The Sandwich Life

Ray Price. Fucking Cancer.

One of my favorite singers....and one of my favorite songs...from earlier this year.

 

He is now in hospice and left this message for his fans.

I love my fans and have devoted my life to reaching out to them. I appreciate their support all these years and I hope I haven't let them down. I am at peace. I love Jesus. I'm going to be just fine. Don't worry about me. I'll see you again one day.

I hope this next journey is peaceful for him, and for his wife and loved ones.

Fucking cancer.

Down, Down, Down....and a Christmas Cookie Request

Yesterday morning I got up, grabbed some clothes, and headed downstairs rather blearily to get in the shower. I don't know what I was thinking or where I was looking but I somehow missed the last several steps before the first floor. I felt myself going down and tried to catch myself but there was no way....down I tumbled, first on my butt, then somehow flipping around to cut my upper arm on the sharp edge of the dresser, then onto one knee, and then down, down, down til I was flat on the floor looking up at Leo and Ernie.

Damn that hurt.

Of course you can imagine this really helped my back out a lot too. Ha! I took some ibuprofen and made it through much of the day o.k. After lunch however I could feel my back and shoulder tightening up in little spasms. My colleague finally told me I sounded as though I was in labor so I went home, downed a pain pill, had a glass of wine and tried not to move.

My poor sick sweet pea is home again from school today. Yesterday he set off for school but only made it part of the day before calling us to come get him. He's developed a horrible cough and just is still a bit of a limp rag. I decided to keep him home today too....he just needs rest I guess. I almost miss how loud he is when he feels good.

The weekend looms but I need to work through much of it. Bottle Rockets at Highdive on Saturday night though!  I'm hoping to have Sunday free too.....I still have some shopping to do and cookies to make Ernie make though! Favorite Christmas cookie recipes anyone?

 

We finally decorated the tree last night.

Unpacking the ornaments brings me such joy.

As do my sweet peas.

Phil Lee, Judi, and Looking Back

Phil Lee wrote on facebook yesterday that it was the 50th anniversary of his brother's death. That afterward, everything was different, everybody was someone else. It made me think....about a sweet young Phil and his mother....the unfathomable pain of losing a 15 year old boy. I left a comment of sympathy and moved along but it stayed with me. It made me think about how losing my sister changed everything for me too. Completely different circumstances, and far different ages. Judi was 51, when she died, I was in my late 40s. And yet, just like for Phil, in some ways everybody became someone else. I became someone else.

I use the hell out of this blog by processing my life's events for myself. I don't know why  it helps me to write it out, and to go back and read it sometimes, but it does. Today I went back and looked at a post done on this day, or very close, for every year since I've been writing this blog.

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

Wow.

It was the 2008 entry that caught at me the most though. I clicked through, reading over the following posts, into 2009, until Judi died in early February. What a time that was. I've been missing her more recently. I look back over my last few weeks of posts this year and the worst that's happened is high fevers and the like. It's so hard to know where life is taking us.

 

Perspective....and Dulce de Leche

Poor little sweet pea is still stick. I got home last night and he had a fever of 103.6 and was as pale as the snow outside. I gave him some ibuprofen and that brought his fever down enough to let him rest comfortably and doze on and off. Then, once it got down to about 101 he started acting more like Owen....popping out into the living room to ask what was going on with our friend Teri, "I want to know everything," he said. I must say, that boy is a loyal friend. Then he began experimenting with the thermometer to see if putting it under one side of his tongue was hotter than under the other side of the tonge. Oddly enough, one side did seem to be hotter. The things one learns.....

I found myself distinctly uninspired to cook with Owen not eating so I made some odd kind of potato and spinach hash with a bit of bacon and cheese. His stomach isn't really upset but he can't eat much. He did have a craving for fruit so Ernie went to the store and replenished our supplies. I, on the other hand, discovered the pleasures of dulce de leche made with a can of condensed milk. I've always wanted to try making it and so I finally did. We punched a couple of holes in the top of the can and then put it in a little crock pot I have...one of those little round ones that is made for dip, filled the water up about 3/4 of the way on the can and let it cook for about 10 hours. Good God in heaven, is that stuff delightful! I'm thinking of using it for filling in little thumbprint cookies, with a bit of salt sprinkled on top. Any other ideas?

