I’m sneaking into my neglected non-fiction blog because it seems more private. Also because I’m about to make a colcannon as soon as the kitchen is under control, and this is a great place to post recipes. Also because I have an urge to say hostile things about the crazy religious right, which I won’t actually say right now, what with the colcannon and all, but just be aware, all of you crazies, that my patience is wearing thing. Damn you all, and pass the gravy.

I’ll let you know how the colcannon turns out.

Great weekends involve a little nice food, some rest, some play, a few lightweight retail adventures, time with the garden and the pets, and happy weather. So far this weekend I’ve: gone on a bike ride, made a pineapple smoothie, bought curtain hardware at Lowe’s and fancy smoothie straws at Party City. Then we had a tower of tuna millefuille on top of a bed of spinach for lunch, with fresh made carrot-apple-lemon-ginger juice on ice in tall glasses (with fancy straws), watched a little movie in the heat of the day and took a quick nap. Now we are going to pick up the porch swing and hang the curtains.

Tuna Millefeuille

Sashimi grade tuna
Mozzarella
Basil
Olive oil
Lemon
Olives
Roasted red bell peppers
Flying fish roe
Crispy pecan crackers, optional

Chop the olives and mix with basil, olive oil and lemon. Slice the roasted red bells and toss in with the olive mixture. Salt and pepper lightly.

Slice the tuna and the mozzarella both in 1/2 to 1 inch slices. Stack the tuna, the olive/basil mixture, and the mozzarella in alternating levels, until it is 3 or 4 inches high.

Pretty it up by topping with basil leaves, ribboned carrots and roe. Drizzle with olive oil and serve stacked high.

This is an approximation of a dish at Noda’s Japanese Restaurant in Rio Rancho (891-4378), which has both the best and the most original Japanese food in New Mexico, in my opinion (which is fairly well informed, I will say without undue modesty). The crackers at Noda’s are homemade, crispy and dense, with pecans, seeds and something else… they would be tough to replicate, I think.

Mmm. Now you may happily continue your weekend.

I can’t make up my mind. It’s a holiday weekend. Should I leave for the weekend? Go with Alyx and Julie to Cochiti Lake and have a sun-fest? Go to Portales to visit Dan and Elizabeth? Go to Santa Fe for a secret weekend hideaway with my sweetie? Take the dogs camping? Paint the master bedroom a light sage green? Stay home and work in the yard?

The dogs say we can’t go to Cochiti or Portales because they would not be able to run free like the little wolves that they are. They also don’t like the Santa Fe idea because they would not be invited. They like yard work just fine as long as they are helping, but really need a good hike. They don’t care a fig about painting, unless it leads to a walk.

We’ve been discussing it for over a week now and have conclusively determined that we can’t make up our minds about anything.

We could plant some tomatoes. We could go to some movies and take a nap. We could lie around and read books.

Ok. The problem is, we can’t commit to going anywhere or doing anything. We are BAD FRIENDS who WON’T DO ANYTHING FUN. Dammit. And we’ve had friends over the years who would not commit to advance planning and have been VERY ANNOYED with them at the time. Hmm. Maybe we are overextended?

I think I’m voting to stay home and either paint or play yard games and take the dogs for many walks because I honestly feel for them, I do.

Have you ever noticed that I never talk about my work? I wonder why not? I mean, I think I could. Or about my fiction or my goals as a writer? Or about my writing group.

I think I’ll write more about writing itself, and the group that meets at my house, and what we are doing that works or does not work.

I miss my friend Ken, who just shut down his writing group after 16 continuous years.

This weekend, though, I think I’ll play it by ear.

My grandfather had a thin mustache, my grandmother good legs. My grandparents spoke Spanish and English and a little Italian but the Italian was not sincere. My grandparents smoked and went to theatre and galleries and lived in Texas and Mexico and Colorado and New Mexico and Canada and California and then back to New Mexico where they lived for most of their elderly years. My grandparents were runaways and liars, and cheated on each other for as long as they were young and could get away with it. My grandparents were married for 70 years, but divorced for 10 of those. My grandparents had smooth beautiful voices and liked books, and vino tinto, and chile, and they used olive oil to keep their feet smooth and soft, and they drove very big cars and voted Republican in the 80s but were socialist in the 30s, and they planted corn in their backyard with the great grand children, and they walked in the Organ Mountains looking for a place to scatter their ashes, and that’s where they are now, in an arroyo in southern New Mexico, on their way down to the gulf of Mexico by way of flash floods and monsoons, however long that might take.

This was a 5-minute writing practice in group this Monday. Got some great photos, but not the ooomph to scan them right this second. I’ll add in a separate post.

