Suebob's Red Stapler

Question: why do old people put things in the back windows of their cars? I mean on that shelf under the back window of sedans. A lot of times it is hats. Or stuffed animals. Or decorative kleenex boxes.

Does some memo go out with your Medicare sign-up letter? “Please put something in your car window to signify that you are now One of Us?”

Anywhoozle, I was sitting at a stoplight today and saw an egregious example of this in the back window of one of those early 2000 Lexuses.

It was a stuffed animal, but a really rough-looking one. Slightly matted fur, lumpy, fat flattening out around the edges. The world’s ugliest stuffed cat in the back window of this car.

“Why?” I wondered at the red light. “Why?”

The light turned green, the car accelerated…and the cat turned its head.

The dang cat was real. A fat, old, very sleepy long-haired Siamese riding as calmly as Queen Victoria in a carriage.

“Why?” I wondered. “Why?”

I should probably put this over on my food blog. In other news, holy cats, I forgot I have a food blog. Oh, well, what’s a little 4-year lapse between posts?

Here’s a recipe. No photos, no videos. Imagine pesto. But not basil-y.

The Green Sauce.

You can put it on anything. Meat, veg, chips, potatoes, rice. Whatever. It’s that good.

1/2 small or medium onion or a shallot. What-have-you.

1 clove garlic

Massive bunch of parsley (say 2-3 regular-sized bunches. 3 is better)

Massive bunch of cilantro (see above)

Leaves from a big sprig of oregano, if you have it on hand. If not, a sprink of dried oregano or just forget it, no matter, it’s still good.

A goodly splash of olive oil. 1/3 to 1/2 cup or so

About a tablespoon of mild vinegar. I use rice wine vinegar, but cider will work, or even white, in a pinch.

Salt, pepper, blah blah

Instrucciones:

With your food processor fitted with the s-blade and the motor running, drop in the onion and garlic clove. Voila, instant choppage.

Open the food processor and stuff the herbs inside. You washed them, right? If not, what the hell is wrong with you?

Pour some olive oil over. Just some. You can’t put too much, so don’t worry. Add a glurg of vinegar. Salt, pepper. Replace the lid.

Turn that puppy back on. If the herbs aren’t getting chopped, add more olive oil until they start moving.

Process until the greens are a fairly smooth pesto-ish paste. Taste, add more vinegar and salt and pepper if needed.

If the texture is squeaky, put in more olive oil and process a bit more.

That is it. A lovely green paste that is a spread, a dip, a sauce. My dad would say “It is good and good for you.”

Enjoy.

Yeah, #metoo. Sexual harassment is all over the news. Harvey Weinstein broke the floodgates open, then half of Silicon Valley flowed out, along with much of Hollywood and even old Grampy George H.W. Bush.

Meanwhile, women have been saying #metoo. Some women are talking in detail about their experiences. Stalkers, gropers, inappropriate drunks, catcalls, rapes. Other women are quiet, wondering how much to say and what we will contribute – or what we will face – by coming out now.

Less skillful voices are weighing in, too. It’s a “witch hunt,” it’s “McCarthyism,” it’s “getting on the bandwagon” – as if something being horrible and common somehow makes it less horrible.

What’s the big deal, the grabbing, the groping, the staring, the comments, the “Can’t you take a joke?” chortles and sniggers?

I’ll tell you what the deal is. It’s not just the ass-grabbing. It’s the dreams dying. It’s hopes being abandoned. It’s creative projects never reaching fulfillment.

For every woman who has toughed it out and learned to ignore, to look away, to never be alone, to be blank-faced – there are five women who have stepped away.

They have decided that they can come to work, put their game face on, sharpen their talents, be creative, follow their dreams, try hard – but they can’t do all that and simultaneously face a hostile environment that reduces them to being sex toys for grown boys.

So one day after realizing they have gotten drunk every night for a month to try and forget the abuse and harassment they have to deal with each day, they stop showing up to work.

They take a lesser position somewhere else. They stop speaking up. They try to fade into the background. They put their dreams away and focus on just getting through the day. The world needs every woman’s dream and every good idea. We are all poorer for the loss of these dreams.

Meanwhile, their harassers go on, getting praise and promotions and moving up the ladder, all the while crushing dreams as they go. They don’t mind – in fact, they enjoy it – treating people as playthings is part of their reward for doing so well. After all, they’re just having fun.

Did I ever tell you about the guy I reported for exposing himself to a female co-worker? No? I just checked LinkedIn. He’s the boss now. I wonder where our co-worker is.

Here’s the rule: it’s not fun unless everyone is having fun. And if people are walking away with their dreams in dust and tears in their eyes, they’re not having fun.

