The Edge of the Continent

What's happening with you? We're living large out here in Covid-California times. I haven't posted in over a week, but I've composed many in my mind. That was our Fourth of July celebration. We weren't celebrating #TerribleAmerica but tried to make the best of the day. I don't feel like using this space today to rant and rave about this country or the POSPOTUS, but I will inform you that I don't think I've ever been this stressed out in my lifetime and it's not just about the pandemic, the POSPOTUS and the Assholes Who Still Support Him. There is so much stuff happening, none of which I can control but all of which I am juggling because -- well -- apparently that is what the universe is currently demanding of me. I am on edge. I am the edge. My ex continues to detonate giant mushroom clouds; I am now supporting my tenant whose job was affected by Covid, who can't pay rent and who is entitled to stay rent-free as long as the moratorium is in place.  Don't ask. I've started my baking business up to help make ends meet and am currently deep into peach pie. Last night, Sophie had three giant seizures in a row and I changed over five diapers in two hours and then I just told Henry to keep an eye on her, got in my car and drove toward the edge of the continent. I played Ennio Morricone's music because he died yesterday, and I cried and wanted to yell but then I got to the ocean, so I parked the car and walked out onto the sand and just stood there, in the dark, listening to the surf, the lights of the Santa Monica pier bright in the distance. No one was on that ferris wheel but it looked pretty in an apocalyptic way. The world is vast and oh, so weird.

I felt better.

Today I am thinking of you, Reader. How are you doing? What are you doing? Reading? Listening to? Watching?



Here's a poem:

Not Writing

A wasp rises to its papery
nest under the eaves
where it daubs

at the gray shape,
but seems unable
to enter its own house.

Jane Kenyon (1993)

Tuesday Evening Tiny Little Mother Mind™ Peach Pie and Miscellany

In case you're wondering, Sophie continues to enjoy her new community-based adult day program. Today, she and a group of other clients went to the California Science Center. They rode the train downtown, and evidently Sophie loved the ocean room. Of course.

I took this picture this morning. I love Sophie's hands. They are so delicate and fine. I wish that she could use them more.

This sign made me smile and roll my eyes. It's hard to believe what's happened in the last five years in the cannabis medicine world. That being said, I heard about a neurological/pharmaceutical conference recently where the Powers That Be spent a good amount of time denigrating the CBD oils that we've been using for so long. The usual Two-Faced Neuro was there, sort of my nemesis if I really gave a shit anymore, which I don't. He was doing his thing, and this tiny little mother mind™ was doing hers.

Surprise, surprise. I hate to be cynical, but these guy and lady docs are about as cliche as the older man who has an affair with a younger woman.

Recently, a newspaper article touting the benefits of Epidiolex, the new CBD-only single-molecule pharmaceutical approved for Lennox-Gastaut and Dravet Syndrome, quoted a physician who said something to the effect of the "artisan oils" being used were "impossible to test." I don't mince words. What a load of crap. If crap could be, it'd also be transparent -- so clear that Big Pharma and the stooges in the medical world are busy, busy, busy undermining everything that's been done. Telling lies. Propaganda.

Don't get me started.

I made a peach pie today. It's one of the monthly offerings in my gig as baker for Everyone Needs Cake,™ in this case, pie. I took the skins of the peaches, Reader, and honestly? It was like slipping off a silk nightgown.

I tossed them in sugar and whiskey and let them sit for a bit.

I cooked the juices that collected after they sat for a while, added some cornstarch and cooked that up. Then I rolled out the pie dough that I'd made earlier and dumped the peaches in. I made a lattice with the other disc of pie dough and then I froze the whole thing for a couple of hours.

Here's the finished product -- perhaps a tad too brown in places, but my God! Those naked, cooked peaches sure smell good!

#Dessertfordinner

Oliver and I had a peach and raspberry pie for dinner. It was a disappointing day for several reasons, most unbloggable.

The pie made up for it. Plus, there was no sugar in it and only pieces of top crust so we felt moderately virtuous.

Pie and Where the Regular Folk are in LA

Tonight are the Emmy Awards, and when you live in this town you always know people who are either going or might even be nominated for one. I do have friends who are going, but the rest of us, the normal people, go to the Pie Contest at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. We wait on line in the blazing sunshine and walk slowly by the tables laden with every sort of pie you could imagine. One special category was the Tim Burton Pie, in keeping with the Tim Burton exhibit currently running at the museum. Here is my favorite one in that category:

James and the Giant Peach Peach Pie

As we strolled down that table of pies, Sophie kept reaching her arm out toward them, trying to grab one. I love that she was so engaged.

Peach Pie and Trouble in Paris

I had about six peaches sitting on my counter, growing wizened. I cut them up, sprinkled some superfine sugar, cinnamon, and flour on them and tossed it all together. I had a Trader Joe's piecrust, frozen in the freezer (they're perfectly serviceable and have no fake ingredients) that I rolled into my blue pie plate. I dumped the peach mixture inside, rolled the other crust on top and crimped the edges. I made small slits in the top and sprinkled some more superfine sugar on top, baked it in a 350 degree oven until it was bubbling peach juice.

I fed it to four boys playing at my house and then finished it up by 9pm last night.

As for Paris, pillows flying in the living room did this:

Yes, that's the Tour Eiffel, in Lego, gracing a sacred corner of the room, the initial construction of which took many painstaking hours not only by our resident Lego genius, Henry, but The Incredibly Swiss Husband's meticulous attention to detail in the middle of the night.

I won't describe the screams of dismay that reverberated throughout the arrondissment.

Quel dommage.