Post recipes, talk about gardening, my patients, neurology, communication, politics and religion, salt and pepper. A little simple reflective blogging on the nature of things. Seems good.

The chickens and the guinea fowl are grown now. The guineas are named Thing 1 and Thing 2 (there are 17 of them). The chickens are setting, do not disturb. The geese suffered in a late winter coyote raid, and we have one young female who is grieving the loss of her companion. We will bring home a gosling in her breed in a few days.

The fruit trees made it past the last frost and I believe we will have pears, apples and plums this year.

It is officially the season of fresh food, and I will post new recipes at a more reasonable hour.

Went away for awhile. Facebook. I admit it: I was unfaithful.

Facebook makes a continuous humming sound, like bees in their hives in high summer. Fascinating. Comments are short, relevance is questionable, connectivity is enticing but not necessarily functional.

I’ve located some long losts. That is fun. Had time to think about the function of this blog. No conclusions as of yet.

My writing group is up and running splendidly. We are weekly now, every Monday from 7-9 p.m. Good writing, energy is on the rise. My hands still go numb if I type very much. This is cramping my style, but is gradually easing up.

I love that this is spring. I love that I am on vacation this week. I love that I’m back involved in the dance and theater community at long last.

I’ll be back again when the study is more picked up.

I haven’t written anything for months, mostly because of the nasty shoulder injuries that were keeping me from doing anything at all. I think I’m ready to write again, but I’m nervous and shy, have regained my blogging virginity, and have been wondering if I have a damn thing to say.

So, since it’s all about me and all, I thought I’d write about prolotherapy, which is the treatment I chose for my shoulders (yes, both of them).

Prolo therapy is a non-surgical intervention for torn ligaments and tendons. According to the prolo pros over at prolotherapy.com,

Prolotherapy uses a dextrose (sugar water) solution, which is injected into the ligament or tendon where it attaches to the bone. This causes a localized inflammation in these weak areas which then increases the blood supply and flow of nutrients and stimulates the tissue to repair itself.

Let me just say that, after I spent a couple of years skirting around the issue of living vs. dying and being repeatedly slit from my guzzle to my zatch, I came finally through that experience weaker and more wobbly than I knew was possible. Everything I did hurt, everything I did caused a new injury. In about 18 months, I sprained my ankles twice, got a hernia while on a tiny little super easy bike ride, and tore ligaments in both my shoulders. This sucked beyond my ability to convey, but was at least better than actually being dead.

I stopped sleeping, due to pain, started taking vicodin, due to pain, and slid into a vague, extended and tiresome period of being afraid to do anything. Let me say, this did not seem to be an actual depression, although it was depressing. More, it seemed like my body wasn’t willing to carry me anymore, and I was tired, and tired of pain. From some angles, I look like Frankenstein, a constructed being, scars shooting out in all directions, lit more by lightning than by nature.

So. That did sound a bit depressed, eh?

I am a bit driven, by temperament, and this sloshing around in a half stupid hydrocodone fog, alternating with bright and angry pain, did not suit me overmuch. Hence the prolotherapy, after assorted other modalities did not do the trick.

Here’s what they do, and let me tell you it hurts like holy hell:

The needles feel huge, no, enormous, and for about 30 days after the injections the pain was worse, massively and unbearably worse, which made me feel like a complete idjit. Pass the vicodin, please.

Then one day about a month after, it stopped. Not 100%, but about 80%, not bad, not bad at all. I stopped taking vicodin, and switched to ibuprofen with a very mild pain pill on the side. Stopped taking anything in the daytime, and now I’m taking the pain pill at night just two or three times a week.

As soon as the pain stopped, I started lifting weights and going to the gym (still working on frequency, but really I’ve always liked weights, so it feels good to be able to do it at all). I’m starting to sleep again, intermittently. My brain and body are starting to feel better, not well, quite, but better.

I’ve been driving my wife crazy with my bad sleep, chronic pain and forgetfulness (goes with the other two). And I’ve been driving myself crazy with the sensation that my body is the enemy, and that my brain has gone utterly to mush, never to be its own vigorous, adventurous and imaginative self ever again.

 I will let you know how this goes. It’s the old body-mind connection, can’t have the one without the other. I knew that. Wish me luck.

I’ll be back.

To my shoulders and can barely spend an hour on the computer without having to get a hot pack a massage and a prescription. Bugging me. Hopefully it gets better again soon so I can get back at it here and at Cuentos.

Sandhill Cranes (via www.desertusa.com)

We’ve been watching the cranes, the turning of the year, the golding and dropping of leaves. Last night, the biggest harvest moon I’ve ever seen. Tomorrow, hang out the winter sheets to air, put away the light summer linens.Tonight, fresh roasted tomato soup with olive bread.

