? I can’t sell the bootlegged ones or give them to Goodwill. I’m not even supposed to have them. Besides, nobody wants tapes anymore. Even DVDs are fading away. I hate to throw them in the landfill, but that’s what I did. When I thought I was all done, I found another whole box hidden away in a cabinet. Most of those went into the trash, too. I still have a box of blank tapes. What should I do with them?

The clean-a-thon continues. I have approximately 50 books to sell or give away, got rid of lots of CDs and audio cassette tapes, and I have started on the closet. Anybody want a pair of giant Peavy speakers and an amplifier I don’t need anymore? Contact me.

You can’t take it with you, the priest stressed at Mass yesterday. True whether you’re going to heaven or a smaller home. I’d rather sort my junk now than have somebody else do it later.

How about you? Are you drowning in your possessions, too? Got any VHS tapes left? What are you absolutely unwilling to let go of?

What did P.D. discover at Ona Beach?

In my novel Up Beaver Creek, the main character, P.D. finds something in the sand at Ona Beach State Park. Can you guess what it is and what she does with it? Bonus points if you know what she saw in the trees up above the beach. For answers, read the passage excerpted at the Up Beaver Creek web page. Meanwhile, between rain showers this weekend, I snapped some photos for you to enjoy. P.D. is imaginary, but Ona Beach, on Highway 101 between South Beach and Seal Rock, Oregon, is very real. It’s open year-round, and admission is free. Picture yourself kayaking up Beaver Creek in the last photo. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?

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Why Not Run Away to Mary’s Peak?

DSCN4147 After listening all day Thursday to the Senate Judiciary Committee testimony about sexual abuse, I needed a getaway day. So on Friday I ran away to Mary’s Peak.

It was so foggy on the coast I wondered if this would be another opportunity to drive for two hours to see nothing, but by the time I stopped in Alsea, population 164, about 30 miles up narrow, winding Highway 34, it was clear and hot. Since I hadn’t planned ahead, I was worried about running out of gas. How far was this dang mountain? When I saw the big GAS sign at a no-name station with one line of pumps, I pulled in. Honk or walk across to John Boy’s Mercantile to fetch the attendant, said a sign. I honked. Two people resting on a bench out front of the store looked up, and I suppose they alerted the lanky white-haired man who ambled across to fill my tank. We chatted about the weather—yep, warm here–and the need for a runaway day. He agreed it was a good idea. He reminded me of the handsome actor Sam Elliott. I wondered whether he was John Boy and whether he was single. Probably not.

DSCN4141 $3.60 a gallon? Whatever. I was off on my adventure. Just before Milepost 48, I turned left at the Mary’s Peak sign and drove an even narrower, windier road for about nine miles. At the top, just past a campground, I turned into the parking lot, my jaw dropping in amazement. No, not at the view, at the cars. The parking lot was full, including two busloads of kids. So much for sitting quietly staring into the distance.

At 4,097 feet, Mary’s Peak is the highest point in Oregon’s Coast Range and the most prominent peak to the west of Corvallis. On a clear day, you can see both the Pacific Ocean to the west and many of the Cascade peaks to the east across the Willamette Valley. Unfortunately, on Friday, the view to the west was all foggy goo, and the rest was a bit hazy, but it was much better than the one time I came up with Fred and couldn’t see anything.

DSCN4132 There’s not much up there at the top. No real shelter from heat or rain, no food or water, a couple picnic tables, a self-pay fee station ($5), pit toilets, and several trails.

I picked one of the shorter, shadier trails clinging to the steep mountainside. Man, it was a long way down from there. The trail went up and up, merging with a switchback trail that emerged into dry grass and looped back to the parking lot. My legs got a workout after two months of slow easy walks with Annie, who is still recovering from knee surgery. I saw crickets and yellow jackets, dusty little birds, deciduous trees coming into full fall color, and hikers in couples, groups, and packs. Many sported fancy walking poles, which might have been helpful. A hat would have been good, too. By the time I saw the yellow buses in the distance, I was hot, and my own gimpy knee ordered me to sit down. So I did.

