Monday, June 1, 2015

Trying New Things and Organ Meats




Today it is Katherine writing.  A rare appearance of late.

I have been consciously and with effort trying and doing new things for about six months.  Watching Mom retreat into the things she already knew because she could remember them sparked this decision.   Mom spends most of her time in her apartment watching Nelson Eddy and Jeanette McDonald movies.  I try to stop by close to meal times to avoid being trapped into a full viewing of one of her gems (she forgets I have seen them).   Naughty Marietta is her dream and my nightmare.

It seemed like a pretty little resolution--"I will try harder to do new stuff."  Seems easy.  Seems like that's what people do all the time.   It surprises me daily that I have to will myself into something new and that there are days where it just doesn't happen.  Doing new things is really hard.

Sometimes the new thing is only semi-new.  Sometimes I count that and sometimes I don't.  The rules are hard to pin down as well.  What really is new?  I mean, my spaghetti sauce tastes new each time I make it.  Kind of.

Seeing the movie version of INTO THE WOODS fell into this semi-new category.  I've spent enough time discussing the movie version with folks that I've decided it works.  Trying new things at old restaurants fits in this category too, but beyond deciding whether I will eat the new item again, there isn't much brain work here and it just isn't really new enough for my current approach to the resolution.

Sometimes a new thing takes away from an old thing.  We watched VALKYRIES the other night.  Not bad, but it got in the way of my knitting.  I had to pay attention.  Whoa.

 Sometimes new stuff is just really awful--the organ meat street tacos in PV hit me like that and I'm pretty darn sure I am not going down that road again.  For the record, Jim loved them and can't understand my complaints about odor and texture.

Sometimes new stuff is breathtaking or healing or really tasty.  There is a lot of risk here and a lot of aging is about learning to avoid risk and it is counter-intuitive to try out new things when you only have so much time to enjoy what you know you really enjoy.  Somewhere in all this is how grumpy old men become grumpy old men, but I need more caffeine than I have had in order to figure it out.

Before I get carried away and try to think about this too much, I think I'll just list some of my efforts to experience new things in recent history.

1.  I have tried multiple oysters of late.  Slithery oysters and fried oysters.  They are growing on me.  Jim keeps saying they taste like the sea.  Chefs say things like that too.  The sea tastes like salt and nothing else.  Oysters taste like oysters and they feel weird and slippery and feeling them slither down my throat is odd, but they don't taste like the ocean or the sea or even a Great Salt Lake.  Oysters might smell like the sea.  That's as far as I go.  I liked the fried ones in Puerto Vallarta best.

2.  I have started beading certain knitted work.  Thank you C. Fite.  I am more and more seeing myself as someone who paints with yarn and the beads add a medium.  I tried to "paint" the Santa Fe opera house into a shawl. The shawl combines the shape of the opera house and the colors of the sunset.  I am proud of it.  The photo I attached is the shawl.  Even Nate seemed impressed.  It is very hard to impress Nate.

3.  I had an acupuncture treatment.  It's kind of a fun story.  We've become friends with folks who run VALLARTA EATS in Puerto Vallarta because the tours and guides are incredible and I seem to make friends wherever I go because I listen to people as all real teachers do.  We went to their office to deliver a novel to a guide working on her English.

As we chatted, I melted--really.  Because of cancer drugs and my age, I melt now and then.  It's like a waterfall starts on my forehead and goes for a while and then stops.  It's embarrassing and damp on my end and most people try to pretend they aren't seeing it on their side.  Jim and friends have told me to just ignore it.  Can't happen.   Eric, the company owner, didn't pretend this wasn't happening and jumped in and told me his partner was an acupuncturist who specialized in treating women my age for these kind of things.  Eric gifted me the treatment.

I loved the treatment and the results.  I went close to three months without melting down and the night sweats were gone and for the first week after the treatment I felt like I walked around in a teflon bubble.  Yet another item on my To Do list is to find a local acupuncturist who could help me.  We can't afford monthly trips to PV for treatments.  That sucks, but I suspect I will lower my standards and try a new acupuncturist and decide if that counts as trying something new.   Just deciding if something is new or not is a task in of and itself sometimes.

4.  I have started drawing.  C. Fite introduced Zen Tangles at a knitting class.  It looked cool.  I bought a couple of books (I have never started much of anything without buying some books on the subject) and started drawing with the "required" pens.  The artsy pens clogged constantly and were expensive so I chucked them and started drawing with my favorite ballpoint pens.

I just did little drawing exercises at first.  Then I started getting ideas.  I started doing my own little drawings based on my own little life.  I gave myself narrow little assignments and by drawing 20-30 minutes a day, I got better.

I love this.  I am not doing this.  Life got busy and this slipped away.  Writing slipped away.  Knitting did for a bit.   Part of writing this is trying to find my way back to the things I love to do and the effort for that is hard as well.

5.  I have suggested some new restaurants and we have gone to them.  This is really hard.  Jim and I love food and we have found places that curl our toes.  If we find a new place we love, it's hard to work it into the rotation because we need to keep going to our favorite spots.  If we try a new place and we don't like it, we feel badly because we could have gone to an old standby.

There are two new places that have become part of our regular rotation.  The first is BUTCHER'S BISTRO in the Ballpark neighborhood downtown.  It's across the street from the Ballpark SNOOZE which is our go-to breakfast spot.  We've done lunch three times.  They make their own sausages and pates and mustards and you can buy them at the counter up front.  We like to sit at the bar and nibble appetizers or go for the burger and fries.  This is a really good place.

The other new place is SALT & GRINDER.  It is Frank Bonanno's new deli.  Sometimes after Jim drops Franny's kids back at their house, he will stop for a drink and burrata appetizer at S & G and bring sandwiches home for dinner.  I really like that.

6.  At the risk of ending on a downer,  I am pretty much done with organ meats.   The taco on the food tour did not win me over.  Even the chef's tasting menu we did at Mizuna where all food is wonderful didn't win me over when two dishes were based on organ meats and the textures bothered me.  I just don't see me getting there.  I tried.

At some point this list was very balanced and there was as much new stuff on it that I didn't like as the new stuff I did like.  There is more I like here now though.  I can only remember the name of one restaurant we won't go back to and couldn't tell you a single movie that I've turned off because it wasn't worth finishing.  I guess I needed more than a post title on my To Do list.

If there is a lesson here, and I'm not sure at all there is one, it's that we remember what we like.  Organ meats may be the exception.






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