The Door

This is about a literal door. A door that has become a problem. It’s a problem I had hoped would be fixable. I am not a carpenter, but I was trained in a variety of tools and equipment in high school. Being of a scientific bent, I also studied algebra, trigonometry, geometry, physics, chemistry, and biology. My after-school activities included Coin Club, Photo Club (which included film development), Computer Club, Drama Club, and Science Club. I was President of that club after years of putting out a weekly mimeographed science newsletter full of synopses of various magazine articles I read. I was not a member of all those clubs simultaneously. I attended that high school for five years from ninth grade to twelfth, but I was given below the passing grade of 70 in three subjects during the second half of my junior year, so, I had to repeat the entire year, which I was OK with. I ended up with a nearly perfect understanding of Algebra, did well in Physics, and was placed in the Honor Society in my senior year. I actually tutored other students after school as my Honor Society duty, which is why I ended up dropping most clubs except Science and Drama.

However, my high school education gave me a keen “Theory & Practice” education. I studied drafting (mechanical drawing) and made tools to match. I learned a bit about woodworking, sheet metal work, and forge. I made a wooden wrench pattern from one of my drawings that was turned into a metal wrench. I cut and hammered, and tempered a cold chisel. I made a small sheet-metal box, spot-welded together, that I kept as a reminder of those years.

But, fast forward 52 years, long after I retired from disease-research laboratory work at a University medical school, and after I spent eight years making wine while being a background actor for TV and movies, and years studying acting, and suddenly I have to retrieve that woodworking knowledge from high school. The knowledge is there, and it comes back to me, but the skills are weak. I did physical labor during my working career, from electrical work for a carnival to foundry work for architect Paolo Solari at his Scottsdale, Arizona headquarters. My initial job for the University was working as a Mason’s helper. I ran a jackhammer, repaired concrete sidewalks, built block walls, built a baseball dugout, built an underground utility room, installed metal doors in block walls, and even laid a brick floor once in the University President’s former garage.

In addition, in 2006 & 2007, while still married, I added a 12-foot by 20-foot room to my wife’s house, removed the old tar and gravel roof and rotten wood underneath, and shingled the entire house roof and the addition’s roof. I’m handy, but not a skilled craftsman. I did design the addition but ordered a set of roof trusses (struts) that I had to install manually (and creatively). So I used a lot of power tools, but few hand tools other than a hammer, measuring tape, and levels. My wife kicked me out as soon as I finished, so I never got to enjoy the new addition, with the nice raised ceiling I’d installed. I had to leave her the job of completing the electrical wiring, the sheetrocking, and painting. I’ve never seen the completed work, but when she moved back to California, she offered (through my stepdaughter) to rent the place to me for $50 less than the rent I currently pay. I passed on that. It was a home, not just a house — I couldn’t live there alone with those memories. I suspect that what she wanted was free maintenance by me while I lived there, and rent.

The door? Yes, I said this was about a door. And it is. I’m getting to that. Here’s the door:

For the photo, I simply stood it up against the outside door frame.

It’s a thick outside door made of fir, unfinished, and has no cutouts for the hinges, doorknob, or deadbolt. Which is why it’s taking me a while. I contemplated fixing the old door, but it had been ruined when a very large dog door was cut into the lock stile, a lower panel, the lower mullion, and the bottom rail before I moved in. After I’d lived there a bit, I realized how easy it was to enter the house by reaching up through the door to unlock both the doorknob and the deadbolt in a matter of seconds. In addition, the hole itself was large enough to allow a boy or a slim adult access to my house while I was away from home. I hated that. It’s sealed off now.

THIS IS THE OLD DOOR. I HAD THE DOG DOOR SEALED OFF WITH A PIECE OF THE ORIGINAL DOOR.