DSCN4146 I considered eating the healthy snacks I had brought, then decided I would rather sit in an air-conditioned restaurant sipping iced tea, eating French fries, and reading my library book. So I did. Taphouse, Philomath, good grub. Close to Highway 20, which offered a much easier ride home into the cool fog and a suspicious dog who sniffed me all over, wondering where I went without her.

The upper road to Mary’s Peak is closed during the winter, although the park is still open to cross country skiing and other non-motorized sports. For more information about trails, camping, etc., visit the website.

Why Do They Call It a Rest Room?

42761954 - hand dryer icon I walk into a public restroom and hear an ear-splitting roar. The source is the hand dryer, a tiny thing, not much bigger than a wallet with a knob on it. No one is using it, I notice as a woman in white Capri pants brushes past me, shaking her dripping hands.

Some dryers holler, some hum, but none of them get your hands dry. You could stand there all day and still come out wiping your fingers on your pants.

These little noisy ones make your skin move around. You can watch it sliding across your veins and ligaments. I don’t know if it’s good for your skin, but it’s fun to watch. I want to call everyone over and say, “Hey, look at this,” but there’s an unwritten rule in public restrooms, at least ladies’ rooms: You can only talk to people you bring in with you. You must pretend the others are invisible.

With bathroom dryers these days, I never know whether to put my hands under it or in it, sock it, do tai chi in front of the motion detector . . . or press a button. Is a towel going to come down? If it does, they never give you enough. And sometimes you get to choose: auto dryer or paper towel? Choose the towel, then notice a little girl staring at you, horror in her big green-police eyes. “The dryer doesn’t work,” you lie.

And now the internet is full of posts about how electric hand dryers spread germs. Read this happy little ditty: “Here’s the Gross Truth About Bathroom Hand Dryers” by Carly Cassella.

Remember the cloth towels that used to come down in a circle and were never quite dry? Now that was sanitary! But then, how often do we wash our towels at home? Does each person use his/her own? Would you ever consider installing an air dryer?

At least when you’re waiting outside, the noisy dryer tells you your wait is almost over.

It’s not just the hand dryers that make going to a public restroom an adventure these days.

Toilets haven’t changed much. You still sit or squat over a horseshoe-shaped thing atop a porcelain bowl and do your business, but with automatic flushers, sometimes you get a booty bath when it decides to flush for no particular reason. Other times, you finish, stand up, stare at it, and nothing happens. Has anybody else ever done a little dance to try to make it flush? And it still doesn’t? So you push the button. Whoosh. Or you walk out, hoping nobody sees that you failed to flush. Just as you exit the stall, you hear: Whoosh!

I often wonder why there are 20 stalls and two sinks and there’s always some woman redoing her entire face when you just want to wave your hands under the water. And why, when the woman finally realizes someone’s waiting and moves half an inch to the left, is the soap everywhere but the dispenser? Why is the counter always wet so you have nowhere to put your purse?

Have you ever stood waiting for a sink to turn on, complaining that it’s not working, then realized it was not automatic?

With automatic toilets, sinks, soap dispensers and hand dryers, you still have to touch the door knob or handle to get out, so what’s the point?

Finally, why do folks spend a fortune installing automatic toilets but don’t fix the door locks? Between trying to hold the door closed with your foot, hanging above the toilet seat to avoid germs, and being subjected to dryers loud enough to liquefy your eardrums, I don’t see why anyone would call it a “rest room.” Would you?

I welcome your bathroom adventure stories in the comments.

It’s all about air of the dog these days

IMG_20180910_151552051_HDR[1] I’d be a terrible mom because I can’t blow up balloons. Never could. I hiss and spit and just about explode, but the balloon stays limp.

I don’t have any need to blow up balloons, but life has been all about air lately. My car tires suddenly needed more air when the temperature dropped into the low 40s this week. Hello, Les Schwab, where a kid who looked to be about 12 years old did what I felt unable to do myself. Where did the air go? Why doesn’t it just stay in the tire? And who ever decided we would ride on rubber circles filled with air? It sounds crazy.