Rights and benefits of marriage under law in the United States:

• Right to many of ex- or late spouse’s benefits, including:
  • Social Security pension
  • veteran’s pensions, indemnity compensation for service-connected deaths, medical care, and nursing home care, right to burial in veterans‘ cemeteries, educational assistance, and housing
  • survivor benefits for federal employees
  • survivor benefits for spouses of longshoremen, harbor workers, railroad workers
  • additional benefits to spouses of coal miners who die of black lung disease
  • $100,000 to spouse of any public safety officer killed in the line of duty
  • continuation of employer-sponsored health benefits
  • renewal and termination rights to spouse’s copyrights on death of spouse
  • continued water rights of spouse in some circumstances
  • payment of wages and workers compensation benefits after worker death
  • making, revoking, and objecting to post-mortem anatomical gifts

Yes, you can.

• Right to benefits while married:
  • employment assistance and transitional services for spouses of members being separated from military service; continued commissary privileges
  • per diem payment to spouse for federal civil service employees when relocating
  • Indian Health Service care for spouses of Native Americans (in some circumstances)
  • sponsor husband/wife for immigration benefits

Yes, you can. 

• Larger benefits under some programs if married, including:
  • veteran’s disability
  • Supplemental Security Income
  • disability payments for federal employees
  • medicaid
  • property tax exemption for homes of totally disabled veterans
  • income tax deductions, credits, rates exemption, and estimates

Yes, you can. 

• Joint and family-related rights:
  • joint filing of bankruptcy permitted
  • joint parenting rights, such as access to children’s school records
  • family visitation rights for the spouse and non-biological children, such as to visit a spouse in a hospital or prison
  • next-of-kin status for emergency medical decisions or filing wrongful death claims
  • custodial rights to children, shared property, child support, and alimony after divorce
  • domestic violence intervention
  • access to “family only” services, such as reduced rate memberships to clubs & organizations or residency in certain neighborhoods

Yes, you can. 

• Preferential hiring for spouses of veterans in government jobs

Yes, you can. 

• Tax-free transfer of property between spouses (including on death) and exemption from “due-on-sale” clauses.

Yes, you can. 

• Special consideration to spouses of citizens and resident aliens

Yes, you can. 

• Spouse’s flower sales count towards meeting the eligibility for Fresh Cut Flowers and Fresh Cut Greens Promotion and Information Act

Yes, you can.  

• Threats against spouses of various federal employees is a federal crime

Yes, you can. 

• Right to continue living on land purchased from spouse by National Park Service when easement granted to spouse

Yes, you can.  

• Court notice of probate proceedings

Yes, you can.  

• Domestic violence protection orders

Yes, you can.   

• Existing homestead lease continuation of rights

Yes, you can.   

• Regulation of condominium sales to owner-occupants exemption

Yes, you can.   

• Funeral and bereavement leave

Yes, you can.   

• Joint adoption and foster care

Yes, you can.   

• Joint tax filing

Yes, you can.  

• Insurance licenses, coverage, eligibility, and benefits organization of mutual benefits society

Yes, you can.   

• Legal status with stepchildren

Yes, you can.   

• Making spousal medical decisions

Yes, you can.   

• Spousal non-resident tuition deferential waiver

Yes, you can.  

• Permission to make funeral arrangements for a deceased spouse, including burial or cremation

Yes, you can.  

• Right of survivorship of custodial trust 

Yes, you can.  

• Right to change surname upon marriage

Yes, you can.  

• Right to enter into prenuptial agreement

Yes, you can.  

• Right to inheritance of property

Yes, you can.   

• Spousal privilege in court cases (the marital confidences privilege and the spousal testimonial privilege)

Yes, you can. 

On this incredible, historic day, the first African American has been elected to be the President of the United States. A day for joy, for giving thanks, for seeing the future of all African-American children open up, bright and high as the sky.

It is also the day in which the exclusion into the basic and fundamental relationship of marriage and family has been codified into law, in the state constitution of California through the passage of Proposition 8.

So all of you good Americans out there, get out there and celebrate.

Yes, you can. 

For me, for mine, we are so excluded from this basic level of community, from inclusion in the American process, we are crying and angry on this most historic day, when we should all be celebrating, as one people, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

For some. For us, we have once again been denied full citizenship under the law. As a people, we are not even relegated to the back of the bus. We are not even on the bus. We are under the bus. Once again.

You believe your relationship is more legitimate than mine? Really? More normal? More moral?

Even in the absence of all of these special privileges that are granted to you heterosexual people of all colors and creeds, the one right I still have, at least for now, is the right to disagree with you and your vitriol, your judgment, your pettiness of spirit.

Yes, I can.