After four long days (full-speed from 6 am to 10 pm every day) at a work meeting, I was burnt to a nubbin and ready to go home on a Friday afternoon. All that stood between my and my comfy chair in California was a taxi ride, check-in, airport security and a 1900 mile, 5 hour flight. Oh, and a 90 minute drive home. Ok, kind of a lot of stuff.

The Lyft driver was very nice, up until the point I wanted him to drop me at my actual terminal, which he had missed. He refused to go around (“It takes a long time, like 5 minutes!”), so he dropped me 3 terminals down from where I belonged and I schlepped. It was of course under construction, a holiday corn maze of plywood and duct tape and cables.

When I went to check in with Delta, there was a problem with my flight. A problem I don’t want to talk about because it was all my fault. A problem created by not being able to tell the difference between AM and PM. Yes, I my flight was at 6 am and I arrived at the airport at 2 pm. While I was trying to get this sorted, someone set off a piercing, 95-decibel alarm that no one seemed to know how to turn off. It went on, minute after minute, everyone just looking around like stunned mullets.

I stood there thinking I was probably going to have to pay something like $1500 out of my own pocket to get home. Then I remembered my company travel office. The alarm thankfully shut off. I called the travel office, and 15 minutes and a $75 change fee later, I was in possession of a seat back to California.

While I was on the phone, I was smushed in a corner of the terminal with some potted plants, a German family of four, and an elderly couple. We were adjacent to the Lufthansa check-in, which wasn’t open. A young man came out and began to carefully arrange the stanchions and belts that made up the pre-counter maze. He arranged and arranged. He removed belts, straightened them, and put them back. He moved stanchions an inch one way, then an inch back. He lined everything up. He adjusted. He re-lined.

It was such a lengthy performance and so precise that I began wondering “I know the Germans have a reputation for precision – is this that, or OCD?” Then I looked over and the German family and the elderly couple were also staring with barely concealed glee at the young man’s determination to make a perfect grid-like maze. He went on and on. And on.

All of us began glancing at each other and glancing sideways at him, as if to ask each other silently “Are you seeing this craziness?” We began bonding in our wonderment, which made an otherwise isolating airport seem less lonely. We began to chuckle, then laugh, then guffaw. And all that time, the young man never glanced our direction.

I had to go to security, or I might have gotten to see if he ever opened the sales desk. For all I know, he might still be there.

I have been doing some stuff. Going on the defense against the voices in my mind.

I had four-day work meeting in Florida and was waaaaaaay nervous about it. The crowd is super accomplished, smart, fit.

And then there’s me.

Dreamy, schlubby, largeish. Clutching a degree from a not-very-good state U.

So I went and bought work-appropriate clothings and let the ladies talk me into matching jewelry, something modern – large and shiny and bold but not kooky.

I got my hairs did. Cut AND colored some, just enough to take the crazy level of grey out. Foil was involved. And the handing over of large wads of cash.

I got shoes. Lady shoes.

Then a mani-pedi, first in my life. I have had the mani part but not the pedi. I hate people messing with me in general, so I had to talk myself into it.

The mani was standard. Pedi, they strapped me into an electric recliner, put an eyebag over my eyes, and went to work. The electric recliner was supposed to be a massage chair, but it was really just a thing that poked me in the back, lumbar, sacral region and butt. Poke, poke, poke.

I thought about stopping the massage, but then my butt got used to being poked every 10 seconds. It was enjoyable, sort of. Then I was done. I left with Pepto-pink nails, pumpkin spice toes.  I handed over more cash.

This self-confidence thing is expensive. But I’m glad I did it. It’s bad enough to feel like you’re not as on-the-ball as everyone else without looking like it, too. I don’t think I looked fabulous, but I blended in, which is about what I aimed for. I just didn’t want to embarrass my boss, for whom I have great respect.

I still felt like an odd duck – a quirky, creative person in a sea of people who deal with the concrete and quantifiable. But I imagine most of them felt like odd ducks in their own way as well, because I think 95% of us do – we imagine we’re the only ones who feel like kids playing at adulthood, when we really all just want to go home and get in our jammies.

Before I left, I set my intention to love these people, and I think I largely succeeded. I had a few eye-rolling moments and a few impatient sighs, but for the most part did what I wanted to, which is to make people feel like I was glad they were there.

When I picked up Abbie Lynn (my dog) yesterday, she was happy to see me. For about 10 seconds. Then it occurred to her that she was going to have to leave her best friend, Shelby, who runs the dog boarding place. I could see her look back and forth between us. Shelby got a long goodbye hug and off we went. Now we’re chilling in our jammies.

For the past few days, people in Ventura have been talking about bioluminescence happening at our beaches.