A Google search led me to this article on tires and the invention of the inner tub e in 1845, quickly followed by the invention of the flat tire.

But mostly my attention has been on the blue inner tube-like inflatable collar my dog Annie wore post-knee surgery to keep her from licking her incision. Why not use the traditional plastic cone of shame? Because it’s cruel. The dog can’t see, can’t eat, can’t drink. The collar is easier on both of us—if it would just stay inflated.

We had three weeks of hard caregiving, starting with 12 pills a day and me constantly watching to make sure Annie didn’t get to her wound or overuse the leg which has been restructured with plates and screws.

And blowing air into the stupid collar. We had three different collars in three weeks. Air, it seems, is a hard thing to hold onto. Being a lousy balloon blower, I gave up and tried to use my late husband’s air compressor. It plugs into the car, forcing me to sit inside with the engine running while I direct air into the rubber nozzle. I couldn’t make it work at first. Desperate, I ran to the handy neighbor for help. He hooked it to a machine in his garage and had it blown up in seconds.

A week later, the collar sprang a leak. I woke up to find Annie licking her knee. No! The staples hoping her incision together were gone. But maybe it was okay. A nice scab had formed. Maybe the incision had healed enough to let her go commando.

Wrong. Fifteen minutes before I had to leave to play music for the 5:00 Mass on the Saturday nine days after her surgery, Annie sat in the back yard and licked the whole thing wide open while I was getting dressed. Cursing, I dragged her across the street and borrowed the neighbor dog’s plastic cone to get us through Mass. Annie went berserk, banging into me and knocking down furniture. I had to leave; the choir was waiting. God bless the neighbor who sat with her while I did Mass and went to the Mini Pet Mart to buy another inflatable collar.

Collar number two was too big, even though the measurements on the box were correct for a 20-inch neck. Annie slipped out of it during the night and again while I was taking a bath. She chewed up her wound. Ate the bandage I’d put on it.

We just had to get to her vet appointment on Monday, I thought, counting the hours till we’d be free.

No, said the vet. Look how red and oozy it is. She needs to wear the collar for another week and take another round of antibiotics. Back to the Mini Pet Mart, where Annie knocked over a display of jerky treats while I exchanged the giant collar for collar number three, my favorite because it glowed in the dark. That one worked until last Thursday, when it flattened from an inner tube to a cumbersome necklace. Rats.

I was not going to bother the neighbor again. I was not going to sit in my car trying to work the compressor either. I was going to blow it up with my own mouth if it killed me. Phew, phew, phew. Ow, my lungs. Deep breaths. I’m a smart woman. I could figure this out, right? What if I put my lips in the same position I learned in my failed attempt to learn to play the flute? OMG, it worked. Finally a use for my embouchure!

My success was short-lived. By bedtime, the collar was half flat. By morning, it was useless. I blew it up again and again, trying to keep it going just a little longer. Finally, Annie’s wound had healed enough. Hallelujah.

This morning, I gave her the last of her antibiotics. Collar-free, she can use the doggie door again, so I don’t have to escort her out to do her business. She still limps, she still has a bald back left leg, and I still keep looking at her incision to make sure it hasn’t opened up. But we seem to be past the worst of it.

I paid the first installment of the vet bill this morning, and I’ve got two limp collars sitting on the washing machine. I never did locate the leaks. I pray we never need to go through this again. But at least now I can blow up the inner tubes inside the collars by myself. I have also figured out the compressor, just in case.

Did you know there are YouTube videos on how to blow up a balloon? You’ve got to watch this one from Gregg the Balloon Guy. It’s funny, helpful, and he is so cute I think I’m in love. He also offers a solution if your mouth isn’t working: a balloon pump. Only about $5 online. He says all the good balloon guys use them.

I wondered who decided you could trap air inside things like balloons, inner tubes, tires and balls. How do you capture something that is neither solid nor liquid? Google had answers, of course.

This article explains how balloons were invented in 1824.

Check out this history of soccer balls.

