Quail eggs.

We had lunch yesterday at friends of ours in the subdivision here, along with other friends K and B who drove in from downtown. S cooked up an Asian chicken dish, along with rice and peas, and a huge platter of stir-fried vegetables. In with the vegetables were these small round light brown things that I thought were the tops of button mushrooms. When I bit into one, it tasted like an egg.

Not just any old egg..... S told us that they were quail eggs. Now, I have seen live quail out in Arizona... they walk all around the neighborhood where my Uncle T and Aunt M live... cute little quail families crossing the roads all the time... the mother and father, followed by two or three baby quail that have to run faster to keep up with their parents.

And now those little quail eggs were on my plate. Well. I ate the one that was mixed in with my vegetables, but I made sure not to take any more of them. All I could picture in my mind was a tiny baby quail rushing to keep up with the mama quail.

But you eat chicken eggs.... said our friend K. Somehow that's just different. I don't know why, but it is. Maybe if I had chickens in my yard here, I would hesitate eating those eggs as well. Or maybe it's just that I've been eating chicken eggs for all of my life. It's a known food source, not a memory of cute little feathered birds running from one Arizona rock garden to the next.

White Lilacs

At this time every year, the scent of white lilacs is overwhelming in our subdivision... and that is not a complaint. When they built these houses, the builder must have gotten a great deal on white lilac bushes because they were planted in front of every house.... and there must be 600 homes in this subdivision.

Some of the homeowners have taken out the lilac bushes when they re-designed the landscaping around their houses.... but I would guess that more than 80% of the houses still have the white lilacs growing. And they surely do grow and grow, and bloom and bloom...... the result being an April and May filled with white blossoms that give off such a sweet perfume wherever you walk.

Our corner-neighbor has the original white lilacs, which are more than half the height of her two-story house. The bees love the white lilacs, and when you walk around the corner near her lilacs, you have to be careful not to get a bee stuck in your hair. If you stay away from the bees, they stay away from you.... but if you're allergic to bee stings (which I found out the hard way last year that I am) you really have to walk away from those gigantic lilacs. Not to worry, though, because those massive lilac bushes are so filled with blooms that you can smell them across the street.

Off in the distance....

I went to the eye doctor today for my usual exam.... I forgot all about it last year, but my glasses weren't bothering me, so he confirmed what I thought-- my prescription hadn't changed. My eye doctor is exactly my age, and he had told me in my 40s that my prescription would change every year in my 40th decade, but my vision would "level off" in my 50s. And level off it has.

However... that level didn't stay put when it comes to my "distance vision." Oh goodie. The good doctor (who looks like a young version of Captain Kangaroo-- really dating myself now) asked me how I passed the vision test for my driver's license last year. Well, that was a challenge, come to think of it. The letters in that vision machine looked much smaller than they needed to be, and I remember telling the clerk that I could only read letters of that "tiny size" with my reading glasses. She was about the same age as me, so I guess she let me slide, probably thinking I would figure it out on my own that I would eventually need distance glasses as well as reading glasses.

When my husband and I are driving in the car, I've noticed that I can read street signs only if they're written out in bold print-- those skinny letters high up on a street-pole just don't do it for me. So when Captain Kangaroo suggested this morning that I "look into" (pardon his pun) distance glasses, I thought I may as well give it a try. The last thing I need when I go to re-new my driver's license again is for the clerk to tell me that I can't have my license until I get driving glasses for distance.

So that's what I got today-- two pairs of distance glasses, one regular pair and one pair of sunglasses. When I got out into the parking lot with those new sunglasses, I was amazed that I could read the street signs, store signs, parking lot signs--- lots of signs that I once looked at from afar and couldn't make out till I got up closer.

Reading glasses. Distance glasses. I remember when I didn't need glasses at all. I also remember walking up and down the stairs at my grandmother's house, looking for my Aunt Dolly's glasses. She had just one pair back then, and she was always leaving them in the last room she happened to be in, then when she got to another floor of the house and needed her glasses, she would ask me to go look for them. So off I would go on the "search," and when I came back with her glasses she would tell me "What would I do without you?"

