I Am Chicken Little - "Do We Stay or Do We Go?"

I have been accused of being Chicken Little.  I have been told I always think of the worst that could happen.  It has been suggested that I might feel better if I wore both a belt and suspenders.  I guess these may be true.  I do tend to hope for the best but plan for the worst.  This is what I do when I wake up in the middle of the night and can't go back to sleep...I ruminate over all the terrible things that could happen and try to think of what I can do to avert these outcomes!

Lately I have been thinking about our house.  We love our house.  Jay purchased this house 27 years ago. It represented his California dream house because it had a pool.  When we married 13 years ago, we had planned to buy a new house together, but after months of searching, we decided we really liked the location of his house in Playa del Rey and we would remodel it to meet our current needs and stay put.  We did the remodel and declared..."We will leave this house when they carry us out!"

However, what looms over me now are the 15 steps it takes to climb from the street level to our front door.

Once at the door, the house is a single level but what if we lose the capability to bound up those stairs?  So we are considering looking for a street level house.  Each Sunday we drive the local area and go to Open Houses.  We wander through other people's homes and try to imagine living there and always come home and say..."We LOVE our house!"  Copying a post idea from my friend, Erin, at Knitting in Beantown, here are 6 of the many things we love about our home:

1. Our Front Porch

Many evenings are spent on the porch, sitting together as we sip a "liquid refreshment," talk about the day, plan tomorrow, wave to neighbors, watch Spencer shoot baskets across the street and admire the hummingbirds dipping their beaks into our red flowers.  We watch the world go by and feel that we are so fortunate to live where we do.

2. Our Greatroom

Our house is Goldilocks size...not too big and not too small, but just right for the two of us.  When we remodeled we opened up the kitchen and dining area so we have a "greatroom" that we love.  I enjoy cooking in my open kitchen, Jay enjoys sitting at the table reading the newspaper during the day, friends and family enjoy gathering around the island, sampling appetizers or singing happy birthday. The walls hold all the sounds of happy times, laughter and love. The Greatroom makes our little 1200 square foot house feel expansive.

3. Our Sunroom

This is a special room that holds our treasured books.  At certain times of the day, the sun comes in just right and it has the most delicious feel.  It is easily converted to a quest bedroom for a single guest by opening up the love seat.  Here I can read, begin a new knitting project or sit and meditate...ohhhmmmmmm.

4. Our Raised Garden area

All our garden areas are raised and easily accessible.  We have raised beds in the backyard for vegetables and terraced areas in the front that reminds me of the garden terraces of Ferla, in Sicily and I can easily weed and cultivate our edible landscape.

5. Our Neighborhood

We have a wonderful neighborhood for walking.  Just enough hills to make it interesting.  The beach is only a few blocks west and we can watch the sailboats enter and leave the Marina.  We know our neighbors and catch up on their lives and happenings.

6. Our Office

Our office is the room where we spend most of our time.  We enjoy having our desks facing each other so we can easily communicate as we each work on our separate projects.  Jay researches and creates his lectures and PowerPoint presentations for his energy class.  I write my blog, send email, update Facebook, prepare Omnilore presentations.  And we talk!  This room has the most "lived-in" feel and it is also the room that has the closed door when company comes!  

Soooo, if we don't move, then we have to think of other options of getting from the street level to the deck if the need arises.  We will investigate various technologies and keep the quotes in our hip pocket.  As a last resort, I remember that my cousin, Enza, who lives on a third level of an apartment house in Gela, Sicily. She  had a basket she used to let down when the produce vendor would come by.

She would lower the basket with her list of items needed, he would fill the basket and she would crank it up to her level.  Maybe...if we lost some weight...

I Am A Chef - Beating the Heat with Mango Lassis

I love summer...the Farmers Market runneth over with fresh vegetables and fruit...the eyes are assaulted with vibrant colors of heirloom tomatoes, peppers, greens, carrots, corn, fruit and berries.  Bargains scream out to my wallet...10 ears of corn for $1.00, ripe mangoes for $1.00 each.

I always come home laden with produce and then rush to figure out how to use everything up before it goes past its prime.  The peppers are roasted, seeded, peeled and dressed in olive oil.  The tomatoes were prepared in a vinaigrette and topped our fresh grilled halibut two nights ago.  But the mango has been staring at me.

Fortunately, I visit food blogs and this afternoon, being a bit hot, seemed the perfect time to prepare a recipe I obtained from the blog of a local chef, Patricia, (nice name) at her blog, Fresh Food in a Flash!  It is for Mango Lassis.  A lassi is like an Indian Smoothie.  Cool and refreshing it is the perfect compliment for the spicy Indian food or the perfect mid-day drink on a hot August afternoon.  Patricia conducted a cooking class where they prepared Indian dishes and the menu included Mango Lassis.  The recipe is so healthy and so simple that I am going to capture it here on my blog!

Since it is just Jay and I, I only use one mango.  Milli taught me the "island" technique of cutting mangoes easily.  Since the fruit has a large flat seed in the middle of it, you just slice off the large "cheeks" of the fruit and then score it in a checkboard pattern and invert the peel.

Then it is easy to cut the cubes off to eat fresh, put in a salad or toss in the blender for a lassi.

Here are the specific ingredients for 2 small lassis.  It can easily be doubled.
1 mango
1 cup plain non-fat yogurt
1/3 c of milk (I used plain almond milk...but I could use regular or coconut milk)
1/8 c sugar
1 cup of ice cubes
Blend it until it is all smooth and creamy.

I poured the lassi into our Frangipani Wine glasses that we just got last weekend when we visited JoAnn DiStefano Frangipani at their winery in Temecula and then topped it with some ground cardamon to give it an exotic flair.

