Indio, California: So... one little thing I forgot to mention yesterday? I ran into the drop-down screen. The wind blew it right into my fat little cheek as I walked from the bus to the casita. Bang! The corner end-cap that weighs down the screen… ya know… so it won't blow around in the wind?
My first thought was that I was going to have to go to the hospital emergency room (NO! NOT! NOW!) and was afraid to look in the mirror. Nothing. No blood. No gash. It hurt like heck though, so an ice bag was produced and I walked around for quite a while looking like I was a crazy lady pretending an ice pack was a telephone.
There will be a bruise.
Perfect timing for the state-wide mask wearing order from Our Governor.
This was my get-up when I went to the post office this afternoon. (Elvis has left the building!) I had purchased a few fun puzzles and things for Passover for the kids to play with while they were here... except they are not coming here. No one is going anywhere, so I packaged it up, printed the label and drove to the post office, with my bandanna mask and sunglasses. The La Quinta post office has an automatic swinging door at the entrance (I had to touch nothing) and a drop-down chute where I had to place the package and touch the handle to drop the package into the back room. I wore one disposable glove for this task, peeled it off and disposed of it in the no-touch trash can, and went back to my car... where I used THREE squirts of precious hand sanitizer.
I will not, obviously, go to the bank with this mask!
A quick update on my RV garden center: Barbie and Ken can invite Chatty Cathy to lunch! This is only four or five days growth. Amazing.
Dinner tonight - since it was Shabbat, I tried to celebrate a bit - was a half-chicken I had vacuum-sealed in the freezer from January.
We have SO MANY lemons and SO MUCH thyme, so I marinated the chicken in lemon, fresh thyme, salt and pepper all day. Lemon juice and lemon zest. The lemons are the size of baseballs. The first lemon produced 2/3 cup of juice! See the little juicer in the bottom right corner? I bought it in Japan in 1981, part of a “baby food making” kit. Honestly, I can no longer recall (my baby is 38) what other pieces came in the box, but I still use this little juicer every few days.
Our evening cocktail hour snacks were green olives, kalamata olives, cornichons, the last of the radishes, pimento-cheese-stuffed celery and Parmesan crackers. I’m getting down to the dregs of appetizer options... but still have a ton of nuts - and one bag of potato chips!
Just when you think She can’t get meaner, Mother Nature woke us up this evening - just before 7p - with a 4.9 earthquake, 20 miles west of us in Anza. I felt one big jolt, heard our casita groan, and we rushed outside to ride out the rest of the rumblings. Though we did not feel the aftershocks, as I write this before 10p, there have been nearly 30 aftershocks, most of them in the 2.5 range.
Our salad/vegetable/side-dish this evening was a salad with a bit of the remaining (barely hanging-on) frisée, over a balsamic glaze, with a perfectly ripe tomato, topped with the last of the burrata and the last of the basil.
My live-in grill master cooked the chicken half to perfection. And I am not exaggerating. Super juicy inside and crispy and lemony! Lotsa Leftovers!
Until my next thrilling update, I remain, your “shaken, not stirred” correspondent.