UNE ARTISTE

Do you see why I call her the Beautiful Artistic Daughter?

When she came by for a visit recently, she had put her hair up and wrapped it in what I called "a head rag".

I'm sure it has some fancier term.

But when I looked up and saw her I said, "Wow! You look like an artiste!"

She responded, "I am!" 

As the three of us were sitting together, her mother said, "I told her I don't think she looks a day over 50."

I thought even younger than that.

But truth be told, she recently celebrated a landmark birthday 20 years beyond that half-century mark.

I find it hard to believe.

But when I realize that I've known her for 54 years . . .

I still think she's more beautiful now than she was way back then.

THE FRIDAY FUNNIES

 Okay, it's time to stop protesting, to put all sad things behind.

It's time for the pre-Saturday sappiness.

So let's not solicit a second more of your time.

Let's get on with it!

That's all I've got, Gentle Readers and Mirthful Mavens.

No, please take the rest of it for yourselves and attempt to have an artfully fine weekend.

But ALWAYS . . . ALWAYS REMEMBER TO KEEP LAUGHING!

Here, kitty-kitty . . .

( . . . uh, huh, I suspected as much . . . )

A YARD SALE

 The little girl who lives across the street is always in motion.  She bursts out the door and jumps on her tiny bicycle or a scooter and races around the driveway and sometimes even into the street.  We live on a rather remote street so that doesn't consist of too much danger.  Just enough.

Her energy is enviable.  But she is only seven or eight years old so that is easy to understand.

I'm guessing that she must have recently gone to a yard sale with someone.  She must have decided that was a great way to make some money.

This afternoon she started hauling items out into the front yard of her home.  Many articles colored pink.  Her mother helped her bring larger items out of a very crowded garage.

The little girl carried item after item out.  She arranged them and re-arranged them repeatedly.  Then she sat down in a tiny chair and waited for the customers to flock in.  

And waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Then she walked out and looked up and down the street.  When a car was heard approaching, she would look down the street and start waving her arms in a beckoning motion as the car whizzed past.

This went on for about an hour and a half.  No one stopped.  She disappeared into the house.

Now, as the sun is setting, the garage door is back up and the items are slowly being returned inside.

 - - - by Judith Taylor

MAY DAY

Now don't tell me about the first day of May being celebrated as a Workers' Day, or a really big deal for international Communists.

And don't start with it being the first day of Asian Pacific American Heritage month or that it's celebrated as Lei Day in Hawaii.

Or that it's National Learn to Ride a Bike Day or World Carnivorous Plant Day.

I might lean a bit in the direction of National Chocolate Parfait Day.

When I was a tot, the first of May was celebrated by hanging May Baskets on people's doorknobs and running away.

The lucky recipient would open the door to find no one there but a basket containing these types of candies.

I've outgrown those.

No I go back, way back, to the ancient pagans who knew how to mark this period between Spring and Summer.

They danced around a May-Pole.

Modern Day Pagans paint themselves green and indulge in drinking and dining and perhaps some other whims of mind.

I'm all in on that.

However and whatever you celebrate, Happy May Day!

WARMING UP

 Those of you who have had to put up with me bitching about commenting on our cool weather this Spring can now say it: nah-nah-nah-NAH-nah-nah.

For on this April 30th here in lovely Arizona, the mercury has climbed to near 80 degrees in mid-afternoon.

That's almost 27 degrees Celsius in Canada and Europe and Australia and, well, most of the rest of the enlightened world.

Now I'm not complainin'.

In fact I fired up the oven in the Taylor Family Kitchen this morning to replenish Judy's supply of English Muffin Bread.

Honest to gawd, they really aren't that ugly.

They're purtier than that, I swear.

I even tipped one loaf over on it's side to try to get an artsy-fartsy shot.

Well, there's not much else I can do.

Like me, they don't photograph well.

But Judy says they make great toast for her breakfast so there.

I remember many years ago when I was working for a television station in Phoenix, where it gets much hotter than here.

I got the bright idea one day to see if the old saying "It's so hot you could fry an egg on the sidewalk" was actually true.

Maybe if we'd left it longer it might have fried.

Or burned, more likely.

But the idea was a failure as the egg just turned into a slimy mess on the sidewalk.

It did work (sort of) though when we tried one on the hood of my photographer's car.

I don't think our culinary efforts got picked up by either Gourmet or Bon Appetit magazines though.

I'm still waiting to hear from the Food Channel.

A GOOD EVENING

 

Sorry about the roof-tops but I wanted to get as much of the clouds as I could.

It probably would have been a better picture if I'd have noticed it earlier.

So it goes.

CAKE! er, PIE! er, MUFFINS! (whatever)

 My extremely talented wife, Judith (Judy) Taylor aka She Who Must Be Obeyed, is a good teller of tales.

Now by that I do NOT mean to imply that she's a liar.

She's just a good writer.

But she's modest to a fault.

She was a bit gobsmacked by all the kind comments on her story yesterday about putting her mother in a retirement center.

I kept praising her as comment after comment came in and she scoffed, "They're just trying to kiss up to you."

I reminded her that she's the only one of us who has written a novel.

It's unpublished but still!

Then she got a telephone call from a very dear friend in Seattle, who told her how much she appreciated her essay.

They talked about my blog and how about every three weeks I say, "I don't know, I think I'll end it, I don't have anything more to say."

Our friend said, "No, no, just tell him how much I enjoy reading it."

Judy said that she had told me I should stop blogging about food so much.

Our friend responded that anyone who cooks the kind of food we do should be proud of it and keep blogging about it.

So . . . . the other day SWMBO tried a recipe she found in a drawer for Banana Pecan Muffins.

The only problem was it made way more batter than the dozen muffins the recipe called for.

And we didn't have another muffin tin.

So she put the extra batter in a pie plate and baked it that way.

Some cream cheese frosting topped it off and here it is.

The photographer (NOT Judy) didn't do a very good job.

But the cake or pie or whatever is delicious!

And the blog lives on.

(Thanks, Seattle Lori, for the stimulus.)