A Convivial Birthday Season

Yikes, how did it happen? I’m way behind again. Well, let’s get started. On June 20, I went to the Zen Center for a meeting of my class, which is called Establishing the Path of Practice. I left a tad early to walk over to the apartment of Tom’s niece Sarah, who is a very open-hearted and kind and lovely young lady who threw a dinner party to celebrate my birthday! That was extraordinarily sweet of her, and I know it was a lot of work.

I should say that a couple of months prior, I got a voice mail from her saying that she would like to do this, and suggesting we go out to eat (we went to Tsunami for sushi) so we could plan the dinner party. That was pretty much like getting a call from Benicio del Toro saying, “Let’s get together so I can give you a foot massage while we plan your upcoming date with Viggo Mortensen.” That is, it was very good.

Here’s who was at the dinner party: Sarah, Josh (Sarah’s partner), Steve (Sarah’s uncle), Julie (Steve’s wife), Paul (Sarah’s father), Dan (Sarah’s other uncle), Tom (Sarah’s other uncle), me (the birthday lady), my friend Carol Joy (usually of Novato), Dave (Paul’s friend), and Christine (Dave’s friend). I got a pile of presents, including something approximating a pith helmet, and a big bunch of flowers, and we communed and enjoyed Sarah’s wonderful dinner. It was a splendid party.

Eva was in Sweden, but she called us, and Chris had to work, but he later came to San Francisco and treated me to dinner at Ziryab on Divisadero (Kristin, Tom, and Sarah were there, too), which was another very congenial occasion, so, given that Amy had also made me birthday pizza and cake and invited people over when I was in Michigan, this was by far my best-celebrated birthday in 47 years. So that was extremely great.

A week later, on a splendid Saturday morning, I woke up with the strong feeling that it was intolerable that anything in my apartment should be stored in a paper bag whose contents I wasn’t sure of without digging through the bag, and leapt out of bed to rectify the situation.

In a couple of hours, matters were greatly improved, with things (even) better organized and fewer things that are out of sight or out of reach. New empty horizontal surfaces appeared, even though I didn’t discard anything to speak of.

Later on, I went to the dentist for approximately the twenty-fifth time in nine months. Since then, one of my new crowns fell off, so I’ll be going again soon.

The next day, I made chard lasagna and two-bean chili with bulgur, and ventured my third attempt at whole-wheat bread. This “kneading” suggested by my mother proved to be quite a good idea: this loaf was absolutely perfect, soft and chewy and with a fine flavor. (My mother adds some cracked wheat to her dough for a firmer texture.)

After that, I had more and less success, so I decided to take the bread website’s advice and start with white bread and work my way back to whole-wheat bread; I also got Beth Hensperger’s book The Bread Bible, 300 Favorite Recipes. I want to make olive bread.

This past weekend, I made two utterly gorgeous and delicious loaves of white bread, as you can see for yourself, the gorgeous part, anyway. It’s really good toasted with a bit of garlic olive oil drizzled on it.

In July, Tom suffered a double communications whammy: his PC died AND it turned out he hardly gets any TV stations in the digital TV era, even though he got the converter; he would be in better shape if he could speak Spanish or the language Chinese people speak. He also has a microwave he’s trying to get rid of, so far without success, so he noted, charmingly, that he was “rich in e-waste.” (As are most of us, I guess, sooner or later.)

For entertainment, he was forced to do puzzles, the kind that are made of little pieces of cardboard that can be fitted together.

The one good thing was that I got to tell Tom all the news for a while, until his mother very generously gave him a laptop she was no longer using. On one evening, for instance, he was the only person in San Francisco who didn’t know Palin had resigned the governorship of Alaska.