Jay just loves being my royal taster...one of the "many" fringe benefits of being my spouse!

I Am A Celebrant - A Blogiversary & Reinventing Yourself

My Blog is 2 years old...almost!  This coming Sunday, August 12, will be the two year anniversary of my first blog post.  I started the blog for myself.  I wanted to:

1. Learn a new skill

2. Work a regular writing discipline into my routine

3. Capture the meaningful events in my life

4. Honor people in my life who were important to me

I have accomplished all those goals and more so.  I found that my blog took on a life of its own.  Through the two years I have enlarged my sense of who I am as a person, I reinvented myself...from a person who didn't know much about computers to a person who is a "Blogger!"

Retirement for us has been  a gift and an opportunity to realize that we can continue to grow and become MORE...we can reinvent ourselves.  Sadly, we recently attended a memorial for a friend who never experienced retirement.  Mistakenly thinking he had time, he continued to decide to work, "just one more year." 

I think it is significant that the first blog I wrote was about my husband, Jay, and a class he had put together on the topic of Energy to teach at CSUDH's Osher Lifelong Learning Institute because today I want to write about Jay again.  Jay is a perfect example of someone who has re-invented himself.  He retired 12 years ago from a career as an aerospace engineer.  It was his identity...what he presented to the world and what he held in his mind. Today, he would still tell you he was an engineer because an engineer takes science and applies it in ways to try to improve the human condition.  He continues to carry a notebook, pen, pencil, highlighter in his top left pocket...but NO pocket protector!

However, how he manifests his role as an engineer is completely different.

Six years ago he began reading and hearing much about Global Warming and Peak Oil.  An eternal "skeptic" he decided to attend a day-long conference held at Cal Tech on the topic to try to determine, for himself, if what he received from the media was truth and to try to better understand the situation.  That conference was the catalyst for his re-invention!  In the intervening years he has worked to understand and monitor the "true" state of affairs regarding these two topics and their inter-relationship. He has read stacks of books, analyzed charts, dug into data, talked with experts, and mulled the situation over and over. 

As he own knowledge and analysis grew, he took on another role...that of informer.  Convinced that the government cannot solve this problem on its own because legislators are so removed from scientific data, he seeks to translate the information into a form that others can understand, inform others about what the issues are, and influence policy and action (both governmental and private) into the most effective activities toward maintaining a healthy economy, society and world.  What a huge objective!  He writes letters, contacts "those in positions of influence," and continues to teach.

Just this week he began teaching another course, this time at UCLA in their Extension Program, on The Critical Issues of Energy and Climate Change.  Today his world, his area of expertise, his world perspective and his self-image are all broader in scope and purpose.

The beauty of it all is that re-invention is a continuing process.  He will tell you one thing today, but he knows that a new finding or a tweeking of a situation can change the data.  It is dynamic and Jay remains open to new information and is willing to adjust his findings and even change his mind!  What a concept!

So...he is continuously re-inventing himself and as a result, is more fully alive!

I Am A Seeker - Participating in Philologue

"If you build it they will come..."  Sometimes I find myself in a conversation with someone who is contemplating retirement...wondering if the time is right and, more importantly, if they will be able to enjoy a fulfilling life without a regular job to fill the hours.  "How do you find things to do?" they ask.  Retiring early at 58, I have now enjoyed 12 1/2 years of retirement.  When Jay and I retired, we thought seriously about the semantics involved.  It was not retirement...it was re-creation...a time to reinvent, re-create ourselves while we recreate!

We kept our eyes and ears open and found many things to do, classes to take, places to see, books to read, skills to refine.  And....if we could not "find" something we were looking for, we could be part of "building" it.  That is what we did with Philologue.  This is the name we have given to a group of "like-minded" friends who have chosen to meet monthly to discuss various topics of interest.  It is really the brainchild of our friends, John and Lynn Taber.  After completing a very successful class in Omnilore some of the class members decided they wanted to continue their stimulating discussions by meeting regularly at each other's homes.  The name of our group comes from the word philology and is related to words and the love of discussion.

It is not easy to find a group of people who share inquiring minds and are willing to come together and talk meaningfully with each other, even if they have different opinions!  But I think the desire for such a group is nothing new.  There have been "salons," gatherings of people throughout history.  I don't know if we truly meet the definition of such a group, but we find ours very rewarding.  We have discussed fantastic topics like: Global Poverty, the War on Drugs, Health Care Reform, up-coming elections and propositions, Issues Facing the State of California, the Situation in Afghanistan, the Food Delivery System, Energy and Peak Oil to name a few.  Each month we choose the next month's topic and identify the host and then we come to the gathering prepared to share what we have discovered on the topic during the intervening time. In our discussions we question prevailing rhetoric and challenge ourselves to see where we stand on the issues.

Last Sunday we met at John and Lynn's home and the topic was the Supreme Court: the justices and key cases. 

Our hosts this month, John and Lynn Taber

For two hours we shared information with each other and discussed various aspects of how the Supreme Court works.  And of course, we love when the discussion winds down and we gather around the table to share appetizers!

The membership has changed over the 7 years that we have been meeting. Some have dropped out and their chairs have been filled by others. We keep our group small...just 11 of us...small enough so that everyone can participate but large enough to have a good exchange of opinions and thoughts. We always leave with new found clarity and often with some good ideas about what our legislators could be doing.  We are not as recognizable as "Brookings" or "Cato" or "Rand" but we would be happy to share our findings and conclusions!  Now if only some of them wanted our input!

We are looking forward to next month when we will gather at Karen's home to talk about Employment and the Job Market: How technical innovation will affect employment and what will be the jobs of the future. We will never run out of topics. 

So, bottom line, the message is...if you can't find what you are looking for in retirement, you can always help to create it!