Don't Have a Cow, Man...

One of the joys of being a grandma is being able to snag a kid and just go do something.  Usually Hubby, Babygirl and I hit the farmer's market on Saturday morning for fresh coffee and cookies vegetables and fruit, and then move on to our weekly shopping. Since Babygirl was hanging with a friend, and Hubby's back was being mean, I went next door and asked Squeaker if he'd like to go.

"Is it far?"

"Not at all!"

"Not the one at the beach?  'Cause it takes EIGHT HOURS to get to that one."

Well.  He has a point:  That WAS the last farmer's market I took him too, and it did take him and Curlygirl eight hours to get there because of rain, traffic jams and general mayhem on the road.

"Nope. It's here in town, I promise."

He agreed, and to our delight we discovered that it was trick-or-treat day at the market. He wasn't costumed, but no one held that against him. He got candy, a tiny pumpkin, fresh cookies, a bag of granola and samples of all kinds.  He wants to go back next week.  I felt a bit like Charlie Brown.  I didn't get rocks, but I had to PAY for my stuff.

On the way home we talked about food we liked.  "Thumbs up if you like:  Carrots!  Broccoli!  Apples! Peaches!"  We took turns suggesting foods.  I finally said, "Coconut!" and he said, "I don't know, I've never had it.  But I like milk, and coconuts have milk, so I guess I'd like it!"  So I had to explain that cow's milk an coconut milk might not be at all similar, and why.  So then he said:

"So, it's not a cowconut?"

I. Laughed. My. Butt. Off.

He's FIVE.  OhMyGoodness.

DeeDee

Me, Too.....

The "Me, Too" campaign to raise awareness of rape/sexual assault/sexual harrassment online has been interesting to observe.  The idea is that any surviver of any of the above should put "Me, too" as their status to let people know just how overwhelmingly common this is.

I'm not surprised by how MANY people have posted. I'm more surprised by how FEW.

Statistics show that one in THREE women (and one in FIVE men) will have some sort of unwanted sexual encounter at some point. I'm not sure those stats even assessed more 'ordinary' day-to-day sexual harassment that women just deal with - catcalls, "why-doncha-SMILE-baby", and having to say, "I have a boyfriend" whether you do or not to get some loser to back off at a bar.

That being said: Me too.

I've never been raped or assaulted.  But....nearly 40 years ago....

I was 22, in my first 'real' job, working in a large biological R&D lab. We did serious research: Our lab developed interferon as a drug, the first biological drug to have to go through the FDA. We developed the test that is still used for early detection of prostate cancer.  It was a very diverse place.  My boss was a Chinese woman, and her boss was a Polish man.  My immediate superviser was Japanese.  One of my co-workers was a soft-spoken Korean woman with a PhD in microbiology.  And then there was Lamonte.

Lamonte was a lab tech.  He was everywhere in lab keeping supplies in place, helping gather specimens for quality control, helping maintain the large tissue cultures required for interferon production.  And one place he ALWAYS seemed to be was behind ME and my Korean co-worker.  He'd sneak up and tickle us in the ribs under the arms, never quite hitting the breasts from behind, simply enjoying watching us jump and shriek.

Personal history:  My dad used to tickle me, and not EVER stop until, well, HE wanted to.  As a child, I had a recurrent nightmare of standing in a spotlight, with hands reaching in from the dark to tickle me.  In the dream I absolutely KNEW that if I could just scream the tickling would stop, but I could NEVER scream.

Lamonte did not sneak up on any of my male co-workers and tickle THEM.  The very first time he did this to me I asked him to never do it again.  He thought that was cute, apparently.  At least once a week, when I could not possibly anticipate it, he snuck up behind me and tickled me.  At the Xerox machine. At my desk. While I was doing delicate work with cell lines. And NEVER when there was anyone to see it. After a few weeks of this I reported it to his supervisor.  A few more weeks and I reported it to MY boss.  My Korean co-worker QUIT, and I didn't find out until much later that he was the reason why.

The last time he did it, I was seated in a solid chair, and by reflex jammed my elbows back, trapping his hands against the metal.  He had the temerity to complain that I had hurt his hands.  I looked him in the eye and told him that if he ever touched me again I'd do more than hurt his hands. And then I went and got his supervisor, dragged her to my boss, and had a come-to-Jesus-shout-down about this ongoing behavior, and how they were allowing sexual harassment in the workplace, and that IF they allowed it to happen again I was going to administration and letting them know just how LONG they had allowed it to continue.

It doesn't sound like much. But it made going to work a gird-up-your-loins chore instead of a joy.  It made me nauseous when I realized he was at work (which was, of course, almost every single day!).  It destroyed my peace of mind.  And it happened only because some man felt he had the right to lay hands on any woman he wanted as long as it was 'just a joke,' whether she was laughing or not.

Me, too.

DeeDee

Eating Our Way Through Austin....

Our purpose for this trip was to attend a wedding, but, airfares being what they are, it was MUCH more affordable to stay a week than a weekend, lodging included. Airfare for a 10 day stay would have been the same, but then lodging would have exceeded the savings, so we decided to make a week of it.

The beauty of having an apartment to stay in is that we can eat breakfast and the occasional lunch here, so going to a supermarket for $100 worth of supplies took care of a significant number of meals that would have been $50 each - not to mention coffees and waters that travel with us.

But Austin is a Foodie city.

There are food trucks.  Dives. High end vegan restaurants. Steak houses. Barbecue joints. Tacos of every description. Coffee bars.  Not to mention every strip-mall chain seen everywhere else in the USA, plus the local fast food: Jack-in-the-Box, Chick-fil-A, El Pollo Rico - but thankfully no Bojangles. There are even specialty supermarkets:  Fiesta Mart, specializing in ethnic (including pre-packaged Indian) food, and Central Market/Whole Earth Provision (Whole Foods meets Wegmans in a warehouse). You can't possibly miss a meal here, and you can buy wine in any corner store or supermarket.