↑__ The old door, above, is still there, hanging on. Unfortunately, I had two feral cats at the time that needed to come and go, so I installed a small cat door for them. However, over time, the door frame kept shifting downward. I tightened the hinges and had to move the mortise for the strike plate down. Recently it had shifted some more, and couldn’t go any lower. I contemplated various options, but I was able to continue using the door by lifting it up as I closed and locked it. Then one day it collapsed when I opened it. The hinge stile remained connected to the hinges, but the rest of the door pulled away. A lot of dust fell out. I was able to hammer the door back into a semblance of its previous self, but I had to use a crowbar to raise it up high enough to lock it in place. Fortunately, I have a back door.

Both the dog and cat entrances ruined the door’s integrity over time. I don’t know how long the doggy door had been there, but I probably installed the cat door 12 or 13 years ago. I’ve had to open the old door a few times, but it disintegrates a bit every time I do that. The last time, two large pieces of wood fell into the space between the upright “hinge stile” and the bottom “rail”, so I had to chop them out of the way with a handy screwdriver in order to close the door. The door is shot. No carpentry shop will attempt to repair it. They build from scratch only. $900 for a consignment door that was never picked up seemed a little steep. But most of their doors far exceeded that. New door? Not cheap either. A similar pine door would take 12 weeks to order from a retail door seller. I thought at first that I’d take this one apart. It only has old rotten dowels and glue holding it together. A couple dowels are completely shot. The glue holding the whole thing together has completely dried out. Repairing it is doable, but I have no access to equipment to replicate the convex edges on the panels, or the tongue pieces that fit into the door sides. I could have someone make them, but it was going to be an expensive, time-consuming project, and I’d have no door in the meantime.

I let the whole thing go as I pondered the options. Finally, I decided a new door would not only be less trouble but likely less expensive that any other option. However, on the day that I was to pick one up, the roofers had come to finish up a roof repair. It’s an odd roof. Not only is it a spray-foam-covered roof, but the housing complex I live in has a common boiler for hot water, which is also used to heat the house by heat exchange from copper tubing to the ductwork through a blower. The hot-water-feed pipe for the copper tubing runs through the roof. The plumbers nicked the pipe. Hot water geysered all over the place and leaked into the cut they had made to seal the roof off from my neighbor’s house. The roofers had recommended that we do our roofs at the same time to save money. The owner of the house with which I shared two walls refused. They had some patchwork done and were not worried about further leaks. The roofers found wet insulation on my side, which they dug out and replaced, but noticed that the neighbor’s house also had wet insulation. I told them, but to no avail. So the plumbers had to build a barrier in the roof between the walls we shared to keep their leaky roof from bleeding water into the insulation on my section of the roof.

WHAT A MESS! I had bucketfuls of water pouring in, mostly down the wall, but also over a small bookcase, some shelving, all the framed photos and art on the wall, and a couple of leaks through the wood ceiling. I got everything off of the wall, moved the bookshelf out, and removed the bottom layer of books whose spines had gotten splashed. There was no real damage, but there were hours of catching water and mopping up the excess with a closetful of towels, then running them and a couple of throw rugs through the washing machine as I exchanged wet for dry. The plumbers completed the work without incident. My neighbor is unhappy about a partly damp couch back, water that wetted the outside of a small frame containing a Navajo rug, and the stain on the ceiling. However, the ceiling had leaked in that house before and had never been completely repaired. I could see an old rotten circle of previous damage. The roofers owned up to causing the problem, but the owner wants compensation for more than the actual damage caused. Opportunistic and greedy, I’d say. This wouldn’t have been necessary if they had agreed to have both sections of roof sealed at the same time. But the owner is demanding compensation from the woman I rent my house from. The plumbing work had been properly approved by the HOA that controls our lives here, so there is no reason to blame my landlord. The leak was an accident that the plumbers caused and fixed. Damage is their responsibility.

PARTS OF A DOOR ASSEMBLY

So, finally, back to the door. It’s like a never-ending saga. Thank you for letting me tell the story. Writing is how I deal with stress. Since the door frame is 2 3/4 inches thick, firmly bolted to the adobe wall, I could not replace the frame as well. So I bought the door without cutouts for the hinges, handle, or lock. I need to fit the door to the frame, make sure it has enough space all around, and line up the existing hinges, etc., then mark and measure everything as it is. There is no other way to do this.

