This is March.
A minute ago the sun was shining, now it is blowing and rainy.
That is spring time almost any where.
These grandkids and cousin are enjoying the surf.

tourist land

We have been right on the edge of the Pacific Ocean most of this week.

Lincoln City was glued together a few years ago from towns that were Delake, Oceanlake, Taft, Cutler City and Nelscott. It is a tourist town with hotels and motels and lots of houses that are for rent by the day or week.

Daughter 2 organized it, and 12 of us showed up, 13 counting a boyfriend today.

In this town the building lots are small and the houses are tall. The original houses I’d guess, were short so people across the street could see over the top to the ocean. That was then, now the ocean side houses are two or three stories tall, and each layer back strains to look over the tops.

But we can see between the houses and to the north we can see a long stretch of beach.

This is a tourist town. Most who live here are involved in the tourist (service) business.

The beach is several miles long. It is smooth sand, but it also is fairly boring. One wave is a lot like the next and the next, varie mostly on whether the tide is coming in or going out.

There are no docks, or fishing boats or the other things that really excite my camera finger.

But we had good company, good food and a good time.

I am glad it happened.

Today is Lora's birthday. She is daughter 2.
This picture was taken a few years ago, but they have not aged much, any of them.
Lora is the one in the back row on the left.

This is the house daughter rented for the weekend.
There are 12 of us in the group, including 6 teen/siblings/cousins.

anger

I could tell she was angry when she got out of the van.

“How would you feel if I did THAT to you?”

“What did I do?”


“Huh, you know.”

“But I don’t know. and the cycle of quetions and angry answers went round and round.

After a bit of digging and admitting any and all guilt I find that she thought I left her at daughters house a couple of days ago, and that I had left their house early in the morning and I had not said anything to her about it.

Well, it had been that day, and I left an hour and a half before they did, so I was not all that far ahead.

Naturally and understandably, she is terrorized of loosing me. That is OK to a point.

It is one of those wonderful side affects of this wonderful disease.

Now that the disease is making bigger inroads into our lives, I am thankful for the good years we have had.

Indeed.

How a building ages is often more beautiful than it's original skin.
In my town there is a big half block long ranch house that was built by a wealthy citizen right after world war 2. It is and always has been painted white. All owners have renewed that white. Not just the house, but the brick walls, the decorative fence out front, everything is brilliant white.
It makes a statement, but it is dull still.

We are traveling again, this time to a family weekend with my 2nd daughter and her husband and kids, the other grandparents and a couple of cousins. I don't think there is internet, so for a few days I may not be writing, or I may write and go to Starbucks to post!
We will see.

The shirt waist

Remember the fire in the "shirt waist" factory?

The building was locked, and the low paid women died in huge numbers when there was a fire.

So, I always wondered (but not enough to look it up) what was a "shirt waist?"

There was a piece about the garment on the front page of today's NYTimes. So I read and learned.

Up to that point women wore really awful clothing.

They lived in a horse economy. Said another way the roads were paved, with horse poop to put it mildly. And women were expected to wear ground length dresses, corsets, bustles and who knows what else (I am a guy so I skipped the chapter on the history of how we expected women to dress).

So a shirt waist was what we might refer to as a "dress". A simple, button up the front, garment made much like a man's shirt only long enough reach the mid calf, but over a foot above the horrors of the day.

Imagine going from a whale bone corset to a simple dress.

Talk about liberation, and talk about moral outrage.

It is always amazing to me what we men have done to our women in the name of something we thought was noble, and was not.

My mother would plant spinach in the fall. In spring while the rest of us were just getting our gardens in place, she was eating and freezing spinach.
I cheat and grow spinach in a simple unheated cold frame.

garden salad

We had home grown salad yesterday.

The cold frame I planted last fall yielded cress, spinach and chard. The kitchen had sprouts, mostly alfalfa, but also radish and broccoli.

The combination was healthy (organic) and simple.

I combined some good olive oil, some lemon juice and some seasoning to make a simple, made on the spot dressing.

On top of it all I added one touch of luxury: a spoonful of Feta cheese.

It was good.

And as a reminder: there is nothing going on in the world today that is going to reduce the cost of food. Whether we call it reality or belt tightening the little people have few choices.