Just for fun, here’s a piece on the invention of bubble wrap.

Why is there air? To blow up basketballs. That’s what Bill Cosby said on one of his comedy albums back when everybody loved him and “me too” was what you said when an adult asked, “Who wants ice cream?”

For now, I’m just happy to breathe air in and out and watch Annie do the same without an inflatable collar.

Can you blow up balloons? What’s the secret?

No, it’s not medicine, it’s a yummy treat!

It’s all about pills around the Lick house these days. Annie thinks they’re treats. Don’t tell her any different.

Post knee surgery, the dog came home from the veterinary hospital with six different medications to be administered at var IMG_20180831_083701117[1] ying intervals and frequencies. She had antibiotics, pills for pain, pills for inflammation, and pills for sedation. So many pills I needed a spreadsheet to keep them straight.

Some of Annie’s meds are chewable. Rimadyl, $90-plus a bottle, she gobbles down. Phycox chewies, which look like the old Rolo chocolate-caramel candies but smell like dirty socks, she snatches out of my hand. But most of her prescriptions are tablets or capsules.

Getting pills into a dog is not easy. It’s not like you can ask them to pop them in their mouth, swallow and chase them with a glass of water. No way. People say: Hide them in their food, coat them with peanut butter, bury them in cheese, chicken, or hot dogs. Maybe that works with their dogs, but not Annie. My dog can find the pill in any sort of disguise and spit it out, especially the capsules, which she can’t chew. It’s especially fun when she breaks the capsule open and scatters white drug powder everywhere.

You can buy a “pill shooter” to launch the medicine into the pup’s mouth, but aiming it into the mouth of a moving dog is a challenge. There’s also the method where two people hold the dog down and you force the pill deep into their throats, holding their mouth closed until they swallow. It works, but it’s not a good way to stay friends with your best friend. Also, there are no other people here.

Enter pill pockets. God bless the genius who invented them. What’s a pill pocket, you say. It’s like a circle of cookie dough with a hole in it for the pill. You insert the pill, smoosh the dough around it and offer it to the dog. She swallows it whole and looks for another one. Cephalexin, check. Tramadol, check. Trazadone, check. See you when you wake up.

Now how come dogs get to eat cookie dough and we don’t?

Never mind. I have purchased pill pockets in chicken, hickory, and peanut butter flavors at the Mini Pet Mart. None of the other local stores carry them. Walmart has an off-brand variety that Annie immediately rejected. I couldn’t blame her. Those pockets were hard and nasty. But at $12 for a bag of 30 and using an average of eight a day, we have gone through an awful lot of pockets, money, and trips to the pet store. For what looks like cookie dough.

Enough. I found a recipe online to make my own. All it takes is milk, flour and creamy peanut butter (the kind without xylitol). I wouldn’t get those perfectly formed circles like the store-bought ones, which list several more ingredients (rehydrated chicken, xanthan gum, “natural” flavors?), but maybe it would work. If Annie rejected them, I could eat them.

On Saturday, I made the homemade pockets. Easy enough, although I don’t see how they expect one to get 12 pockets out of one tablespoon each of milk and peanut butter, mixed with two tablespoons of flour. I got three. I put holes in them, added a pain pill and offered one to the dog.

She rolled it around the floor a while, then took it in her mouth with an expression of distaste on her doggy face like I had never seen before. Sheer horror. After she choked it down, I tried a bite. Oh. I apologized to the dog and offered her a meatball dog treat. Maybe we need a different recipe, something with butter and sugar. Meanwhile back to the pet store.

Until recently, I have always taken my own pills straight. Put in mouth, swallow, wash down with water, done. Most of the time. I have never been good with pills. I gag. I cough them up. I look at the big ones and wonder how I’m going to swallow them. Deep breath. Down the hatch. But not long ago, I bought a bottle of calcium gummies, orange and raspberry-flavored 500 mg. wonders that I actually enjoy. They’re loaded with sugar, and I question whether they’re as effective as the regular calcium pills, but they’re delicious. Like the dog, I always want another one.