I’ve begun work on the door. I fired up my small circular saw and removed the correct amount from the lower rail. Pretty straight. Looks good. I am still working on the door’s upright lock stile, planing it down to the correct size. I’m told to remove 1/8 inch from both sides. The door company, however, recommended that I just remove wood from the lock stile side. I do not have a table saw, and no place to put one if I did, so I am falling back on my woodworking knowledge from high school. From experience, I know better than to try to use a circular saw with a 1/8 inch blade to remove 1/4 inch down the full length of the door. I own a good sturdy plane with a sharp blade that didn’t need much sharpening. I’ve scribed both sides and filled in the scratches with a pencil. I have planed both sides of that edge to a 45-degree angle up to, but not including the pencil marks. It’s difficult without a workbench to clamp it to. I currently have it lying flat on two sawhorses I had to purchase for this project. It’s heavy enough to mostly stay in place. Later, I will have to rig some way to hold the door upright on the opposite edge, so I can plane the length of that upright stile to remove the remaining wood. I think I can brace one edge against the fireplace banco, which is shorter than the width of the door, and use the sawhorses to hold it vertical. But I’d have to brace those lightweight sawhorses somehow, and I will have to step around them while planing. Later.

Then I have to attach the hardware, see how it fits and how freely the door moves. Then I will have to use a clear stain and sealant after I get approval from the HOA. They usually require that we use outside contractors, but I’m going to present this door as an emergency repair out of necessity. All they need to do is OK the color, which is bare wood, and on the approved list of colors. However, they don’t allow any work to be done without written permission obtained in writing in advance from the architecture committee. They are very slow to answer. They could fine the landlord. I’ll have to see how this goes. I’ll update that story later.

Next up – a new evaporative cooler. I had to remove the old one before the roofers finished sealing the roof. It was a rusty, leaking hulk that I’ve kept running for 14 years, tightening the V-belt, oiling the bearings, replacing water pumps, tubing, and floats, and replacing parts of the rusted-out metal sides. A new one in that same size was on sale at Lowe’s Hardware store for $369. I paid $35 for estimates of what it would take to purchase one and have it delivered and installed: $1922.52. That’s absurd. I suspected that, however. All I did was remove the old cooler. The ductwork is still in place. The electrical conduit is still there for attaching the unit to power. He wanted to replace all that, and there was no reason to do that. My advice: buy a cooler, but install it yourself or have an independent contractor install it.

I’m going to do it myself. The landlord’s nephew will assist me in picking one up and getting it on the roof. Stay tuned.

Basic Evaporative Cooler, aka desert cooler, swamp cooler, etc.

Walker Flats and a Solitary Llama

Photos from a hike to Walker Flats. The mountain peaks are part of the Chimayosos and Jicarita peaks. I was up above Santa Fe, and north of Mora, NM. West of that general area is the Pecos Wilderness. The specific place is called Walker Flats. We were searching for a waterfall and just missed it. Two travelers from Houston, Texas had already found it. We’d have gone back, but two of the people were ready to go home, and I didn’t like the looks of the dark clouds moving in. The winding dirt road we took to get there was full of deep ruts, and undercarriage-busting rocks. I didn’t want to drive on that road at night or in the rain, or in the rain at night. This llama followed us around but didn’t want to be approached too closely. Perhaps she is lost? She was munching on plentiful meadow grass, but two hikers kept trying to feed her almonds and granola bars.

On the way home, we stopped for ice cream, at Rene’s 50’s Diner and Little Alaska Ice Cream Parlor.

The Diner is paired with Little Alaska Ice Cream Parlor, so you can sit down and get both.

Laundry Dreams? A Dating Adventure?