When I was in high school, one of my uncles gave Aunt Dolly a pretty beaded chain which held her glasses around her neck. Aunt Dolly was amazed... her glasses were always with her, no matter where she was in the house, and she was happy that she didn't have to "bother" me to run around the house looking for them.

It was never a bother. It was an adventure. And it made me love that big old house all the more because as I went up the stairs and down the hallways, with every step I would say the same words that Aunt Dolly said: "I love this big old house... I love this big old house..."

I should call the good eye doctor and thank him for giving me that memory today.

Miracle Growth.

Our next-door neighbor V has three baby tomato plants in her yard..... "free from a friend," she told us. She laughed at the word free because the little plants have already cost her nearly $50.00 at Lowe's for "farming accessories."

First, she had to buy three large pots to put them in-- she didn't want to plant them in her backyard because she thought her dog would just dig them up and eat them. After all, the plants smell like tomatoes... her dog eats anything that smells like food. (Plus a lot of things that don't even remotely resemble any sort of food item.) Then she had to buy special potting soil so the plants would thrive and produce enough tomatoes to last the summer.

After that, she needed those round wire cages so the plants would have something to support them as they grew taller. Around the cages she would need chicken-wire, to keep out squirrels, rabbits, raccoons, possums, and any other critter that happens to find its way into her yard. Do skunks eat tomatoes?

She was proud as could be yesterday when she showed us her tomato plants and all the accessories that had to be bought to help her free plants along. My husband asked her if she remembered to buy "Miracle Grow"-- she hadn't.... which meant another trip to Lowe's, and more money for those plants which didn't cost her a penny in the beginning.

So there I was this morning, in Kroger... they had a display of vine-grown tomatoes. Perfectly red, round, delicious-looking tomatoes, complete with the green vine still attached. Now... wouldn't it be funny for V to find those pretty little tomatoes sitting in her perfectly tended pots holding her baby tomato plants? I couldn't resist.

Before I brought the groceries into my kitchen this morning, I took three of those tomatoes with the longest vines and walked over to V's side yard and placed one red tomato against each stalk of her tomato plants. If you didn't look too closely, the tomatoes seemed to be growing right on those little baby plants.

I didn't hear V's car when she came home this afternoon.... and I didn't hear her laughing in the driveway, but I know she did, and that was enough. When I saw her after dinner tonight, she told me "It's a miracle! Those plants of mine are just magic! I found one tomato in each of those pots, even before a tiny yellow flower popped out on the vines! I'm going to be a farmer after all!"-- Then she said she knew it was me right at the start..... "Who else would go to all that trouble?" she said.

No trouble at all. Those perfect little tomatoes made my day.

Typing on the fly.....

That's what this feels like...... as soon as my husband walks out the door to go to his office or out on an errand, I sit in front of his computer. It's like writing on demand..... and hard to do. If I'm not in the mood to type, or have nothing to say at the moment, well tough..... my typing window is small and I have to take advantage of it when I can. Needless to say, my laptop is still nothing more than a paperweight sitting on my desk.... and not a pretty paperweight at that.

The Swine Flu has taken over the news here..... schools have been closing all over the Houston area, as well as other parts of the state. How do they determine which schools to close? If one child sneezes, do they send everyone home and lock the doors? And with schools closed, the kids are home alone.... and that's not a good thing, so parents are complaining about non-supervised kids. (Well-- stay home from work and take care of your kids. A novel idea, don't you think?-- Don't get me started on the day-care phenomenon in this country.)

I read in the paper where thousands and thousands of pigs were slaughtered in Israel..... and they didn't have to do that.... Swine Flu hasn't been reported there. I'm sure other countries are doing the same..... and there are a lot of "Miss Piggy" jokes in the paper every day, concerning the mass-execution of her could-be long lost relatives.