They didn’t have gummies when I was a kid. I enjoyed the orange-flavored children’s aspirin Mom gave us. But the pills, ugh. We always got one of Mom’s homemade cookies after taking our medicine. How great it would it have been if she had put the pills in the cookies and all we tasted was cookie. But it took dog people to think of that.

Annie in donut 2018 With luck, Annie will soon be back to one arthritis chewy a day, and I can recycle the spreadsheets and empty pill bottles. At what used to be pill time, she’ll hound me for those delicious doughy treats.

What is your go-to pilling-the-pet process? Want to come over and make pill pockets?

Here are some sites that offer advice on medicating the pooch.

https://www.petmd.com/dog/care/how-give-your-pet-pill

https://iheartdogs.com/8-creative-ideas-for-getting-your-dog-to-take-their-medicine/

Do You Have a Bury-the-Body Friend?

17578403 - woman carrying spade I’ve gotta get me some friends, and not just Facebook friends, although I appreciate every one of you. I need some “bury the body”* friends, preferably young ones with strong backs.

County commissioner and sister writer Claire Hall shared that saying with me at a party on Saturday. A “bury the body” friend is one whom you can call at 3 a.m. to help you dispose of a corpse and they say, “I’ll be right there.” They don’t ask why you have a body to bury. They don’t say, “Are you crazy? It’s the middle of the night.” They just show up. With a shovel. That kind of friend.

I don’t expect to bury any bodies (okay, I did bury a dead rabbit a while back), but I do see the need for a bury-the-body friend. As a widowed, childless woman getting older by the second, I have been reading this book, Essential Retirement Planning for Solo Agers by Sara Zeff Geber. It’s extremely well done, and it scares the bejeebers out of me.

Geber’s main message is that we need to get our act together while we can. Even if we have spouses and kids, we need to make arrangements for our older years and our death. Our spouses may die. Our children may or may not jump in to help. And if we have neither, we’d better figure out who is going to handle such things as paying our bills, making medical decisions, making sure the dog gets fed, helping us to transition (God forbid) to a nursing home, or deciding what to do with our bodies when we die. Cheery stuff like that.

If we don’t have all our paperwork in order and haven’t chosen people to take care of things, either things will not be taken care of, or the job will be given to folks who don’t know us well enough to know what we would want.

So we need friends. Let me stress that I do have friends, wonderful friends, but most of them are older than I am. No, no, no, says Geber, you need to cultivate younger friends. Cozy up to them until you trust each other enough to put their names on your advanced directive. I’m not good at cozying. I hate networking. I’m uncomfortable at parties unless I’m playing with the band. Take a class, volunteer, join a club, says Geber, but I’m already plenty busy, and where I live, most of the people doing these things are seniors like me. Should I move?

How do all the people on TV sitcoms hook up with friends who are always together, always in one another’s homes, always there in a crisis? Does that really happen?

I’m working on ways to connect with friends under 65. I’m open to invitations and thinking of making some of my own, even though I’m an introvert who is much more comfortable at the computer.

How about you? Do you have a bury-the-body friend? If you don’t, do you worry about it? If you do have such a friend, how did you connect and how do you keep the friendship going?

Here’s another question: With young people so tied to their electronic devices, will they find themselves without lifelong bury-the-body friends in old age?

Please comment.

* I’m still trying to locate the original source of the “bury-the-body” saying, which has developed many variations, including that a real friend will show you the good spots for burying and that a real friend will assume that if you killed somebody they deserved killing.

** If you remember last week’s post, Annie the dog had knee surgery on Aug. 16. We were almost done with the worst of her recovery when her inflatable collar deflated early Saturday morning. I woke up to a limp collar and the dog licking her incision. She kept licking it, reopening the wound and making for a tense weekend. I bought a new collar that proved too big. She got it off and went back to licking. This morning, which was supposed to be the day for removing Annie’s sutures, the vet sentenced us to an extra week of the collar, the pills, and the inability for me to leave the dog for any longer than necessary. Back to the Mini Pet Mart. I bought a new collar that even escape artist Houdini could not get out of. We’re both going stir-crazy. Grr.