Every once in a while I’ll have a dream that sticks with me after I’m awake. This morning, one of those shook me awake: I was living in some kind of multi-story apartment building, which I have never done, nor have I ever considered doing that. There was someone else in the apartment with me, maybe even two other people. It seemed we were arguing, or deep in some serious discussion. The phone rang. There was a laundry facility in the basement of the building, and my clothes were done. It wasn’t a service, just coin-operated machines, and the drier had finished. So they needed me to come get my clothes out of the machine. I said I’d be right down. As I was telling the other person, or persons, that I had to go get my laundry, there was a knock on my door. It was a large muscular man and I let him in. He had my clothes in a laundry basket. I lifted my arms to take the laundry and dump it on the bed, but he inverted the basket, dumping my clothes on the floor. I didn’t say anything, I just swooped down to pick them up and put them on the bed. They were still slightly damp.

And I was awake. I was confused for a moment, because it was just after 5:00 am, and still dark. I have no place to be, and nothing planned for all day, but I was wide awake. I made some strong tea as dawn broke. I can’t get the dream out of my mind, pondering what the hell it was about. A high-rise apartment? A laundry room? Neither applies.

The dream wasn’t about laundry. Anger? Was the argument about something important? I did have an odd breakup with someone I barely knew a few weeks ago. Diedre was someone I met on a movie set, the set of Matthew McConaughey’s Gold movie. It was shot here in Albuquerque in 2017. I was a background actor on the set for a few scenes. She was also doing background on that set. We had gotten together back then some time later, and gone to watch a movie in this great theater that has a brewery and bar in it. (not a dream – it was real). It was about the time that the Gold movie had been released, 2018, so I think that was what we watched. The movie house has multiple theaters, but it’s been closed since Covid-19 hit. Great place. You can sit at the bar before the movie starts, and then take your drinks with you into the theater. In fact, you can order food, and another drink while you watch the movie and they bring it to you.

After we watched the movie, we talked for a bit at the bar, discussing the movie, and other things. I had seen Diedre at meetings of a local group, Casting Coffee, made up of other people in the movie business, mostly background actors like myself. Before Covid-19 we had get-togethers once every other Saturday for coffee, snacks, and pot-luck items, and we talked shop: what movies were being shot, who was casting, etc. Around Christmas time, I had worn a Santa hat to the meeting. Diedre actually sat down on my lap, joking about what Santa (me) would bring her. It’s an old joke, so I laughed. We finally exchanged phone numbers, which is how our movie date came about.

As we were talking after the movie, she mentioned some friends we had in common, a man and a woman. They had made a short movie themselves, and I had supplied a still photo that was used in the movie as a MacGuffin (an object that is unimportant in itself but figures in the plot). I watched the finished short movie with them. I knew that woman, Tara, also from Casting Coffee meetings, and we had shared driving to and from movie events in Santa Fe a few times. She was then part of a Foundation that promotes movie making in New Mexico, and I had told her about a photography/modeling group that gave photographers and models practical experience and instruction in a photographer’s studio: Guerrilla Photo Group. The group that met there were also interested in movies, and I had obtained my first role with some novice movie makers there. So Tara and I met at the photographer’s studio and she gave a short introduction of her organization for people interested in getting involved in the movie business. I took some photos of Tara that she could use as headshots for casting directors. She had a small role on the TV series “The Night Shift” as a nurse, and they made her ID badge from one of those photos I took of her. I knew the man also, Chuck, who was a close friend of Tara’s.

Is this getting too complicated? I’m just rambling here, trying to piece this thing together.

So, all of that had to do with my conversation with Diedre at the movie theater bar. She talked about those two people, Tara and Chuck, whom she knew well, but she was gossiping about them, and bad-mouthing them. I didn’t like that at all, and never wanted to see her again. I don’t like gossips, and since Tara was a friend of mine, I hadn’t liked what Deidre was saying about Tara and Chuck at all. Malicious gossip and innuendo.

So, jumping forward to the present, in March I met Diedre on a hike organized by a Meetup hiking group. I was actually happy to see her, as a few years had passed. We hiked together and talked some. After the hike I asked if she’d like to get lunch nearby. We met at a popular Cafe in Corrales, a place where I had met a very interesting woman about nine years ago, but that’s a whole different kind of story. The GPG photography/modeling group I was part of then had also been to this same Cafe that night, holding a photography exhibit there, and one of my photos was part of the exhibit back then. So, anyway, during lunch at that Cafe with Diedre, I brought up the whole gossiping thing that had occured years earlier, because, if we were to be friends, I wanted that settled? discussed? It had bugged me about her. She told me about being on the outs with Tara, and having had an argument with her, and Chuck was somehow involved in that, and it was more that I wanted to hear about, but it seemed to explain why Deidre had been gossiping about them, so I decided to let it go.