So far we've hit two steakhouses (don't ask - I can't remember!), a taco truck, a fabulous Mexican restaurant (Polvos) and an amazing family-style Italian (Buco di Beppo), where 16 of us were seated in "The Pope Room."  This was a domed circular room, with an 8 - 10 foot circular table with an enormous lazy Susan in the middle.  Huge platters of manicotti, shells, chicken, salad, mussels, spaghetti with 1 pound meatballs and garlic bread spun their way around, with a bust of the current Pope smiling benevolently at us as he spun along.  It's the only restaurant I've ever been in where you walk through the kitchen to get to the seating, and one booth is located IN the kitchen, so if you like, you can be seated where you can watch all the action there.

Babygirl has been bringing home leftovers from most meals. I think she plans to have a burrito for breakfast.  I'm not throwing stones: Yesterday I had leftover red potatoes and spicy fried butterflied jumbo shrimp.

Oh - I even picked and ate one of the prickly pears.  The color is amazing. The flavor?  Kiwi-ish, not as sweet.  Not worth the risk of the prickers IMO LOL.

I think I will not step on a scale for a week or so after I get home.

DeeDee

Armadilllos and Such Like.....

We arrived in Austin, Texas on Wednesday to celebrate the wedding of my Godson Danny, which will take place today at The Moss Ranch near Enchanted Rock State Park. We haven't had much opportunity to explore Austin, but we did drive to the ranch yesterday. It's about two hours away from our apartment in South Austin.

(Side note:  I can't say enough good about AirBnb.  We needed a place to stay where we can manage Babygirl's medical needs:  Comfy surroundings, a fridge and a stove, clean bathroom and so on, and we found a very cute, reasonably priced 1 bedroom apartment less than 10 minutes from our hosts, 10 minutes from downtown, and across the street from not one but THREE amazing Taco Trucks.)

We attended rehearsal dinner last night, not because we were needed but because we are just, well, family. It was fun to reconnect and to meet a generation of young'uns I've been watching grow online but haven't seen IRL so far.  Danny is the last of my 'neices and nephews' (from my 'brother from another mother,' Rich) to marry, and the first whose wedding I've been able to attend.

The venue, as I said, is 2 hours away, but only 88 miles.  Google Maps helps sort out traffic, most of the time, but letting Google decide between one deserted hill-country road an another in the dark may not be the wisest course of action.

Google sent us off in the opposite direction from which we had arrived.  Having seen a map, I knew that this was, however odd, entirely reasonable, since we were in a sort of you-can't-get-there-from-here corner of the universe anyway.  But holy Lord, we went over some twisty dark roads with cattle guards and flood crossings and switchbacks and...

We saw a coyote. Since I'd already seen a roadrunner it seemed logical, and could the Acme truck be far behind?  We saw deer.  I saw an ENORMOUS skunk. We saw some WTF was THAT? And some deer, and Hubby scared the life out of me when an armadillo startled the snot out of HIM.  The second one was less alarming, giving us a bit more warning by ambling down the center of the road.

At one point I misheard my directions, took a wrong turn and was then redirected by Google onto a HolyHillsBatman back road.  At the third left turn, we spotted a sign:  "No Outlet. DO NOT FOLLOW YOUR GPS."

OMGoodness.  I wish we had paused for a photo, because, really?  Who is going to believe us?

We backtracked a mile or so, caught our road, and finally hit civilization and revived ourselves at a "Texas Stop Sign," AKA Dairy Queen.

Now we get to go back there for the wedding. Wish us luck!

DeeDee

Midnight and Pearls....

I haven't had many insomniac nights in the past year - scarcely any, actually. But tonight is a humdinger of a can't-shut-my-head-off kind of night. You know: The kind where you might just as well give in, get up, and accomplish something.  And it isn't like there isn't always a to-do list, right?

Bella is getting married tomorrow.  JuJuBee's middle sister: Eight years old when she first charmed her way into our home, in and out during her mother's tumultous struggles with addiction, and on her own by age 18 with a 2 year old. She has had her own demons to fight, and has grown up all the way, ready to become The Grownup in her own family.

When she asked me to be Mother-of-the-Bride, I cried.  I am deeply honored, yet incredibly humbled.  There is so much I could not do for her, so much I could not save her from, so many times when all I could do was pray, and pray, and hope and pray some more.

She deserves better, although I know I couldn't have done much more.

So...

I asked her if she would like to wear my mother's pearls on her wedding day.  She got teary, and touched, and excited.  But antique pearls and modern wedding dresses don't always work well together. So this week, she asked, "Do you have anything else 'old'?"

Oddly, yes.

Among my mom's things were not one but three sets of pearls.  One has an, um, interesting, history. Mom left those to Citygirl. That set I know is about 65 years old. The next, I'm not sure of - judging by the clasp and the stringing style they are likely older, possibly MY grandmother's.  The third set of about that same age had a cheaper clasp and a broken string, and the pearls were coming off.

So I offered to stitch the loose pearls to her garter.  Something old, something from her Grandma.  My friend Michelle (one of my best inheritances from my mother) is a talented seamstress, so when I asked if she had fine needles and silk thread she produced "beading needles" (who knew that was a thing?) and beading thread (again, a thing?), so all I needed was some time to get it done.

Work's been crazy. Nothing like a computer software overhaul to make your day difficult, or to trigger some massive migraines.  I guess I needed some insomnia.

Sixteen pearls are now adorning the lace of her garter. I've had some quiet space in my head to pray for her and her soon-to-be-husband and their new life together.  May they face it with courage, grace, and humor.

"Always kiss me goodnight."

DeeDee