Photo Copyright: auremar / 123RF Stock Photo

The Trials of a Dog Wearing a Donut

Annie in donut 2018

Monday, 6 a.m.

I awaken for the umpteenth time and listen for the dog. I hear her shaking her head. Along with the big blue donut around her neck that’s driving her crazy, she has an ear infection, so neither one of us can sleep. Does she need to go out? Is she licking her incision? Is she choking on the bandage she ate last night? If she’s quiet, is she asleep or is she dead?

Seven more days. I’m not sure either one of us will survive. Annie had her second knee surgery on Thursday in Springfield, Oregon, a two-hour drive away. They don’t do this complicated bionic procedure on big dogs here in Newport. Oregon Veterinary Referral Associates is very nice, full of kind, talented people. If only they weren’t so far away. If only the air weren’t full of smoke from the various wildfires. If only it wasn’t 90 degrees out and the air conditioner on my Honda “Toaster” Element wasn’t broken. If only Annie hadn’t torn her left ACL a year and a month after she tore the ACL on her other leg.

The surgery went well, they say. After three days, Annie is beginning to put some weight on the leg. Just now when I finally got up to stay up, I found her on the easy chair in the den. “How did you do that?” I asked. She didn’t say. The leg must have worked well enough to get her up there. By the expression on her face, she doesn’t know how she’s going to get down.

I’m afraid to look at her incision. The first night, she got to it in spite of the donut, and removed several of her stitches. I mopped up a little blood and applied a bandage. I rejiggered the donut, and she doesn’t seem to be able to reach the remaining stitches. Except for church, when the neighbor doggie-sat, I have been with her constantly. Once in a while, we go for a short walk. She scoots along on three legs faster than I can walk, stopping to sniff here and there and to water the grass. Mostly we’ve been sitting on the floor. I pet her belly while reading, writing, watching videos on my tablet, or just contemplating the shocking fact that under her fur, my dog has fat thighs like me.

Last night, since I was right there, I took off the troublesome donut. She stretched out, rubbed her head on the rug in ecstasy and went to sleep. For hours. I couldn’t bear to wake her. I slipped into the other room to watch TV, checking on her at the commercials. Sleeping, sleeping . . . No! I caught her sitting up, licking her incision, bandage gone, shit-eating grin on her face.

I put the collar back on and gave her more of her six different medications while praying to God that she will be able to digest and excrete the big bandage, just as she has passed and excreted all manner of other things, including parts of a nylon collar, rubber toys, and wood. Please don’t let her need emergency surgery to remove the stupid bandage which her stupid mom left unattended and which her stupid mom absolutely cannot afford.

I contemplated a future without her. No. Please God, save us from our own stupidity.

I have told Annie that she has to live until I pay off this surgery. At least. Aside from the bandage making its way through her digestive tract, she’s healing well. Her incision looks fine. Her appetite is good, and she seems relatively happy. Except that the donut is driving her nuts because she can’t scratch her itchy ear, lick her stitches, or lick her bottom. I’m hoping the drugs help.

During my off-and-on sleep, I had wild dreams. A dog got hit by a car. My hair turned into this big bushy thing that got bigger the more I tried to control it. I won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. That was a nice one. But I’m as sleepy now as I was when I went to bed at 9:45 last night. Welcome to another doggy day.

If you have read my 2011 book Shoes Full of Sand, all of this may sound familiar. We went through two knee surgeries with Sadie, Annie’s predecessor. But Fred was here to help. They did the surgeries at our local vet’s office. Plus I was so much younger then.

On the good side, Annie’s a wonderful snuggler, and we communicate without words. I walk toward the door, suggesting she goes out. She stays put and licks her lips. No. I want to eat. I give her a pill in a chicken-flavored pill pocket, which she thinks is a treat. (God bless the people who invented pill pockets.) She interrupts my work to nose my sweatshirt and my shoes to tell me it’s time for a walk. I get up. She has me well-trained. Except that now she’s telling me she wants the donut gone. Not happening.