Red tides, which often contain harmful algal blooms (HABs), are caused by chemical reactions that occur between algae and other substances. Red by day, blue by night, this colorful ocean phenomenon is a relatively rare natural occurrence…Visible only in the dead of night, phytoplankton emit a soft bluish glow when disturbed, due to a specific chemical reaction that takes place between the algae and surrounding oxygen. Similar to the glow of a lightning bug, the algae glow can be seen within crashing waves, following boat movements and other disturbances in the water. All that is interesting.com

I didn’t know what it would look like. I imagined glowing blobs in the water. Last night, I found out as Abbie and I walked down by the harbor after dark.

It was one of those things where you feel like your eyes are deceiving you. I saw a wave crash glowing turquoise blue in the moonlight and briefly thought “Do they always look like that?”

I walked closer and got my answer. No, no they do not. The waves were full of flashing blue, like soft turquoise lightning under the water. A wave would break and a line of blue would race down the shore along with it. And the boats in the harbor were followed by streams and pools of light.

It was magical. I’m not exactly sure why, but it gave me hope.

I have been so horribly depressed since the presidential election. Each day brings some new crudeness, some new horror, some new assault on freedom and decency. I go about my days feeling like I am going to crack. I feel worn out by it all, like I can never get enough rest, and the rest I do have is shallow and ineffective.

But those blue lights, they showed me a glimpse of another world, a place beyond laws and borders and hatred. A place of hope for something different.

This all made it worth it when I landed flat on my face when I fell into a hole about 2 feet deep someone had dug in the sand. I had been looking at the waves and it was really dark and then…boof. Down she goes.

But I got up, brushed myself off (though there is still sand in my crossbody bag), and kept walking, eager to see what more magic the night would offer.

I got on the train by myself to go from Joliet to Chicago. The Metra train cars are cool – regular double bench seats down below and a second story of single seats along the edges, with an opening over the aisle so you can see the first floor. Of course I had to sit up top!

Two teen boys got on the train, sat down below, and flipped the train seats so they could put their feet and bags on the seats across from them.

The conductor, a man about 6’3″ with an imposing beard, walked through.

“Feet off the seats, boys,” he commanded. There were signs, too.

The boys took their feet off the seats and put them back up as soon as the conductor left the car.

He reappeared about 30 seconds later.

“How many tickets did you buy?” he asked them.

“We bought tickets,” they said.

“How many? Because if you want a seat and your feet want a seat, you had better have four tickets. If your bags want a seat, that is six tickets.”

“Why can’t we put our feet on the seats?”

“I just came through and told you to keep your feet off the seats and you put them right back up. There are signs that tell you not to. But you ignored them.”

“The train isn’t even full.”

“I don’t care if the train is full. I care about the safety and convenience of the customers.”

“We’re customers. We bought tickets.”

“You bought tickets? Or your parents bought your tickets? Do you have a job? Do you live under your own roof? I think your parents would agree with me. Now keep your feet off the seats.”

They took their feet off the seats. And I took the opportunity to give him a thumbs-up from my perch upstairs.

Warning: a post about poop.

By way of explanation.

I never go out into the back yard. It is a narrow strip of dirt and concrete behind my house, maybe 10 feet wide, 40 feet long.

First of all, the dog pees and poops there, so ew. Thankfully she confines her poops to a small area over on the north side, so I can quickly locate and dispose of her waste.

Second, it is either in the direct sun or deep shade, and I have a nice porch with a semi-translucent roof upstairs on the north side, where I can sit and enjoy the fresh air, so who needs the back yard?

Third, the back yard is lower than the adjacent parking lot, so if I were to sit out there, I’d have the uncomfortable feeling of being gazed down upon by all the random car-parkers.

And lastly, the pot-smoking neighbor is out in his back yard ALL the time, emitting vast clouds of really stanky pot smoke many times a day. I’m not sure how high you need to be, but this guy is higher than that.

All this by the way of excusing myself. Because.

Ok, I’m going to tell you.

I had been dutifully cleaning up the dog turds in Abbie’s spot to the north and ignoring the back yard. The other day I looked out the back door on the south and…horror.

Abbie had switched spots. There were piles upon piles of nasty dried leavings. If anyone had looked down there, they would have thought “Wow, a really nasty person lives here.”

And I suppose one does.

I want every single person who is ever tempted to say “We speak English here” to someone to do this: go live in a non-English speaking country for a few weeks and try to learn the language and live your life.

You’ll learn more than just the language and culture. You’ll learn how humiliating it is to not be able to express your needs (one day I ended up telling a woman at a pharmacy “Those little things that go around your finger” because I couldn’t think of the word for “bandage”).