It turned out that Diedre actually lives near me, and was more interested in having a hiking buddy to fast walk along the ditches in this old farming area. She really wasn’t that interested in hiking with the Meetup group. I agreed to meet her for hikes, since we lived close anyway. Well, fast forwarding a little, we had some enjoyable hikes. I suggested that we get something to eat after the first one, since I hadn’t eaten breakfast. She agreed. That happened a few more times. Once she offered to split the tab, so it seemed we were just to be friends, hiking buddies, which was fine with me. However, that was just a ruse. She kept buying me facemasks, as she didn’t like the generic ones I wore on the hikes (this was pre-vaccinations). She offered me two: a maroon one, a flashy bright paritotic one. She even gave me a photography book. She thought I should wear those skin-tight water-wicking pants that runners and bicyclists wear. Turns out she was curious about my legs and ass, which wouldn’t have been a bad thing, except she was becoming less and less interesting to me. She still gossiped, about other people now, and how people had ghosted her, and wronged her, and I wasn’t interested in any of that. She thought I wasn’t being supportive. I also was becoming suspicious of her, as she was acting like my long-time best friend, and wanted to date more often, pushing through the hikes quickly just so we could go out to eat.

She had also once been talking about crime in the neighborhood, and suddenly spit out: “Those Fucking Mexicans!” which I found horrifying. She herself was born and raised in New Mexico, so an attitude like that shocked me. We discussed it briefly, and she back-pedeled a bit, saying she just meant the ones committting crimes around where she lived, but it harked back to Donald Trump’s habit of lumping all Mexicans together who traveled (legally or illegally) to work in the US, as rapists, killers and thieves. We hadn’t discussed politics, but I was now highly wary of her. We hiked after that, but the discussion sometimes got heated, and I started calling her out on the way she talked about her friends, and I told her if she was so upset, she should call them and try to straighten things out.

I suspected now why people ghosted her and were mad at her. She’s a bit overbearing, and besides gossiping about other people, she has strong opinions about things, opinions that bothered me, so I would tell her what I thought, which was often much the opposite of what she thought. She didn’t like that. I think she wanted a PAL – which at one time was slang for “personal ass licker” a person whose sole value in a friendship is to agree with everything they say, condemn the people and things they don’t like, and like only what they like. It is not how I see real friendship. It’s also a domination thing. Diedre spoke often about how people had wronged her, especially men, whom she saw as always trying to control her. More and more, however, that’s how I saw her, She was critical of the clothes I wore to hike, critical of my house when she was there once, and absolutley sure of her opinions, which she could not discuss without taking offense to anything I said that did not reinforce her own opinions. She said I was trying to control her.

I’m a pretty laid-back kind of guy, so that seemed like a bizarre thing for her to say. But she tried to back it up by saying she had studied psychology and read a lot, so she understood people and understood how people manipulated other people. She also said that she was a really good person, that many people had told her that. An interesting discussion that we had once centered around how people often project their personality flaws onto others they have relationships with, unable to see those things in themselves. It was something we agreed on. However, I could see Diedre doing that herself. I found her manipulative, as I mentioned, but also rude to food workers in the restaurtants we went to, always – and I mean every time – wanting substitutions and additions. Her favorite thing was to ask for “crumbles” to be added to her meatless dishes, by which she meant meat, like hamburger, crumpled over her food dishes, but she didn’t want to pay for it – she fully expected it to given to her free because she smiled when she asked for it. Some waitstaff told her she would have to pay for it, which she didn’t seem to expect. This was a pattern with her.