The car goes to the shop tomorrow for a whole day of repairs. $1,400. Turns out the air conditioner wasn’t all that was broken on the trusty toaster, which has covered a lot of miles this year.

God willing, we will survive this, but it’s going to be a long, long week.

We’re Never Too Old to Sing and Play

Gus & Trish 91315 — Gus Willemin and Trish Morningstar at the South Beach open mic

I was sitting at the piano at the Saturday evening Mass when I got a vision of me and my three-woman choir in Newport, Oregon being echoed at churches all over the world, singing and chanting the same songs at the same Mass. It was beautiful.

Behind me that night sat two visiting couples, probably in their 70s. Both of the men sang out, one in a strong voice, the other in a reedy rasp. Both came up to talk afterward. The burly guy from Vancouver thanked me for lowering the key on a couple of the songs, making them easier to sing. The other man, thin, balding, with an earring in his left ear, shared that he is losing his voice to cancer. “Did any of you girls ever smoke?” he asked us. We shook our heads. “Well, good.”

All three of my Saturday singers are over 70. I’m getting closer every day. Our Sunday choir also has its share of septuagenarians. But none of these singers are “geezers.” Nobody is ready to settle in their easy chair to watch TV till they die. In fact, they’re so active it’s difficult to keep up with their schedules, whether they’re singing with Sweet Adelines, hosting charity events, working at the rec center, serving as Master Gardeners, taking classes, visiting grandchildren, or traveling to the Bahamas.

To most of the congregation, I’m a fixture. They only see the back of my head, if they can see me at all. The music automatically happens. Maybe the teenagers think I’m corny with my button earrings and my pixie cut hair playing the moldy old songs like “Holy Holy Holy,” then rocking out to “Sing of the Lord’s Goodness.” But I catch the little kids staring at me as they come up for Communion. When I smile at them, they smile back, star struck. The piano lady smiled at me!

Of course to some of them I’m the guitar lady because I play for the kids in the religious education on Wednesday nights. Some of our big hits are “Alle, Alle, Alleluia” and “The Butterfly Song.” The little kids sing with gusto, but when they become teenagers, they seem to lose their enthusiasm for the music. Why is that? Will they get it back when they’re old like me? It’s hard for me to understand because I never stopped loving music.

I had a very musical weekend. Every Friday from 3 to 5 p.m., the Waldport song circle meets at the community center. We have a blend of “young” guitar guys just starting to turn gray, a steady group in their 70s and 80s, and Doug, 97, who can’t wait to get to the piano. The music is rarely perfect, but it feels good.

Yesterday, we had our monthly South Beach open mic—second Sunday, 5 to7 p.m. at the South Beach Community Center. Again, it’s a majority of gray hairs. We get ukuleles, mandolins, guitars, fiddles, flutes, saxophones, cellos, and drums. We sing gospel, folk, rock, pop, Beatles, Dylan, Grateful Dead. Anything goes. We accompany each other and harmonize. This wave of sound builds up. Riding it is better than surfing, I swear.

We share a language of music in common, songs that we all know from school, church, the radio, and American Bandstand: “This Little Light of Mine,” “Mr. Bojangles,” “Jeremiah was a Bullfrog,” “Ain’t Misbehavin’.” We grew up in an era when teachers made time for music. I remember loving those thick books full of songs that we sang while teachers played clunky old school pianos. “Waltzing Matilda,” “Funiculi Funicula,” “Little Brown Jug.” Do you remember? I wonder if children do that at all now.

Kids whose parents can afford it, still take music lessons, but do they get together and just sing? Are they too busy fiddling with their phones? Do they think listening to Granddad strum and sing is too corny to think about?

We old folks are still learning new songs and new skills. We battle arthritis and hearing aids. We struggle to figure out which pair of glasses will let us actually read the sheet music, but there are too many great songs to ever stop. We may have to lower the key a little these days, but like that man at church who is losing his voice to cancer, we’re going to sing until we can’t sing anymore. Then, like one of my favorite songs says, we’ll whistle, and when we can’t do that, we’ll listen.

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