You’ll learn how much your language defines YOU. How lost you feel when you can’t use your wit, your humor, your clever turns of phrase to ease social situations. How humiliating it is to talk like a three-year-old and to be treated like you’re dumb because of it.

You’ll say incredibly stupid things by accident, without meaning to.

You’ll learn that, without fluency, many people will have no time for you, that they will turn away in impatience and frustration rather than to bother with your foolishness. You’ll be relegated to the background, desperately trying to figure out what people are saying to one another right in front of you.

You’ll learn to treasure the people who do have patience and kindness for your bumbling with their language. You’ll see their lovely hearts shining past this barrier that divides you, and you will want to cry from relief.

I only exist because of Gaviota. Gaviota did not exist before my family and was erased from the earth soon after we left. The only people who ever really knew that spot were the 50 or so of us who lived there over the short 17 year span when it arose, was populated, and was destroyed. It was a place that belonged only to us, a wisp of wood smoke on the wind, passing into existence and then quickly out again.

You can drive by and still see the sign by the side of the road. It says something like Gaviota, population 93, but those people – if there are even 93 anymore –  are scattered in isolated spots for dozens of miles among the mountains and valleys. The real Gaviota, our Gaviota, was a place we simply called The Hill.

On The Hill, there were seven small white wooden houses in a row at the top of a winding half-mile road up from the highway. They were ringed by a road made of crushed rock, and faced the Pacific Ocean and San Miguel Island offshore. The nearest town was Buellton, 13 miles away, with a population of just 300 back then.

Each house had 2 bedrooms and a front yard and back yard and a storage shed out back. They were built as worker housing by the Flying A oil company, and everyone who lived there worked, as we said “In the oil patch.”

After returning from World War II, my 27-year-old father Bernard married my 19-year-old mother, Pauline, in January, 1946. In November of that year, my eldest sister, Elva, was born. For the next four years, my parents moved again and again as my father sought steady work in a sputtering economy. He farmed, he started a tractor repair business with my grandfather, he worked as a mechanic, but work was never steady.

In the summer of 1950, my mom was again pregnant and sweating in a tiny one-bedroom t
in-roof shack in Los Olivos. The water heater stuck in one corner of the kitchen made the house even hotter. My mother, tired of moving and struggling and not even knowing where the new baby was going to sleep when it arrived was fed up with the whole thing.

One day my father came home to ask my mother “How would you like to live in a brand new house with a view of the ocean?” My father had landed a job with Flying A oil company and the house, newly constructed, was part of the deal. That house saved my mom’s sanity and that job provided my father work for the next 35 years.
Because of that job and that house, my parents went on to have five more children instead of an early divorce. I was the last of those children.

My father and all the other men worked at the marine terminal, which was across the highway from our homes, under the bony arms of a black iron railroad trestle. At the terminal, tanker ships off-loaded oil to storage tanks on land. Shiny silver trucks came at all hours to pick up the oil products and drive away to destinations unknown.

The men’s work in the oil patch was a source of pride and terror. We were never blind to the dangers of working with oil and solvents and gasoline and gas. We all knew people who had been badly hurt or killed at work.

My own dreams were haunted by the sump – an open pit of black oil about 15 feet square. It was surrounded by what seemed to be an entirely inadequate and flimsy iron railing, which had bars set so far apart a child of my age could easily slide through to certain death, because, as my father told me, no one could swim or survive in the pool of oil. I had no way of telling how deep it was, which was the scariest part of all.

The marine terminal faced a crescent moon beach about a half-mile wide, protected on both ends by natural walls of crumbly yellow rock that extended out into the sea. The only name of the beach was “Our Beach.” You could get there either through the marine terminal or by scrambling down steep rock cliffs about a mile away and walking in at low tide – and out before the tide rose again – so we rarely saw anyone but ourselves there.

The people on the hill worked together and lived side-by-side, far removed from other civilization. Every day, all day long, we could see and hear each other. With town so far away, we counted on each other for help, support and love. That intimacy marked our lives and led to lifelong friendships that still feel more like family than family.

When the oil company reevaluated its strategy of providing worker housing in the late 1960s, all seven families were kicked off the hill, which at the time seemed like a tragedy, shattering the sweet way of life we had become accustomed to. Low rent, close to work, an ocean view, a private beach, a close community – how could we leave all that behind? The seven wooden houses were torn down and the land bulldozed to make room for a new, larger refinery. The place that existed only for us was wiped away as if it had never been.

As sad as it seemed at the time, the truth was that the move forced my parents to become homeowners, something that set them up for a lifetime of economic stability that benefits my mom even at age 91.

Almost 50 years later, most of our family stories and memories are set in Gaviota, and we have all said that when we sleep and have dreams of home, those dreams are always set back on the hill.