Unfortunately poor Owen can't make his band concert tonight. And I don't even care that I'm missing Jon Dee Graham now....I just want to see my sweet pea play his trumpet. Sniff. Ernie took him to the doctor, negative for flu or strep but they said he's getting bronchial congestion so some stuff for that. It's funny, one or other of us is sick all the time it seems but this has really knocked Owen out and has bothered me more than usual. It makes me realize how incredibly lucky we are with the health of our kids. It's always good to be reminded of perspective.

Perspective, perspective, perspective.....

 

Changing Course

This weekend it felt like I had a toddler again. Poor Owen has been so sick that he's waking up in the night multiple times calling for us. Poor guy, a fever of 103.8 last night. I'm not sure he's going to make his band concert on Tuesday evening....we'll see.

We managed to make it to the Gordyville Antique Show on Saturday before he came down with it. We trudged through the whole thing but the only purchase we made was a $1 ornament. I love the ornaments that are painted to look as though they have snow on the top....we call them our turtleneck ornaments.

Our friend Steve was going to come over and work on the jukebox but we didn't want to make him sick so we cancelled that. We were going to make dinner for a friend who's in chemo, but his wife and I decided we wouldn't do that because we didn't want to chance passing Owen's bug on to them. So our Sunday was free and clear.....and it would have been perfect for Ernie to go to my friend Boo's Pie Clinic. And we FORGOT!!! We were so caught up in keeping an eye on Owen and seeing how he felt that we totally forgot. Sigh. And look what her tutorial produced:

We were also going to decorate the tree at long last but decided we couldn't do it with Owen that sick so put that off too. Hopefully tonight.

What did we do? Well, we baked the Cynthia way. Which means that I sat at the computer in the kitchen and read ingredients to Ernie. I occasionally puttered around getting ingredients out, etc. but mostly I ordered him around. It was delightful, and makes for a much better result than if I do it myself. Occasionally we would hear Owen's calls and go in and sit with him for awhile. When he got too miserable I curled up with him and he would drift in and out. My poor sweet pea.....I hope he feels better soon.

In the meantime, don't forget that we've got Fats and Kristi Rose on the 21st....and then a special New Year's Day show with Kevin Gordon on January 1st!

Fevers and Guitars and Biscuits

It's hard to get me out on a Saturday night but I was actually really looking forward to Robbie Fulks and Tim Carroll at the Rosebowl last night. We had tickets in hand and were meeting friends but Owen came home from a birthday party rather pathetic however. We wrapped him up on the couch and got him some water and I could just feel his fever going up everytime I reached over to touch his face. Damn. Hopefully it doesn't spread to every one at the party, and his friend he spent the previous evening with (sorry guys!).

I could tell he really felt awful and when that happens he likes me next to him so I could see my plans for the evening receding into the distance... We sent Ernie off and watched a bad Hallmark movie together and then I dumped him into bed. He was shivery and cold so he asked me to get in with him and so of course we both fell asleep. My poor sweet pea. He still feels lousy this morning. I told him he wouldn't be going to school tomorrow and now he's worried about his band concert on Tuesday. Fingers crossed.....

Ernie woke me up this morning early telling me that Owen wanted him to let me know it was snowing. I smiled sleepily and drifted off again. Later Ernie came in and said, "I have something to tell you and it's going to make you very happy." I blinked at him and he announced that my beloved Amy had won the guitar door prize at the Robbie Fulks show last night. He was right....it made me ridiculously happy!