She usually asked for extras, extra sauce on the side, extra this and that, and it seemed she was used to getting free items, and extra service. She always ordered more than she could eat, and then would specify extra boxes for each of the items on her plate, rather than one container. I saw her actions as rude, self absorbed, and coming from a sense of entitlement. We stopped at a restaurent one evening at 9:30 pm, but they were closing at 10:00 pm, and had already shut down the kitchen. Diedre wouldn’t accept that, insisting not only that they seat us, but that they make food for us, and she asked for the manger, who politely told her she couldn’t do that. She offered to seat us and bring us drinks and snacks, but Diedre wasn’t having any of that. We left. I could see she was used to having her own way, and fit the popular image of people like her who are called “Karens” – those older white women coming from a life of privilege and money who think they should always be obeyed by those lesser than them, and that they know more about everything than anyone else.

I was really disliking this woman. Our talks turned into arguments. I got heated once and apologized. This woman was getting to me, irritating me. Then one night in April I saw her exactly as she was. I had been telling her I wanted some crabcakes. I grew up in Baltimore, “fished” for crabs in the Cheasapeake bay, and know how to make a good crabcake. However, in New Mexico crabmeat is very expensive, and few restuarants use unfrozen, fresh meat, or prepare it the way it’s done in Maryland. ↓

So, when I found an open Pelican’s restaurant offering “Maryland Crabcakes” I was excited. Diedre had helped me shoot a dialogue audition at my house, for which I had promised her a meal. Which is how we had ended up a week earlier at the other restaurant at 9:30 pm, and then ended up getting a couple of good sub sandwiches at Dion’s Italian restaurant take-out window. Diedre didn’t consider that the meal she had been promised, which is why we were going to a nice sit-down dinner for crabcakes.

The meal was a disaster. The crabcakes came two to an order. They weren’t very big, but I was getting that order of two. Diedre insisted that we split the order, and each get one crabcake and something else. Since I was paying anyway, I politely told her to get an order for herself; I wasn’t splitting that – it was what I’d come for. That really pissed her off, which was bothering me, because it confirmed my idea that she expected to get her own way no matter what. But, we agreed to an order of crabcakes for each of us. She said that wasn’t enough, she would need something else, and the other menu items would be too much to eat combined with the crabcakes. I told her she could order whatever she wanted, but she was in a bad mood now because I hadn’t complied with her insistence that I have only one crabcake. They had a menu item that combined a cup of clam chowder and a salad, so I suggested we get that to pair with the crabcakes, and split it. She agreed. However, after I told the waiter what we wanted and he turned to go, she yelled at him: two separate orders of crabcakes, and a seperate chowder and a separate salad, which confused him. So, he brought our crabcakes, and then he brought out the largest bowl of clam chowder I’d ever seen, not part of the combo. Diedra didn’t want any, and I couldn’t eat all that. She tucked into the endless salad menu instead. It was not part of the combo either.

But the meal wasn’t over. Of course, she asked for extra bread, which she just wanted to take home. She wasn’t all that hungry. She asked our poor waiter for a box for the bread, a box for the salad, and even a container for the salad dressing, and, out of boxes, and because I suggested she add the crabcake to the salad – a crabcake salad for later – she insisted that he bring her another box for the leftover crabcake, because she had only been able to eat one of them (in truth, they weren’t very good). The clam chowder hadn’t been all that good either. She had tasted it but hadn’t wanted any, but she didn’t want to take that home too. She insisted that I send the waiter back for another container and take that home with me. I didn’t want to. She kept insiting that I take it and wouldn’t take no for an answer. I just wanted out of there. I finally had to tell her I didn’t like the heavily creamed chowder, and I wasn’t going to eat it. At this point everyone near us was listening to all of this. She finally backed down, sullenly. I took her back to my house so she could get her car. She didn’t insist on hugging as she had been doing, and said that she needed to go home immediately because she had to pee real bad. I offered my bathroom of course, but she said no.

I didn’t expect to hear from her again.