We went to our once-favorite Italian restaurant for dinner last night..... my husband said he had a taste for some of the dishes we used to get there..... and we also thought we'd see our friend K, who (wonder of wonders) is working there again (after they let her go quickly when she had given them a two-week notice last year). (A run-on sentence if ever I've seen one.)

K wasn't waiting tables last night.... she was working behind the bar, mixing drinks, which she seems to like. Her favorite thing to make is a Chocolate Martini.... she said it's like having a liquid dessert. I love chocolate, but not enough to try it.... I'd rather have to chew the calories than sip them.

The food was good.... but the owner didn't cook any of it. There are three chefs in the kitchen now, because of the larger restaurant. Their new china plates are huge..... like having your dinner served in a bathroom sink. The salads are smaller, the portions are smaller, the prices are higher..... which are all reasons why we stopped going there when they changed locations.

But to be fair.... dinner was good. K wasn't serving it.... and we weren't crazy about our waitress..... and the owner's wife came to our table to hug us as if we'd been there just yesterday.
It's just not the same. No matter how good the food..... and even if K had been waiting tables instead of tending bar...... just the fact that Stefano isn't in the kitchen singing along with the Italian music and cooking food just for you, makes it just another Italian restaurant.

And did I say "Italian music"-- there wasn't any..... they were playing part rap/part crap music that's hooked up to a TV screen above the bar.... so you can watch those awful music videos as you listen to the awful music. Give me a blessed break.

Curse of the laptop.

My laptop is still out.... it's sitting on my desk like a huge flat paperweight. Not a pretty sight. My husband has tried repeatedly to get it breathing again, but it still sits there. He thinks it picked up a virus. Funny thing is that my cousin F up in NY told me about a computer virus set to launch on the first of April (April Fool's Day). Of course I used my laptop that day.... was there ever a day that I didn't?

Every once in a while, I get to use my husband's computer. Oh goodie. This machine has a noisy keyboard.... my laptop's keyboard was silent. Typing on this machine is very distracting, with all this noise. They say you get used to the noise. "They" must never have used a quiet laptop.

I can only use this computer if my husband isn't using it..... which is only when he's out of the house, because he's always using this machine when he's home. (Now that is an age-showing little detail-- calling a computer a machine.)

It's also difficult to write in this room-- the desk is covered in papers, the room isn't my own (where is the floral wallpaper? where is all my pretty stuff?) and it's very disheartening to sit here at a desk that isn't mine, in a chair that is much too big for me. (I feel like little "Edith Ann" when I'm sitting here. (Unless I sit on the very edge of this big leather chair, my feet don't even touch the floor. How sad is that?!)

Worst of all.... I have to write/type on this computer only in little snippets of time.... my husband goes out the door to his office, and I rush in here to check my eMail and try to sign into this site so I can type something in this blog. It just never works. Case in point-- as I'm typing this, my husband is sitting on the sofa in his room here, waiting for me to finish up.

So maybe it's just time to finish this whole thing up, for the time being. Unless we (translation: he) somehow get my laptop back to working.... and I absolutely refuse to buy a new one-- that paperweight on my desk is less than two years old, for goodness sake. At the prices of laptops, shouldn't it last longer than that. Stupid machines. (There's that word again.)

Since the last time I typed in here, we've had a deluge of rain (two or three, actually, which flooded the downtown areas yet again) and the Swine Flu threat is closing schools all over the Houston area and The Powers That Be are telling everyone in Texas to stay out of Mexico. Yet another reason for us not to want to travel to Mexico.

"Dancing With The Stars" has begun again, so has "The Amazing Race" and "The Apprentice." I wish one of them would cancel because that's just too many hours of television. My pile of books-to-be read is piling higher and higher these days. I really should cut out "The Apprentice"-- I love Joan Rivers but her daughter gets me nuts.... but we like to watch the show because of the great photography of NYC.

My husband needs to use his computer...... I need to finish typing. Now that I've started, I'm on a roll here. Maybe I can get used to this keyboard after all. (Did ear-plugs come as an accessory with this machine?)