So our plans have changed a bit for today. I'm going to slow roast some pernil, buy some Christmas lights, start decorating the tree...maybe have a fire in the fireplace, get a dinner ready that we're bringing to somebody tomorrow evening....mmm....what else? Maybe that's enough. We just finished a particularly good batch of Ernie's Sunday morning biscuits. If I recall correctly, I started a mystery last night before falling asleep. Leo is happily minecrafting, Ernie and Owen are on a Walking Dead marathon, and I think I'll curl up and read for a bit before the day well and truly starts.

Oh, and it snowed. I am so happy.

 

Just two weeks til Fats and Kristi Rose! You can pay up by clinking on the 'make a reservation' link at the top right of this page. Let us know if you have any questions! It will be a lovely evening.

 

Pernil and Pain and Dark Matter

This morning Owen left early for jazz band and as I was nibbling my breakfast Leo was getting ready for school and chatting to me about dark matter and the universe...you know just some early morning theories about space and time and the universe. I asked where he learned all this and he said from documentaries he found online. I asked him if he learned any of it from school and he just harumphed in disgust and went on about dark matter. God I love that boy. I should have yelled at him to go brush his hair but I didn't want to interrup him and he just looked so beautiful....I couldn't do it. A nice way to start my day. My sweet pea.

My back has been much better (you haven't heard me whining about it as much, now have you?") but yesterday was a horrible day. I came home early and curled myself up in a chair in the position that seems to help the most, took a pain pill and had a glass of wine. Eventually it lessened but it was not pleasant all evening. I made a weird leftover thing with stuffing and egg and cheese and it was outrageously good. The problem with the pain is that it leaves me feeling so tired. I think I went to bed at 8:00 pm. So once again I am pondering the whole issue of treatments. We'll see.

And in big news (well, not really) I've decided what I'm going to make for our Christmas house concerts with Fats Kaplin and Kristi Rose. I think we'll have Pernil, Puerto Rican roast pork, with yellow rice and black beans. It sounds kind of festive, doesn't it? I can't wait.

 

Random Notes from the Sandwich Life

1. I love foggy mornings....the way the nothingness is always just ahead of you. I'm sure there is some sort of metaphor but I'm feeling too foggy myself to figure it out.

2. As much as I like my job it was still damned hard to come back after break. Came home Monday night and entered directly into a full fledged uprising. Tried to stay calm in the midst of the revolt....and did so off and on, ahem. Luckily things had calmed down by the time our savior Laurie showed up with the Lego Advent calendar...AND a copy of the new Bottle Rockets reissue which we had really wanted. Ahhhhh. Peace reigned for a little while and I cooked dinner....made rice because that makes Owen happy.

3. Ernie had picked up what he thought was a pork tenderloin at Target since he was there to get something else. It turns out it was a small piece of pork loin, not tenderloin...which was fine. I took it out of the package to salt it and thought....ugh. It was one of those that had been injected with god knows what. You can just tell by the texture. I was trying to get dinner done quickly so I just seared it in a cast iron pan and then put it in the oven for about 15 minutes (with a glaze of some okonomiyaki sauce that I had in the refrigerator). It was fine but I swear it almost tasted like ham....it had been brined to death. It keeps it moist...I'll give it that and yet...if I want ham, I'll buy ham. Oh well, it got done quickly and it shut Owen up (oops, did I say that?).

4. The Bottle Rockets reissue sounds great and and I can't wait to see them next week. I've got three weekends of music coming up! Tim Carroll opening for Robbie Fulks this Saturday, Bottle Rockets and Otis Gibbs next Saturday and of course the following Saturday will be the grandest of all....our 5th Annual Fats Kaplin and Kristi Rose Christmas House Concert! Come one, come all. If you've every pondered coming to a show but were too shy (which I TOTALLY get) this is the one to come too. It's just warm and fun and wonderful.

 

Random Pictures from the Sandwich Life

 

Owen sitting on the couch playing around with my iPad

 

listening to my Sweet Pea

leftover meat pie (tourtiere) for breakfast