But, of course, I did. She called me wanting to try Pappadeaux, another restaurant I had mentioned that used to have a Maryland chef who made good crabcakes. I told her no, that I had called the restaurant and they were asking $16 for each crabcake, double what I had just paid. But I asked Diedre if she wanted to hike and she agreed. It wasn’t the best hike. She was argumentative and hostile, trying to rehash things we had discussed over and over again. At one point as we made our way back from the hike along a different trail, she pointed out a cactus I had seen earlier that I had commented on. She said: “There’s your cactus again.” I was unsure what she meant, since we had taken a different trail back that she chose. I told her it was not the same one, but she insisted it was. She said I was trying to control her. I told her that I hadn’t understood what she meant, because it couldn’t be since we were on a different trail, farther from the river than when we’d set out. She wasn’t having any of that, and wouldn’t believe me. I let it go. She said, <“Maybe it was the same one,” but she kept insisting we were on the same trail. Then she wanted to go eat. I told her I’d eaten a good breakfast and wasn’t hungry, which was true. She insisted, however, that we go out to eat, and maybe try another restaurant with crabcakes.

She didn’t take kindly to my turning her down on that. So, I told her we weren’t old friends, we weren’t close or family, and I hadn’t liked this way she kept coming on to me, wanting to have regular dates right off the bat, and acting like we were a couple. That really pissed her off. She acted indignant, insisting that she is a good looking, really attractive woman, and I was old and ugly, even though she’d once told me she was almost my age. She said there was no way she’d be interested in me, and that’s the way men, including me, are – so full of ourselves, and so self-centered and deluded that we think women are interested in us when they are not.

Again, I thought that was the last of it, and I was content not to ever have to deal with her again. However, she sent me a long text, the gist of which was that she was still really upset at what I said. It sounded like she wanted me to apologize. I ignored the text, so I got one last retort from her, which I’ve forgotten, because I deleted the conversation entirely. I was actually very happy that she would be out of my life.

When she had been at my house helping read for me for my audition, she had offered to clean my house for me as a job, because I had not been keeping up with dusting and clutter. She’s getting unemployment, but doesn’t want to work. She only wants to go back to art painting. She had asked me if I was getting unemployment too, as so many were during this time of Covid. I had told her I had a small retirement income and was receiving social security as well. She had smiled broadly, and half joking, had said: “Marry Me.”

I dodged a bullet there.

[UPDATE:

Weeks later, I took myself to Pappadeaux. Their crabcakes were exactly the same type as the ones served at Pelican’s: breaded claw meat, not lump meat, but also gaggingly smothered in capers. Now, in a large dish or stew I can take a few capers, but they had prepared the capers in a sauce that they poured over the crabcakes. I picked out the dozens of capers, but there was nothing I could do about the strongly infused taste of capers in the sauce. I could barely taste the flavor of the crabmeat. Capers are way too powerful a taste to me, because they completely overwhelm a delicate flavor like blue crab. I asked if it was possible to get the crabcakes without capers the next time I came, and the server told me I could order them that way. However, at $16 per crabcake, I’m not likely to order them again.]

Hiking Somewhere Above Fenton Lake

Went for a Meetup hike in the Jemez mountains, way out past Jemez Pueblo. The plan was to hike to an overlook with a good view of Fenton Lake, but hours later, we discovered we’d not taken the right trail to the overlook. Nevertheless, we had a pleasant day with occasional cool breezes or cloud cover, although it was hot in the direct sun. I didn’t get the photos of Fenton Lake I wanted, but, next time. We also stopped at the Intersection of US-550 and NM-4 near San Ysidro to catch some recent art ( @skindian_art ) near the feed store and animal museum there. Here are some photos:

CUSP OF A MORNING

Sautéd onion
beaten eggs
a lot of green
a dash of salt
a modicum of pepper
a sprinkle of cheese
a drizzle of red.

It’s all good after that.

FROZEN CUISINE DIRECTIONS

Prep…………………………………………………….Cut to vent…………………………………………………………….
Cook…………………………………………………..high…………………………………………………………………………4 minutes
Stir………………………………………………………and recover……………………………………………………………
Cook again………………………………………..high…………………………………………………………………………2:30 minutes
Stand…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..1 minute.